Student hits back over Hyde St

There was once a time when students fought for the rights of others. When they marched for an end to war and to oppression. When they marched for human rights and equal rights and civil rights.  Sure, they did illegal drugs and love-ins, but a huge amount of their spare time and energy went into trying to make this world a better place.

Now it seems all some students can be bothered fighting for is the right to take over public streets for their parties, get blind drunk and burn couches whenever the whim strikes them.

How did this happen? Politicians, with little or no public consultation as I recall, lowered the legal drinking age to include a sector of society that quite simply does not have the maturity to handle that freedom.

"The couches are always in the middle of the road there is actually a low risk of a fire spreading onto a flat with all those people standing around it.

Hate to burst your alarm bubble, but its probably more dangerous for us to try and intervene then to just wait and watch it die down. "

Hannah,

I know you don't see what we mean, but what you have just said shows that you are all aware of the risks but want to do it anyway. Students stand around and watch them burn? Oh goodie. Let's burn another one and watch it burn too. Why?

Because lots of people are inebriated beyond caring that this is not a sane thing to do. Inebriation rarely brings more sanity to a situation. And still nobody said you were an idiot. You are defending the mob single handedly. All of them: idiots as well as others.

As I see that this is flogging a dead horse, this will be the last reply on this subject I make, but I do hope some people somewhere - especially students - are thinking about it all. I know those that have been blogging have.

Now I think we need that move to committed action, preferably with student co-operation but without if necessary.

I look forward to the Facebook page promised so we can set up a meeting, for we cannot let this keep happening at the whim of one part of the community which insists that their irresponsible behaviour is responsible, without onsulting nor wishing, it seems, to hearing, the rest of us.

...But burning couches is, in fact, illegal.

Hannah- There are two aspects of this issue: the street party and its inevitable aftermath.  I have no problem with you getting official approval for the street party and associated activities and engaging in them - as long as those activities are restricted to the proscribed area. But were they? Not from what I experienced in the early evening on the north end of campus.

One might claim this year was a one-off that will not be repeated, but I think there is at least the perception that things are getting worse and the probability that eventually the Hyde St party will go the way of the Undie 500 and Toga Parade - completely banned after a particular bad year.

I'll stick by my proposed solution - badly behaving students would have their financial support for attending university incrementally cut.  I think there would be broad voter support for such a proposal and just the threat of that might be sufficient to solve the problem.

Actually, yes it did;

"Half of our future leaders appear to be idiots. The other half appear to be sheep." Those were the words of Willowbank station officer Grant Clarkson yesterday.

I personally wasnt there when they started the fire - however even if I was, what exactly do you suggest I should have done? Run and jumped on the couch to try and stomp it out? Many of our flats dont have hoses. Shoud i run back and forth from the kitchen of some random person's flat with a cup full of water?

The couches are always in the middle of the road there is actually a low risk of a fire spreading onto a flat with all those people standing around it. Hate to burst your alarm bubble, but its probably more dangerous for us to try and intervene then to just wait and watch it die down.

Many/most of my family parties and gatherings include beach fires, bonfires, campfires etc - this is just our version of them. It wasnt illegal because we had already arranged it with the proctor and the police in advance and shut down our street. It obviously wasnt antisocial - it was the most social thing that ever happend on our street. We cleaned all the mess up ourselves so i dont see why everyone else is complaining about it.

All you people focus on are the negitives. All im saying is there were many positive aspects to it as there are at every event. I agree that some people take it too far, but i dont appreaciate being judged as one of them, and neither do my friends, neighbours and the thousands of people who enjoyed Hyde St without doing anything wrong.

@ hannahfaith: The article didn't identify "you" as the sheep or idiot, but all the students who stood back and watched this atrocious behaviour take place and do nothing.

I'm reasonably confident that if this "party" took place in your parents back yard and your mates started fires and smashing bottles etc they wouldn't just stand there and admire the maturity and community spitrit their offspring was displaying.

Sorry to inform you, but it is not "your" street at all. And we didn't "go there". Some of us have to travel through the mess that was made just to get to where we need to go. Why should we have to alter our lives to suit such antisocial/illegal behaviour? [Abridged]

Group: 'Dunedin Community Stakeholders Unite' on Facebook.

