Belfast Students

[Maguire01]

Students may be an easy target.  And everyone slags the students, even though most have been there. At the risk of sounding a lot older than i am however, it really wasn't like this in my day!

I know it's long, but it's worth a read.

The never ending frat parties that make life hell for the neighbours 
Suzanne Breen Northern Editor 

THEY showed him no respect in life but his wife hoped that, in death, it might be different. She was wrong.

A group of students in Belfast's university area drank, shouted and urinated in the street as Gerard Morgan's coffin was carried into the house.

"They'd been partying non-stop from the day before, " says Sheila Morgan. "The noise and antics as I waked my husband was horrendous. Neighbours told them Gerard had been killed in an accident at work and to be respectful. They paid no heed.

"It took two police visits to quieten them.

The morning of the funeral police had to sit outside my door to ensure the coffin could leave with dignity." Two months later, Sheila fights back tears recalling the scene. "Students here put us through hell, " she says.

"Gerard was secretary of the residents' group.

He was threatened with a hurling stick for complaining about noise.

"Other residents have been badly beaten.

The students are drunk every night of the week. Partying continues to 5am. It's impossible to sleep. I get out of bed and sit downstairs smoking. When we moved in as a young married couple in the 1980s, there'd be occasional student noise but you'd say 'lads keep the music down' and they'd oblige. Now, you get a brick through the window."

The extent of anti-social behaviour is unbelievable to all but those living in the area, says resident Mary McKillop. She points to dents in her front door which students have tried to kick in, either maliciously or drunkenly in search of a party.

"My garden furniture has been smashed and my plants destroyed. Beer bottles are hurled at my house. Two years ago, I was beaten up. My (then) neighbours were partying at 3am and I went to their door to ask them to stop. A female student came out. She pushed me to the ground and kicked me.

"I was knocked unconscious and taken to hospital. My nerves have never recovered. I'm on medication. My son has moved back home because I'm too frightened to live on my own.

I desperately want out."

Bohemian feel The 'Holyland' area as it's known (because most street names are biblical) runs from Queen's University to the banks of the Lagan.

It was once one of the city's loveliest districts. Its diverse social and religious mix had a bohemian feel even during the war. It was unique by Belfast standards - in one street, an ex-UDR member lived doors from a former republican prisoner.

Until the late 1990s, there was a healthy mix of long-term residents and students. But as Queen's and the University of Ulster expanded, so did the local student population. As student behaviour spiralled out of control, most residents sold up.

Now, 5,000 students are packed into a dozen streets; only around 100 residents remain. Had the paramilitaries driven so many out, there'd be outrage. Most remaining residents are too old or too stubborn to move. Others, like Mary McKillop, are trapped because they aren't owner occupiers who can sell up. Their houses are owned by a private housing association and they can't secure a transfer to an association property elsewhere.

Decent students now won't live in the Holyland, preferring quieter parts of Belfast. It's easy to see why. On Wednesday at 6pm, students have dragged sofas and stereos into their front gardens or the pavement. The music and noise is at night-club levels; hundreds of people are drunk on the streets.

In Carmel Street, 10 male students sit outside a house. Using a three-foot catapult, they fire a water bomb from 40 yards at myself and my six-week old daughter. It splashes the pram. The students cheer as the baby screams. Two passers-by witness the attack and are willing to make statements. I telephone police but, after an hour waiting for them to arrive, give up.

On Thursday night at 11pm, students hurl bricks across Agincourt Avenue. At 2am, four drunken male students drag an interior door from their Palestine Street home onto the pavement. They smash its glass panels.

At 3am, students 'bounce' a car into the middle of Rugby Avenue. A red car with five drunken students nearly collides into it. The police are called.

Student behaviour has deteriorated so much that community safety wardens now walk the streets until 4am. At 3.15am, wardens try to quieten a house party in Cairo Street.

At 3.30am, bins are blazing in the alleyway off Penrose Street. The fire brigade can be out three times a night to extinguish bin and skip fires started by students. At 3.30am, students are dancing on car bonnets in Fitzroy Avenue. This isn't extraordinary -- it's a typical night.

