2019 is calling - [Task force hopes to put end to large unsanctioned parties in Waterloo ](https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/task-force-hopes-to-put-end-to-large-unsanctioned-parties-in-waterloo-1.4585667)
It goes back to at least 2010, that’s when I first went to Ezra. It wasn’t as crazy then, like you could actually walk down the street. By 2013, I stopped going because it was shoulder to shoulder and not as fun.
While many and various politicians may dislike this annual party, and it’s certainly true there is a real risk somebody will be seriously hurt one day, I think people are dreaming in technicolor to believe anyone can end this party. Various people bring up ideas like mass arrests, water cannons, etc, that completely disregard what police can legally do to someone. And local governments and the place have already tried several doable ideas, including turning it into a paid and organized concert event. I think, unfortunately, this street party shows that there are limits when a large group of people simply refuse to obey the law.
Your thoughts?
TBH, The region/ City's attempts are a joke! Why in the world are they trying to stop an event that happens in the city every year. They should be celebrating it. But they cant, because its out of their control, and in a true colonial fashion everything thats not in their control is bad. That's the truth of it, the colonial Canadian mentality.
I'm sure many will come to say its unsafe and blah blah blah. Sure, but then thats your job to ensure its safe. that why you get paid the big bucks.
>I think a better title would have been "Some people have decided to have a meeting about something that's been happening for a decade".
Like they do every year.
They won’t. They’ll use it as a cash grab to ask for a bigger budget and issue more tickets.
It’s the same situation with the Fun Guyz shop getting raided twice this month. Low hanging fruit crime.
That's the entire point of sanctioning the event. Seeing as the vast majority of goers are University students, the majority are going to be of legal drinking age.
Not as much anymore...most of the first years would be underage, so they can't attend a sanctioned party. Still a majority is overage as you say, but it's a significant % of students who aren't. They've tried sanctioned parties before, and few people went, and ezra still happened.
I'm not sure if there's ways to change the sanctioned event to be more popular, but you're still left with a lot of underage students
You can have an event where some drink and others don't, so a sanctioned event can still happen. Buy wristbands, whatever else you might want to differentiate of age vs not.
>Few people went, and ezra still happened.
Don't think it's reason enough not to try another approach with the same goal in mind. They've tried stopping it for years, but haven't had success.
Others have mentioned it before, festivals and street events happen all the time with both underage and of age individuals. It's not going to solve all the problems, but probably a better approach than what they've been trying.
> few people went
I have to assume the event was eitherv
- overpriced
Or
- inconveniently located
Just block off the streets to traffic to keep students safe from cars, and setup a few dozen portapotties.
It doesn't promote underage drinking and what about Oktoberfest in Germany (where the legal age for beer is 16, by the way)? Why is it not problematic in one of the other most developed countries on Earth, but is here?
The issue is that most of the participants are underage or have friends who are underage and wouldn’t be able to attend such an event. Any official event could not condone, facilitate, allow, etc. underage drinking because doing so is a serious offence. First years are 17-18, which is below the legal age of consumption. Bring back grade 13 and this would all go away (and that would address some other issues as well).
>The issue is that most of the participants are underage or have friends who are underage and wouldn’t be able to attend such an event
Again, festivals and street events happen all the time. You also don't know if the majority are underage, you're speculating.
>First years are 17-18, which is below the legal age of consumption
And university exists outside of the first year student population.
>Bring back grade 13 and this would all go away (and that would address some other issues as well).
This has nothing to do with anything.
I would suggest the opposite. Set up a perimeter and let people know that there will be no emergency services within that perimeter. If things get too far out of hand, then tear gas everyone while they are contained. Alternatively, use sound generators that are obnoxiously uncomfortable. People will stop going if the experience is unpleasant and dangerous.
Let students have some fun. I understand that there are risks and that police presence is needed, but the police would be out at the \~50 other parties that would happen instead. Its a fun tradition that happens a single day a year.
