He’s too drunk. His legs have collapsed beneath him, so there is someone supporting either of his shoulders – that’s two. His head is lolling back, so a third person holds it up and grips a mask to his mouth, from which a plastic sac drops down to collect his thin, watery vomit. This third one coaxes him to a seat where he can recover. A fourth gently holds the folds of his toga together at the crest of his back in such a dignifying way that he may never know they were there. He sits down. He gets a biscuit. He gets a ride home safe. He’s one of the many hundreds of people helped every year by the student volunteers at Are You OK during O Week.
7:30pm
It’s 7:30pm on the Wednesday of O Week. Sage Burke, Manager of OUSA Student Support, is addressing a room full of student volunteers. “This is going to be one of the biggest Toga Parties ever. Literally,” he says.
The volunteers’ shirts are a bright, new magenta with ‘Are You OK splashed across the front. Just about every single volunteer is armed with a radio and mouth piece – this is how they’ll navigate one of the biggest parties of the year. 3,200 freshers are about to crash land into Forsyth Barr Stadium for the OUSA Toga Party. The volunteers – many, if not most, of them students - in this room will spend all night to ensure each attendee have a safe and enjoyable experience. They’ll barely sit down for the next five hours.
Sage relies on a wide pool of keen volunteers to make Are You OK happen. “I like to have 50-60 [volunteers for O Week] to make sure our bases are covered,” he says. Tonight, there are 25. 11 of them are members of the elite Student Support Response Team (SSRT). They’ve been training for weeks to support emergency services in as many different situations as you can think of: suicide prevention, cardiac arrest, missing persons, and a range of drug responses.
There were four teams at Toga; each had a leader, and were highly trained. There were two chill out zones, each snappily referred to as North and South COZ. The COZs are tents situated outside two of the major stadium gates equipped with first-aid materials, blankets, and chairs. Once attendees make it inside, this is where they will be taken if they have gone too hard, to eventually return to the party, or to be ferried home in the OUSA van.
This Toga Party was different from all the others. Sage told the room the new rule: if a student is visibly intoxicated at the gate to the party, they will be turned away, and have no opportunity to sober up in the COZ as in previous years. They get a circle drawn on their hands and become a Toga outcast.
Lauren, who has been with Are You OK since 2016, predicted that this new rule will mean “a lot of upset and distressed students”, but agreed that it needed to be in place. With less people in the venue who are dangerously intoxicated, “it makes for a safer night for everybody,” she said.
Nicola broke down Are You OK’s approach to these students for me. “We have people roaming on the dance floor, so they’ll be picked up [by Are You OK],” she said. “They’ll be taken to a tent where they’ll be reported to the team leader, who’ll check them in with their details, and they’ll decide what needs to happen. Normally they sit down, get given biscuits and water, and we see what their condition is like. If they’re in terrible condition and we can’t handle them, they go to St John’s, but normally we help them sober up and they can go back in. Or, we can give them a ride home if they’re not gonna sober up and the best thing is for them to go home and be taken care of by someone else.”
Lauren called Are You OK “the RAs (residential assistants) of O Week,” which I loved.
7:50pm
10 minutes before the gate officially open, we were ready. I could hear the cheers and chatter of hundreds of people, most of whom have arrived by busses arranged by their college to avoid egging.
Despite the extensive coordination, the first year mob was huge, screaming, impossible to keep track of. Pairs of Are You OK volunteers peppered themselves along the unruly queue.
One college had clearly not policed carrying alcohol on their chartered bus. Students spilled out with berry scrumpies and Great White Sharks in their fists. They seemed surprised when stadium security held up their hands in a ‘woah’ movement and told them they could not sink piss in this area (which, for the duration of O Week, had a liquor ban). The curb then lit up with the sound of dozens of half-empty vessels hitting the concrete. The gutters along Anzac Ave filled up impressively with a river of dirty yellow.
I heard a girl dismount the bus and laugh, “Imagine being sober at Toga”.
Lauren was right in thinking people would be pissed off with the crackdown on intoxication. Two boys, standing outside the steps up to Forsyth Barr, circles drawn hurriedly in vivid on their hands, were the first victims of the ‘no second chances’ rule. I heard them before I saw them. This is the first time I see Are You OK in action tonight.
The two excluded students were berating a pair of volunteers, shadowed by their college’s warden, who had been called in to take the boys home. Inside, the bass from the live acts is rumbling.
