Unusual university traditions

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YP junior reporters
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Here are some of our junior reporters' favourites from among weird customs and initiation ceremonies at colleges

YP junior reporters |
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1. Students at Cambridge and Oxford are known to be bitter rivals. Many Cambridge students even refuse to call Oxford by its name. They simply refer to the rival college as "that other place".
Junior reporter Jasmine Chiu

2. At Cambridge University, it's an old tradition among students at rival colleges to taunt one another. They may even point fake guns at each other.
Junior reporter Jasmine Chiu

3. Students at Cambridge cannot take pictures until dessert time during their Formal Hall dinner nights.
Junior reporter Jasmine Chiu

4. One of the more peculiar initiation ceremonies is reserved for the women's hockey team at Britain's Gloucestershire University. After dressing up as pirates, new players have to suck on meat-flavoured food cubes and parade around town while stuffing raw fish down their undergarments.
Junior reporter Cameron Tucker

5. "High Table Dinner" at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) is a formal meal requiring formal wear.
Students can make new friends and listen to valuable advice from a guest-of-honour's after-dinner speech.
Junior reporter Fong Hui-yi

6. During HKU's inauguration ceremony for freshmen, students get to listen to speeches delivered by the vice-chancellor or the deans of different departments.
Putting on their green robes for the first time during the ceremony is a highlight of the event.
Junior reporter Fong Hui-yi

7. At the Chinese University of Hong Kong, "dem beat" (demonstration of beat) is the name given to mass chanting, clapping and stomping.
Students there love to cheer - often just so as to taunt students of other colleges. They have plenty of chances to scream themselves hoarse.
YP cadet Candace Kwan

8. Students at HKU love to have their photo taken with the statue of Sun Yat-sen. Some have even gone so far as to hug him while sitting on his lap.
YP cadet Candace Kwan

9. Students at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology have renamed their university "The University of Stress and Tension".
August is a particularly busy time for committee members as they work relentlessly to get freshmen to join their clubs and societies. They take the idea of "no pain, no gain" to a whole new level at the club-obsessed school.
YP cadet Candace Kwan

10. Every Halloween, students gather in Brown University's Sayles Hall for a midnight organ concert. They bring pillows and blankets.
They are there to listen to the university organist play a selection of spooky tunes on the largest remaining Hutchings-Votey organ in the world.
YP cadet Isabel Lai

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