Police try taming Animal House
September 15, 2008
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Louise Brown
EDUCATION REPORTER
The trouble with police clampdowns on rowdy student parties is that the more charges you lay, the more headlines attract the party animals, as officers are discovering this month around London's Fanshawe College.
"Once you get that reputation for parties – they're now calling it Fun-shawe – the message seems to be 'Come and party,'" said London Police Chief Murray Faulkner. His officers laid 685 charges in the first two weeks of school for noise and liquor infractions, for bonfires and fighting – and even kicking a cat so hard it had to be put down. Nearly 200 of those charged were not students.
It's September. Welcome back to the Ivory Kegger.
Like campuses around the world, Fanshawe is scrambling for new ways to fight age-old town-and-gown tensions that can erupt in mid-sized university towns where students are clustered in one or two enclaves.
While studies show two-thirds of Canadian students drink responsibly, even the pollsters hold off during the fall whirl from frosh week to the homecoming, until mid-terms and frost shut most of it down.
"Orientation is an anomaly; we don't even survey students (on drinking) until 30 days after it's over because so many of them seem to buy into the predisposed notion that partying is what you're supposed to do this time of year," says Fran Wdowczyk, executive director of Student Life Education Company, which tracks drinking on 150 Canadian campuses and promotes moderation. The group has joined with Molson this year on an interactive website for students – herestomychoice.com – where a quiz and avatar help students make responsible choices. Labatt Breweries has an on-line guide at makeaplan.ca.
"There are a lot of decent kids living there," said Fanshawe President Howard Rundle, "and sure, they're going to party their first time away from home, but we have to work with them so it doesn't get out of control.
"So we're crawling with police in those neighbourhoods, but we're also monitoring Facebook for plans for parties that look like they could get out of hand," he said, "and we've toughened up our code of conduct to apply to some dangerous behaviours off-campus."
The Fanshawe student union has visited student houses to drop off blue boxes and a free guide to the Perfect Party – perfectly responsible – that warns keggers are not just illegal (selling booze without a licence) but also a sloppy waste of good beer.
The University of Western Ontario has delivered 3,000 copies of a new guide for students and neighbours to houses near campus. McMaster dropped 180 "courtesy letters" to party houses this month, reminding them of local bylaws. The student association of Durham College and the University of Ontario Institute of Technology has been handing out a Good Neighbour Guide to off-campus students with tips on everything from putting out garbage to introducing yourself to the family next door.
And cities are starting to swap tips through a new network of police, city councillors, students and campus officials called the Town and Gown Association of Ontario.
"We hear from officials with the same problems in Italy, New Zealand, Germany, the United States, the U.K. – wherever large groups of people at the same stage in life are spreading their wings and experimenting," said association past president Kaye Crawford, manager of community relations for Waterloo, which has the highest student-to-citizen ratio in Ontario.
Yet even with Waterloo's outreach to its two universities – police and bylaw officers made friendly pre-emptive visits to 1,500 student homes on Thursday and Friday – extra police patrols this month in student enclaves "are just insane," said Trevor Mayoh, vice-president of the Wilfrid Laurier Student Union and a member of the city's town and gown committee. "We feel we're being severely targeted.
"I have friends who were playing euchre on their porch with a six-pack and they felt so intimidated by bylaw officers lingering around that they finally went inside," said Mayoh, a political science major who lives a block from the Ezra St. student strip, which he likes because it "feels like a community.
"But at least with the town and gown committee, we have a way to talk to the city about this civilly."
In Oshawa, where residents weary of student partying sued neighbourhood landlords for overcrowding – and won – police have stationed up to 10 more officers this month in student neighbourhoods, and say partying is down a bit this year, although a 19-year-old was stabbed at a recent house party.
At Queen's, where homecoming vandalism has drawn national headlines in recent years, campus officials have set up several new committees with Kingston officials, and the dean of student affairs made personal visits this fall to houses prone to parties. The student code of conduct also was changed to apply to some off-campus incidents.
In Hamilton, McMaster University spends about $40,000 a year to hire off-duty officers to patrol student neighbourhoods during the fall, and held a workshop last spring for landlords to go over property standards and responsibilities.
"We get complaints about parties," admitted vice-president Phil Wood, "but we also get good reports from neighbours happy the students shovelled their sidewalk and carried in their groceries."
Toronto Star