EASTON, Pa. – Could it be the end of Friday night lights in the Easton Area School District?<\/p>\n
That’s what Superintendent Tracy Piazza said could happen after an “extraordinary number of arrests” were made during Friday night’s Easton Area High School football game.<\/p>\n
The idea of moving the popular football tradition to Saturday afternoons is one of the many factors in discussion for how to prevent further incidents, like a reported altercation on Friday night involving numerous people.<\/p>\n
Now restrictions are already in place for the last two regular-season home games left.<\/p>\n
The home of the Easton Red Rovers is always buzzing during the Fall football season, but it took just one game at Cottingham Stadium gone wrong to force district officials to crack down and reconsider the popular school tradition.<\/p>\n
“This is horrible. This is happening everywhere, though, not just here,” said Myra, a former Easton Area School District parent.<\/p>\n
The incident has former district parents like longtime Easton resident Myra worried.<\/p>\n
“Nothing surprises me these days because that’s been going around in a lot of different areas. Like these kids are reckless. I don’t know what’s going on,” said Myra.<\/p>\n
During a district board meeting on Tuesday night, Piazza said a number of young adults and students were arrested.<\/p>\n
She said some visitors were not from the school’s community.<\/p>\n
“It was not our proudest moment as a community,” said Piazza.<\/p>\n
Piazza called the volume of arrests “unprecedented for one single game and probably for a season.”<\/p>\n
Easton Police Chief Carl Scalzo told 69 News that it was “defiant, reckless behavior” from large crowds that gathered without intent to watch the game.<\/p>\n
Easton Vice Mayor Councilman Frank Pintabone was among the concerned fans in the stands.<\/p>\n
“I’m a season ticket holder. I’m at every home game. We had just come down from our seats, and it happened right as we were walking by,” said Pintabone.<\/p>\n
Pintabone said he’s witnessed chaotic scenes break out at football games in the past.<\/p>\n
“We had another home game two weeks ago, and our officers were involved with something else,” said Pintabone.<\/p>\n
As a result, the district is now buckling down on game restrictions, like limiting the number of tickets that will be sold to students.<\/p>\n
Piazza said if the situation does not improve, it could mean the end of home football on Friday nights.<\/p>\n
“But for a tradition that is rich, and deep and steeped in history here, for our city to say ‘we prefer you do them on Saturday afternoon or we may not support you if this doesn’t get under control’, there’s a lot of work to do,” said Piazza.<\/p>\n
Piazza said students and parents should expect further updates.<\/p>\n
City leaders and police said they will continue to support district officials, as the investigation continues.\u2003<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EASTON, Pa. – Could it be the end of Friday night lights in the Easton Area School District?…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[2694,153,155,154,53081,100407,20843,38138,51818,294,122823,20252],"class_list":["post-297391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-arrests","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-cottingham-stadium","tag-crowd-control","tag-easton-area-school-district","tag-football-game","tag-friday-night-lights","tag-public-safety","tag-school-tradition","tag-tracy-piazza"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}