It looks a lot like Schoolies, and it happens just a few months later, but party camps for first-year uni students have so far escaped the attention the high-school version gets. Amid reports of extreme drinking and sex games, some students are starting to question whether this rite of passage is worth it.

By HADAS KUTTNER 

A disturbing culture of inappropriate sexual games, drinking and drug taking at university club events is leaving first-year students feeling pressured to join activities they feel severely uncomfortable with.

Unlike schoolies week, which attracts wide media coverage and heavy policing, university students barely a few weeks older than school leavers are expected in some cases to engage in stripteases, extreme drinking games, sex-themed events and nudity.

Interviews with students at Monash and Melbourne universities have revealed that camps often held for days at a time in rural locations involve a wide range of sex and drinking games, rooms set aside for sex, excessive drinking intended to lead to vomiting, mimicking sexual positions and simulating fellatio with a banana or dildo.

Camp organisers interviewed for this article stressed that no one was forced to do anything they didn’t want, but conceded there was pressure on students to take part.

One club leader admitted pushing students out of their comfort zone. “We tell the kids at the start, ‘we will push you’, we will say ‘do it, do it, do it, do it, do it’. But every time we are saying that, we are saying it so you get involved to be a part of it, but if you don’t want to, then don’t do it. Just say to us, I really don’t feel comfortable, and we always stop.’’

Monash University student, Leah, who did not wish to be identified, attended a Science Society camp and on the first night found herself expected to perform a striptease with a friend in front of a full room in order to help her team in a trivia game.

Instead, Leah and the friend decided to kiss passionately in the hope that their performance would be sufficient for them not to have to volunteer for anything else.

Sarah* attended a Society of Arts Students camp in 2013 thinking that it would be a good way to make friends, but said her experience was quite the opposite.

“There's this huge environment where girls are pressured into pleasing guys and it all revolves around the guys' pleasure rather than respecting our right to choose what we want to do,” she said.

“There was an activity where they picked a group of guys and a group of girls, and the girls had to lick Nutella off the guys’ chests … also the DJ had a sign saying ‘show breasts for requests’ and I felt super-uncomfortable. There was definitely that environment of sex and shaming.”

It wasn’t just the sexual pressures that bothered her. “Alcohol consumption was strongly encouraged, especially beer bongs, so definitely not recommended for non-drinkers … ‘hoovering’ – (the) punishment for spilling alcohol on the ground – was licking it off the ground. Also ‘white fury’, where people sculled milk with coloured food dye in it and the aim was to throw up in the colours of the milk.”

While the orientation activities are described by Monash University as an opportunity for students to organise their studies, familiarise themselves with the campus and discover support services and staff, the week usually is dominated by events and camps organised by many of the university’s 130 clubs.

The Caulfield Arts Society (CAS), probably the most popular at Monash’s Caulfield campus, changed the way it ran its camps after numbers began to dwindle. The camp is usually held at a campsite on the outskirts of Melbourne in the first and second semester each year and is attended by about 120 students.

According to Amber*, who went on a CAS camp in 2012 as a student and 2014 as a leader, first-year students stopped returning to CAS activities because they had felt uncomfortable on camp.

“We had a whole lot of people who said they didn't want to go either because the last time they went they hated it or because they'd heard stories from friends who'd been before,” she said.

Kelly*, who attended CAS camp in 2012, was a part of the group that decided not to return to CAS activities after her experience at their camp in O Week.

“I was really naïve to what that camp was going to be like and some of the things that happened really shocked me. There was an activity where each person from a group volunteered to deep throat a dildo and whoever did it the best, won,” she recalled.

“I felt pretty uncomfortable even though I wasn’t the one doing it because it seemed like there was an expectation to always be up for sexual activities.”

The vice-president of CAS, Tom Karunaratne, said the club had changed its approach in the past year to make the camp less sexualised.

“Obviously it’s pretty easy for university camps to get a sexual reputation, and it's not that CAS’s was that bad, but we just wanted to try and market things differently … ’cause last year the first years weren’t coming back to camp as much, I think that was partly because of the … older guys, the expectations … so to counteract that, we had a ticket limit for second and third years (students).

“When I was selling tickets for second semester camp last year, I asked some people why (they weren’t coming back), and they were like, ‘to be honest, looking back on it now we felt kind of sexually uncomfortable’. And that was when we started discussing it, and that was with last year’s exec. First semester this year was when we really started changing things.”

Frances Gu, the clubs officer for the Monash Students Union (MONSU) at Caulfield campus, said students who were unhappy with the way a camp was run should contact the student union. All clubs at Caulfield campus were affiliated with MONSU.

