The Ohio University daylight saving time change not-riots of 1997-98

Join me in taking a look back at yet another infamous moment in OU history

Feb 26, 2024

In the early morning hours of April 6, 1997, like many other Ohio University students, I had no idea what I was about to walk into.

Where the evening began, I don’t recall. It was a Saturday night, so most likely a party on Mill Street, either at 116 Mill, where my best friends lived in a rental that Student Senate later deemed the single worst off-campus residence, which is quite an achievement, considering the sheer tonnage of mold growing in Athens rentals, or we may have been at my house on Elliott Street, which had its own charms, like the “Silence of the Lambs” basement and a first-floor bathroom with a door that only intermittently unlocked, which is why on Halloween night in 1996 my neighbors saw me dressed as Bob Dole crawling out of a small ventilation window yelling “Bob Dole doesn’t like this!”

However the night started, it ended with me walking a friend home to her apartment on the other side of town. This was something I did for friends because it always felt like the right thing to do. You walked them home so they wouldn’t be harassed by creepers. If it meant you occasionally wandered into a drunkenly chaotic mass disturbance that made national headlines, well, that’s what being a friend is all about.

How the 1997 incident started
It was one of those perfect Athens spring nights – around 70 degrees after midnight, with the heat of the day still clinging to the bricks. I’ve only ever experienced this in Athens, but there was this thing that would happen where you would go into a bar around 9 on a warm night, and at 1 a.m. when you came out, it was somehow hotter five hours after sunset. I suspect the Natty Lite sweats created a greenhouse effect.

We arrived at her place. I made sure she got in OK. I headed back to Court Street for a slice of GoodFellas as reward for my chivalry.

Coming up Union, something seemed off. Unusual. Loud. Voices. Yelling. Not yells of panic or fear – rather, yells that indicated shenanigans were afoot. It wasn't Halloween loud, but they were Halloween yells that can best be described as “Too bad Sully and Smitty passed out at The House because they are not going to believe this!”

I rounded the corner at Union and Court. The sidewalks were full. I walked into the thick of it, and someone said the bars closed early for daylight saving, and no one was leaving. I recall feeling shocked that the bars of Athens had the discipline to follow any law. Of all the legal requirements and code violations and general bathroom maintenance norms ignored by Uptown bars, this is the one requirement they chose to honor?

Brandi Nicole, a friend from the Class of 1998, remembers how the events of that evening began: “We were at The CI or Crystal at closing, and due to the time change, all the bars pushed patrons out at the same time an hour earlier than normal. This caused an overflow of people who weren't ready to end the night yet standing in the street. Which basically led to friends seeing one another, chatting, and it was a very chill atmosphere. Don't recall much of a police presence being there or anyone really rushing people to leave. In my opinion, any other night the bars would have dwindled down in that last hour with people headed to the next place to continue the night or stagger home.”

It was fun.

It was a moment.

There were a handful of dudes who needed to take it down a notch, but for everyone else it was a goof. Like in 1995 when the football team snapped a 13-game winless streak by beating a lowly Division II team and fans celebrated by storming the field and absconding with the goalpost like it was a national title game. At one point, the students on one side of Court Street shouted “Tastes great” and the students on the other side of the street yelled “Less filling,” an ode to Miller Lite beer commercials. The whole vibe at that point could best be described as Bob Ueker.

No one, as would later be reported, became angry because the bars had closed and thus chose to riot. The thought of students marching on The Pub because they stopped selling beer that students could drink for free at home is comical. The scene was more that Court Street itself became The After Party1.

Before I tell you what happened next, let us pause for a moment and talk about predictable human behavior. What is it that prevents people from walking onto roadways? A couple things. They don't want to get hit by cars. They don't want to get arrested. They don't want to be yelled at for being dumb.

Thanks to the volume of students and the volume of alcohol and the volume of alcohol in the volume of students, all those safeguards broke down. It was late, so there were few cars on Court Street, and at some point I’m guessing those drivers saw the crowds and went the other way. Police were busy that night breaking up a frat fight between Pikes and Phi Kaps outside the Crystal, one that police say involved bottles, pool cues, pool balls and chairs. Finally, crucially, as an increasing number of people walked onto Court Street, they were gawked at and celebrated by the tipsy, boisterous crowd.

There is no predicting crowd mentality, but there are moments with crowds when a tipping point is reached, and behavior shifts. When enough students had ventured onto Court Street, the dam broke and students poured in and took the street with great cheer.

