Evergreen Cancels Concerts

Campus president Les Purce has issued a moratorium on student-sponsored concerts and other events following a riot that recently broke out during a Dead Prez concert at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., and caused between $35,000 and $50,000 in damage.

"We aren’t having any more concerts until we can get our house in order," Purce said in a statement. "We have to ensure that we have the appropriate kinds of security and safety on campus and a revisiting of our policies as they relate to all aspects of approval of concerts, so that we can be assured that our house is safe."

While the riot left some fingers pointing at the crowd, lack of security and the hip-hop duo itself, one witness has chalked up the disturbance to a series of misunderstandings.

A fight broke out during the show, which reportedly drew more than 800 students and non-students to the college’s recreation center February 14th.

Carolyn Hauser told the Olympian that one of her friends was later arrested by a female police officer after he was mistakenly identified as the person who’d struck another concertgoer during the fight.

As the officer, Washington State Patrol trooper Brandy Kessler, led the man out of the concert, Hauser told the paper she heard Dead Prez ask the crowd if they were going to do anything about the arrest.

"They weren’t trying to incite the crowd at all," she said. "They said, you know, ‘This is Evergreen, this type of stuff doesn’t happen here.’"

Kessler took the man to her police car for questioning and a crowd reportedly surrounded the vehicle and began demanding the man’s release, telling her she had the wrong suspect.

"I’m really impressed with the way the officer handled the situation before she had backup," Hauser told the Olympian. "She was very calm about it."

As the crowd grew, Kessler called for backup and the man was released. But when a backup Thurston County sheriff’s vehicle failed to start and was left at the scene, some members of the crowd overturned it, broke out the windows and wrote graffiti on it. A laptop and radar gun were also stolen from the vehicle, police said.

Riot police were eventually called to the scene to disburse the crowd.