UMass-Amherst bans guests for St. Patrick’s Day

The University of Massachusetts at Amherst has decided to prevent students from hosting guests during this year’s traditional St. Patrick’s Day party.

“Blarney’s Blowout” has become an annual traditional for the university’s students, filled with day drinking and green clothing. However, there were 55 arrests and 600 rounds of pepper spray and sting balls fired by riot police last year as the celebration got out of hand.

The ban on visitors at the university will span a full 75 hours. Students “will be prohibited from hosting guests who are not UMass Amherst students from 8 p.m. March 5 through 11 p.m. March 8”, according to the Boston Globe.

“I can appreciate the University trying to protect the students, physical campus and the university’s reputation, especially when the reputation of the school affects the value of any student’s degree,” George Carayannopoulos a sophomore in the Isenberg School of Management, told Campus Reform. “But at the same time the students are paying way too much in tuition, and for room and board to be denied the privilege to have guests over, no matter the occasion.”

Another student told Campus Reform anonymously that he planned to still help his friends attend Blarney by setting them up in a local hotel.

As Campus Reform previously reported, the school decided to ban guests in dorm rooms during this month’s Super Bowl.

Some in the community believe that the Super Bowl guest ban aided in preventing excessive celebration following the Patriot’s big win, in contrast to how students behaved in the fall of 2013 when the Red Sox won the World Series.

However, others such as Daily Collegian student columnist Zac Bears disagree.

“The glowing performance of UMass students on Sunday night has nothing to do with policies instituted by the Office of Student Affairs over the past two weeks,” Bears wrote in a recent editorial.

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