UMES president says “we don’t want to create an environment that is overly militarized”

Although the University of Maryland Eastern Shore's homecoming ended on a high note this weekend, the investigation into the chaos that occurred during the homecoming concert Thursday night.

School officials blame a technology error for starting a problem that caused ticket takers to close all but one of the doors through which patrons were being allowed into the athletic center for the concert. That move caused a bottle-neck effect with the crowd building outside the facility, eventually pushing through the closed doors.  

Police said they used pepper spray to get the crowd under control.

In the aftermath UMES refunded concert tickets and have said a make-up concert will be scheduled. 

Monday students had mixed opinions about how the event was handled.

"People are kind of still stuck on how the police reacted, because I mean this wouldn't be the first time that the police, you know, kind of went too far with something," said Chris Durham.

"Nobody's going to move on from that, nobody's going to move on from that, the whole thing was just out of line," said Miles Nordt.

"To ensure that everybody was safe they had to pepper spray, they didn't know who was the intruder or who was there already so to 201247 to ensure that everybody was safe they had to peppersray," Derwin Tiggle.

Although many students tell us they want to move on they say the use of force by police is still a major concern. 

We asked president Dr. Julliette Bell about bout this and what she plans to talk to law enforcement about later this week.

"I'll hear from them what happened and how many law enforcement people were involved and really look at again how do we strike the balance between a safe environment but we don't want to create an environment that is overly militarized," Bell said.