UCC cancels raft races due to unruly behaviour

THE students’ union at University College Cork has decided not to hold any raft races in the future following seriously unruly behaviour at last Wednesday’s event.

More than 600 people attended the raft race and trouble flared when a well-orchestrated minority arrived laden down with eggs and flour which they threw indiscriminately at passing cars and pedestrians.

One woman's car was bombarded so badly that she narrowly missed crashing into a wall near the city's Gaol Cross.

"One car pulled up and the whole boot was full of eggs. I've never seen anything like it before," UCC Students' Union acting president Deirdre O'Leary said.

She explained that while some students from UCC may have got involved in unruly behaviour, she thought the event had been infiltrated by outsiders set on causing mayhem.

"We saw boys in school uniform involved and we have made a note of what school they were from and will contact the school," Ms O'Leary said.

Students from the university took it upon themselves to clean up after the incident. They washed down 20 cars which were pelted. Dozens more vehicles were attacked at the UCC campus car parks.

Ms O'Leary claimed that gardaí who were at the event were also targeted by the egg-throwers.

"There were a lot of complaints from people who were hit. People were arriving with crates of eggs and there were even people throwing eggs from passing cars. We got the numbers of three of cars involved and we will be liaising with the gardaí in Barrack Street and community gardaí on the campus," Ms O'Leary said.

The raft race started at 2.30pm and what surprised the organisers immediately was the size of the crowd which turned up "In previous years we've had around 200 people, but this year it was more than 600," Ms O'Leary said.

"I have never seen anything like what happened. It was totally and utterly orchestrated."

Ms O'Leary said that on behalf of the students union she wanted to apologise for the disturbances.

"We took all the necessary safety precautions in the organisation of the race itself, however the union was unprepared for the unprecedented volume of spectators. We take responsibility for the incident and we're disgusted and disappointed with the behaviour of a small number of individuals," Ms O'Leary said.

She said due to the incident the union's executive committee had decided to cancel future raft races.

In addition, some of yesterday's events which were part of Rag Week were cancelled amid fears attempts would be made to disrupt them.