Source: Radio New Zealand
123RF
There is concern that some behaviour at Dunedin’s annual ‘Flo’ and ‘O’ weeks is out of control and highly dangerous, with students clambering onto roofs.
A young man was critically injured on Wednesday after falling about 10 metres from an Otago University building, with a wine bottle found on a ledge.
While he was not a student, police were calling for others to avoid rising similar injuries – which were becoming more common.
“Unfortunately, it seems to be becoming more and more prevalent,” senior sergeant Craig Dinnissen told Checkpoint.
“Flo Week never used to be a thing. It has become more of a thing in the last couple of years and the climbing on roofs has been around since the Hyde Street unmanaged events, which just leads to absolute significant risk and injury when it does go wrong.”
Dinnissen said police had engaged with numerous people to get off roofs and passed their details onto their university for further discussion.
He suggested that students had too much time to get into trouble, with classes yet to start.
“There’s absolutely nothing to do with university … there’s no classes, nothing at all,” Dinnissen said.
It is seven nights of various street parties, excessive drinking and just some poor behaviour and poor decision making, he said.
He said it was the first time away from home for many students, and with nothing else to do, evenings could often get “feral”, with illicit substances also a factor.
Dinnissen said wastewater testing indicated that this time of year was “high use”, with police resources stretched to ensure the safety of everyone.
“It takes a huge amount of time from us, from normal court policing,” he said.
Out of towners joining the parties was another factor.
“We have people travelling all the way from Auckland to come down to partake in the festivities here, both Flo and O Week,” Dinnissen said.
“Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, university students, people from all around the area as well.”
Dinnissen said while police could generally handle local students, people that come from outside the region often had no respect for the environment and the situation they put themselves in.
Without putting an end to the parties, he called for a “significant culture change” and for students to embrace social responsibility.
“These are supposed to be new young adults that are going to lead us into the future,” he said.
“We can’t really hold their hand in that sense, to realise that things are getting out of hand.”
Dinnissen said the last thing police ever wanted to do was to knock on somebody’s door and say your daughter or your son was in hospital.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
