College is a ton of fun. You are young and surrounded by people of similar ages and interests, all of which are just trying to have a good time together. Moving off campus is a ton of fun as well, especially at a school like Graceland. Dorm life is fundamental to the college experience, don’t get me wrong, but nothing replaces the freedom of having your own place and living the dream you set out for yourself. Now, me in specific, I do like to go to parties, see my friends, meet new people and generally have a good time. So when my five closest friends and I decided to rent a house together for the year, we all kind of understood the situation we were getting ourselves into. We wanted our house to be a fun place for all of our friends to come and hang out all the time, understanding the side effects that may come with that.

There are certain things you don’t think about if you don’t live in a house like ours, and nobody is there to warn you about those things when you move into that situation. So here I am today, placing a formal notice to people who are thinking about getting a house and throwing parties. This is also a formal notice to everybody about just how difficult and frustrating it is to throw college house parties. For clarity's sake, these are my personal opinions from my own personal experience. This is not a representation of any other situation rather than my own.

1.) People disrespect your belongings and the house.

This is pretty basic. For the most part, people who show up to college parties are drunk and disruptive. Mistakes happen when you get enough of those people together. At my own house, I have watched people spill entire drinks on carpets and walk away, draw on the walls, leave garbage everywhere, try to have sex in the shower, and try to steal from the homeowners. Now, to you, the average partygoer, this is not your problem, or you're thinking, "I don’t do that" or "that’s what you get for hosting parties." However, to me, that is my problem and I pay rent, so guess whose problem matters more? I am the one having to clean the carpet or the walls. Picking up garbage or cleaning up puke in the morning is my job, and that sucks.

2.) The clean-up is not fun.

The clean-up totally sucks, and that kind of goes without saying. One morning I found 219 cans of beer, nine bottles of wine, 23 beer bottles, 11 liquor bottles in various sizes, eight loose cigarettes, two chewing tobacco spitters, and one box of wine. Now to go along with cleaning up spills and other kinds of trash, cleaning up all that sucks. What’s even crazier is that after cleaning up all of that, we found that most cans of beer were barely touched, which means wasted beer! One day we measured out all the wasted beer and it filled four pitchers! That’s $80 in beer! Regardless of how ridiculous that is, cleaning other people's messes sucks, especially when it’s because people are too lazy to take care of themselves.

3.) People think there is an open invitation.

Very true story: One evening, my roommates and I were having a very specific invite-only gathering of a group of less than 10 people. All of sudden a group of six teammates (I won’t say which team for the sake of anonymity) come bursting through the front door hooting and hollering. Obviously displeased, we proceed to tell them that what they just did was breaking and entering (I never claimed to be a lawyer) and to get the (expletive) out of my house. They proceeded to cuss us out and say they couldn't come to our "party" because they were black. Now, let’s be even clearer, none of them were black…like it was six white dudes cursing us out.

This sort of thing happens every weekend, and let’s say for example's sake, we were having a party. If you don’t know my name, and I don’t know yours…you can’t come into my house. Even if there is a party, I reserve the right to kick you out for whatever reason.

Here’s another story: One time a group of four teammates (different than before) tried to fight us for trying to ask them, and everybody else in the house, to leave. Listen, if I’m gonna throw a party, the bare minimum I expect is some basic some respect. I don’t want to get the police involved; just be nice. This is why I don’t want to throw parties.

4.) People are idiots who do dumb sh*t.

I can not tell you the dumb shit I have seen happen in, around or in the context of my house. I’ve broken up people having sex on the lawn, in our shower, in our bedrooms. People have tried to use coffee grinds as a cleaning tool for vomit on the carpet. I have caught people trying to steal food out of our refrigerators, steal movies out of shelves. I swear I have seen someone try to walk out of the house with our TV remote. This is the wild card of this group. It’s the unexpected, the known unknown. The thing I know I don’t know about. I can promise that every night something unexpected and terrible is going to happen. And my little heart can’t possibly take it.

5.) The police come and give us citations.

Listen, we live in a community, a community that I have actively tried to help and support through my work with GU SafeRide. However, it’s totally understandable that other members of communities, and more specifically, our neighbors, do not like massive loud parties with dumb kids at 3 o’clock in the morning. The police in Lamoni are just trying to support the community and do their jobs; they aren’t looking for trouble. I have nothing but respect and praise for the Lamoni PD. They don’t show up at parties and hand out tickets or arrest people. The break it up and move on. But they also have a civil duty — if the party is out of control, they have to cite the house. Let me say that again, THEY CITE THE HOUSE. Not the people who go, not the people who are shitty and are loud and crazy and making a scene. They fine me and my roommates. I don’t want that! I don’t have the money to just throw cash around. So tell me why it’s a good idea to throw parties.

The thesis of all this is basically: If people were not ridiculously crazy, it would be easier to throw parties in Lamoni.