Rituals scrapped at Knox

Yes you are right.  I do appreciate the students here... but I think anyone who has lived here for a few years knows that the drinking is a serious issue!

And yes it is not only students - but to pretend that encouraging a heavy drinking culture does not have negative impacts is just plain silly!

What happens in Dunedin during summer is the gangs start to come into town and by the end of summer someone is stabbed. I'd prefer to live in a vibrant studious city that's always been about excellence in academia. I like living in a city that understands personal responsibility and how to have fun. Dunedin was all about the students before you were born and it will be after you die. You can't wish them away, and without them Dunedin would be economically unviable.

Correction:  A link in factors does not always imply causation.

But don't make the mistake of thinking that causation never implies causation (a common "mistake" that many have used to find wriggle-room  - the tobacco industry prime among them.  The alcohol industry perhaps a close second?)

As for your Dubai comment.  Personally I would prefer it if the drunken louts were shipped off there and I stayed here.

Ever spent a summer in Dunedin when the students are away?  Imagine
that all year around.  Then Dunedin would earn the Edin part of its
name.

A link in factors does not imply causation. The cause is that people make bad choices, the alcohol can't do that for them. Science is a fact confirmed by a physical experiment. The pseudo 'Science' you talk of is a generalisation implied by a study. There are plenty of places you could go and live where alcohol is illegal as you seem to think it should be as you keep implying no one ahould be responsible for their own actions once they've had a drop. Perhaps you would be happier living in Dubai.

"@MaxW: Alcohol does not cause violence or vandalism."

I am not sure how to reply to such a naive statement.  Ask the police whether alcohol consumption leads to more acts of vandalism and violence.  Or look at any number of studies carried out showing a strong causation: 

May I suggest just two to get you started:This NZ police report 

Which says that:

 
Out of all reported crime, police note alcohol is a factor in:

• a third of all violence
• a third of all family violence
• half of all serious violence
• half of all drugs and anti-social offences
• at least 1 in 5 cases of sexual offending
• 1 in 4 traffic offences
• 1 in 5 traffic crashes
• 1 in 4 property offences.

See also this report:

I would like to believe that individuals really did have that much control over themselves when they are intoxicated but the anecdotal and scientific evidence way heavily against your assertion.

@MaxW: Alcohol does not cause violence or vandalism. Blame and punish the individual. If it continues to be a legal drug then you accept that some people will misuse it. However they and only they are accountable for their actions, and ruining the fun for everyone else is not the answer. Again: Blame and punish the individual, not the group that you are generalising to be 'students'.

Well you are right.

The cowards smashing stuff up and down the street did not stick around to show me their student ID so I have no "proof" as such.

However: (i) the vandalism and smashing of bottles starts when the semester starts and ends when the semester ends; (ii) the bunch of people (men and women) smashing things came out off the property of one of the university halls. But I have no proof it was a student you are right.  It just seems very likely.

But whether or not it was students is irrelevant - the reason they were smashing property and vomiting on the streets had one cause:  the binge drinking culture which exists around the University campus.  The actions of the council and university to curtail this "culture" will hopefully reduce the hooliganism of students and non-students alike.

http://www.odt.co.nz/campus/university-otago/197797/university-blames-non-students-over-fires

and blame and punish the individual. 

I wonder what proof you have that it was University of Otago students that damaged your car, or the person throwing up on the street was actually a student. Every year at the Hyde Street Keg Party people are arrested, and the majority of them are not students. 

University students are people who have been preselected by the education system to be intelligent enough to attend university. It is much more often the case that the incidents you speak of are caused by young workers, who are then said to be students, because hey they're about the same age.

My experience of the University of Otago culture was wholly positive, and just like my father's experience and his father's experience it involved some alcohol. That is somewhat part of the culture, just as flavoured tabaccos are part of the culture of some North African countries, and guns are part of the culture in Texas. However, that was not and is not a crime. Blame and punish the individual.

