A man who was angered by an email he received from a University of Otago administrator threw confetti ''bombs'' into the toilets at the Dunedin university because he wanted to inflict as much pain on the university as possible, he told police.
It took cleaning staff a considerable time to clean up the mess.
They had to rake ''confetti'' from urinals, wipe jam off walls and pick out glass shards from inside toilet bowls, Judge John Macdonald was told in the Dunedin District Court yesterday when Chauljhin Steven Kim (21), of Dunedin, admitted criminal nuisance offending.
Kim was charged with committing criminal nuisance by doing an unlawful act - depositing dangerous litter knowing his action would endanger the safety and health of staff at the University of Otago.
At the request of public defender Jo Turner, Kim was remanded to January 31, when he will be seeking a discharge without conviction.
Prosecutor Sergeant Graeme Evans said Kim received an email from an administrator at the university querying a matter, on July 1. Kim took exception to the contents of the email and decided to exact retribution.
Between August 1 and November 4, Kim made confetti-type material from paper, bits of hard plastic, small pieces of metal and shards of broken wine-bottle glass. When he had made a large amount of the ''confetti'' he bundled it up, took it to men's toilets at the university, and threw it into urinals, on to the floor and into toilet bowls.
He did this at least 18 times, at men's toilets all around the university campus.
On one occasion, he smeared jam on the walls in one of the toilets.
