I went back to the fraternity this weekend. I had a great time. It was really nice to see everyone. They were hosting their annual Halloween party, “VooDoo.” It’s always the most well-attended party on campus. Last year we had almost 1,000 people come, which is about a quarter of the campus. As the president last year, I can tell you that I was pretty stressed out with all of those people partying in my house. You just never know what can go wrong. Luckily, nothing did.

We had a fairly intricate security system in place where we scanned everyone’s campus IDs when then got into the party and they got wristbands. One color for people 21 and over, and another color for the younguns. The software we created records the student ID number and their name, just by scanning the ID, so it works out great. We also had a member stationed at every door, making sure no one got in who wasn’t supposed to, and also that everyone left out the exit so that we could know exactly who was inside the house at any given moment. You had to have a student ID to get in, so if you weren’t a student at the university, you were out of luck. We didn’t want people to get in who were just random people from off the street. That would increase the risk of something bad happening. Also, if you were 21 or over and wanted to drink, you had to have a state-issued ID in addition to your university ID. Our third-party vendor who sold the alcohol really appreciated this.

We had three guys monitoring the dance floor at any given point, two guys on the back porch, two guys in each hallway, plus we hired several Indianapolis Police Department officers who were just there in case anything came up that we couldn’t handle. Finally, we had at least three guys on the front porch who were scanning IDs and keeping track of the line to get in, making sure no fights broke out and no one was drinking in the line or doing anything inappropriate.

This year there were a couple of bumps throughout the night, but nothing too major. Taryn and I dressed up like pirates. My pirate costume made me look more like Prince. I had all sorts of guesses. Prince, a pirate, a cater-waiter, an opera star, mozart, beethoven, awesome (that was my personal favorite), and a bunch more.