London, Oct 30 (IANS) Dozens of girl students of Oxford University were forced to wear nappies, suck on dummies and drink alcohol from baby bottles during an initiation ceremony, a media report said Saturday.
According to the Daily Mail, pictures of the ‘Babies and Teenage Mums’ themed event – which appeared on social networking website Facebook – also showed the first-year members of the lacrosse team of the university rolling on the floor wearing nappies.
Older students – who played the role of ‘chav’ mums – wore tracksuits and gold jewellery while smoking and shouting abuse at their ‘babies’, the paper said. During the initiation ceremony Wednesday, the younger girls had to sit on the older student’s laps and be ‘fed’ from baby bottles full of booze.
The younger students were also made to lick baby food off paper plates as part of the ritual, which has been branded ‘extremely tasteless’ by fellow students.
Around 60 senior and new members of the team attended the event, which started in a student house before moving to several pubs and clubs in Oxford where the freshers were made to drink cocktails from baby bottles.
Each fresher – who was assigned a ‘mother’ – was then forced to lie on the filthy ground wearing just T-shirts and nappies which were strapped to their bodies with parcel tape.
The younger girls were then lined up against a wall while an older team member stood over them wagging her finger as if she was reprimanding them.
Another picture shows the younger students squatting in a queue while they licked white baby food from plates.
Jane Dougherty, captain of the lacrosse team, even shoved a plate into the face of one student for her to eat from while holding her hand out of the way.
‘The whole event got a bit out of hand and Jane and the other senior members of the team were almost competing with each other to see who could be most cruel to the babies,’ said a student who attended the ceremony.
‘Jane put a plate of baby food into one of the girl’s faces and frankly I found it too uncomfortable to watch by then and left before it finished.’
President of the Oxford University Sports Federation, Enni-Kukka Tuomala said: ‘We do not condone any club initiations and all the sports clubs know their responsibilities and university regulations that are included in every club’s constitution and code of conduct.
‘The safety and well-being of our students is a priority,’ Tuomala said.
A university spokeswoman said: ‘I’m sorry we do not wish to comment on this issue.’
