Academic frustrations and strict surveillance have marred the first weeks for new university students, writes Critic Te Arohi culture editor Annabelle Parata Vaughan.
In a normal year, if you were to walk down any street in north Dunedin during the months of February and March, you’d see Otago University students flooding the streets in packs, carrying their boxes of alcohol, chatting and laughing with their mates as they head down to Castle Street for “Flo” week – a week-long bender in which second year students host a different themed party each night, often attracting hundreds if not thousands of people.
There would be the faint, consistent sound of drum and bass music rumbling through the city, no matter the time of day. In the mornings, you’d see sweaty and disgruntled fathers lifting mattresses and couches into student flats. Teary-eyed family members would be taking photos outside the clock tower as they sent their kids off on what is meant to be the best years of their lives. You’d see first years dressed in their togas heading down to Forsyth Barr Stadium for the infamous toga party, then decked out in their Speights shirts for the Highlanders rugby game.
As someone who has been studying here for five years, take it from me that the first few months are always the most exciting. New friends, new papers, new parties, new experiences. It’s also the one time of year Dunedin has decent weather, making partying, beach days and gigs the whole lot more appealing.
But walking around Dunedin this year feels different. There are no parties spilling out onto the streets, no weepy-eyed parents hugging their kids goodbye on campus, no preliminary lectures, and no orientation week events. Instead, the arrival of the omicron outbreak has meant these traditional experiences have gone out the window, leaving an impact bigger than most realise on the student community, especially for a university and town famous for its student culture. A majority of classes are online and parties are heavily restricted and policed. Students are feeling disappointed, fed up and burnt out. While the pandemic has been in our lives for a few years now, it did not actually hit the Otago student community until this year, just as we were promised a return to normal, or at least a “new normal”.
This new normal was set to come as a relief, as over the past two years, students have had an uphill battle with lockdowns, the shift to online learning, juggling being essential workers with their studies, and overall just trying to maintain a social life and fulfilling tertiary experience. Throughout the summer, and even as late as January 28, when the move to the red traffic light setting was announced, students were assured by the university that this new normal of in-person learning and events would go ahead, despite the looming presence of omicron.
But, just weeks before the semester commenced, the plug was pulled, and the university shifted to online learning for the majority of programmes. Orientation events were cancelled, colleges began implementing strict mask-wearing protocols and regular RAT testing for residential assistants, and the police and Campus Watch released statements on how partying would be policed.
While students understand the reason for the shift to red, it left many feeling frustrated and upset that the experience they had been promised would not go ahead, with the return to in-person learning unlikely.
“It was implied that it would be business as usual until a week before it started,” says Ruby, a second year student studying history whose programme has now been moved online. “I was very excited for Flo and O Week, and I came down early for it,” she says. But within a matter of days, Ruby contracted Covid and began isolating, as did many other students.
On February 17, the day O Week was set to commence, Otago University announced a Covid-19 case had been confirmed within the student community. The location of interest was a Castle Street party, held on February 12-13. This sent hundreds of students into isolation, and cases began to grow exponentially. It was perhaps the most quiet February Dunedin had ever seen as students remained tucked away in their flats, either infected with Covid or as household contacts of those who were. There were no parties, no concerts, and no sound of distant music. It was dead silent, as if the students had never arrived in the first place – apart from a small minority, who decided to test their luck.
As more students contracted the virus, there were reports of people hosting “positive parties”, where those with Covid could still go and party, as every attendee was a positive case. The logic (not that there is any) was that people could still have fun without contracting the virus because, well, they already had it. There were also reports of people breaking gathering limits, hosting parties of up to 300 people with no QR codes or vaccine pass scanning taking place.
While these events were widely reported, many in the Otago community believe it was only a small percentage of students who were doing this. “It [the move to red] was the right thing to do,” says Ruby, “but it was very crushing knowing other people would still be out partying and fucking it up for everyone else.
“I feel like a lot of the media has been like ‘oh, Otago is a cesspit of depravity and Covid,’ but I’d say 95% of flats are being conscious about their parties,” she says.
Last week, St Patrick’s Day marked one of the biggest days of partying Otago students have had since the start of the year. Despite the dreary weather, those who had recently come out of isolation took to the streets to celebrate the day, with many saying they were keen to not let omicron take yet another festivity away from them.
By early morning, Castle Street was packed with eager party goers. “It was pretty full-on from the crack of dawn,” says Keegan, a reporter for Critic Te Arohi. “My flatmates got woken up from music at 6am, and by the time I left my flat at 10.30, there was a keg on North Ground [rugby field].”
The lack of student bars and strict drinking rules within residential colleges meant that many students took to the streets to party and socialise. This resulted in police breaking up large groups congregating on the streets, and parties with well over 100 people in attendance, in breach of red traffic light restrictions. “Castle Street was pumping hard, with police around controlling people. Students were all in the streets, flats, roofs and everything inbetween.”
Several media outlets reported on the partying throughout the day. Plenty of stories emerged, including reports of a student ending up in the ICU after falling off a roof. “I’m not a fan of the way the media has portrayed students, between the over exaggeration of couch fire headlines for clickbait or cameras being shoved in evidently drunk students faces to show how ‘stupid’ students look” Keegan says. The coverage of students during the pandemic has often ignored the wider issue – the university needs to adopt a focus of harm reduction and creating safe spaces for students to still party within.
