The Great Dunedin Toga Riot of 2009, and other sordid tales of youth.

One of the reasons I came to New Zealand is that I wanted to experience the old English system on campus. 100 year old residence halls with their own traditions. Strange behaviors based upon forgotten deeds. Benign tolerance of the most heinous acts on the part of administration. Well, we are half-way there.

Apparently New Zealand has recently implemented a "bums on seats" (in the vernacular) system of funding schools, which has produced the likely result of Universities seeking underclassmen they know full well will wash out. Preferably fairly quickly, since the government funds the schools for the year based upon initial enrollment. Coupled with an increased focus in high school upon college attendance and extremely low costs for the attendees (college students are even eligible for a special form of welfare payments) it seems nearly every 18 year old in the country has decided to give it a try. After all, you get paid to party.

That doesn't have much impact on me, aside from the drunken bellows at all hours outside my window. When the new demographic meets the hidebound traditions of the school, however, the result is far from graceful.

The toga tradition involves the freshmen parading through the center of town in togas, while being pelted by upperclassmen with water balloons, flour bombs, and eggs. Messy, but basically harmless. This year brought a slightly different approach, with outsiders (either upperclassmen, renegade froshes, or non-students) starting with frozen oranges, moving onto thrown bottles (putting several participants in the hospital) and finally ending up with buckets of vomit and feces. Let me repeat, someone intentionally shit in a bucket, and followed their drunken friends around with a bucket, just to gather the mess they threw.

Understandably the freshmen ran like hell and headed for the shops of the main downtown district for cover. Since they were still being pelted with this leprous mash the stores ended up covered. The 20 cops on site had no chance to cope with the thousands of drunken, stinking, bleeding, terrified 18 year olds. Windows were smashed, cars were damaged, tourists were outraged.

I laughed pretty damn hard, I must admit. Not that I did not feel for the victims, I most certainly did and moved to help as soon as the herd had passed. But for any white supremacist making monkey jokes about minorities, I now have an image. Middle class white kids, the salt of the earth type, madly throwing shit at each other while gibbering like chimps.

So now the recriminations and meetings are flying fast and hard. Outraged business owners are meeting with sheepish student reps and university grandees. Newspapers puff their chests out while demanding that something must be done. Yet, like Nome, the most obvious thing to do is not even considered. Booze just brings in too much cash to be touched. Several of the closest local liquor stores to the campus are actually owned by former policemen and local politicos. So a solution to drunken stupidity which still encourages the drunkenness will be sought (really, kids are actively encouraged to drink from 18 on. I have seen bank ads offering to finance parties for freshmen).

I think next year I will be on a balcony rather than the ground floor. My shoes still smell funny.