Each Thursday, Friday and Saturday, hundreds of UMass students walk, carpool, or bus off campus to the characteristic college social gathering – a house party.

Evidence enough is North Pleasant Street on Friday night, a corridor of off-campus partying, lined from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. with party-goers and the flashing lights of police cars.

When most high school students think of a college party, they imagine something of “Can’t Hardly Wait” proportions; hundreds of people crammed into a house, dancing, drinking, out of control, and they’re often not too far off from the truth.

Walking into a gigantic house party can be somewhat of a sensory overload, there is never less that five or six things going on at the same time. Walking in the door at a party where you’re well known may elicit general “Heeeys!” from the majority of the party, or you may slip in unnoticed. But the first things you experience are the most sensual, the heat produced by 50 people in a small room, the sight of those people piled in to couches or around a Beirut table or anywhere there is space, and the constant sound of conversation or reaction to various drinking games.

Just recently dropping off the top ten list of biggest party schools, UMass is still no stranger to a house party.

“Partying and large parties on and off campus are things that happen across the country,” said UMass spokesman Ed Blaguszewski. “They’re not unique to UMass or Amherst, and unfortunately the overindulgence in alcohol and related violence is not uncommon either.”

Without a doubt drinking is one of, if not the central focus of a big house party, as proved by the wide variety of drinking games probably taking place the moment you walk into a party. There will almost certainly be a game of Beirut being played where teams try to throw ping-pong balls into alcohol-filled cups to make opponents drink, and card games are ever popular.

Certainly, with the recent acts of violence on campus, the question of alcohol and partying has been a point of discussion, but fighting isn’t always one of the ingredients at a house party, some frequent party goers insist they’ve never seen a fight at a party.

“There’s been a lot of violence recently, but all that really happens on campus – I know that stuff that happened in Southwest, the kids didn’t even go to this school – there’s nothing really UMass can do about that,” said UMass sophomore Alex King. “You can’t eliminate the stupid people in this world. I’m sure they were a little drunk at least, but that’s who they are, you’re not going to get drunk and change who you are.”

Capt. Scott Livingstone, of the Amherst Police Department, said he has to deal with violence all the time at house parties.

“When there’s alcohol involved and someone pisses someone else off at a party [it can lead to fighting.] We often get called in to break up fights and most of the time we tell people it might be a good idea to break [the party] up even if they haven’t had an official complaint yet because they probably will.”

Fear of a party being broken up by the cops is always in the back of the minds of partiers and especially the owners of the house. While usually impossible to quiet down a rambling crowd of 50 or more people, a simple utterance, “shhhh