Students at the University of Otago and Otago Polytechnic — the city’s economic lifeblood and source of much of its personality — are back in town, and soon to hit the books.
But before they do that, they hit the booze. In many cases hard, in some cases too hard, and in some isolated cases dangerously hard.
Flo-Week (Flat Orientation Week) has gone; Orientation Week is now in full swing. The unofficial parties of last week have morphed into the officially organised events of this week.
For the vast majority of students this will be an enjoyable rite of passage, a unique time in their Otago experience, to be looked back fondly on.
That is as it should be. They are young, embarking on their way in the world and learning how to stretch their wings and fly away from the family nest.
But some will fly too close to the sun. Hospitals have reported several students attending the emergency department with injuries, police have reported instances of bottle throwing and vandalism.
Alcohol is a factor in much of this, as students learn its powers and their limits. Some of those lessons will be hard ones.
Dunedin’s emergency services and the polytechnic and university themselves are well used to this. Given these festivities are an annual event, they all know what to expect when the students arrive back and are well prepared for most of what eventuates.
The University of Otago proactively provides all students with information about how to party safely and outlines expectations of how students are meant to behave.
In a new initiative, the university proctor has met with representatives of some of the student quarter’s more notorious party flats to make sure that the fun and games do not get out of control.
However, some things are harder to plan for: a young person who was not a student fell from a university building last week and badly injured themselves.
Sad instances like this are a reminder that even though all the help possible may be given to people, at some point you have to trust people’s individual sense of responsibility and self-awareness that they themselves, or other people, do not come to harm.
It is also worth remembering that while Orientation is a student event, that not everyone who attends — or those who cause trouble — is a student.
The polytech, university and students associations can reach their own constituencies, but it is much harder to get the "behave yourself" message out to those younger, older or from out of town wanting to join in the revelry. Non-students are a known source of potential problems, possibly because it is not their flats or streets which they are misbehaving in.
There will be some who feel that the large emphasis on safety being promulgated by the tertiary education providers, students associations and authorities is overkill, that their ministrations are watering down the authentic Otago experience.
There is an element of rose-tinted spectacle wearing in such misty watercolour memories of the way we were. It seems unlikely today’s students are having any less fun than those who preceded them.
What is different is that in recent years Otago students have suffered severe injuries in balcony collapses or falling from roofs. One, Sophia Crestani, died in a stairwell crush during a student flat party, and The Sophia Charter now exists to try to prevent a similar tragedy from occurring.
A bit more supervision than some might like is no small price to pay given the cost of something potentially preventable going wrong.
The carnival is not over but there is now a much greater emphasis on looking out for others and trying to nip trouble in the bud. That is no bad thing.
Dunedin’s students have chosen to come to a world-class university in a special part of the world. They are most welcome here and we want them to enjoy their time in Otago.
But, most importantly of all, when they have graduated their memories of their time in the South should be happy, not melancholy.
