“My first Veishea:

5 p.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday – Writing a 10-page media law paper.

11:01 p.m. – Call it a night after sorting through 300 plus pages of law reviews, U.S. Supreme Court rulings and federal legislation.

11:45 p.m. – Hear what I thought to be fireworks.

11:50 p.m. – Cell phone rings, miss the call

Midnight – Dorm room phone rings, miss the call.

12:03 a.m. – Wake up to yelling over my answering machine from former Daily photo editor Eric Rowley, screaming, ‘Tom wake up! Wake up! Get out of bed! Put on a shirt, throw on some jeans and get your ass to Welch! There’s a riot! They’re tossing tear gas. It burns! . ‘ followed by three minutes of horrendous screaming, shouting and moaning.

12:04 a.m. – Fall out of dorm room loft, stumble half-awake to the dresser, play message on the machine, get awoken again by inaudible screaming and quickly remember what I fell out of bed for.

12:30 a.m. – Help photographer David Osterhaus break into the Iowa State Daily office to grab a camera, notebooks and pens.

2 a.m. – Nearly miss the end of a billy club as I run from a line of police and a cloud of tear gas, hands in the air with notebook and pen in hand shouting ‘I’m with the press, don’t Mace me!’

Ahh, the memories.”

– Tom Barton is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Davenport. He is the editor in chief of the Daily.

“One of my memories of Veishea 2003 was laying in the middle of Central Campus during a great spring day, getting a tan and watching the ROTC color guard. I was also able to get my picture taken with Smokey Bear.”

– Diane Petitti is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Naperville, Ill. She is the managing editor of visual and production of the Daily.

“I was 8 years old when I went to my first Veishea in 1994. I don’t remember much about it, but I got my picture taken by an ISU student while trying to milk a cow.”

– Amber Saunders is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Colo. She is the copy chief of the Daily.

“My first Veishea was in 2004. My roommate and I were sitting around in lawnchairs when we heard a crash and some cheering. We wondered if there was a riot going on – there was. It was everything I though a riot would be. Tear gas, riot police and flaming dumpsters headed down Lincoln Way. I saw it all clearly through the eye holes of my Russian civil defense gas mask. Who ever said buying a gas mask was a bad idea?”

– Nick Farris is a senior in fine art and advertising from Davenport. He is the graphics editor of the Daily.