i am sooo wasted BEWARE OF RANTINGS

According to www.galwaynews.ie Galway Gardai have said they have drafted in extra patrols to the city in response to incidents connected with RAG week. Traditionally RAG week was a week of activities organised by university students to raise money for charity (Raise A Grand), but over the past few years the focus has shifted to excessive drinking and anti-social behaviour. Members of the public have complained about the state of Eyre Square this morning after a night of revelling. Residents in Newcastle (where I live) say students have been running riot since yesterday afternoon. (I think that must be an exaggeration) Student leaders in both third level colleges have said they don’t condone irresponsible drinking or law breaking. Galway Gardai have now issued a strong warning about drinking sensibly. Garda Noelle Kilduff of Mill Street station is urging members of the public having problems with students to contact them.

Funnily enough not many people complain when Galway gets destroyed by people coming in from the country during race-week. And much more destruction takes place during race week. Oh wait… it’s okay to be an irresponsible ignorant fool if your overflowing with money but when you’re a broke student spending whatever money you have on cheap alcohol you’re a criminal. Not that I wouldn’t be disgusted by most of the childish drunken activities that students get up to this week. It looks really stupid falling out of the GPO on a Monday afternoon covered in foam wearing shorts and a t-shirt. I blame the night-clubs that open in the middle of the day and advertise/ glorify irresponsible and totally stupid behaviour and the kids who have more money than sense and buy alcohol until they’re unconscious.

I never really understood RAG week and why it was worth getting excited about being able to drink at anytime of the day. You can do that already. I guess drinking at odd times of the day for prolonged periods of time wasn’t a novelty to me, and I hate crowds, so it really wasn’t that appealing to me. I remember when I was in first year and on the first day of RAG week I found out that Hunter S Thompson was dead. That was a bit of a shock to me since I had just recently finished a few of his books and I considered him a great and inspiring journalistic writer with a witty tongue. He was the last person I’d expect to commit suicide. I always expected him to be on the sidelines spitting literate insults at the corporate and political thieves and liars of the day. So I got hammered drunk on whiskey in his honour. I remember falling up the stairs in Cuba night-club with my friend at some point in the evening after a bouncer had forcibly removed the bottle of whiskey from my clutches, promising me I could have it back at the end of the night. Needless to say I cannot recall much of what happened inside Cuba that night, but I’m sure it wasn’t too exciting. The usual combination of queing for clockrooms/toilets/drinks, shuffle-dancing because there’s too many people, looking at girls whose make up has turned into a Dali painting in half fascination/half horror and looking at the carnivorous men following the girls around.

The bouncer never gave me back that bottle of whiskey.

The best RAG week I had was the following year when a few friends and I spent a week in Italy. We visited Pisa, Bologna and Venice, and had a great time. Debauchery always feels a little healthier when you’re surrounded by unfamiliar sights and sounds. I probably spent less than a lot of people who stayed in Galway and got drunk everyday in over-priced establishments, and I got to see some amazing sights I might never get to see again, and I still had enough money to eat and drink. It was a great week. Italy is such a beautiful country with so much to do and see; I don’t think I would ever get tired of it.

I can’t remember what I did last year. Since it was my Final Year I probably did a minimal amount of studying and a lot of procrastinating. I don’t think partying was on the menu though.

This year I’ll be avoiding town and keeping to myself. The idea of RAG week annoys me and so does the “oh-my-god-they-are-drinking-in-the-middle-of-the-day” reaction to it. Maybe once it was a week when the students did positive things for those of us who are more unfortunate but it has been irreversibly hijacked by night clubs promoting their rubbish events which are always “get as many of them in and take all their money and then kick them out, hose down the rooms and repeat every few hours”. The students are left staggering home blind drunk while the pub owners are running to bank. What the colleges should do is disassociate themselves completely from the week, ban drinking on college. A lot of students around college are getting angry because other students who are drinking in the middle of the day are disrupting classes and the like. I've no problem with getting drunk at any hour of the day, just don’t be a problem for someone else. Why should someone else have to pay the price for someone elses’ inability to be responsible? Students, one would have thought should be aware and informed, but clearly not when the lack of control is visible. But it’s the attitude that the week is about nothing but drinking that creates this atmosphere. And while there are individuals who are going around trying to collect money I think it’s a lost cause. There are events planned which have been planned that don’t involve alcohol, but “if you don’t drink you’re a dry-shite”. The prevailant idea that alcohol=fun needs to addressed and if it's not addressed by the most educated people in our country then who is going to? In fact it's being made worse by them.

Generally students make Galway a less comfortable place to be in and this is noticeable by the more chilled out atmosphere during summer. Sure there are people drinking irresponsibly, but not so many people doing it and doing it so well. RAG week sums up the cultural contribution students bring to Galway and undermines all the good things like Muscuilt which don’t get the attention they deserve. It’s sad really. And now they're bringing in extra police to keep the drunk students under control. How embarassing.