I stayed and watched for a bit, and the moment was so goofy, and seemed so destined to fizzle itself out, that I went to grab that slice of pizza and walk home with a story to tell as I truly believed in my heart there was no reason to stick around because there was no possible way anything could darken that joyful moment.

Something darkens that joyful moment

Thanks to The Post, I can fill in the details from after I left.

At some point, about 70 police officers arrived. This is when any hope of letting college chicanery run its course was lost because a large police presence guaranteed that a drunken crowd would stick around for a very big and dumb reason – to see what police would do to them. The presence of police gave the night a second act, one that heightened the stakes and the tension.

Here's how The Post described the moment: “Students defied a police order to clear the street. Many danced to music blaring from a window and some lit cigarettes from burning trash cans while they waited for the police to take action against them.”

Students were not wholly innocent. Some did set trash cans on fire, and bottles and other objects were thrown. One officer was hit by a bottle and injured. But the troublemakers were far outnumbered by the merrymakers. The worst you can say for the merrymakers is they unwittingly gave cover to the troublemakers.

Like most people, I’m no expert at dispersing drunken college students. The only time I’ve ever needed to do so was during a party my senior year at our house on Mill when a guest fell into a hidden cistern in our backyard and EMS was called. One of my roommates ran through the house screaming that the cops were coming (I don’t remember the cops ever actually coming) as our guests fled into the night. Unfortunately for the police on Court Street in 1997, they did not have access to my roommate in a manic state of mind, so they had to resort to conventional means.

What police did next generated aftershocks for years to come.

They chose force.

Police ordered the crowd to disperse and used metal poles and fired wooden baton rounds (AKA knee-knockers) at students.

Forty-seven people were arrested, 34 of them students. The joyful start of the night gave way to agitation, tension and violence.

One student told The Post he was walking home in a crowd when a police officer poked him in the back with a pole and told him to hurry. When the student responded, “Do you want me to run these people over?” officers threw him against a car and handcuffed him. Given the poor relations between local police and students in the 1990s, I find this exchange completely believable.

Whenever I write about infamous OU events, I always wonder what would have happened if every student had a high-definition camera in their pocket. Or what would have happened if they knew that everyone around them had a high-definition camera in THEIR pockets. The thing about being a jackass at OU in the 1990s – and I speak from experience – is that as long as you didn’t get arrested, you could do dumb things and not have to worry about poor choices following you around. The iPhone came out in 2007. Court Street hasn’t experienced a time change incident since then. Might not be a coincidence.

Way back in the 1990s, we did not all have cell phones with cameras, but a few students did have camcorders, and one student had the awareness to record the night’s events. The student shared his video with a Columbus TV station. Depending on who you asked back then, he made a couple hundred or tens of thousands of dollars off that video from multiple buyers. The Columbus TV news report that ensued was the talk of campus all week because “we made the news.”

The TV report, citing police, links the fraternity fight to the crowds taking over Court Street, which appears to confuse chronology with cause and effect. I suspect, based on my years of experience covering police departments that seek to shape a narrative, that the police in this case sought to shape a narrative. From their point of view, out-of-control students had to be dealt with through force.

It's a narrative Dean of Students Joel Rudy pushed back on when he talked to The Post.

Rudy said he is concerned about the exaggerated coverage of the event by media outside of Athens, many of which referred to the gathering as a riot.

“From what I have seen and experienced in the past, this was a far cry from a riot,” he said.

“Rudy, who has been Uptown during similar situations, said gatherings like this have not been unusual in OU history.

“I don’t want to be misinterpreted as condoning it or excusing the behavior,” he said.

In the past, as long as the students did not hurt anyone or vandalize property, Rudy said officials only kept students from hurting themselves.

“Our idea was just to kind of let them get it out of their system,” he said.

The Columbus TV report stands as the video of record of the evening's events as well as a testament to 1990s TV news cheesiness. Producers created an on-air graphic labeled “Chaos on Court Street,” like something out of Kent Brockman on “The Simpsons.” What’s worth noting from the report is that the amateur video shot by the student shows police arresting people, students just standing around, and police shoving people who are clearly trying to leave. “They would pick people randomly and take them away,” said the student.

That video traveled far and wide, as did an Associated Press report that tallied up the arrests. A follow-up Post article noted that the arrests were mentioned in newspapers as far away as St. Louis, Orlando and Los Angeles, as well as in USA Today and on CNN “Headline News” and “Inside Edition.”

