Vile Adelaide college student sex magazine exposed

THIS vile manual is aimed at first year university students. The most points are reserved for the sickest acts.

WARNING: Explicit content

AN EXPLOSIVE Orientation Week manual aimed at first-year students from St Mark’s College in Adelaide has surfaced, containing graphic poems about raping female students and sexist college chants.

The vile document from the residential college, which houses students from the three South Australian universities, also contains a table that lists the names of older male students and how many points first year girls will get for hooking up or having sex with each of them.

The O’Mag — published in 2013 by students — is designed to initiate incoming “freshers” into the college hierarchy.

It begins: “Attention Fresher F**ks: To this date your lives have resembled no more than that of the smallest maggot in the stomach of a dying cow.

“By the pure miracle of chance, you find yourselves at College and at the absolute mercy of the great Gods [senior students] ... you are considered to be as important as an aborted foetus dangling from a coat hanger … Firstly, do not show anyone outside of college this O’Mag …

“Secondly, this O’Mag will be the most valuable text book you will read in your time at University, so study it hard. Anyone caught breaking these rules, or any other rules, or just generally being a useless fresher f**k, will be in more sh*t than you could possibly imagine.”

The O’Mag, which has been unearthed as part of a major news.com.au investigation into Australian college culture, refers to freshers in derogatory terms throughout; first-year women are labelled “fat fresher sl*ts”, and first-year men are branded “pimply face virgins” with “2 inch” penises.

Disturbingly, the O’Mag also contains the “St Mark’s Baseball” table which lists the names of various senior students and how many ‘points’ a fresher will ‘score’ for going to first base (kissing), second base (genital groping), third base (oral sex) or a home run (penetrative intercourse) with them.

People are valued as ‘points’, with the aim for young students to sleep with much older people.

The introduction to the chart reads: “The rules are simple enough, even for the most brain-dead f**kwit fresher. Below is the value of getting to each base, with people in College.

“Simply add up your points (which are out of 100 you dumb f*ck) if you get lucky. The person with the most points gets crowned the College bike.”

According to the Baseball chart, freshers who hook-up or have sex with one another will be deducted 50 points.

Sharna Bremner, director of End Rape On Campus Australia, said the O’Mag was “absolutely appalling” and aimed at “grooming” teenage girls, in particular, into having sex with older men.

“Having a point scoring system which punishes students for hooking up with people their own age, while rewarding them for sleeping with older students is all about coaxing younger students and maximising the total available ‘stock’ of sexual partners for the older men,” she said. “It’s often referred to as ‘fresher fishing’ or ‘fresher grooming’.”

O’Mag also instructs incoming students they will “be looked upon more kindly” by senior students if they inform them of “any stories involving sexual misbehaviour or drunken tomfoolery.

“Again, this is about the older students trying to surveille, regulate, and then ultimately control and direct the sex lives of the incoming students.”

The University of Adelaide was only made aware of the existence of the O’Mag when approached by news.com.au this week.

Professor Pascale Quester, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President (Academic), was only made aware of the O’Mag this week when approached by news.com.au.

St Mark’s College, however, was made aware of the O’Mag in 2013 but failed to alert the university and refused to answer questions from news.com.au about whether the students responsible were disciplined.

When the existence of the O’Mag was raised with University of Adelaide’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President (Academic), Professor Pascale Quester this week, she claimed it was never distributed on campus.

“I want to make it clear that the University is in no way associated with the publication from 2013 that has been raised with us today,” Professor Quester, who is chair of the university’s Respect. Now. Always. Taskforce, said. “Thankfully, that material was not distributed on campus and had it been, we would have acted on it immediately.

“It certainly does not reflect the culture or standard of student publications at our University.”

She said the safety and well being of university students was “paramount to us”.

Rose Alwyn, Master at St Mark’s College, said: “The College deplores the contents of the 2013 O’Mag and has moved a long way since then.

“2013 provided an opportunity for the College to undertake further cultural renewal with the implementation of additional leadership training and more comprehensive face-to-face training on sexual assault and sexual harassment.

“Since then, the College has continuously improved the standard and depth of training for staff, Residential Advisors and all students. I am confident in the knowledge that today represents a vastly changed and changing scene from 2013.

“The students understand clearly the issues and the impact on themselves, the College and the wider community. St Mark’s takes very seriously any report of sexual assault or sexual harassment. We firmly believe that our students have the right to enjoy a safe, inclusive, respectful collegiate experience and environment.

“The College has been proactive in ensuring that the activities in College meet the standards

and expectations of the wider community and are consistent with our values and purpose.”

