Planning Commission wants Cal Poly to publish frat addresses to curb illegal parties
By Bulbul Rajagopal[
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As the deadline approaches to respond to the county grand jury report about alleged mismanaged illegal frat parties, the city of San Luis Obispo wants Cal Poly to be more cooperative.
"We have been working proactively with Cal Poly to be really frank and honest with them about things we need to be able to enforce our codes and regulations," Community Development Director Timothea Tway told the SLO Planning Commission at its Aug. 27 meeting.
In June, the grand jury released a report called "Round and Round with Town and Gown," alleging that the city failed to effectively control unsanctioned fraternity parties. The report came with six recommendations for the City Council, City Manager Whitney McDonald, and the city Planning Commission. They must respond by Sept. 19.
At the Aug. 27 meeting, the Planning Commission approved staff's draft response to the grand jury's recommendation to adopt more uniform conditions for conditional use permits issued to fraternities.
The response said that the city updated its zoning regulations for fraternity and sorority land uses in 2018 and reviewed new and existing permits in 2024. The changes included resident occupancy limits, requirements that a fraternity or sorority be affiliated with and in good standing with the Interfraternity Council of Student Life and Leadership at Cal Poly, and an overall modernization of permits issued in the 1980s and 1990s to bring them up to current standards.
The grand jury also suggested that the city should step up the rate of code enforcement by hiring more staff or working alternate schedules.
But doing so is expensive, according to the city, especially when its grappling with forecasted budget deficits.
Staff acknowledged at the Planning Commission meeting that being proactive about code enforcement is hard because of Cal Poly's decision to withhold fraternity addresses.
For years, several residents have been asking the city for stricter enforcement and separating Greek life from low-density areas with family homes. They've also asked Cal Poly to publish the addresses of all known fraternity houses.
"One of the concerns and complaints we've heard from the community is that Cal Poly also has a party registration process whereby they used to provide addresses when a party was registered, which helped us confirm whether or not a fraternity or sorority party was happening at a location that was not a [permitted] fraternity or sorority," Tway told commissioners. "In the last year or so, the addresses for those parties have not been listed."
Cal Poly and colleges around California must follow Campus-Recognized Sorority and Fraternity Transparency Act, also called Assembly Bill 524. The bill requires Cal Poly to collect specific information about its recognized fraternities and sororities and their conduct. Then, Cal Poly must compile and maintain those details into a publicly accessible report posted and archived on the internet for a minimum of 10 years. The information must also be sent to all enrolled students through a campuswide email.
Not complying with AB 524's reporting requirements could spell suspension of campus recognition for a fraternity or sorority.
Cal Poly interpreted the bill differently.
"The bill requires the university to collect addresses but only requires publication of specific addresses for events where misconduct has occurred," Cal Poly spokesperson Matt Lazier told New Times. "The university chose to withhold addresses going forward after determining that many other CSU campuses had made a similar decision to do so, also with student privacy in mind."
He added that Cal Poly is committed to working with the city to address neighborhood concerns about the parties.
Tway confirmed to commissioners that the city is in talks with the university.
"It's likely something we'll continue to look into how we can obtain these addresses," she said.
With Commissioner Juan Munoz-Morris stating that finding space for a Greek Row could be a solution to keep the neighborhood peace, Commissioner Robert Jorgensen said that Cal Poly needs to do more.
"I think this [draft response approval] will hopefully successfully send some signals to Cal Poly that this is a big problem that needs their undivided attention as well, and that we gotta come up with a common solution," Jorgensen said. "I don't think it's going to answer every single question everyone has written about it ... so I'm trying to be hopeful about this." Δ
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