A 'War on Fun' at UBC?
Condos go up as beer-fuelled partying deflates, say students.
Endangered campus tradition? Photo by Oker Chen, courtesy of The Ubyssey.
There was a time when police let beer-powered bacchanalia run its course at the University of British Columbia. Yet that was back when the campus was still a quaint, forested place. Then along came the idea of a "university city" -- condos sprang up, rich people moved in, and in no time at all the newcomers were calling the cops and telling them to kill convivial campus gatherings known as beer gardens.
The flash-mob rules
Students like the Radical Beer Faction's Tyler Allison and Mike Feeley say they aren't going to take the cuts to campus drinking lying down. They're going to take it standing up and quaffing beers, en masse and at the blow of a whistle.
That was the idea of last year's "non-organized" flash beer garden, which saw about 200 brew-wielding students converge and crack open beers on cue, in flagrant contravention of the rules, all with the intent to send a message to the RCMP and the university's administration.
"It's kind of like a 2008 version of the sit-ins of the '60s," says Kushnir, who denies any involvement other than drinking a beer at the impromptu gathering.
Kushnir and Allison predict more such "happenings" this academic year, and think it's a funny way to get the message across.
-- Bryan Zandberg
This, at least, is the mental math being done lately by a lot of UBC students, ever since the RCMP began what many are calling a "crackdown" on alcohol on campus. A Tyee investigation into what some students are calling "the war on fun" at UBC, a campus slated to become home to nearly 11,000 new residents by 2021, found their calculations to be spot-on, sorta.
"Four of five years ago, you could go anywhere and find a beer garden," says Tyler Allison, president of the Radical Beer Faction, a group pushing for a relaxation of the "prohibitionist" rules governing liquor permits on university grounds.
These days, however, Allison says they're disappearing faster than a sorority girl can chug a can of beer. Students are frustrated by a school that's increasingly all work and no play, leading some to wonder: How sober should a campus be?
Beer down
Once you start digging, it's not hard to find a group affected by the fact that, since 2005, the RCMP have started strictly applying the province's liquor act on a campus with a historical laissez-faire stance on drinking.
Take Tim Louman-Gardiner, for example. The 26-year-old Vancouver lawyer and UBC alum says the law school used to run weekly "beer-ups" where students could mingle and relax in the cafeteria on Friday afternoons.
"Things weren't crazy, just sociable," he recalls. "Students would interact with law professors and occasionally lawyers from firms."
Those weekly gatherings have now been cut back to two per month. "Sure, you can hold campus events off-campus, but that quite clearly kills community on-campus," says Louman-Gardiner.
Niall Sloane, a second-year student and vice-president of UBC's Ski and Board Club, says their lively socials of yore are now less frequent, and tightly controlled.
"The ones we had this year, some of them were just pointless," complained Sloane, who adds beer gardens now draw fewer students because the latter know there are fewer drinks to be had. Whereas the Club used to drain up to 13 kegs in a single night, they currently have to make do with a maximum of four to six.
"When the beer runs out after an hour and a half, the party just empties," says Sloane. "You're going to go and tell this person, an adult, that they're only allowed to have two and a half drinks? It's a bit ridiculous."
Enforcement has been tightening, too, says Louman-Gardiner.
"Putting police officers in a room tends to have a chilling effect on the party."
Coco-nuts
Mild "beer-ups" and not-so-mild beer gardens aside, long-standing campus traditions like the Forestry department's "Coconut" party are being tamped down too.
Melinda Morben, a student in the department and current co-president of the Forestry Undergraduate Society, describes annual spring event as "a ton of fun with bands, dancing and saying farewell to the year and to your friends."
Coconut, however, also tends to be an out-of-hand orgy spurred on by drinking games and copious amounts of yukaflux imbibed from coconut-shell cups (hence the name).
In the spring of 2007, the RCMP broke up the festivities because the club abused their liquor license -- drinks were being mixed out of the eyesight of students and more alcohol was on hand than what the license allowed for. Police also said they had coconut shells thrown at them by drunk and angry revellers. They told Morben and company to party elsewhere in 2008.
"I don't think that Coconut will be allowed back on campus," says Morben, "[the RCMP] pretty much laughed in our faces when we asked to do it this year so I doubt that it will be held on campus in the near future."
Engineers, Greek fraternities, the graduate student society: the list of dissatisfied students -- and faculty -- is long. By last spring, the official campus newspaper, The Ubyssey, was decrying the end of an era.
Loaded gonzos
So why the crackdown, why now? ask students.
