ST. FRATTY’S DAY
About
Thank you for visiting. This website covers this annual illegal event in our neighborhood, the Alta Vista neighborhood. This neighborhood of San Luis Obispo, California, borders California State Polytechnic University, Cal Poly, in the northern part of the City. The event is dedicated to drinking and illegally shutting down the streets and an intersection in the neighborhood. This event is one among other negative impacts on our neighborhood described on another website.
Statements of fact are based on publicly available, published documentation and media. Other media or information published is personal media which we captured and posted to this website. It’s a memoir. Any opinions expressed may differ from yours. Nevertheless, they are just that, opinions, sometimes written in blog format, but besides that, they are based on our lived experiences in the neighborhood. The web links and videos provided give you a sense of this event.
History
St. Fratty’s Day originated in 2009 at an illegal fraternity called “The Pink House” at 348 Hathway Avenue in the Alta Vista neighborhood. The fraternity guys started the event to circumvent St. Patrick’s Day’s safety enhancement zone (double fines).
The event is a dangerous, unlawful assembly not sanctioned or permitted by the City. Cal Poly’s fraternities can register parties with Cal Poly Greek Life however, for the event in our neighborhood. Cal Poly also passes out “Party Boxes” to registered parties in our neighborhood and provides pre-party items to the dorms on campus according to a flyer prepared by the City and Cal Poly. They also serve free breakfast burritos on campus to their students beginning at 5 a.m., before the students head down to the neighborhood early that morning.
St. Fratty’s Day is held in March, on the Saturday before winter finals at Cal Poly, and before the college students leave town for spring break. College students set their alarms for 3:17 a.m. as an homage to St. Patrick’s Day, which is on 3/17. Fireworks wake the neighborhood at around 4 a.m. and people take over the streets and rooftops and party for hours until mid-morning. Things calm down for the afternoon, and then parties at the fraternity houses, including satellite houses, start up again that night.
Roof Collapse
On St. Fratty’s Day 2015, a roof collapsed under the excessive weight of too many partying people. The incident was declared a mass-casualty event by the first arriving Fire Department personnel and by some miracle, there were no fatalities. A local ER doctor at Sierra Vista Hospital wrote to City Council with his concerns. The event was featured on major news outlets throughout the United States, as well as in international news, and was an embarrassment for Cal Poly. President Jeffrey Armstrong issued a statement of disappointment in those who participated. He also went to a San Luis Obispo City Council meeting afterward and pledged cooperation with the community.
Cal Poly hired a firm to investigate and compile a report about the incident. The report said St. Fratty’s Day originated six years earlier, in 2009 at “the Pink House” at 348 Hathway Avenue. The house was a documented fraternity at Cal Poly and known by SLOPD. According to Cal Poly’s report, other parties in nearby houses also contributed to the event. Though the City knew illegal fraternities, including 348 Hathway, were operating illegally in a residential neighborhood, no action was taken by the City to shut them down. 348 Hathway is still the main Chapter house for a fraternity.
Cal Poly’s report found no fraternity was responsible for the event and blamed the crowd size on social media. The Dean of Students, Jean DeCosta, said the day’s origin, dates back several years and is Greek-associated, but the 2015 roof-collapse event “was organized by a variety of students and fueled by social media.” After 2015, St. Frattys Day was tamped down until it re-emerged in 2022.
Brewfing
“Brewfing” is a term coined by San Luis Obispo students to describe the act of sitting on top of a roof while drinking beer, according to this article in People .
Cal Poly’s incident report after the roof collapse in 2015 says:
- “Many students participated in the activity known as Brewfing (drinking on a roof). This is a recent social phenomenon that Cal Poly students engage in as part of the party culture.“
- “Sitting, standing on, and hanging out on roofs (Brewfing) has been a frequent occurrence for the last few years. Very few students realized that there was any danger because it is such a common practice.“
Due to this dangerous custom, then-Mayor Jan Marx proposed an ordinance that would prohibit people from being on a roof unless they were doing maintenance work. She was not successful in gaining support from the majority of her fellow Council members. The majority viewed the activity as harmless, and the proposal to make it illegal failed.