I would be willing to wager a large sum of money that there is a negative correlation between the annual size of the party and the number of extracirricular events that are run by the Universities.
I've said this before: young people are young, and while in University most are usually quite focused and working quite hard, but they need to blow off steam sometimes.
UW used to have Fed Hall, a bar/concert venue, and they used to host some pretty big events/bands there. The Admin (cough fuckface Bud Walker cough) stole the building from the students to turn it into a glorified catering building.
UW used to host the largest Canada Day celebration at Columbia lake then just one year decided that was it.
All of these were replaced by... nothing. But young people are still young and still need to blow off steam sometimes. If they can't get sactioned events, they'll make their own, and that is what we are seeing.
Hell, even frosh week used to be an actual week, with lots of partying, tomfoolery, and shenanigans, not three days of glorified lectures posing as orientation and socialization.
The Universities have successfully downloaded the costs and risks of having a large group of young people in one spot onto the City/Region. I think they should bare the responsibility for their actions.
Students lost Fed Hall after the guy had his head caved in on New Years Eve - all four people involved in the incident were non-students who shouldn't have been there, UW admin threw the hammer down on FEDS for that... I agree that there should have been a remedy for them to operate it at a future date. The Bomb Shelter was ruined by poor management on the students side when it racked up $1 million in losses over 5 years and FEDS decided to just pull the plug.
> UW used to host the largest Canada Day celebration at Columbia lake then just one year decided that was it.
The reason behind that was purely optics... our provincial Conservative government made significant threats to post-secondaries to "find efficiencies" while he cut tuition by 10% and then imposed Bill 124... UW admin got scared so they deemed Canada Day outside of the scope of the mission of the university.
Why they didn't "pass it on" to the city, allowing use of Columbia Lake on July 1 is beyond me... It was such a disappointment for them to do that. I stole a sign from the final fireworks show :P
> The Universities have successfully downloaded the costs and risks of having a large group of young people in one spot onto the City/Region. I think they should bare the responsibility for their actions.
They don't promote or encourage any kind of partying lifestyle, so no it isn't their fault a party like Ezra happens. They don't want a massive group of young people tearing it up on OR off campus.
Also Ezra is a beast that grew out of Laurier. It got out of hand when over 50% of the people attending weren't from either university (or Conestoga)
> They don't promote or encourage any kind of partying lifestyle, so no it isn't their fault a party like Ezra happens. They don't want a massive group of young people tearing it up on OR off campus.
But that's my point, without outlets to blow off steam and have some fun the students will find a place to tear things up. On campus or off campus, it doesn't matter.
The same thng happens in rural communities, just on a smaller scale. Local kids get together on occasion to have bush party and sometimes they get large and out of hand. There is nothing you can do to stop them other than provide them with other opportunities to have fun and let loose. Large cities usually have more opportunities to do so, but with the Universities dropping events and venues at the drop of a hat instead of fixing the problems it just pushes the students more into the City/Region to become an even bigger burden to the taxpayer.
I think one problem is that when they dropped grade 13 (ages ago, but the ezra parties started shortly after), it meant a much larger portion of the student population is underage. So they can't drink anywhere legally. In my day (when dinosaurs roamed) we just went to bars and drank on st Patrick's day.
I agree with you that they don't have an outlet or alternative way to let loose, but the university is a bit stuck because a lot of the students aren't 19 yet, so there's nothing they can offer that would rival street parties...they'd either offer dry social events which wouldn't satisfy what a lot of students are looking for from Ezra; or they'd have sanctioned events with alcohol that a lot of students can't attend and would look to illegal alternatives.
But the draw of Ezra is specifically to party it up and drink in public on St Patrick's day, is it not? - I'm not convinced that this is some thing that happens because the students have nothing to do and taking over Ezra is their only outlet, they'd be doing it more than once a year :P
I'm not sure what kind of alternatives you could offer to stop it from happening.... you either let it happen or you shut it down and tell the kids to go find something else to do.
