St. Patrick's celebrations

[plam]

Well, I believe that certain services should be included with our OHIP (psychology). However, there are still a lot of services that attempt to deal with these mental health issues. I think it's similar to dealing with the homelessness. You can do everything you can, it still won't prevent much of the suicides and the mental illness that leads up to it.

I do believe too, that if the schools concentrated on this issue, the numbers would go down. Though to be honest, I really don't know what programs the school have running and how they educate students and staff currently.

What do you think would be a solution to this problem (suicide)?

I don't really have solutions, I just know during my time, it really wasn't talked about. I think there was a suicide while I was there, but I couldn't find any news about it or any discussion, and there wasn't much discussion of support. I was lucky enough to stay with family, but I can imagine how isolating it would be to live on campus alone for the first time, at the time, it was very much cut off from the greater community.

I also know people who tried to use the support services themselves, and they faced problems of weeks or even months of wait time.

These days if you urgently need counselling at the University of Waterloo you can get same-day counselling. In less-urgent cases there might be waits of 3 weeks, depending on the time of the term. Certainly a lot of us think about mental health issues and try to do what we can, both in terms of providing support to students and in terms of advocating for more services. The universities are large institutions and changing them is challenging, though there is support from the top at Waterloo. As a concrete change, we are increasing the number of counsellors as well; demand for counselling has been going up in the past few years.

(Talking about completed suicides is probably not the best thing to do; the public relations policy around that was recently reexamined).

[danbrotherston]

I don't really have solutions, I just know during my time, it really wasn't talked about. I think there was a suicide while I was there, but I couldn't find any news about it or any discussion, and there wasn't much discussion of support. I was lucky enough to stay with family, but I can imagine how isolating it would be to live on campus alone for the first time, at the time, it was very much cut off from the greater community.

I also know people who tried to use the support services themselves, and they faced problems of weeks or even months of wait time.

These days if you urgently need counselling at the University of Waterloo you can get same-day counselling. In less-urgent cases there might be waits of 3 weeks, depending on the time of the term. Certainly a lot of us think about mental health issues and try to do what we can, both in terms of providing support to students and in terms of advocating for more services. The universities are large institutions and changing them is challenging, though there is support from the top at Waterloo. As a concrete change, we are increasing the number of counsellors as well; demand for counselling has been going up in the past few years.

(Talking about completed suicides is probably not the best thing to do; the public relations policy around that was recently reexamined).

It is certainly possible it has changed since I was an undergrad, and I have no doubt that individual people at the university do care about these issues, but large institutions be large institutions, I'm well familiar with the problem.

As for talking about, I'm not sure what the right response is, but when I was a student it was a taboo topic, even asking about it was met with "you're not supposed to talk about this" which I suspect does harm as well--or at least I felt distressed by being told that.

[jeffster]

These days if you urgently need counselling at the University of Waterloo you can get same-day counselling. In less-urgent cases there might be waits of 3 weeks, depending on the time of the term. Certainly a lot of us think about mental health issues and try to do what we can, both in terms of providing support to students and in terms of advocating for more services. The universities are large institutions and changing them is challenging, though there is support from the top at Waterloo. As a concrete change, we are increasing the number of counsellors as well; demand for counselling has been going up in the past few years.

(Talking about completed suicides is probably not the best thing to do; the public relations policy around that was recently reexamined).

It is certainly possible it has changed since I was an undergrad, and I have no doubt that individual people at the university do care about these issues, but large institutions be large institutions, I'm well familiar with the problem.

As for talking about, I'm not sure what the right response is, but when I was a student it was a taboo topic, even asking about it was met with "you're not supposed to talk about this" which I suspect does harm as well--or at least I felt distressed by being told that.

Suicide, and indeed mental illness, is still taboo, which is really sad. What I am surprised about is that they're not advertising resources outside of that area. They need to choose to advertise and provide free transportation for sick students, to get checked out, for example, KW Counselling or Front Door -- as well, most kids parents insurance continues to provide healthcare not covered by OHIP, so it opens other options too, like Mosaic Counselling and Homewood Health Services. Lots of resources outside the university. They just need to have orientation every semester to remind the young adults where they can go and what they should do, for example, avoid alcohol.

[Spokes]

Ontario universities meet in Waterloo to discuss unsanctioned street parties

Wilfrid Laurier University played host to eight Ontario universities for a discussion on unsanctioned street parties such as the annual St. Patrick's Day party on Ezra Avenue in Waterloo.
...
Fifty-four representatives from universities including Waterloo, Queen's, Guelph, Western, McMaster, Ottawa, Brock and Carleton were joined by members of the Waterloo and Kingston police forces and city representatives at the meeting held Friday on Laurier's campus. The goal was to have a shared discussion about the challenges each school faces, what has worked when trying to control the parties and what hasn't.
...
One is the growing number of people attending unsanctioned street parties. In Waterloo, 22,400 people came out to Ezra Avenue last year on St. Patrick's Day; the year before the crowd was estimated at 15,000.

