Laura Hartman

 

Everyone is Irish

           

Column written for The Defender

            If you pull out an old St. Michael's yearbook or flip through old issues of the campus newspaper, you'll find dozens of pictures of students dressed in green and waving shamrocks for a St. Patrick's day celebration that is now largely lost.  Since 2004, spring break has been scheduled to fall on the week containing St. Patrick's Day, preventing students from spending the holiday on campus.

            Residence Life started petitioning for the change in 2000 because the celebrations on and off campus had gotten increasingly out of hand.  The holiday started out as “an absolute great day of celebration for many Catholic and heritage Irish,” Lou DiMasi, director of Residence Life said.  What it turned into was a drunken beer fest.  Students were disrespectful to faculty and staff, and academics went out the window, he said.

            Part of the reason for this, according to Dean of Students Mike Samara, is that the bars in Burlington like to open early in the morning to maximize their profits for the day.  Students would go out and drink way too much too early in the day and show up to classes intoxicated.  Concern for students safety became an issue, as well as concern for the faculty and staff dealing with unruly students and liability towards the college.

            “It's not the student activities that are the problem, it's the individual decisions to drink or use other substances that cause the problem,” DiMasi said.

            Members of the custodial and kitchen staffs dreaded the holiday because students trashed the cafeteria and residence halls.  A total of 15 departments in Student Affairs submitted letters to go into the proposal to the cabinet to have the calendar changed, he said.

Who can blame them when they have to spend all day cleaning vomit off the floors and rushing students to the hospital or detox?  With the bars opening at 6 or 7 a.m., how can faculty and staff hope to compete for students’ attention?  This isn't like P-Day or Mardi-Gras, where the celebration occurs over the weekend and academics remain relatively undisrupted.  St. Patrick's Day falls during the week more often than not.

It only makes sense then, that the school takes action to relieve the stress on faculty and staff and remove students from a potentially dangerous situation. If students are at home and out of the college environment, they are less likely to engage in wildly drunken activities.  It may seem like the college is dodging a PR bullet, but there are other reasons why the calendar makes sense. 

            Having spring break during that week divides the semester almost perfectly in half, and other colleges all around the country have done the same thing, Samara wrote in an e-mail.  Originally, spring break took place in February, only four weeks after the end of the winter holiday.

On the other hand, it's a shame that the situation has gotten so bad in the past years that we can't celebrate the holiday on campus.  Drinking is a very culturally Irish part of the holiday. The problem is that it gets out of control very quickly when people start drinking before breakfast and going to class drunk, trashing residence halls and puking all over the floor of Alliot.

“This is how it was back in the day,” DiMasi said.  “I perceive it to be different today.  Our students are more committed to being great.”

College is a breeding ground for the party atmosphere, impulsive decision-making and excess drinking.  Combine that with the festivities of celebrating an Irish holiday and it’s a recipe for disaster.  Let's face it; everyone wants to be Irish on St. Patrick's Day, dress like a leprechaun and watch Boondock Saints all day.  The catch is that this usually goes along with a pint of ale in one hand and an Irish crème in the other.