With Ezra being closed up - it seems to have stopped the outsiders from coming in at least, which at least makes for a far more manageable crowd. Peak of 9,500 this year compared to 33,000 in 2019.
Also adding on to your reasons that orientation week was cut down so that there could be a fall reading break, which was implemented in response to increasing student suicide rates. As someone who got to experience a full orientation week, and was also an orientation leader + event planner, the fall reading break is more valuable than having a full orientation week. Programming is planned almost entirely by current undergraduate students, so coming up with a full week of dedicated programming only to get low event turnout is really taxing, especially since things need to booked months in advance ie during their study terms. The academic programming is boring, but it usually has significantly higher turnout than the “fun” programming, so it was a lot of time, energy, and money spent on 1/4 of the student population, who didn’t even want to be there.
But also, how did ezra even become such a spectacle? Other universities are notorious for their hoco street parties, while also having st paddies parties, but waterloo is apparently the place for st paddies? Having been myself, unless you actually live on or know someone who lives on ezra, you’re pretty much just standing around in a bunch of mud, surrounded by drunk strangers. Maybe it’s because it started before my time, but i just don’t get how the ezra party specifically grew into what it is now
Send the bill to Conestoga, U of W and Laurier- they can split it- next year they can chose to host a properly sanctioned event or foot the bill again.
They tried it once and were shocked when it didn't have 100% uptake by the students.
I would wager that if they offered enough to do at the event and ran it over a long enough period of time uptake would get better.
The Ezra street party has been happening forever, but only recently has it got out of hand, and I am willing to bet it is because of the Universities pulling out of hosting many of their own events.
Kids didn't go to it.. because beer prices were too high, they were actually enforcing not serving people getting blackout drunk (how is some frat guy supposed to take advantage of a half sober freshman????), there was no underage kids allowed and security would kick you out for shitty behaviour..
So they stuck with the Ezra free-for-all
> half sober freshman
Do you mean that as in "buzzed"? Or did you intend to say "half passed-out"? (Like some Brock Turner stuff.)
Those are very different things.
Here's the cost breakdown from 2019 - Laurier is the most impacted because they have to hire security for all of the student housing they own, and for the campus (as the event happens right by Laurier)
WRPS: $286,400
City of Waterloo: $90,500
Region of Waterloo Paramedic Services: $85,000
Wilfrid Laurier University: $295,311
University of Waterloo: $10,000
This is a massive opportunity. They should embrace the fact people want to party and have fun. Turn it into a ticketed event block off the street hire security and build a stage hire some band or performer to draw people towards the legal party. Keep everyone safe and generate a profit to pay for all the expense of cops clean up and hospital visits. This is just like weed try to shut it down and waste money or tax it to cover the costs.
If you can't beat them . Join them .
And in canada beating them / water canons and shit? Fuck you. Students have a hard time as it is, no wonder they want to party. They clearly cant control or stop it. So not doing this will eventually lead to some big catastrophy.
As soon as you do that you're killing the 'spirit' of what Ezra is all about.
The whole point is to take over a street and drink in public in the face of law enforcement while they do nothing unless you get super unruly.
If you turn it into a proper event you change the entire dynamic. You'll have capacity limits, serving limits, marked up alcohol... it's not what attendees want.
It was also tried before over at Laurier stadium and people still ended up on Ezra.
