Me and Tyler have decided to do the Keene Pumpkin Festival and the 2014 riot as our project idea.
We plan on researching the history of the Pumpkin Festival and how it grew over the years and any foreshadowing to the event that happened at the 2014 festival. I think the most important aspect of our research is going to be talking and interviewing different groups of people, both students and community members to get as many perspectives as possible. So we’ll need to work on getting our IRB approval before we do that especially with a subject as touchy as the Pumpkin Fest incident.
Speaking of that, my main concern with this topic is how it is a very touchy subject for the school. But we’re making sure to give the project a positive spin and really focus more on the conflict resolution aspect more than the riot itself. I actually emailed a professor I had in the fall semester last year who specializes in human conflict so I thought he’d be an excellent person to talk to about his opinion on how the school has grown from the incident but I think he ignored my email because he hasn’t gotten back to me. And he usually responds very quickly. This may just be an accident but I’m worried he doesn’t want to talk about it because he could get in trouble with the school. But on the other hand, students should be able to talk about a serious event that effected their college without being censored. As long as we give accurate information. I have other professors who may want to help though so I will talk to them next week.