Of all the universities, York likes to keep its freshers waiting the longest for what many will describe as the “best week of their lives”. If there is ever a period where totally abhorrent behaviour passes as acceptable, it’s got to be Freshers Week. It seems like there is no limit to the stupidity acted out by freshers every year, and now it’s your turn.
In neighbouring Leeds, police joined forces with emergency ambulance crews to help students taken ill or injured through excess boozing during this year’s Freshers Weeks. On the team’s first night of action they attended seven incidents. This included three assaults, a road traffic collision and, my personal favourite, a drunken cyclist, taken to hospital after colliding with a bus shelter. Amazing.
The ultimate fresher adventure, though, has to be the ‘initiation’. In America, at the University of Virginia, a student ended up in intensive care after drinking a bottle of soy sauce as part of his fraternity’s initiation ceremony. The student also ate an initiation meal which contained dog food and minced fish. The tasty combination seems to be popular with freshers; just last year students looking for acceptance to the hockey team were made to down drinks mixed with dog food and goldfish. Not to worry though, initiations have now been banished, replaced with a much more civilized ceremony known as ‘Freshers Fun’…
A 2004 student survey conducted by a student officer at the University of Southampton identified overwhelming support for initiations among the students who had taken part in them. It suggested that the ceremonies were popular because they gave new members a sense of “humility”, and so helped to build a team spirit.
That must have been the thinking behind the University of Gloucestershire’s rugby and football initiation ceremony. Six gents performed oral sex and mutual masturbation on a public bus while dressed as characters from Top Gun (an appropriate theme). After their arrest, one student told the police: “The beauty is that next year I’ll be able to do it to a fresher.”
Just remember, freshers – alcohol kills 100 people a day, and if it doesn’t, drinking Soy Sauce might. Enjoy – it’s undoubtedly the best time of your life!