I was a Knoxie several years ago and I have to say I am neither surprised nor upset that these changes are happening. The initiations described as "good-natured feather ruffling" were in my year, events where first year students were herded into a room and yelled at, while second year students  pelted us with cat food, fish oil, tomato sauce and other gross items. At the same time second year students force-fed first years alcohol.  In another orientation event, "bus trip" first year students were subjected to the same behaviour, but on a bus. At one stage of the trip, the "sperm race" first year students were forced to crawl through the octagon. On this occasion a second year male thought it was appropriate to hit me, forcing me to withdraw my participation.

A similar pattern surrounded the ritual of 'bathing', where students were punished for breaking etiquette (dressing inappropriately for dinner etc) by being carried to a cold bath and dunked. Of course all students are told in O-Week that none of these events are mandatory but it was highly encouraged that first years participate if they wanted to fit in.

The consumption of alcohol in the college (in my year there were no restrictions of what sort of alcohol was allowed) was well in excess of what could possibly be considered appropriate or even safe. However, alcohol and initiation are only a few of the problems that the college faces, and in my years there were several very concerning things that went on that were dealt with poorly. If the 'culture' that the Facebook group is fighting to preserve includes the college's past of alcoholism, discrimination, and elitism I would seriously recommend that anyone thinking of sending their child to Knox reconsider. [abridged]

I am not sure that getting drunk until you vomit all over the street and smashing bottle classifies as "culture" anywhere else in the world.

Having had my car smashed multiple times by drunken students travelling between the halls and the pubs I am happy that this sort of "culture" is being stamped out.

Perhaps students will be able to think of some new form of fun which does not involve vandalism and revolting drunkenness.

My congratulations to the university for recognising this as a serious problem and doing something about it.

During the six, or-more years I worked at a hall-of-residence, (as they then were), I saw much ritualised humiliation inflicted upon unsuspecting first-year students in the guise of the generally infantile 'rituals' which took place. To the fore in the Hall which I belonged-to, was someone for whom that humiliation was a means of his retaining his status as 'King-Rat' amongst younger and more impressionable students. That malignant presence caused all sorts of trouble both 'in' and 'for' the Hall concerned. Unfortunately, try as they would, the Hall couldn't get rid of the chief offender, until he was ready-to-go. (You might be surprised who he is in his latest incarnation and what he does, but 'my lips are sealed'). I didn't see that immersing young girls in a bathful of kitchen slops and rotting food, chosen on an increasing index of rising objectionability, accomplished all that much for the edification of the human-race. Sorry to be a 'spoil-sport'.

It's about time some of the initiation ceremonies were stomped on hard by grown-ups.  .

Other aspects of this reported Knox tradition-slaughter are hard to understand.  What is good about this: "traditional names for the Buttery, as well as the Porters Lodge and Ab Epistulis, have been changed to the canteen, reception and administration officer."  Are they trying to make the university experience as much like working in a factory as possible?  Is it wrong to have a special time of one's life blanded into uniform beige?  Of all the things that go to make up the "student experience" you would think that the authorities would have the sense to hold tight to the harmless ones but no, it looks as if they are going to remove those, leaving only the "too hard" ones like public drunkenness with its associated stupid, high risk, behaviour that is potentially dangerous not only to the individual student but to those in their vicinity, and expensive to the whole of society who have to pay to clean up the mess.

Likewise dressing up (relatively speaking) for dinner.  There is a generation who have spent all their lives eating in front of a screen and are clueless when faced with a table and a situation requiring more than a fork and fingers.  Learning the social skills around dining with others is no more alienating than any of the other education a tertiary student needs to acquire.  Presenting oneself appropriately is good practice for the big world they will eventually have to move out into. 

[Abridged]

The Gardies, the Bowler, KC's and the Outback all by one way or another gone, despite having been crowded most Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights before they closed. The Cook an icon of Scarfie culture is just barely hanging on in the face of University pressure.
It's surprising that the culture at Knox has lasted so long, but I suppose given that the University has ruined all the fun outside its own doors it's now looking within them.