While many residents and local figures are searching for solutions to the riots on East Beaver Avenue, few can agree on how to fix the situation or who deserves the blame.

While "Beaver Canyon" — the area on Beaver Avenue from Garner Street to Pugh Street named for its towering apartment buildings — was the location for the riots of 1998 and 2000, residents of Beaver Canyon buildings say building management is not to blame.

"I don't think the landlords have anything to do with it," said Jameson Cotter (junior-environmental systems engineering) of Alexander Court, 309 E. Beaver Ave.

"My personal opinion is that you've got Acme Pizza right here. You get a couple hundred people lined up and they're drunk and that causes problems. There is nothing the landlords can do about rioting," Cotter said.

Adriane Schwartz, the sole female arrested in the weekend's incident and a resident of Alexander Court, echoed Cotter's sentiments.

"I've lived here a year and a half, and from what I've seen, I don't think there is anything the landlords can do to prevent this," Schwartz said.

Schwartz said the tenants of Beaver Canyon buildings aren't to blame, either.

"Most of the people who live around here stay on their balconies or their decks," Schwartz said. "They don't go out in the street."

But residents who remain on their balconies are precisely the problem, said State College Borough Council member Elizabeth Goreham.

"Beaver Canyon is such a great spot to throw stuff," Goreham said. "Once you get more than four stories high you're disconnected from the world below. And when you're 10 floors up, you don't have much to worry about.

"In those buildings, the density combined with the somewhat harsh living conditions leads to problems," Goreham added. "People just don't care. They'll throw anything."

Bryan Sawyer, a resident of Cedarbrook, 320 E. Beaver Ave., said the problem wasn't people on balconies but intoxicated people on the street below.

"It was alcohol-raged and baseless," Sawyer said. "You've got a bunch of angry, drunken, spoiled, rich white guys all over."

Sawyer said those involved pointed fingers at police but that those accusations were unfair.

"They're saying that they hate the cops for all of the wrong reasons," said Sawyer, adding, "They say the cops are keeping them down and that they're just trying to have a good time, but they're destroying a town that isn't theirs and in which they don't pay taxes."

Goreham agreed that police weren't to blame.

"People who were there think police overreacted," Goreham said. "But police reacted just the way they've been trained. The problem is they've been trained to deal with rioters who are attacking them and this is a situation where the revelers are jovial and trashing at the same time. They weren't looking to hurt anyone."

Council member Thomas Daubert said police presence was a good thing but that it belonged at area bars, not on Beaver Avenue.

"The problem seems to start when the bars let out at 2 a.m. and everyone leaves at once," Daubert said. "Put more of the effort on people when they're leaving the bars, not after they've already gone to Beaver Avenue."

Daubert said communication with people while they are still at a bar would be much easier than trying to control those same people on the street.

"You can talk to 50 people but it's very difficult to talk to 2,000 people," he said.

State College Police Chief Tom King said one possibility to prevent future situations is to install cameras on Beaver Avenue. But, King added, State College is not the sort of city which typically uses cameras to avert crime.

"Big cities like New York are the ones that have (cameras)," King said, "and they would be costly."

Council member Donald Hahn said significant time needs to be taken to consider available options before settling on any solution.

"This is certainly a subject for a lot of study. I myself at am a loss to understand the motivation for something like this," Hahn said. "I can't rationalize what happened."