St. Fratty’s Day & Halloweekend
St. Fratty’s Day
The idea of St. Fratty’s Day originated at an illegal fraternity at 348 Hathway Avenue, then called “the Pink House.” and is covered in greater detail on the website stfrattys.com.
This event held in March is dedicated to drinking and illegally shutting down the streets and an intersection in the Alta Vista neighborhood. It begins before dawn, at 3:17 a.m. on the Saturday before Cal Poly’s winter finals. 2,000 people attended in 2022, 4,000 in 2023, and an estimated 7,000 in 2024.
Cal Poly’s fraternities can register parties with Cal Poly Greek Life for the event at illegal fraternities, primarily in the Alta Vista and Monterey Heights neighborhoods.
Halloweekend
Fraternities, including illegal fraternity houses in our neighborhood, have also caused the recent evolution of Halloweekend, when thousands of people overtake our neighborhood on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights nearest to October 31st. The Halloweekend event increased exponentially in 2023. It was a chaotic scene and SLOPD seemed overwhelmed with the sheer number of parties and people during Halloweekend. The illegal fraternities in our neighborhood host costume parties with blaring music each night. Equally disruptive are the loud parades of people walking from one fraternity party to the next, screaming to each other across the road or down the block. Cal Poly students post about the event on social media.
During the 3-night Halloweekend event, SLOPD dispatches college-student officers in the Student Neighborhood Assistance Program (SNAP), to respond to the majority of the huge parties at illegal fraternities and other houses. According to SLOPD’s dispatch log, during Halloweekend, 10/26 – 10/29/2023, there were 120 calls to SLOPD for noisy parties. SNAP issued 30 zero-fine Disturbance Advisement Cards (DACs) and 75 calls were cleared as Negative Violations (NV), No Report, or Unable to Locate (UTL). Of the 120 calls, SLOPD wrote 15 citations. There were thousands of people in the neighborhood, openly drinking alcohol, and ongoing parties were blaring throughout the three nights until early in the morning.
At around midnight on Friday night, my wife sent an email to the City Council members, inviting them to visit the following night, Saturday 10/28 at 10 p.m. so they could see for themselves how horrific the situation had become.
None of the City Council members showed up. One responded that she was “tracking the increase in party registrations for the weekend and will request an update next week.”
None of the Council Members live in areas impacted by illegal fraternity houses or events like St. Fratty’s Day or Halloweekend that have been allowed to evolve since 2022. You cannot begin to understand the negative impact of no sleep and constant screaming and noise unless you experience it first-hand.
The City Council adopted a Safety Enhancement Zone for the weekends near Halloween starting in 2024. There is no policy change related to sending SNAP officers, who presumably will continue to respond to large fraternity parties at illegal fraternity houses in our neighborhood and likely clear them as “negative violation” or “no report”. The City’s noise ordinance during Halloweekend isn’t consistently followed, exacerbating the problem and sending the message that the large, loud parties, mostly at illegal fraternity houses, are acceptable.
In 2024, Halloweekend spanned two weekends: the weekend before Halloween and the weekend after Halloween. There were about 50 noise complaints to SLOPD on the first weekend and 65 noise complaints on the second weekend, not including a call deemed a “traffic hazard” with SLOPD dispatch notes saying there were hundreds of intoxicated people blocking the street. It was in front of a huge fraternity party at 299 Albert Drive and the party was not cited.
The property owner at 299 Albert Drive previously received a Notice of Violation from the city for illegal fraternity operations at the address, but the fraternity (Alpha Sigma Phi) continues to operate as a fraternity without consequences.