Julie Conlon
Student Life Editor
Stephen Trinkwald
Equinox Staff
When Hurricane Sandy flooded Keene in October, it seemed the beer flowed more than rain for Keene State College students. The same can be said for snowstorm Nemo, but Nemo proved to be a bit quieter than Sandy’s whirlwind. Keene Police Department’s College Liaison Officer Katie Corbett said the blizzard brought a pretty quiet weekend for her. Corbett said that the blizzard tamed the off-campus party scene in Keene for the weekend.
Photo Illustration By: Emily Fedorko / Photo Editor
“To be quite honest, I don’t think I had any calls for the college at all, all weekend. I was actually quite surprised. I think it was dead quiet. I was shocked because there was nothing,” Corbett said. Corbett said that while she had a pretty boring weekend dealing with off campus students, she thinks drinking may have picked up in the dorms.
“You still see a couple of kids venture out. But for the most part everyone stays in their rooms. I’m sure that the college sees a lot more parties in the dorm, but for off campus it’s a lot more tame,” Corbett said. Corbett said many students took the blizzard as an opportunity to get away from Keene. “I think a lot of the students went home. I saw a lot of them on Friday, and their parents picking them up,” Corbett said. Corbett said overall it’s been a pretty slow season for dealing with off-campus madness.“There hasn’t been that many parties recently because it’s the winter… It’s a lot quieter for me, which is nice,” Corbett said.
For Keene State College students like junior Sam Murray, the weather had little affect on his social life. Murray said he typically drinks one night over the course of the weekend, and said that the blizzard’s arrival didn’t really change anything. Murray said he stayed inside and had some drinks with his friends, which he said he is a pretty ordinary weekend for him. Murray said most of his friends live pretty close, so nothing really changed socially. Murray said the biggest impact the blizzard has had is on his academic life. “I missed a couple of classes because teachers weren’t showing up, but other than that not much,” Murray said. Murray said that additional free time could inspire other students to pick up the drinking. Sophomore Annie McCaffrey said she has class on Fridays, so the blizzard opened up more time for her to have some drinks with her friends. McCaffrey said she typically drinks two or three times over the course of the weekend, and that the blizzard didn’t slow that down.
McCaffrey said the snowstorm didn’t cause her to drink any more than she would have on a typical weekend, but said she thinks some students saw it as an opportunity to step up their party game. “Yeah, they know that there will be no school. It’s just an excuse to drink, because drinkers always find an excuse to drink,” McCaffrey said. One student, senior Chelsey Watson, said she drank more that weekend than a typical weekend. She explained, “I got snowed in at a friend’s house, I drank more than I usually do. Because we were trapped, it was like a camaraderie thing. We were all stuck inside the house so we stayed in and drank and played games all day.” Watson said she thinks because there wasn’t much else to do, because of the snow, students drank.
“We had no other responsibility,” she said, “I think people used that avenue to get drunk.”
Senior Bobby Pettit said he and his friends drank during the day through the weekend. “We drank all day compared to other weekends where we just drink at night. We didn’t really go out to the bars; we kind of just stayed in and drank.” Amanda Mills, a senior, echoed her peers and said that with nothing better to do, she and her friends day drank.
Mills said she drank during the day on Friday and Saturday, and said on Friday she and her friends went to Cobblestone Ale House around four in the afternoon and stayed through the night. Mills said she didn’t notice any special bar deals for the storm. “It was snowing pretty hard, we couldn’t even get out of our driveways–we didn’t have anything better to do. Basically, that’s kind of sad!”
Julie Conlon can be contacted at
jconlon@keene-equinox.com
Steven Trinkwald can be contacted at
strinkwald@keene-equinox.com