*Investigate journalism article
Being in your twenties in the middle of a pandemic is only getting tougher. Most university students have already gone almost a year without being at social gatherings and meeting new people, and they are getting fed up. Many students stay locked up in their rooms all day with nobody to talk to and this can have serious damaging effects on their mental health. This is why some students have decided to break the rules, by partying and getting together, completely disregarding the current pandemic and government recommendations.
This causes a dilemma because on one hand it is inconsiderate to disobey the rules because it increases the risk of the virus spreading, but on the other hand, university students are struggling to mentally cope with the loneliness, and so they seek company and friendship to feel better.
According to a study done by the Mental Health Foundation, young adults are more likely to report stress arising from the pandemic than anyone else in the population, which means that many of them tend to attend illegal raves as an escape of their problems or negatives thoughts.
At the end of the day humans are social animals, so you cannot completely blame university students for following their instincts. The virus is dangerous but young people are at a lower risk of experiencing severe symptoms if infected, unlike their parents or grandparents.
On a typical November afternoon, Jardel, a friend, was talking about a rave he had attended the previous night at his university campus with over 50 people. “We were definitely not allowed to be gathering in such a large group and I knew it was wrong, but I’ve been spending literally all day in my room for the past few months and this was the first time I felt alive in a long time. The rave lasted for like 20 minutes until security came and busted us at around midnight. Someone shouted, “SECURITY IS HERE!” and I just put my hood up and walked away like everyone else was doing. I don’t think anyone got in trouble because we all dispersed before any of the security could get close enough to say anything to us. It wasn’t really a big deal to be honest”.
From interviewing Jardel, what we can understand is that a large rave is more likely to get busted than a smaller rave because of the amount of noise. However, this does not mean that small raves reduce the likelihood of being caught, in fact attending a smaller rave would increase the chance of being fined. This is because at a large rave there are more individuals the police/security personnel need to identify so it would be easier to make a swift escape and go undetected. At a small rave, the police have fewer individuals to focus on so its very likely that everyone who was attending would be caught and fined.
From mid-March 2020 to mid-November 2020 there had been 24,993 fines issued in England and Wales due to breach of coronavirus restrictions. Furthermore, the measures and the fines were getting tougher as the holiday months were approaching. In England, the fee for a fine can vary depending on the situation. You can be fined £200-£700 for being a guest, and even up to £10,000 if you are an organizer of an event according to the Metropolitan Police website.
But still, people were organizing secret illegal gatherings or parties for Halloween, Christmas and New Year's Eve. There were over 1000 unlicensed illegal parties from June to September. According to data obtained from Metropolitan London, more than 200 illegal parties were busted by the police in one weekend in August. And on New Year Eve alone, 58 illegal raves were caught by the Metropolitan police, who fined 215 people that day with fixed penalties, while 5 organizers were fined £10,000. As it is instructed, the fines depend on the amount of people attending the specific gathering. So far, the Metropolitan police have registered around 3000 people who have attended illegal raves/parties.
Since the lockdown began, private groups in Facebook and WhatsApp have been created where people publish and ask about future raves or parties. We asked some close friends, who had attended, how they found out about these events. They suggested joining a Facebook group, so we did. We typed in the search tab illegal raves London, and tons of private groups popped up. As we looked at each one, we decided to join two of them named London Rave info and Rave Events UK- The Mad house. Both had around more than 10,000 members making it liable. It took around a day to get accepted to both groups.
Once in, we read the posts. There were two types: the ones who asked about if anything was happening tonight and the ones publishing posters of the next rave. The images included all the information about the event except the location. For it, they asked you to either text a number or an Instagram user for the full details. We texted one of the events who looked more legit and were added to a Telegram group. There were the instructions. You had to pay 15 pounds for the ticket and the code scanner sent to your email was your way in.
The address was already on the group chat and asked everyone to be discreet and careful. The rave was supposedly going to happen the week after. The rave started at 11 am and ended around 10-11 pm. “Starting and finishing early helps our chances not to phone in and get caught by the police,” Felix, a frequent raver which refused to give his detailes, explained. He comments even if it’s not ideal, it is better than not going out.