RAPE CULTURE, SEXISM AND MISOGYNY

The most alarming section of the O’Mag contains a series of poems which celebrate sexual violence towards women. News.com.au has deemed the poems too graphic to reproduce, however some of the less graphic lines include:

This beast from the river makes lochness look tame

He puts girls in wheelchairs without knowing their name

Beating his chest like the mighty King Kong

You’ll get schlepped in the face by his powerful schlong

A leader of men and warlord so great

He’ll come for you girls and knock down your gate.

He’s concealing a footlong so girls run in fear

Or he’ll pounce on your rump like a small baby deer.

The O’Mag also includes a section of unofficial College Songs, including verses about necrophilia and venereal disease. Lyrics to the college song I wish that all the Ladies , popular Australia-wide, are also published in the O’Mag:

Versions of this song are sung on college campuses throughout Australia, and are very graphic in their description of women.

Mark Pace, the President for the National Union of Students and the outgoing President of the University of Adelaide SRC, said that “students at the University of Adelaide are aware that there is a rape culture, but the university has been denying that it exists”.

“In my role as campus President [last year], I sat in countless meetings where university administration told us that we do not have an issue, but publications like this that exist completely undermine any argument that we don’t have a ‘rape culture’” Mr Pace said.

Professor Quester, who is also chair of the University of Adelaide’s Respect. Now. Always. Taskforce, added: “University has zero tolerance for sexual harassment and assault and we are determined to dramatically reduce its incidence and support those affected.

“The safety and wellbeing of our students is paramount to us.

“For this reason, we have already adopted all of the recommendations in the Australian Human Rights Commission report into sexual harassment and sexual assault, and established a Respect. Now. Always. Taskforce to guide such matters at our University.”

COLLEGE CULTURE

In addition to the sexist and misogynistic language, the O’Mag also provides insight into other aspects of college culture. A scavenger hunt style list of “Things To Do At College” includes:

• Watch porn in the JCR [Junior Common Room] during the day

• Get caught doing a walk of shame

• Take a poo on a couch

• Fornicate on the Master’s desk

• Sleep on the tennis courts … naked

• Steal some construction equipment

• Go to a lecture drunk

• Skip a lecture while drunk

• When there’s blood on the pitch, go play in the ditch

• Coitus in the back of someone else’s car.

The Orientation manual also includes a “Fresher Dick-tionary” which demystifies the college lingo for incoming students. Examples include:

• Butt-chug [consuming alcohol via one’s anus]: A quicker way to get smashed — also will lose all dignity.

• Floorcest: A particularly heinous sexual act carried out by two Fresher F**ks from the same floor

• Fresher: Good for nothing, mornonic, dipsh*t, scumbag, stink, idiotic, cesspool dwelling, little f**kers, lower than bugs that eat sh*t. Know nothing. Are nothing. Also known as you. Get use to it.

• Ponding [being thrown in the college pond for breaching informal student rules]: A common occurrence. Get use to it.

• Truck and trailer [a couple who choose to be exclusive]: An awful habit for both parties involved and the wider college community, in which an inter-college couple are too pathetic to communicate with anyone but themselves. Ie. they walk, talk, sh*t, go to uni, got to all meals and NEVER attend a college function, only by themselves.

The University of Adelaide in Adelaide, South Australia. Picture: David Mariuz / AAP

According to Ms Bremner, college students often frown on committed relationships within college, because they “permanently remove” some students from the casual sex pool and because “serious relationships are viewed as a type of alliance, and students are meant to be loyal to the college above all else. It’s cult like.”

This same blind loyalty and absolute commitment to the college is also evident in some of the attitudes expressed in the St Mark’s O’Mag towards students from other residential colleges in Adelaide.

In a section titled “The Lesser Colleges”, it states: “When God envisages heaven, he thinks of [our] College. Outside our revered utopia exists fiendish, self loathing d*ckheads of inferior intellect who are thus confined to [other colleges, which are considered] “special” homes for the blind, dumb, deaf and r****ded.”

Finally the O’Mag finishes with an inspirational message for the freshers: “O-Week will most probably get the better of you, even if you try your teeny tiny little heart out. You ARE a Fresher F**k ... We leave you with the [following] wise words… : Life’s short. Get f**ked and spew!’”

CULT LIKE LOYALTY

When asked why first year students would want to be loyal to a culture which degrades and humiliates them, Ms Bremner explained that, paradoxically, the degradation often helps foster loyalty by creating a sense of “bonding through adversity” among first year students.

“Across the country, college O-Week initiation rituals are all about tearing first year students down through hazing and other forms of verbal degradation” she said.

