After the St. Patrick's Day weekend dust has settled both Cal Poly students and the San Luis Obispo Police Department have had time to reflect and evaluate the madness that ensued all day Saturday.
For juniors Samantha Avalos and Ava Whitman, instead of partaking in the fun, they were left to defend their home from vandalism as people trespassed on the corner of Bond and Hathaway Street.
“It really hurt my trust with the community," Avalos said. "I asked them to stop doing this and they were extremely disrespectful.”
“I know they need to create a better solution that's probably going to decrease the number of people that are coming in and out of this vicinity,” Whitman added.
On Tuesday night in the weekly city council meeting, San Luis Obispo Police Chief Rick Scott agreed that a change was indeed necessary.
“I think our strategy looking forward shall not be on containment, it shall be on prevention," Scott stated. "I think this is a great opportunity for partnership because that needs to start with the people that attend this event.”
For the students, they believe social media to be a main reason people came out in droves with viral videos of people swinging from telephone lines and gathering on rooftops.
“It's just bringing more and more people over when we don't need more people,” Avalos explained.
The police department issued multiple citations ranging from $700 to 1,000 dollars in the safety enhancement zones, finding alternate solutions through Cal Poly administration, student groups and outside departments is key moving forward.
“We will reach out to other departments that have experienced similar events and maybe we can learn from them and what works for their communities,” Lieutenant Jason Dickel explained.
The majority of the citations were from Saturday while the actual St. Patrick’s Day citations on Sunday were down considerably according to Lt. Dickel.
“The main focus heading into the weekend was safety," Dickel said.
However, students, including Avalos, don’t want a repeat of this year’s St. Patrick’s Day.
“There's been enough St. Fratty’s Days that they know what to expect and it seems that they're just trying the same things over and over again and it just keeps getting worse.”
The police department did say they were happy and grateful that nobody was seriously harmed and they’ll look to communicate with Cal Poly in the future to come up with preventative measures to insure safer gatherings.
