On Friday, at about 2:15 p.m., junior public relations major Jessica Fisher noticed a man outside her South Campus apartment issuing tickets to cars parked illegally around her building.

Interested by what she had seen and worried about her parents’ car being issued a similar ticket for not having a proper parking pass, Fisher kept an eye out her window and on the parking lot.

Suddenly, Fisher saw a tow truck start to tow a dark green Subaru from across the lot.

Within seconds, Fisher said, Syracuse University basketball guard Gerry McNamara and forward Matt Gorman ran outside an apartment to stop the truck from taking McNamara’s car.

According to Fisher, McNamara and Gorman approached the driver and tried to talk him out of taking the car. Then, Fisher said, McNamara returned to the apartment before re-emerging on a cell phone.

Eventually, Fisher said, the tow truck driver took the car off his truck and left after five to ten minutes of discussion.

‘It didn’t seem like they were angry,’ Fisher said. ‘But they were talking pretty loudly. I could hear them across the parking lot. They seemed upset.’

Junior television, radio and film major Pat Bither, one of six SU roommates (four men, two women) behind the popular mid-week party spot on a street off Euclid Avenue known as ‘Tonic Tuesdays,’ said the weekly party may switch to monthly.

‘It’s possible,’ Bither said. ‘We’ve been discussing it for the past week or so.’

The weekly party, which was named ‘Tonic Tuesdays’ for the day of the week on which it’s held and drink of choice (gin and tonic), has become a must-stop on Tuesdays for many SU partiers. According to Bither, the party, which also serves vodka and tonics and rum and cokes along with its flagship drink, draws about 150 people each Tuesday.

‘It’s a lot to clean up each week,’ Bither said. ‘The house gets trashed because there are a lot of people each time.’

The roommates came up with the idea over the summer, Bither said, and threw their first bash on the first Tuesday of school. At the first party, Bither said, 60 to 70 people showed up and the event has only grown in size since.

‘It’s a lot of the same people each week,’ Bither said.

Still, Bither said, it’s a possibility that once the weather cools down, so will the frequency of the parties.

If the switch does happen, a definite announcement will come on a future Tuesday, Bither said, so that the regulars don’t show up during an off-week expecting another party.

Many parents could be seen out on the town drinking at the Marshall Street bars this past Parents Weekend. Still, according to Ryan O’Connell, a junior biology major and bar back at Chuck’s Cafe who worked Saturday night, few parents let their drinking get out of hand.

‘There were a decent amount of parents here,’ O’Connell said. ‘They were pretty well-behaved.’

As the night went on, O’Connell said, and the students got crazier, the parents began to filter out of the bar.

According to O’Connell, by the time the bar got busier and the crowd got rowdier, few parents were around. As far as O’Connell knew, there wasn’t an inebriated parent in the bunch.

‘It would have been really funny if there was,’ he said.

With mom and dad safely tucked into their hotel rooms, Saturday night offered a number of high-profile themed parties near campus. A formal cocktail party, an underwear party and a pirate-themed party all garnered large, eager, enthusiastic crowds. Of the three, though, the only one not broken up by the cops: the underwear party. Go figure … Residents in Booth Hall had to endure two fire alarms on Friday night. One at 11:30 p.m., the other at 3:30 a.m.