Anyone who had hoped to “drop it like it’s Bob” on Friday night and then tried to choose which fraternity to party at on Saturday experienced a common problem of the Stanford social scene — there are either too many or too few parties on any given weekend night. This issue seems easily remedied, given the technology and networking at students’ disposal. Currently, no central party registry openly exists for party planners, who struggle to choose dates for their social events. We recommend that such a service be created in order to facilitate party planning — often a difficult and thankless job.

One possible solution would be for the Office of Student Activities to be the central coordinating body for registering parties. Currently, those planning registered all-campus parties must already go through the office but don’t have access to a master calendar indicating all upcoming registered parties. Student Activities could maintain such a calendar online and grant students access to view it. A potential problem with this is that those outside of the Stanford community could gain access to this calendar. However, this can be easily avoided by requiring a SUNet ID to enter the site.

This solution, however, would be unwieldy and difficult to establish. It would involve significant red tape, unnecessarily add to the bureaucracy involved in hosting events and force University administrators to assume the cumbersome position of party planning — a role not in their job descriptions. As such, it is unlikely to get off the ground.

A more reasonable alternative — and one that we are hopeful will come to fruition — would be for Row and Greek social managers and dorm RAs to coordinate through an online scheduling program — such as Yahoo Calendar — a database to which only they would have the password. This option seems more logical, as well, given that the primary concern is planning parties — not promoting them to the campus at large.

Two risks seem evident in this solution; fortunately, both are easily addressed. First, there is the legitimate worry that the password for this Web site would be widely disseminated not only outside of the party-planning community, but beyond the Stanford community. However, given that the events listed on this site are by their very nature registered parties that are closed to Stanford outsiders, this would not be as problematic as it first appears. Student IDs are required to enter these events, so even if outsiders learned of them, they theoretically would not be able to attend. Unregistered parties, which do not require student IDs, are irrelevant to this fear because they would not be on the calendar.

Second, unhoused fraternities and sororities and cultural and other organizations would not have access to this site, despite their hosting of campus-wide events. Such events, however, generally take place in a dorm or Row house, and as such can be coordinated in conjunction with a residence staff member. In instances like the Queer/Straight Alliance’s Genderfuk, which is not housed in a campus residence but in Tresidder, event planners may contact the Web site’s administrator instead. One student, under whose e-mail address the site could be registered, would need to volunteer to be the central contact for anyone wishing access to this information for legitimate reasons. The burden on this student would not be too great, because such instances are rare and it is unlikely that it will be necessary for planners to contact the administrator very often.

We’re hopeful that enterprising social managers or RAs will take the initiative to coordinate such a calendar system. That way, by the time of spring quarter’s Notorious B.O.B. party, the student body will be able to expect a full but not overloaded gamut of social options on every Friday and Saturday.