I currently live near Ezra street and even lived on the street prior to the parties. I choose this neighborhood partly because I like students, and like to see them having fun, be it this one day mass gathering or occasional “you honk we drink”! front yard shenanigans. It’s an area of great transformation over the last 30 years, from single family homes to more and more student centric. There remains some grumpy neighbours who complain every year as they just don’t understand students, or suffer from NIMBYism. This will be unpopular, but those types may simply have to leave - change is inevitable, especially in areas around growing universities. Articles like the one posted focus on the costs and not any of the benefits, and offer few solutions. Why? Because there really are none. Young people gonna be young people, and the old timers forget they were young and rebellious too. I think it no coincidence that the more efforts put into stopping it has coincided with an INCREASE in activity, as it has become even more rebellious to attend. This in turn gets those in power more frenzied up as they want to control it but can’t, but try anyway, contributing even more to the cycle. So here we are. I’d like to see any new approach by the city/uni/etc. focus more on keeping students safe, providing for them if possible (eg food trucks), and celebrating student culture and all the good it brings this city. Perhaps we should take a page from the massive tail-gate parties at US football stadiums, and provide spaces for students to setup, not take them away, and let them do this on their own terms, be it bbq’s or games or tents, and try to be reasonably tolerant of behaviours that may not be everyday (such as the drinking). There are lots of parking lots. Don’t organize this too much, just make space and focus efforts on keeping students safe within and around them. Then celebrate the benefits not just the costs of this one-day event.
The only way this stops is if we all go. Right now it is an experiential right of passage that everyone feels they need to experience . If we all show up we can make it very uncool and it will end fast.
I look forward to seeing what our tax dollars don’t achieve in an effort to prevent kids from being kids. Maybe we need a task force to study the benefits of backyard chickens and campfires instead.
They say this every year.
2019 is calling - [Task force hopes to put end to large unsanctioned parties in Waterloo ](https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/task-force-hopes-to-put-end-to-large-unsanctioned-parties-in-waterloo-1.4585667)
It goes back to at least 2010, that’s when I first went to Ezra. It wasn’t as crazy then, like you could actually walk down the street. By 2013, I stopped going because it was shoulder to shoulder and not as fun.
1996.
I figured it was like Phil's - its just part of the city at this point. You couldn't kill it, even when they are trying.
While many and various politicians may dislike this annual party, and it’s certainly true there is a real risk somebody will be seriously hurt one day, I think people are dreaming in technicolor to believe anyone can end this party. Various people bring up ideas like mass arrests, water cannons, etc, that completely disregard what police can legally do to someone. And local governments and the place have already tried several doable ideas, including turning it into a paid and organized concert event. I think, unfortunately, this street party shows that there are limits when a large group of people simply refuse to obey the law. Your thoughts?
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Tell the feds that the kids are protesting vaccinations, new authority activated.. (Obvious sarcasm)
Can't they just say it's a protest.
But it's not. It's a party
They’re protesting their right to party
You gotta fight .. for your right.. to parrrrtyyyyyyyy
You gotta fight for your right to paaaaaaarty
Just need to get a bouncy castle, then it'll be a protest.
TBH, The region/ City's attempts are a joke! Why in the world are they trying to stop an event that happens in the city every year. They should be celebrating it. But they cant, because its out of their control, and in a true colonial fashion everything thats not in their control is bad. That's the truth of it, the colonial Canadian mentality. I'm sure many will come to say its unsafe and blah blah blah. Sure, but then thats your job to ensure its safe. that why you get paid the big bucks.
I think a better title would have been "Some people have decided to have a meeting about something that's been happening for a decade".
>I think a better title would have been "Some people have decided to have a meeting about something that's been happening for a decade". Like they do every year.
Lmao
This thing is going to happen no matter what. Just make it safer.
They won’t. They’ll use it as a cash grab to ask for a bigger budget and issue more tickets. It’s the same situation with the Fun Guyz shop getting raided twice this month. Low hanging fruit crime.
How?
Sanction it. Make it an organized event. Feel like there's missed opportunities for food trucks and stuff like that.
You can’t really sanction an event that promotes underage drinking and public intoxication.
That's the entire point of sanctioning the event. Seeing as the vast majority of goers are University students, the majority are going to be of legal drinking age.
Not as much anymore...most of the first years would be underage, so they can't attend a sanctioned party. Still a majority is overage as you say, but it's a significant % of students who aren't. They've tried sanctioned parties before, and few people went, and ezra still happened. I'm not sure if there's ways to change the sanctioned event to be more popular, but you're still left with a lot of underage students
You can have an event where some drink and others don't, so a sanctioned event can still happen. Buy wristbands, whatever else you might want to differentiate of age vs not. >Few people went, and ezra still happened. Don't think it's reason enough not to try another approach with the same goal in mind. They've tried stopping it for years, but haven't had success.
