A 2021 retrospective
Illustration by Frankie Ho.
The time I spent partying at UVic that fateful fall semester in 2021 is time I’ll never get back. UVic students had the devil in them, and the liquor let it out.
I remember when I stumbled down to that first slice of hell. It was a wet September night in Cadboro Bay. The beach was lined with a horde of strangers exchanging socials and 30-second greetings. Students stumbled through the sand and drank their $9 wine. Creepy men hid in the limited visibility. Not a single LED or flashlight in sight, the beach was completely dark until that first flicker of red and blue.
The cops arrived and killed the buzz. A thousand students scurried up Sinclair Road. Victoria sidewalks could never handle such traffic. The swarm spilt out onto the street, and cars honked their way through the pandemonium. I saw drinks chucked into oncoming windshields and people jumping onto hoods.
I separated from the group once the herd returned to campus, and the next morning I saw Global News had picked up the story. I even heard that they expelled a couple of kids, but I don’t know for certain. Classes hadn’t even started. Sometimes on a quiet night, I can still hear them chanting. “Cluster 60! Cluster 60! Cluster 60!”
If campus parties were hell, then Cluster 60 was the ninth circle. With every weekend came a single intrusive thought shared by a battalion of frat boy foot soldiers. How can we cure our boredom in the most destructive way possible? I’ve experienced more vandalism in UVic cluster housing than anywhere else in my life. Stop signs ripped out of the concrete, litres of dish soap poured into Petch Fountain. Another time I saw someone, while campus security was watching, punch out a window after arguing with their boyfriend.
Campus Security didn’t do a damn thing about it either, but in my experience, that’s routine for them. The Community Leaders are no different. Either they act like students and let their friends drink, or they call CSec if they see a single empty can. At the end of the day, they likely won’t lift a finger if there’s a real threat. It’s beyond their pay grade.
I can understand the desperate appeal of cluster parties if you’re 18, a first-year, and still not allowed at the bar. But my advice? Sit this one out for another year.
UVic doesn’t tell you in the orientation booklet that living on campus has a risk of imminent injury. In the span of one Halloween weekend, I sustained burns, bruises, and multiple lacerations. That year they started the biggest mosh pit I had ever seen. I walked right into the middle of it without even realizing. After the pit had swallowed, digested, and expelled me from its clutches, someone threw a bottle of Smirnoff from a third-story balcony. It shattered against my right hand and left a few shallow cuts with a splotchy bruise across the knuckle. I held a cold beer against it to reduce the swelling.
I went to tell my friends that I was leaving this cursed place to go home and cry when I noticed the crowd had dispersed from where I was standing. I heard a faint sizzling at my feet. Snuggling up next to my Blundstones was a lit firework. It erupted and my crotch was engulfed in a flare of red and purple sparks. It made my pant legs crispy and burned through to the thigh. I yelped like a branded animal. Nobody should ever have to leave a party with a charred ass.
Monday morning always looked like a tornado had blown through. An explosion of gutted trash cans, broken glass, and dried puke. Put that in your orientation booklet. A party fails when it lacks one thing: good people. I was unsuccessful in finding them here. Be safe if you decide to attend. You should party where the bouncer isn’t a coward, not here where campus security just daydreams about being cops.
