Parties pushing the pandemic? Lexington police got 90 party complaints in 2 weekends
Parties in Lexington haven’t slowed down despite record-high COVID-19 case counts in the city the past two weeks.
The Lexington Police Department said it received complaints about 60 large parties during Halloween weekend and another 30 over the just-completed weekend of the Breeders’ Cup.
The parties were primarily in areas near the University of Kentucky campus, police spokeswoman Brenna Angel said. In comparison, there were 30 party complaints during the weekend of the Kentucky Derby, according to Lexington police. On average, there have been about 20 to 30 party complaints each weekend since classes resumed, Angel said.
The city began a partnership in early October with UK police, and the deal was intended to increase patrols and tamp down on college game day parties. The partnership has continued as the university police department’s schedule has permitted, Angel said. The departments will partner to patrol the city for UK’s home football game against Vanderbilt University Saturday, Angel said.
Daniel Cartier, a UK student, said he’d seen fellow students “party constantly and receive zero punishment.”
“It just boggles my mind how UK (doesn’t) at the absolute minimum require bi-weekly testing and contact tracing for all their students,” he said.
Students who violate UK’s COVID-19 guidelines are subject to discipline, per the office of student conduct. There have been 71 cases in which the code of student conduct has been violated regarding COVID-19 health and safety guidelines this semester, UK spokesman Jay Blanton said Monday.
“Sanctions would have ranged from education kinds of measures to preliminary suspensions,” he said.
But UK officials haven’t acknowledged a significant number of party complaints in recent weeks.
“We only had a few reports of off-campus parties related to Halloween weekend,” Blanton said Friday. He said Monday that UK only received “a couple of reports regarding off-campus activity” during the weekend of the Breeders’ Cup.
“It was very light.”
A video shared to Reddit showed a large party in a Lexington backyard during the weekend. Commenters thought it was likely the partiers were students.
“You really think college kids are gunna not party just because some old bureaucrats at the school say so? Maybe the administration at the school should have not allowed kids back to Lexington and just remove the possibility of kids in large gatherings with no masks or social distancing,” one commenter said.
When asked about video, Blanton said it would be hard to link it to any student activity.
Lexington has reported its largest COVID-19 surge yet in recent weeks. There have been 1,038 cases reported since Halloween weekend, and Saturday featured the most new cases in a single day: 236. UK student cases increased by 160 over the past week. The rolling seven-day average for students has more than doubled over the past couple of weeks.
Some residents who tested positive for COVID-19 have reported attending Halloween parties, according to the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department.
“It’s hard to say definitively that it is contributing to the spike, however,” health department spokesman Kevin Hall said.
UK has repeatedly declined to release information about COVID-19 “clusters” being tied back to student parties. But Blanton said Friday that the school felt confident it could continue to manage the virus.
Increases in UK student cases had been low for a few weeks before trending upward again over the last couple of weeks. In late September, UK students were accounting for more than half of Lexington’s new cases.
This story was originally published November 9, 2020 at 2:27 PM with the headline "Parties pushing the pandemic? Lexington police got 90 party complaints in 2 weekends."