Out of a misguided search for a sense of community, terrible initiations are being conducted at the University of Otago, further condemning students in the media and in the public eye.
But they haven’t always been here, and they don’t need to be this bad.
So what happened? What are initiations really like and how did we get here?
From what I can tell, this sort of flat hazing started somewhere in the early ‘00s. This was a time when initiations served a subsidiary role to other activities.
They were about getting locked in an attic and drinking wine with Crazy Frog on repeat which, to be honest, sounds like a pretty good time.
The vast majority of flat initiations don’t get as bad as you have seen on the news - because they’re not newsworthy.
That’s the whole point. In our flat, for example, we had planned to do a series of challenges with the incoming tenants, eventually throwing in the towel when this all came under fire.
Instead, we’re gonna have a bog-standard party. Nothing flashy, just a way to connect. Because, again: that’s the whole point.
Students aren’t bad people, even the ones who are misguided. Taking what you hear through the grapevine as the full truth only serves to further divide town and gown. This isn’t denying that we do have a problem.
There are genuinely some horrendous initiations out there which dehumanise and humiliate victims. These are also usually the ones 50+ people show up to.
The seriousness with which these initiations are conducted is also in large part due to their inherently cyclical nature.
Every year students are initiated, and every year the next cohort of initiators feel the pressure to one-up their predecessors by just that little bit.
Year on year this worsens until the only way to one-up initiators of the past is to delve into the extreme.
Tipping into the realm of no return
So when did we start vomiting into each other's mouths?
For those flats who take their reputations very seriously, it doesn’t take much for them to tip into the realm of no return.
Watching one of these a few weeks ago, before the media storm had hit, it became apparent why so many had come to watch.
The shock of it all was undoubtedly entertaining. What surprised me most was when, after having consumed cooking oil, dog food, gallons of milk and each other’s vomit, the victims went on to jovially dance in front of their captors, smiling all the while.
The sad reality is, those forced to be initiated are entirely loving it. Sure, they may find it gross momentarily but this is what they take pride in.
They have won the respect of their elders and now they get the chance to wreak havoc on a bunch of innocents in a year's time.
There may very well be a problem with what we find fun, and why, but from my perspective as someone who's been there, I haven’t seen people forced to do anything.
Herein lies the problem: initiations have taken a much larger market share of student culture than they would have in years past.
At Critic Te Ārohi, the student magazine where I work, the explanation people usually fall back on is that every single problem with student culture can be tied back to the lack of a student bar.
As much as we joke about this, in this case I believe it is overwhelmingly true.
At student bars, students had a third place where they could connect with one another on a level of equal status.
This, along with gig venues, student cafes, and spots on campus gave students the kind of egalitarian environment they needed to be a student body.
These equal spaces bred a community of people willing and trying to do things for the benefit of the many.
This is a void that students intuitively know they need to fill, but without the perspective of a Dunedin local, they don’t actually know what they’re trying to replace.
They just know something’s missing. Like my editor Fox Meyer wrote in a recent editorial, “There is no student body… you are chasing something that you cannot even picture, because it ceased to exist before you even stepped foot on campus.”
And now, the lack of a communal student body is coming back to harm the individual student’s body.
These initiations are a byproduct of a student community which has lost its way.
They are the epitome of a Castle Street hierarchy which simply didn’t exist when students had areas like student bars where they could create a community of equal status.
Now, we have first years craving to be initiated to feel as if they belong.
What they really crave for is something which the student community once provided: a link to something bigger, something which we all need, whether it be a football club, a dance troupe or a flat on Castle.
We need to be a part of something bigger.
If we don’t have that, we’ll make it for ourselves.
• Hugh Askerud is a politics and religious studies student at the University of Otago
