OUSA confident all tickets to Hyde St party will be taken up

REPORTS of the death of the Hyde St party were greatly exaggerated, organisers say.

There were about 800 tickets offered in the second round lottery this year for tomorrow’s Hyde St party, but the event would reach a capacity crowd of 3600, Otago University Students' Association (OUSA) events and venues operations manager Jason Schroeder said.

A handful of lottery tickets now remained, but they would be allocated before the event, Mr Schroeder said.

There had been unclaimed lottery tickets for the party this year for a variety of reasons, including an inability for some students to pay, he said. But the vast majority of unclaimed tickets had already been reallocated and any remaining tickets would be reallocated today.

Wouldbe partygoers who wanted a ticket threw their names in for consideration and the OUSA randomly picked winners who then had a certain amount of time to buy the $55 ticket.

If the tickets were not claimed at that time, the second round lottery started.

Residents of Hyde St and adjoining streets had tickets allocated and did not have to go into the lottery.

OUSA’s role in the party was to ensure the event happened as safely as possible while still remaining a studentled event, Mr Schroeder said.

OUSA worked with police, St John, the Southern District Health Board, Fire and Emergency New Zealand, the University of Otago and Hyde St residents to do that, he said.

But a major part of the safety plan was controlling crowd numbers through ticketing.

A user pays, cost recovery model would make sure the event was ‘‘not financially impacting on students not involved with the event’’, he said.

The party created an enormous amount of costs and resourcing for OUSA, including employing staff to work at the party and contracting suppliers.