This weekend marked the 86th weekend of Round Up at UT Austin. The Round Up season began with sorority merchandise orders, wristband handouts, and last-minute announcements of artists, places, and times – and it ended with shut-down parties, some degree of havoc, and neon-clad girls running around party to party to find one not yet at capacity.
Below is a video compiled and edited by “The Daily Texan” from 2015 Round Up, and is an accurate representation of what every girl hopes their weekend is like.
I don’t know what my expectations were for Round Up necessarily, probably something like from the video above. To be honest, they were not met. While I had a really fun time going out with my DG sisters in our gear, Friday night ended with us being turned away from a party after waiting for an hour outside, and Saturday ended with a party we were at being shut down then another turning us away because they had reached capacity. I spoke to several girls whose days met similar ends, but heard of more yet who had even worse experiences. A friend of mine was trampled and thrown up on, another one saw a girl who needed medical attention for alcohol poisoning. And these experiences led me to an important conclusion – there is a problem with Round Up.
The most obvious problem with Round Up that probably every Round Up participant experienced to some degree was the logistical issues surrounding the event. With missing party permits, shut-down parties, seemingly tiny capacities, and lines that often turned into mobs, just getting into fraternity parties was absolutely chaotic. The sheer lack of organization and planning for an event with thousands of students made many students’ Round Up experiences disappointing and unfulfilling. The Daily Texan reported last year that more than 15,000 people came out for Round Up, with approximately 2,500 of these students being non-UT students. With this sheer number of (drunk) college students, it’s no wonder that for many students their weekend was a nightmare of lines, crowds, and not being let into parties.
But the more insidious and potentially dangerous problem with Round Up is its strong association with binge drinking. For many students, part of the experience of Round Up is purposely surpassing their alcoholic limits, and while idea this could to some degree be applied to much of college party culture, this is merely intensified by the full two days worth of partying and implicit drinking.
There is a feeling of pressure to get very drunk during Round Up, and an unspoken understanding that students that do not are not fully experiencing the weekend or having as much fun as those who do. But when idealized binge drinking, dehydration, lack of food, thumping music, and crowds of people are all combined, the mix can become very dangerous very fast. In 2015, an astounding 68 MIP tickets were issued during Round Up weekend. Passing out and alcohol poisoning are not uncommon during the weekend, and the sound of sirens could often be heard accompanying the thumping music.
Taking all of this into consideration, it is easy to see how Round Up weekend could potentially become dangerous and unsafe for students. There is a problem with when the huge masses of students cannot be accommodated. There is a problem when free alcohol is offered at every party but not water. There is a problem when the number of shots you took is used to quantify the amount of fun you had. There is a problem when a large percentage of parties are shut down by police officers. There is a problem with Round Up.
