Party-goers put blame on police

"What do you expect when you have so many student flats in one street?"

University of Canterbury commerce student Lance van Dyk, 18, visiting Dunedin for the Undie 500, said he had never seen anything like the scenes he came upon in Castle St on Saturday night.

"In Christchurch the streets that have all the student flats on them are dead quiet, probably because they are all mixed up with normal residents who complain when there is noise and stuff," he said.

Mr van Dyk believed the University of Otago's advertising campaign, which highlighted Dunedin's student lifestyle, contributed to mass parties like that on Saturday night.

Like many others spoken to, he blamed the police for Saturday night's chaos, saying it would never have happened if they had not turned up.

Hundreds of drunk students were not going to be scared into backing off by a dozen policemen. "When you're drunk, you'll fight.

"If the police just stayed out of it and left everyone alone, they'd go back into their flats."

While he did not think students would be able to hold the same sorts of parties in Christchurch, he thought the party was "awesome".

"The Undie 500 is known to be the best weekend of many people's lives."

Another Christchurch party-goer, engineering student Robert Hasler, 20, said Dunedin was "a nice place to visit" but he would not want to live in "this carnage" all the time.

"It's fun, hell yeah, it's a great experience, but I get to go home on Monday morning."

As helmeted police using batons pushed students past him down Castle St he said he did feel sorry for the police, "a bit".

"It is their job, and it is fair enough looking at what is going on here; it's a little bit out of hand."

But the police were probably being a bit heavy-handed, he said.

"It's a bit of a breach of people's civil liberties when they bust into their flats and shove people out for no reason."

- OTAGO DAILY TIMES