Alexandra Birukova
News Editor
Pub night at the Underground became a fight club Sept. 23 when, in three separate incidents, patrons became rowdy. One community member allegedly assaulted a pay-duty police officer.
Police arrested the suspect Sept. 24, following the assault. According to the Toronto police, the person was charged and is currently waiting on a court date. The other fights that night involved non-community members.
“I know that the Underground has very tight security measures. However, that night [Sept. 23], there was a lot of silliness,” said Robert Kilfoyle, York’s director of Security Services.
Kilfoyle said that as soon as he found out a non-community member got inside of the Underground and caused a disturbance, he asked for a meeting with Scott Jarvis, the executive director of the Student Centre, Sept. 28.
“I was concerned that a non-community member somehow found his way into the Underground,” he said.
Jarvis said in an email that the pub only grants access to York students and students from other insti- tutions, as well as those who are ac- companied by a York student, adding that those students must have a valid student ID from their institution.
“No one can be absolutely sure how the non-community member got into the pub. There are two theories. First, that the individual had a fake YU card. Second, the card was ‘passed back’ to the individual from someone who had already entered the pub,” said Jarvis.
Jarvis said that after talking to York security and student focus groups, they have made a few changes to their security procedures.
A new computer program that notifies staff about passed-back cards was installed Sept. 28 to prevent any further incidents with non-community members; according to Jarvis, the pub night when the new program was put into work was “incident-free.”
“If a card is ‘passed back,’ the program will immediately notify the operator that the card has already been entered. Furthermore, there are no ins and outs anymore,” said Jarvis. Kilfoyle said that the Student
Centre is responsible for their own security staff during pub nights at the Underground and noted that York usually sends a security guard to look over the situation outside of the pub.
Nana Asiama, second-year labour studies major, has never been to a campus pub night, and predicts she won’t be attending one any time soon.
“I wouldn’t go. Things have hap- pened and there’s nothing stopping it from happening again,” said Asiama. “I heard about [the shootings] but I thought they were actually in Uberhaus [a nearby Keele Street club].
When I found out it was here [at the Student Centre], that didn’t make things any better.”
“You run the risk of running into frights and messy situations any- where you go,” said first-year geography major Rachel Stenning, adding the recent incidents should not stop non-York students from attending campus pub nights.
“I don’t think anybody should be allowed to just waltz onto campus,” she said. “But we have to realize a lot of students are here internationally, and may have friends and family at other schools. You have to keep the social doors open.”
In May of last year, a shooting during the last pub night of the year shook the university. It happened as Underground security was removing a patron from the pub.
Things went out of control when a patron took out a gun and fired multiple shots, injuring an Underground staff member. As the victim was taken to the hospital with non-life- threatening injuries, the shooter fled the scene. He was never arrested.
With files from Excalibur archives and Yuni Kim
