Cedar Village gathering celebrates MSU's Final Four win over UConn

Photo credit: Dane Robison


Following the Michigan State Spartans' Final Four victory over the Big East's No. 1 seeded UConn Huskies, I just wanted to get together with a bunch of other Spartans to celebrate. Granted, partying with an estimated 4,000 students in Cedar Village isn't exactly my idea of a good time, but I really needed to be around those who were just as excited and psyched as I was about our big win.
"Wanna go to campus and check things out, take some photos?" I asked Dane, my husband.
"Sure, if you want to," he said. Minutes later, we grabbed our cameras and headed for the door.

"Where you goin'?" my son asked.
"Cedar Village?" I winced. I had a momentary flashback to my years as a teen when I'd ask my parents if I could spend the night at a friend's or go to a party, always afraid they would say no.

"Are you serious?" my son replied. There was a hint of incredulity in his voice.
"Yeah ... wanna go with?" I asked, half hoping he'd say no. He wouldn't understand all the revelry, and I didn't want him to get bored, then insist that we leave before either Dane or I was actually ready.
"Nah," he grinned, "but have fun."


Going in and getting the word out

Soon, we were on the road, and I notified the Twitterverse: "Heading into EL to check out the haps." (Follow lolorobison on Twitter for a blow-by-blow report, or friend me on Facebook.)

We approached campus by heading north on College Road, west on Forest, and north on Harrison. Dane asked me to swing by the Spartan Statue, so I proceeded east on Kalamazoo. He took a few photos of Sparty, who currently sports a basketball jersey bearing the number 1. Campus may have been eerily quiet, but the air was charged with an invisible electric current. Here and there, small groups of pedestrians rushed along the sidewalk, chatting excitedly. Two girls stumbled as they walked along West Circle Drive. We veered to the right toward Auditorium Road. I'd planned to park in Lot 9, which is the parking lot closest to Cedar Village. And that's where it became clear that something big was going down in EL. With the exception of a single unoccupied parking space at the farthest point west of the entrance, the entire lot was packed. Suddenly, a steady stream of cars began pulling in and milling around. Everyone was looking for a vacant spot.

As soon as we exited my car, I heard a chopper (or was it choppers?) overhead. We proceeded on foot toward Bogue Street, and merged into small groups of students headed in the same direction. As we neared Bogue, the familiar smell of beer permeated the air. In the distance, we heard a deafening chant: "Go Green! Go White!"
Just off Bogue at Waters Edge Drive, the entrance into Cedar Village was barricaded, and officers from the MSU Police Department stood by, taking it all in.
Dane and I discussed whether we dared to venture into the madness. Although I didn't vocalize it, my concerns were twofold:

1) Based on past student practice, there was a real possibility that a riot might ensue; and

2) We were the "old farts," and we'd definitely be crashing their party.

Our discussion went like this:
Me: "Well, what do you think?"

Him: "I dunno, you?"

Me: "I mean, should we go in?"
Him: "I guess, if you wanna."
I looked down the alley again, beyond the barricades, but I couldn't make anything out because the headlights of a car parked in the alley blinded me.

We agreed to keep our eyes peeled, stay together and get out at the slightest sign of trouble.

Now what?

We walked in slowly, cautiously. As we arrived at a point just south of the "gathering spot," I gasped at the size of the crowd. It was an immense sea of people, chanting and jumping to a frantic rhythm. The sea moved like a creature comprising thousands of individual parts. From the balconies of the apartments bordering Cedar Street, onlookers chanted along with the crowd. "MSU! MSU! MSU!"The mood was friendly and infectious. Young females flirted with male police officers, who seemed to enjoy the attention. Though they were on riot watch, the officers were relaxed, yet composed. They obligingly posed for the camera.

"Dude, check out that cop," one young man pointed toward a female officer. "That's a chick – that's so hot!"

"Are you on Facebook?" a 19-year-old woman asked MSU Police Officer Casey Christman. She asked not to be identified. "Can I find you there? Can I friend you?" she bounced on her toes, clearly hoping he'd say yes.

She spotted me and my camera and jumped at the chance to ask if I'd take her picture.

"Are you with the paper?" she asked hopefully.

