SDSU Acts to Cut Stadium Rowdiness

San Diego State University officials announced measures Wednesday designed to curtail violence and public drunkenness during Aztec football games at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

The most serious of three steps stipulates that students ejected from the stadium will have their SDSU identification cards confiscated by police and be turned over to the University Student Affairs Office for a judicial hearing by the school.

Carl Emerich, associate vice president for student affairs, said Wednesday that students arrested for fighting or public drunkenness during Aztec games could then face punishments ranging from probation to permanent expulsion.

In addition, SDSU Athletic Director Fred Miller said in a prepared statement that the San Diego Police Department will become more vigilant “in the stadium parking lot three hours prior to games with the intent to prevent underage drinking.”

Miller said stadium security personnel will also “intensify their efforts to deny inebriated patrons entrance to the stadium.”

The measures come in the wake of numerous arrests made during the second half of the SDSU-UCLA game, played at the stadium Sept. 27. The game was won by UCLA, 37-12, before a crowd of 37,333 and a national television audience.

The melee in the crowded student sections, which Stadium Manager Bill Wilson called “the most continuous battleground I’ve seen” in eight years on the job, led to 52 police “contacts” with fans, who were fighting or threatening one another in disturbances that lasted for more than an hour.

Three male streakers were also arrested.

Among those approached by police, two went to County Jail, 17 were issued misdemeanor citations and many more were taken to a detoxification center for public drunkenness or simply ejected, San Diego Police Sgt. Bob Nunley said.

Afterward, Wilson said the Stadium Authority board might have to consider banning the sale of alcohol during Aztec games, but Wednesday’s announcement makes no mention of such a move, nor does it advocate limiting the number of students admitted to student sections.

Peter Hayes, president of Pro-Tect Professional Services, which handles security at SDSU games, called Sept. 27 the worst night in the history of the stadium and blamed it on a combination of alcohol and crowding in student sections.

He said almost all the fights broke out in the field and plaza levels on the stadium’s north side that are reserved for SDSU students. He and others blamed the fracas on the fact that SDSU sold about 13,000 student tickets--at $1 each with the appropriate school card--in sections that have a capacity of 8,000.

Hayes said 2,000 to 3,000 students is the “normal draw” for attendance in those sections, which is why the school experienced no problems during its first two games, on Sept. 8 (versus Long Beach State University) and Sept. 14 (versus University of the Pacific).

Stephen Shushan, assistant stadium manager, said Wednesday that stadium officials had decided to let SDSU take the lead on what to do about crowd behavior during its games. He said a ban on alcohol sales was passed over--at least for now--because the “first two games went so smoothly.”

Shushan said beer sales inside the stadium are tightly controlled. In the student sections, beer can be obtained only from a concession stand and not from a portable beer vendor.

Beers are priced at $3 each, fans are permitted one beer per individual purchase, and, Shushan said, beer sales are prohibited after the third quarter.

Emerich, the vice president for student affairs, said university officials felt that exposing students to the school’s judicial process and threatening them with expulsion would carry more weight than any other measure.

He added that students arrested during the UCLA game are not immune from discipline, including expulsion.

“They’re under investigation right now,” he said. “They’ll have the option of accepting a sanction or going to a formal hearing, to which they may bring their own counsel.”

Of the new measures, Emerich said: “We’re simply putting people on notice that, if they behave in this manner, we have the authority to pursue our own investigative and judicial process, and to impose sanctions. And, among those, expulsion is a real possibility.

The punishment “could be as simple as a letter of censure in a file, a formal warning, probation or suspension,” he said. “Or it could be expulsion, which is a permanent separation from the school. That could then bias a student’s entry into any other school in the California State University system.

“It should be a surprise to no one that if they disrupt a university event in a violent manner, they will be accountable for their actions,” Emerich said. “From now on, we’ll see to it.”