UW Oshkosh students, friends and family members filled the streets and bars of Oshkosh last Saturday celebrating the second Pub Crawl of the school year.

Pub Crawl is an event that happens twice each school year, once in the fall semester and once in the spring semester. It’s a tradition going back years and gives alumni across the country a talking point with current UWO students. Pub Crawl also attracts students throughout the UW System to come together on Titan grounds for a day.

Typically, students will wake up early in the morning and start drinking, some said as early as 7 a.m., the goal is to make it to the bars at night.

University Police records, obtained from Public Records Custodian Nikki Schettle, showed a variety of incidents recorded over the weekend, 159 in total.

Seventy-seven calls were reported for building checks, which Schettle said were “self-initiated” checks by University officers. Twenty-three calls for traffic stops, 15 of which were categorized as warnings, were reported. One motor vehicle accident and five calls for underage drinking were reported. Schettle said the number of people involved in an underage drinking report fluctuates. “It can be one person or it can be five people,” Schettle said. “We just mark it as one response.”

Eight calls were reported to assist UP. Schettle said these calls were closely related to Pub Crawl. One call for disturbance was reported, and three calls for a focused patrol were reported. Schettle said a focused patrol is when an officer stations themself outside a suspicious area. “They kind of pick a spot and stay there for a while,” Shettle said.

One Emergency Blue Light call was reported. One call for marijuana was reported, though Schettle described a call for marijuana as “any odor.” Five calls were reported to assist citizens with things like directions and one call was reported for social contact. Two calls were reported for suspicious incidents, “things that are generally suspicious,” Schettle said. Two calls for suspicious vehicles were made and four calls for checks on welfare, which Schettle said could have been someone stumbling down the street, needing assistance,“or someone’s parents calling and saying their child hasn’t responded in two days.”

Molly McGuire’s owner Tom Taggart said his bar had a profitable weekend. He said they had a line of people going out the door at 10:15 p.m., which he said was a first. Taggart also owns The French Quarter in Oshkosh, which is a bar across the street from McGuire’s and separated from campus by Wisconsin Street.

Taggart said his beverage sales were up 50% from their average weekend and said the food sales at Molly’s were up 20%.

“We’re busy all day on Pub Crawl,” Taggart said. “From morning until close, we had a crowd.” Taggart owns Callejones as well and said their sales were up too. Taggart’s fourth business, Mahoney’s, didn’t do the same numbers as the bars, but did see an increase in food sales, he said.

UP Lt. Trent Martin said Pub Crawl continued to drift away from its origin and UWO students were using it as a day to act recklessly and trash campus-area grounds.

“Pub Crawl in Oshkosh continues to be an event focused around alcohol consumption as the primary purpose of the event and is not what most people would consider a Pub Crawl,” Martin said. “The Oshkosh Pub Crawl has turned into individuals throwing large alcohol parties at their houses or in their yards, which is what we saw here this past weekend …

“We were able to watch individuals roam from house to house with the mere purpose of looking for which residence had the most activity and most people, and then invite themselves into yards and houses of people they often didn’t even know. When officers would randomly ask individuals leaving or going into house parties or backyards if they knew who lived there, more often than not, the response was ‘no.’”

Martin said UP responsibilities over the weekend were “to the keep our University, community and assets safe during Pub Crawl, no different than any other day of the week.”