Just out of curiosity, is it students or other people causing problems? How serious are the situations? I guess it just surprises me with East Lansing, but I'll admit I don't spend a lot of time out there, especially not at night.
The answer is "some of both", but a major source of the problem does appear to be non-university-students who, basically, have decided that downtown East Lansing is now a great place to show up and start some trouble. University students themselves are actually remarkably well behaved, even when drinking - they may forget how to get home, but they rarely start fights.
As to how serious, I'm only estimating this number, but based on the radio chatter very early last Sunday (around 2:00 AM), I would guess about 15 police vehicles from other agencies were called in to assist basically all at once (Meridian, Delhi / Ingham County units, Lansing PD, and even Clinton County). I am not counting MSU units in that number who will show up without specific request (EL and MSU share the same radio channel). You can hear panicked or out-of-breath East Lansing officers calling for any backup they can get, and trying to shutdown the entire downtown area.
I am grateful for the good windows in my building for keeping out most of the crowd noise at night, except for in the bathroom where the sound travels through the ventilation! I have talked about this before, downtown East Lansing has become an entertainment district for the whole city [Greater Lansing], so the students are the outsiders. I don't know who is starting fights, but in my experience living in a summer resort party town for many years it is over serving alcohol, and too many places selling alcohol that causes most of the problems. It is sad to say but more enforcement, detain drunks, and cops on the street can help. Out in Provincetown they call it personal protection, they spend the night on jail and are released the next day in most cases with no charges. They also close the bars at 1am. One less hour does make a difference. Teaching people how to behave in public could help.
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As to how serious, I'm only estimating this number, but based on the radio chatter very early last Sunday (around 2:00 AM), I would guess about 15 police vehicles from other agencies were called in to assist basically all at once (Meridian, Delhi / Ingham County units, Lansing PD, and even Clinton County). I am not counting MSU units in that number who will show up without specific request (EL and MSU share the same radio channel). You can hear panicked or out-of-breath East Lansing officers calling for any backup they can get, and trying to shutdown the entire downtown area.