Another Saturday Night

If you’re currently a freshman, or a prospective incoming student, I feel bad for you, I really do. With the new policy of ticketing loud parties immediately, instead of first giving a warning, the greater Loyola Marymount party scene is going to die, and possibly a quick death at that. That means, because of the year-round equivalent of Ebenezer Scrooge and his inability to appreciate the fact that others have a better thing to do with their Friday nights than throw obstacles into the lives of the others, an important part of the college experience is going to be excised out of the average student’s life. Sure, not all college students party. In fact, even many of the ones that do are not part of the scene that causes a bit of a ruckus. Or, according to the LAPD as of a couple weeks ago, a hellish maelstrom of thumping music, drunken screaming and white crowd noise worthy of a $1200 ticket. If I blow through a stop sign or a red light, I pay a lesser ticket than what was given to homeowners last night that happened to entertain a large crowd.

The thing about rowdy, large parties is that, for most undergrads, it’s their only opportunity for the rest of their lives to be in that kind of atmosphere, to blow off steam and stress with dozens of their peers, to experience a kind of energy that will never be found again in their lives after graduation. It’s an experience that needs to be had to find a proper balance between the pressures of schoolwork and the looming real world, to enjoy the last minor shreds of irresponsibility, to know it so that it can be grown out of.

For those miserable homeowners that feel the need to call in the cops on a gathering of students, and I can say that the ticketed party I was at last night was neither particularly boisterous nor crowded, they are forgetting the joys of a time period when you could feel that you were amongst 50 of your friends, when you could forget your finals week by embracing your peers, when it’s not about the life outside the party but the one where you can lift up a beer and savor the life inside. You see, freshmen, incoming students, you’re not going to have that within safe walking distance of your college, free from threat, free to enjoy yourselves. You may, if you look for it, find it a dangerous car ride away, in unknown territory, among many that you don’t know, and there’ll be a house in Westchester where someone will go to sleep without a sound outside then or even maybe in the morning, when due to circumstances you don’t make it home.

- Leonid Leonov