The cancer is spreading; it is slowly growing into a malignant
tumor that threatens to kill any sort of fun around our fine
university. Three years ago things were different ““ my first
Black Sunday was incredible.
I met so many people, got to experience my first fraternity
party, and started to feel welcome at college. I can’t
imagine how much my college experience would have been diminished
without it. Honestly, it gave me pride in our university to see so
many cool people partying together in relative peace. It made me
feel like a real college student, and after partying that hard I
was ready to relax for a while. I even went to class with little
complaint!
Unfortunately, things have changed. Now 2004 is beginning to
look more and more like 1984. Last year I witnessed helicopters
ripping through the skies, waking up whole neighborhoods by
shouting, “You must cease to party.” More and more
police officers are knocking on my door, and many similar doors, to
remind us that freedom of speech ends at about 1 a.m.
The prohibition of frat parties on Black Sunday is a huge step
in this same bleak direction. Our infamous beginning of Zero Week
““ where fraternities and their respective parties fill the
streets ““ was a UCLA tradition known all over Southern
California.
Yes, it may be somewhat dangerous, and there may be some
liability, but college students are going to get drunk no matter
what anyone says. These days, Black Sunday consists of a bunch of
drunk people scouring the streets of Westwood desperately looking
for something to do.
Having hordes of angry drunk people walk the streets seems more
dangerous than confining them to the fraternities and other small
apartments with music, giving them a chance to meet fellow students
and maybe even make friends or dance around a bit. This year, to
make up for the lack of parties, UCLA promised that Pennywise would
come play, but that was later dropped.
More than just being a party, Black Sunday was yet another UCLA
tradition to be torn down. We used to have a rather cool Mardi Gras
festival, until the mid-90s when it was canceled. Homecoming also
used to be a huge event, but it has dwindled over the years. We as
students have a responsibility to uphold the traditions of our fine
university, despite what any authority says.
The ironic part of this whole thing is that UCLA students are
relatively tame partiers, and would mostly be done by 2 a.m. at the
latest. I have thrown many parties at both my fraternity and my
apartment, and I have discovered that telling people they cannot
party just leads to a lot of fights. These fights are then used as
evidence that parties are dangerous, and events like Black Sunday
can then be canceled.
Other colleges around the country have all kinds of
campus-sponsored drinking parties, but since we are a public
institution this cannot happen. So a simple solution seems apparent
to me ““ let the kids figure it out.
If we want to party off-campus, we should be able to do so
freely ““ at least for one night a year. Black Sunday was the
sugar that made the medicine go down well, and without it many
dread the start of school.
In addition, all the new students looking for some kind of fun
tradition can now look forward to tedious nights wishing with all
their hearts that they had chosen UC Santa Barbara. Rather than
meeting new friends and being exposed to the fun of fraternity
life, students that wish to party are instead greeted with fines,
riot gear and maybe even cozy jail cells.
As the Beastie Boys so wisely put it, we all must fight for our
right to party.
Johnson is a fourth-year ecology and evolutionary biology
student.