Friday night chaos across the Cornell fraternity scene

We Cornellians all know about the fraternity party scene here on campus, and the weekend events the frats sponsor usually don’t have a spot in the news. However, Friday night attracted a significant amount of heat and excitement.

Apparently the Lambda Chi Alpha house is prone to attacks from fire, as this was the second weekend that the fraternity forced drunken party-goers into the streets due to smoke and fire alarms. Last weekend the

house was under siege when some begrudged kids rejected from the party allegedly set the house’s shed on fire. Firemen and police stormed the grounds as a crazed, scared, inebriated, mostly under-classmen diaspora took place in the surrounding area. Once again, the partygoers had to be evacuated from the fraternity house. Whether the alarm was triggered by the fog machine, foam machine, or just somebody raging against the machine, is unknown at this point. Either way, it went off, and instead of bathing in a cesspool of foam, Keystone, and foot fungus, everyone was forced to leave the foam-party and wait outside in their soaked clothes and flip-flops in the chilly air, fighting hypothermia, waiting to receive their jackets which remained inside. We kid, but it was a tad bit chilly outside.

Might I recommend to Bear Grylls a new location for Man vs. Wild? A Cornell fiesta in the winter? They’d pick him up for public nudity in a heart beat.

With so many intoxicated, hungry Cornellians making the last-ditch attempt to make it to an eatery somewhere across campus, encounters with the Cornell Police, and therefore JA documentations, ran high. In an unrelated incident, Cornell Police officers at Theta Delta Chi fraternity (aka Thumpty, Thumdee, Humpty, Dumpty, any other variation you have to contribute) told Cornell Review reporters that there was chaos there, as well. According to one of the policeman on the scene, one of the wretched ‘townies’ managed to sneak into the party and cause a ruckus. The Ithacan then proceeded to get into a fight with one of the brothers at the house (then presumably lost), until the police showed up.

The problem? The officer was kind enough to tell Insider reporters that it was relatively simple: brothers at fraternities were not responsible in checking IDs to make sure all the booze-cravers were from Cornell.

The officer said that incidents including Ithaca kids get especially nasty, because these drunkards do not receive the same treatment as Cornell kids; basically, instead of JA or PRB documentation, they get…arrested. Sucks for you, townies! Now stop crashing our parties.

On a more serious note, I would like to comment that the brothers and sober monitors from at the Lambda Chi Alpha House did a good job in evacuating the very large crowd. They’re 2/2 on successful frat evacuations this year.

Photos by Oliver Renick