St. Fratty’s Day partying is out of control. Here’s what Cal Poly should do | Opinion

Well, that was dumb.

Partying on St. Fratty’s Day — Cal Poly students’ unofficial and unauthorized celebration of St. Patrick’s Day — is one thing.

Theft and vandalism so bad that it necessitates briefly evacuating a college dorm, such as happened early Saturday, is next level — as in criminal.

Muir Hall on campus had “damage so extensive that university officials were forced to temporarily close the building and evacuate about 300 student residents in order to repair and restore fire suppression and alarm systems, clean up destruction and debris from smashed ceiling tiles and marred floors and provide deep cleaning and air quality restoration throughout,” Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong said in an email to the campus community. Other buildings were damaged as well, though not so severely.

There will no doubt be repercussions, most likely in the form of increased security from here on out. That won’t affect just current students, but also future Mustangs.

The campus wasn’t the only location affected.

Thousands of students congregated in the nearby Hathway Avenue neighborhood, where city police issued citations for various violations, including noise, unruly gatherings, open containers, public urination and public intoxication. Damage to several vehicles — including a smashed windshield — was reported.

If this were merely a case of loud partying, authorities might have been more forgiving. But it’s hard to ignore deliberate vandalism and theft.

In his scathing email, Armstrong vowed to hold those responsible accountable for their actions.

“These selfish and harmful actions are unacceptable for individuals who have been granted the privilege to study, live and work in the Cal Poly community,” he wrote. “It is confounding and deeply disturbing that a portion of our own students so ignorantly and callously destroyed parts of our campus — including the very places they and so many other students live.“

A paternal scolding from the college president is unlikely to change behavior, however.

For one thing, it echoed the admonition Armstrong delivered back in 2015, when at least eight St. Fratty’s Day revelers were injured after a garage roof collapsed under the weight of 50 celebrants.

“This event raises significant concern about the judgment exercised by both the party organizers and attendees regarding the health and safety of themselves and others,” Armstrong said then. “Behavior like this has no place in San Luis Obispo and is counter to the expectation we have of Cal Poly students.”

After that debacle, then Mayor Jan Marx wanted to ban climbing onto rooftops for any reason except maintenance and installation. That went nowhere, though other crackdowns on disruptive partying — including adoption of a party registration system and the doubling of fines on and leading up to St. Patrick’s Day — have been adopted.

Those, too, have failed to deter St. Fratty’s Day revelers, however, which demonstrates just how tough it is to control such events.

In the case of two other celebrations that grew unruly and violent until they erupted in full-blown riots — the Mardi Gras Parade in downtown San Luis Obispo and the annual Poly Royal open house sponsored by Cal Poly — authorities permanently canceled the events.

Last year, some Cal Poly neighbors called on the university to cancel St. Fratty’s Day, according to Mustang News.

But that’s not so easy in this case. How do you stop people from celebrating an annual holiday?

You can’t “cancel” St. Patrick’s Day, any more than you can cancel Halloween or New Year’s Eve.

Nor can you easily change the culture that surrounds certain holidays.

St. Patrick’s Day, for example, is no longer strictly an Irish Catholic holy day. It’s been embraced by all nationalities as an opportunity to wear green beads, eat corned beef, drink copious amounts of alcohol and attempt to speak with Irish accents.

Absent truly draconian measures — such as imposing a curfew or closing down campus — authorities are better off attempting to prevent things from getting out of hand in the first place.

The university could start with more aggressive messaging that makes it clear just what risks students face if they’re caught destroying property and committing crimes.

This goes beyond threatening fines that will end up being shared by entire dorms or off-campus houses. Suspension and even expulsion should be in the mix for the worst offenders.

Another strategy would be to once again tell visitors from other schools that they are not welcome here. That message has been used in the past to discourage out-of-town students from bringing chaos to San Luis Obispo.

Then, when St. Fratty’s Day morn arrives, boost security around the first-year dorms so any aspiring ne’er-do-wells know someone is watching. Deter misbehavior while students are dispersed and before they have a chance to feed off a drunken, anonymous crowd.

Not that we want to see a heavy police presence on or off campus. It’s not something students should want, either, which is why they really should call out the idiots who think it’s fun to trash residence halls, steal from campus dining facilities, mess with fire alarms and damage parked cars.

But we’ve now reached the point where another step in escalation could get really ugly, and we need to do whatever we can to prevent that from happening next year.

Because there will be another St. Fratty’s Day next year.

We all know students are going to party, and it doesn’t seem that meager regulations, fines or registration systems are going to stop that from happening.

But something must change now, before the rocks and bottles start flying again.