Dalhousie University and the Dal Student Union have teamed up for another year of school-sanctioned fun on campus. To avoid the large, unsanctioned street parties of years gone by, the university is hosting—mostly sports—events on Saturday, September 28, from noon until sunset.
According to an emailed statement from Dal, Saturday’s events include:
- A Dal Tigers football game and back-to-back women's and men’s Tigers varsity soccer games
- A food truck festival
- A licensed area on campus
- Alternative programming across campus and in residences throughout the day, including “health supports and harm reduction resources”
Dal’s statement says the day’s events were designed in partnership with the DSU as “a vibrant student on-campus experience for the fall,” which they say is “an important part of our ongoing work in managing the negative impacts of illegal street parties.”
The statement says Dal encourages students to “engage in these fun opportunities while taking care of themselves, each other, and our neighbours and community,” and points to last year’s homecoming, which, it says, found many students choosing Dal’s “promoted activities on campus instead of organizing or taking part in any illegal street gathering.”
Last year, students generally moved on from Dal’s sanctioned party and away from the neighbourhoods surrounding Dal’s Studley campus—where things had gotten out of hand before—towards a concert held at the Garrison Grounds. This year, a two-day music festival at the foot of Citadel Hill might do the same trick.
Dal’s statement refers to this as “another event in which students can choose to take part, rather than in unsanctioned street gatherings,” though it is not a homecoming event per se.
In response to what the school is doing to manage these unsanctioned street parties that have drawn concern, outrage and a heightened police presence over the past decade, Dal’s statement says the school has taken “a multi-level response.” The school says unsanctioned street gatherings are a “complex and growing problem” and that this response is “aimed at addressing the root causes and finding alternative ways for students to feel connected to each other and their community.”
The multi-level response includes:
- Creating a “multi-stakeholder collaborative framework” in 2022 for community engagement, which included a “Paint the Street Placemaking Project” that shut down Larch and Jennings streets in September 2023 to paint a colourful mural on the road
- Creating the Dalhousie Student Transition and Engagement Framework to plan on-campus events that don’t spill over into adjacent streets
- Building up the on-campus first response capacity through the Dalhousie Campus Medical Response Team, as well as harm reduction efforts through Dalhousie Care Hubs that are now a mainstay during campus events. Give food, water, medical and mental health first aid and “health promotion resources”
- Launching the HRM-Dalhousie Task Force in 2023 “to foster coordinated planning and response to unsanctioned street gatherings”
The task force is co-chaired by HRM acting managing director, government relations Conor O’Dea, Halifax Regional Police (HRP) superintendent of patrol services Derrick Boyd and Dal’s vice-provost of student affairs Rick Ezekiel. The membership also includes senior members of Emergency Health Services (EHS), Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency, Dalhousie and community members. The task force also includes an “Ad-hoc Security and Public Safety Collaborative Response Group,” which is meant to “collaborate in the immediate lead-up, during and following an event to be called in by the task-force chairs, if needed, for a ‘joint-response structure’.”
This ad-hoc group invites participation from: HRP patrol and HRP’s Public Information Office, Dal Security Services and Communications, Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency, EHS, Halifax Transit and “others as needed.”
