Pandemonium erupted Halloween night at the second annual Monte Mash held on the lawn of the North Quad when irrigation sprinklers came on an hour into the event.
Musicians and producers scrambled to get expensive electrical equipment out of harm’s way as the sprinklers doused the stage and many of the about 200 students who were in attendance.
By the time sprinkler heads had been covered by buckets and storage containers, the damage was already done. The event was called off as thousands of dollars worth of camera and sound equipment were soaked and potentially ruined.
“We haven’t tallied everything yet…our most expensive camera got a direct shot,” said fourth-year Micah Stamps, the station manager of Otter Media, which hosted the event. “What we were really worried about was electrocution (of event participants),” he said, noting the potential danger of exposing such large amounts of electrical equipment to water.
In a statement to the Lutrinae, University Spokesperson Walter Ryce said “Our Student Affairs team, including Residential Life Coordinators who responded during the incident to ensure students were safe and to offer alternative activities for them, has been working with the event organizers and staff to determine what happened in this situation.
“We are still looking into what happened around the work order requests for the Monte Mash event that led to a miscommunication about the irrigation schedule, and we are working with students to identify any equipment damage and costs from the incident,” said Ryce.
“We’ve been planning this event since last year. It was supposed to be the biggest event of the season” said fourth-year Kah’Maurie Norwood, Otter Media’s radio and programming station manager.
“We had more than 200 people turn out tonight and they’re all soaked and going home instead of enjoying a Halloween rager like (they) should have been…they were really robbed on this.”
More on this story in next week’s issue of the Lutrinae.