Be careful, St. Frattiers: This party could come with your worst hangover ever | Opinion

Cal Poly’s annual St. Fratty’s Day bacchanal is Saturday, but this year feels different — as if the entire community has lost its collective patience.

The university, with a heavy assist from the city of San Luis Obispo, has announced there will be zero tolerance for shenanigans. Security will be strengthened. Fines will be assessed. And violators will be arrested.

Even the District Attorney’s Office has gotten involved. St. Fratty’s Day partiers who are arrested will not be eligible for the county’s misdemeanor diversion program, which means they will face criminal charges.

That won’t look good when a future employer runs a background check.

“The street parties that have occurred over the last several years will not be allowed,” District Attorney Dan Dow said in a prepared statement.

It may sound harsh, but if the community sincerely wants to bring the situation under control, change needs to happen, and Cal Poly and the city are right to take this stand now.

Sure, students are going to party, and admonishing them to be responsible is not going to change that.

But it’s time to bring it down a notch or two or 10, because taking over an entire neighborhood and filling it with drunken revelry — while expecting residents to tolerate it and clean up the mess — is not OK.

Neither is vandalizing dorms, smashing windows, heaving on some stranger’s front lawn or causing a roof to collapse under the weight of too many bodies.

And that chaotic rollout of Cal Poly’s first — and possibly last — “alternative” event?

That is not an excuse to ignore the warnings.

Yes, despite its best intentions, Cal Poly didn’t exactly handle the process flawlessly.

It organized an early morning, outdoor music festival aimed at luring students away from the streets — sort of like a Pied Piper — but limited it to less than 25% of the student body. And practically speaking, the actual share of Cal Poly students who get to attend could be well less than that.

If the entertainment were mediocre — or worse — that might not have been a problem.

But whoever was in charge of booking the acts did an excellent job, because the 5,000 available tickets were snapped up within three minutes. That naturally led to complaints from disgruntled students who had little advance warning and were not lucky enough to score tickets, so it’s not surprising Cal Poly is dealing with the backlash.

While we have sympathy for the organizers — this is a first-time event, after all — there are legitimate concerns about the way the ticketing was handled.

For one, those who did manage to get a ticket were allowed to snag a second one for a guest — and that guest did not have to be registered at Cal Poly, which meant fewer tickets available for actual students.

Allowing non-students also seems to contradict Cal Poly’s effort to keep visitors away from campus; no overnight guests are being allowed in the dorms between March 13 and 18. They can’t even park on campus overnight.

The university is inviting students who were unable to get a ticket to show up anyway and wait in a standby line — even though they may not be able to get in.

But legit ticketholders who show up after 6 a.m. — when people in the standby line may start entering — could be left out if the venue is too full at that point.

It’s not hard to foresee potential problems developing.

Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong responded to the pushback in an op-ed, explaining that the number of attendees “must be manageable and approved by the fire marshal.”

“Furthermore,” he wrote, “the festival was never intended to accommodate all, or even a majority, of Cal Poly’s students for the simple fact that most students don’t take part in unruly celebrations.”

But isn’t the event meant to serve as an alternative to an “unruly celebration,” in which case, wouldn’t it attract a wide range of students? Or was Cal Poly hoping only rowdy students would be interested in attending?

Of course students felt let down. They were offered a carrot, only to have it pulled away.

“This was a great opportunity to shift St. Fratty’s away from a crowded, chaotic block party into a contained (and still fun!) concert,” Mustang News Opinion Editor Landon Block wrote in an op-ed. “Unfortunately, it’s looking like Cal Poly blew their golden opportunity.”

We hope that’s not the case.

Despite flaws in the execution of the plan, it does make sense to confine the partying to campus, to whatever degree possible.

Because for better or worse, St. Fratty’s Day has become Cal Poly’s signature party event — a successor to Poly Royal, which was shut down, and Mardis Gras, which was also shut down.

St. Fratty’s Day is next on the hit list. Unless it morphs into a reasonably sane celebration all sides can live with, the zero tolerance policy will be in effect not just this year, but every year.

And that policy won’t get more forgiving. If anything, out-of-control revelers could provoke a more severe response, and that’s the last thing anyone wants to see.

So the time to start turning the tide now.

If you plan to party on St. Fratty’s Day, the message is clear:

Do not blow it.