Twenty minutes before Friday’s pep rally ended, about 500 people, mostly students, crowded into the entryway of Reynolds Coliseum. They pushed through the doorway of the venue for the Pack Howl concert that featured Common and N.E.R.D., down to the coliseum’s lower level, according to Jeramy Blackford, assistant director of student membership and marketing for the Alumni Association. At least two people fell and one student hurt his shoulder, Blackford said, who was standing near the stage when the crowd rushed through.

Campus Police could not be reached to verify the number of those waiting in the main hall, but Blackford said the main floor’s maximum capacity was about 1,200, and it was half full.

Event security, who said earlier in the evening that they did not know whether students would be let onto the floor for the concert, would not tell those waiting if or when they would be allowed entry to the lower level, according to Leilani Thompkins, a sophomore in business administration.

Thompkins, who attended the 2004 Pack Howl concert featuring Ludacris, said that concert, because it had assigned seating, was much more organized.

During the 25 minutes between when students started leaving their seats to stand in line for a spot on the floor and when doors to the floor opened, Thompkins said a lack of information was unacceptable.

“They could at least let us know what’s going on,” she said. “People are getting so angry. They could at least let us know why we are not in the concert right now.”

Jeff Gray, chair of this year’s Pack Howl concert, said event security was instructed on this point so students would stay in their seats for the pep rally. He said the incident occurred because of an unforeseen rush from pep rally seating to the main level.

Gray, a senior in engineering, said he hadn’t heard any complaints and didn’t know what happened with security or with students’ actions to make it so that officers could initially only open one door to allow the flow of students to pass through.

“Security did what they were supposed to do,” Gray said. “I know people were there for the concert, but the pep rally was important too. We wanted people to stay in their seats as long as possible.”

Gray said the event staff had reserved the lower floor for the pep rally and had intended to make an announcement informing attendees they could make their way down the stairs to wait for doors to the lower level to open.

But before the pep rally ended, Gray said students started to figure out they would be able to stand closer to the stage.

“Even with about 15 minutes left in the pep rally, it was very noticeable that people had been getting out of their seats and moving to the first floor,” he said. “You know how rumors spread,” he said. “When you get kids lined up like that, there’s nothing you can do, no matter how much security we have.”

When students moved forward, security personnel was only able to open one door because there was not enough room to open all of them. As soon as it opened, the crowd filtered itself through the door in such a hazardous way that Blackford said security might have stopped allowing others through because staff “didn’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

“They had set it up so that all the people that came in at 7 [p.m.] to see the pep rally, they sent them upstairs,” Blackford said. “About 20 minutes before the pep rally ended, students started to figure things out. From what I heard, people just started crowding along that open area. When they did open the doors, there was a huge rush to see who could get to the barrier the fastest.”

Gray said it is a problem that, although event coordinators could not have predicted it, will be addressed at the meeting for the next Pack Howl concert.

“How do we know the people are going to get up halfway through the pep rally and make their way downstairs?” he said. “We did the best we could with what we had. Of course you get problems, but that doesn’t happen all the time. It was not one of those situations you can really predict. We can just work toward making that not happen next year.”