It’s called St. Fratty’s Day.
It’s St. Fratty’s Day! That’s what people call the event. You can Google it or use the hashtag #StFrattys and the infamous Cal Poly drunk fest/neighborhood takeover will pop up.
Difficulty
However, Cal Poly administration and certain City officials have difficulty saying it. It seems it is no longer politically correct to call the event by its recognized name. Administrators and leadership call it several names including “St. Patrick’s Day pre-party”, “the street party”, or “St. Pat’s”.
But it is a stand-alone event, separate from St. Patrick’s Day. It is not St. Patrick’s Day, which is celebrated annually on March 17th. The date of St. Fratty’s Day varies yearly and is based on Cal Poly’s academic calendar. It historically happens on the weekend before winter finals. It’s a made-up event that originated at a Cal Poly fraternity located in a neighborhood near campus to avoid the fines associated with St. Patrick’s Day, hence the name St. Fratty’s.
Distancing
At the November meeting of the Student Community Liason Committee (SCLC), Jason Mockford, Senior Director of Leadership & Service at Cal Poly, mentioned that they don’t say “St. Fratty’s” and clarified that the fraternity that started St. Fratty’s Day, is no longer affiliated with Cal Poly and fraternities are not involved with the event. Well, I disagree. The particular fraternity that started St. Fratty’s in 2009 may no longer be affiliated with Cal Poly, however, Cal Poly’s fraternities have continued to celebrate and amplify the event.
Sororities go to the fraternities to pre-game before dawn. Pre-gaming involves downing a large amount of alcohol to get intoxicated before heading to the main event, the neighborhood takeover at Hathway and Bond Street.
In 2024, noise complaints to SLOPD began just after 3 a.m. and several documented fraternity houses in the neighborhood were issued noise citations before 4 a.m. A huge fraternity party was broken up by SLOPD later that morning and a police report was filed because it was so disruptive.
Social Media
There is tons of stuff on social media about St. Fratty’s Day. An infamous “SLO-lebrirty” Uber driver named Big Larry travels up to San Luis Obispo to drive during certain events like St. Fratty’s Day and works a 14-hour day, shuttling people back and forth between the numerous fraternity parties starting early in the morning around 3:30 am that wakes the neighborhood. Big Larry posted a video on Instagram of his first customers at 3:30 a.m. on St. Fratty’s. A young woman asks her fellow passengers, “Are we going to Beta?” at 00:00:36 seconds into the video. “Beta” is a shortened version of Beta Theta Pi, with a fraternity house on Foothill and a satellite fraternity house on Fredericks.
I don’t know when calling the neighborhood takeover St. Fratty’s day became a slur because even Cal Poly mentioned St Fratty’s in an After-Incident Report published after a roof collapsed during the event in 2015. Refusing to call all it by its proper name and using any other name is confusing.