Let's talk about it...

Now we are talking. Sparrowhawk and Helenz, this is the kind of community involvement we need. A brainstorming session made up of different stakeholders - university staff, students, council members, police. I love it. Let's do it.  I will start a FB page tomorrow and post the link here.

Now we're talking. What can we do?

Well, maybe a start would be a petition to council asking for street parties and activities to be banned unless conducted in university grounds or some other private property. Maybe we could petition the police for a no tolerance policy on drunk and disorderly behaviour on the streets and ask them to get back on the beat. Maybe we could email the police minister. Maybe we could suggest that any public activity (like the Toga Parade) be alcohol free and have police on site to ban any one who is over the limit from participating.

What we need is a brainstorming session with those of us that care (which doesn't have to exclude concerned students, of course). Any ideas how we could get together over this? Start a private Facebook chat room if anyone knows how to do that for a start so we can set up meeting arrangements.

Any advance on any of that?

I agree with you New to Dunedin. The problem runs very very deep and extends far beyond students in NZ. I have said that myself already on other posts here.

So tell me - if I have reached a point where I am tired of walking through vomit and broken glass and driving home late at night through drunk students weaving across the road and if I moved house just to get away from a bunch of endlessly partying students who were drunk in charge of a bag of fireworks and firing rockets at the wall of my house - what do you suggest I do? Remain silent for fear of offending the students involved? Surely coming together as a community starts with some people having the guts to voice their irritation on forums such as this?

Yes the problem runs very deep but sitting on our hands and not speaking up about what's not acceptable on a local level is not the way to get anything done about the problems no matter who's causing them. Yes this particular issue is around student behaviour but we need to speak up in general. If the All Black fans are out of order we need to do the same. We must let people know where our boundaries are or we have no come back if we get what we are not prepared to accept.  Maybe some of our students act like sheep (from the ODT not my statement Helen) because the adults around them do too. Speaking up is stepping out of the paddock and up to the plate. We need to do more of it, and we need to take the next step from the blog to the judiciary and the polies. And we need to be the squeaky wheel until the culture changes.

Drink as much as you want, just don't:-

Break stuff
Burn stuff
Disturb your neighbours
Waste Police and Fire Service time

And take personal responsibility for the impact of excessive alcohol on your personal wellbeing.

The problem of drinking in Dunedin, and throughout NZ is not only a student problem. Of course students should be respectful, of course there should be consequences for their actions, of course public drunkeness is annoying. But students are easy to blame and complain about in an environment where the problem obviously runs deeper. New Zealand has a major problem with alcohol, which contributes to its other major problems - injury, domestic violence and violence in general. A dual effort by officials and parents is needed. It's a big-picture problem, a reason to come together as a community, not a reason to complain that students are trashing your neighborhood.

Young adults learn their way in the 'real world' though trial and error, mistake after mistake. This may include annoying the neighbors and dealing with complaints, just like food shopping, doing your own laundry and running out of money at the end of the month. Those are the kind of mistakes that played a role in shaping me into the person I am today - or am I the only one who is not perfect? Helennz, you can't live anywhere in Dunedin without overlapping with the student popluation, and thank goodness for that. They need us, just like we need them.  

No, I am not missing the point. The point was that I was on the front page of the ODT cleaning up under the heading of 'students are idiots and sheep' when I never did anything wrong. I had fun and enjoyed seeing the creativity and community in my street. I know many of my friends and neighbours that were not drunk. I know most of them are not idiots or sheep, and that is what I was defending. The fact that we choose to party the way we do is our choice not yours, and it's our street, our little community not yours, no one invited you and you didn't have to come. 'Love it or leave it'. Dunedin will survive without you, but it wouldn't survive without us.
[Abridged]

I think it's you who is missing the point New in Dunedin. Of course I'm glad there is a university in Dunedin. I work there. And of course I love the vitality and energy that the students bring to the city. That's not my issue. It's public drunkenness I object to and sadly in Dunedin most of that seems to be centred in North Dunedin where I live. Are you suggesting residents in North Dunedin should move out and hand the entire area over to those students who want the freedom to be blind drunk and trash the place without being inconvenienced by residents' complaints? How would that prepare then for the real world outside university, I wonder?

