Investigations ongoing after Dal student gathering

HALIFAX – Feces, fireworks and urine.

Those are among the complaints of residents after Saturday night’s mass Dalhousie University student gatheringturned riot in a Halifax neighbourhood.

Halifax Regional Police are still tallying tickets, charges and injuries after between 3,000 and 4,000 students caused havoc in the area of Preston, Jennings and Larch streets and Jubilee Road. The area includes private residences, rental homes occupied by non-students, and homes that have been chopped up into rental units for students.

Resident Caitlin Lees has lived in the area for a number of years, and said she “quite happily” lives in a student community.

“I love having students for neighbours but this is the one time of the year I hate it,” she said. “And it’s horrible.” The issue has only come up in the past four years, she said.

There are students who live next door and are great neighbours, Lees said, and will even babysit for her. But then there were the masses that arrived on Saturday.

In the afternoon on Jennings Street there were a number of house parties, including one that had a DJ, a sponsor and a yard full of people.

“That slowly dissipated over the course of the afternoon and was loud. We had people straying into our yard to try to use it as a toilet, so we spent a fair bit of time trying to tell students to go elsewhere.”

Later in the evening, people started to come back and congregate at the intersection of Larch Street and Jubilee Road, she said.

“That’s when things started to get ugly.”

She said there was a lot of noise, fireworks were set off and pointed at one of her neighbour’s home.

Fires were set in the street. In one video, a young man in a white T-shirt could be seen grabbing the wrists of a female police officer who was trying to deal with him.

Police cleared heavily intoxicated people from the area, only to see them cutting through backyards to return to the street, knocking down fences in the process. A fight broke out, and one person was stabbed.

People were using cocaine outside below Lees’ bathroom window, and the noise from the chaos on the street kept her children from being able to sleep.

She said her biggest fear is that someone may die on her property and be found in the morning.

“When the rumours started going that someone had been stabbed, my heart really sank.”

People set a fire in the street and pelted police with bottles and other objects.

Lees said residents know there will be parties in the area because there are students living there, but fires being set o the street is a whole different level.

She said she’s sure that there were people on the streets who were not Dalhousie students, even though it was marketed on social media as a university event.

Dalhousie had spent the past couple of weeks telling students that the event was not sanctioned or organized by Dalhousie and telling them not to take part. An Ontario company was part of the promotion of the event as a homecoming weekend gathering, with photos and videos posted to Instagram.

Dalhousie’s vice-provost of student affairs, Rick Ezekiel, said because everything happened off-campus and was not a Dalhousie event, there is little the university can do about issuing sanctions against students involved because the student code of conduct doesn’t apply off the Dal property.

“We’re in a stage right now to debrief and communicate with our partners, to get a full picture of what unfolded on the weekend,” he said.

University president Deep Saini posted an open letter to the university community on Dal’s website Sunday.

The statement said, in part, that the university was frustrated by the “reckless behaviour and the organization of unsanctioned and illegal street parties near campus.”

Halifax Regional Police spokesman Const. Nicolas Gagnon said police are still compiling information on the number of charges laid, arrests, and tickets issued.

A number of officers were injured and treated for nonlife threatening injuries, he said, but he wouldn’t give specifics on the nature of the injuries. He said police are talking with Dalhousie about the incidents.