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Photos: Westley Jackson
A group of travellers have taken up residence in a car park on Heslington East, and have been threatening students with violence.
Around 20 caravans worth of travellers moved into the car park between Langwith College and the York Sport Village before 3pm on Thursday May 30th and now appear to be residing on University grounds.
One of the travellers, a middle aged Irish male, told Vision‘s photographer, who was not attempting to take photos of any people and had his camera over his shoulder: “Get that camera out of here or you’ll get smashed up,” before adding: “There are wee kids here, and we’re very protective of our kids.”
A first-year Langwith resident told Vision: “It’s pretty scary having them this close to our accommodation, especially if they’ve been threatening violence. I hope the University gets rid of them quickly because at the moment I don’t feel that safe.”
Langwith Chair Sam Maguire issued advice to students, saying: “This issue is one that should be treated with extreme sensitivity, no judgement or assumptions should be made about this group. Our role as the JCRC is to pass on any recommendations from security services which we will do accordingly.
“Campus is manned 24/7 by security and portering staff so if anyone is concerned or feels unsafe they are available on 01904323333. The issue will be dealt with by the University so as long as people keep themselves secure there should be no problems.
“I understand that YUSU Doorsafe staff will be working throughout the night in the area, to ensure that the situation remains calm.”
The travellers’ appearance on University grounds comes just days after York Council announced that a strategy is being drawn up to improve life expectancy and literacy amongst them, and also to more land for them to live on in the city.
An estimated 350 traveller households currently reside in York. The Council have drawn up a five-year vision which is aimed at improving healthcare, living conditions and employment opportunities.
The University told Vision that they have “stepped up” the security presence on Hes East: “The travellers appeared on campus having been removed by City of York Council from a site in Poppleton and refused entrance to Grimston Bar car park by the Police. They have advised us that they intend to move out on Sunday and we are issuing formal notice to them that we expect them to abide by that.
“‘The travellers are free to use the University sports facilities like any other members of the public, but our sports staff are enforcing the normal rules relating to behaviour.
“‘We have stepped up the security presence on buildings on Heslington East and through our roving patrols. If any member of the University feels in any way threatened they should call Security on 3333.”
Oh Frankie Lampard, he scored 200 against the Hes East travellers!
As if Hes East could get any worse!
Not denying that their being there poses an issue for the University
But just as a small point, it seems from your article that the violence (which no denying, is very problematic) was only threatened when your photographer tried to take photos of them. They might have seen it as an invasion of privacy… just saying.
On the other-hand if thats going to be their general attitude towards all students in the area, then it really is a big issue.
The traveller quoted is within his rights to protect his children from being filmed or photographed. Does YorkVision observe a journalistic code of ethics?
The gut-wrenchingly sanctimonious opinion pieces are coming.
Just to clear up – at no point did our photographer attempt to take photos of any people. The threats were issued when the camera was actually down by his side and not in use.
Surprised they didnt pick somewhere nicer to pitch up
I wonder if the parking warden will be issuing them with a £60 fine for each space they use, like they do to any students who park without a permit.
@ Alex Finnis
Thanks for clarification :) Just wanted to check.
@ Brace yourselves
No, I’m done.
Bringing some much needed social diversity to the University of York.
If your photographer did not attempt to take any photographs, then who took the photographs at the top of the article? Why was your photographer there? Why did he have his camera?
@Common sense question
I said he wasn’t attempting to take photographs of any people, not that he wasn’t taking photographs at all (had he wanted to it would actually have been perfectly legal for him to take photos of the people, he just decided ethically that he didn’t want to)
Don’t mind the travelers at all. However, I can never get a parking place at Hes East at the best of times. This just makes the situation worse.
Do you reckon the travellers are feminists? If not we should convert them to the cause!
Photos of caravans != photos of people
I bet Hes East students are still paying more for their accomodation than the caravan owners!
You can understand it though, they must be fed up of cameras now having been on t.v all year.
Is the fact they’re Irish relevant? Also you wouldn’t have to try too hard to be told you’re going to be ‘smashed up’ on a Saturday night in town.
These guys are just minding their own business, on one stop off of many. To think that they get this sort of response (accusations of violence and crime) everywhere, even at a university supposedly full of educated people, is terrible.
No matter what way you look at it, this is a big problem.
Right vision I want two comment pieces of 200 words each. One by Tom A-C explaining why the travellers would be perfect in his lad-banter man cave and one bybuelena Horton explaining why this is all the fault of straight white middle class males and so we need a Fem Soc. On the desk by 9am tomorrow. I await with baited breath.
There are many sorts of travellers – Romani gypsies and Irish travellers being the most common (and both are already present in York). The adjective Irish lets us know which group they belong to.
How can you try and justify this? If someone rocked up into your back garden I think you would politely tell them to go away. From what you are saying, you would be unjustified in being curious as to what exactly they were doing there.