“In the event that someone does feel like it’s over-sexualised, then they come speak to us, and then we would take action and tell the clubs that they needed to reformat how the events were run,” she said.

She added that if students did not go to MONSU with complaints, their hands were tied. “We can’t pry into the clubs running their own events,” she said.

But article 8 of the MONSU Caulfield Rules of Affiliation states that MONSU may “investigate or direct any Registered Club, Affiliated Club or Incorporated Club, if it so desires”. There appear to be no documents outlining the regulations under which camps should be run.

Despite having rules for general club events in the 2013 MONSU Clubs and Societies Handbook, there are no concrete policies about activities or treatment of members for the clubs to refer to.

At the Clayton campus, Part 7 of the Constitution of the Clubs and Societies Council 2013 states that “a Club shall be guilty of misconduct if it, or at least one of its representatives, engages in conduct that is racist, sexist, militaristic, homophobic, or otherwise unbecoming a member, or prejudicial to the interests, of Clubs and Societies (C&S)”.

Similarly, in the Monash Student Association (MSA) Responsible Serving of Alcohol Policy at Clayton it states that, “a club’s grant report will be rejected for any event … where the club has promoted the excessive consumption of alcohol through drinking games or activities based solely around the consumption of alcohol”.

Both the Monash Student Association and the Clubs and Societies Council declined to respond to the claims made by students.

Complaints about club camps are not isolated to Monash University. Melbourne University student Steve* said it was easy to see why some people felt uncomfortable on camps at his university.

“I personally never felt uncomfortable, but I could see some situations where others might have … on Commerce camp they had a sex positions competition, which ended up essentially just like porn. It was pretty obvious some people were uncomfortable with it,” Steve said.

“The leaders made it really clear beforehand that you didn't have to do anything you didn't want, but it was evident the peer pressure involved kind of forced them into doing it even if they didn't want to,” he said.

The Society of Arts Students (SAS), at Monash University’s Clayton campus, also runs a camp in the first semester of each year. It has been described by a past member as one which is “super hetero-normative” with “too much pressure to perform sexual acts”.

A representative from Monash’s Society of Arts Students, who did not want to be named, admitted camp leaders would push students to take part in activities, but added they would never force someone to do something they did not want to do.

“We always push kids out of their comfort zone but we will never haze. We find that repugnant and we don’t understand it,” he said.

“A lot of people do things, that at the time, they pump themselves up to do it, and then afterwards they regret it. And it’s like, when I’ve got a camp of 150 first years that are all wanting to do something different, unfortunately, I can’t go to each and every individual and say to them, ‘rely on your own strength of character to do this’.

“They need to assume that, because they’re adults, whilst we put them in a situation where, yes, they are pressured, I mean in certain ways, but we give them an out … so unfortunately when it comes down to those situations, it’s unfortunate but inevitable in some ways,” he said.

Professor Jayashri Kulkarni from the Monash Alfred Psychiatry Research Centre, who specialises in women’s mental health, said she often saw girls for counseling after O Week at universities across Melbourne.

“I do actually see women who come back from various O Week activities who seek help, or women who actually attribute the onset of their psychiatric condition to the O Week activities at university. I’ve heard that a reasonable number of time.”

She warned that it was important to understand that students who attended to O Week camps were still adolescents, despite being legally adults.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that the schoolies end of year stuff attracts a lot of media attention, and you know, the police put a lot of restrictions into the high traffic areas on the Gold Coast and so on … and yet just a few months later O Week is really glorified schoolies, but there’s absolutely no concerns about any of that because they’re basically, legally adults. It’s a real paradox to worry about one group and three months later no one bats an eyelid. It's crazy.”

Monash University was approached for an interview, but declined to comment.

*Name has been changed.

Hadas Kuttner is a third-year journalism student at Monash University.

Response from Caulfield Arts Society

Reply from Lizzie Gapper, president of the CAS

In the transition from high school to university, young people will undoubtedly feel pressure to belong with the people and fit into the environment in which they are surrounding themselves for the next three to five years.

In the past, some of the university camps have exhibited inappropriate behaviour and some clubs have earned that reputation.

I would like to acknowledge that while Caulfield Arts Society had previously been a part of that culture, this year we have strived to recognise the problems and have worked tirelessly to revamp and rebuild our club culture in order to accommodate all students.

I hope it can be understood that process and change takes time, and we count on our members' faith, support and patience.

The important aspect is not to dwell in the past, but to understand that the CAS committee is unquestionably dedicated to improving our methods to provide a comfortable, encouraging social platform for new and old students alike.

Mojo editorial

Mojo editor Jason Walls writes here: Responsibility to make sure students are safe