Brewfing has continued to be a risky tradition in San Luis Obispo and we’ve seen drunk guys at a nearby fraternity jump off of their roof onto a mattress on the ground. We’ve also seen over-loaded rooftops at multiple fraternity parties throughout our neighborhood.
St. Frattys Day 2022
On 3/12/2022, our neighborhood was woken at 4 a.m. by fireworks exploding near our home. By 4:30 a.m. there was blaring music coming from multiple houses nearby. My wife flagged down a police officer driving by and pointed out a very loud party at 348 Hathway but he told her that he was still looking for fireworks and could not respond to the party. She called SLOPD to report it, but no officers responded and her call did not show up on the SLOPD dispatch log. SLOPD officers started to cite parties early but were overwhelmed and could not respond to all the parties or the sheer volume of people who had taken over the intersection at Bond and Hathway. The large party at 348 Hathway was not cited.
Officers parked their vehicles on Hathway and Fredericks and appeared stunned as they looked at the crowd. One officer kept apologizing and said that they did not know what to do and had called their sergeant down to the location. The illegal street party lasted for several hours and SLOPD officers stood around the perimeter of the crowd and watched until the street party fizzled out and the students left. Many partygoers went to the illegal fraternity houses in the neighborhood to continue their parties. The illegal fraternities in the neighborhood hired porta-potties in their yards and DJs blasted music after the illegal street takeover ended. A constant stream of sirens was heard as fire trucks responded to calls for intoxicated people throughout our neighborhood.
The SLOPD dispatch log shows activity that morning and some calls that went unanswered for hours as the officers were occupied with the crowd of 2,000 people, drinking, climbing utility poles, standing on roofs, and causing mayhem in the Alta Vista neighborhood. San Luis Obispo hired a new Police Chief in mid-2021 and this was his first experience with St. Fratty’s Day.
St. Fratty’s Day 2023
Depending on the calendar, St. Fratty’s Day may fall on the same weekend as St. Patrick’s Day. This was the case in 2023. Upon realizing this ‘perfect storm’ scenario, concerned residents of San Luis Obispo went to the SLO City Council meeting on 2/21/2023. They appealed to the Council members to prevent St. Fratty’s Day, or at least impose a “Safety Enhancement Zone”, which means fines for citations are doubled for the duration of the safety enhancement zone period. The City Council members declined the residents’ pleas and did not adopt a Safety Enhancement Zone for St. Fratty’s Day in 2023. One council member remarked that they thought that the reason the 2022 St. Fratty’s Day crowd had increased in size was because “they had just come out of Covid.”
On 3/18/2023, 3,000 – 4,000 people converged into the neighborhood at 4:00 a.m. for St. Frattys Day. SLOPD had extra staff but could not handle the volume of people who overtook the streets, sidewalks, and rooftops. Dozens of people climbed telephone poles, sometimes five people at a time, and one person did pull-ups on a utility wire. This time, there was no intervention from law enforcement. They did not enter the crowd and stood on the sidelines watching the illegal activity on rooftops and people climbing telephone poles.
EMS was unable to navigate the crowd to reach people needing emergency aid. One resident on Hathway was guarding his home as people came onto his property and was confronted by trespassing college-aged guys who wanted to fight him. He called 9-1-1 and the SLOPD dispatcher told him officers were unable to respond to his call because they were busy with other calls. Other residents expressed fear and felt trapped in their homes. SLOPD leadership did not request mutual aid from the SLO County Sheriff’s Department for the event and the illegal and dangerous activity was allowed to continue for hours.
Students openly carried and drank BORGS (Black Out Rage Gallons) which is a homemade mixture of water, vodka (or other hard alcohol), a caffeinated flavor enhancer, powdered electrolytes like Liquid IV, and food coloring. BORGs have been linked to alcohol poisoning and hospitalizations at other college events across the United States. Once the party fizzled out after watching the sunrise, drinking and dancing on roofs, watching people climb utility poles or doing pull-ups on electrical or communications wires, empty BORGS were everywhere on the ground in the neighborhood, having served their purpose.