And why is the camera person getting so much stick? It’s perfectly reasonable to wonder why an unusual group of caravans has suddenly appeared in the car park in Hes East. It’s complete madness.
It was just a description, it’s fair to mention he’s Irish. In your logic, does his age matter?
Also, it isn’t a Saturday night situation. Travellers do have a reputation of stealing and being violent, it’s fair the students who LIVE there don’t feel safe. They’re “minding their own business” in a car park on university property, not an open camp site!
WHY IS THE CAMERA GUY GETTING SO MUCH STICK?
It is perfectly fine to be curious about events that happen on campus and take photos of them, but you need to be aware of peoples privacy, and be ethical about it.
Example: You see a person in a restaurant having a meal, and wearing some clothes that you like. You are curious as to where he got them and decide to go and ask him.
You don’t go up to the guy and say ‘where did you get that’ , because the response is likely to be ‘go away, I’m having a private meal’ (although a violent threat is an over-reaction)
You do go and say ‘Excuse me, I like your clothes. Where did you get them?’
Basically be polite and respectful of peoples boundaries, and from what Alex Finnis is saying, this photographer was, but the article didn’t word it in a way that showed that.
Isn’t it exciting for York Uni to have some news for once that real people actually care about.
Mum?
Done. 9AM.
It is shocking. We pay £123 a week to live here, never mind our water and heating hardly ever working properly, constant fire alarms, electricity always faulty and severe lack of shops and cash machine which never works we now have people ‘living’ on our campus for free! Never mind the fact that students aren’t allowed to park in that carpark and if we have visitors they have to pay! They are not permitted to be staying there nevermind for free!! they have no respect what so ever, I was sat in my kitchen minding my own business when 20 odd caravans drove across the grass right outside my window (Where we all have bbq’s!) leaving tire marks ruining the grass and just driving like maniacs. Who do they think they are and why are they here?! We do not need our security/possessions at risk, nor do we need this nice, calm friendly campus atmosphere destroying. Somebody needs to get the balls to go up to them and tell them to shove it! If they want to live in a caravan fine- but this is not a caravan site nor is it a waste land/empty land where nobody else lives.
Legend
Yo, delete this article or I’ll smash you up
Given that some students are paying upto £14,000 for the use of University facilities, which includes the car parks these travellers have so brazenly helped themselves to, I don’t think anyone can argue the problem is our lack of respect for them/us “invading their privacy”.
It’s bloody stupid, not to mention illegal.
You can be the first to ask them to make a direct debit payment to the accommodation office. All I ask is that you video the event as I need something to keep me going. This problem is not unique to the University of York.
Hopefully they’ll move on soon.
Irish – relevant – yes – half Irish Matt – look up the history of Walmgate. There are Irish people and the there are tinkers, taylors etc
I don’t mind really, just don’t get in a punch up and buy that lucky heather.
To all those saying that gypsies just need a place to stay and will then move on, no fuss, I refer you to the Karl Pilkington meme.
Travellers like this group occasionally arrive on a piece of farmland via an open gate, and park their caravans there, totally illegally. Yes, the majority do act legally but the fact is that some don’t, and when they are questioned on it, they tend to react violently.
On one such farm, arable, south-east, a group set up camp in the middle of a gateway to one side of the farm. The farmer asked them to move, and was told in no uncertain terms to do one for his own sake. When he got the police involved, they said they could do nothing. When he again asked them to move – he was in the middle of sowing, and couldn’t access the field they were on – he was threatened and abused.
When they finally left, they had turned the gateway into a mire, had torn up half of the field, making it totally unusable, they had left numerous bags of rubbish around the field and in the road, and had demolished part of the fence as they drove out. At the next farm where they stopped, two quad bikes were stolen and a barn broken into to be used for dog fighting.
While I’m not saying these are indicative of all travellers or gypsies, the problem is that a minority do act like this, often without any action taken against them.
It’s just worth bearing in mind that while most are happy to live within the laws of the land, some don’t, but rarely get prosecuted for it.
Really, you are going to use a restaurant as a direct comparison?
If you suddenly decide to use a university campus car park to live in then I think privacy is obviously going to be lost. If the deadline passes without the caravans leaving, action by the university should be taken. Safty of the student population should be of paramount concern, not how upset travellers will be if they are told to move to another area.
@Adele
“Does York Vision observe a journalistic code of ethics?”
Dear me. Talk about bureaucratic.
Do tell me more about such a code of ethics. I’m intrigued.
I’m sorry, but whether it’s Vision, Nouse, the Yorker, the Press, whoever. It’s news, and they’re perfectly entitled to report it. I’m glad they did.
Some of the comments on here are madness. Quite frankly, if you don’t want people taking photos of you, don’t set up your home on a University car park, where hundreds of students live. If I set up my house in the middle of a Hes East car park, I’d expect people to take an interest in what I was up to.
As for @Umm…’s comment that “Also you wouldn’t have to try too hard to be told you’re going to be ‘smashed up’ on a Saturday night in town.” Erm…. And your point is… what exactly?
