Some city officials spent their days at Ohio University partying at tests, while other tried to stay away from the raucous partying.
Current Ohio University students aren’t the first to have reveled in the grandeur of fest season.
Throughout the years, OU students have participated in a variety of outdoor parties around town. Some of who went on to become local and state officials.
Athens City Councilman Kent Butler, D-1st Ward, said he lived on 10 Palmer St. while attending OU and was involved with the first Palmer Fest in 1991.
“It wasn’t that complex,” he said. “It was just the idea that each house would purchase a keg or two and we would all hang out in the backyards.”
Back then, yards on Palmer Street weren’t fenced off, which allowed for a better fest atmosphere, he said.
Before the tradition of Palmer Fest began, Butler said the university sponsored annual “Green Weekends” on each of the residential greens culminating up to “Spring Fest” on the intramural fields.
“Each green weekend had festivities,” he said. “Movies, beer trucks on campus and bands.”
At that time, the drinking age was 19, Butler said, and OU served alcohol on campus.
The drinking age in Ohio was set to 19 in 1982 for beer, and was raised to 21 in 1988.
“Spring fest was a raucous good time,” he said.
Butler said once the drinking age changed to 21, the university dropped Spring Fest, leaving the residents of Mill Street and Palmer Street to come up with a replacement.
“That winter, people started brainstorming on Palmer and Mill Street about how to have a fun, exciting event,” he said.
Butler added in his day, festers weren’t nearly as rowdy as they are now.
“At the time, it was novel and neat because there were up-and-coming bands in the backyards,” he said. “You either knew the people in the bands or some of your friends did.”
Although the fest was mellower than it has been in recent years, he said people still engaged in risky behaviors.
“I made bad decisions at that age that were not well-thought-out or informed,” he said. “And I’m sure others prior to me and after me have done so too.”
Councilman Jeff Risner, D-2nd Ward, said the big party when he went to OU between 1971 and 1975 was Octoberfest.
“It was before HallOUween was really a big thing,” he said.
Risner said festivities included merry-go-rounds, a ferris wheel and beer kegs.
He added that the fest took place on the fields between the Aquatic Center and Porter Hall.
Risner, a geology major, spent most of his time in Porter Hall.
“Octoberfest started Friday,” he said. “We’d just go downstairs, out the door, and then we went to the nearest keg.”
Students could buy beer for 25 cents a cup, Risner added.
“There was always an excuse to get drunk,” he said.
But fests didn’t appeal to every OU student.
“That was not exactly my scene,” said State Representative Debbie Phillips, D-Albany.
Phillips went to OU in the early ‘90s. At that time, Palmer Fest was still the only fest in existence.
“I mean, I liked to go out when the weather was nice and spend time walking around,” she said.
Most spring weekends, she chose to take hikes around Sells Park rather than hit up the town for fests.
“I really have always loved the beauty of this area,” she said. “I would just take a really simple picnic and spend the afternoon.”
She said fests didn’t get too rowdy until after she graduated and began serving on Athens City Council.
“There was definitely a period of time when there was a lot of tension,” she said. “For a while it was turning into quite an event.”
Municipal Court Judge Pat Lang also said he refrained from the fests while he was at OU between 1995 and 1999, turning to sports instead when he had free time on the weekends.
“I was pretty busy with city council and classes,” he said.
He said his position on city council, as an undergraduate, tended to help him keep things in perspective when it came to fest season.
“I think it gave me a more well-rounded view of fests,” he said. “I could see how it affected people on a city level, not just students.”
Now that he’s a member of city council, Butler said he is wary of fest culture in Athens as well. The fests these days tend to be much rowdier than they were when he went to OU and pose a major concern for the city and the university, he added.
He said the university might be able to curb risky behaviors at fests if they started hosting university-sponsored spring events again.
“The irony in all this is that I don’t drink now, and I haven’t in 23 or 24 years,” he said.
—Emily Bohatch contributed to this report.
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