By Jasmine Makar and Anthony Lippa-Hardy
On Sept. 12, the Toronto Metropolitan Students’ Union (TMSU), hosted a live event featuring performances from rappers Offset and G-Eazy, where students were pushed and knocked over near the front of the crowd.
The event was held at Yonge-Dundas Square where multiple mosh pits broke out, leaving many students uncomfortable and worried for their safety.
“I was in the middle of the mosh pit involuntarily,” said Sofiya Dalati, a RTA new media student who attended the concert. She explained how students around her got aggressive as the pushing continued throughout the event.
“I got separated from my group and at one point, someone’s arm was against my throat and I was getting choked out,” said Dalati.
In addition to the pushing the crowd experienced, there were incidents of people fainting throughout the event with medical services attending to students after they passed out.
Sedem Dartey, a fifth-year biomedical science student, saw one attendee drop to the floor and had to call for medics.
“I kind of saw him drop. But I also saw the people around him make a circle to, I guess, allow him to breathe some fresh air…then I turned around to call for the medics,” he said.
While waiting for the show to start, security had to remove several students who got overly aggressive in the mosh pits.
One of the hosts from the event asked the large crowd to “take one step back” and threatened to cancel the show if students didn’t stop pushing.
Other students expressed similar feelings of fear and discomfort due to the congested area. Teagan Soubolsky, a third-year social work student explained she felt claustrophobic during the concert and said she felt concerned for her safety throughout the evening.
“I was a little bit worried about how packed it got when some of the moshing started…I was scared that someone there might fall down and get trampled,” she said. “It got so packed that there were people on your front, back and shoulders touching you and it started to really feel claustrophobic.”
The event, promoted as TMSU Live, spanned from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. with the first artist, G-Eazy, not arriving on-stage until after 9 p.m. The headliner, Offset, arrived to perform around four hours after students were let into the square.
Muhammad Awais, the TMSU’s vice-president of operations, said on-stage that the event took six months to plan and execute.
The Eyeopener reached out to the TMSU for comments on the allegations in this story on Sept. 17 but they did not reply in time for publication.
Dartey said “it could have been better communicated that the artist [was] coming later instead of hyping it up and saying it would start at six.
Dartey added that the entire event could have been shorter, especially for students that had arrived at 6 p.m. and earlier that had to wait in the square until the show began.
Other students agreed the timing of the show was poorly communicated.
“It was a long wait because they didn’t give an opening time or an ending time, so me and my friend were standing there for four hours,” said Soubolsky. “People were expecting performers to go on at [7 p.m.] and no one came out until almost 10 [p.m.].”
The concert ended at around 11 p.m. with many students leaving before the show finished.
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