A few weeks ago, on Saturday Oct. 21, students threw a dance party in the largest of the vacant, concrete-walled rooms in the decommissioned List Art Building. The room’s walls were covered in black-light paint, invisible until exposed to UV rays and unnoticeable under the normal fluorescent lights of the room. Putting aside the ironically pleasing and clever trick of creating a room that becomes decorated only under the proper conditions, we cannot give credit for this feature to those who planned this event.
Rather, there is a precedent of throwing parties in that particular room that goes back a number of years. The space has been unused since the Kennedy Center opened its doors in 2014 and took over as the Physical Art hub on campus. As with the previous party to take place in List, there was music, dancing, and no serving of alcohol. And, completely justifiably, in just over an hour, the gathering was broken up by Campus Safety and its attendees dispersed.
The actions that took place at this gathering and those that preceded it quite clearly broke a number college policies and rules. As we all know, parties are thrown every year on this campus that break policy in spaces that are not properly supervised or sanctioned. We can all agree that breaking the rules is not the safest way to host an event.
In looking through the Nov. 6 Student Assembly minutes, I quickly concluded that neither the student body or the Student Assembly should have to hold itself more accountable or police itself to cut down on future situations such as this most recent List party.
To be clear, this type of self-policing is not the job or jurisdiction of Student Assembly. In fact, we already have a system in place for the enforcement and punishment of students who break college policy, the commonly understood “points” system applied in conjunction with Campus Safety. The individuals responsible for this party, whoever they are, will most likely have to face this system in some way or another.
Illicit parties are nothing new on this campus. In the past, individuals who broke the rules have been held responsible by the system we have in place for situations exactly like this. Student Assembly, and students in general, should not feel compelled to do anything more than condemn these illicit events.
And what would be the goal of further whistleblowing from within the student body against fun, safe, and creative events like this? Ultimately, it will serve to drive even more students downtown to unofficial and unsafe fraternity and sorority parties or bars where they will illegally enter with fake IDs and break the law. Students without a disposable income may not be able to afford nights out at bars downtown or the prohibitive cost of joining a Greek organization.
With coordination and cooperation with Residential Life, the solutions to our problems can be found right here on campus with expanded social spaces and guidelines to keep them safe. If anything, even though it broke policy, the alumni weekend List party was safer and closer to our campus’ social life problem than anything found down the Hill. Either way, we should trust the systems in place to deal with such events rather than asking students to do more than they can or should.