One answer is the arrival of RCMP Staff Sgt. D.J. Wendland, who, in 2005, was called in to oversee policing the rapidly developing "University Town" campus.
Wendland was the first officer of his rank to take a position at the expanding but small detachment, which oversees both the burgeoning university and the private lands on the Point Grey peninsula, an area that falls outside the jurisdiction of Greater Vancouver.
One of his first tasks, he told The Tyee, in an hour-long interview, was to bring the campus in line with provincial liquor laws.
While he openly accepts responsibility for the changes in liquor policy at UBC, Wendland calls the crackdown "a myth." He says he's just following the rules.
"Nobody out here qualifies for a special occasions license," (SOL) underscores Wendland, referring to the unique authorization needed in order for students or faculty to sell or serve liquor outside a licensed bar or restaurant.
"We bend the rules to a certain degree, with Victoria's permission."
When the provincial government created SOLs, explained Wendland, they were intended for weddings and bar mitzvahs, not for, as the straight-talking staff sergeant puts it, "weekly beer gardens, daily beer gardens, drunkfests, whatever [students] want to call them."
Apart from the enforcing the law, Wendland says he's just looking out for the safety of his people. With only 12 regular staff, he can post a maximum of three officers at a time on a campus that can have upwards of 70,000 people on it. Sending three cops out on a night where thousands of young adults are drinking is too great a risk.
"It's not that I'm trying to kill the fun. My members come first," says Wendland, who, as supervisor, is personally responsible to do his job with due diligence. If an officer gets killed or injured in a situation he could have prevented, he's to blame.
"I'm not willing to lose my house, or my retirement fund, for anybody's party."
Wine and cheese bust
Wendland thus created an unpopular formula for granting special occasions licenses: no more than 2000 people can be consuming alcohol at special events on campus at a given time (an arrangement allotting one officer for every 650 attendees).
Departments are limited to two permits a month, which have to be shared between both faculty and student groups from the same department. And licenses also now permit a maximum 4.5 drinks per person, even though the provincial maximum is six.
"You don't need as much alcohol as they want out here," reasons Wendland, who says he nevertheless processes about 500 of the licenses a year because there would be "a revolt" if he didn't.
Faculty get no free rides either.
"They get shut down the same as the students," says Wendland. "I even killed the going-away party for the president two years ago," he added, referring to a soirée for outgoing UBC president Martha Piper that was denied an SOL because there were already too many applications for the same date.
Even faculty wine and cheeses count. Just last semester, officers seized the wine at a faculty do in the department of agriculture. Why? The professors had brought more liquor than what was written on their special occasions license, says Wendland.
Workaholics in training
Mike Kushnir, a geography student and the vice president of the Radical Beer Faction, says the new restrictions reflect a larger trend, which sees the student experience becoming a workaholic routine where nothing but credentials and the bottom-line count.
"As tuition goes up, people are freaking out more and more about their marks," observes Kushnir. "People are sacrificing their social lives."
University shouldn't be about just work, argues Sloane. "You're all here for the same reason: you want to meet other people."
Where else, he asks, can the 600-member Ski and Board Club meet up if not on campus, close to the residences where many students live? And when can the young expect to live it up if not during their university years?
"The bigger it is, the better it is, that seems to be the general understanding of people," says Sloane, adding: "we're just trying to provide a good time for everybody."
So long to drunken networking
A number of the students that spoke to The Tyee, however, said they think it's far safer to drink on campus rather than off.
And, of course, there's the networking factor.
"I owe a lot of my student politics success to beer gardens," says Louman-Gardiner, who was elected as a student rep to the University's Board of Governors and served in the student-run Alma Mater Society.
"The fact that they're dying is sad."
For many, it comes down to a slighted sense of ownership, and community.
"UBC loves to use this phrase 'I am UBC,' but the thing is, nobody feels that way," says Kushnir.
Even Wendland, a UBC alum himself, agrees that times are changing. He recalls being a finance student back when there was just one officer, who let a lot of rowdiness slide on his nightly rounds.
"In essence, we owned this place," recalls Wendland. "Nobody lived here."
A bubble in Vancouver's bubble
By 2004, however, there were 2,300 residents in UBC's newly constructed University Town. That number is set to hit 10,700 by 2021, meaning the community is growing by the hundreds every year.
Mike Feeley, a 30-something computer science professor at UBC, is one of the new residents. No stranger to Vancouver's ridiculous housing market, he's highly thankful to have been able to purchase a home right next to where he works. His wife, a student, is minutes from her classes and the couple bring their five and eight-year-old children to school via the trails of the lush Pacific Spirit Park.
"I can walk to work and my family and I can walk or cycle pretty much anywhere we need to go in the city."