Afterward, during a discussion of the upcoming St. Fratty’s Day 2024 at an SCLC (Student Community Liaison Committee) meeting on 11/16/2023, the mayor told Cal Poly members, that she did not implement the Safety Enhancement Zone earlier in 2023 (when several SLO residents went to the City Council to ask that the City do so) because the college students promised they would change their behavior and she trusted them. But, she said that things had gotten worse so she had no alternative at that point than to impose a Safety Enhancement Zone in 2024. She had relied on the students’ promises that they would do better but the crowd doubled from 2,000 on St. Fratty’s Day 2022 to 4,000 on St. Fratty’s Day 2023.
Promises
St. Fratty’s Day 2024
During a City Council meeting on 1/9/2024, Mayor Stewart asked SLOPD Chief Scott if he would be asking other agencies for mutual aid for St Fratty’s Day on 3/16/2024.
The Police Chief said he would not ask for help from other law enforcement agencies because he was not comfortable with them coming into San Luis Obispo because they “are not accustomed to interactions with our community so we take that very, very seriously. And so when we bring in other agencies to assist, we just can’t predict those outcomes and that’s not a position the department is comfortable with.” – see City Council Meeting on the YouTube video at 2:23:45
SLOPD has a relatively small police force.
During the same meeting, Police Chief Scott admits that for the past two years during St. Fratty’s Day, ambulances were unable to get medical aid to people who needed it in a timely manner because the streets were completely blocked by thousands of people:
“We’ve seen this each year in response to St. Fratty’s Day, where we’ve had to go into an area that was overrun by people in the street to get an emergency apparatus or to get first responders in to render medical aid. And that has happened each year that I’ve been present, I’ve witnessed that. It’s a very, very dangerous operation to do that because typically we’ll have to assemble a group of police officers to escort our EMS first responders into the location to get first aid. That takes time and a lot of planning, believe it or not, to get into the crowd and that’s a dangerous place for any of the first responders to be. The problem is time, has a big effect on how successful we are at rendering first aid and so all of these steps take significant time.” – see City Council Meeting on the YouTube video above at 2:22:27
Ultimately, mutual aid for 2024 was brought in from the California State University system (CRU Team) and California Men’s Colony but not from the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff and/or CHP. As with the previous two years, there was not nearly enough law enforcement to handle the number of people overtaking the neighborhood.
Despite the Safety Enhancement Zone, an unbelievable crowd of 7,000 people converged on the neighborhood on 3/16/2024 for St. Fratty’s Day. Law enforcement stood around the perimeter. There was gridlock within the mass of thousands of people in the streets, and it was impossible for EMS to reach someone if there was an emergency. People climbed onto rooftops, destroyed fences, and smashed windshields on parked vehicles. Some residents put caution tape around their homes and barricaded themselves inside. An estimated 200 college-aged people climbed onto a roof on Bond Street and one of them accessed an electrical line from the conduit on the rooftop that led to the utility pole, then did pullups while hanging onto the electrical wire, lost his grip, and fell to the ground. Video of the incident was posted on social media from multiple angles. There was no law enforcement in sight during any of the video footage from any angle. The guy wasn’t identified by SLOPD until after the event when the SLOPD Chief announced they’d learned who he was and cited him.
SLOPD closed off streets to vehicular traffic at 6 a.m. but kept the streets open for the parades of students to use as pathways as they converged into the neighborhood, walking down the middle of the neighborhood streets to the massive party on Hathway and Bond.
When the illegal gathering in the streets fizzled out hours after it started, parties continued at the illegal fraternity houses in the residential neighborhood with blaring music including DJs and live bands. Even though SLOPD opened the streets to vehicles again, it was impossible to drive on many streets because of the parades of drunk students standing and walking down the middle of the streets.
