Residents in college areas

Auburn

What's the deal with the stables and scholars losing their licenses? All I've heard is that it's because of complaining residents.

If you ask me, they're (residents) only bringing more trouble on themselves. With the size of the Hurlers and not many other nearby pubs, it's only going to lead to people having house parties instead.
House parties will be even more annoying for the residents than a few drunken students stumbling home from pubs. Plus, because people are going to be p****d off with them, they'll not be as, shall we say, *understanding*

This all leads back to the underlying problem. You can't live in a student area and expect it to be as quiet as a normal residential area.
I lived out there for a while (college court) and some of those people from the residential committee are constantly just peeking out from their curtains looking for something to complain about. They called the guards to the house I was staying in about five times in the space of a few weeks and we honestly weren't doing anything annoying!!

Mr E

From what I heard, its not nearly as interesting as that. There was an objection to the way that club members are being enrolled. Not sure about the details, but I never heard anything about residents complaining.... thats just nuts (students will just go the the hurlers, killmurray lodge etc. instead)

- Dave.

sceptre

I happened tyo pick up a copy of An Focal today so all I know comes from that. May call into Eoin O'Broin at some stage (I hear he's regarded as one of those "good" presidents (which is, er good))

Basically the College Court residents association made three objections to the renewal of the licences last September. because there were objections submitted, the hearing/case was adjourned until December and then February. The hearing last week took four hours btw. The objection that hit home was the third one: "that any of the rules are habitually broken". Basically part of the problem is that ID cards don't have dates of birth on them. Because of this it can't be guaranteed that people visiting the pub are over 18 (yeah, I know, it goes on all over the place but not all club licence renewals have people as determined to resist at all costs). UL won't put the DOB on the cards as it's part of their ultra-modern:rolleyes: security check on results (there are only three items people need to check results: ID number, DOB and the PIN).

Judge O'Reilly was also fairly pissed that the pubs were operating as "commercial enterprises" (in other words he doesn't think the checking of ID cards on entry and the rules relating to non-members being signed in is being done properly). He's also got a major problem with the procedures being used by the "clubs"* to register members. There is no procedure to register members that I know of - all students are automatically members of both clubs regardless of their age. I'm not too sure what the financial arrangement with the Scholars is but I know that the membership fee (paid directly by the SU to the Stables to cover the whole consideration requirement of being a club member) was 10p pre student.

Given that the reasons for failing to renew the licences were pretty niggly and technical, I think the problem can be solved quite easily:
1. Have students register individually themselves as members of the clubs, paying a pittance in membership fees (10c a year sounds quite reasonable)
2. As part of the membership, students will be issued a proper membership card holding all necessary details (cost of membership can be raised to cover costs of this, it'll still be a peppercorn pittance)
3. Enforce the requirements of having a club beer licence. If that means checking the ID of every person walking into the bar, so be it. The Scholars used do it every busy night and it was never a problem.
4. The above to be enacted and put into practice before the case comes up for appear in about 10 weeks time.


There are some steps being taken by the SU to sort this out more quickly but if that doesn't happen (and it's a long shot), it'll be 10 weeks roughly before the appeal comes up.

Incidentally the chief enemy on the College Court residents assoc (which students are not allowed join, even if they've lived there for years) is a woman named Ursula Stokes. Friends of mine (who were pretty damn quite, believe me) used live around the corner from her and regarded the woman as a nut. When I was Community officer on the SU exec I once had the misfortune to deal with her (as opposed to the "other" residents association in Castletroy, who are a lot saner). My quite friends were right. I've a few choice quotes from the lady including

(UL is an institution) to set you up for drugs and alcohol and to become an alcoholic

There you go now.

I'm not denying the residents association have a number of issues that they need solved. Governing Body aren't all that interested in talking to them, which is a bit unfortunate. That woman is an idiot though - or at least does a good impression of it.

I can understand noise. I live in the middle (the very middle) of Limerick city ffs. It's a lot noisier here than it is anywhere in Castletroy (I've lived here for five years, I lived there for four). Ursula Stokes does a good rant but as long as she's heading the residents assoc, the college won't want to talk to them (given that she appears to impossible to placate or negotiate with). It's a bit unfortunate (from their point of view) that they don't realise that.

And you're right btw - there will be a lot more home drinking now and a lot more noise around the College Court area. From the point of view of the residents though these will be stationary targets to call the cops to. The odd moving singing student will be gone by the time Mr Pleeseman arrives. I think they may come to regret it but havnig won a vicroty (at least temporarily) they'll be jubilant for some time now.



*I'm not being a smartass by putting the word"clubs" in inverted commas. The pubs are run with club licences and quite a bit of money is distributed to clubs and societies on campus. As a former auditor of two of them I think this is a great thing. Putting the word in inverted commas is merely because most people around UL just considered them the local pubs and never considered the type of licence they were operating under.

Mr E

Yay! I'm right!

Great post, Sceptre...

- Dave.