Tag Archives: saint patrick’s day

“St. Fratties Day” Celebration – Cal Poly San Louis Obispo

Age: 22

Date Collected 4/16/2026

Context:

My informant is a close friend of mine attending Cal Poly San Louis Obispo. She is a graduating senior and an active member in a sorority. She told me about Cal Poly SLO’s most recognizable holiday, “St. Fratties Day.” When I went to college in Santa Barbara, I knew all about St. Fratties day, but I never got the opportunity to go.

Text:

“Every year on March 17th, we wake up at 3:17, get dressed in our “greenest” outfits, take a green Jello shot, and hit the block parties.” That’s been the tradition long before my friend first enrolled at Cal Poly SLO, but it seems the traditions are changing.

To my informant, this is a uniquely SLO festival that’s shared with students all over California; students come from neighboring schools to attend, similar to UCSB’s Deltopia to celebrate. Typically, students indulge in “Irish like drinks – Guinness, Irish Whiskey, Baileys, Green colored mixed drinks and of course green Jello shots,” “anything that seems remotely Irish is there.” More recently, my informant explained that students come dressed in custom green t-shirts painted with white paint and patched. Like four leaf clovers or messages like “kiss me, I’m Irish” or “I love Irish goodbyes.” About two years ago, students made their own green “borgs” decorated with on- theme messages funny quotes or Irish themed puns.

The holiday has been largely student- run, consisting of massive block parties where certain streets of the town are packed full of students celebrating. House parties, local band performances and pre-games litter the surrounding neighborhoods as students prepare to gather on Hathaway street at 5am. Most students hear about the event through word of mouth, as it is quite popular; if not through friends, they see posts on social media discussing house parties or cover charges for bands. But it seems the tradition is about to change significantly.

Last year, the school started its own concert music festival on campus to divert attention from the neighborhood street parties. My informant told me that this is largely due to the resulting property damage, noise and underage drinking that occurs. In the 2025 celebration, roofs caved in and fences were toppled over by the mass of people.

My informant explained that while in the middle of the crowd she “literally thought I might die.” But, thats part of the fun. Regardless, she explained, the surrounding neighborhood, police, and other officials have placed pressure on the school to make St. Fratties less damaging for the community. So, as a result the school offered a music festival free of entry that has big names performing. My informant explained that the school and community’s goal is to make the block parties illegal and push students towards more “responsible and respectful” celebrations. Additionally, next year, the school is going to switch to semesters, so St. Fratties weekend will fall under their Spring break. My informant believes that “this is their [school and officials] path to totally killing it.”

This last March (2026) the streets were barricaded, with cops on horses preventing students from moving around. So, this exciting student tradition might not exist for much longer, which is sad for my informant and future generations of SLO students. This is a huge event for the students at SLO. They look forward to it, and it is a way for them to communicate their identity as SLO students and show off their campus and student life to friends from out of town. To them, this isn’t just a big party, its part of their life. The event takes a lot of energy from the students as well. Setting up, planning, coordinating their individual contributions and plans. It also takes place on “dead week,” or the week before their finals for the quarter. So, there is a significant cost for dedicated students to fully commit or even attend the event.


My informant explained that after the initial rush, around seven or eight in the morning, she and her friends go back to their house and sleep in the sun by the pool. They rest, get some work done then go out again later that night to the bars in town, which have green decorations, themed drinks and the bands performing. This is where the student population joins the rest of the community, because both students and adults are all out celebrating at the bars.

Analysis:

This event shows a lot about student identity and how events and festivals become a core part of students’ on-campus life. The community comes together to celebrate, meet one another, and enjoy being around one another. It’s an event where groups that otherwise might not interact can mingle and find common ground. It is a way to let go and be free of the difficulties of school for a moment. To release your tension before the push from finals. But also, in a way, a means to challenge the system. Students defy their obligations to study for finals to take part in this event. This is by definition the carnivalesque. An act that defies the “dominant” or regular system of the academic calendar by providing a day to suspend those roles as students. It is especially poignant because it takes place at the highest stakes moment of the quarter, right before finals week.

