A song incited a brawl Saturday night at the Black Action Society's annual homecoming party, according to Black Action Society (BAS) President, 20-year-old accounting major, Mariah Banks.
"A fight broke out and then there was just chaos," Banks said.
Banks said the last song of the night was to blame, "Knuck if you buck" by Crime Mob, and that opinion was reinforced by Jeff Brady, a 22-year-old senior criminology major and military police officer in the Navy.
"It was because of a hyper song," Brady said. "I guess it amped something, and then someone bumped into someone else and it just escalated from there."
Elford Jarret, a 21-year-old health and public safety major, blamed the song for inciting things.
"The song that was playing just made it a hostile environment," Jarret said. "The song that played was a fight song and gets everybody's blood flowing."
During the altercation, several officers were assaulted and suffered minor injuries, according to Slippery Rock University Chief of Police Michael Simmons. Four people will be charged due to the fights, only two of which are SRU students.
One student was tased by a police officer from a responding agency that was called in after several fights broke out. Among the responding agencies were the Butler County Sherriff's Office, Middlesex Township Police, Slippery Rock Borough Police, Evans City Police, Butler City Police and Cranberry Township Police, according to Simmons.
The student who was tased and arrested was Barry Tyson, a 21-year-old senior criminal justice major at SRU.
"I was trying to break up a fight and then I got hit in the back and tased twice," Tyson said.
According to Tyson, he received no prior instruction to stop what he was doing from police officers, and the first action taken against him was being tased in the back twice.
He said the tasing was unnecessary because at the time, he posed no threat to the police officer.
"I couldn't have been doing any harm because my back was turned when I got tased," Tyson said.
Simmons said in a statement that the tasing was justified, but the fact that Tyson was tased twice was still very concerning to Brady because tasers are a potential deadly weapon.
"What if he had a pacemaker or metal rods in his back," Brady said. "Because I know that at least one of the members of BAS who were there has scoliosis, so he has metal rods in his back and if he was the one who was tased twice, he could've died."
The incident almost escalated further when a K9 unit on the scene threatened to let his dog go, according to Brady.
"He was adamant about letting his dog go," Brady said. "But campus police told him to keep his dog on his leash and that it wasn't worth it."
The Black Action Society's homecoming party is one of their biggest fundraisers, but has been ending with problems in recent years, Brady said.
"Something like this happens every year towards the end of the party," Brady said.
One possible solution people are talking about is cancelling all on-campus parties at the union like the homecoming event, something that Jarrett is strongly opposed to.
"Having a union party provides so much more safety than having an off-campus party," Jarrett said. "If you have a house party, people could have weapons—someone could get shot or stabbed, and there's no police presence at a house party."
Other ideas that Brady talked about to make parties potentially safer is to turn the lights on 15 minutes early, and have people sign in, instead of just showing their IDs.
According to Banks, the BAS is working with campus police to handle the fallout of the situation and the two sides have meetings scheduled in the coming weeks.
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