13. A Vulgar Culture

To quote my Czech friend, I am disgusted by Dunedin's student culture.

Otago students are notorious for their drinking and rowdy behaviour. Drunken youthful exuberance I can handle, but in Dunedin drinking is no longer just about getting a little happy with your mates, it is completely out of control. I believe the burning of old couches in the street is the latest edition to Otago student rituals.

It would appear that Dunedin's residents took living in the extreme sports capital of the world to heart and have taken disgusting, drunken loutish behaviour to the extreme.

The front lawns of many a student's flat are littered with beer bottles, broken letter boxes, smashed glass, wet cardboard boxes, underpants and the remains of what was once the front fence.


On reaching the main Uni campus you find, without fail, that the night before some pissed posse has rolled a shopping trolley into the river that runs through the grounds and for most of the journey I am preoccupied with avoiding shards of Vodka bottles.

All this seemed unpleasant enough, but nothing prepared me for the criminal damage. Within weeks of arriving my Czech friend's back windscreen, of his newly purchased car, was smashed in. Another friend's rear spoiler was ripped from its moorings and on my morning walk to Uni I am guaranteed to see not one, but rows of cars all with the side mirrors broken off.

This was just one of four cars that had the mirrors broken

Last week I had the pleasure of bumping into my Jordanian friend, he on his way to the mosque and I heading home. In the cool evening air we stopped to chat. Our conversation however, was interrupted by hoots and jeers coming from across the street where a group of drunken youths were hurling bottles into the road. My friend and I decided to part ways fearing for our safety as bottles exploded round us.

My bad impression of Dunedin's residents was topped off last night when I woke to the dulcet tones of my neighbour, a young man of about 20, calling to a passer by to come and "suck on this one". I guess his eloquent poetry was at least a change from the usual horde of sloshed sheilas staggering up the street shrieking and gurgling the words to Bon Jovi.

My neighbour's house

At first I wondered if my distaste for such behaviour was just a sign of my becoming a granny before my time, but I find that I am by no means the odd one out.

Most of my friends in Dunedin are other international students, including a Czech or three, two Jordanians, a Swede, Chilean, German, POM and Caribbean Islander. All of us, although totally independently of each other, have come to the conclusion that Dunedin's student "culture" is nothing of the sort, but rather it is a vulgar social phenomenon devoid of any of the subtleties, pleasures and interesting oddities associated with other cultures around the world.