“Can we get a refund at least?” one asked. Blair*, a veteran Are You OK volunteer, calmly told him that she knows it sucks, but no he can’t, and that they don’t make the rules. “This is fucking bullshit. Absolute fucking bullshit,” one of them yelled at her. Another 20 minutes of complaints, commiserations, and cussing droned on before the warden could get them into a car. It was gross to watch. Once they left, I asked the pair if they’re all good. I’m shocked when they shrug it off.
“It happens,” Blair* said. She said people always, always try and convince them to let them back in.
8:30pm
I tagged along with a pair of volunteers as they patrolled the main corridor. In previous years, volunteers in their hi-vis have had to dive into the toilets to stop lovebirds from giving themselves some privacy in a locked stall. I saw another victim of the “no second chances” policy outside, holding hands and talking with her friend on the inside through one of the event boundary fences.
Those unlucky few that needed to be escorted out seemed to be outliers. One of the volunteers I’m with, Flora*, said her night was mostly pointing out bathrooms, fixing togas, and helping people find their friends. A woman called Gabby, who was working coat check, said that most people seemed pretty sober. “A girl nearly flashed her tits at me,” she laughed. “But that’s alright, you just carry on.”
By this time last year, three vans had been filled with students who had to be removed and shipped home. At 8:45pm, not one van has left the stadium. I asked veteran volunteer Taylor* what’s up. “I don’t want to say the q word, but it’s unusually quiet.” She was scared she may have jinxed it. It turns out she did.
9:15pm
At 9:15pm sharp, a switch flicked in the fresher collective consciousness and – like the mighty southern royal albatross – it was time to start flying home. Students were suddenly leaving in droves to Castle. Are You OK tried to find anyone who didn’t look fit to make their own way home, but it was an impossible feat. To give each and every person a visual breathalyser test would take hours. They had to be sharp, and lucky. Most people waved the teams off with a smile. They asked a guy with the words ‘cock garage’ written on the rear of his toga whether he’s all g – apparently he is. A girl who was sprawled on the ground, giggling, refusing hands up from her friends, saw Are You OK coming and straightened up instantly.
When I get back to the COZ, the mood has shifted. A girl is getting carried out on a stretcher into the care of St John’s. Nicole later tells me that she sees Are You OK’s role in this whole crazy landscape as “reducing the burden” on St John’s resources by dealing with the non-threatening stuff. Sometimes, though, there’s nothing more you can do but get the professionals in.
9:30pm
By 9:30pm there was a consistent rotation of the lost, the miserable and the sick in and out of the care of Are You OK. Lee* said that the most common issue students come to the COZ for is ’I haven’t made friends and everyone else has friends’. Lauren told me about a girl she consoled during one Toga Party because her boyfriend had texted her – from within Toga – to tell her he was breaking up with her to hook up with someone else – at Toga.
Three volunteers comforted a girl as she cries, laughs, and then hyperventilates. Her best friend had moved to Auckland for uni and she misses her so much. She said this is the most she’s ever drank.
“This sucks, having to look after people like me,” the girl says.
“We volunteered to be here,” they reassure her.
“--Fucking why? I actually love you guys.”
She sends a selfie with her new Are You OK friends to her group chat.
The Toga party has definitely been worse. The talk in the volunteer group is that since Toga is a first-year only event, there aren’t as many people arriving on substances. Some volunteers have had to deal with broken bones before; others have had to deal with people “covered in fecal matter”. This year is a good year.
Lauren said that after doing a full O Week of Are You OK volunteering, she has to go to Student Health to “take stock”. It makes sense. Not only is the job physically exhausting, it’s emotionally draining. After five years of donating her time and energy, she still loves it. She said it shows you a “different side” to students, and lets you witness “extraordinary human moments”.
I overhear a guy ask an Are You OKer whether they get paid. When they tell him no, he just mutters “what the fuck”. “Back in my first year, I was one of the kids who needed a bit of help.” said one volunteer.
Lee* said the same. “Are You OK took me home in first year… So I thought I’d give back.”
11:00pm
The night’s not over until every toga leaves the building. Just after 11:00pm, all of Are You OK had moved the last of the stragglers out of the stadium. Some of them are ushered into the last of the van seats, others are taken to Campus Watch to get home. Many of them, both volunteer and first-year, will be back tomorrow, and the next day, and for every stadium event in the O Week calendar, to do it all over again.
*Some names were changed to protect privacy.