"What's important about UBC's development is that it provides high-density, thus more affordable, housing in a community planned for families," says Feeley, who is also the director of the University Neighbourhood Association (UNA).
He adds that his neighbourhood, Hawthorn, has 700 homes and about 650 kids under 18 years old. Feeley says roughly 70 per cent of residents at Hawthorn are faculty or staff.
Contrary to what a lot of students believe, Feeley says the UNA is not making calls to police telling them to squelch the fun. Living at the fringes of campus as they do, Feeley says residents aren't bothered by beer gardens, which take place in the centre.
Be that as it may, Wendland's blunt take on the so-called war on fun is telling.
"They don't own this place out here," says Wendland of UBC's disaffected students. "It's a community."
Related Tyee stories:
- Drink Beer, Save the World
Reviewed: Fermenting Revolution: How to Drink Beer and Save the World by Benjamin Dangl - The Quest for the Perfect Pub
Why it's hard to find a satisfying drink in Vancouver. How about where you live? - Home Cost Crunch: UBC's Role?
As real estate inflation tears Vancouver's social fabric, what's a university to do?
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
Mr. Beer N. Hockey
02-09-2008
Drinking leads to sex, sex
Drinking leads to sex, sex leads to dancing and dancing leads to Anarchy. Good to hear the RCMP are pissing on the flames of Anarchy just as soon as they are sparked.
jrb
02-09-2008
is there no campus security force?
why wasn't there any mention of campus security staff?
surely, the entire campus isn't always being patrolled by just 3 mounties. why can't UBC just hire a few more security people - and charge a bit for each event license issued to help offset the cost?
every campus in the land has campus security officers, rather than relying on its own in-house, taxpayer-funded rcmp coverage. what's going on out there, anyway?
let the rcmp in the lower mainland get busy at cracking down on gangland shootings in restaurants instead of asking them to break up faculty wine and cheese receptions, for pete's sake!
Luke Skywalker
02-09-2008
jrb...
Lottsa campus security. I just can't understand this idiotic RCMP stance either.
When I was there, no one even saw an RCMP officer, with the exception of patrolling NW Marine Drive.
To re-emphasize your commentary...
The top cop at the local RCMP detachment now bragging about....
1. "killing the going-away party for the UBC president two years ago...
2. Seizing the wine at a faculty do in the department of agriculture...
That's not what most reasonable RCMP officers engage in and the buck stops at RCMP staff Seargent Wendland's feet.
I don't think he's gonna last out there toooooo long.
zalm
02-09-2008
Wieners
It's the aggrieved tone of the students that gets me. I mean, 500 events a year to blow off steam? When I was there in the late 70s/early 80s, there weren't more than half a dozen events a week, and some of those were invite only. Which is why many of us ended up at the Pit. If you needed your fix earlier, you could always get a couple of beers in the basement of Old Aud at the Chinese restaurant.
And yah, there was "blowing off steam" all right, but nobody kidded themselves that it was a necessity for all students to do that - only about a third of the students I was there with at any given time were into "blowing off steam". The others of us had our fun elsewhere, or carried out the rest of our lives, like working part-time jobs, studying, and practicing sports or hobbies.
Sorry, the "necessity" of all this orgiastic behaviour is beyond me. But this is clearly a new era.
Of course, this explains why some of the miserable wretches we get fresh out of school in the engineering firm don't work out - can't work a full day without texting someone, making plans for the evening or the weekend, rushing through the work to do "something more fun". I'm not saying the beer gardens are responsible for that, I'm saying that some of the childish behaviour I see at most secondary schools right up through graduation carries on into university and afterward, and it's got bugger all to do with becoming a good engineer. Or even an average one.
Grow up, kiddies!
ME2
02-09-2008
"The law is for pertection of the peepul.
....and right is right as any fool can see".
Acting irresponsibly when you drink, Garth, has more to do with your attitude toward drinking than with "The Devil (alcohol) making us do it".
IMO, there are far less fights among drinking youth and amongst patrons in bars than I recall in my youth, yet I doubt there's less drinking going on.
Perhaps the pot smokers - yes, those dope-crazed fiends - have made it less cool to display one's macho immaturity, and this has spilled over into alcohol use too.
The RCMP is a Federal force, and I'm convinced this new pettiness. now being seen all over our Province, is the result of Harper's eagerness to display to us peons that he is indeed "Tough On Crime". And what better way to suck up to MADD - which has become today's version of the WCTU - than to rack up as many "violations" as possible to "prove" alcohol use is "out of control"?
