Life's a riot for pampered kids
BY ROSEMARY MCLEOD
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Rosemary McLeod
OPINION: In some places people riot over serious matters - religion, politics - but here we riot just because we can.
We riot because our affluent parents have sent us to Dunedin to grow up, a tradition in so many well-appointed homes in which a drunk daughter lying in her own puke on the Persian rug is unwelcome, and an equally drunk son urinating from the rooftop could prove embarrassing.
In Dunedin the offspring are out of sight, out of mind, off their heads, and somebody else's problem.
Straight-laced Amish communities in the United States do something similar with their teenagers, sending them out into the world to live as they please before taking on the life of their families, or renouncing it.
Most choose, after their fill of sex, drugs and booze, to stay within the Amish community and continue the cycle.
The difference is that Amish kids have been brought up with values to start with, in an identifiable community that shares them.
I wonder if the Otago and Canterbury students who let it rip last weekend in the infamous Undie 500 car rally are the same.
I can't help comparing the images of Dunedin students setting fire to things in the streets, chanting "F the police", and "Let's start a riot", with current images of anti-Islamic protesters in English cities that echo the way in which British fascists behaved in the 1930s.
Britain is a melting pot of cultures with many good reasons for hostilities back and forth.
Our students, however, act up for no reason at all other than that they are young, reckless, arrogant and drunk. And there's another thing - they hold a community to ransom.
Dunedin really needs its students, and its students know it.
Otago University may be the biggest business in Dunedin, when you take into account all income generated by the students and the fact that they keep the university going, and Dunedin tolerates an awful lot from them in exchange.
But it sounds as if mayor Peter Chin has had enough, as no doubt have weary police and the university itself, and this is where, once again, is revealed the luxury of life here where nobody is ever really to blame for anything they do and people should not be held accountable for their actions.
The rioting kids are among our best and brightest, so we should heed what they have to say; it shows what they have learned and how well they've learned it.
And what they say is that it is basically all the police's fault that the situation got out of hand, because the police tried to contain them.
There will accordingly be complaints by students to the Independent Police Conduct Authority - after 67 students were arrested over the two nights of rioting and members of the public were injured by flying bottles aimed at police.
* * *
Police had to put on riot gear and use tear gas at one point to disperse a crowd of about 600 people in the city centre.
Otago University Student Association president Edwin Barlow says the mayor is sticking his head in the sand over the annual event.
"The issue here is not about supporting or opposing the Undie 500, because we can't stop people coming to Dunedin."
Instead, he says, the council should support alternative events that weekend. Got it? It's the police that are the real problem, hence the complaints about them.
And failing that as an argument, it's the council's fault for not laying on more lavish entertainment from the coffers of Dunedin ratepayers. These kids are sharp.
Some students could be thrown out of the university because of their actions last weekend, and it seems uncertain whether students who are prosecuted will be able to get the traditional discharges without conviction that are offered to middle-class kids who act up.
I'm sure their parents will be most upset about that.
Students have traditionally enjoyed such privileges, which have equally traditionally been denied the working class and the poor when they break the law.
One excluded student, backed by the Otago Students' Association, is already putting up a legal challenge to the university's ability to discipline students for actions outside the university - meaning, I presume, off its campus.
Meanwhile the people of Dunedin clean up, tug their forelocks, and know their place.
- © Fairfax NZ News
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Facts... OUSA's president is Edwin Darlow, not Barlow. He's the one sticking his head in the sand, thinking that either the DCC or OUSA should pay for an event that benefits students from another university. Darlow (with a D) is not supported in this by OUSA's many (non-rioting) members, who don't want to see the association's money spent on what's effectively a bribe to stop riots.
If these riots had occured in another town and involved a different group of young people they would have condemned by everyone and the police would be urged to use more force to disperse the crowds. I think even if there had been other entertainment available in Dunedin that weekend there still would have been people getting too intoxicated and causing trouble. There will always be some idiots who look for any excuse to throw bottles at the cops, but we should expect more from our "future leaders" students who have the privilege to study at university. Perhaps if these intelligent young people spent more time at the library less time at the pub they would be more respected and spend less time trying to justify their immature behaviour.
I see the Police are exempt from the anti-smacking legislation. Thank goodness, smack away on these young spoilt punks
it would seem that not taking responsibility for ones own actions and blaming everyone else is par for the course these days. who made the students sit and drink all day #2? they chose their course of action they should accept the consequences and not blame everyone else.
It seems that the point is being missed. Regardless of what you are doing or why you are doing it. There is NO excuse for rioting. No one should have to put on special events for you, just to prevent you from rioting! Everyone has to take personal responsibility for their actions. That is life. You don't s'pose that the police are going to come down hard on you because you're doing something wrong?
This is the first i have heard about tear gas being used in the city center on a group of 600 -
I was in city center on saturday night and didn't and haven't heard anything of this.
Perhaps the authour can cite a source for this? or is it just more artistic licence?
Theres more to this problem then just police or students, the media needs to be considered as does the NZ culture in general.
once upon a time those partying with the undie went through town and trashed all the bars - THE CULTURE HAS BEEN THIS WAY FOR YEARS, its only now that we decide to make an issue out of it.
In addition, we had similar sized parties in high school, which for some reasons never called riots - prehaps because of the lack of riot police?
Once again, a source please sir?
It's interesting, given the comments above and of the Minister of Police that the first 3 charghed included a 21 yr old mill hand and a 28 yr old factory worker ...
Castle St is nowhere near the city centre - it is a slum near the varsity where students are forced to live in revolting conditions, exploited by local Dunedin landlords who make them sign year-long leases to live in uninhabitable tenements.
As far as I hear, there was no riot until the cops turned up and started one.
I'm an Otago Uni student who has never been to the riots and while I think there needs to be serious consequences for the idiots who went to Castle Street, I think more attention needs to be paid to the fact: - That out of 20,000 students attending our Uni, only 600 were at the riots. The rest of us are smart enough and civilised enough not to attend, yet articles like this treat us like the bad guys. - People from out of town (like the smart guy from Balclutha who fell in the fire and needed surgery) came up for the weekend specifically to riot. - Diversion is not just for middle class young people, it's based on the seriousness of an offence and it is ignorant to claim that only middle class young people benefit from it. - I'm not blaming the police, the fire brigade or the DCC. The only ones at fault were the people stupid enough to think that rioting is cool. - I'm also not blaming ENSOC. Most of the Christchuch kids weren't at the riots, but just the whisper of "Undie weekend" sends offenders into a flurry.
Yes the riots are embarrassing and out of control and there need to be consequences for the people involved. BUT stop judging the 19,400 students who are still the brightest minds of the future and stayed at home on Saturday night.
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If you start pepper spraying a crowd of people of course you're going to get a riot. If the police turned up to a wedding and started pepper spraying guests you'd get a riot too!