Of the 24,183 students living off-campus in apartments and houses this semester, no doubt many will host house parties.

Fully aware of the prevalence of parties, the Iowa City police are planning a voluntary registry for these alcoholic celebrations; the program likely won’t be implemented until the spring semester.

While we’re skeptical the plan will be an unabashed success, we encourage students to give it a chance, if only out of financial self-interest. The registry could be a huge boon for students and could prevent partiers from paying hefty fines. It could also aid police officers, who would be able to focus on more important things than driving around forcing house parties to disperse.

Currently, when police receive a noise complaint about a house party, they dispatch an officer to check the house, who then issues a citation if a raucous party is underway. Under the registration system, however, the police would call the registered party’s organizers if they received a noise complaint, Iowa City Police Chief Sam Hargadine told the DI. The organizer would then have 20 minutes to either quiet down or end the party.

If police received no more complaints after the 20 minutes were up, officers wouldn’t visit the party. In contrast, another complaint could result in citations to party organizers and attendees.

It’s clear many UI students, at least in the proposed registry’s infancy, would opt not to sign their party up with the cops. Why should students alert the very authorities who bust them for hosting unruly parties?

That was sophomore Drew Pederson’s beef with the proposal.

“I don’t know if I like the idea of the police knowing that there is a party,” he said. “The police don’t want us to party, so it seems counterintuitive to let them know there is a party going on.”

But UI senior Molly McPartland said she would.

“I would do it,” she said. “I’m not worried about the cops taking advantage of that information. There are enough people downtown for them to bother. I would rather be warned than not.”

Putting our visceral incredulity aside, the proposal has worked in Fort Collins, Colo., the home of Colorado State and the town Iowa City’s plan is modeled after.

“Our students love it, and there is a very high success rate,” Fort Collins Neighborhood Resources’ Melissa Emerson told the DI. A 2009 survey found a whopping 97 percent of students who registered house parties said they would do so again. In addition, noise complaints have dropped almost 50 percent since fall 2003, Emerson said.

The plan could also be helpful to police, who would be able to focus their resources on more serious crimes than house parties. Hargadine said police would rather respond to more serious calls than noisy parties, and the proposal may allow them to do just that.

While the Editorial Board acknowledges abuses are unlikely, we’re still wary of the increased power accorded to police under the plan. Police could simply call every party that is registered and tell them to disperse, or dispatch officers to every registered party at some point during the night, using the registry to make them easier to find.

We admit a massive sting using all of the names on the registry list is unlikely — house parties are near the bottom of the list of police priorities. And it is far easier to make a phone call after a complaint than sending a squad car. Still, both officials and students should remain cognizant of the uptick in power the proposal would engender.

Hargadine pledged not to abuse the program if it is enacted.

“When we say we won’t [shut down registered parties without a courtesy call], there is an integrity factor there, and it will not be violated,” Hargadine told the DI.

We sure hope so. And if police did begin to abuse their newfound power, students would have one recourse: stop registering their parties.

So while we have our reservations, the proposed system appears to be a good one. After all, a phone call is a much better way to end the night than an onerous fine.