BlackBox fight leads to arrests

Both Public Safety and Princeton Borough Police will bring charges against three non-University-affiliated individuals suspected of causing a violent incident at the Wilson College BlackBox on Friday night, University spokeswoman Cass Cliatt ’96 said in an e-mail.

Public Safety will charge the three with “obstruction with the administration of justice,” Cliatt said. One of the three will also be charged with resisting arrest, and all three face separate additional charges from the Borough, she added.

The three assailants were affiliated with the Bloods gang, said a University student familiar with the incident who spoke with Borough Police after the incident. The student’s name is being withheld because the investigation is ongoing.

Borough Police could not be reached for comment late last night.

Responding to violence

A freshman woman was punched in the face after refusing to dance with one of the suspects charged. She was taken to University Medical Center at Princeton for treatment.

The woman, who was granted anonymity to protect her privacy, said in an e-mail that “Public Safety and Blackbox did not handle the situation well at all,” adding that she believes that members of the Safeguard Security Agency employed by BlackBox had been drinking.

Safeguards manager Tom Methvin ’09 could not be reached for comment late last night.

The woman also faulted Public Safety, saying that officers “arrived a while after the incident had occurred.”

Public Safety Deputy Director Charles Davall said six officers responded to the call as quickly as possible. They arrived on the scene within two minutes of receiving the call and saw what seemed to be a disturbance, he explained. Three people, who officers assumed were the suspects, took off running.

“The officers were involved with a footchase,” he said, adding that another officer, who had been on a different assignment, arrived on the scene within 10 minutes of the call.

Public Safety’s response met the department’s expectations for response time, Cliatt said.

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Security at BlackBox

Though BlackBox normally checks University IDs before letting students in, the presence of prospective freshmen made it difficult to enforce an ID-checking policy, BlackBox president Dexter Doyle ’09 and vice president Lalithra Fernando ’10 said in a statement released Saturday.

Brittney Winters ’09, a member of the BlackBox staff, said in an e-mail that BlackBox has hired Safeguards to check identification at all prior events. “At this particular party,” she said, “the usual protocol was waived due to the large amounts of admitted students who would not have Princeton identification.”

Cliatt, however, noted that “it will be helpful for future events to ensure that organizers know they can ... [check] PUIDs and the identification badges issued to prospective students.” Prospective students were given temporary prox cards during Princeton Preview weekends.

According to the statement released by BlackBox, many students were entering and exiting the party, which made it easy for non-Princeton-affiliated persons to get past the Safeguards and into the BlackBox.

Winters noted that failing to deny entrance to non-University-affiliated people was “a gross oversight on the parts of Blackbox, Safeguards, and the administration.” She added that BlackBox staff, including herself, responded as soon as they were able to.

The statement also noted that BlackBox will be restructuring its “already present security procedures in order to prevent the possibility of an event like this occurring in the future.”

Witnesses and bystanders

The BlackBox statement said that as the incident occurred, the party continued as usual, and “the majority of students present were not even aware of the disturbance.”

Stephanie Feldstein ’09, a former EMT who was present at the event and administered first aid to the freshman who was hurt, told The Daily Princetonian on Sunday that the suspects “had already made their presence known, definitely,” by the time the brawl broke out.

Winters, however, said that BlackBox members did not “merely [stand] by” while the suspects acted aggressively.

“If partygoers were so concerned about these people at this party, why did they not inform either Safeguards or a BlackBox staff member?” she said.

Yet the freshman woman who was hurt in the incident disagreed, faulting Princeton students who watched what happened and did not help.

People watched as she was hit and two male Princeton students were “punched and kicked on the floor,” she said.

“No one, except a few people that I can count on one hand, did anything,” she added.

Discussion

Several University groups joined for a discussion about the impact of the event on the community Monday night. Among the groups were Akwaaba, the Princeton Caribbean Connection, the Princeton Association of Black Women and the Black Men’s Awareness Group.

“We just talked about the essence of having a sense of community here at Princeton University,” said Mickheila Jasmin ’10, who attended the discussion. “We wanted to make sure that everyone at the meeting had a good sense of community; ... that someone else would be there [for them] regardless of skin color,” she said.

Men and women first discussed the issue separately and then joined together. Among the issues discussed were the meaning of a community, the responsibilities that members of communities have to one another and the sense of apathy within communities.

“I felt affected by it as a Princeton student, this is something that happened on my campus,” Jasmin added. “When I’m going to a Princeton University [event], I don’t want to feel like I’m going to have to watch my back for a fight.”