Looking ahead to rough times out in the real world, it seems Columbia seniors are feeling the pressure even during a night of light-hearted on-campus diversion.
Columbia’s Senior Formal ended on a sour note early Sunday morning, when students waiting to retrieve their belongings from the coat check outside Lerner Hall’s Roone Arledge Auditorium grew impatient and tried to push past barriers.
The scuffle erupted after the music ended at 1 a.m., as a large group of students gathered outside the coat check. Many were intoxicated, and public safety officials were unable to effectively organize the masses into a line.
After some yelling and pushing, witnesses said one student jumped over into the coat check area. In response, public safety officials closed the gate to the coat check and said no one could retrieve their coats until students returned to Roone Arledge and a line was formed.
“Every single person who was inside was still pushing to the front,” Austin Carr, CC ’09, said. “They tried to close the gate on people’s fingers.”
Carr said a number of the students were “probably a little drunk, but no more aggressive than the security guards were.”
Eventually the students were organized into a line and the chaos was resolved.
“I wound up leaving and coming back an hour later,” Olivia Cholak, CC ’09, said, adding that because she chose to get her coat after the crowd settled down, she had “no trouble.”
A witness who asked not to be named said that, while waiting to get her own belongings, she saw a girl fall in the crowd. At least one paramedic was on the scene, but it is unknown whether there were any injuries.
“It was CU’s job to handle the situation, and they weren’t handling it appropriately,” Carr noted.
Jim McShane, associate vice president for public safety, could provide no information on the incident by press time.
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