Another challenge is the influx of people from out of town. Crowley said 73 per cent of the 619 charges laid at last year's Ezra Avenue party were against students who don't attend Laurier.
...
Crowley said that this year the City of Waterloo, police and the universities will take a similar approach to the St. Patrick's Day gathering on Ezra as they did last year.

There will be a substantial police presence; Laurier special constables will be out as well as contracted security, and bylaw and police officers will be enforcing all relevant laws, he said.

https://www.therecord.com/news-story/918...t-parties/

[Spokes]

Seems like a good approach, keep doing the same thing.

[jeffster]

Seems like a good approach, keep doing the same thing.

For a minute there, my sarcasm checker was broken.

It's working now.

[Spokes]

I need to embed some kind of sarcasm tags to use around here.

[Bob_McBob]

Waterloo is now asking the province for major changes to the Municipal Act to allow bylaw officers to compel identification.

https://www.therecord.com/news-story/920...-officers/

[robdrimmie]

Waterloo is now asking the province for major changes to the Municipal Act to allow bylaw officers to compel identification.

This is a bad idea. That kind of authority gets misused over and over again and it's a power police should not have, and using these parties as a lever to get it is a bit gross. I hope the province denies the request.

[urbd]

Waterloo is now asking the province for major changes to the Municipal Act to allow bylaw officers to compel identification.

This is a bad idea. That kind of authority gets misused over and over again and it's a power police should not have, and using these parties as a lever to get it is a bit gross. I hope the province denies the request.

100% agree with you... unfortunately I have a feeling that this will be the perfect outlet for Ford's war on students, so they will happily agree to abuse their power here.

[robdrimmie]

100% agree with you... unfortunately I have a feeling that this will be the perfect outlet for Ford's war on students, so they will happily agree to abuse their power here.

I suspect you're right, sadly.

[ijmorlan]

Waterloo is now asking the province for major changes to the Municipal Act to allow bylaw officers to compel identification.

This is a bad idea. That kind of authority gets misused over and over again and it's a power police should not have, and using these parties as a lever to get it is a bit gross. I hope the province denies the request.

How is enforcement supposed to work if they can’t compel identification?

Officer: I’m ticketing you for [valid for-real infraction that actually does negatively affect others]. Please identify yourself.

Offender: No. Bye!

Officer: …

I recognize that officers can and do abuse their authority, but I don’t see how making it impossible to do their job helps the situation.

Except that apparently right now they can’t compel identification, and the City isn’t exactly a hellscape of crime. So according to my framing, right now their job is “impossible” yet things aren’t so bad.

But I still would like to know how enforcement is supposed to happen without the ability to stop people and do the actual enforcement.

[robdrimmie]

How is enforcement supposed to work if they can’t compel identification?

I'm considerably out of my legal league here, but it's important to remember that it is by-law enforcement that can't compel identification, not criminal law.

The process to create a by-law is considerably less complicated than making a criminal law, and the standards by which they are measured are different. If identification is so important, perhaps a by-law is a wrong tool. Empowering police to compel identification in the case of by-law enforcement concerns me because the oversight in creating by-laws is different and less strict than encoding something in criminal law and it puts a lot of power into the hands of by-law officers, which is a different role and has different background and training than a regular police officer.

It feels like the "regular" qualifier there is a pejorative against by-law officers, and I want to clarify that is because of my poor writing. By-law officers serve an important purpose, but it's different than a police officer and transferring powers between the roles is something that should be done with thoughtful consideration and intent, not because we don't like students behaving in certain ways.

[ijmorlan]

[…]

It feels like the "regular" qualifier there is a pejorative against by-law officers, and I want to clarify that is because of my poor writing. By-law officers serve an important purpose, but it's different than a police officer and transferring powers between the roles is something that should be done with thoughtful consideration and intent, not because we don't like students behaving in certain ways.

Thanks very much. This actually makes a lot of sense to me. What it suggests, at least to me, is that any enforcement where identification is required should be done by police officers. I don’t believe in ineffective enforcement — that just means that regular people get enforced, and the real scofflaws get away scot-free. I understand there are people who regularly ride the TTC for free and it’s pretty much gotten to the point where they’re just tolerated. At some point I think a tipping point has to be reached where everybody else decides they’re done subsidizing the rides of thieves.

I think this means that bylaw should be restricted to property standards and parking — areas where an inanimate object (currently inanimate, in the case of parking) is the target of the enforcement action. They might also be OK to triage things like noise violations.

This is an area where I think multiple desireable goals conflict, so there is a lot of scope for meaningful discussion and I’m not even sure myself what I really think.

[jeffster]

Waterloo is now asking the province for major changes to the Municipal Act to allow bylaw officers to compel identification.

This is a bad idea. That kind of authority gets misused over and over again and it's a power police should not have, and using these parties as a lever to get it is a bit gross. I hope the province denies the request.

Yeah....backwards idea. Waterloo seems clueless on how to handle this issue.