Members of the Veishea task force are giving students and Ames residents a chance to present their views on what happened during the April 18 riot in Campustown.

Pete Englin, dean of students, sent an e-mail on Aug. 15 to about 24,000 possible witnesses.

All Iowa State students registered at the end of January 2004, members of the fire department, Campustown business owners, Iowa State police and CyRide employees received the e-mail.

According to the e-mail, members of the Veishea task force wanted to get a “comprehensive picture of the events.”

“The future of Veishea is being evaluated through this process, so it’s important that the entire community participate so we provide comprehensive and thorough recommendations to President [Gregory] Geoffroy,” Englin said. “Hopefully, folks took the time to look at the e-mail. Here’s the opportunity to share what you saw, if you’re willing.”

Because people were in so many different locations, Englin said they have different points of view to offer.

Englin said the responses will help the task force decide the fate of the 2006 Veishea celebration. The responses will be compiled and presented to the 31-member Task Force on Assuring Successful Veishea and Other Student/Community Celebrations.

All e-mail responses will be open to the public and are planned to be available Tuesday. Meetings held by the task force are also open to the public.

“The main thing is to actually understand what happened from the students’ standpoint,” said Sophia Magill, Government of the Student Body president. “We have the cop reports, but we want to know what students observed or did, too.”

Magill, a member of the Veishea task force, said she thinks this is an effective way to reach students since it makes the information available to everyone.

She said the task force has given witnesses of the riot multiple ways to report what they saw. In April, a similar e-mail went out to students. She said responses from the April e-mail were mostly from people who were passionate about making their story known and she expects similar results with this e-mail request.

Englin said there have been about 40 responses so far. He said the majority of the responses have been detailed and helpful.

The deadline for responses is Friday, though anyone with information is encouraged to share it at any time.