“But then the freshers will be welcomed wholeheartedly into the college community and celebrated for having survived O-Week.

“The idea is that during the first week, the freshers will face trials and will develop close ties with one another through shared hardship. Once they emerge victorious from the O-week ‘rites of passage’, they will be embraced by the older college students.

“The process preys upon the fact that the students crave a sense of connection and belonging because they are going through a highly unstable time due to the upheaval involved in moving out of home and transitioning from school to university.

“The initiation rituals also imbue those who survive them with a sense of superiority over outsiders who haven’t passed those same trials, and this begins the process of college insularity from the outside world.”

According to Ms Bremner, college students often view non-college students with a level of soft-contempt. “They’ll refer to non-college students as ‘day-rats’ or ‘muggles’, it’s a real ‘insider-outsider’ mentality,” she said.

University of Adelaide information on sexual assault.

SEXUAL ASSAULT ‘A SYSTEMIC PROBLEM’

Both Mr Pace and Ms Bremner, a former UoA student, said that sexual assault has been a systemic problem at the university for many years.

• In 1991, former St Mark’s College student Alister Thompson strangled fellow St Mark’s student, 18-year-old Allison Nitschke in her bedroom, following a party held at the college.

Soon after killing her, Thompson used a friend’s car to transport and dump her body in the hills area. The crime was considered to be sexually motivated, and Thompson later told police he had been fascinated by her body. He also pleaded guilty to indecently sexually assaulting another woman. Thompson, now 46, has spent 27 years in custody.

• In 2016, University of Adelaide student Scott Braeden Belcher was sentenced to three years and seven months jail after he admitted to raping a female student in November 2014, after a night drinking in the city. At his sentencing, a senior member of staff provided Belcher with a character reference in a bid to secure a more lenient sentence.

The university has previously been criticised after it was revealed that rape victims sometimes waited up to four weeks for counselling.

Despite this, the university’s website also states that “help is available for people who commit sexual assault ... sometimes assaults occur when the perpetrator has not understood respectful boundaries in a relationship and lacks understanding of how to behave in relationships”.

“Whether or not any action has been taken against you [talking with a counsellor can] help you find more appropriate ways of acting that will be much better for you and your relationships,” the website stated.

Ms Alwyn emphasised that there was “much about life at St Mark’s that demonstrates and affirms the broader, deeper and more lasting value of the collegiate residential experience”.

She said the college had “welcomed the release of the AHRC report and support for further measures to ensure that all of our residential students enjoy an environment which is safe, secure and free from any and all forms of violence and harassment, including sexual harassment and sexual violence”.

“Our students have been engaged in the findings and recommendations of both the AHRC’s report, the UNSW Centre for Human Rights Report On Safe Ground and the Broderick Review into the Cultural Renewal,” Ms Alwyn said.

She said the college had been represented on the university’s Respect. Now. Always. Taskforce, a “comprehensive program of expert-led, trauma-informed and evidenced-based educational programs for all students aimed at preventing any form of sexual violence”.

St Mark’s College also provided training in consent, sexual assault and sexual harassment for staff and residential advisers, and training in gender stereotypes and bystander intervention for students.

A survey and student roundtable on college culture, which drives the Orientation Week program, was conducted every year and students were encouraged to ask questions and give feedback, Ms Alwyn added.

“St Mark’s does not tolerate any form of harassment and intimidation including sexual harassment and sexual assault,” she said. “These issues are not trivialised and form part of an extensive educative process which is provided not just at the start of the year but that is embedded within our culture and values and incorporated during the year.

“St Mark’s has strong female leadership both at staff and student level and high numbers of female students.”

Of returning students, 54 per cent were female and 46 per cent were male while the breakdown of first year students was 58 per cent female to 42 per cent male.

“These statistics point to a culture of inclusion, warmth and respect,” Ms Alwyn said. “All residential colleges are working together with regard to ensuring positive and respectful

inter collegiate culture.”

Minister for Education and Training Simon Birmingham, a former University of Adelaide student, said in a statement: “This is exactly why there needs to be a zero tolerance approach to anyone being denigrated, abused or violated.

“There’s no place for this sort of rubbish at our universities let alone in modern-day Australia.

“Some university leaders clearly need to take a good hard look at the sort of environments that have been allowed to ferment on their campuses and at their colleges.”

Nina Funnell is an ambassador for End Rape On Campus Australia and the author of The Red Zone Report. She is a Walkley Award winning investigative journalist and is running news.com.au’s exclusive investigation into college culture.

Do you know more about college culture in Australia? Contact: [e-mail]