Last Tuesday, the Committee for the Safe and Legal Use of Public and Private Space, created to develop strategies to prevent another “Aberdeen Street Riot” at this year’s Homecoming, submitted their final recommendations to city council. This nine-member group, which has been meeting since last November, is made up of representatives from Queen’s as well as the Kingston community. Unfortunately, the majority of their recommendations are much too vague and unfocused to make any significant difference.
Some suggestions targeted only incoming students with an idea to create an education program. Thankfully, the suggestion to send letters home to parents never made it to the final recommendations. Street cameras were proposed to deter illegal behaviour, but details regarding the cameras use were not provided; neither were concerns of privacy reduction adequately addressed. The goals of enforcing the noise by-law and emphasizing responsible partying do nothing to investigate the root cause of the problems, or offer concrete solutions to fixing them. Several of the committee’s recommendations are completely outside of the jurisdiction of the city and police, such as proposing to chance certain provincial liquor laws. It is shocking that there was not a greater demand for details on how these recommendations would be put into place.
The committee’s focus should have been on harm reduction, recognizing that students will continue to party, but encouraging them to do so in a safe and celebratory manner. One suggestion made by students was to hand out plastic cups in exchange for bottles in order to cut down on the number of injuries from broken glass. Students are the ones who will be making the decisions on Aberdeen on Sept. 16 this year, and it’s a shame this suggestion wasn’t a final recommendation.
By attempting to remain uncontroversial to enable the recommendations’ age, tangible recommendations, which could have made a major difference and were within the group’s limitations, were not made. Instead we are left with an overwhelming and scattered collection of vague, unfocused and confusing recommendations, most of which are unlikely to even be implemented.
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