The reason I chose the restaurant example is because it is a public space, but you expect privacy. The Car Park is a public space, but a person’s life and home deserves some respect of privacy. Admittedly, it is not perfect example
People should be treated equally and with respect at all times, regardless of how they live. Yes a group of travellers turning up on a university car park raises alarms about student safety, however one cannot assume that they are violent or want to cause trouble. If we treat them with suspicion and fear, then they will treat us the same way, tensions will arise and things are more likely to boil over.
Of course if we treat them with respect, things could still go wrong, and the tensions are already present. However it is less likely to happen.
When it comes to people I am an optImist, and look for the best in everyone. I also believe in talking, finding common ground in order to overcome arguments and bring understanding. I know this does not work all the time, and as a historian I could real of a list of when it doesn’t. But I still believe it is the only way forward peacefully and harmoniously.
And how long will it be before someone says my world view is naïve? (I’ve got bets on one comment :p)
I’ll say it! (It’s naive!!)
Yes a home is a private place, but he was not taking photographs of the interiors of the home. Would they have “smashed up” a Google street view car or a police car with a camera in it, just for driving past? No, because they can’t intimidate them.
It is these actions that cause suspicion, their actions. Please do not disregard suspicion based on an actual encounter for an optimism based on only the fluffy feeling you attain when looking a lol cats.
Yeeeeeaaaaaah in retrospect, trying to explain myself at 3:00 in the morning after writing half of a 5000 word essay on medieval history was probably not the best idea.
There are two main issues that I have with the article.
1) First is that we don’t know exactly what caused the reaction. What we know is that the photographer tried to take some photos and was threatened. Was he taking photos of people around the caravans? Had he just wandered over and started taking them randomly? Could his actions have been perceived as an invasion of privacy? Why might somebody react violently to a situation?
From what Alex Finnis is saying the answer to the first question was no. The answer to the second and third are difficult to attain, and you have to try and judge how you would feel in the same circumstances, and how you would react.
The answer to the last is more complicated. You are talking about a group of people who move around from place to place. Sometimes (but not all the time or constantly or by everyone) they are forced on by the community around them. This can create feelings of resentment and anger towards others who are in the way, without the actions meriting the response. This is exactly what I think happened here. There is no way to avoid tensions in this instance, and it is better to try and smooth over things by not doing anything that might provoke a reaction. This is something we must bear in mind in the current situation.
The point is that you cannot make assumptions about people’s behaviour without trying to understand what may have provoked it. The violence threatened WAS an over-reaction, but was a response to a perceived invasion of privacy. People DID protest against the google street view cars as an invasion of privacy, and won the right to not have their houses photographed, and If i remember correctly there was at least one instance of violence against one.
2) the second issue is the one of assumption. This is not just the case with this article, but the general attitude shown in the student body, in Nouse, and on the comments section: that travellers are inherently violent and criminal.
No-one is inherently violent, circumstances and environment cause violence. This ranges from necessity and poverty to the assumptions and prejudices forced on people by society. The only way to resolve this issue is to look beyond prejudices and try to help people through improving their circumstances and environment. This is what I was trying to express above in my sleep addled state. I am not saying, ‘be nice to them even if they threaten you’. I am saying show some respect of their space, and they should afford you the same courtesy. If they don’t then by all means report them.
I hope that explains things in a better manner.
I am fully willing to admit I can be a bit naïve, but everyone tends to be when they are getting an average of 4 hours sleep a night. And how did you now I’m a cat person (although if you really want to see my fluffy optimistic side, you have to look at red pandas ;) )
p.s. thanks for letting me win the bet with myself :)
“show some respect of their space”
“their space”?
yes ‘their space’, by which I mean their personal space, not a literal definition of area, which is what I take it you mean?
Hi anon1, I understand where you’re coming from, but personal space isn’t static. It tends to follow people around in whatever literal definition of area they happen to be in. If I were to come to wherever you live and sit down in front of your door, would you have to respect my personal space (despite it being within the definition of area to which you held rights)?
I’m glad that you look for the best in everyone, but I’m also glad that the Uni is taking precautions like security guards in the Goodricke Nucleus.
Did the photographer make his ethical decision not to take any snaps of people before or after the “smash you up” comment?
@martin humphries and others
Why on earth is everyone so down on the photographer?
Regardless of ‘photographer ethics’; by taking photographs of them, he did not break the law whereas they did.
But the police visited them and didn’t do anything? Clearly they didn’t deem it illegal.
Have you ever tried moving Travellers who don’t want to be moved? Dale Farm.
^^ More likely, they acknowledged that laws were being broken but decided that it was beyond the scope of their payslip…
You must be an idiot to not recognise that they were trespassing and, if you’ve seen the pictures, that they committed criminal damage. Also, they made threats which would come under assault and possibly even blackmail.
^ So we should just bow down to their law breaking?