View from the North 40:

Americans, like humans everywhere, love holiday traditions, and a college town in New Hampshire has started a new Halloween tradition to rival any All Hallow’s Eve custom as college students and unwitting townsfolk rioted the Samhain out of the Keene Pumpkin Festival last weekend.

Keene, New Hampshire, is home of the Keene Pumpkin Festival, Keene State University, and the Keene police department and their military-style armored vehicle, as well as a guy named Steven who apparently doesn’t understand the U.S. Constitution, but Pamville experts say none of those things are the city’s biggest problem.

The 24th Annual Keene Pumpkin Festival was on track Saturday to display a respectable number of jack-o-lanterns, said the event website, Pumpkinfestival2014.org. The city of about 23,000 people has engaged in a rivalry with Boston, Massachusetts, and Highwood, Illinois, for some few years over Guinness Book Record bragging rights for the most carved pumpkins gathered together in one place and lit by candles.

The rivalry was the subject of a 2012 HGTV special. It’s that big.

In fact, Keene officially nabbed the Guinness Book crown in 2013 with 30,581. There's no real crown.

With all this media attention, Keene police had applied for and, in 2012, received a $286,000 military-style BearCat mine-resistant armored vehicle, NBCNews.com reported. The federal grant application said that the pumpkin festival was a potential target for terrorists — pumpkins being a high-value target for ISIS and their ne’er-do-well ilk.

Fast forwarding to Saturday, the festival got off to a typical start with carvers and sight-seers enjoying the anticipatory atmosphere and the jack-o-lantern-fueled spectacle — until alcohol-fuel students from Keene State started acting like rabble.

Reports are unclear about how trouble started, but the Sentinel Source, Keene’s newspaper, said that, despite warnings from teachers and coaches to remain civilized, student parties started at the university Friday night. By Saturday at 1:15 p.m. a large, rather unruly party had gathered downtown and three hours later police were responding to fights and disturbances. The arrests started at 7:30 p.m., and reports of rioters breaking into buildings and homes started at 11 p.m.

As of Wednesday, the paper reports, 84 arrests were made, 26 people treated for injuries, countless other injuries went unreported, one vehicle was overturned and an as-of-yet untotaled amount of property sustained damage. The BearCat was reported to be on-scene, but not utilized for riot control.

No word yet on whether any arrests were made for acts of domestic terrorism.

That said, Nicky Woolf of TheGuardian.com reported experts saying that the normal levels of university and Halloween drunken revelry was pushed into the realm of riot because “the systemic culture of militarisation in American police makes situations like this worse.” Reports from the scene describe use of teargas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and the now infamous military vehicle.

John Ransom, in an opinion piece for Finance.Townhall.com, quoted 18-year-old Steven French as saying: “It’s just like a rush. You’re revolting from the cops. It’s a blast to do things that you’re not supposed to do.”

And concluded from that sage comment that “Steven likely doesn’t understand what the constitution is all about.” and immediately goes on to speculate that “In this — as with the whole affair — I blame (U.S. President Barack) Obama, who also doesn’t seem to understand what the constitution is about.”

Noted Pamville sociologist I.B. Nosey told Pamville News that, based on his studies of crowd mentality, he has reservations about agreeing with either conclusion.

“Obviously, this Ransom subscribes to the taffy school of logic if he can take an 18-year-old boy’s foolish statement about the excitement of being a bad boy, a.k.a. moron, and conclude that the statement in any way means the president is thwarting the constitution. He stretched that connection pretty thin,” Nosey said, adding, “get it? Taffy — stretched thin? Anywho ...

“That Woolf fellow makes some sense, but he’s not looking at the big picture, putting the event in context,” he said. “Clearly it's the fault of those Guinness World Record people for creating a hype that fuels unreasonable expectation for great success in venues that require a large number people to gather. That's never safe.

"Perhaps, for the 25th annual festival they should just bring a fuel tanker to a match throwing contest,” he added.

Thank you for reading Pamville News where our motto is “We can match you crazy quote for crazy quote as long as you accept fictional professionals.”

(It’s a riot at [email protected].)