Why did a story about something that happened at a Southeast Ohio college for an hour or two on a Sunday morning get picked up everywhere? By choosing to aggressively disperse the crowd and make 47 arrests, which is an eye-catching number, police unwittingly handed the press an irresistible story that hit on two narratives that had already been well-established well before that evening – rowdy college students misbehaving, and Ohio University as a party school. All that notoriety guaranteed it would happen again.

1998: It happened again

In the early morning hours of April 5, 1998, I took my reporter's notebook Uptown and did something I'd never done before – I remained sober at The Junction. I had a suspicion this would be a big story, plus I saw how the official police account of what happened in 1997 differed from what I saw with my eyes and on video. I felt compelled to report what happened, to talk to students and to observe the police. You know, to be a journalist. Since I was representing The Post, doing so six Bud Lights deep into the night was not an option. I'm glad I kept my head clear because I needed it.

The police will tell you 1998 was all about media overreaction. The media (me – I was managing editor of The Post) will tell you 1998 was about police overreaction. I suspect both can be true, but the difference is, I'll admit the media played a role. I’ve never heard anyone from the police admit culpability. Of course, any real blame rests with the students who took to the streets and refused to leave. None of this would have happened if thousands of people had not descended on Court Street. But the question is what brought them there, and the answer is publicity (media) generated by the 47 arrests made the year before (police).

In the story I co-wrote for The Post, I reported that students began to crowd the sidewalk around 1 a.m. as the bars closed for daylight saving. If there was any attempt to grant bar owners a variance that night on closing time, I don’t remember it. I also don’t recall any talk of asking the bars not to open that night. It’s almost like the city wants all of the money students spend on getting hammered while not taking responsibility for the consequences of students getting hammered.

The vibe was noticeably different in 1998. There was still an air of festivity, but the presence of police added an edge.

Brandi Nicole was a bartender at The Junction. She said, “After closing, when we walked out to go home, the police were everywhere. On horses, with guns and full riot gear. They were not allowing people to cross the street, telling you to go home or threatening to shoot you (with rubber bullets). Not understanding, I need to cross Court Street to get to my home on Mill Street. The person that was bartending with me would not let me walk alone in the chaos. So we continued to be persistent trying to find a way to get home. However, no matter how far we walked, nothing let up, (a friend) ended up being shot with one of those rubber bullets.”

Some police were mounted on horseback. They kept students from taking the street for about 30 minutes. Around 1:30, students finally spilled into the street. At 1:41, police said they announced to the crowd that it needed to disperse, but I can tell you from being in that crowd the dispersal announcement was inaudible. About 20 minutes later, police in riot gear advanced on students.

Officers fired at the mass of bodies on Court Street with knee-knockers, one of which limply struck my leg on its 73rd bounce. I kept it as a souvenir. A woman who was less fortunate was struck in the face and injured. Her photo wound up on the front page of The Post. This went on for about 30 minutes. Police firing and advancing. Students backing up.

Said Lyndi Sarges Gesiorski, Class of 2000, “I remember making our way to Court Street because there had been so much hype and we wanted to see what was going to happen. It was called a riot, but I remember a large crowd of us and then a line of police coming at us and getting smacked in my side with the rubber bullet, or wooden? So much for being where you shouldn’t be because you are curious. It certainly was a funny story to tell and thankfully only a bad bruising.”

I stayed on the edge of the fray, far enough not to attract police attention but close enough to see what was happening. I witnessed students stubbornly not moving, and police shoving students and also cornering students in alleys and arresting them, including a member of Student Senate who as he was arrested in an alley saw me and suddenly saw the value of the fourth estate as he cried out for me to write about what I saw. (I have now kept that promise, twice.)

Looking back, it was like everyone had a role to play.

The students fell into two camps – those who went Uptown to see what would happen, which was most of them, and those who were there to defy police and make fools of themselves, which was some of them.

The police were there to clear the street using force.

Some 34 people were arrested, 30 of them students. A few officers were injured.

Afterwards, police said media coverage “played a crucial role” in drawing students to Court Street. The city’s police chief struck a conspiratorial tone when he said, “I feel the media helped create the event and brought about a self-fulfilling prophecy and gave them a story to cover.”

As someone who has worked in the media his whole adult life, I’ll tell you what most likely happened. Out-of-town media remembered that students took Court Street and police used force and arrested four dozen people the previous year, so they came back to see if it would happen again.

You can clearly see why it happened again in this news report. For something like this to be prevented, the city, county and school would all have to be on the same page. The sheriff’s antagonistic attitude makes clear they weren’t.

