As a student attending the No. 1 party school in the country, you have probably been to your fair share of house parties and are now a seasoned veteran. Never again will you consider drinking Beast Light out of a red plastic cup in a stranger's basement to be a fun weekend activity. But if you've never thrown a house party yourself, you may not have thought about one of the biggest components of this college ritual—money.
Sam Boebel, now a senior at UW-Madison, said he threw a party every other weekend when he lived on College Court his sophomore year. He and his roommates threw parties to hang out with their friends and to make money. Boebel said they often made a profit, with one party bringing in approximately $650.
We had over $1,000 in cash at that party,\ he said. ""If you plan on throwing a party, it's pretty easy to make money.""
After making this kind of cash, what do frequent party throwers spend it on? Boebel said the profits usually went to help pay for the next party, while his neighbors used it to pay their utility bill.
Other students use their party profits to cover damages. After this year's rainy Mifflin Street Block Party, UW-Madison senior Jess Fried's kitchen floor was covered in mud, so she bought cleaning supplies that night with the money she made at the party.
""I went to Sentry at 10 on Saturday night and I bought two mops, a bucket and a bunch of cleaner. As I was leaving a guy asked me if I was a maid,"" she said.
Boebel has also had to pay to clean dirty carpets, bathrooms and fix holes in walls after his parties. He even had to clean the ceiling after it got covered in champagne at a New Year's Eve party, he said.
In addition to messes and damaged property, there is a good chance that party guests will go home with some of your possessions. Boebel said he and his roommates had a Playstation 2, a set of knives, two keg taps and ""a bunch of food"" stolen at parties. At Fried's Mifflin bash this weekend, someone took off with a ream of printer paper and a comic strip from the refrigerator door.
""The last two years we've kind of stopped throwing parties because stuff gets stolen and broken,"" Boebel said. ""We figured it was a lot more fun to just hang out with our friends.""
UW-Madison senior Matt McMahon has also stopped throwing house parties, but for a much different reason. After getting fined more than $15,000 for a party in fall 2004, he and his roommates could not afford to even go to another house party, much less throw one.
""The main reason we didn't [throw any parties] after that one was because they held huge quantities of fines over our heads for a year,"" McMahon said. ""If the police came, we would have been charged an extra $3,000 per person.""
The police charged McMahon and each of his roommates with two offenses—one for being underage and one for selling without a permit—each of which is a $350 ticket. Multiply that by the number of guests (they were charged for eight) and you have one expensive party.
After paying $3,000 for a lawyer, McMahon and his roommates got their fines reduced to $1,000 each. For the rest of the year, McMahon used all the money he made and did community service to pay off his tickets, making his final payment last summer.
""When I sent out that last check it felt really good,"" he said. ""It's so nice to have that out of my hair.""
If McMahon's story does not deter you from throwing a party yourself, Boebel has a few tips for making money and avoiding problems.
""Make sure as many people as you trust know about [the party] as possible and as early as possible,"" he said. ""Try to seclude the crowd to people you actually want to come over to avoid stealing."" He also suggested buying cheap beer and saying you have more kegs than you really do, which will encourage latecomers to still buy cups.
McMahon also has one important piece of advice: ""I don't recommend getting caught.\
