Lots to learn yet

St Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland, not the patron saint of cheap booze.

St Patrick’s Day, March 17, is meant to celebrate the arrival of Christianity in Ireland in the 5th century.

It is not meant to be a day to mark alcohol-fuelled idiocy.

Yet that is what it has become, in New Zealand and around the world — just another excuse to get drunk.

Pity the poor Irish, who might want to enjoy their national day and their history and culture in a more moderate fashion.

Of course, the silly hats, the bright green colours, the shamrocks, appeal to partygoers of all ages.

But, with a nice hand along by liquor companies and retailers in the form of discounted alcohol, the prospect of another big party becomes too much for students to resist.

St Patrick’s Day in Dunedin this year was no exception to that rule.

Some students were already drinking and partying at 5am, and by late afternoon there were some very intoxicated people around.

Two students are now seriously injured in hospital after falls from height at parties on Thursday afternoon.

Roofs and balconies are risky places at the best of times.

While in party mode, they are even more dangerous.

We hope both students have a speedy recovery and time to think about making wiser choices.

Why do we seem to be so accepting of out-of-control partying and public drunkenness, so ready to just shrug it off as “oh well, they’re just kids”?

Much comment from emergency services personnel after such mayhem tends to try to play it down, saying most were well-behaved but there were just a few idiots. Really? To many of us, it is pretty obvious there are hundreds of idiots.

Long-suffering north end residents also had to put up with hundreds of drunk students at Brackens View next to the Northern Cemetery, some of them requiring treatment.

What a total waste of time for emergency responders when there will be far more pressing call-outs around the city.

We can’t assume that all the students are from the University of Otago.

Some may well be from Otago Polytechnic and others might even be from further afield, or hangers-on from secondary school.

There is something terribly wrong when people look for any excuse to be drinking at 5am.

Incidents such as this week’s hold a lens up to the awful blight of binge-drinking in our society.

Alcohol abuse is a major factor behind a great deal of violence and unnecessary misery running through our communities. It is a catalyst particularly for domestic violence.

While Dunedin prides itself on being a scarfie town and home to so many tens of thousands of young people each year, the “charm” of that only goes so far.

The city’s reputation is at risk from bad behaviour.

In fact, in recent years, mayors at the annual welcome for first-year university students have explicitly told them they have certain behavioural obligations as part of a city and a community.

It is not a good look at all to see so much broken glass strewn around North Dunedin streets, making the area look like some riot-plagued ghetto.

Just this week, 13-year-old Queen’s High School pupil Violet Campbell-Collins took matters into her own hands and cleaned up the mess left on North Ground by partying students, saying she doesn’t want her city to “look like a dump”.

The question is, what more can the tertiary institutions do about out-of-control partying behaviour?

How about offering stage one alcohol studies to teach how bad liquor can be for you, to highlight repercussions of alcohol abuse, and point out how much money some companies make from others’ suffering.

Maybe one of the most important lessons it could share is: You don’t actually have to be drunk to enjoy yourself.