Hours before a recent Syracuse basketball game, the parking lot to Castle Court cleared out and a pickup truck pulled in. The driver killed the engine, as a group of people strode up to the truck. Speedily and efficiently, they unloaded significant amounts of alcohol — a party in the making on a big athletic day.

A bit later, two men, one older and one younger, and both clad in Syracuse apparel, joined in the fun with a 12-pack of Coors Light in hand.

“Is this allowed?” the older man asked. The younger one told him not to worry: “We could get shut down, but we’ll just move elsewhere.”

The party went on, breaking up hours later — voluntarily.

It’s been about a year and a half after parking lot parties at the apartment complex were banned. Yet over the past five weeks, the famed location of the Syracuse University party scene has re­emerged as a place where hundreds crowd shoulder-­to-­shoulder — with beer cans stacked on tables — to celebrate Syracuse basketball games. The operators of Castle say the ban remains in place, but their policy has been undercut by a police force that has shown little willingness to enforce it.

Andrea Cornell, the assistant general manager at Campus Hill, which operates Castle Court, said that that while the landlords do all they can to prevent the parties, “it’s so known for it now so it’s hard to stop it.”

“They’re not allowed at all,” she said.

The ban took effect in August 2014 about two weeks after The Princeton Review named the university the No. 1 party school in the United States. Campus Hill sent an email to Castle Court residents announcing the ban.

“The University has expressed their very deep concern,” the email read. “Per our conversations with the University and the Syracuse Police Department, we wanted to officially let you know that this will not be allowed going forward and there will no longer be any large parties in the Castle Court parking lot.”

The ban was a result of an agreement made among the three institutions — SU, SPD and Campus Hill — after the university raised some safety concerns, including excessive alcohol consumption, the setting of fires in the parking lot and students hanging off balconies.

All three groups continue to take on those “issues of concern,” said Kevin Quinn, SU’s senior vice president for public affairs, in a recent response to a reporter’s question about the ban.

Law enforcement officials say that the parties aren’t banned, but rather that police will intervene if there is a safety risk.

“We do not have any specific policy as related to this one location, and we are not directly monitoring that location,” said Syracuse police spokesman Sgt. Richard Helterline. “If we are notified of an event, then monitoring may occur if there is a cause for concern, as in last year with a large promoter planning to come there.”

The Department of Public Safety might help SPD with party control if the situation is large enough to disrupt traffic on sidewalks or on the street, said Hannah Warren, DPS’s public information officer, who has since left the university.

Student Association President Aysha Seedat said the Student Association is “primarily concerned about student safety more than anything else.”

In October 2015, SA got involved with a Syracuse Common Council ordinance that would have amended “The Social Host Ordinance” to make off­­-campus underage drinking an offense that could lead to prison time for a party’s host if police were to discover underage drinking or illegal drug consumption there. The ordinance was voted down.

“In this situation, we did get involved because we didn’t think that it was fair for students to have that penalty, not on the first offense,” Seedat said.

Common Councilor Nader Maroun, who represents the city’s Fifth District — which encompasses part of the university neighborhood — and serves on the Public Safety Committee, was in the majority that voted against the ordinance. He did not return a request for comment to this story.

After the initial ban on the Castle Court parties, students started a movement to “#SaveCuse.” The campaign culminated in a YouTube video made by ImShmacked, an entertainment company known for its videos showing parties on college campuses. The video, titled “#SaveCuse,” has almost 10,000 views on YouTube.

“It’s the most important thing about being in college, being around people who make you feel good and make you want to have a good time,” a woman says in the video. “Taking away a place that allows us to do just that is only hurting the university as a whole.”

On that recent basketball game day, with the Castle Court parking lot nearly full with students and other members of the SU community, a student raised his red Solo Cup and said the rallying cry, “Save ‘Cuse.”

Police officers watched from the sidewalk.

Editor’s Note: Over the past month, The Daily Orange has collaborated with the Department of Newspaper and Online Journalism at Syracuse University on a series of stories relating to alcohol culture on the SU campus. Multiple stories will appear in The D.O. in the coming days.

Published on April 3, 2016 at 11:34 pm

Contact Justin: [email protected] | @jmattingly306