The city of San Luis Obispo denied all six findings of the SLO County grand jury report that alleged mismanagement of unsanctioned fraternity parties.
“Even though this report, if you read it, might look like we disagree with everything and we are not implementing the things that have been recommended, we really all do care about all of these things,” City Councilmember Michelle Shoresman said at the Sept. 16 City Council meeting. “I’m frustrated by it all too.”
The City Council unanimously approved the city manager’s, the Planning Commission’s, and its own response—originally composed by staff—to the grand jury report.
The city denied the findings in a 14-page letter to SLO Superior Court Judge Rita Federman on Sept. 16. Many of the findings, the letter said, have “overlapping themes” and omit context, such as the grand jury not directing findings and recommendations to Cal Poly.
“By not addressing a key stakeholder, namely Cal Poly, the report creates the impression that the city alone is responsible for mitigating the negative impacts of student party culture,” the letter said. “These challenges extend beyond city limits since Cal Poly, Cuesta, the city, and the county all have an important role to play.”
This isn’t the city’s first pushback to the grand jury report. Prior to the report’s publication in June, the city responded with a 27-page list of alleged clarifications and factual inaccuracies.
The September letter is the result of an ad hoc committee—helmed by Mayor Erica Stewart and Councilmember Jan Marx—that oversaw the response to the grand jury.
At the Sept. 16 City Council meeting, Marx said that the grand jury considered residents’ complaints about city’s handling of the unruly frat parties neighboring “uncritically.”
Marx added that the issue of frat parties is set to get more intense, with Cal Poly looking to increase enrollment and switch to year-round classes.
“My concern is that we not, in any way, alienate the grand jury or the judge,” she said. “Frankly, some of the people who were feeling so desperate and angry may just have to continue with those feelings, even though I would be love to be able to change reality.”
The City Council echoed the Planning Commission’s call to the university to be more cooperative. Despite needing to follow the Campus-Recognized Sorority and Fraternity Transparency Act that requires Cal Poly to collect and publish specific information about recognized fraternities and their conduct, the university stopped publishing the addresses of frat houses due to student privacy concerns.
The city is in talks with Cal Poly to retrieve those addresses to help with code enforcement.
Mayor Erica Stewart said at the meeting that the grand jury report was needed for the community because it could compel Cal Poly to engage more robustly.
However, SLO resident Kathie Walker—a former neighbor to frat houses in the Alta Vista area—thinks the city isn’t willing to admit the ongoing problems of the documented fraternity operations in residential zones.
“The city is also casting blame on Cal Poly,” Walker in an email to New Times.“Cal Poly staff have specifically told me that it is the city’s responsibility to uphold its laws and is not Cal Poly’s problem because the fraternities are illegally operating within the city limits.”
A screenshot of an email between herself and a Cal Poly fraternity and sorority life staff member detailed that the university requires students to register satellite houses (houses that have more than 50 percent of chapter members living there or where a frat wants to host an official chapter event).
“Other than that, the city is in charge of ensuring that they are staying within the city guidelines and policies,” the email from Cal Poly said. “Community members that suspected that a property is operating outside of these guidelines are encouraged to contact SLO City Code Enforcement and/or SLOPD.”
While the city rejected all the grand jury findings, it implemented four of the seven recommendations.
The city will continue working with Cal Poly and regional law enforcement agencies to proactively address unsanctioned parties. The city also modernized its conditional use permits, and the city manager implemented an ongoing formal process to identify unpermitted fraternities and bring them into compliance.
However, the city won’t consider adopting a tiered planning appeal fee structure to make airing community concerns more accessible and affordable. The council also won’t create a task force to explore the possibility of setting up a student overlay zone that introduces separate municipal code standards.
And the city isn’t going to create formal guidelines and provide training outlining how the SLO City Police Department will respond to requests from oversight bodies like the grand jury.
“Recommendations numbered R4, R5, R7 will not be implemented because they are not warranted or are not reasonable,” the city response said. ∆
This article appears in Sept 18-28, 2025.
Everyone is passing the buck on this issue. Why can’t these bureaucracies cooperate and do what’s right for the citizens of San Luis Obispo?
“Money often costs too much.” – Emerson
While denying all six findings of 19 impartial grand jurors (who had nothing to gain or lose from the City or Cal Poly) the City cites the economic advantages it gets from the college. But as Emerson warned, “money often costs too much.” The cost here is the erosion of public trust and the well-being of San Luis Obispo’s neighborhoods.
How can the authorities distinguish between the targeted “unsanctioned fraternity parties”, and the usual kegger shindig thrown by a bunch of 19 year old party animals sharing a house, unless the unsanctioned fraternity thoughtfully posts signage, or the fraternity thoughfully brings back the traditional pledge beanies of old?
And, can we reasonably expect landlords to decline to rent to a large bunch of high-spirited kids in a state like California where the law prohibits discriminating against family size, and the definition of ” family” seems to keep evolving?
The fraternities are required to register their ‘sanctioned events’ beforehand with Cal Poly and the city defines a “fraternity” as a residence where fraternity members live and hold fraternity-related events. Guys sharing a house holding a party is not a fraternity, unless they are fraternity members and it is a fraternity-related event.
Since the fraternities have realized it is illegal to rent a house in a single-family neighborhood and turn it into a fraternity house, they’ve taken down their Greek letters to stay hidden from the code enforcement.
Also, Cal Poly published the addresses of all the fraternity houses where events were held, but then erased the addresses when code enforcement told them that it was illegal to hold those events in residential neighborhoods. Cal Poly is complicit in hiding the addresses of its fraternity houses from the city and the public. Though if you live in the neighborhoods, there is no doubt where the frat houses are!
My point was not to defend the frat houses. From my own misspent youth I can imagine what a nightmare it would be to live next to one, and I sympathize with efforts to control such parties. My point is how easy it is for the fraternities to get around such efforts. Anytime they want to have keggers, but find themselves on “double secret probation” (movie Animal House reference), they just rent a house in the name of individual members, and throw a party without publicizing it as a frat party. How would the police or anyone know it is anything but a bunch of drunken kids? If you want to clamp down on repeated parties, just increase police enforcement efforts against “problem houses” (the cops know which ones they are), and against the landlords for maintaining a nuisance, if necessary.