U. Police active despite Fling's low crime rate

As Penn students went about the task of cleaning up after a weekend of non-stop partying yesterday, University Police spent Sunday taking the toll of what they say was one of the least disruptive Spring Fling weekends in recent history. Over the course of the three-day event, six students received disorderly conduct citations and six were sent to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania with alcohol-related illnesses. The most serious incidents of the weekend took place early Friday and Saturday mornings when police broke up parties on the 3900 block of Baltimore Avenue and at the Zeta Psi fraternity house. "Crime-wise, we did very well," University Police Chief Maureen Rush said. "Ninety-nine percent of the students had a great time and understood what it takes to stay within the limits of the law." Rush added that the majority of the disorderly conduct citations were distributed early Friday morning, after University Police officers broke up a string of parties on the 3900 block of Baltimore Avenue at around 12:30 a.m. "[The partygoers] were spilling out into the highway and it was starting to become a large block party on Baltimore," she said. "With the volume of people, it was becoming very dangerous and there were some serious fire and crowd control issues." According to several students who were present at the time, University Police began by asking students to vacate the residences, then forced them to move eastward on Baltimore Avenue. "As far as I know, at first they just told people to vacate the houses," Engineering junior and Baltimore Avenue resident Ben Williams said. "They weren't forceful at first. Then as more time passed, they just started throwing people out of houses." "I think it was an awfully large reaction to a non-existent problem," he said. Rush said the students who received disorderly conduct citations did so for failure to cooperate with University Police officers trying to control the crowds. "The issue on the 3900 block of Baltimore is that it's almost all student housing, and when every house is having a party, it's total chaos," she said. "The officers found that [at 12:30 a.m.] it was to the point where it could have escalated into a dangerous situation for everyone involved." "For the most part, when it was time to close parties down, most people were cooperative," Rush added. The other serious incident of the weekend took place early Saturday morning, when police officers and University Alcohol Policy Coordinator Stephanie Ives broke up a party taking place at the Zeta Psi fraternity house at 3337 Walnut Street. Police stormed the house at 2 a.m., ending the party and forcing the nearly 600 people in attendance to vacate the house. Fraternity leaders say that although the party was approved earlier by Ives and no alcohol was served, the police likely intervened because of the presence of outside alcohol on the premises. "I'm upset because the police gave the fraternity no opportunity to close the party," Zeta Psi President and Wharton junior Mark Hodgson said. "They used scare tactics even though our party was non-alcoholic, and Stephanie [Ives'] justification was that there was alcohol there because there was about 60 cans of beer around the house." "If we were serving beer, wouldn't there be more than 60 cans at a 600-person party?" Hodgson added. According to Rush, the party was shut down because of capacity issues and complaints from neighbors. "Approximately 400 to 600 people were in the place," Rush said. "It was overcrowded and that was why it was shut down -- it was just so loud." Few other serious incidents marred the weekend. The 18 students who received citations from the state Liquor Control Enforcement bureau and Penn Police is similar to the number in recent years. Of the six students sent to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, none were believed to be in serious condition. "I thought people generally tried to have a good time and not interfere with others' quality of life," Rush said. "And I think for the most part people were amenable to the things we had to do."

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