“Unofficial RAG Week”: The Final Crusade

By: Jason Glynn

After Wednesday night, most people knew that last night, the place to be wasn’t a nightclub or a pub but outside Supermacs once the clubs began to shut. From as early as 1:30am Eyre Square was beginning to fill and by 2:00am all anyone could think about was: “When will it kick-off?”

In a rare sight, at one point there was nobody at the tills inside; instead a good 1,000 or so students had gathered outside and began as they left off the previous night, but you knew when it was basically planned that it wouldn’t emulate the night before. Gardaí were out in force, but they were still heavily outnumbered and knew that attempting to prevent anything would simply make things escalate, so their role was to make an attempt at keeping the peace as opposed to preventing a riot.

The atmosphere from the night before wasn’t there. It wasn’t as spontaneous, there were no flares and instead only a few bangers were set-off; each time one went off it garnered a large roar but it had nothing on the night before. With the front door looking like a mosh-pit and hundreds standing back looking on, it was the singing and chanting that once again made it something special. “Ooh Ah Up The Ra” rang out from the crowd several times, switching between that and the tune of “Chase the Sun” by Planet Funk, found commonly at Darts games. And if you fell over, you’d have heard about it.

Some went the extra mile though, as one girl brought a tin whistle with her for the final night of what has been a memorable “Unofficial” RAG Week.

Last year NUI Galway made the first step in an attempt to prevent one of the most anticipated weeks of the student calendar, and soon they were followed by GMIT, whose Student’s Union voted to cancel the week sixty-six to one. However, the result can be summed-up in one meme
found over Facebook, “Rag Week Cancelled… I Think Not!!!” With an image from Wednesday night in the background.

“Unofficial” RAG Week was organised through social networking sites such as Facebook and has shown both NUI Galway and GMIT that they can remove it from a calendar all they want, but RAG Week will go ahead one way or another. Some people have criticised students for their actions, especially based on images from Wednesday night but the students of Galway rebelled and still made a memorable and even historic week, with people from all over the country coming in throughout the week to join the “Unofficial” madness.

Although it is technically not over, with most out of county students going home on a Friday evening, the crowd simply won’t be there for tonight. But if you feel like heading out, Sidney Samson will be performing in Central Park Nightclub and all other nightclubs are open.

If you took part in “Unofficial” RAG Week, we hope you enjoyed it.

Here’s a video from last night – Unofficial RAG Week 2012