We decided to meet in a student residence around 2 pm and have a few drinks as we were going with Bea and other two close friends. We waited around an hour and then left the place. The tube ride was around less than 30 minutes which became at some point a panic attack. We were nervous of getting infected or getting caught by the police. The tube was empty and so was the street. The closer we got, the more we could hear the music.
There were not many people queuing. We followed the ticket holder sign and queued there. Three groups of people and a couple were in front of us. We stood still not even grabbing our phones as we knew they had cameras at the line. Apparently, they always watched you to know if they were going to let you in, a similar process you got to get into Bergahin in Berlin.
Three men and two women weren’t let in because their masks weren’t safe enough. Everyone was wearing a mask which impressed us and made us feel safer. We stepped closer to the gate as they let in the rest of the people in front of us. Before presenting our tickets, they took our temperatures, put gel in our hands and stuck green stickers on our phones’ cameras. Then, without saying any words, we gave our tickets, and they put a stamp in our hands. Then, they searched us quickly. The security guards were wearing a protective glass mask, a N9 mask and gloves. The first thing we saw as we got in was the sitting areas which are divided by glass walls. We saw people sitting smoking, drinking and chatting there and a sign saying, “only take off your mask in the sitting areas.”
For the dancing areas, which were four, they had signs all over the place saying to keep your mask on at all times. We got into the dancing floor, there were around 100 people in, and we saw mostly everyone was wearing a mask. The music was very loud as any normal rave, but the people looked calmer than any other normal rave. We watched around and some minutes after we realized people from the staff were walking around and scolding people if they didn't have their mask on.
The place was open air and felt hotter as the time went by and having a mask on made everything more suffocating, but still we wore it until the very end. Three hours we were there dancing and having a few breaks where we got to talk with some ravers asking them about why they attend knowing the risk they are putting themselves and their families at.
“I am careful, at least I try to be, but at the same time, I don’t believe everything the government tells us, so I’d rather go out and enjoy myself instead of believing lies,” Millie, 22 British, comments.
“Like yes, be careful and everything. But not going out is affecting everyone's mental health. I am twenty years old and a pandemic can’t stop me from living my life. If I were to stay at home, I wouldn’t be living my life how I wanted to,” Gretel, 20 Irish, comments.
But why do young people actually attend illegal raves? Do they do it simply out of boredom as many admit or does it actually make help them cope with their mental health? Well, a new study conducted by Sodexo reveals that 46% of university students admit to feeling extreme loneliness during their time at university. And 42% of university students have also considered dropping out of university because of mental health issues. This shows how important mental health is, and also how important the social life of university is.
How can the new generation succeed if they are all dropping out of university and have poor mental health because of all the lockdowns? Young people are so desperate to the point that they don’t even care about breaking the government guidelines. They would rather increase their risk of getting coronavirus, than stay inside and be lonely.
For example, third year university student Tanya has considered dropping out of university because she finds it difficult to focus on her studies when there is no social life to balance out her time spent working. She tells me about the reason why she goes to illegal raves. “Literally all I do all day is just do my uni work and then watch Netflix or something, I only go outside to buy food. Last year I had a lot of friends that I would hang out with, but this year they didn’t come back to live out in uni halls because of the lockdown which is understandable.”
Tanya adds, “I feel really lonely and sad, especially late at night and I tend to over think a lot. One day I just had enough so I looked online for secret social events and I found this group on Facebook. I requested to join, and they accepted me after a few hours. I realized I wasn’t alone and there were so many people who felt the same as me. The first rave I went to was really good and I made some good friends there. I’ve been to 4 so far in the last 2 months. Going to raves doesn’t completely help me feel better, because its only temporary fun, but it does makes me feel human again.”
We are living hard times, people want to still join their lives and now a days is getting harder to convince them to stay at home. “I am twenty years old and a pandemic can’t stop me from living my twenty-year-old life. If I were to stay at home, I wouldn’t be living my life as I want to,” Gretel believes. “You need to carry on with our lives, we can’t just wait for it to be over.”
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