Rector urges end to Roskilde school-start parties after stabbing

The rector of Roskilde Gymnasium is calling for the city’s annual school-start parties to be stopped after a 16-year-old boy was killed in a stabbing near one of the events on Friday, DR reports.

Thousands of young people gather each year in Roskilde’s Folkeparken to mark the start of a new school year at the city’s upper-secondary schools. The gatherings are known as “putte parties”.

Henrik Nevers, rector of Roskilde Gymnasium, said the death showed why the tradition should end. The boy, who attended Himmelev Gymnasium, was stabbed several times and later died from his injuries. Another 16-year-old boy has been arrested and charged in the case.

“I am strongly critical of the entire culture in general,” Nevers told DR. He said newly arrived students were particularly vulnerable to what he described as an excessive alcohol culture.

Students from eighth and ninth grade also attend the parties in Folkeparken, Nevers said. He criticised a culture in which young people draw on each other’s white tops and T-shirts, calling it highly sexualised and unsuitable for the youngest pupils.

The Association of Danish Upper-Secondary Schools also called on Sunday for the parties to be shut down.

Roskilde Mayor Tomas Breddam has contacted the city’s upper-secondary schools to ask why the parties should be held in the municipality. Nevers said he hoped the schools, municipality and parents could prevent future events.

However, he noted that the schools could not abolish an event they did not organise. While night patrol volunteers were reportedly present on Friday, there was no organiser responsible for monitoring the gathering, he said.

Oscar Tønsberg Hoffmann, chair of the Danish Association of Upper-Secondary Students, said the stabbing should not generally be linked to the parties. He referred to the police description of the incident as an “internal dispute”.

Hoffmann said local authorities should instead increase measures designed to make young people feel safe, such as deploying more police and night patrol volunteers.

“I do not think technically that it is possible to ban the parties,” he said. “The party will not stop; it will simply move somewhere else.”

His organisation said parts of the alcohol and sexualised culture were problematic, but argued that they should be addressed through safety initiatives and efforts to change the culture.

Julie Rørdam Thom, rector of Himmelev Gymnasium, did not wish to comment on whether the parties should be stopped. Thomas Ulrik Stilling, rector of Roskilde Cathedral School, said the solution was not to try to prevent young people from meeting outside school hours.

“As a school, we believe more in dialogue and responsibility,” he wrote to DR, adding that parents also had an important role in helping students create safe communities and look after themselves and one another.