Community tallies profits, incidents after Dakota Days weekend

While students are already counting down the days until Dakota Days 2017, USD and Vermillion are still cleaning up from one of the biggest community events of the year.

Dakota Days is known by many as a time to have fun with fellow Coyote fans, while many businesses in Vermillion know it as their busiest time of the year.

Gregg Peters, manager of Vermillion Wine and Liquor, said they had a very busy weekend.

“I would be comfortable in saying that D-Days Friday is the busiest day of the year,” Peters said. “Usually the Sunday after is the busiest day of the year for the cafe (Mister Smith’s) for breakfast.”

Another industry that benefits from D-Days is the hotel business. With all of the alumni and other Coyote fans coming to town that needed a place to stay, the hotels in town were full. Madison Huber, a front desk worker at the Best Western Vermillion Inn said they made a lot of money over the weekend.

“People on D-Days like on Friday and Saturday kept calling and asking for rooms, but we couldn’t give them because they were completely booked,” Huber said. “A lot of people come and use the pool here because we have a sauna and a hot tub. Students will come here and just a lot of people call and ask if they can do that. We do charge $7.50 per person, but it’s something that helps our business during D-Days.”

The food industry makes a lot of money on D-Days as well, according to USD student and McDonald’s employee, Rebecca Meyer.

“Oh, it was absolutely insane. We had to hire a security guard,” Meyer said. “We had to call in the cops on Saturday night, mostly just for show, to show that we will do something to get them to calm down, but we did not have to throw them out or anything. We called the cops on a drunk driver. They drove through once, and we were all like, ‘Should we say something?’ But we did not get a license plate, and then they drove through again.”

D-Days may be the busiest for law enforcement. TheUniversity Police Department, the Vermillion Police Department and the South Dakota Highway Patrol were all on high alert over the weekend.

UPD reported that fire alarms were pulled on campus three times, all in North Complex. UPD was also involved with 11 alcohol-related incidents on campus. There was also one weapons violation on campus on Saturday afternoon,
according to UPD.