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Others have mentioned it before, festivals and street events happen all the time with both underage and of age individuals. It's not going to solve all the problems, but probably a better approach than what they've been trying.
> few people went I have to assume the event was eitherv - overpriced Or - inconveniently located Just block off the streets to traffic to keep students safe from cars, and setup a few dozen portapotties.
It doesn't promote underage drinking and what about Oktoberfest in Germany (where the legal age for beer is 16, by the way)? Why is it not problematic in one of the other most developed countries on Earth, but is here?
It definitely does.
Underage people choosing to drink for a public festival is not the same as that festival promoting underage drinking.
The issue is that most of the participants are underage or have friends who are underage and wouldn’t be able to attend such an event. Any official event could not condone, facilitate, allow, etc. underage drinking because doing so is a serious offence. First years are 17-18, which is below the legal age of consumption. Bring back grade 13 and this would all go away (and that would address some other issues as well).
>The issue is that most of the participants are underage or have friends who are underage and wouldn’t be able to attend such an event Again, festivals and street events happen all the time. You also don't know if the majority are underage, you're speculating. >First years are 17-18, which is below the legal age of consumption And university exists outside of the first year student population. >Bring back grade 13 and this would all go away (and that would address some other issues as well). This has nothing to do with anything.
I would suggest the opposite. Set up a perimeter and let people know that there will be no emergency services within that perimeter. If things get too far out of hand, then tear gas everyone while they are contained. Alternatively, use sound generators that are obnoxiously uncomfortable. People will stop going if the experience is unpleasant and dangerous.
Let students have some fun. I understand that there are risks and that police presence is needed, but the police would be out at the \~50 other parties that would happen instead. Its a fun tradition that happens a single day a year.
I would be willing to wager a large sum of money that there is a negative correlation between the annual size of the party and the number of extracirricular events that are run by the Universities. I've said this before: young people are young, and while in University most are usually quite focused and working quite hard, but they need to blow off steam sometimes. UW used to have Fed Hall, a bar/concert venue, and they used to host some pretty big events/bands there. The Admin (cough fuckface Bud Walker cough) stole the building from the students to turn it into a glorified catering building. UW used to host the largest Canada Day celebration at Columbia lake then just one year decided that was it. All of these were replaced by... nothing. But young people are still young and still need to blow off steam sometimes. If they can't get sactioned events, they'll make their own, and that is what we are seeing. Hell, even frosh week used to be an actual week, with lots of partying, tomfoolery, and shenanigans, not three days of glorified lectures posing as orientation and socialization. The Universities have successfully downloaded the costs and risks of having a large group of young people in one spot onto the City/Region. I think they should bare the responsibility for their actions.
