Several young men in bicycle helmets lingered outside a house lit with a purple glow just south of Atwater Avenue. A few minutes before midnight on the Saturday of Halloweekend, they gripped skateboards and ranch dressing.
“You tryna take a pull of this ranch?” one shouted at a couple on its way into campus. “Come on, take a pull of this ranch!”
He raised the bottle of Hidden Valley above his head. The couple did not accept his offer.
With the pleasant weather, there were a lot of people out for Halloween parties, IUPD Capt. Andy Stephenson said. Overall it was a pretty safe weekend.
From midnight Thursday to midnight Monday, the IU Police Department made 29 adult arrests. In the same time span the week prior, they made 9. The week before that they made 11.
“My, my, simple sir, this ain’t gonna work,” floated from the speakers of a red-glowing house a few blocks away from the ranch dressing. “Mind my wicked words and tipsy-topsy slurs.”
The Glass Animals song complemented crashing skateboards and police and ambulance sirens wailing from no direction in particular. They seemed to be everywhere.
As Saturday ticked toward Sunday, a man in a nondescript costume that resembled bacon lay on the stone wall approaching Indiana Avenue on Third Street. A partially consumed bottle of Captain Morgan waited at his feet.
“Hey, keep on going on, trooper,” a cowboy said to him. “All right?”
As the Night Owl pulled up with its cramped contents of cats, Pikachus and the undead, a swarm descended upon it.
And off they went to countless parties celebrating the holiday that wouldn’t come for more than 24 hours. As the bus turned the corner, the students inside chanted something, muffled by one another, the vehicle walls and inebriation.
Just around the corner, near the Sample Gates, a man emerged from a small congregation of bikers in cutoffs, members of the Cubs and various other young people. A voice from within the group heckled him.
“Let’s go follow him,” the voice said. “Let’s go get that guy!”
That guy, in his plain clothes, looked over his shoulder as he hurried away.
“He’s drunk,” a second voice said of the first. “He’s drunk, but he ain’t kidding!”
Of the 29 arrests, 21 were attributed to the illegal possession and misuse of alcohol. Another five cited drug paraphanalia, and the rest included bicycle theft and beating a skunk to death.
Shortly after midnight, as police cars and ambulances rushed around campus, the McNutt Quad circle drive played home to two delivery cars for Baked, one for Pizza X, one for Papa John’s and an Uber.
Between McNutt, Foster Quad and Briscoe Quad, 12 incidents were reported to IUPD, and half of those resulted in an arrest.
Back on Atwater Avenue, a young man towered atop a porch at 1:30 a.m. and rapped about how he ordered fast food all by himself. His hype man wore a onesie and begged passersby for applause.
A few blocks away, a pack of young women, some clinging to the backs of others, headed westward on Third Street.
“Give me a sign,” they howled into the darkness. “Hit me, baby, one more time.”
