In the past few days the events on Aberdeen have garnered immense amounts of negative publicity, not just locally but across the country. Police Chief Bill Closs described it as a “drunken street brawl” in the Kingston Whig-Standard. The CTV website called it a “drunken brawl with police.” The Toronto Star reported Aberdeen as an “alcohol-fuelled riot.” Individuals who actually attended the Aberdeen party can attest that the events of last Saturday don’t deserve to be given that much credit. It was a drunken, unorganized gathering that got completely out of hand. The sensationalizing of events points to the need on the part of media outlets to attract attention and as a result, readership. The unfortunate reality is that scandal and controversy sell.
Most disheartening is the fact that all the other positive events of Homecoming have been overshadowed by Aberdeen. Aberdeen has come to represent Homecoming, and those unfamiliar with the Queen’s tradition will associate Homecoming with drunken mayhem.
While a great deal of attention was paid to the foolish and asinine behaviour of a few drunken individuals, the City of Kingston witnessed its second homicide of the year on Sunday morning. At the bottom of Monday’s Kingston Whig-Standard, beneath a large photograph of a KCVI student standing atop an overturned car, a smaller article explained how 23-year-old Lindsey May Dibert was killed. Her death, allegedly at her boyfriend’s hands, went relatively unnoticed by the community amidst the flurry of responses to Aberdeen Street events. The misbehaviour of a select group of kids should never have eclipsed the death of this young woman. Aberdeen simply doesn’t warrant this amount of news coverage, not when much more important issues, such as the ongoing tragedy of domestic violence, are at hand.
As a student paper, the Journal seeks to represent students properly, with accurate, balanced coverage and without profit quotas to meet. Photos of the Aberdeen party have appeared in major papers like the Toronto Star. However, they will never be photos taken by the Journal. In an effort to prevent the proliferation of the incorrect idea that Queen’s is a school out of control, Journal photographers have made a conscious decision not to release their photos to other media outlets. Although the behaviour of some people at Aberdeen was deplorable, it was not representative of students at Queen’s, and we intend to ensure that the distortion of the Queen’s reputation is not further propagated.
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