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Cal Poly students damage property in San Luis Obispo, video

March 17, 2024

By KAREN VELIE

An estimated 6,000 to 7,000 people gathered near the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo campus on Saturday morning for the annual Saint Fratty’s Day celebration. Students damaged dorms, broke glass and left trash throughout the area.

Beginning at about 3 a.m. on Saturday, a large group of primarily Cal Poly students gathered near the intersection of California Boulevard and Hathway Avenue. Students passed around plastic jugs filled with alcohol, played loud music and danced in the street.

Dozens of officers attempted to keep the crowd under control. They poured jugs of alcohol in gutters and arrested people for a variety of offenses.

During the morning, revelers broke mutiple car windows. The owner of one sedan posted, “Please do not climb” on his windshield along with a warning that the car was under surveillance. Even so, revelers shattered the cars front window.

At the campus, students damaged mutiple dorms, including Muir Hall. Campus officials temporarily evacuated Muir Hall in order to do repairs and cleanup.

“I’m disappointed and disgusted as I write to you today about the behavior that some of our students and campus visitors displayed when they took part in early morning St. Patrick’s Day partying that caused significant damage to Muir Hall and several other University Housing facilities,” President Jeffrey Armstrong wrote in an email.

Between midnight and 1 p.m. on Saturday, San Luis Obispo and Cal Poly officers made 11 arrests for charges, including public intoxication, DUI, resisting an officer, possession of an open container and climbing on a pole designed to support wires, according to SLO County Jail logs.

  • Bennett Manning Pearce, 21, climbing on a pole designed to support wires
  • Dylan Blake Zorn, 19, public intoxication
  • Ashley Nicole Wilson, 19, DUI
  • Ronan Michael O’Sullivan, 20, public intoxication
  • Aidan Paul Lear, 20, climbing on a pole designed to support wires
  • Joshua Anthony Harkey, 22, climbing on a pole designed to support wires
  • Solomon Fix, 22, resist or obstruct an officer
  • Camden Becker Fix, 20, resist or obstruct an officer and possession of an open container
  • Noah Fan, 21, climbing on a pole designed to support wires
  • Kyle Robert Crossman, 22, public intoxication
  • Thomas Patrick Callahan, 21, public intoxication and resisting or obstructing an officer

By 11 a.m., must of the revelers had dispersed though some were passed out on the ground while others dined at local restaurants.

 


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Reminds me of the great philosopher Homer Simpson… “To Alcohol… the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.”


37

A bit reminiscent of the Poly Royal Riots but without near as much vandalism and violence as that 3-day bratty student Bacchanalian blowout. Learning of this year’s Saint Fratty’s Day celebration I was struck by the student’s strong sense of personal responsibility, respect for private property and solid environmental ethic. /sarc


35

if Cal Poly can completely ignore Kristin Smart they should be able to let a little vandalism go.


33

Ouch!!! Quick, dispatch the Fire Department to the CPSU Administration Building!! I think you just burned every administrator and staff person working there!


19

Drunken brawling, resisting arrest, public intoxication, DUI, sounds like the students are getting instructions from Professor Martinez.


30

I graduated from Cal Poly in 83. Partied a plenty, but these students who get arrested are not right. Did their parents just write a check and send them off, or was there some kind of moral compass that they packed in their suitcase? I had one, as I was launched into the adult world, and didn’t annoy or the piss off my residential neighbors. What the heck happened to our youngsters?


58

I was about 10 years behind you. I partied. I had lots of fun. I did a few dumb things. However, vandalizing property, climbing power lines, trashing cars, resisting arrest? Inviting a few hundred friends to jump up and down on a roof?


I don’t understand that path, even when I was young and intoxicated.


5

So you say you want to be a college town…


37

It wasn’t mentioned, that this location is the same place as the 1990 Poly Royal Riot. What are the, not so surprising, odds about that?


28

These arrests are all for off-campus lawbreaking. Will anything be done to the students who damaged the dorms? If a Cal Poly English teacher can assault a cop on campus at an anti-Israel protest and then two weeks later be arrested for a DUI at 3 am, and suffer no consequences from Cal Poly for her unprofessional behavior, why should we expect Cal Poly to do anything about these students who have trashed their own dorms? They should all be held financially responsible for repairing the damages and maybe booted out.


77

Definitely expelled, not maybe.


36

At least they listed a handful of names.


I wonder if posting names, photos, and expulsion dates would help…


4

There is no excuse for the city and Cal Poly to allow this invasion of thousands of students in a residential neighborhood. Both could work together to end this out-of-control event. What’s it going to take before they do that–someone getting injured or worse? It is a disgraceful image of our city–drunkenness and dangerously risky and disturbing behavior. Is this the image Cal Poly wants of its university and is this a good image for our city? It was sheer luck that nothing catastrophic occurred yesterday.


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