It also has ritualistic elements, like waking up at 3:17 am (3:17 = March 17th) and drinking Jello shots. This crates a shared “starting point” that all students can enter this event. Brutal as it may be in the moment, it is a fond memory of my informant and shows that students are committed to this event because there’s a “barrier to enter.” These are things that students wouldn’t normally do, waking up that early or drink the Jello shots. But under the context of the event, these things have meaning created by the culture and traditions passed on by older students.

It has been sad to hear about how the school and institutions are in effect “killing” the event. Switching to the semester system means everyone will likely be free from school and away on break. The holiday needs a place, that place and community are removed for the period of St. Fratties. There are risks for the event- students getting hurt, property damage, and noise, to name a few. But, I don’t think killing the event totally is a fair or beneficial solution. The event has become part of SLO’s identity, and students look forward to it every year. Even though they are offering a festival, my informant explained it was poorly run and wasn’t as fun or unique as the block parties. We learned this is called fakelore. An institutional ripoff trying to build on the authenticity of the people’s culture. My friend explained that it felt forced rather than natural. As an outsider, I’m upset by this. It’s like getting a YouTube video interrupted by a corny corporate ad that’s trying too hard to fit in. It also eliminated the house parties, random interactions, and smaller local student bands. When the day becomes just a performance, the students aren’t active participants; they become more like an audience. This institutional replica of the event highlights how the culture and specifics of the event are sanitized by larger corporations to create a mass-produced event. There are thousands of music festivals every year, but only one St. Fratties day.

Corning of The Beef and St. Patrick’s Day – Irish American Tradition

Nationality: American
Age: 61
Occupation: Dog trainer
Residence: San Diego, CA
Performance Date: 04/24/20
Primary Language: English

Context: The following piece was collected during a casual interview in the informant’s home. 

Background: The informant is my mother, who is a third generation Irish immigrant. She learned the tradition from her parents, who partook in it with numerous other Irish-American families who also lived in Bridgeport, CT. 

Piece: 

Collector: So who corns the beef?

Informant:Whoever’s house it was got the meat and they put it in the pot and then somebody else poured in the water and then somebody else put in, like a couple of people would put in the different spices. So it was a group activity if you will, they kind of all … um joined in. Obviously there weren’t jobs for every adult but everybody was there.

Collector: Where do you put it after you season it?

Informant: Okay, you take the meat and you have this huge pot looking thing in a wooden box almost with these long handles so that the men could carry it because it was very heavy. And you would put it either in your basement, um or somewhere cool and dark because it was in Connecticut so at that time of the year it would be cool enough. So one year when we had it at our house we put it in the garage and covered it um because we didn’t have windows on our garage doors. 

Collector: What day would you put it in there?

Informant: Always on um Ash Wednesday. And then on Saint Patrick’s Day whoever had the meat at their house, they held the party. And they always like set these incredible tables up with all sorts of decorations and party favors.

Collector: Like what, for example?

Informant: Party favors could be the candy coins. They would make pots of gold to put on the table and use the candy coins. Sometimes they made little leprechauns out of um pipe cleaners and sticks and stuff. 

Analysis: I really enjoyed hearing this piece from my mother, as she reminisced about her childhood and the strong tradition that was upheld by her family and numerous Irish-American families in her neighborhood. Irish immigrants, like many other immigrant groups, were subject to negative stereotypes upon arrival to the States. In ritualizing the preparation and consumption of corned beef, a distinctly Irish-American dish, the participants forge pride in their community. The fact that the process begins on Ash Wednesday, a holy day observed in multiple Christian traditions, highlights the shared religious identity of this group as well. All of the families who participated in the tradition were Catholic, a religious identity that is often understood in Ireland as a nationalist political identity as well. The “party favors” on the table suggest touristic representations of Ireland, an idealized and even romanticized conception of the Motherland. Ultimately, the tradition represents the generation of a hybrid, even liminal culture that is neither wholly Irish nor wholly American.

Erin Express

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Tarzana, CA
Performance Date: April 18, 2018
Primary Language: English

“How appropriate do I have to be?” was the first thing Lila asked me about describing this tradition.

Background: Lila attends Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA. When she arrived at school she called my friends to ask us if we had ever heard of Erin Express. When we all assured her that we had never heard of that she began to describe this Philly-wide tradition called Erin Express that related to St. Patrick’s Day.

Context: I had this conversation with Lila over the phone. I recorded our conversation and transcribed it below.

