DAN QUAGLIANA
News Editor
Trigger warning: This article contains depictions of violence and injury.
SUNY Fredonia used to be known as a “party school” a few decades ago.
The last, biggest remnant of that bygone era is undoubtedly the giant, infamous event known as FredFest, which is always held two weekends before final exam week.
FredFest, for the uninitiated, is a giant, weekend-long “street party” that takes place on Canadaway St. in downtown Fredonia. Imagine a giant frat party taking up an entire street and lasting for about 72 straight hours, and you have a pretty good idea of what FredFest is.
The first thing a FredFest newbie will see is how attendees openly carry around borgs. Not to be confused with the cybernetic race from Star Trek, a borg is a mixed drink in a jug consisting of water, vodka and a powdered drink mix (usually Kool-Aid) — and as long as the event stays confined to the yards of Canadaway, the village police usually won’t bother anyone too much, as long as nothing gets out of hand.
People jumping off roofs and hanging out of moving cars are common sights, along with nudity.
And things do get out of hand occasionally — in 2023, a stabbing occurred, and the entire event was shut down a night early by the police. Even though the stabber and stabbed were both non-students, the crime still reflected poorly on the University.
This year, a shooting occurred, although details are still unfolding about that event considering its recency. According to an article by The Dunkirk Observer, one victim was shot in the leg and back and was transported to Erie County Medical Center (ECMC) in Buffalo. They were shot by a drive-by shooter on Green St., after “an earlier altercation with unknown individuals at a residence on Green Street.” Witnesses claim they heard several gunshots, and no arrests have been made as of the morning of May 7.
The increase in violence at the event is largely attributed to the fact that FredFest used to be a college-sanctioned event.
“When I was a student here, in ‘96, ‘97, [FredFest] was right outside of the Williams Center, between [it] and the quads,” remembered University Police Lieutenant Benjamin Miller, a 1998 graduate of Fredonia. “[The college] would set up a stage and everybody would just come out. They’d have local bands and one really big, popular band come on and perform and people [would] just come out and have a good time. And then, when the band stopped, everybody went downtown. And now there’s nothing on campus, so everybody just goes downtown.”
The college eventually had to stop associating itself with FredFest in 2015 because of rowdiness concerns. The amount of alcohol on campus, which has always been against University rules, became too much for event organizers to handle. Students began to get out of control, especially in the village, where University Police and other campus officials have no jurisdiction over them.
Today, Miller says that statement is still accurate: “Most of our arrests involve non-students.”
FredFest began in 1978, but back then it was called “Spring Fest.” In 1980, the name was changed to the one it still retains today.
“Spring Fest was a six-hour ‘day of fun, beer, hot dogs and activities,’” reads a Leader article published on April 28, 1986, written by Donna Hoke. “There were sales, exhibits, games, volleyball courts, tug-o-war matches and departmental competitions.
“According to the Spring Fest Committee, ‘the main objective of the event is to bring faculty, students and staff together for a few hours of fun and relaxation, to celebrate spring and the end of the academic year.’”
The article continues to say how only the date remains the same, as even by nine years later, the event had fundamentally changed.
“By 1980, the six-hour, dorm sponsored Spring Fest had been taken over by UBG [meaning unknown], given live rock bands, [sic] and turned into a two day [sic] celebration of spring that had Todd Hobin [a performer that year] asking the crowd, ‘Is this any way for college students to act?’”
But even only a few years ago, back when student enrollment was higher, FredFest was a much bigger event than it is today. “There was a year where we would clear out one street and then move to the other street and then re-clear that [first] street. It’s not as big [now], even though we did have that stabbing,” Miller said.
He also believes that there’s one specific incident that “preempted the canceling of all FredFest activities on campus.”
At a house on Temple St., across from the dorm quads, “A young lady was … burned when a student was doing a shot of very high-proof alcohol. They lit it on fire, while he did the shot, and then he spit it out … onto the girl that was in front of him. She catches on fire, gets really burned … We’re pretty sure she got disfigured. And this was like, ‘Maybe we should stop doing FredFest.’ But now they don’t have FredFest on campus anymore,” he explained.
In 2015, then-Vice President of Student Affairs Dr. David Herman announced at a Student Association meeting on Feb. 5 that FredFest would no longer be officially sponsored by the college.
“Are we going to have FredFest this year? No, we’re not. We are not having the University connected with FredFest,” he said at that meeting. “We are putting FredFest behind us; we’re not going to talk about it anymore. We’ll have other events, we’ll develop other traditions, we’ll develop things we can all be proud of … We’re not going to have everything consolidated on that weekend before finals so that it becomes a destination for everyone that wants to blow off steam and raise hell.”
Herman added in an email to all students on Feb. 9 that, “Many of us are disappointed that this approach has become necessary, but we can’t stand by idly and watch students and community members get hurt.”
That was also the year that the University started banning visitors in the dorms on FredFest weekend.
Due to incidents like the burning of a student in the past, University Police have been taking steps to make sure that nothing like that happens again.
“We increase our patrols, obviously,” Miller said. “We used to put more people on [patrol] during the FredFest activities, but it’s been such a non-event anymore that we don’t have anybody extra on.”
Miller is referencing the fact that student “incidents” during FredFest have “definitely” dropped in recent years, something that the Office of Student Conduct concurs with: “Over the years that I’ve been here at Fredonia, the number of incidents have dropped, at all times of the year, not just at the end of the spring semester,” explained Lisa Newell, the director of that office.
But FredFest continues to be a problem, both for the police and for the image of the University. “We still have our typical incidents on campus with open containers, underage possession of alcohol,” Miller said.
Mitch Horucy, a sophomore communications journalism major who will be living on Canadaway St. next year, said that he has “a lot of mixed emotions” about living in FredFest’s epicenter.
“It’s exciting and cool to be right where it happens, but that’s also what makes me nervous,” he said. “I’m nervous to really leave my yard with the fear that someone will break in or something of that matter. There’s also the chance that something happens on my lawn and then I’d technically be responsible for what happened and [I] could get in trouble legally. I think it’ll have its pros and cons.”
Horucy also added that he plans on “cooking and selling hot dogs to make some extra cash, so that could be fun.”
While it has gotten “better” in the last few years, FredFest continues to be a problem for both the University and the surrounding community, and despite efforts by both of those parties, it doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon.
Mitch Horucy, who was interviewed for this article, is the Assistant Sports Editor of The Leader.