At Wits End
Jollying it up with Juju
By Heather Dugmore Such was the battle to find parking on campus at the start of this year that I began dreaming about it. During one of these dreams I was test-driving a new Aston Martin, fresh from its shiny shop floor, when I found myself on campus, once again hunting for parking. At the time I was researching first-year initiation rites at universities, most of which have not evolved one jot. First-year rites for males at Cambridge University, for example, continue to revolve around vomiting after drinking vast amounts of alcohol and eating delicacies like pig’s snout with wasabi sauce, washed down with a pint of water containing a live goldfish. April 2010
Rites for females continue to be focused on kissing, condoms and undressing. One favourite at Cambridge has first-year women putting a condom on a banana using only their mouths; another involves eating a length of liquorice held between a male student’s teeth. She is expected to kiss him when she reaches his lips, irrespective of whether he has finished vomiting or not. I was thinking about this while slapping my parking angel when a young man behind the wheel of another Aston Martin pulled up alongside me. “Where did you get that car?” he shouted through his open passenger window. He was wearing a silk cravat, a Gucci suit and a Breitling watch. WITSReview 63