"No, I'm not," I answered, laughing at her enthusiasm. "I'm a blogger, and I write about ... whatever comes to mind."

"Will you put my picture on your blog? How will I find it?" I promised to send her an e-mail notification.

She posed with Christman, then with fellow partiers.


'I was here'
I asked Christman how many people he estimated were in attendance tonight, and he said he didn't know for sure.

"It started out at about 500, but that was hours ago, and I haven't heard anything since," he said.

I told him the media had reported that about 4,000 were expected to turn out, and he said, "Yeah, that would seem about right."

Three serious-looking individuals, all much older than even me and Dane, sauntered by, each wearing a white T-shirt bearing the words "ACLU OBSERVER." They stood along Water's Edge, keeping a watchful eye on the evening's festivities.

A petite blond approached and asked me to take her picture. Her name is Leah Tessier. I asked her how old she was and whether she's an MSU student. She hesitated just long enough for me to doubt her response: 23 and not a student.

"You're not going to get me in trouble, are you?" she asked, worried, then finally admitted, "I'm a student here." A search on MSU's online directory confirmed that she is a freshman from Saint Clair, Mich., studying Human Biology.

All around, party-goers asked us to take their pictures. They grabbed their buddies and crammed their faces and bodies together to make sure no one was left out.

"I wanna say I was here, that's it," I heard one young man tell his friend as they rushed along Water's Edge toward Cedar Street.
A couple of girls approached, adorned with green feather boas. They stopped to pose for a photo. It seemed everyone wanted someone to take a photo of them to document their participation in this year's Cedar Fest – the equivalent, I guess, of scratching, "I was here," into the paint or wall of a public bathroom stall ... only better.

"Front page, baby," one young man in a black stocking cap said as he posed. "We're No. 1 all night!"
"All night, all night, all night," others chanted.
Just before 1 a.m. I returned to my new law-enforcement friend, Casey Christman.

"Have there been any major incidences reported tonight?" I asked.

"No, we've had very few," he replied. "A couple of indecent exposures and some disorderlies. Other than that, it's been pretty good, especially compared to 2005. As long as they do what they're doing right now, we [the police] aren't going to do anything more than stand by and observe."

"That's so cool," I said.

"Yeah," Christman agreed. "This is great by comparison!"
In the late 1970s, the first Cedar Fest was sanctioned by the city of East Lansing as a block party at the Cedar Village apartment complex. Throughout the '80s and '90s, however, Cedar Fest spiraled out of control, and was eventually banned by the city council.

The beat goes on

Somewhere at the heart of the celebration, drums beat erratically. They pulsed through the night air, conflicting with the cadence of the chants, yet still in sync with the frenzied atmosphere. Young women mounted the shoulders of their male companions, and everyone chanted, "Go Green!" Hugs, kisses, smiles, laughter. It was fun to be among Spartans who knew how to have a good time without getting out of control.

"I don't want to get into any trouble," Tessier had said more than once. "I just want to have fun."
And that's just it.
Who doesn't want to have fun? But at what price? It only takes one bad choice, one stupid decision to turn a party into a problem. And when you've got thousands of young partiers drinking beer and shouting, "Take it off!" or "Tear gas!" odds are, problems will arise. That was the tension that hung in the air all night. At the edge of the crowd, another young woman screamed, "I'm going up!" She volunteered her body to surf the crowd. I saw her legs kick up into the air, and then she disappeared into the vortex. Another young woman asked my husband if he would be her boyfriend.

"Uh, no," he said (thank God!), and then he looked at her as if he thought she'd surely lost her mind.

Later at Giorgio's a young man asked my husband if I was writing a blog about how bad the cops were.

"I didn't think they were," Dane answered. "In fact, I thought they were pretty cool."
"Yeah, I guess you're right," the kid said, "except that they were all dicks when the girls flashed their boobs." I'm sure it won't surprise anyone that he had taken issue with that fact. "Everyone just wanted to have fun," he added.

And from my perspective, most everyone did.

More photos, compliments of Dane Robison, visit Flickr. More unrelated photos by Dane Robison at TimeFramePhoto.

Read LSJNews online: East Lansing Police: 60 arrested in 'peaceful' celebration.