8 Of The Most WTF Initiation Rituals Happening At Aussie Residential Colleges

Hazing: the practice of rituals and other activities involving harassment, abuse or humiliation used as a way of initiating a person into a group.
Sure, it’s more firmly steeped in America‘s red-cup, beer-pong, Beta Gama Alpha Pie college culture than our own – but only insofar as how it’s referred to.
Guaranteed almost every Aussie universities that offers on-campus living engages in O-Week of some variety – and O-Week invariably involves sex, drugs, alcohol and / or loss of dignity via time-honoured tests of one’s masculinity / femininity. All of those involve pints of vomit, as freshers (or 1st years) bust a nut to prove their worth to 2nd and 3rd years i.e. the rest of the student body.
A lot of the initiation rituals are straight-up disgusting, and very illegal – others are much more harmless; we hereby present a comprehensive mixture of both, some of which have been personally experienced by members of the PEDESTRIAN.TV team and others shared with us by friends of friends of friends. 
Oh, and college names have been kept off to protect the privacy / legal rights of those who attend(ed), but some of you probably won’t have any trouble putting two and two together. Particularly if you lived through it.
Disclaimer: P.TV doesn’t in any way endorse the behaviour outlined below – we just be reportin’ on that #collegelyf.

The Walkabout
An annual event at one Sydney college, older students place monetary bids on freshers lined up on their hands and knees like cattle at uni bar. What are they bidding on? The right to get them categorically wasted and drop them off in the middle of nowhere, the idea being that the near-naked, phone-less and cashless students are forced to beg their way home by whatever means necessary. The popular kids fetch bids of up to $200 (JFC, think of the goon sacks), while the less desirables either fetch $10 or $20 or get passed over completely. Ouch.
They don’t mess around, FYI: freshers have been dropped off as far away as Newcastle and beyond.

An annual event at one Sydney college, students . The winning bidder owns your ass; they can dress you up however they like, make you drink heinous concoctions and, as happened once, drop you out to Newcastle and leave you there. 

Mount Pan Run

The official explanation of this uni’s time-honoured Mount Panorama Run (doesn’t take much to figure out which uni we’re talking ’bout, but that’s what the mountain is called ok?) is “the key for [the rugby club’s] freshers, with which they unlock the door to becoming a man.” In reality, it involves a bunch of shitscared, first years being woken up by their 2nd and 3rd year overlords in the middle of the night – with zero notice, so they can’t mentally prepare themselves – and marched, naked, to the top of Mount Pan for a nudie run on steroids.
By that we mean that the boys are pelted with rotten fish, honey, sour cream, tomato sauce, flour and feathers as they try / fail to retain their dignity in a dash down the track; it’s campus folklore that the boys started wearing goggles after one of the previous years’ freshers copped an EGGSHELL TO THE EYEBALL.
Fresher Fishing
An annual party at at least one college (the college’s admin allegedly threatened to shut down every year, but can’t do much because it’s done discreetly) where groups of older students are paired with freshers of the opposite gender; the aim is for the older student to “catch” the “young fish” by bedding them. In other news, it’s 2016! 
The Bachelor of Inebriation
Being able to stomach an ungodly amount of piss is a badge of honour at college, dangerous or no. The students of one particularly campus hit the town on a specified night and are awarded certificates – known as the Bachelor of Inebriation or BI – based on how much alcohol they can consume in one sitting without projectile vomiting all over the nearest goon sack. Unsurprisingly, attendees are given strict instructions *not* to wear any item of clothing that could be traced back to the college.
Brickmasters

Those freshers who want to be involved (which is every dude, ‘cos outdated perceptions of masculinity etc etc) head off-campus, where they’re partnered with a mate, tied together by their ankles and wrists and encouraged to consume copious amounts of alcohol, before being handed a brick with a name. Previous idioms include “Shit Cunt Fuck” and “Weeping Log”.  
Everyone’s job is to tell a story about their brick, and if the story isn’t good enough, it’s down the hatch with more piss until everyone’s sick as a dog. Much vomiting ensues, and often results in blokes VOLUNTARILY chundering on each other.
Breastival
As takes little to no imagination based on its name, ‘Breastival’ essentially involves a group of game fresher ladies who are down to take their tops off to run across the Library Lawn and college carpark with their norks out. Note: we’re told no one’s forced to participate (too fkn right), and that most girls see it as a bonding exercise among themselves.
Ironman
This semi-athletic feat is held off campus, and organised by 10x freshers who survived it the previous year.
First things first, participants chug a piss-warm beer before running the first lap of 10 on a track field. Every time they cross the finish line, they consume something foul beyond measure; we’re talking chowing down on Weetbix covered in dog food, raw squid, off milk and snorting lines of Wasabi. Then it’s onto the next lap.
But near fear! Everyone’s given a garbage bag i.e. portable vom-sack to tie to their wrist , in case of projectiling. 
Rum Jungle
Freshers are encouraged to drink a whole brick of rum (700ml) in the shortest amount of time possible, and keep it down for a minimum of 1 hour… with nothing to gain but the title of ‘sickest kent’, and quite possibly a stomach ulcer.
Photo: Old School.

More Stuff From PEDESTRIAN.TV