What an attitude. I'm a professional too. So what? Does that mean we exemplify for people that nothing can change? That we have to put up and shut up or leave? That being the case Dunedin is in a bad way.
Yes the gold rush is over. And Dunedin is no longer the capital. And Otago University is not turning us into the intellectual capital we could be either. It's turning us into party town. We already have one of those that does a much better job than we ever can. It's called Queenstown. If we got over the Gold Rush, we can probably get over the loss of a partying university.
Maybe we could become the town of art, culture and design? How about the documentary capital of NZ? Or the hub again of the music industry. The opportunities are wide open for any who would be willing to do something with whatever's already here, let alone what could be. Let's choose what we want, not put up with what's served up to us.

[Abridged]

"Behind the clouds the sun is shining,
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life a little rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary." (Longfellow)

I'm a professional, and have lived my share of life in college towns. The fact of the matter is ... if there was no University of Otago, there would be no Dunedin. Period. The gold rush is over, folks. Either love it or leave it.

Sorry Hannah. You are still missing the point. Many of us have hard days and weeks at the grindstone but we don't turn the neighbourhood over to our stress relief efforts. And if you don't call the Hyde Street party a 'binge' I think you're in denial. Hard work does not give the students carte blanche to burn and take over, causing damage, broken glass, and cost to the community. I am sure your friends are good people. That was never in question. It's how you choose to enjoy yourselves or let off steam so publicly and at the expense of others. If you can't see that, and keep taking this personally, you are possibly defending for the sake of defence. This idea that we can do whatever we like when we are drunk has to change. That's all.

[Abridged]

Well said sparrowhawk- just wish something constructive can be done to get this rubbish sorted. The trouble is just getting worse and the authorities are far to weak to act against this behaviour. We'll talk at the end of the year and you'll see we would not be one step closer in solving this issue. Our motto should be "Get rid of troublemakers - get Dunedin  back."

This topic is getting kind of boring, isn't it? These days student controversy seems to centre more on drinking misbehaviour and not on students being part of 'the critic and conscience' of society working toward a better future for all.Is this Hyde Street stuff all that stirs them up now? If so, it's pathetic.

First of all, like I said in the article I was not drunk, and I am not a binge drinker. How can you assume that I was even saying 'carpe diem' means binge drinking? Or that I act like an ass? As far as I'm concerned living life to the full does annually involve a creative, community street party.

Secondly how can all of you come on here and assume you even know the people you are talking about - 'drinking untill you puke and stumbling home in the streets on a regular basis' 'acting like an ass'- That is actually not true, many of them are your typical kind, thoughtful, intelligent, active students studying subjects like law, medicine or creative arts and achieving high marks. They are not always binge drinkers but after a hard week of studying like to let loose and go out to town ... sometimes they drink too much and end up worse for wear but often are learning from their mistakes in the process.
[Abridged]

Were they not tertiary-level students, one would suspect that the contributors to these 'festivities' would be out getting themselves paralytic anyway and conscientious and responsible students would not be copping the flak. North Dunedin was always a 'party' area, as I used to flat there in the 1960s; the difference was, that people in those days had sufficient sense of responsibility not to damage another individual's property nor to inflict themselves to an undue extent on their non-student neighbours during their drunken escapades.
In the last fifty years, (admittedly quite a long time), something has gone AWOL from the human psyche, and now 'enjoyment' seems to be indissolubly linked to 'trashing' and it matters not, to what, to whom it belongs, or the costs and inconvenience involved.
The true 'scarfies' disappeared years ago towards the end of the era when if someone accidentally dropped a bottle 'between parties', the offender was not allowed (by his mates, usually), to just walk away from the shattered glass; someone stood over him, or assisted, until it was all safely gathered-up and disposed-of.

I fear for some of our students, or so-called "future leaders", when they reach their 30s, as this is the age when medical experts predict brain and mental disorders surface as a result of binge drinking when younger. I suppose you can be a "future leader" in that respect.