“I go to Drexel University in Philadelphia. When I first got here I started hearing about this event. Actually I don’t even want to call it an event, it’s not an event. Its something the city… it’s like the 3 weekends leading up to Saint Patrick’s day, a bunch of bars and clubs in the area will have a kind of bar crawl? If you go to college in Philadelphia you will have pregames* starting in the morning and then go to those bar crawls. So basically the three weekends leading up to St. Patrick’s day and then on St. Patrick’s day you will get dressed up, you’ll wake up early, wear all St. Patrick’s day apparel and basically day drink the whole day and go to different bars. And it’s not just something college kids do, it’s something that older people do too. It’s not a college thing, I guess if you’re in college you’ll start at frats but end up at bars. It was something interesting about the culture here that I had never heard and something cool that Philly does. Yeah.”

When I asked her to elaborate on what people typically wear, this is what she said;

“You dress up like it’s St. Patrick’s Day, even if it is multiple weeks before. The whole theme of it is Irish? A lot of time friend groups or sororities will make a t-shirt for it that people will buy that have puns about Erin Express since that’s the name of it or puns about St. Patrick’s Day or different cute designs. It’s almost like tailgate t-shirt culture** but in a different kind of setting.”

*Pregame- a pre-party where people get together to drink alcohol before going out to a bar, typically as a way to save money on drinks once you’re at the bar. It is also a way to meet up with your friends to “get the party started”.

** Many sororities and fraternities at various schools will make t-shirts that have jokes on them about the school that they are playing often in football that people will wear to tailgates. Some examples for USC would be t-shirts that say “Tri Delta Tailgates” or “FUCLA” (as a way of insulting a rival).

Tradition – Irish

Nationality: Irish
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Ventura County, CA
Primary Language: English

“Every Saint Patrick’s Day my parents would go all out to celebrate.  For most people, St. Patrick’s Day isn’t that big of a deal, and most people don’t really do anything.  But my parents would always make it a huge event.  They would dye the milk green, they would dye my dog green, and my mom would always spray my dad’s hair green with temporary hair dye.  And when we would wake up, our rooms would always be really messy because leprechauns are supposed to make a mess of everything.  So every St. Patrick’s Day we did that until I got a lot older and it was really fun.  I don’t know anyone else who celebrated like my family did.”

Kelsey said that her parents liked to celebrate every holiday, including St. Patrick’s Day.  I asked if her parents celebrated the holiday like this when they were little kids, and she said that she was not sure but it was likely that her parents invented the idea when her and her sisters were born.  Kelsey said she really enjoyed celebrating St. Patrick’s Day because it was so different than other holidays, and because she did not know any other families that were as enthusiastic about celebrating it.  She felt that it helped set her family apart from other families, and she appreciated the effort her parents exerted in order to give her and her sisters a unique and special holiday tradition.  I also asked Kelsey if her parents are Irish and she said that her dad is fully Irish, and she is half Irish.  She said that this may have been part of the reason her dad wanted to make the day such a fun celebration, but she said that even if her family was not Irish her parents still would have celebrated the holiday.

Kelsey also said that when she got older, her parents stopped dying everything green and messing up her room.  Because Kelsey enjoyed celebrating the holiday so much, though, she dyed the milk green herself.  She said that messing up her room was kind of a hassle to clean up later, but dying milk and wearing green was an important part of the holiday that she did not want to miss out on.

It seems like as Kelsey grew up, the context of the holiday changed.  When she was little, her parents’ creativity allowed her and her sisters to participate in a unique holiday tradition that set themselves apart from other families.  However, as Kelsey and her sisters grew up, some aspects of the tradition became a nuisance and no longer appreciated as much (i.e.- messing up Kelsey’s room).  As a result, her family changed how they celebrated the holiday in order to correspond with the age level of the children.  Kelsey did not want to stop celebrating completely since she had so many positive memories of the holiday, which explains why she would try to continue some of the traditions by herself.

Although I also have Irish heritage, my family has been less active in celebrating St. Patrick’s Day.  We wear green and might go to a small party at night, but I have never heard of a family celebrating St. Patrick’s Day to the extent that Kelsey’s family did.  Although Kelsey’s family has Irish roots, it seems like Kelsey’s parents were more concerned with creating unique and memorable traditions for her and her sisters to enjoy, regardless of their heritage.