St. Patrick’s Day lands on a Saturday. Watch out

In two weeks, it will be St. Patrick’s Day.

And if you live in Waterloo, you know what that means.

This year, the police, city and university officials are planning to work together to tone down the dangerous, unmanageable street party that has been materializing every year on March 17.

But they don’t really have that power.

Whatever the authorities do, “it’s not going to stop people,” said Victoria Grundy, a first-year student.

She and others told me that the wearing of green, the drinking of beer and the cramming of 15,000 people into a small area focused on Ezra Avenue near the campus is a “bucket list” experience for students.

It’s a tradition they anticipate with excitement. For some, it’s part of the reason they come to Laurier. One first-year student described it as a bonding activity.

Not every student enjoys the party. Yavieshni Manoharan walked halfway down Ezra Avenue one year and turned back. “It smelled really bad — cigarettes and alcohol and sweat,” she said.

“It’s like walking through a mosh pit,” agreed Nicole McEwan.

But whether the students love or hate it, they all agree: No one is going to tell thousands of revellers that they can’t drink in the streets.

Being heavy-handed with students will “backfire,” said student Julia Verin, who saw one young man passed out at 11:30 a.m. one year.

“It’s going to get really sassy.” The party has grown over the years. At first, authorities tried to embrace it. Waterloo Regional Police Chief Bryan Larkin waded through the crowds, high-fiving students and posing for selfies with them.

Officials also turned a blind eye to the public drinking. The City of Waterloo sponsored a tent serving food and beer, hoping to break up the crowd into smaller chunks.

But instead, word spread about the festivities. Busloads of students from other universities — Queen’s McMaster, Western,

Guelph, even some from the United States — started showing up to join in the fun.

These were mistaken attempts to deal with the problem. The crowds ballooned. In 2016, officials started to get nervous about their ability to manage in an emergency.

They tinkered with details, like locking academic buildings at night, so that people wouldn’t come in looking for a washroom, and banning St. Patrick’s regalia from the campus bookstore. The city cancelled the tent.

But by then, the St. Patrick’s Day party had taken on a life of its own. The crowd tripled in size, to 15,000 in 2017 from 5,000 in 2016.

Part of the reason for the larger crowds last year was that March 17 fell on a Friday, when fewer classes are scheduled and it’s easier to skip them. This year, it falls on a Saturday, when there won’t be classes at all. Watch out.

So when Shayne Turner, director of municipal enforcement services with the City of Waterloo, recently warned that “ticketing and fines is going to be one of our key focuses this year,” there’s nothing to do but laugh at the futility of it all.

All the public education plans in the world, all the extra police being brought in at public expense from Peel Region, the rules about no overnight guests in residence rooms on that weekend, and the ticketing and fines — it’s a flimsy wall against the tide of party-heartying that the occasion has come to represent.

It should never have been allowed to grow as big as it did.

Pushing it back down to size won’t be quick, and it won’t be easy.