Bins of bottled paint — pink, blue, green — waited backstage. Balloons nestled in a net suspended from the ceiling, waiting for their cue.

A crowd of approximately 5,000 waited anxiously for Dayglow’s sold-out event to begin in downtown Syracuse, N.Y., knowing what to expect from Facebook photos capturing the riotous atmosphere of shows at other universities.

But as the Syracuse Police Department prepared for the event to start, officers didn’t realize the scope of the issues they would soon face when dealing with Dayglow, the tour dubbing itself “the world’s largest paint party” on its website.

The performance entailed the standard Dayglow attractions of loud music, bright lights and paint — lots of paint.

“We anticipated problems, and we did have problems. The problems were people overdosing on alcohol and overdosing on drugs,” said Syracuse police Capt. Shannon Trice. “The most disturbing thing was people would overdose, and their friends would just leave them.”

A sergeant at Pennsylvania’s Lehigh University described an even more chaotic scene from a show there last year, one that led to dozens of medical transports.

Dayglow is scheduled for an April 25 show in the University of Maine’s Field House, but both the University of Maine’s police chief and the student who booked the show say they aren’t terribly concerned the show will require much of a deviation from UMaine’s normal security measures.

‘The worst concert I’ve ever seen’

Lehigh University Police Department Sgt. Brian Kelly worked the Dec. 3, 2011, Dayglow show on the Bethlehem, Penn., campus, a sold-out event that drew 4,200 people, according to The Morning Call.

The department set up a triage station, but Kelly said he is still stunned by the evening’s high number of medical transports. He said that between 40 and 50 showgoers were transported for medical treatment.

Lehigh normally sends individuals requiring treatment to one hospital.

“That particular night, we dealt with, I think, four different hospitals,” he said.

“There were people throwing up. They were urinating. They were crapping all over the place,” he continued. “That’s just what to expect.”

When Kelly learned Dayglow would perform at Lehigh, he called other universities that hosted the event.

“Everyone I spoke to wished they had more security than they had,” he said.

He contrasted the show to parties at fraternity houses on campus that typically draw about 200 people and are considered big events, saying the Dayglow experience was unlike anything he had seen on campus.

“This was the worst. This was the worst concert I’ve ever seen,” he said. “We’ve never really had anything like this.”

‘It’s the students’

Trice, the Syracuse police captain, remembers the Sept. 2, 2011, show as being attended mostly by students, though the event was open to the public and was held off campus at the Nicholas J. Pirro Convention Center.

“There were quite a few overdoses that led to the emergency rooms being overwhelmed,” Trice said. “You certainly don’t get a lot of overdoses at other events on campus.”

Fifteen people were transported for medical care from the show in Syracuse, and one person was arrested for harassment and resisting arrest.

In hindsight, Trice said he would have wanted a medical station on site as an attempt to stave off problems before they progressed.

Despite Kelly’s misgivings about Dayglow, he acknowledged that issues stemming from drug and alcohol use are the fault of showgoers not performers.

“They go in there with their Ecstasy and their alcohol,” he said. “It’s the students.”

Trice agreed performers cannot be held responsible for the actions of showgoers. He said “it’s more of the behavior of the people showing up” that caused problems.

However, that doesn’t mean all is forgiven between Lehigh and Dayglow.

“At this time, [Dayglow is] no longer allowed to come back here,” Kelly said.

‘Confident we can pull it off’

Like Kelly, University of Maine police Chief Roland LaCroix has sought the advice of universities that have hosted the show. He said he spoke with officials at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, which hosted a show attended by approximately 6,000 people.

“They didn’t indicate anything as far as [drug or alcohol problems],” LaCroix said. “Their issue was medical calls — dehydration. They had close to 30 [transports].”

He said the show also saw one overdose on Ecstasy.

On Thursday, LaCroix learned the show was coming to UMaine in April. He said a planning meeting will be scheduled to determine the level of security it will warrant, but he did not expect to amp up police presence in comparison to other shows.

“Off the cuff, I don’t see we’d do anything we don’t normally do,” he said.

UMPD generally has 12 officers on duty on the night of an event like this, as well as one or two officers on loan from Orono or Old Town to assist.

UMaine Student Government Vice President of Student Entertainment Joseph “Pat” Nabozny, the pointman for signing acts to perform on campus, is not expecting Dayglow to cause the university any significant stress.

“All of our shows, we have ample security measures in place,” he said. “Honestly, I think it will be pretty similar.”

Nabozny said water will be available at the show in hopes of preventing dehydration, and the standard rules of no re-entry, no drugs and no alcohol at UMaine shows will apply. He hopes to sell 3,000 tickets for the event, and members of the public age 18 or older will be able to attend.

He said he attempted to contact people responsible for bringing Dayglow to the University of Massachusetts to compare notes but has not heard back.

“Student Entertainment has put on several concerts, and I’m confident we can pull it off,” he said. “Every concert has arrests, but you look in Police Beat on any given weekend and there are arrests.”

Reprinted with permission from The Maine Campus.

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