BLYTHE DAHLEM, Special to The Denisonian—On August 31, fraternities were preparing to kick off the party season with a slew of day parties (commonly known as “Darties”) behind their fraternity houses behind North Quad. According to a senior member of one of the fraternities, darties had never been a problem in the past.
“A few of the fraternities in the IFC have our lodge spaces where we’ve had darties the last few years. I know others did for sure and so did my fraternity,” he said.
Everything was going well at the start of the afternoon. People were showing up, playing drinking games and just having fun like in previous years.
But eventually Campus Safety showed up and the feeling of the darty changed quickly.
According to the senior, Campus Safety told one of the fraternities to shut down the slip-n-slide they had set up, quit playing drinking games and put all their drinks in a cup. Shutdowns continued along the row to the rest of the fraternities set up on North Quad and the fraternities were told they had half an hour to comply or they’d be given a written warning.
While the first fraternity with the slip and slide was shut down for not complying to Campus Safety’s requests, the rest of the fraternities were trying to clean everything up and comply before they too were shut down.
“They said they would come back in a half an hour, they came back in like 10 minutes. We did everything they told us to do, but they still shut us down, gave us a written warning and said, ‘North quad is a dry quad’” the senior said.
The rest of the fraternity parties were shut down too, and the kick off to darty season came to an abrupt end.
The senior has one question for Campus Safety, “Why now are they being so strict? What happened the last three years where now it’s suddenly this huge issue?”
Jim O’Neill, Director of Campus Safety, was not on North Quad on August 31st, but he still responded to questions about Campus Safety’s policy on shutting down parties.
“We have policies in place for handling it, but we give our officers discretion,” O’Neill said, “A lot of action is complaint driven, so if someone calls and complains about the noise level at a party or is concerned about the safety of a party—that would be approached a lot differently than some outdoor activity that officers would just stumble upon during foot patrol on a quad.”
Director O’Neill also added that the department is only enforcing the national fraternities’ policies.
“Their policies say that alcohol is not allowed in or around the fraternity houses. It’s disappointing to see because they have other places to do that,” O’Neill said. He added that north quad being dry would be very hard to enforce.
The senior did have one more thing to say to Campus Safety, “The rules have been in place for years, so they have every right to do it… So, no hard feelings.”