Student leaders at UBC Okanagan in Kelowna are distancing themselves from a large bush party that RCMP broke up on the weekend. About 600 UBCO students showed up for the Saturday night bash in a field on Postill Lake Road. When RCMP heard about it, officers drove to the site and saw people paying admission, large tents, a generator and a disc jockey playing music. Molson had donated 10 kegs of beer. Red Bull, the caffeine drink company, was one of the sponsors. Chartered buses and vehicles were ferrying partygoers to the location. Organizers failed to show police a permit for the event. Officers set up a roadblock, checking for open liquor and turning back vehicles. About 12:30 a.m., they shut down the party and sent everyone home.
The RCMP suggested student leaders were behind the party. “The (UBCO) student association learned from this incident,” said RCMP Const. Steve Holmes. “Include the RCMP. We‘re not about wrecking people‘s fun, but it has to be done in the proper way.” However, the university‘s student union denies it had anything to do with the party. Internal co-ordinator Carolyn Cody said police are painting the student council unfairly. “It‘s easy to say it was the student union who put it on, but the council – the governing body of the student union – had zero involvement,” she said Monday. Twelve RCMP officers, including auxiliaries, ended the blowout. As chartered buses transported students back down the road, drunken malcontents threw rocks at the vehicles, police said. The bus drivers refused to return, stranding 150 people who needed rides. They endured a rainstorm as they tried to arrange other transportation. The officers pulled the plug because uninvited people could have joined the party and it may have descended into a melee, Holmes said. “There was no security (and) no monitoring of alcohol consumption.”
Permits for commercialized events on regional-district land don‘t exist, said area director Kelly Hayes. You have to own the land to apply, he said. Doug Owram, UBCO‘s deputy vice-chancellor, released a statement saying the party was not a university-sanctioned event. Who organized it is a “mystery,” said Cody. “As far as I know, it was entrepreneurial young students wanting to throw a big party. No one has fessed up, and the largest groups are being blamed.”
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Update: Molson also distancing itself from UBCO bush party
Update: 09/09/22/ 8:50 a.m. Kelowna.com
Molson is now denying that it, too, had no official involvement with a weekend bush party attended by UBCO students.In an e-mail sent to Kelowna.com this morning, Adam Moffat, manager of marketing and brand public relations for Molson Coors, asked for a correction to information provided by the local RCMP, which indicated the beermaker sponsored the event.“We had no involvement in this activity,” Moffat wrote. “The students may have had Molson cups but they were not provided by us. We also did not supply any beer.”The UBCO student union denied involvement with the party on Monday, contrary to information provided by police.
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