Syracuse Students Fight for Their Right … to Party

Syracuse University students are fighting back against a new prohibition on “celebrations” in a popular area known as Castle Court.

They created a YouTube vid (featured on the channel “I’m Schmacked”) “calling for the preservation of Castle Court.” Huff Post College reports:

[Castle Court is] a place, at least once student says, where Syracuse students from all walks of campus life can unite, rather than being divided by fraternity and sorority affiliations or other social barriers.

According to the Daily Orange, Syracuse first reached out to Campus Hill (the off-campus apartment complex surrounding Castle Court) management in 2013 concerning issues with parties in the space. The university’s complaint included the following safety concerns: students hanging off balconies, disrupting traffic and setting fires in the parking lot, as well as large crowds, excessive alcohol consumption, and glass and debris in the parking lot.

Management agreed with Syracuse’s complaints and found it appropriate to end the large parking lot parties at Castle Court.

However, in the clip above, one student argues there was no safety-related reason to prohibit large parties there.

“It was fun and it was safe,” he says. “You never saw anybody getting hurt, and we were respectful enough to clean up after ourselves.”

The university, however, maintains that the area “posed [a] significant risk to the health and safety of students.”

Syracuse was recently named the #1 party school in the nation.