Johanna Kershaw moved to the Holyland from Cork five years ago. "I thought living beside the university would be lovely -- it's the worst slum in Northern Ireland. The students here are completely different from the ones in Cork, and the gardai wouldn't tolerate their behaviour like the PSNI do."

Kershaw's home has been attacked: "Once, students threw a bucket of excrement over the front of the house. Another night, they set plants in my garden on fire. I started screaming. Since September, I've had only 17 nights without partying from my neighbours. I do housework in the middle of the night because I can't sleep.

"Playing football or hurling on the street at 3am is the norm. It's so bad that a family of Zimbabwean asylum seekers moved out. I was walking my wee dogs two nights ago when a male student yelled: 'Get the f**k out of the Holyland you oul' whore and take your rats with you!'" Drunk on the roof Kershaw says the trouble is caused by rural students "going buck mad" at university:

"The area is just a big zoo. One student's father asked if I'd complained about his son.

I said his boy was crazy. 'My son's a pioneer', he said. 'He might be a pioneer when he's down on the farm with you but he's not a pioneer when he's drunk on the roof, shouting and urinating onto the street below at 4am, ' I said. I showed him photographs I'd taken."

The universities have established panels to investigate complaints against students and "discipline" those found guilty. This academic year, the University of Ulster has delivered 37 written and 152 verbal warnings. Queen's have fined 54 students and issued three written warnings.

"It's a PR exercise to ease pressure on the universities, " says resident Alan Murray, himself a mature student at Queen's. "Hundreds of students run riot every night. Only a tiny fraction face disciplinary hearings, and they rightly treat written and verbal warnings as a joke. The fines are minimal - no more than students spend on a night out.

"Expelling students is the only threat they'd take seriously and the universities won't do that. The sons and daughters of the rural rich can attack residents' homes, beat them up, and continue with their degree. If the vicechancellor was beaten up or his house covered in excrement, those responsible wouldn't be let into a lecture theatre again."

Murray is the latest resident leaving. As he packs his bags on a sunny afternoon, drunken students in Rugby Avenue drag a chest of drawers onto a first-floor bay and raise a Tennant's flag over it. Most residents are on tranquilisers or sleeping tablets. "I'm not ashamed to admit I'm one" says Murray.

"And I play a white noise CD to drown out the drunken shouting."

Mother of two, Joanne Fields, was driven out of the area three months ago: "Students smashed my windows and stole my pram. The worst incident was last summer when a drunk student forced his way past me into the house at 10pm. He walked up the stairs and climbed into my daughter's bed. I'd never seen him before in my life.

"I screamed at him to get out and dialled 999. The police came and drove him away.

They didn't arrange to take a written statement from me or a neighbour who witnessed it. When I phoned to see if the student had been charged, the police said, 'oh, usually this sort of thing doesn't happen again'. They don't take residents seriously. We're treated like dirt."

PSNI are 'spineless' The vast majority of students are nationalist and some residents attribute PSNI inaction to a desire not to alienate young middle-class Catholics. An officer who works elsewhere in the city has a different perspective: "My colleagues in south Belfast are spineless.

"They have certain stereotypes. Anti-social behaviour is associated with a chav in tracksuit bottoms. He'll be arrested. A student making people's lives hell is just a high-spirited guy who needs a light scolding."

Brian Gillen, who served 10 years in Long Kesh as a republican prisoner, lived in the Holyland after release. He says there was no trouble from Protestant students but Catholic students, post-peace process, became increasingly sectarian and contemptuous: "You'd try to sleep against a backdrop of shouts of 'Up the Ra'.

"Anyone challenging them was deemed a Protestant and got a mouthful of sectarian abuse. They weren't genuine republicansjust cowardly arseholes. One night, students in the house next door to me were partying at 5am.

"My child couldn't sleep. I asked them to turn it down. 'F**k off you Orange bastard!'

one told me as the 'Boys of the Old Brigade' blasted from their stereo. 'I'll give you the 'Boys of the Old Brigade'.' I said. I got laid into them." Gillen has also moved out: "I'm one of the lucky ones. My heart goes out to people still left there. It's only going to get worse."

http://www.tribune.ie/article.tvt?_scope=TribuneFTF&id=118933&SUBCAT=&SUBCATNAME=&DT=01/06/2008%2000:00:00&keywords=holyland&FC

Glad i never had the misfortune to live in the Holylands. Funny thing is, some of these people likely post on here. Disgraceful.

