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Suzanne Breen: Life in the Holyland (of Belfast)

Northern Ireland has been enjoying glorious weather. It’s been ice-creams,
sexy shades, and summer finery as people relax in the sunshine.

Not in the Holyland. Drunken students have been on the rampage. They gather
in their front gardens or the street. Not two or three students enjoying a
beer with a CD on in the background. There can be up to 20 outside a house
with caseloads of alcohol.

One house blasts dance music, the Wolfe Tones pounds from the next, another
hammers out the latest chart sounds. It’s maximum volume, like being at an
outdoor rave.

The behaviour would make the worst yob in a working-class area seem
mannerly. Drinking and raucousness are interspersed with ball games. Not
gently tossing a football about. It’s taking over the entire street, balls
pounding off cars and windows. In my street yesterday, three separate ball
games went on simultaneously for two hours.

On Tuesday, the girls two doors down spent the afternoon throwing eggs and
water-bombs out the window. The week before, a student two doors up
urinated onto the street from the second-floor window one afternoon.

The boys in the house next door regularly smash bottles in their garden. To
describe such behaviour as animalistic insults animals. Yesterday’s mayhem
lasted from 4 to 11pm. Then they headed to the pub.

Since term began after Easter, the Holyland has been worse than ever before.
Residents’ complaints in April were up three-fold from March, and March
included the always awful St Patrick’s Day.

Physically and mentally, we’re struggling to cope. Many of us are
prescribed sleeping tablets and diazepam. The situation is compounded by
landlord builders.

Students party to 4 am and builders, who enjoy decent sleeps in areas far
removed from the Holyland, noisily begin work at 8 am. I’ve survived three
weeks now on four hours sleep a night.

The wardens patrolling the area are great guys. On occasions, they’ve been
assaulted. They do a sterling job but need greater powers and numbers. There
are three on at night. You’d need 30.

Queens’ liaison officer Gordon Douglas is committed and conscientious. But
both universities top brass, despite their oft-repeated promises, are
failing abysmally.

Still no student has been expelled for anti-social behaviour. Tokenistic
fines or a few weeks’ suspension doesn’t work. The students’ behaviour
shows they’re not perturbed by that.

The landlords are woeful. Last night, they drove about the area but notably
weren’t seen ordering their tenants to behave. Builders’ skips are
overflowing.

At 1 am. on Tuesday, students lifted two chairs from a skip in my street,
banged them off the front of every nearby house, then flung them across the
pavement. At 3 am, other students hauled beds from the skip onto the
pavement and lay on them, drunkenly yelling, until the wardens arrived.

The biggest disgrace are the PSNI. I spoke to officers three times last
night, begging them to take action in my street. No thing was done. Blocking
the road with ball games, drinking on the street – not just in front gardens
– blasting music and yahooing doesn’t apparently constitute a breach of the
peace or public disorder.

If Holyland residents did the same outside the homes of vice-chancellors,
landlords, or top cops, we’d be swiftly arrested. After residents’ requests,
police numbers increased. It made no difference. Most drove around safely
inside their vehicles doing nothing.

I watched as three police on foot saw the worst streets and decided . . . to
walk in the opposite direction. Sleep deprivation and horrendous noise is a
recognised form of torture. It’s criminal that it’s still happening.

Suzanne Breen