In the HUB on Dec. 1, the president of PACE, Adam Berthiaume, spoke to a seemingly empty Fire Place Lounge. A couple professors showed up, but surprisingly, only a handful of students, mostly from PACE. After Berthiaume’s speech, Delilah Smith from the S.A.G.E Center stood up and personally thanked him for making the decision to not allow Barstool’s Black-Out party to come to Plymouth State University.
Everyone in the room was a little puzzled. The event’s Facebook page has about 1,300+ members (a little more than 1/4th of PSU undergraduates), members who, online, were quick to attack PACE and the Dean of Students, Tim Keefe. The event was designed to “clear the air,” and “put an end to the rumors,” but seemingly, no supporters of Barstool felt it was necessary.
Berthiaume in his speech pointed out the troubles of working with Barstool, and how it was not an administrative decision not to work with them.
“It was an incredibly misrepresented company to work with,” Keefe said after Berthiaume’s speech, “Ironically, I held a conference and all the schools on their list [B.S. BlackOut Tour] happen to be at this conference, so I said ‘let me ask around’… Every one of them said we never heard of this company [B.S.], …so ironically, many of those schools immediately started calling their attorneys who are going to start to call this company.”
And it has turned out to be true. Barstool has altered its site since Keefe’s conference. Instead of just using the school’s name (usually a nickname, or an acronym) it’s now followed clearly by a venue outside of the school’s campus (UConn/XL Center or UVM/Higher Ground, etc.).
So when angry PSU students asked, “Why is it that every other school on the east coast will associate with Barstool but we won’t?,” it turns out, as a matter of fact, they don’t. Far from it. Not one school has ever, and probably will ever, work with this organization to host an event.
All the venues for the events have been privately rented out, some very far away from the college campuses themselves, with no more affiliation with a school than a college I.D. special night at any random local bar. These, and more facts on the issue, were the focus of Berthiaume’s speech.
PACE’s main goal, amidst any controversy, remains the same—they want to put on good events. “As an organization and as individuals, we have other things to be doing than putting on events nobody wants to go to. That is not our goal,” Berthiaume stressed.
When ideas were discussed on how to replace Barstool with a more professional black light party company, Berthiaume pointed out the response from the student body was indifferent to the suggestions, “We don’t care. We want Barstool. We don’t care who you’re bringing.”
“We’ve done great club/rave type parties here in the HUB before and they’ve bombed, and I’ve seen other groups on campus do them before, and they’ve bombed,” Berthiaume says reluctantly. Our student body, it seems, just wanted the novelty of the website’s event at PSU, not the actual entertainment. And they did not want any facts about the issues, since no dissenters showed up to the meeting. Seemingly a large number of students just wanted to post, complain, and “like,” until they got their way.
Keefe has found a more positive way to use the controversy in his critical thinking class, “It’s a marvelous opportunity to look at evidence and lack of evidence,” the professor says, “when someone makes an assertion, what do you do? How do you deal with it?”