Talk:San Luis Obispo Mardi Gras controversy
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Hi, I created this article after reading a POV summary at the Mardi Gras page, which stated only that the celebrations were shut down due to police brutality, which incited a riot. It was not so much that the students were out of control, on the contrary it was the police who were out of control, and I believe that is why they started firing into the crowd. They fired bean bags and paint balls full of tear gas into the crowd, without any warning or or obvious reason. I've done a lot of sourcing to get an objective summary of the different sides and some of the controversies. This is a pretty unique "town gown" issue, which we might be seeing more of if student admissions continue to rise. Noirdame 00:44, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
The article was notched with a notice that it had been considerably rewritten or edited. I posted the original copyedit notice and requested copyediting/readers, but the article was not considerably changed since then (just a few lines on the top), so I changed it back to copyedit. (The person may have added that notice due to the substantive changes I made the day I created the article - I had some problems with my browser and getting the sources to look nice!)
However, the rewritten top section stated that the controversy was chiefly between students and police - a reader might read that summary and believe that the only argument is between those two parties, which is incorrect.
The controversy has so far involved many other parties - students at other UC and California State schools, a state senator from San Luis Obispo, the mayor and city council, other business leaders and community members, as well as members of the Cal Poly community. It clearly should not be summarized as being between cops and students. There may be hostility between these two groups, but apparently there is lots of concern by local residents about violence, tourism; the school is concerned about Cal Poly getting a negative reputation, etc.
So, I've edited it to try and clarify that as cleanly and as objectively as possible. Noirdame 07:06, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