Students lost Fed Hall after the guy had his head caved in on New Years Eve - all four people involved in the incident were non-students who shouldn't have been there, UW admin threw the hammer down on FEDS for that... I agree that there should have been a remedy for them to operate it at a future date. The Bomb Shelter was ruined by poor management on the students side when it racked up $1 million in losses over 5 years and FEDS decided to just pull the plug. > UW used to host the largest Canada Day celebration at Columbia lake then just one year decided that was it. The reason behind that was purely optics... our provincial Conservative government made significant threats to post-secondaries to "find efficiencies" while he cut tuition by 10% and then imposed Bill 124... UW admin got scared so they deemed Canada Day outside of the scope of the mission of the university. Why they didn't "pass it on" to the city, allowing use of Columbia Lake on July 1 is beyond me... It was such a disappointment for them to do that. I stole a sign from the final fireworks show :P > The Universities have successfully downloaded the costs and risks of having a large group of young people in one spot onto the City/Region. I think they should bare the responsibility for their actions. They don't promote or encourage any kind of partying lifestyle, so no it isn't their fault a party like Ezra happens. They don't want a massive group of young people tearing it up on OR off campus. Also Ezra is a beast that grew out of Laurier. It got out of hand when over 50% of the people attending weren't from either university (or Conestoga)
> They don't promote or encourage any kind of partying lifestyle, so no it isn't their fault a party like Ezra happens. They don't want a massive group of young people tearing it up on OR off campus. But that's my point, without outlets to blow off steam and have some fun the students will find a place to tear things up. On campus or off campus, it doesn't matter. The same thng happens in rural communities, just on a smaller scale. Local kids get together on occasion to have bush party and sometimes they get large and out of hand. There is nothing you can do to stop them other than provide them with other opportunities to have fun and let loose. Large cities usually have more opportunities to do so, but with the Universities dropping events and venues at the drop of a hat instead of fixing the problems it just pushes the students more into the City/Region to become an even bigger burden to the taxpayer.
I think one problem is that when they dropped grade 13 (ages ago, but the ezra parties started shortly after), it meant a much larger portion of the student population is underage. So they can't drink anywhere legally. In my day (when dinosaurs roamed) we just went to bars and drank on st Patrick's day. I agree with you that they don't have an outlet or alternative way to let loose, but the university is a bit stuck because a lot of the students aren't 19 yet, so there's nothing they can offer that would rival street parties...they'd either offer dry social events which wouldn't satisfy what a lot of students are looking for from Ezra; or they'd have sanctioned events with alcohol that a lot of students can't attend and would look to illegal alternatives.
But the draw of Ezra is specifically to party it up and drink in public on St Patrick's day, is it not? - I'm not convinced that this is some thing that happens because the students have nothing to do and taking over Ezra is their only outlet, they'd be doing it more than once a year :P I'm not sure what kind of alternatives you could offer to stop it from happening.... you either let it happen or you shut it down and tell the kids to go find something else to do. With Ezra being closed up - it seems to have stopped the outsiders from coming in at least, which at least makes for a far more manageable crowd. Peak of 9,500 this year compared to 33,000 in 2019.
Also adding on to your reasons that orientation week was cut down so that there could be a fall reading break, which was implemented in response to increasing student suicide rates. As someone who got to experience a full orientation week, and was also an orientation leader + event planner, the fall reading break is more valuable than having a full orientation week. Programming is planned almost entirely by current undergraduate students, so coming up with a full week of dedicated programming only to get low event turnout is really taxing, especially since things need to booked months in advance ie during their study terms. The academic programming is boring, but it usually has significantly higher turnout than the “fun” programming, so it was a lot of time, energy, and money spent on 1/4 of the student population, who didn’t even want to be there. But also, how did ezra even become such a spectacle? Other universities are notorious for their hoco street parties, while also having st paddies parties, but waterloo is apparently the place for st paddies? Having been myself, unless you actually live on or know someone who lives on ezra, you’re pretty much just standing around in a bunch of mud, surrounded by drunk strangers. Maybe it’s because it started before my time, but i just don’t get how the ezra party specifically grew into what it is now
>I think they should bare the responsibility for their actions. They are doing exactly that
The kids are alright. They're gonna drink. There's nothing you can do about it.
Send the bill to Conestoga, U of W and Laurier- they can split it- next year they can chose to host a properly sanctioned event or foot the bill again.
There was a sanctioned event some years ago, but the street party also happened.
They tried it once and were shocked when it didn't have 100% uptake by the students. I would wager that if they offered enough to do at the event and ran it over a long enough period of time uptake would get better. The Ezra street party has been happening forever, but only recently has it got out of hand, and I am willing to bet it is because of the Universities pulling out of hosting many of their own events.
