It's just days to homecoming at Queen's University, the annual booze-up that brings thousands to the streets of Kingston, Ont. Even before the first “pancake kegger” gets rolling this weekend and new chug-a-lug videos hit the Internet, there are growing signs the community has had enough.
Keeping a lid on rowdy street parties is costing hundreds of thousands of dollars for extra policing. It also is requiring time and energy from an army of volunteers to keep town-gown relations on an even keel and help prevent a repeat of the drunken riot on Aberdeen Street n 2005.
While organizers are hoping for the best and praying for bad weather, there are several factors working against them. Homecoming is earlier than usual, meaning mid-terms are far off and warm weather is likely. This year's football game is against the University of Western Ontario, and the city is bracing for an onslaught of enthusiastic Mustang fans.It's shaping up to be a make-or-break year.
“There has been lots of conversation, lots of meetings, and lots of ideas put on the table but nothing that can turn this off. It is just not happening,” says Venicio Rebelo, a Queen's graduate and local businessman, part of a core volunteer group he dubs the NATO peacekeepers of homecoming.
“It gets to a point of, what more can you do?” he says. “Cancel homecoming? Cancel football? Not allow 17-year-olds to go to university?”
Indeed, a small group of vocal residents is calling for just such drastic actions, a kind of shock-and-awe approach that would include one-term suspensions for bad behaviour and zero-tolerance enforcement of noise and liquor laws. Leading the charge is Don Rogers, a former city councillor who represented the Queen's neighbourhood for 15 years. He says student behaviour in general – not just at homecoming – is driving families out of a growing area around campus.
“What upsets us so much is that it is not just one night of noise and rowdiness and beer and drunkenness,” he says. “It is this attitude of students that they own the entire neighbourhood and they can do things that they would never dream of doing back in their hometown.”
To make his point, Mr. Rogers has started a website, saveourneighbourhood.ca, filled with pictures of streets near campus – an area the university is trying to rebrand as “the village,” rather than the traditional “student ghetto.” There are pictures of partiers spilling onto streets and morning-after shots of trashed lawns. Mr. Rogers says he's targeting parents who have no idea what their kids are up to, as well as alumni he hopes will pressure Queen's into tougher action.
Students have responded with cheeky T-shirts and vows to take pictures of Mr. Rogers. Paul Tye, an executive of student council, says suspensions are the equivalent of a “life sentence” for a minor infraction. “It's like losing your house and job if you don't cut your grass,” he says.
Mr. Tye, an organizer of the Aberdeen Street volunteers, argues the current tactics are working. The number of Queen's students packing the streets is dropping, he says, and so are the number of violent incidents. “We are holding the line,” he says.
Last year, 54 people were arrested, most for public intoxication. The university estimates less than half of the 6,000 revellers were from Queen's.
Deputy police Chief Brian Cookman says in an age of instant messaging, Facebook and YouTube, diminishing the appeal of the event is the main challenge. A quick troll of Facebook turns up invitations to weekend-long house parties, carpool plans from Ottawa and a homecoming road trip as part of a reunion of staff from Jasper Park Lodge.
Deputy Chief Cookman says the police will follow the tactics of recent years, bringing in extra forces from as far away as Toronto to contain hooligans, watching crowds with surveillance cameras and moving in at the first sign of trouble.
Still, he cautions that the city can't rely on the goodwill of other forces indefinitely. “How often can I go to the well?” he asks.
Patrick Deane, Queen's vice-principal of academics, says it is “appalling” that the city and the school have to put up with such shenanigans, but he sees the alternative – the use of force to end it – as worse. “We want to make this party less exciting,” he says. “We would like it to end.”
Mr. Rebelo worries that even with careful handling, bad things could happen. “At the end of the day it is a powder keg ready to explode,” he says. “I just hope we get a hurricane coming through, keep them all indoors.”
The Saturday forecast is for a 70-per-cent chance of showers.
