Chilly temperatures may seem like the cause for low turnout at Milliron Fest, but parties drew crowds to places other than the designated fest street on Friday.
Small crowds of eight to 15 people gathered outside the townhouses of Milliron Street starting around 4:30 p.m. while blaring music could be heard inside a few apartments.
“Hopefully it will pick up later but if it doesn’t by nine, but will probably die down,” Kevin Kroencke, a senior studying electrical engineering, said.
As the hours passed, only a few dozen people joined and departed from the festivities while others shuffled between parties and moved up and down the small street.
“I didn’t think it was Milliron for a second,” Hannah Smith, an OU alumna said. “People just save up their energy for Mill Fest.”
Mill Fest does not start until March 2, but on the corner of Mill Street, a house that seemed larger than all of Milliron Fest combined blared music from a DJ.
Kroencke said that this year’s Milliron Fest was tamer than last year’s fest.
Beer pong, flip-cup and blaring music were the main attraction on the front porches of the townhouses while people could be seen on the balconies of the apartments.
A lot of the parties didn’t have a particular theme, but senior Kevin Pham and his roommates decided to throw a “redneck engineering” themed party on their front porch.
“The only furniture we can use for the party is stuff that we make,” Pham, a digital marketing major, said.
Pham said they were still setting up their party around 7:30 but when it started at 8, they planned to “blow up the house.”
“Sorry momma,” Pham said.
There were no sign of cops between 5 and 9 p.m., but resident and veteran fest-goers expected that they might show up if the parties got more rowdy later in the night.