Manufacturing crime has always been the forte of Right Wing gov'ts.
alive
03-09-2008
"fun"
It is interesting to see how the other half lives!
I always wondered how "fun" became such a priority to certain individuals.
The again we can't all be born with a silverspoon in our mouths.
As far as I can see, one gets a better start in life by attending "the school of hard knocks"!
At least one becomes realistic about one's own importance.
jimmy_laroux
03-09-2008
Wendland
I know this sounds bad, but the your average Professor in the Faculty of Agriculture is an absolute party animal. "Too much" liquor at a Faculty of Agriculture wine and cheese is just the beginning. Next thing you know they're all streaking down the Main Mall and then fornicating openly in the rose garden, all talk of soil science and crop management long forgotten. Seriously.
What a [OFFENSIVE WORD REMOVED. -MODERATOR.].
Yeah, a community of students and faculty.
Is this a by-law? Who makes these rules? Who represented UBC faculty, students, and staff in the process that led to these limits? Or are they just handed down from on-high by the local RCMP branch?
Stump
03-09-2008
By the book
I tip my hat to Wendland and the apocryphal Sea to Sky RCMP officer, both or whom are doing their job and leaving the interpretation of the law to judges and courts.
I think all laws should be enforced as written, not at the discretion of a police officer. Otherwise, the same infraction can result in a warning, or a day in court, depending on the officer. No way to run a society where all are supposedly equal before the law. If we don't enforce stupid laws, they just stay on the books as a blunt instrument to be wielded by police who are given permission to not only enforce the law, but essentially render a judgement of guilty or not guilty (in some cases) as well. Not their role at all. Further, the more we enforce stupid laws, the sooner we will see them wiped away, as generally law-abiding people find themselves on the wrong side of silly rules.
Stump
03-09-2008
drink to fit in
That's how people network, socialize, and enjoy themselves. And it makes for a less anxious and more socially adaptive employee in the future. That's certainly been my experience!
Enjoying a cold beer and keggers turned riot are two very different animals. Further, there are many people who don't imbibe who are 'socially adaptive' and calm individuals. You're just perpetuating a dangerous stereotype that you have to drink to fit in. What would Yoda think?
gassyandy
03-09-2008
Beer Machine
Do they still have the beer machine in the
radio station?
I remember the days when you could have a beer, while you did your radio show!!!
I remember bolting down the CITR panel
antenna on the roof of the sub building.
We all had beer on the roof. wait!!!
it was not just 1 beer!! it was a 24 pack.
How come these Harper loving socialists
all want to keep the fun for themselves?
What is up with that anyway?
I spent a good part of the 80's
contributing my life to BEER at
both SFU and UBC. I was the guy who
built the philosophy these radio stations
keep to this day!!!
Being the Cheif engineer at CJIV (now CJSF)
90.1fm and the guy who knew enough about
broadcast electronics that CITR would ask me to help back then.
This earned me a life time seat on the
board at SFU Radio Society. (It belongs to them now!).
They say if you can survive College radio
politics then you can survive any politics!
Well I did for almost 8 years.
Back to topic. those days were beer filled
and a lot of fun... My only hope is that
our (head up the ass gentrifiers) do not
try to take this away. simply because
without culture there is BLAND!!!!
Sam sillivan eat your heart out!!!
Perry
03-09-2008
Let them smoke pot!
When I was at UBC-Law I was surprised at how much alcohol was a part of everything. From first day to graduation day, alcohol was present everywhere. We were given free booze at our first week reception, and at the weekly beer-ups law firms would often pay for two free drinks for each student, just to get them started. Then there were all the wine and cheese receptions where you could meet potential employers or celebrate the end of a course. At one small party hosted by a prof, I got a dirty look from her when I helped myself to a double, neat single malt whiskey, but how could she blame me? Over indulging seemed the normal thing to do.
And all that freely flowing alcohol doesn't end with law school. If anything, it just gets worse from there. No wonder alcoholism is such a problem amongst lawyers.
As for me, I'm a cannabis connoisseur. Maybe that's the solution to the policing problem on campus! A few thousand pot smoking students would be a lot quieter, more docile and easier to monitor, don't you think? At least it would be better for their health.
dorothy
03-09-2008
Bull?
"That's how people network, socialize, and enjoy themselves. And it makes for a less anxious and more socially adaptive employee in the future. That's certainly been my experience!"
- How did you do the research leading to this conclusion? I am wildly interested, for most people I know who regularly get themselves souped up at social occasions appear neither terribly adaptive nor to be enjoying life very much to me.
shamelesshussy
03-09-2008
dry on the boards
They can't even get more than an opening night license for the Frederic Wood Theatre anymore. It's enough to drive you to drink (elsewhere).
