The college party lifestyle is usually associated with American Pie-esque stories; hundreds of people crammed into a house, live bands playing in dining rooms, kegs scattered in backyards and lots of hangovers and hazy memories the next day.

Ranked number 13 on the Princeton Review’s top party schools for 2010-2011, UA students can boast their own number of house parties of epic proportions.

There are always those parties that many students seem to know about – current UA upperclassmen may remember the Reed Street parties from a few years ago and the Depot parties last year.

Bret Reynolds, a UA alumnus who majored in general business, lived at the Reed Street house when their parties were in full effect.

Reynolds said it all began when they realized how perfect their house was for parties.

“It was me and my roommate Chris Cousins behind all the partying,” he said. “We just realized we had an awesome house. It’s perfect. There are big doorways, a huge dining room and den. It pretty much said ‘party in me’ when we came in. I couldn’t help but listen.”

Reynolds said at the time there were six guys living in the house, and the rent was $1600 a month. They thought a party would be a fun way to try to pay the bills.

An accounting student at the time, Reynolds said he used those skills to work out how much to pay for bands and how many kegs to get depending on how many people would show up.

“For that very first party we took $100 from all six of us and we had our first party,” Reynolds said. “We had three kegs at the party and at the time those were $82.50 each and then we used our connections for the bands. We ended up making $1,000 that night so we all got our $100 back, then we had a little lock box that we kept the extra money in. It was our house money, our party money.”

Reynolds said after that the parties were overall very successful.

“This is my grandiose story,” Reynolds said. “Our most successful party was the A-day game a year and a half ago. That weekend we had 300 people pay us five dollars a head, we floated seven kegs and three bands played at our house. There was nothing else that was close to that.”

Reynolds said a few crazy things did happen as a result of the parties.

After a conflict with two different groups of boys at one of the parties, a van of boys came back to Reynolds’ house to fight with the other group, he said.

“They ended up making plans to come back to our house and meet up for a fight,” Reynolds said. “This was probably by 4 or 4:30 in the morning. They came back looking for them, and they ended up kicking in the door and punching one of our roommates in the nose thinking it was one of the other guys. He needed like three stitches. We added some more locks to the doors after that. That was our scary story. That was freaky to me.”

Reynolds said he and his roommates did a lot of worst-case scenario planning.

“You have to remember to not have anything whatsoever in the house,” Reynolds said. “You can’t have those unmentionables. You have to think what could possibly happen. It’s not what will happen but what could happen.”

As a result, Reynolds said the Reed Street parties made an effort to hire a bouncer and eventually a security guard to check IDs. They also put tarps up over the windows.

“We encouraged responsibility,” Reynolds said.

Reynolds had some advice for those who are thinking about throwing big parties at their houses.

“First of all, if you’re going to break a law, don’t break more than one at a time,” Reynolds said. “Usually it’s the combination of two things, don’t break more than one at a time.”

He said, keep in mind that everyone can see you. A house party is loud and it looks like a crazy party no matter what.

Thirdly, get to know your neighbors because those are going to be the people that make the complaints.

“I would say one of the biggest reasons we had so much success is because we had a band no matter what and we paid every band that played,” Reynolds said. “We had bands like the National Trust, Bangtail Cats, Model Citizen and more.”

Robyn Hill, a senior majoring in communicative disorders, went to her first house party just the other night, she said.

“I had never been to a big house party before,” Hill said. “I thought it was a great environment. As long as everything is done with mind to laws and the safety of the people coming I think it’s a great, fun way to have a good time with friends on the weekend. I think every college student needs to experience one in their lifetime. It’s not what you would think. Whether you drink or not, whatever your scene may be, it’s just students getting together, celebrating football, being with friends and listening to good, live music.”