Keene State College made the news in a big way when a riot broke out among hundreds of local and visiting students who were drawn to the small city in honor of Pumpkin Fest weekend in 2014. Pumpkin Fest was an annual tradition in bucolic Keene, New Hampshire.
The festival is celebrated in advance of Halloween every October with a display of a world-record-setting collection of carved and lit jack-o’-lanterns, which are on show throughout the city.
Although the event is primarily designed for families, in the years leading up to the incident in 2014, it had increasingly drawn students from all over New England who reputedly viewed it as a party weekend.
Many Keene State students volunteered to participate in the city cleanup afterward.
Nevertheless, because the event occurred in Keene, the college received national attention.
At the time, Keene’s vice president for student affairs and enrollment, Kemal Atkins, had been in his new position for only a few months.
He took the event in stride, and it has since faded into the background, he says. “In student affairs, we’re kind of trained to expect the unexpected,” Atkins said in a phone conversation with Diverse.
