Should the Undie 500 continue?

[Mr Revhead]

Scared for our innocence in Temuka at 9pm on a Friday night

there would have been you, and a stray cat on the streets at that time of night in temuka!

[ke25sr]

apart from a few student. There all a pain in the $&#$% arse.

They walk out in front of you when driving down the 1 way.
Make a mess of the entire student flatting area.
Ive seen castle st covered in glass. 100% of the road was smashed bottles.

The Undie 500 is great. But the bastards get away with so much.
Sure have Fun but not at Dunedin's Expense.

[rolla_fxgt]

Ok this is my opinion from a current but slightly more advanced student (5th year double degree'er), me & my partner went down about 4ish with my son to show him the cars & have a bit of a looksee.
We saw mostly students on their couches in their yards having a good saturday avo drinking session, on a rare nice day. But what we also saw & experienced was at least 5 marked cop cars (both highway & normal) & 4 plainclothesers (with uniforms in them), plus a couple of unmarkeds (older almost personal cars by the look of it) with officers with there stab proof vests on, plus we were sure there were a couple of people we saw who were plainclothes undercover officers.
Now all the cars were pulling over anyone who drove through the student area left right & centre, which made me a little annoyed, and i can imagine if you got on the piss afterwards would make the cops about your least favourite people on the plannet, especially if you got a ticket for something minor.
So the way i see it the cops were winding them all up all avo, just begging for an excuse to get involved. I mean fair enough pulling someone over for something actually they've done wrong, but blanket blitzing of cars fro no real rason is just plain stirring.
Also the idiots who through bottles at cops deserve to be punished to the full extent of the law, so i'm not excussing them.
I just think the cops could of handled it a bit better by being less confrontational, especially after knowing what they have been known to do in the past re getting out the riot gear if there's a party with more than like 20 ppl at it. Some of these cops are on a power trip pure & simple! & yes as someone else has said their tactics are questionable, including beating ppl till unconsious & breaking into houses & turfing residents out on to the street to join the masses (i mean hello where's the logic in this?), etc etc

Oh & the council idiots who forgot to include hyde street & leith street south etc in the liqour ban, i mean come on are you guys retarted? In my opinion & maybe being a little conspiracy theorist, they left it out on purpose just so they had an excuse to crack down on the students in future & ban the undie.

Ensoc needs to take some responsibility for the carnage, i mean they say hey the undie finishes on friday, well bullshit, everyone knows that its a weekend long party (in the holidays of both canty & otago), & OUSA offered to help them organise events for sat avo & evening. Also the claim that Ensoc is only responsible for offical undie participants, thats a bit of a copout too.

In future Undie should be organised by both OUSA & Ensoc, with castle street closed off as a big open air party with bands etc, the cops should mingle with the participants, being good fun like this years Hyde St Keg party, leave the riot gear at home. The fire brigade should park either a engine or a tanker with hoses on the street if anyone is idiotic enough to light a fire, so they can easily put out fires if they happen, & the ambo's should have there event team there so if anyone is a little unwell or gets cut feet etc, they can make there way to the tent & get treatment.

Sorry about the novel guys but this years media coverage of the event has really riled me up

[Barks]

What gets me is all of these university students acting in a way not far removed from animals. This is an event run by and for engineering students?!? You mean to tell me these are the people that will be designing the bridges I drive across in the future?!!? I wouldn't let them design a kennel for my dog, much less structures dependent on critical design criteria.

I think it's good that the police are starting to charge more and more of them with rioting and more serious charges, that way they may actually take a step back and say 'do I really want to ruin my entire career before it's even started by acting like a complete twat?'

I had a lot of fun when I was that age, but because I was working I had to think about my actions as even a minor conviction would have seen me out of a job. Even now I have to be careful - a suspended licence would see me on the unemployment line pretty much well straight away.

Don't ban the undie 500, don't ban the parties afterwards, just make sure that the people who like to act like rednecks know that if they do they could risk their entire career.

/rant

[Baxter]

Give it another chance, and if the same sort of munters turn up and screw it up, then don't allow it to continue.

Nah, I've said that for the last few years as well, and they've had several chances to sort the behaviour - but they've failed every year. Actually things seem to get worse each year.
And claiming that the Saturday isn't part of the official event simply doesn't cut it.

ENSOC are unwilling and probably unable (due to the fact the event is now pretty much a munter magnet) to step up and organise it safely so the event is probably finished.

[Snoozin]

Ensoc needs to take some responsibility for the carnage, i mean they say hey the undie finishes on friday, well bullshit, everyone knows that its a weekend long party (in the holidays of both canty & otago), & OUSA offered to help them organise events for sat avo & evening. Also the claim that Ensoc is only responsible for offical undie participants, thats a bit of a copout too.

Heh, ENSOC.... I encountered an issue when my Alfa was hit by an egg, thrown with serious force while the Undie Convoy was congregating at Uni... it seriously damaged the paint, and NO ONE at ENSOC was willing to step up and take responsibility for the damage cause by one of the participants. Sour taste hard. So given they wouldn't even accept responsibility for a relatively minor incident, I seriously doubt their ability to be responsible for the increasing carnage being caused....

It sucks, cos the event itself is bloody great fun