The students need to organize a (BYOB) demonstration.
sanamark
03-09-2008
Interesting
Interesting how a piece about drinking at UBC got turned into yet another Hate Gordon Campbell rant. So what? We have heard it all before. Don't like Campbell? Well, don't vote Liberal next May.
The real point of this is how forest land at UBC is being hacked down to build some of the crappiest housing I have ever seen. These places are chip board fire traps. It is tragic to see the University Endowment Lands turned into this cheap ghetto of foreigners. This is especially true since the actual facilities are UBC are dreadful; the building are far apart, mostly old and in awful condition.
Are we seeing better student housing? I haven't. UBC would rather get some rich guy from China to buy a chip board condo for his kids to live in while at UBC.
Many UBC residents don't even attend classes. Have a look at the traffic flow; At 4:00 pm, Marine Drive is bumper to bumper with traffic coming from Richmond and opposite at 7:30 am. It is a travesty what is going on at UBC.
Notice that this is not going on at UVic. Most of the students there are Canadian born. When I was an undergrad there, had anybody even mentioned first ripping up all the student parking to build condos (note faculty still has parking) and then hacking down the forest, there would have been blockades galore. Not one chip board tenement would have gotten the roof on before we torched it. See UVics nice new dormitory and Student Union Buildings? Nothing like that at UBC.
Universities are for learning. They should act as land preserves. Nothing that is not in the direct interest of the students should be constructed on a university campus.
Fii
03-09-2008
UBC housing affordable??
UBC housing affordable?? You've got to be kidding me. I tutored a foreign student a few years ago who lived in one of the new condos on the UBC campus and they were extrememly well off. The boy didn't even attend the uni; I think his dad may have wokred on campus, though. Twice I was leaving the building and who popped into the elevator next to me? Gordo himself. Guess that was back when he was hiding from the angry mob. So yeah, perhaps affordable for the wealthy professors and their families, but seriously, where the heck do the students live these days? It's elitist, like pretty much everything in this city.
Moat
03-09-2008
Finger Waggers!
a commentator wrote:
Everyone eventually does, and then complains about the generations that follow.
Young people acting irresponsible and testing limits? Whoa.
I am sure that some of them are staying up too late as well.
Silly young adults.
sanamark
04-09-2008
Message, not Messenger
GWest, at least there are new dorms at UVic. There are none at UBC.
Again you are attacking the messenger instead of the message.
Nor is there the absolutely awful situation going on at UVic that is going on a both SFU and UBC, where public lands are being ripped up for rich foreigners to live.
jimmy_laroux
04-09-2008
sanamark: Quote:GWest, at
sanamark:
Wrong.
http://www.housing.ubc.ca/marine/main.htm
Room for 1600 students.
It's UBC (and SFU) owned land.
Lame. I'd guess the vast majority are citizens. Not that it matters, of course.
Actually, not much forest has been removed. Most of the housing has been built over top of parking lots.
It's neither cheap nor a ghetto. You've obviously no clue what you're talking about. And what's with the xenophobia?
Funny, I thought we had parks for this purpose. Like the (gigantic) Pacific Spirit Regional Park right next to UBC, for example, or Burnaby Mountain Park at SFU.
The purpose of these developments at UBC and SFU is to generate money for their endowments. UBC's endowment has grown dramatically as a result. And of course these endowments help pay for UBC facilities, which is obviously in the interest of UBC students.
Dave2
04-09-2008
old Ubysseys
Those old Ubysseys from 1966 are fun to read through... Gabor Mate!
SOLs are certainly nothing new, I remember dealing with them being the social director of a certain political club back in the 80s. Never any problem then.
sanamark: A new residence was built at Place Vanier Residence early in the 21st century.
Fii
04-09-2008
And at the bargain price of:
And at the bargain price of: 4 to a room for $7,800, 2 to a room for $9,300 and studios for $9,300- that's more than what I pay for housing right now- we're pretty much back to what Sanamark was saying- only rich foreigners will be able to afford to live in the new condos on the UBC campus.
I wouldn't scream xenophobia just because he was making a good point- that Canada is pretty unique in opening up its land to any rich dude/dudette on the planet who can afford to snap it up, thus driving up prices and lowering availablity for others
jimmy_laroux
04-09-2008
Fii: Quote:only rich
Fii:
Because there are no rich British Columbians who can afford to live there? That is ridiculous. From the article:
All "rich foreigners"? I think not.
First, there was no screaming. Second, he wasn't making any point, let alone a good one.