And here’s a compilation of local news coverage, which includes footage of many authentic 1990s college students.

They weren't riots

I recall a newsroom discussion at The Post about what to call the 1997 event. Students were calling it a “riot,” but I think students did so for lack of a better word. In my opinion, riot was not definitionally correct.

A riot is defined as “a violent public disorder” that is specifically “a tumultuous disturbance of the public peace by three or more persons assembled together and acting with a common intent.” What happened in 1997 and again in 1998 did not meet that threshold.

I believe at some point an editor pulled out a thesaurus, which is what journalism nerds do in times of literal crisis. The word The Post went with in our headline, for lack of a better option, was fracas, which is defined as “a noisy quarrel.”

Fracas was an imperfect description, but it got us close to reality. It’s a tough one to pin down because most of the students were just standing around, not messing with police, so any definition that includes two opposing forces clashing with each other doesn’t quite work. It was more like one group clashing and another group that didn’t want to go home. What do you call that? If anyone has a better word, let me know.

A tradition begins … and ends

The pattern was set. Similar scenes played out annually for years.

1999: The time change fell on Easter weekend, when campus is traditionally empty. About 300 students milled about but never took the street.
2000: “Ruckus Returns” was the headline in The Post. A group of students took Court Street for about 25 minutes, and 19 people were arrested. A guy punched a horse.
2001: Police seemed to acknowledge their role in stirring up students and struck a less confrontational pose. Instead of making arrests (zero were made), police waited it out. One student described the scene as “pleasantly crazy.” With fewer police about, the crowd broke up faster than usual.
2002: The “makeshift Mardi Gras,” as The Post called it, was a cold one, and only five arrests were made as police once again kept a lower profile.
2003: Tensions rose again, with police hauling away 21 people, 14 of them students. The high arrest numbers occurred on a night when mounted police officers moved through throngs of students. Said one witness: “The cops got dumber from last year. Last year, they watched everyone, and everyone got bored and left. This year, they started pushing people, and then everyone gets mad.” Once again, a horse bore the brunt of human stupidity.
2004: Some 25 arrests were made even though students described the gathering as “not a big deal.” Police were present, but it seems they mainly just asked groups of students to break it up and go home.
2005: For the first time since 1997, the gathering did not make the front page of The Post and was relegated to the news wasteland that is Page 3. The Athens Police chose not to provide arrest numbers or talk to the media.
2006: The Post did not run a news story, just an editorial asking law enforcement to treat it like any other weekend because students were basically over the whole thing.

In a 2018 article in The Athens News that looked back at unruly student gatherings through the years, editor Terry Smith wrote, “During the fracas’ seven-year trajectory in Athens … the community got to see the full range of possible police responses. Those ranged from aimless over-reaction the first two years to a hands-off approach in two later years, and finally a strong show of force (mixed with more advance outreach and warnings by the city and university) that discouraged misbehavior in the final two years.”

We didn’t start the fire

According to some alumni who shared stories with me, the student body has a history of not wanting to go home when the bars close early for daylight saving. There were incidents in the 1970s, some said, and they were worse than what happened in the 1990s and early 2000s.

James Cahill, class of 1976, said, “I remember the time change in the spring and the riots. The time change was supposed to add an hour to the bars’ closing time. Well, that didn’t happen. In essence they closed at 1:30 a.m., and the students went ballistic. No one would clear from Court Street. People were drinking up and down the street. About that time the cops moved in with tear gas and knee knockers. I remember being in a group that was chased down Jeff Hill.

“The cops were shooting tear gas down the hill and firing knee knockers at us. A couple people tried to heave the gas canisters back up the hill at the cops, but the canisters kept rolling back down. The thing about it was the cops never had permission to come on campus grounds. Apparently, that didn’t matter to them. The whole episode probably lasted till about 4 a.m. Lots of students had welts on their bodies from the knee knockers. And, yeah, tear gas does have an appropriate name.”

That’s a far more aggressive and scary scene than I witnessed in 1998.

Andy Haack was also present for one of those incidents and said, “I was a freshman in 1977‐1978. I lived in Read on the 3rd floor and got a souvenir knee knocker from the police open firing on the dorms. I believe my freshman year was the last year.”

Were you there?

I can only tell you what I saw and what I researched and what some folks shared with me on Facebook. There are, I’m sure, many more tales to be told from these nights, and you are welcome to share them if you would like to leave a comment.

Joyride

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