Toronto — When will an Ontario politician pluck up the courage to stand in the legislature and say many of today’s university students are a bunch of hooligans?
The evidence is clear: drunkenness, rowdiness, vandalism and fighting involving students, although a minority, is common and increasing. People living near some universities have expressed fear for their physical safety and homes.
A doctor in a hospital emergency room, who has treated many students injured in brawls and other antics, has warned someone will be killed soon unless student violence is curbed. Ministers and MPPs should be concerned, but none in any party has stood to condemn the students or offer a solution, which would include educating students to behave better and making it clear they will be treated like others and forced to obey the law.
This would help reduce incidents such as one during a homecoming party at Queen’s University in Kingston, when more than 8,000 revellers jammed a street. Police brought reinforcements from neighboring communities to help their 200-strong force and charged more than 600, mostly with alcohol-related offences, and dozens of injured students were treated in hospital.
After the doctor warned “each year is worse than the one before and loss of life is inevitable if this continues,” the university said it will consider canceling the annual event.
Police called to a district of mainly student housing near Fanshawe College in London laid 1,118 charges against students in a month, nearly 300 more than in the entire previous school year. Most were for drinking and rowdiness, which included an incident in which 500 students got out of control at a street party, leading to a series of fights, but two students were charged with sexually assaulting a woman.
In Waterloo, residents have complained students have turned their area close to the university into a “student slum” by vomiting and urinating on their lawns and the municipality had to send a fire truck to clean one lawn. Police laid 330 charges against students for public nuisance and vandalism in the area in less than a month.
Business owners in St. Catharines have complained the downtown area with its 60 bars has become “a university street party” and demanded the city provide late-night buses to get students out of downtown.
In Guelph where as many as 5,000 drinkers, mostly students, pour from downtown bars weekends at 2 a.m., a newspaper says the area often is “a sea of drunkenness.” This writer checked and within a few minutes saw a fight involving a dozen young men and blood on the sidewalk.
In Oshawa, where there is a new university, residents’ complaints of late-night partying by students prompted police to station 10 more officers in student neighborhoods, but a 19-year-old was stabbed at a house party. Homeowners also sued neighbors renting to students who drank heavily, held noisy late-night parties and had sex in front of curtainless windows and a court ordered the owners to stop using their homes as lodging houses.
Students behave away from home in ways they would never dream of in their own communities, where they are known. Politicians turn a blind eye first because they like to be seen in tune with youth and the times and not as fuddy-duddies.
Eric Dowd is a veteran member of the Queen’s Park press gallery.
