Security officials and event organizers have formed a central safety and planning committee for Greek Key weekend after an unusually high number of medical issues resulted in overstretched resources during last year’s festivities.
In the past, since Green Key has not had a central committee like the other big weekends because it is a series of events planned by disparate organizations, Collis Center director and senior assistant dean Eric Ramsey said. Ramsey is the head of this year’s inaugural committee.
“The committee is an open place where people can bring up issues or questions,” Anna Hall, director of student activities at Collis, said.
Last year, resources were “maxed out” and the weekend was more hectic than usual, Safety and Security director Harry Kinne said.
“We realized in a debrief that we needed to have a more organized approach to the weekend,” he said. “Last year prompted us to take a hard look at how we approach Green Key.”
A large working group, comprised of Ramsey and adult representatives of other planning groups, was formed this term in response to last year’s intensified safety issues, Kinne said.
“The committee has been essential in helping people navigate the weekend,” Ramsey said. “There is a lot of coordination that goes in to make sure people are in the right place.”
Coordination includes understanding requirements from the town, making sure resources, including security, are deployed in the most efficient way and that event timings are properly aligned or spaced out, Ramsey said.
The committee is using a calendar tool where groups can input the events they are planning, Ramsey said.
“We found that when organizations plan events within their membership, sometimes they don’t have a greater understanding about what might be going on around it,” Ramsey said.
Kinne said he sees the committee as not only important for preventative reasons, but also important for debriefing after the event.
“We can always figure out something to do better and celebrate things that went well,” he said.
He said that the committee helps Safety and Security look at things from a wide lens. Hanover police chief Charlie Dennis said treating the weekend as a single event is a great idea, because it will allow resources to be utilized more effectively and efficiently.
Safety is the number one priority of the committee, Kinne and Ramsey both said. Last year, the high number of students who needed to be taken to the hospital for alcohol-related reasons exhausted the fire department’s capabilities, and ambulances from other communities were dispatched to help.
The number of student medical issues during last year’s weekend was a sharp increase from previous years. Although Kinne said the exact reason for this is “hard to say,” he speculated that the fact that the event was closer to finals week may have played a role. Safety and Security received 51 calls between Friday afternoon and 6 a.m. Sunday morning, though the number of reports filed is not known. In 2013, Safety and Security filed 54 reports over Green key weekend. Additionally, Dennis said there were 34 arrests during Green Key last year, the vast majority of which were alcohol related. This, he said, was also a significant increase from previous years.
Both Safety and Security and the Hanover police are increasing staff and analyzing last year’s data in order to use security more strategically this year, Dennis said.
Safety and Security will station more staff around campus to increase visibility and quicken response times. Kinne added that Dick’s House also usually increases staff during the weekend due to higher amounts of medical need.
Kinne also said that he hopes that with the new policies put in place by the “Moving Dartmouth Forward” policy initiative, on-campus parties will be safer and students will be less intoxicated.
Chi Gamma Epsilon fraternity, which annually hosts the Gammapalooza party, is not particularly concerned about safety because the event “usually goes off without a hitch,” Chi Gam risk manager Mark Widerschein ’17 said.
Widerschein said for the fraternity, the biggest risk management requirement they have is employing the number of security guards required by the Hanover Fire Department. They hire third-party security, mostly students, to watch over specific areas for the duration of the event. Because the event is dry, some of the risk is mitigated, he said. Furthermore, after talking to the risk manager from last year, Wilderschein determined that no changes to planning were needed.
He also said that much of the risk management is troubleshooting that happens the day of the event, such as making sure that the house does not violate fire codes and ensuring that people are not damaging the house.
Leif Harder ’15, who is Programming Board’s main concert director this year, said that he has gotten the concert planning “down to a science” from his previous experience on Programming Board. Since the concert typically sees around 5,000 attendees and is one of the largest events on campus, Harder said safety is a big challenge.
“It’s truly the most complex event,” Hall said of the Green Key concert.
Harder said that Programming Board has formed great relationships with Safety and Security, the Hanover Police and another private security company called Green Mountain Concert Services.
Green Mountain is mostly responsible for watching the entrances to dormitories during the concert, Kinne said. Despite concerns, Harder said the concert usually ends up having a fun, safe atmosphere.
“We’ve never really had any strong safety issues from this concert, which is great,” he said.
Throughout the weekend, Dennis encourages students to “be safe, be a friend, be that good Samaritan,” he said.
“It can be a very fun weekend,” Kinne added. “We want it to be fun, but we also want it to be safe, or else it detracts from enjoyment of it all.”
