Erin Lynch and Tyler Harrington
Conflict in America
15 September 2017
Overcoming Pumpkin Fest
Introduction
Keene New Hampshire is a typical northern New England town. With a white congregational church at the head of downtown. Old mills and factories scattered around the town it’s the perfect example of a blue collar New England. Like most small towns tradition is very important to Keene. Most notably is the Keene Pumpkin Festival which began in 1991 as a way to bring in revenue for the struggling downtown. The festival grew into a huge spectacle that revolved around the community coming together and carving the most jack-o-lanterns as possible. But the festival became too big for the small town to contain. As college aged students from all over New England flocked to the event it became an issue of community vs. college aged students. In the fall of 2014 the tensions building had boiled over into a full out riot. The campus erupted into a day of chaos and violence prompted by drunkenness and a mob mentality. Over 120 people were arrested because of the event, many of them not Keene State students, but college aged students from other New England schools. Since the event, the community and college have had some tension on how to fix this disconnect between community and college. But through new community service programs and teaching incoming students the importance of their community they are a part of, Keene has started to take steps in the right direction to resolve the conflict.
The Keene pumpkin festival riot is important to study because it gives a unique look into the effects of mob mentality and a community conflict that is apparent in many college towns. Also, if we compare Keenes riot to other riots that have occurred recently, such as the Ferguson riots, we can see the two had extremely different reactions from police and the media because of their racial and geographical differences. This is an important insight into America’s current climate regarding different standards and expectations for different groups of people.
Research Methods:
To find more information about the history of the Pumpkin Festival and effect it had on the economic, social and political life of Keene and the Monadnock region, me and Tyler will look into archives of newspaper articles. We will look at newspapers both from the Keene Sentinel to get the communities perspective and also the college’s Equinox to get student perspectives. The most important part of our project is to have a variety of perspectives so the information and image the reader receives is very well rounded and takes into account different opinions and views. The largest issue with researching the Pumpkin Festival in Keene is that different groups of people will tell you a very different story of what happened and how the town has changed. We want to avoid a one sided viewpoint.
Secondly, we will be conducting interviews. The interviews won’t be done in a sociological method format but instead we will have people who are completely comfortable and interested in the topic talk to us after giving their written consent.
Structure and Delivery:
In order to display the information we gathered, in a clean and clear way we will decide to show the important events, information, and accounts of what happened that weekend in, 2014 through a wordpress blog site. We will be using timelines and google my maps to show the festival over intervals of a number years. We will see how with the rise of pop culture and the effects of social media influenced this conflict. By starting with the origin of Pumpkin Festival in 1991 till 2014, we will see how over the years it grew from a local festival to the extent it reached in 2014. The viewers will be able to click on more tabs on our blogs and be able to read more about what was happening at Keene’s Pumpkin Festival as the years went on. We will create a digital timeline, use uploaded news articles and have audio recordings of interviews on each of these tabs. Also on the Website will be a page that discusses why this conflict goes a lot deeper than just “A riot about pumpkins”. We will show the intersectionality of this conflict in relation in our country today.