Following are remarks made by University of Minnesota, Morris, Chancellor Samuel Schuman at the NCAA Postgame Crowd Control Summit April 8 in Savannah, Georgia.

An NCAA report of “Postgame Crowd Control Incidents” for 2003-05 contains this rather dry sentence describing the October 22 football game between the University of Minnesota, Morris, and Crown College: “A 20-year-old Minnesota-Morris student was killed when football fans rushed onto the field and pulled down a goal post at the end of the school’s homecoming game.”

Today, I want to put a human face on those events — to recast an “incident” into a shocking tragedy that touched many lives.

Let me briefly describe what actually transpired; say a bit about what I discovered about the role of a college president in this situation; and most importantly conclude with some comments on what lessons I learned through these difficult days.

What happened

October 22, 2005, was UMM’s homecoming. Traditionally, the centerpiece of our homecoming is the afternoon football game. After years as a weak Division II competitor, we had moved to Division III and a new league just two years ago. We began to win frequently in all sports, including football, and fan interest was high.

This particular homecoming contest was an exciting game in which we won in double overtime. It was an especially sweet victory, and it also happened that this was the last football game to be played on our old college field (we are constructing a new football stadium this summer, to be shared with our town high school).

As the game ended, a group of perhaps 10 or 12 students — many of whom were members of our varsity basketball team who had been enthusiastically cheering for their friends on the football squad — dashed onto the field. They headed for the north goal post but were turned away by a member of our five-person university police force (two other officers were, as our league recommends, escorting officials off the field and into the nearby gym).

The exuberant students then ran to the unguarded south goal posts, calling to their friends on the victorious football team to join them. Some did. About two dozen students leaped on the post or began rocking it back and forth until it snapped and fell to the ground. One student, basketball player Rick Rose, was hanging onto the crossbeam when the goal fell. He was killed instantly. Emergency efforts by attending EMTs were to no avail. After about 10 minutes, Rick’s body was transferred to our nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Since all this happened immediately after the end of an exciting and intense game, no one had left the stands. About a third to half of our entire student body saw these events play out, along with perhaps a couple hundred alumni and fans. That evening, at our student center, many members of our community gathered to learn what had happened, as there had been no official or informal announcement of Rick’s death; some who had watched the afternoon’s events believed that the EMTs had revived him, then taken him to the hospital to recover. Students were shocked to learn that their friend was gone.

Of course, counseling staff, as well as coaches, faculty and administrators, were present and tried to administer to students’ grief. A few days later, there was an on-campus memorial, attended by perhaps half the student body, and the next week we sent about 15 students and several faculty and staff, including me, to a service in the Rose home community in Washington state. In the next weeks, an autopsy was performed and, at our request, the Stevens County Attorney conducted a thorough and objective investigation. Neither turned up any particularly surprising new findings.

Chancellor’s role

UMM is a small college. The campus chancellor is not a distant or removed figurehead. I was at the game and actually happened to be located near the sideline, perhaps 100 feet away, when the goal post fell. I watched the EMTs work along with virtually the entire crowd. I went to the hospital and in the emergency room, I identified the body. I conferred with the attending physician about the autopsy and other arrangements. Then I went home and called the Rose parents and told them their son had been in a tragic accident and had died. It was also my job to speak to the students who had gathered in our student center and tell them Rick was dead. This was, actually, the single-most difficult part I had to play in these events. Some of the students were nearly hysterical, most were shocked; some of the coaches and adults in attendance wept uncontrollably.

I also was the sole university official designated to respond to the media (I would guess I spoke to more than two dozen newspapers, radio and TV stations, some more than once). Media contacts ranged from our small-town weekly newspaper to ESPN. I also spoke at both memorial services.

As it happens, I’m a rather passionate geriatric athlete — tri-athlete, actually — and I have a locker in the varsity basketball room, right next to Rick Rose’s. Rick also was a lifeguard at our competition swimming pool, so on occasion, ironically, his job was guarding my life.

Lessons learned

My point here is not to lament the difficulty of this incident, for me or for our campus, but to share some of the lessons I learned that might help save others from having to learn them first hand.

• I learned that uncontrolled and dangerous fan behavior can happen at small, academically rigorous liberal arts colleges. We have fewer than 2,000 students, only five security officers (three of whom were on duty during and after the game), and a football field on which the stands and the playing field are hardly separated — fans can just stroll onto the field. Traditionally, in fact, parents and friends informally mingle with the team after the game. Postgame problems are not just the concern of Division I institutions.

• Tragedies do not require riots of hundreds or thousands of participants. In this case, about 25 exuberant students were plenty. The finality of a student death, and the depth of the tragedy for family and friends, is every bit as bitter, regardless of the number of participants.

• Here’s an obvious lesson: Unpredictable behavior cannot be predicted. In our 45-year history, nothing like this had ever happened and I think we therefore assumed it never would. Very few catastrophes and disasters happen on a recurring basis. We were wrong to assume that a prior record of safe and sane fan behavior was a guaranteed predictor of such discretion and caution in the future.

• I have learned a lot about goal-post design — not part of my graduate education in non-Shakespearean English Renaissance drama. I now can discuss the advantages and liabilities of collapsible and of indestructible goal posts. Although I can’t imagine this incident being repeated after the trauma on our campus, we have added $80,000 to the $2.5 million cost of our new field to install collapsible goal posts. We want to model this precaution for other small colleges.

• I learned that there is a huge variety of responses to such a tragedy in the media. Some reports and reporters have been understanding, balanced and thoughtful. Others have been irresponsible vultures who snuck into student residence halls the night after the disaster and confronted grieving students with microphones, lights and cameras.

• Good young people, I learned, can be responsible for very bad things. I know personally many of the students (and in some cases, their families) who were involved in this incident. They are not riotous or irresponsible students. But adolescent exuberance can be overwhelming, and it needs to be anticipated and channeled into non-destructive ends.

• There was some alcohol involved in the events and we learned, once again, that the mixture of alcohol and athletics is an inappropriate and dangerous combination. We are being considerably more vigorous in enforcing our policy of alcohol-free athletics contests.

• I learned that it is finally the responsibility of all of us — including college presidents and chancellors — to step forward to control fan behavior. It is too easy to say that fan control is someone else’s job. It is too easy to do nothing when one should do something. It is too easy to treat actions as amusing until they turn tragic.

• Finally, we learned that all of us will come through such a tragedy, but each of us will be scarred by it in some way or another. And I learned that it is much better to do the hard work of preventing dangerous behaviors at athletics events than to suffer an incident such as the one that occurred at UMM on October 22, 2005.