TOPHER ELKINS
Special to The Leader
You wake up at around 10 a.m. It’s Friday, you look out your window to see people walking down your street with gallon jugs full of alcohol. This is what it’s like living on Canadaway Street during Fred Fest weekend.
If you ask a Fredonia student what their favorite weekend of the school year is, chances are they might say Fred Fest.
Usually set around the first weekend in May, Fred Fest occurs the weekend before “Dead Week,” or the last week of classes and has become synonymous with a two day long “bender” of day drinking and partying on a few select streets in the village of Fredonia.
On any given year during Fred Fest, Canadaway Street in Fredonia can be found lined with students in yards and in the streets drinking, listening to music and simply enjoying themselves.
But what many students may not know is how the event started, and how it transitioned to the “darty” many students know it to be now.
The first “FredoniaFest” started back in 1980, after a group of students known as the Union Board of Governors (UBG), which was described by their president at the time as “a radical bunch of kids, always at odds with the college administration in pushing our agendas of providing great entertainment and social activities for the students.”
According to a previous article written, there was a lot of “red tape” that the UBG had to jump through in order to get FredoniaFest off the ground. Even so, they proved administrators wrong and were able to find every loophole to make this now annual event a success.
The three key elements of the original “FredoniaFest” were simple: beer, music and fun. These were implemented with the half-kegs of beer that were purchased with a $1,500 budget alongside the many music groups that have performed over the years.
Because Congress did not pass the National Minimum Drinking Age Act until 1984, which raised the legal drinking age from 18 to 21, nearly all college students were of age at the original FredoniaFest.
The first ever headliner for FredoniaFest was Todd Hobbin Band, who were from Syracuse. They were in the middle of a college tour at the time to promote their then hit song “I Hate You.”
Fredonia has since had some major artists perform at FredFest including SlipKnot, Gym Class Heroes and Lupe Fiasco.
SUNY Fredonia continued to sponsor the event up until 2015. In January of that year, Vice President of Student Affairs David Herman sent an email to the entire student body announcing that the school would no longer be hosting the event. This decision was due to a number of concerns and factors — primarily the off campus safety of students.
A major concern was the amount of non-student related incidents that were occurring because of guests or friends of people who are Fredonia students.
In the original email, Herman wrote, “Over the last three years on FRED Fest weekend, there have been more than 100 citations in the village, numerous campus conduct cases, injuries and reported sexual assaults. Most of these problems have occurred off campus and involved non-students, but many of those arrested were guests and friends of Fredonia students.”
According to past statements made by Fredonia Police, the majority of arrests they have made in the past during FredFest weekend have mostly involved non-Fredonia students.
The event also cost the village of Fredonia a lot of money to try and get ready for the massive influx of people as well. According to past news reports, in 2015, preparations for Fred Fest cost the village over $3,000 for extra “porta-potties,” trash barrels and overtime pay for officers.
Officers have had to work overtime to monitor Fred Fest festivities in recent years.
Last year, especially after dark, there was a consistent police presence seen on Canadaway Street.
This didn’t stop everyone from continuing to party, as videos can be found online of people hitting, or even jumping onto the police cars.
But the question is, do these concerns still exist? How do students feel about the weekend now?
One aspect that some students could forget is that the streets they are partying on do have people living on them, and the sheer amount of people can overwhelm them.
One Canadaway resident said, “I loved Fred Fest last year, and I’m excited about it this year. But this year, I live on Canadaway, so it does give me a bit of anxiety after seeing so many people just walk into houses last year. And truthfully I don’t want my house to be the one house where someone jumps off the roof.”
Realistically, there seems to be no stopping Fred Fest, as it’s almost become synonymous with SUNY Fredonia. Many students look forward to it every year, and it’s a staple of the spring semester.