Kerre Woodham: When did buckets of vomit become fun?

Dunedin students dressed in togas on George St during the parade. Photo / Otago Daily Times

You know the thing that really annoys me about the Otago University students?

It's not the fact that every year, there's a ruckus involving mayhem, mess and mob mentality. It isn't because this year they were particularly vile with buckets of vomit and faeces being tipped on to the toga-parading students.

It's because when I read about the antics of these oiks, I turn into a caricature of a talkback caller.

I splutter and fulminate about how in my day, there wouldn't have been any of this sort of carry-on and that these spoiled brats could do with a jolly good reality check.

If I had a moustache it would bristle, and I'm a chronological heartbeat away from calling for the rattan to be introduced. Or putting the miscreants in stocks in the Octagon.

It's maddening. I'm 44, not 144, and I can still enjoy a good time. So long as the good time is over by 10.30pm.

But nowhere in my vast repertoire of good times did flinging buckets of vomit and shite count as fun. It's not as though anybody should have been surprised.

A parade involving toga-wearing students sounds like a recipe for disaster. And indeed it was.

And every year that badly behaving students at Otago are shown marauding through the streets is another invitation for bogans from around New Zealand to decide that Otago's the university for them.

The lack of consequences for these idiots means the bad behaviour will continue and the reputation of Otago will be tarnished. And don't try to tell me that because the oiks inject millions into the Dunedin economy that it gives them the right to treat the city and its people with contempt.

Living in a university town can be fun, vibrant and interesting. Wellington isn't just a city of walk-sock-wearing bureaucrats; it's also a uni town. And you don't see Victoria students in the paper year in, year out displaying their vileness for the world to see.

Dunedin's like a real life version of The Lord of the Flies - an ugly example of what happens when the children take over the running of their own world.

It's not a pretty sight.