In an attempt to lower risks associated with house parties, a campus-community coalition announced a set of guidelines for throwing safer house parties Wednesday. University of Wisconsin officials warned students against selling shots, using cover charges and allowing large crowds to gather at house parties.

UW Dean of Students Luoluo Hong and the Madison Police Department could not say how they plan to notify students or encourage them to use the guidelines, however.

“It’s a more proactive approach; we don’t want to wait until the party has gotten out of hand,” Hong said at a press conference.

Hong said the Policy, Alternative, Community and Education Project’s student-written guidelines are designed to teach students to plan safer house parties and create awareness of the dangers in combining irresponsible drinking with house parties.

She said UW and the police department’s current position on house parties is to encourage students to take care of each other to prevent alcohol-related incidents like sexual harassment or fighting.

“The vast majority of students make wise, smart, caring choices, and we want to empower them to take a leadership role that trickles down to other students,” Hong said.

Madison Police Central District Captain Luis Yudice said the police department does not have the resources to revive the “party patrol” of officers who sent undercover police to parties to ticket underage drinkers.

“Even if we could double the number of officers, we couldn’t control every house party,” he said.

Yudice said law-enforcement efforts would target party hosts, who can face legal consequences for serving alcohol to underage drinkers.

The downtown area leads the city in aggravated assault, sexual assault, robbery, burglary, vehicle thefts and larceny, and while some of the incidents happened at bars, most of them occur at house parties, Yudice said.

He also said he hopes the house-party guidelines will raise concern for these issues among the student community.

“It’s up to students to make mature decisions, the police can’t be everywhere,” Yudice said.

Yudice also said intoxicated partygoers are at an increased risk to be a victim or an instigator of alcohol-related crime because of the unregulated atmosphere.

He illustrated this point by recalling incidents the police responded to Labor Day weekend, including a Langdon Street house party where guests threw a beer can that shattered the window of a passing car. The driver and passengers armed themselves with an ax and garden tools and kicked down the front door before police arrived and made an arrest.

The police department sends property managers a letter when there is significant property damage or someone is injured, and it is up to the landlord to take action against tenants, Yudice said.

The house-party guidelines include reasons a party may be shut down and/or fined. These include charging cover, selling shots, serving alcohol to underage guests, growing numbers of attendees causing a party to get out of hand, and no one staying sober to monitor the party.

The guide also suggests securely locking valuables to prevent theft and covering items that could be tampered with such as furnaces and radiators to prevent property damage.

To prevent sexual assault and fights, the guide says not to allow people to walk home alone, to limit areas where guests could have sexual encounters, and to step in if someone is being pursued against their will or is looking to fight.

The guide emphasizes that hosts may be liable for damages if a crime such as an assault happens. The hosts can be cited after the fact, even if they were not present at the time of the crime.

The guide also recommends ways to keep police away from a house party: alert neighbors beforehand and ask them to come to you with concerns instead of calling the police first; take walks around the house to see if the music or guests are too loud or there is a line to get in; and use fans and vents to keep the temperature cooler to prevent people from passing out or getting sick.

UW senior Peter Marlenga, co-author of the guidelines, said he used his practical experiences to tell students what he thought should happen at house parties. He said he became involved in PACE to make sure their guidelines were accurate.

He said an effective way he kept his house parties under control was to use bouncers to throw out people who are too drunk.

“If a few people stay sober every once in a while, it’s not a big deal to throw a safe house party,” Marlenga said.