The first year or “fresher” experience has been among the most interrupted by the pandemic. Students who are entering their fourth or fifth years of study managed to get a few pandemic-free years of partying, living in a college, flatting and experiencing the quintessential “Otago” dream.
Newer students haven’t been so lucky. “I had a good time, in the days before Covid,” says Ruby. “The fresher experience this year is not at all what it should be. You have been dumped in a place with no support system, then you’ve got to try to make one. They’ve come for Otago’s partying culture and it is an important part – not having that experience is sad.”
Instead, there have been reports emerging of first years partying in remote locations, such as Dunedin’s Northern Cemetery, due to not being able to congregate in residential colleges or student bars.
“I think there will be more accidents,” says Ruby of the move to partying off the beaten track. “It’s dangerous. People give the Castle Street parties a lot of shit, but it’s a decently safe place, there’s police around.”
Hannah, a fourth year teaching and history student, thinks most Otago students are being cautious. “I think people understand the seriousness of Covid and don’t want to spread it. I think there are definitely some people who aren’t so responsible and are just being stupid and selfish, but they are the minority,” she says.
“It’s been really hard on my social experience,” adds Hannah. “It’s nice I am a fourth year in a course and I know my classmates well, we still have decent discussions online, but I really miss chatting and walking to lectures. It feels more lonely not seeing them at all.”
And it’s not just the social side of university life that’s been impacted. Many students have expressed deep frustration with the switch to online learning, despite still paying full fees. Online learning often consists of watching pre-recorded, sometimes even recycled lectures. Tutorials and labs, usually a more hands-on aspect of studying, have largely shifted to Zoom calls, with a small number being able to go ahead with mask and distancing measures in place.
Online learning isn’t the same as being in the classroom with your peers and lecturers, and the move to it has left students frustrated, especially given the whopping fees that people pay to study. For the most part, students acknowledge the need for larger lectures to be online, but many don’t understand why smaller classes can’t go ahead.
“I don’t think the university understands how much harder it is to be motivated to enjoy studying when you’re online,” says Hannah. “They had enough time to figure out how to make in-person teaching work. All my teaching classes are online at the moment, but we are hoping to have tutorials and workshops in person after mid-semester break,” she says.
Hannah says the teaching department reached out to students to explain and justify the move online, in contrast to the university, which left many students feeling in the dark with little justification given for the campus-wide online shift. “I appreciated the communication from the teaching college,” she says. “You could tell they had really thought about it, and they gave us a list of reasons why they chose to go online. I appreciated this transparency.”
Elliot, a fourth year masters student, says this year’s Covid disruptions feel different. “I felt like lockdowns didn’t actually impact academic stuff, just social life. In 2020, we got a grade bump, but now, students are not only isolating, but genuinely having Covid. They are unable to do any work, and during that time, they fall behind and there’s nothing in place.” It’s particularly difficult for first years, who are trying to get acquainted with the uni experience in general, Elliot stresses. “You’ve got group projects with people you have never actually been able to meet other than in a box on a screen.”
The university has been questioned repeatedly about why a fee reduction hasn’t been implemented due to online learning. The bottom line is, students are paying for a service they are not receiving. “Part of the fees is keeping up the campus, making sure you have places to go, having resources,” says Ruby. “I do think they could be cut. If the course is all online, what are you paying for? A lot of in-person stuff isn’t happening, so surely a discounted rate? It feels sketchy.”
Hannah agrees. “I think a fee reduction is a good idea. It doesn’t have to be significant, but we are not receiving the same quality of education we would receive in person and that needs to be acknowledged.” she says. “I think it is unfair that we have paid the same amount for the last two years with online learning, but especially this year needs a reduction in price as it seems we will mostly be online.”
On the matter of a fee reduction, Professor Helen Nicholson, deputy vice chancellor academic, says that “while lectures are online, most papers are offering face-to-face tutorials and labs”. She adds that “delivering online lectures is often more labour intensive for our staff than delivering them face-to-face, as staff carefully consider and adjust their teaching to find the best ways of delivering learning in an engaging way”.
As for the facilities, Nicholson says that “in most cases, students can also use all of our facilities such as our libraries, study spaces, support centres, cafes and Unipol”. But the return to in-person learning is uncertain. “We have signalled to students a few weeks ago that we would be expecting to produce details about teaching after the mid-semester break and near future,” says Nicholson.
Elliot says the pandemic has exacerbated existing inequalities among students. “It means there’s people who have to isolate and can’t afford takeaways or to get their groceries delivered who are having to scrounge for food, and that directly impacts how well you can perform if you are sick. The people who are worse off financially anyway are the ones who are working jobs that are customer facing, so they have greater risk of getting Covid and losing their income source.”
Life at Otago University is not the same as it was for previous generations of students. The full on, jam packed partying culture which once filled the streets of North Dunedin is becoming more and more of a distant memory. At any moment, police have the ability to enter private property should they believe students are breaking the restrictions under the Covid-19 Public Health Response Act. The looming threat of a $4,000 fine, or the potential for police intervention has left many feeling nervous, and the ability to truly relax and have a good time has gone out the window. The status of future events such as the Hyde Street Party, return to in person learning, or autumn graduation ceremonies remain up in the air, with many unsure of what the future holds.