Ontario universities are working together to build a new strategy to curb the rowdy street parties during homecoming weekend.
Representatives from nine universities met at Wilfred Laurier in Waterloo last week to get a better handle on the situation. Kingston’s Queen’s University was part of the discussion.
Ontario University Athletics (OUA) has re-worked the fall football schedule to consolidate homecoming games at half a dozen schools. This means that instead of spreading the games out over six weeks, they’ll be held over two weekends.
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“It’s a little bit like a Rubik’s cube in trying to get everything solved,” said Gord Grace, OUA CEO. “We’ve been able to come up with two primary homecoming dates for those six schools and we’ve got that in place for the upcoming season, the 2019 season.”
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Grace says the whole intention of the schedule changes were to help make an impact. The schedule was released in December. Daniel Woolf is principal at Queen’s.
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“We’re hopeful,” said Queen’s principal Daniel Woolf. “It’s not going to fix the problem but I think it’s actually going to minimize the number of occasions on which there can be parties on multiple weekends with a lot of out-of-towners.”
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Unsanctioned street parties don’t only happen after or because of a homecoming football game. St. Patrick Day is also a big party day.
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Woolf says progress is being made and he’s hopeful the schedule change is another step towards curtailing and mitigating the behaviour.
Queen’s will play its homecoming game on October 19th against York.
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