the reason for riots in previous years has been because the mayor and police wanted riots in order to be able to kick the undie from dunedin. The mayor did not allow undie organisers to arrange an event for the students which would have mitigated much of the problem. Police were heavy handed in many of the encounters and on occasion illegally entered properties along castle st.

Since when has hitting trees on the side of the road been associated with the Undy? It is also just an interesting point that no arrests were made on the actual undy event last year, the event itself was well run. Also big ups to the Christchurch police who accompanied us for some of the way down, they were great sports and did a great job (as opposed to the riot squads). I hope the Blenheim police can have the same attitude as those policemen did.

At woodstock in the late 60's, there were well over 200,000 people there over three days with no violence reported.

Welcome to Marlborough Students, Hope you enjoy your stay and have a great time. Sorry I'm to old to join you , but if i was 20 years younger i'd be there. Take Care

Bet the property owner lives to regret offering their land when it all goes wrong and the students trash their propety. Hope that they realise that they have no cover under any insurance as they have invited all the students onto their property.

It's going to be pretty hard for this to go bad. you can't really riot it a paddock in the middle of nowhere. They can only hurt themselves (and possibly Mr Yealands trees).

@ griff_em_all #47

If the paramedics acted like the NZ riot police they would crash in to people just in case they were going to crash later when they weren't around. While I wasn't at the Undie 500 riots it is often a chicken and egg situation and I have seen first hand riots develop when police have forcefully moved in when there was no, or very little, trouble before.

It is sad to see they are looking at only this one event, I have been on Undie 500's and untill recently they were all good. I don't think the organisation has changed much and the people getting in trouble were not all students.

There are more than just this event organized, get hammered in Hanmer (and they are welcome back), The Queenstown Spew Crew (and they are welcome back), Wet your whistle in Westport (and they are welcome back), Out dring a Frenchman in Akaroa (may be arts students tho and no problems), along with the many events and outings in CHCH City itself.

The Dunedin event ENSOC has rightly canned because it was the ONLY event where trouble occured, sure there is the drinking yelling noise etc but no serious problems in fact no arrests and no media coverage.

This event will become unherd of as soon as the sensational headlines dissapear and the media move on, the Drinking culture in the Student population is changing to these sort of events and a big binge.

Not to sure if the event is a good idea wasn't there complaints about new zealanders being bad drivers anyhow and this event encourages us bad drivers to buy cheap probably c#$p cars and do a pub crawl with them overloaded with passengers and this appeals to what age group the most? Could it be teens that shouldn't be driving anyway?

Most of the "rioting Otago students" were not even students I think you will find if you look at the stats they were unemployed bums or local tradies it's a shame Otago students got such a bad rap. Good on the Redwoods I'm sure it will be a cracker weekend.