Storm Erie left members of the University community scratching their heads and feeling alarmed when he left his mark on the school two years ago.
Erie drove his car through the Quad and threw various items, including a sling blade and a gas can, from the vehicle in February 2010. He spoke with The Daily Reveille on Tuesday to reflect on the event and share where he is now.
Erie, now 23, said he doesn’t regret the incident and feels like his action was misrepresented.
The items he removed from his car weren’t randomly tossed around the Quad, he said, but they were part of an artistic representation.
Erie said each item had a symbolic meaning and was arranged in a manner intended to communicate a message and serve as a symbol for life.
The incident was an impulsive reaction to his best friend’s murder and the stresses of being an architecture student, Erie said.
His friend’s unexpected death caused him to “start looking at the world from a bird’s-eye view.”
The main part of his artistic representation was a 30-inch by 80-inch display of a spiraling structure from an architecture project he had done during a previous semester, he said. He draped jumper cables over the structure, which he said stood for “power to architecture.”
According to Erie, he set out a chessboard to represent strategy. An African drum represented rhythm. Waterproof pants symbolized protection from the elements. Rain boots represented walking on water.
A gas can placed on top of a trashcan, which alarmed students at the time, was meant to say that humans should not rely on fossil fuels and turn to alternative energy sources as well, Erie said.
But students who witnessed the display thought the worst. “I really thought he was going to start shooting or something,” psychology student Kandice Tyler told The Daily Reveille in February 2010.
The final piece was a sling blade planted into the ground, which Erie said meant that his “work here is done.” “Those are the items I carry around with me that make my life what it is,” he said.
Erie called the action unplanned, impulsive and a result of built-up stress. He said he wasn’t under the influence of any drugs.
Erie said he elected to drive through the Quad because it was an easier method for him to carry his belongings and he could avoid the hassle of parking at the University.
While Erie understood why people were alarmed, he said he didn’t mean to be dangerous or threatening, and he emphasized that he drove carefully in the Quad.
Architecture senior Noam Platt, a friend of Erie’s at the time, said Erie worked hard in school but was often unorthodox.
“He was always kind of the alternative type,” Platt said. “He always had off-the-wall, strange and challenging ideas.”
Platt said he thought the campus community’s reaction to Storm’s drive through the Quad was too harsh and showed that the University wasn’t very progressive.
After the incident in the Quad, Erie was handcuffed, put into an ambulance and taken to a mental institution.
He stayed there for two weeks and called the experience mentally traumatizing and publicly humiliating.
“When I was in the mental institution, I felt like I was helping the patients more than the doctors,” Erie added as he spoke about his disapproval of the institution’s operations.
Erie was suspended for a year and was banned from the University.
He said he experienced other “altercations” after the Quad incident, but later enrolled in the naval architecture program at the University of New Orleans.
Disappointed by the lack of funding and room for creativity, Erie left UNO.
He now works at a commission-based sales job to save money for a company he wants to open. His plan is to create Erie Innovations, a “design and build” architectural firm dedicated to conceptual, innovative and sustainable design.
He said he’s also open to returning to school.
 
____ Contact Emily Herrington at [email protected]