'A real statement of solidarity': Hundreds attend UCC protest raising awareness about spiking

The director of University College Cork’s (UCC) Bystander Intervention Programme has said that awareness of spiking, being proactive and knowing how to step in is key to keeping society safe.

Professor Louise Crowley was speaking following an on-campus protest in what was a collaboration between UCC Bystander Intervention Programme and UCC Student’s Union.

The Take Back the Spike campaign saw hundreds of students in attendance on Thursday, as well as the President of the university Professor John O’Halloran which Prof Crowley said was “a real statement of solidarity from the management of the university, recognising dangers to our students but also standing with our students”.

The purpose of the protest was to highlight the growing seriousness of the issue of spiking in nightclubs and at events - where a drug or other substance is added to a person's drink or injected into someone by syringe.

Prof Crowley said that the situation is a huge threat to the safety of society and to the safety of students in their social endeavours and that both raising awareness of the situation and educating people about how to act if they are a bystander to such a situation are particularly important.

She said that oftentimes, a person may not be involved but it is their friend who is affected by the spiking or their friend who is perpetrating, in which case she said it is important to know how to be proactive and know what to do.

In recent weeks there have been numerous reports of spiking via needle in Ireland and the UK. Prof Crowley said that while such incidents haven't yet been reported in Cork “it is going to evolve and it is going to arrive and so we want the message to be out there”.

She said that while there has been a call for nightclubs and pubs to be more conscious of the issue, that it is not about telling the pubs or nightclubs to “stop the spiking” but that it is about everybody recognising the role they have to play.

Whether you’re the pub owner, whether you’re the nightclub owner, whether you’re the young person going out, whether you’re the taxi driver, whether you’re the bouncer outside the door, it’s about ensuring that we know what to look for and recognise it when we see it.

She said that while nobody has the solution to the issue, that if everyone comes together “what happens is that those who are perpetrating, whether it’s spiking or any other form of inappropriate behaviour, they become the outliers”.

“The silence gives them the consensus of acceptability, the silence makes it easier, so we’re trying to embolden our students with a voice and doing it through knowledge, education and skills empowerment,” she said.