Dunedin’s student drinking problem cannot be fixed by arresting and prosecuting young people, a senior Otago police officer says, after a person was left with critical head injuries following a 400-strong party on Castle Street on Sunday morning.
Senior Sergeant Iain Notman, the Otago coastal area prevention manager for community and youth, told RNZ’s Checkpoint on Tuesday that the city was a “unique environment” with a dense concentration of students, and that the problem kept changing shape.
“And also I think in the past, trying to arrest or prosecute our ways out of some of these things, and create a bit of a nanny state also isn’t often the way either, it is a complex and ever evolving problem for us,” he said.
His comments came two days after a large gathering in the heart of the North Dunedin student quarter ended with a young person being carried out of a flat and taken to hospital.
The Otago Daily Times reported that at least 400 people had turned out on Sunday 20 September to mark what students call “school reunion” day, when they dress in their old school uniforms and play drinking games. The paper described glass shattered across the street, with Campus Watch, police and Hato Hone St John ambulance staff all present.
Hato Hone St John said it was called at 10.34am. “We responded with one rapid response vehicle. One patient was assessed at the scene and was transported to Dunedin Hospital in a serious condition,” the ambulance service told 1News.
A doctor who treated the young person told RNZ they had critical head injuries, and that other partygoers also needed treatment for alcohol and drug related harm. Dunedin Police said they had been aware of the event and were monitoring it, and that “Inquiries into the circumstances of the incident are ongoing.”
The University of Otago has been quick to point out that the injured person was not one of its students. It told the ODT the party was not organised by the university, and that “The university understands there are many people at the event who are not Otago university students and who are from outside of Dunedin.”
The timing has sharpened attention on the city’s party culture. Less than a week earlier, on Monday 14 September, Associate Coroner Emma van Son released her findings into the 2023 death of a 20-year-old first-year Otago student who choked on his own vomit at his birthday party in Dunedin. His blood alcohol level was 319 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood, more than six times the adult legal driving limit.
“His death was senseless and is a woeful illustration of the prevalent youth drinking culture in New Zealand. Sadly, [his] death is not an isolated incident,” the coroner said in those findings. She urged young drinkers to learn the signs of alcohol poisoning, including confusion, vomiting, pale or bluish skin, passing out and slow or irregular breathing, and said the safest response to someone who cannot be woken is to call an ambulance rather than letting them “sleep it off”.
Notman said police were working in partnership with the university, Campus Watch and the Dunedin City Council to make the student area as safe as possible. Asked whether that approach was working, he said young people would always be young people, and that youth drinking was a national and international problem rather than one peculiar to Dunedin. Asked whether the University of Otago needed a culture change, he said that was a question for the university.
He did point to one change he believes has made things worse, which is the disappearance of supervised drinking venues from the student quarter.
“Back from my days university, we had 11 odd student bars where people could be monitored with experts and managers and food on site, whereas we’re now down to zero for example in our student quarter,” Notman said.
“And that’s increased the purchasing and drinking behaviour from off-site establishments, supermarkets and the like – and pushed a lot of the drinking back into the flats,” he said.
That point echoes an argument made last week by Bede Crestani, whose daughter Sophia died in a crush at an overcrowded flat party on Dundas Street in October 2019. Speaking to Checkpoint on 14 September after the coroner’s findings were released, he said the supermarket companies Woolworths and Foodstuffs bore some responsibility for the problem, though he stopped short of saying they should stop selling alcohol.
“There is a drinking problem in New Zealand where it’s cool to drink too much. It’s not victimless, people die and it causes many other health problems as well,” Crestani said.
A Foodstuffs spokesperson responded at the time that alcohol harm was “a complex issue involving a range of factors, individuals and organisations” and that the company complied with all laws governing its sale.
For its part, the University of Otago said in a statement to RNZ that a significant amount of work went on throughout the year to help students socialise safely. Staff visit student flats to talk about hosting parties safely, and students are encouraged to use the “Good One Party Register”. The university said it also works closely with police, the student association OUSA and other community partners.
A 24-hour Campus Watch service patrols the area, but the university’s spokesperson noted that it does not have the same legal authority as police or emergency services.
Castle Street has long been the symbolic centre of Dunedin’s student flatting scene, and its reputation now draws tour buses of domestic and international sightseers. Couch burnings, fireworks aimed at police and street-wide parties have prompted repeated crackdowns over the years, yet large daytime gatherings like Sunday’s continue to draw crowds from well beyond the university’s own roll.
The pattern Notman describes, where drinking has moved out of licensed bars with staff, food and door control and into private flats stocked from supermarket shelves, leaves no one with a clear duty of care when things go wrong. A bar manager can refuse service or call for help. A flat hosting several hundred strangers has no such backstop, and the first people to respond to someone who has collapsed or been hurt are often other intoxicated young people.
Police have not said whether anyone will face charges over Sunday’s party, and NEWS WIRE could find no public update on the injured person’s condition.
Do you think bringing back supervised student bars would make a difference in Dunedin, or does the answer lie with supermarkets, landlords or the university? Share your view in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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