OH BOY, HERE WE GO AGAIN!
We want to make sure that the students are good neighbours to the other residents at Sandy Hill
Superintendent François D’Aoust of the Ottawa Police Service (OPS)
We hear this sort of rhetoric each year when it comes time for that historic homecoming game against Carleton and U of O. Each year we see the same response.
Why is it that each and every October, OPS seems to have just remembered that Panda Game exists? Is there a reason why police have to march through the streets in military formation? Where was this choreography when the Freedom Convoy stumbled into the city and decided to illegally occupy us?
A bunch of drunk university students running around obviously isn’t ideal. There are ways to mitigate damages instead of smothering young Ottawa residents with police.
As someone who has lived in Sandy Hill for years; Panda Game feels like we are being occupied by a foreign power. Last year, much like when Laura Secord alerted Canadian militias of approaching American troops, I would alert my fellow students of where the cops were.
Students of Sandy Hill are members of Sandy Hill
Maisy Elspeth, Advocacy Commissioner for the University of Ottawa Student Union (UOSU)
It’s obviously important to note that not just students live in Sandy Hill. We share this neighbourhood. One of those neighbours is City Councillor, Stephanie Planté. Each year the OPS and the City of Ottawa throw more police into Sandy Hill and does it work?
It does not! We know it doesn’t — how many times does the OPS need to learn this same lesson? The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again. We can’t treat this like a crime issue, because it’s not really a crime issue. It’s a crowd control issue.
You have a massive crowd of drunk young people who want to party and have something to do; you have to direct that energy towards something–anything. If you fill an area up with police that energy will be used to avoid or confront police because it becomes a game.
You have to give students a whole separate location to go to at night, and you need to make it at least somewhat enticing. It certainly would be cheaper than the up to half a million dollars the city spent last year on their annual tradition of cosplaying as fascists.
Students will drink, they will party, and they will be loud. You cannot just send the police to fix an issue without an actual plan. The plan in previous years was to just push students out of the neighbourhood and restrict their movement. That plan just doesn’t work; we know that, we’ve known it for years. Now it’s time for a new plan and it seems like the U of O administration, City of Ottawa and the OPS seem to partly agree.
Now despite the police planning a “more aggressive” presence in Sandy Hill for this years Panda Game, there will be a sanctioned tailgate party on campus. Every year we have a pre-Panda party but never a post, and this year the administration is finally giving us a post party.
This is that “something to do” and it’s a relatively good sign that for the first time in literally decades that we are actually seeing ideas beyond just a police presence.
My understanding thus far is that there will be cops on campus, and I think I can say pretty unequivocally that we’re not happy with that.
Maisy Elspeth, Advocacy Commissioner for UOSU
Now, we still have a long way to go because this Panda Game will see one of the most aggressive police responses in the history of the game. But it’s a baby step. Considering that it’s taken almost 70 years to come up with the idea of giving drunk student’s a place to go instead of attempting to keep them out of the neighbourhood most of them live in; at least we are getting somewhere.