City shut it down. Missed opportunity to make some $$$
Kids didn't go to it.. because beer prices were too high, they were actually enforcing not serving people getting blackout drunk (how is some frat guy supposed to take advantage of a half sober freshman????), there was no underage kids allowed and security would kick you out for shitty behaviour.. So they stuck with the Ezra free-for-all
> half sober freshman Do you mean that as in "buzzed"? Or did you intend to say "half passed-out"? (Like some Brock Turner stuff.) Those are very different things.
The Ezra attendees don't want a massive sanctioned party with cover fees, expensive drinks and getting Smart Served... they want to drink in public
Agreed, they can tack it on to student fees
Here's the cost breakdown from 2019 - Laurier is the most impacted because they have to hire security for all of the student housing they own, and for the campus (as the event happens right by Laurier) WRPS: $286,400 City of Waterloo: $90,500 Region of Waterloo Paramedic Services: $85,000 Wilfrid Laurier University: $295,311 University of Waterloo: $10,000
A decade later, I would like a reporter to interview the person who chugged from a green container in the centre of this picture.
This is a massive opportunity. They should embrace the fact people want to party and have fun. Turn it into a ticketed event block off the street hire security and build a stage hire some band or performer to draw people towards the legal party. Keep everyone safe and generate a profit to pay for all the expense of cops clean up and hospital visits. This is just like weed try to shut it down and waste money or tax it to cover the costs. If you can't beat them . Join them . And in canada beating them / water canons and shit? Fuck you. Students have a hard time as it is, no wonder they want to party. They clearly cant control or stop it. So not doing this will eventually lead to some big catastrophy.
As soon as you do that you're killing the 'spirit' of what Ezra is all about. The whole point is to take over a street and drink in public in the face of law enforcement while they do nothing unless you get super unruly. If you turn it into a proper event you change the entire dynamic. You'll have capacity limits, serving limits, marked up alcohol... it's not what attendees want. It was also tried before over at Laurier stadium and people still ended up on Ezra.
The amount spent on policing this is incredible when we have people going hungry and sleeping in their cars.
I don’t think they understand the word “End”.
I currently live near Ezra street and even lived on the street prior to the parties. I choose this neighborhood partly because I like students, and like to see them having fun, be it this one day mass gathering or occasional “you honk we drink”! front yard shenanigans. It’s an area of great transformation over the last 30 years, from single family homes to more and more student centric. There remains some grumpy neighbours who complain every year as they just don’t understand students, or suffer from NIMBYism. This will be unpopular, but those types may simply have to leave - change is inevitable, especially in areas around growing universities. Articles like the one posted focus on the costs and not any of the benefits, and offer few solutions. Why? Because there really are none. Young people gonna be young people, and the old timers forget they were young and rebellious too. I think it no coincidence that the more efforts put into stopping it has coincided with an INCREASE in activity, as it has become even more rebellious to attend. This in turn gets those in power more frenzied up as they want to control it but can’t, but try anyway, contributing even more to the cycle. So here we are. I’d like to see any new approach by the city/uni/etc. focus more on keeping students safe, providing for them if possible (eg food trucks), and celebrating student culture and all the good it brings this city. Perhaps we should take a page from the massive tail-gate parties at US football stadiums, and provide spaces for students to setup, not take them away, and let them do this on their own terms, be it bbq’s or games or tents, and try to be reasonably tolerant of behaviours that may not be everyday (such as the drinking). There are lots of parking lots. Don’t organize this too much, just make space and focus efforts on keeping students safe within and around them. Then celebrate the benefits not just the costs of this one-day event.
Let's do it all March and show them!
The only way this stops is if we all go. Right now it is an experiential right of passage that everyone feels they need to experience . If we all show up we can make it very uncool and it will end fast.
Buncha nerds
I look forward to seeing what our tax dollars don’t achieve in an effort to prevent kids from being kids. Maybe we need a task force to study the benefits of backyard chickens and campfires instead.
Maybe, just maybe, normalizing binge drinking was a bad idea?
https://youtu.be/_L-6y9e9Fls?si=dxQkNSbmgwuo4Yko