[Minder]

I would say there are people like that post on here,the ones that love going to renshaws on the rip and getting a fry in some shit hole on the ormeau road

[charlie stubbs]

lived in the holylands 4 4 years was great craic

[Puckoon]

I lived just off the holy lands on university street. It was starting to go that way whenever I left university.

Some of the stories on there are disgusting.

[corn02]

Minder is there a problem with going on the drink in Renshaws and getting a fry. I done it and many more on here done it too. I never threw excretment, etc etc. To be honest I spent three years in the Holylands and the only thing I witnessed remotely related to that story was the Up da Ra chants.

I did see many local youths in the Holylands break car windows and target students in gangs. Not just students to blame.

[thejuice]

Eviction and expulsion from University or college is what should be done. I think thats what most places would do anyway

[pintsofguinness]

I dont think the residents are entirely blameless apart from anything else  some of the comments in that article make them look like right wankers.

The students imo are just a demonstartion of everything that's wrong in today's society with regards to alcholol.  There's got to be more to life than sitting in Renshaws or the Bot in your GAA jersey drinking all day - or sitting in the house drinking three ltr bottles of cider.  How much you can drink without puking over yourself or pissing the bed is not a demonstration of your manhood but it's not just the students that are at this - they just happen to have free time, mammy and daddy's money and all live together so their behaviour stands out.

btw, anyone that lives in any of dumps of houses in the Holylands deserve a medal! 

[Puckoon]

Probably not implementable (is that a word) but the licensed premises in the surrounding area should be forced to take more responsibility for the results of their profit making.

They gladly fill these students full of drink (ok, some of them need no encouraging) and then its out on the street you go. Out to rampage and tear the shite out of the homes of innocent people (other students included as well as residents).

[Our Nail Loney]

Talk about ripping the complete bag outta something, the way they talk about the holylands here you would think it was beirut or somewhere like that

What a pile of exaggerated balls

[Puckoon]

Talk about ripping the complete bag outta something, the way they talk about the holylands here you would think it was beirut or somewhere like that

What a pile of exaggerated balls

You have a fair point, however - what if it was your mother that had a drunk student pushing past her and crawling into her daughters bed?

If it was your garden being torched, or covered with shit - or if you had a 24 hour party next door to you with a young family?

It might certainly begin to feel like beruit.

Its very easy to pass this off as sensationalism - but the reality is that if even half this carry on is happening to residents - its not good..

[Maguire01]

It's a filthy noisy kip.  The students don't care - they're only there for 5 days a week for 30 weeks of the year and leave the place in a dump.  I know i wouldn't want to live anywhere close

[Stalin]

ONL is 100pc correct - 'exaggerated balls.' Not much evidence is given in the article to corroborate any of the claims.

The social problems in the holylands work both ways, with 'spides' from the Ormeau contributing to the problem also. There doesnt seem to be any easy solution to the existing problem.

[pintsofguinness]

ONL is 100pc correct - 'exaggerated balls.' Not much evidence is given in the article to corroborate any of the claims.

What evidence could the article provide?

I've no doubt some of the residents love playing the victims but there is no denying that students cause a big problem in the area. 

[Stalin]

Yes, but on the other hand, the residents cause the students a lot of problems. What about all the craic with the paint stripper being poured over cars on Agincourt at the beginning of the 06/07 term for example?

Cant be bothered to read through the article again but I would seriously doubt the gravity of some of these 'assaults.' Strange for the police not acting upon some of those claims 

[pintsofguinness]

Yes, but on the other hand, the residents cause the students a lot of problems. What about all the craic with the paint stripper being poured over cars on Agincourt at the beginning of the 06/07 term for example?

Cant be bothered to read through the article again but I would seriously doubt the gravity of some of these 'assaults.' Strange for the police not acting upon some of those claims 

Yeah I agree with that,

My (then) neighbours were partying at 3am and I went to their door to ask them to stop. A female student came out. She pushed me to the ground and kicked me.

"I was knocked unconscious and taken to hospital.

That's a hairy story if ever there was one! and the "other residents have been badly beaten" claim is a bit ridiculous.