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San Luis Obispo doubling fines for Saint Fratty’s Day

March 7, 2025

By KAREN VELIE

The San Luis Obispo Police Department has expanded the days for doubling fines for rowdy parties and alcohol offenses associated with Saint Fratty’s Day.

The city’s safety enhancement zone begins today and extends until March 10, and also from March 14 through March 18. Fines are doubled for open container, peeing in public, noise violations and unruly gatherings.

An estimated 6,000 to 7,000 people gathered near the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo campus on March 16, 2024 for the annual Saint Fratty’s Day celebration. Students damaged dorms, broke glass and left trash throughout the area.

The city has provided the following tips to avoid costly fines:

• Keep bottles, cans and cups of booze inside the bars and your house.
• Use a toilet, not the street. Portable restrooms will be available for use downtown.
• If celebrating at home, keep the music volume down and turn down the bass.
• Keep gatherings small. Inviting 500 people to your condo is not the best idea.
• Do not drink and drive. Designate a sober driver or use rideshare apps to get home safely.

 


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Cal Poly and the City of SLO has been known for decades to not do enough to stop the despicable behavior of university students. It took a riot to finally stop Poly Royal. Why has St. Patrick’s Day become an excuse for idiots to get drunk? It is a day to honor a man who brought Christianity to Ireland and integrated it into Irish culture. Poor man must be turning over in his grave every March 17th.


8

Prevailing theory in christianity is that those who never heard of Jesus through no fault of their own, go to heaven automatically. Spreading christianity only exposes people to the sentence of hell… Why would anyone be grateful for that? Why celebrating it? The reality is, the spreading of christianity, was(and is) nothing but an attempt to control people. Keep your religion to yourself pls, and let the kids celebrate life. Though I do hate the liter :/


-3

Doubling the fines is not a deterrent. Nobody is deterred by a potential fine for intoxication or party behavior because everyone perceives that their risk for arrest or ticketing is extremely small. And if they are fined then their parents will cover it or they can dip into their student loan funds.


The threat of expulsion for behavior unbecoming to the student body might command more attention, but the odds are very low for Cal Poly taking responsibility for their impact on the community.


28

Perhaps an on campus frat safe zone should be established where the students can drink, pee and vomit to their hearts content. Earn your Money Armstrong and set it up.


25

Well, the big new swimming pool won’t be used for team sports, so…


9

The city should be sending the message “the party’s over.” They need to be firm and have enough enforcement personnel to end this dangerous invasion of a mob of thousands of drunken students–many of whom are minors–into a residential neighborhood. The double fines for this longer period have been in effect since January of 2024 and it wasn’t a deterrent at last year’s event since there were 6,000-7,000 partiers in the neighborhood wreaking havoc. More should be done by the city. There should be barricades blocking off the streets where this street party occurs, and the city should have enacted a curfew. Miami Beach found those two efforts very effective and had a strong campaign message on social media and in media in areas all over the state saying, “the party’s over,” which worked. Cal Poly’s on-campus party seems to encourage partying and allows students to invite guests to their concert and there are some nasty comments on social media about how this event has been rolled out. The guests were allowed to have tickets to the event but aren’t allowed to stay on campus since there was damage to the dorms last year. So these guests that are being invited here will be staying in city neighborhoods with other students. How is this going to stop the neighborhood street party problem? They’ll have TWO parties to attend now. Hold onto your hats–it’s going to be another disaster for the residents in the neighborhoods where this event has been growing each year.


20

I would think if President Armstrong announced that expulsion is a possible consequence that might actually have a impact, higher fines will do nothing.


31