St Paddy’s Day: fun for (mostly) us all

I sit writing this on the eve of St Paddy’s Day.

Breathas are snapping up the last of the city’s lime cruiser supply, leprechaun hats are swiftly becoming extinct at $2 shops, and some may have even started drinking (I pity whoever did).

It’s a tale as old as time. You would have seen it in the paper, or on the TV and the story is usually the same. Students are getting drunk, and that’s mostly bad. This is the narrative spread most pervasively in conversations, even when the coverage is relatively balanced. When we resign ourselves to this narrative, the complexity of such a significant day in studentville is closed off, being known only by the few who were there on the ground when it happened.

I thought I would change that by looking at the actors involved on the day and what St Paddy’s means for them.

Police

You would not find any individual more jovial than a police officer on St Paddy’s Day.

Throughout O and Flo Weeks it was hard not to get a kick out of the police playfully bantering with the students.

They generally keep out of the way and only step in when things get really bad, as they probably should. Something about this cheeky banter is really settling, making you feel like you’re totally in control.

It’s probably for this reason that the presence of three to four cop cars just outside the party doesn’t immediately throw everyone off guard. It’s a positive relationship, and reports from the police generally reflect this, consistently reporting that things are fine.

They know students aren’t intending to do harm, they know where to draw the safety line, and they know that the damage is minimal.

University

For the university, it’s a completely different story.

Despite St Paddy’s day being held on a Sunday, giving university staff little jurisdiction over the event, senior leadership at the institution knows very well that their brand image is on the line. Control of the day is important for them, otherwise they look like idiots. Students just aren’t being trusted to control themselves.

Critic Te Arohi, the student magazine which I am a part of, tried setting up an event which would set boundaries and turn student drinking into a supervised, manageable event.

Though it was admittedly a bit of a daft approach, Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) advocated on the magazine’s behalf for police and the university to get behind the event, supporting harm reduction measures on the day.

This idea was promptly shot in the foot as expected, and Critic Te Arohi later learned that the university would be veering in the opposite direction, taking a hard-nosed security stance to hem in the madness up at Brackens lookout.

It’s patronising, it’s backwards, and it’s a form of brand management which paints the students as enemies.

Business

It’s no secret that St Paddy’s Day is big business. The biggest beneficiaries are, of course, the alcohol companies, but it seems like Catacombs will have a healthy shot in the arm as well.

Catacombs stepped up to assist in the Lakehouse host which was the main event of the day. The club supplied the host with Portaloos, drink bottles and most of the things you need for such a large-scale event like this.

And it’s great they’re doing it. With Catacombs’ support the host was no doubt a goodie, but they’re playing the marketing game and it’s hard to look past it.

Students

Six before six is such a universal rule for St Paddy’s Day that it makes the rest of the day a real battle for the majority of students. If we were smart, we would take it slow, but in reality there’s something thrilling about the time pressure and the absurdity of drinking at four o’clock in the morning.

As a result of the early wakeup, most will have a well-timed nap or two to get through the day. Then you wake up again at 11am, ready to stumble through the broad daylight seeing friends and having a laugh.

For me, there is a dizzying undulation between, "this is really fun" and "this is morbid" every five minutes when I look up and see a non-student doing a completely mundane activity. It’s a weird feeling but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Everyone is happy, and you end up in the most bizarre places, chasing an idea or a flat party which you somehow stumble upon whilst drunk.

It’s a lot of fun and there wouldn’t be any point continuing the time-honoured tradition if it wasn’t.

So, there you have it. That’s the St Paddy’s Day you might not have seen on Sunday. It’s chaotic, it’s frenetic, but above all that, it’s a joy for pretty much everyone involved.

 - Hugh Askerud is a 20-year-old local resident and student at the University of Otago, majoring in politics and religious studies.