We continued to hear sirens throughout the morning and tuned into Pulse Point, where a dispatcher reported an unconscious male on a 2-story rooftop at 146 Stenner, which is known to hold events for Kappa Sigma. Shortly after, there was another call for an unconscious male on a rooftop at 1861 Hope Street, which is an illegal fraternity house for Kappa Sigma in the Monterey Heights single-family residential neighborhood. Later, a photo of the male was posted online showing a splayed-out body with bent legs lying near the edge of the roof at 1861 Hope Street while another male sits unfazed in a chair, looking at his cell phone on the other side of the roof.
SLOPD’s Debrief After St. Fratty’s Day 2024
During a debrief of the St. Frattys event at an SCLC meeting on 4/18/2024, SLOPD Chief Rick Scott admitted that St. Frattys was an “unlawful assembly” but said:
- He would not give orders to disperse because officers would need to follow up on orders and he would not do that.
- SLOPD’s approach is the “least harm” and “restorative” with the student community.
- Preventing the St. Frattys Day event in the future is not something law enforcement can do without a show of force, which is not in line with SLOPD’s policies.
- Prevention “is really going to have to be a student-led or student partnership type Board” that steers stopping the illegal neighborhood takeover in the future.
Is the City’s plan really to rely on the college students to stop St. Fratty’s Day?
In 2022, the college students promised the Mayor that they would make changes in 2023, and the City Council did not change ordinances for a Safety Enhancement Zone. Then, crowds doubled to 4,000 people in 2023. In 2024, despite the Safety Enhancement Zone and extensive messaging before the event, this unlawful assembly grew to 7,000 people. Relying on students or Cal Poly to stop the event within the City doesn’t seem like a viable plan.
Impending Doom?
While scrolling on social media one day, a video popped up. My wife recognized our neighborhood, so she shared it with me. The person who made the TikTok video was a contractor from the Pacific Northwest. So why did this contractor in the Pacific Northwest make the video? It was a “PSA” (Public Service Announcement). A warning. He made the video because alarm bells were going off in his head, and he couldn’t believe the number of people on the roof during St. Fratty’s Day 2024. No roof with a pitch like that is supposed to carry that much weight. As mentioned earlier, a roof collapsed on St. Fratty’s Day in 2015 due to the excess weight of people on the roof. Are we destined for a 2015 repeat? Based on the crowd size trend: 2,000 in 2022, increasing to 4,000 in 2023, and increasing to 7,000 in 2024, the momentum and the exposure of the annual St. Fratty’s Day event on social media, it doesn’t look good. Cal Poly’s report after the roof collapse in 2015 blamed the event on social media.
Alcohol and large unruly gatherings are not a good combination. St. Fratty’s Day is an extremely high-risk situation. Who bears the the liability? And how did we, as a neighborhood, get here?
I would say it’s because of the mixed messaging about Cal Poly’s activity and the City’s response to the party activities in the neighborhood, particularly at illegal fraternity houses. Are these activities illegal, or are they illegal-ish?
Definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
The City and Cal Poly start communicating about St. Fratty’s Day in the fall every year and meet regularly. Ideas are shared and information exchanged. In their collaboration, they talk about Cal Poly’s midnight breakfasts before St. Fratty’s Day and “Party Box” distribution by Cal Poly with Liquid IV, granola bars, snacks, water, Irish-themed tattoos, and condoms. Complimentary breakfast burritos are given out on the traditional heavy party day with safety messaging reminding people to be more mindful of their alcohol consumption as they make their way off campus to party in the Alta Vista neighborhood. The students living on campus are mostly under 21 years old.
Boiling Frog
The boiling frog syndrome can be applied to St. Fratty’s Day. This metaphor reminds us that failure to act on an increasing, incremental problem will ultimately end in catastrophe. Similarly, if we’re unaware of problems that slowly develop, we may never recognize a looming catastrophe until it’s too late.
The City has not taken measures to stop St. Fratty’s Day and is aware of the high-risk and illegal nature of the event. SLOPD has been ill-equipped to handle the event since 2022. The City has previously stopped other problematic events, like Mardi Gras, when it evolved from a downtown parade to a Cal Poly drunk-fest in the neighborhoods. The City surely knows that St Fratty’s Day is a ticking time bomb that will ultimately result in grave injury or death.