Matt Guba remembers the night of April 17 clearly.

Around 11 p.m., he was at a party on Hunt Street when a squad car of police in full riot gear came “out of nowhere.”

This, the sophomore in pre-business explained in an e-mail to the dean of students, “riled up” the gathered mass of students.

A short time later, a police officer clubbed and Maced an individual who ran across the street to meet his friends, Guba wrote, and then did the same to a couple of the person’s friends who ran out to help him.

Aaron Anderson also recalls the night of the riot, and he describes a completely different set of events.

Anderson, senior in mathematics, tells of walking to a friends house on Hunt Street and staring in bewilderment at a block that was “nuts.” “There were drunk people everywhere, in the streets, in the front lawns, in houses, just all over,” Anderson said. “I was only there for about 15 minutes, but while I was there, a police cruiser drove by, and the two police officers had looks on their faces like ‘Holy crap.'”

Anderson, who has lived in Ames for five years and has even hosted his own parties, said it was obvious things were going to take a turn for the worse, which prompted him and his girlfriend to go home.

How can Anderson, who was at the same place at roughly the same time, have such a different perspective than Guba?

Why is it that Guba believes the Veishea riot was the students’ response to extreme police brutality, while Anderson says he can’t wait to graduate so he will no longer be associated with rioters who “give us a bad name?”

With so many discrepancies in what people believe they observed and numerous differing perspectives among those in the community, how can anyone tell what caused the more than $97,000 in damages and 28 complaints filed with the Ames Police Department?

“There’s clearly multiple views of the same event at the same time by multiple people. Depending on their frame of reference and view point, they see things in a different light,” said Dean of Students Pete Englin. “In the midst of all that craziness, how do you create a shared understanding of what needs to happen?”

The answer, for now, is to gather Guba’s and Anderson’s accounts of the riot, along with those of 176 others that have been obtained by the 2004 Task Force on Assuring Successful Veishea and Other Student/Community Celebrations through responses to a mass e-mail survey that Englin sent to Ames and ISU community members.

The goal — to assess and create a comprehensive picture of what transpired that night.

“You don’t piece [the accounts] together, but represent them as independent and valid perspectives,” Englin said.

Working group 1 of the task force will categorize the compiled responses by time and location to create an extensive chronological time frame. The task force will present the time line at its next meeting from 1 to 5 p.m. Sept. 7 in the Great Hall of the Memorial Union.

Following the presentation, working group 2 will take over, using the information to achieve its mission of discovering and examining the underlying causes of the riot. From there, working group 3 will formulate recommendations for the task force to approve for submission to ISU President Gregory Geoffroy.

As of now, the standing document the task force has used for a time line of the riot is the one submitted by the Ames Police Department to the Ames City Council on April 27.

Despite information from an additional 178 sources, Englin and working group 1 co-chairwoman Michelle Bohan said little new information has been gathered.

“It’s still clear that the disbandment of the party on Hunt was the beginning of the disturbance,” said Bohan, president of the Graduate and Professional Student Senate. “There’s nothing that’s really revealing or shocking other than what people have already said and what’s been reported by the news media.”

A vast majority of responses document instances of being unnecessarily pepper-sprayed, pushed, sworn at or exposed to tear gas by police in the Campustown area as law enforcement attempted to disperse rioters.

“I don’t think anyone can fully understand what happened,” Bohan said. “It was chaos, and because of that it’s almost impossible to know what’s the right thing to do because things move so quickly in those situations.”

Yet most of the comments recognize that involvement by both students and police caused the riot, with just a few solely blaming police or students.

“People have the same general feeling. There’s more with the middle ground who understand police have to do their jobs, students were being destructive and understand both sides contributed to the events that occurred,” Bohan said. “The task force is really trying to get away from pointing fingers. It’s a futile game because it doesn’t help solve the problem.”

The need now is to formulate a way to prevent future instances or discover how to minimize the risk of disturbances happening again, she said.

“It may illuminate for some people that there are multiple perspectives, and create openness to creating the best solutions,” Englin said.

However, questions of why the riot began have yet to be answered as the task force is still working toward its November deadline.

“It would be premature to get too far ahead,” Englin said.

Students and Ames residents indicated plenty of suggestions in their e-mails.

Anderson said he’s glad the administration is taking students seriously.

“Just developing a task force is a huge step, but I was surprised to see an e-mail asking for my input,” he said.