Picture this: it’s 7:30 on a cold October Wednesday and you’re getting ready for bed. In the street below, dozens of half naked male students are walking sideways like crabs towards the nearest club. You shut the blinds.
So, what exactly is a university initiation? society initiation is a rite of passage where new members perform tasks to gain acceptance into a group or society , this can sometimes involve hazing or other harmful behaviours. The term is most commonly associated with negative events involving humiliating, degrading, or potentially dangerous acts like excessive alcohol consumption, and sometimes even forced nudity. It’s usually male sports societies who traditionally hold initiations, and whilst not all of these gatherings are extreme, there has been consistent news coverage of severe and risky initiations taking place.
British university initiations have been consistently extreme, and you don’t have to dig far below the surface before horror stories start popping up. A student in my seminar once declared that his mate at Exeter had been tied to a tree, painted blue as a smurf, and then subsequently left there for a few hours. Whilst this is just just gossip, there have been very well documented cases of initiations going terribly wrong.
These exploitative initiation practices aren’t harmless fun – the consequences for young men are very real, often fatal. In May 2019 at a rugby club initiation for the University of Gloucestershire, Sam Potter died of alcohol toxicity. When he fell asleep on the sofa the others assumed he would be fine, despite the fact that he had drank over five times the drink drive limit. He didn’t make it to the morning. Tragic as it was, Potter’s death was by no means out of the ordinary. in 2016, in the hopes of joining Newcastle university’s Agricultural Society, twenty year old Ed Farmer died in hospital with ‘unsurvivable brain damage’ — the result of a cardiac arrest. He had participated in an ‘initiation style’ bar crawl, in which around one hundred triple vodkas were ordered in just one bar. To make matters more horrifying, it is reported that Potter was made to drink alcohol from a pig’s head at some stage of the night.
Why the obsession with extreme and often degrading events?
Like a lot of socialising, it’s all to do with how well you can perform. It’s argued that older students become obsessed with ‘Task performance’, and this then plays a crucial role in the initiation itself. They aim to find out what limits a new student will go too in order to be accepted by the group – often they are asked to do something ‘for the team’ — challenges and objectives that are often risky, humiliating and horrible to watch. Having a good initiation performance by ‘going the extra mile’ for the group could elevate your social status, while opting out could see you socially isolated. Confronted with social exclusion, it’s no wonder why male students participate in these extreme events.
How to identify an initiation
Should you ever find yourself wondering about the party or social you’ve gone to, ‘Universities UK’ have set up an indefinite list of activities which are typical of severe initiations. This list does not contain every negative behaviour that could happen at an initiation, so it’s important that you use your common sense to determine what behaviours are out of place and make you feel uneasy.
Initiations can take many forms, but these are some key signs to look out for, which may help you leave the situation as quickly as possible.
- intense and severe alcohol drinking
- Substance/drug abuse
- Harassment, bullying which create unequal power dynamics among students, often used as a means to coerce participation in challenges and other risky behaviours that are designed to humiliate students.
What should the university response be? Knowing your rights as a student
Problem initiations are of course at odds with the values and ‘duty of care’ of every British university, so how should they respond?
Firstly, universities are legally bound to provide a safe environment in which students can study, socialise and live out their degrees. This is non negotiable, and extends to every student regardless of whether they are physically on campus, undertaking placements or overseas study, in student accommodation, and even those studying online. The student right to safety is determined through legislation and common laws such as the Equality Act in 2010, which means that universities are obligated to safeguard the interests of their students in particular circumstances
Crucially, this act makes it unlawful for a university (or university management) to discriminate or victimise both graduate and current students on the grounds of a protected characteristic. Similarly, If a university fails to foresee and plan reasonable adjustments to stop a student with protected characteristics being treated with negative bias, then this also breaches the terms of the act
These laws and policies then ensure that universities are bound to provide a certain duty of care to all students receiving an education — whether this be through the provision of support services or by other means, your university must be open and available to assist you with anything that might be troubling you. Therefore, if you have experienced problem initiations, or have information that points to the occurrence of these events, then you should definitely feel comfortable going to a faculty member.
If a student becomes the target of abuse or is at risk of abuse through these initiations, the university must respond accordingly through appropriate staff training ( staff should be notified of the risks and significance of initiations) and employ effective safeguarding measures in monitoring society events. If your university is failing to meet these requirements, you must bring these issues up to your student representatives, who have the power to directly discuss new initiatives with higher university management.
Another key thing to point out is the role of Students’ unions. As Universities UK highlights, these unions function essentially as charities, and therefore share the same duty of care for their members and must protect their interests. Crucially, whilst it is not the fault of the union itself, society initiations and other risky social events fall under the umbrella of the student union ( this is because every society is sanctioned by, and operated through the union). Most student unions are easily contactable via email or over phone. Similarly, universities like Cardiff which have large physically build union buildings often have student union staff on site in an office .This then opens up a second channel of communication to be utilised by students should they feel unsafe or have concerns.