I GO running in the Ormeau area regularly so it is noticeable that the lower Ormeau Road is busier now that the students are back. Mind you, there weren’t many students on that particular stretch during the Belfast Half Marathon last Sunday morning (which I completed and I won’t tire of letting people know that I did!).
The ‘Holylands’ has a bad reputation at this point. Regardless of whether or not the reporting of the behaviour of students is exaggerated or reflects the truth, residents of the area should not have to continually complain about how certain behaviour affects their quality of living.
Last week I indulged and took myself down memory lane to the year I was a doe-eyed teenager, beginning my college life.
The truth is, I was doe-eyed, naïve and very green around the edges.
I recently read Sally Rooney’s much lauded book Normal People – about two Sligo teenagers, their friendship at home in Sligo and how it changed during their college life. I’m not a good reader of fiction but I found myself easily investing in the main characters, Marianne and Connell. I related to aspects of these characters.
Marianne was the loner at school; she was shy and viewed as a bit of a freak because she dared to be different and didn’t fit in, while Connell was the opposite; he was the popular fella everyone wanted to be friends with.
They more or less swapped roles when they went to university in the big city. They were on a voyage of discovery – about themselves and about life.
One of my former lecturers commented this week that the start of the university year is a time of year when it’s "absolutely OK to be lost in many ways". She has a point. This feeling isn’t confined to first year alone.
Finding your place in new surroundings is a challenge at any stage. With university life comes a world of temptation. The innocent decisions – to get up or not to, to tidy your room or leave it, to go to lectures or not – and the bigger temptations.
Drink, drugs, and everything else that goes with them.
Everything is easier to weigh up with the passing of time, space, and good old hindsight. Socialising was great craic, but a lot of people were vulnerable, insecure and lacking confidence. Alcohol was a part solution.
The first drinks I tasted were Hooch and good old Diamond White. Shots became a firm favourite as did Tia Maria and milk and Malibu. I couldn’t look at any of them now.
Going out and drinking is a big part of university life for many.
A friend told me the other day about a young girl who, while out for Rag Week, needed the loo really badly and ran, uninvited, into a stranger’s house, up the stairs into the bathroom. I wonder if she was embarrassed when she realised what she had done? Did I or did any of my friends ever do anything like that?
Of course we had parties, of course we went out and drank together. I would like to think that we weren’t rude to anyone. The minute your behaviour is having a detrimental effect on someone else, review the situation. That’s common sense.
I felt safe at university. I had good friends. When we went out, we did so in packs. A huge effort was made never to leave anyone behind.
Since the Belfast rape trial earlier this year, the very important conversation around sexual consent is now more prevalent. This week alone, three reports of rape made by first-year students in Cork hit the headlines. The reports were made by young women, to the Sexual Violence Centre, not to the police.
I can’t help thinking that there are even more cases generally that haven’t been reported.
Listening to news programmes this week, it is being reported that most attacks are happening when socialising, when the victim feels safe and is not expecting something sinister to occur.
Alcohol, drugs, the way women dress are wrongly used as qualification for rape. I think it needs to be absolutely stressed that ‘no means no’ in any circumstance.
While the university experience brings with it an exciting world of choice, it also brings with it a world of responsibility.
