5 minute read
Time to initiate chage
The young man was excited about leaving home for the first time. He couldn’t wait to go to the University of Aberdeen to begin the next stage of his life – to train to be a primary school teacher.
He went as a young man who loved Jesus (he still does, more than ever) and a communicant member of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. What he went through in his first month in Aberdeen could not only have affected all that – it could have killed him. Why? Because Jonathan was like many hundreds of young people each year at our British university sports clubs, who are forced to undergo some horrific and potentially devastating ‘initiations’ when they join up.
According to the journalist Martin Samuel, writing in the magazine GQ: “University initiations are degrading, outdated and sometimes even deadly.” Yet these rituals are still very common in British universities, despite the National Union of Students’ belief that there’s been a shift in the culture surrounding initiations and several universities trying to ban them. Speaking to a graduate of a popular Scottish university, I was told that their university had a very strict policy on initiations – they are banned completely. In fact, if your team is found to conduct one of these initiations, the team is banned from competitions for the year. However, the student also said that they knew in some clubs, initiations still went on in secret.
Indeed, the Rugby Football Union is so concerned with the decrease in the number of students participating in the game after secondary school, as a result of this culture, that it has set up an ‘educational working group’ to seek to address the issue. They estimate that 10,000 school leavers were lost to rugby in the recent past, many blaming the sport’s “penchant for humiliating initiations and stupid, laddish excess.” But that’s a naive view of what is happening. What is actually taking place is potentially life threatening.
Jonathan was a student at Methodist College, Belfast and while there played rugby for the 1st XV. When he went to university he played in a freshers’ tournament, was awarded ‘Man of the Tournament’ and subsequently invited to play for the University 1st XV. He understood that there were practices that a first-time player was supposed to undertake, including a pub crawl around the city. He was not a drinker, which he explained to the club captain, so he didn’t go on the specific night. He was told that was ok, he just wouldn’t start on the 1st XV as a result. He didn’t mind.
However, a few weeks later at the team’s first away match, Jonathan was made to pay for not undergoing the normal initiation. He, along with another fresher on the team, had two two-litres of cider taped to their arms, were physically forced to drink it all along with another litre of the cider each and a whole bottle of port. A large chunk of blue cheese was also forced down their throats. On the trip back home to Aberdeen, the cars stopped at the side of the motorway and both boys were brought out, had their trousers and underwear removed and left exposed to both the elements and the other travellers. By this stage in the day, both boys were so drunk they could not remember where they were or understand what was being done to them.
Jonathan ended up being carted into his flat, and left alone, along with a note asking him to let the person who left him there know he was OK the next day. He proceeded to be violently sick most of the night and perhaps might have choked on his own vomit had it not been for the kindness and attentiveness of his landlady. The next day he sent me a photo – his skin was pale and his eyes were completely blood shot, the vessels having burst because of the violent nature of his vomiting.
Jonathan is not simply a member of my congregation – he is my son. And what he was put through by his so-called team mates – this degrading, dangerous, and evil practice – should never happen to any young person.
As I have researched these so-called initiations in sports clubs across the UK, I have found some awful stories and testimonies, some of which are far worse than Jonathan’s story...
Students having to drink until they vomit, shaving their heads, apple bobbing with dead rats and sliding around in excrement, are just some of the things they have to do. Members of a hockey club from an English university were forced to have drinks that had been mixed with dog food and live goldfish. And according to The Times last year, initiations at another English university hockey team involved freshers having cooking oil poured into their eyes.
Just in case we think it’s only the boys who are involved in such things, let me tell you about one young woman, a great athlete who enrolled at another English university. She made the netball team, like Jonathan, one of the few freshers who did. Before the first training session began, there was a team bonding evening. The theme was ‘ladies and the tramps’. The established team members got to be the ‘ladies’, wearing gowns, tiaras and long gloves. The new girls were the ‘tramps’. They were ordered not to wear make-up and were dressed in bin liners. Dirt was smeared on their faces and dog food in their hair as they were taken to a nightclub. Like those thousands of rugby players, this young woman doesn’t play anymore.
In 2016, Jeremy Farmer’s life changed forever when his son, a student, died of a heart attack as a result of a university initiation ceremony. Ed was a 20-yearold student and had had five times the legal drink drive amount of alcohol in his blood. At one bar, the group that Ed was part of ordered around 100 triple vodkas. Jeremy now wants any students found participating or involved in such practices to be immediately expelled from university. He and his family were frustrated at the lack of effort made by the university and the Students’ Union to get to the heart of this culture. Also in 2016, Gavin Britton, a university student, died from alcohol poisoning after an initiation at a golf club.
In a BBC report last November, Universities UK said many institutions are doing proactive work to tackle the behaviour and a working group of students, parents, experts and university leaders has been established to develop policies to tackle the problems linked to these practices. The National Union of Students believes there has been a shift in the culture surrounding all this, though they admit that it’s still going on.
I do not write this to shock people, but to warn and prepare young sportspeople if they are about to go off to university for the first time – and their families. We as parents were left profoundly upset by all that our son has experienced. Jonathan ultimately decided that he couldn’t play rugby with those who had abused and humiliated him. So, he went on to play for Grammarians, the top rugby club in Aberdeen. Now teaching in Manchester, he still plays competitive rugby today.
For me, these barbaric practices highlight the issue of identity. Young people, going away from home for the first time, seeking to ‘fit in’, need to be taught about the truths of who they are, whose they are and the offer of Christ’s presence with them, wherever they go. We must encourage our young people to understand that they are loved by the Lord Jesus and that they can trust him for their lives and future.
To parents, grandparents, friends of young people about to head off to university or college for the first time, please talk to them about all this. Help them to have the tools that they need to face these hurdles with grace, confidence and strength. For anyone reading this and feeling appalled, let us not just wring our hands and feel despair – let’s do something about it. Why don’t you do what I have done and write to the following people: The Right Hon Boris Johnston MP, Prime Minister, 10 Downing Street, London, SW1A 2AA; Universities UK, Woburn House, 20 Tavistock Square, London, WC1H 9HQ. For universities in the South of Ireland, write to: Leo Varadkar TD, An Taoiseach, Department of the Taoiseach, Merrion St, Dublin 2; and Irish Universities Association, 48 Merrion Square, Dublin, D02 PK02, Ireland.
Ask them to do whatever it takes to end these initiations and to encourage the leadership of our universities to deal severely with those sports teams and individuals who engage in them so that no other young person will die as a consequence.
Mairisine Stanfield is the minister of First Presbyterian Church, Bangor.
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