For Cal Poly students, St. Patrick's Day weekend was marred by destruction to property both on and off campus from Saturday's day-long festivities.
The aftermath of reportedly 6,000-7,000 partygoers from sun up to sun down on Saturday left behind broken glass, empty cans, and, of course, damage around the neighborhood. For one house, right on the corner of Hathaway and Bond streets, it was enough for them to lose power.
“That was just insane to deal with," Cal Poly student Jordan Douglas said who lived at the house that was the epicenter of the block party. "We didn't even make it out onto the street at all. We never got to leave our house. “
That wasn’t the end of it, though. Douglas and her housemates tried to remove people from their yard and their roof.
“We had moved these trashcans also to block people getting into the side yard and they moved them to jump onto the roof and ripped our gutter off,“ Douglas said.
Other houses had their fences broken, some even had their gutters ripped off and water access broken until later this week. But it didn’t stop there.
Damage made its way on campus to the Muir Hall freshman dorm, which, resident Victor Nicolacakis told KSBY, had random people he didn’t know in it as early as 3:30 a.m. Saturday morning.
“All of a sudden in an instant, the hallway is filled with a ton of people where the majority of them didn't go to Cal Poly and I know they were not residents of Muir Hall,” Nicolacakis explained.
In a statement from Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong, he said:
“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, as well as property off campus.”
“I know talking to my neighbors and my peers that also live there, it was none of us and it was people coming in doing stupid stuff and getting out of there with no consequences and just leaving us to pick up the pieces,” Nicolacakis added.
The students were able to re-enter their dorms Saturday night but the damage was already done. The university provided an emailed statement in response to a request for comment:
“The university is taking this weekend's activities very seriously, is assessing the situation and will hold students who participated in illegal activity or activity that violates our student conduct policies accountable.”
The San Luis Obispo Police Department does not have official data as they are still going through arrest reports and citations but were able to report no serious injuries or fatalities over the weekend due to St. Patrick's Day activities.
