Members of the senior class will head to Hurricane O'Reilly's tonight for the first Senior Pub Night of the semester.
The Senior Class Council expressed high hopes for the event. It has taken precautions to avoid a repeat of last September's Senior Pub Night, at which several attendees were expelled from the venue for drunken behavior, including reports of theft, attempted indecent exposure and public urination in the bar's main room. In the wake of the event, administrators cancelled pub nights for the remainder of the fall semester before bringing them back in the spring.
Tufts has staged Senior Pub Nights at Hurricane O'Reilly's in the past and chose the venue again because of the existing relationship between the bar's management and event planners, according to Senior Class Council Secretary Vicki Eastman.
All 600 tickets for the event had sold out by Wednesday, Senior Class Council President Lindsey Rosenbluth said.
Class council members emphasized the importance of appropriate behavior. A note distributed with each pub night ticket warns that improper conduct could preclude students from attending future Senior Pub Nights.
"Students asked to leave the event due to improper behavior will be banned from ALL future pub night events," the note reads.
Such conduct could even result in a ban from other events for seniors, including those scheduled during Senior Week, according to an e−mail sent last Thursday to the senior class last.
"I think we've tried to impress upon the senior class how important it is to behave," Eastman said. "It's like a harsh policy, but we just decided to impress upon everyone how important it is."
Rosenbluth said the policy of barring those who cause trouble from attending future events was something they intended to underscore in the e−mail.
"It's people's responsibility to take care of themselves, and a lot of times it's the same people who are getting kicked out time after time," she said.
Although the class council wrote the e−mail, the Office for Campus Life (OCL) provided some input and advice about logistics like crowd control.
The OCL, which wanted students to be the voice behind the e−mail, hopes that seniors will respect their peers, OCL Assistant Director David McGraw said.
"I just want to stress that students will understand that they will have fun and enjoy themselves, but do it in a responsible way so that everyone can enjoy it in the future," McGraw said.
Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman hopes this year's seniors will take last year's lessons to heart.
"What I'm hoping is that students who attend the event read carefully and take in what the class council wrote because I would hate to have this event jeopardize the rest of year for the seniors," Reitman said.
The e−mail warns that those exhibiting "excessive drunkenness" will not be permitted to board the buses nor enter the venue.
Management staff from Hurricane O'Reilly's, university administrators, OCL staff and Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) officers will all be on hand to make that determination using their best judgment, according to McGraw.
Other school events, like Fall Ball, have similar regulations due to liability issues, according to Reitman. Rosenbluth anticipates the screening will be taken seriously and that alcohol will not be permitted on the buses.
"No one's saying you can't drink before you go," Rosenbluth said. But she encouraged seniors to drink at the bar as opposed to drinking excessively beforehand.
"We're really hoping to be able to keep doing [pub nights]," she said. "I'm not going into it thinking we're not going to have more; we're setting dates and making plans for other ones."
Eastman said the class council is optimistic about the event but recognizes that the behavior of just a handful of people could potentially ruin the event for everyone.
Reitman said poor behavior similar to that displayed at last year's event would embarrass the university and expressed his hope that the administration will not have to intervene as it has in the past.
"It's not the first time that happened; there were other events that got cancelled," Reitman said. "There was a ... cruise last year that never left the dock because students were too drunk to go on the cruise."
"I'm just hoping that we don't need a reminder beyond the letter. It's in no one's best interest for Tufts students to be thought of as a bunch of drunks," he said.
