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by Steve Conlon
‘Rugby mauls’ and other forms of dangerous behaviour by a small minority of those queueing to attend Toxic Tuesday may see the night cancelled altogether, according to sources in the students’ union.
The statement comes after the College View presented video footage to the students’ union of a female student collapsing in the queue at 11pm on Tuesday October 4. Only her friends and a few onlookers went to her assistance as neither event security for Toxic Tuesday or DCU security were aware of her condition.
The unknown student was taken to the road to recover. She was then escorted away by fellow students to a safer location. The students’ union received no incident report about the collapse.
Toxic Tuesday runs every week in the NuBar, featuring cheap drinks promotions such as pints of OLM for €2.50 and extendedlate night opening hours.
Shea McNeilis, Entertainment Manager for the students’ union told the College View “a lot of planning goes into all our events including health and safety plans, incident planning and a detailed event management plan…all incidents are dealt with as quickly as possible and over the course of the last 6 six years we have had a total of 3 incidents…we hold debriefs after every event and this is the first that we heard of [the incident]”.
Students who were in the queue told The College View that while “everyone was having the craic people were getting annoyed that lads were hopping barriers and just ignoring the queue altogether…..there was no security at all controlling the queue and when the pushing started girls were getting pushed up against the fences”. One student remarked “one girl took her heels off so she could just remain standing from the constant shoving…but there was glass on the ground so she just left with us and we went into town, I’m not paying €2 to be trampled on.”
The €2 charge was introduced by the students’ union to entice earlier arrival by students according to Mr. McNelis and to avoid large crowds in queues. During events such as Toxic Tuesday the NuBar hire one qualified security officer for every 100 attending, two of which are medics. The NuBar security are provided by IPSS.
Anyone found to be engaging in rugby mauls or other such dangerous behaviour “will be removed from the queue” advised Mr. McNelis. In light of the video new security measures will be taken to manage the queue. Students are encouraged to report any dangerous behaviour in the queue immediately to an event security officer. The College View has provided the video footage to the students’ union to help them further improve the management of their events.
Last year noisy DCU students returning home after Toxic Tuesdays prompted angry Shanowen residents to ring the Joe Duffy liveline. The university has since been working closely with local residents’ associations to cut down anti-social behaviour by students. Image by Andrew McGowan |
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