If you haven’t been living under a rock these first four weeks of school, I’m sure you’ve seen a certain news story by a local CBS news affiliate that has been making the rounds through campus and Facebook. In it, some not so great things were said about our off campus lifestyle.
Later, our lovely campus newspaper, The Santa Clara, wrote a front-page article about Welcome Weekend. In the interest of full disclosure, I did not come to campus until Sunday, so I missed the ordeal of our first Saturday night. From what I know of what happened, the situation was not handled spectacularly on our part.
However, the article had some interesting things to say—particularly the line about not getting a job you applied for “because Santa Clara has a reputation for being a party school.” Um, hello. Anybody who thinks Santa Clara is a party school obviously has not tried to find a spot to study in the library during dead week. I sincerely doubt this story made national news. I’m from Colorado. Home of CU Boulder, that is a party school. If this shindig didn’t make national news, I’m sure our welcome weekend shenanigans won’t. How would our neighbors respond to CU Boulder’s parties in their backyard? There are probably more people at that party than there are at our entire school (not really, but you get the point). I’m not saying CU’s parties are better. In fact, I think smaller is better. CU is too loud and rowdy. Imagine walking through that crowd or trying to talk to someone.
All non-freshman are sure to have noticed the marked increase in police activity on Bellomy Street this year. Since that video came out, police have begun shutting down parties between 11:30pm and midnight, if not considerably earlier (sorry highlighter fans). I’m sure it can be almost universally agreed upon by students that they would prefer things to go back to the way they were.
There are things that we can all do to help begin this process. Hopefully, most of these seem obvious.
- Don’t get in fights.
- If you choose to drink (not drinking might be the better option), don’t do it to the point that your friends have to call 911 to save you. (If you need to make the call though, do it).
- Don’t throw bottles. Especially at the police cars, idiots. Be respectful to the officers if they talk to you, although they rarely do.
- If you choose to party in the dorms, be prepared for the consequences. Campus Safety and SCPD work together on these things and it’s no fun calling mom and dad about the write up.
These are not hard concepts, people. If we want the cops to leave us alone, let’s do everything we can to not draw attention to ourselves, capiche?
I miss the old Santa Clara weekends. Things were a little less crazy at the beginning of last year, but it was still the wildest time of the year. Things settled down and I’m expecting the same this year. Fraternities rush, the weather gets colder, more people stay in. However, there are still parties almost every weekend, and in some ways I think they’re better. During this time of the year, once we’ve moved past the “I’m a freshman and need to meet everyone” phase, the people that come up to you will actually want to talk (flirt) with you longer than learning and subsequently forgetting your name.
We all love our weekends for different reasons; the people here are nice, for the most part responsible, and know how to have an absolute blast. I’ve met kids from Stanford, UC Santa Cruz (I think), San Jose State, Sonoma State, and I’m sure some other schools, at various functions. Most, if not all, have spoken very highly of our parties. Let’s do all we can to keep it that way, not for them, but for us. This is our school, it’s been here since 1851, and I like it just the way it is.