Hey, if you are not one of the drunken disorderly this is not about you. This is about the "people taking it too far". I don't have any problems with people (let alone students) that drink responsibly, and respect other peoples property. That includes other streets, passing drivers, A & E, police, fire brigades, and the DCC clean up crews etc.

If this is your town too, think beyond the boundaries of your street and your mates and care about the effect this has on the town in general, and other people that live here. If you are not one of the problems, join those that are trying to express what they see as the problem, and help to find a solution, because doing nothing is no longer an option.

For the record, I don't like the Robber Baron landlords either, but to cap the rents, the destruction would have to be capped too.To do that, the drinking habits of the problematic student drunks, whether they be 'the few' or the many, would have to change.

Are you willing to be the beginning of that change? I hope so. Because if something doesn't change the rhetoric is going to get much worse, as it has over the past couple of years. Don't let's wait for the disaster.

Nobody's denying them the right to party. Nobody is denying them the right to drink. Nobody is talking about removing democratic rights. But our rights have never allowed damaging property, being a public nuisance, or conducting dangerous behaviour to the detriment of the public at large. That's why we have developed democratic laws. The suggestion that those laws might be selectively being applied for economic reasons is diminishing our democracy. That the rest of us are encouraged to shut up about its unacceptability to us is, well, unacceptable.
I defend the right of people to have their genuine rights defended. But that has to be mutual. The expectation that drunken students and rugby fans are exempt from that in the public domain is a move in a direction towards chaos. Anything that encourages it is not very well advised.

[Abridged]

As a downside, how about the fact that it's an offense under the Resource Management Act 1991?

s15 (2)
No person may discharge a contaminant into the air, or into or onto land, from a place or any other source, whether moveable or not, in a manner that contravenes a national environmental standard....

[Abridged]

I like this idea. If the students take to drinking cups of green tea at their parties and remain fully in control of their mental faculties and able to remember what the couch burning stand is actually for it might just work!

Excuse me, Dunedin does not belong to you. We students live here this is our home too - Hyde st keg party was on 'Hyde St' not your street, this is our neighbourhood and everyone here agreed to it.

I find your attitude towards students offensive. We wouldn't think twice about going to another university if you kicked us out - Dunedin is cold, we are often taken advantage of by landlords etc etc. We look out for each other and we enjoy having a good time. It isn't about 'entitlement' - we belong here just as much as you do. 

As Omrk pointed out, the atmosphere here is what attracts people and what keeps many of the students here who end up staying. There are always people taking it too far. That's no reason to label us all.

[Abridged]

Clearly these students are the product of their environment. Clearly, each of us individually needs to take a good hard look at what role we played leading up to this out-of-control situation, and what role we can play in putting things right.

I would also like to see several interest groups here in Dunedin take a good hard look at the role they played and continue to play too - namely the politicians, the DCC, the breweries, the supermarkets and the liquor outlets. I would like to know what role they are prepared to play in putting this situation right. 

I am very fearful that one of these days we are going to see an almighty tragedy here in Dunedin and then it will be too late. As I see it, now is the time for vested interest to be set aside and for us all to act as a united force. 

Everyone in Dunedin pays rates. Students mostly pay through the rent they pay to their landlord. We are every bit as entitled to a democratic voice as anyone else living in Dunedin. We all live in this town.

Perhaps you do a job with great social benefit and pay lots of taxes. Most students are too young to have paid much tax. This is not a reason to disenfranchise a group from democratic society. The fact that you are a taxpayer doesn't make you so entitled either - we could all do with a little humility. Our town and land have been built up and made productive by the hard work of a lot of people before any of us were born.

Students make a huge contribution to society in Dunedin. If it weren't for the atmosphere they bring to the town Dunedin wouldn't stand a chance of attracting skilled people from out of town. The economic outlook would be pretty dire. They are also a direct source of income through the funding they bring in to the University, the incomes of many private landlords and the money they spend at Dunedin businesses.

I am a student, but I have also worked for many years in Dunedin and paid a fair bit of tax. I'm also a ratepayer. I'm over 30, and while the Hyde Street keg party might not appeal to me personally I'll still fight for the right to party.