Youthful bravado was parked outside the heavy wooden door leading into Guelph Provincial Offences Court on Monday.
They began streaming in shorty before 10 a.m.: over 100 young people, most of them students, who received summonses for a variety of offences related to Homecoming partying last September.
Many came wearing borrowed ties, dress shoes that hadn't seen the light of day since a cousin's summer wedding and untucked dress shirts.
Others sported jeans hanging halfway down their rear ends, "Gryphon" sweatshirts and backwards ball caps, resulting in court officer Matt Mullin asking more people to remove their hats in 10 minutes than he likely has had to in the past year.
There were so many of them that some had to wait in an adjoining room and be paged over a loudspeaker when it was their turn.
It was a production line of open liquor, jaywalking, drunk in public, urinating in public and excessive noise tickets.
In a switch in tactics, Guelph Police did not issue offence notices on this year's Homecoming weekend, which would allow people to plead guilty and pay a fine by mail or online rather than show up in court.
Instead, following the lead of other municipalities dealing with the same problem at Homecoming, police issued summonses, requiring the individual to appear in court to enter a plea and be handed a fine.
Some had their parents appear on their behalf.
"I hope he pays you back," Justice of the Peace Walter Rojek said to one mom.
"Oh, he is paying me back," she responded to chuckles from the packed courtroom.
Another partier had his dad show up.
"He's writing an exam," he told Justice Rojek.
"Your son will pay?" he was asked.
"He will pay me immediately," the dad responded.
"Glad to hear that," the Justice said.
Other than the inconvenience of having to come to court and wait for your name to be called, it was actually a pretty good deal for those pleading guilty.
Several tickets were thrown out for having incomplete information or having writing that was illegible and fines were generally cut in half from what a ticket normally is.
People pleading guilty to jaywalking got a $20 fine, being drunk in public a $25 fine, open liquor (the most common offence) got you a $50 fine, public urination $150 and some renters who got ticketed for excessive noise got hit for $150 each.
Homecoming 2019 cost Guelph Police $70,000 just in overtime.
"We just want to apologize to the neighbourhood. We've lived in the house for three years and never had a problem," said one of the three being hit with the excessive noise fines, explaining to the court that they planned a party that got out of hand.
"We regret bothering the neighbourhood," he said.
The party happened, as did almost all of the incidents dealt with on Thursday, on a south end street.
"We were actually grateful when the police showed up," said one of his housemates.
Justice Rojek did some of those appearing in court another favour by not having the details of the public urination tickets read out allowed in court, as was the case with all the other incidents.
"Do you need it read out?" he asked the first young man to plead guilty to public urination.
"No," was the quick response.
That was repeated for that same offence several times, avoiding some potential embarrassment from playing out in the packed room.
