Let’s bring back the 1990s-era uni culture of pub crawls and pranks (well, maybe not the five-buck chuck...)
In her uni days, Susie O’Brien was elected as a student leader after running on a very raunchy slogan. But not everyone was impressed – including our now Foreign Affairs Minister.
I once ran for political office with the slogan “Think Booze, Think Flooze, Think Sooze”.
It was 1988. Scott and Charlene were newlyweds on Neighbours, Bob Hawke was prime minister, and you could get unlimited beer at pubs thanks to the “five-buck chuck”.
I was running for the Adelaide University Students’ Association Social Committee, and was keen to promote my good-time credentials.
Unsurprisingly, I was elected in a landslide.
I have copped a lifetime of crap for my slogan, which inspired my former boss to call me “Flooze” and my best friends to call me “Booze”.
Penny Wong, a fellow student politician, even called me a bad feminist.
It was the heyday of student politics; a time of piss-ups, pub-crawls and Prosh stunts.
Over the years, Prosh (short for procession) pranks included kidnapping TV personality Ernie Sigley, holding Ronald McDonald to ransom, and suspending an FJ Holden off the University Footbridge.
Now Prosh, like much uni student culture, is no more.
My daughter, who’s at uni in Melbourne, explained it to me.
“No one goes to uni just to hang out. You go to the classes because they make you, but that’s it and then you go home.”
And the bit that really got me: “There’s a uni bar but no one goes there.”
Her comments were echoed in the piece we ran yesterday about the death of the university lecture and campus life.
RMIT student Ted Oldis, 24, said he made a conscious decision to attend all classes and lectures in person this semester. He wanted to engage more and meet new people, but said it hadn’t been “worth it”.
He said his parents (who would be around my age) speak about the fun of their university days, but Ted believes it is “in the past now”.
“It’d be great if everyone committed fully to attending university every day in person, but in reality we’re all juggling a lot of things and now the option is there to step back and do the work online, most people are taking it.”
I understand we are now in a different era, but it’s such a loss.
In past years, students like me didn’t just study, we enjoyed a rich, irreverent and fun student life.
Students were radicalised, socialised and encouraged to have an opinion on the big political issues of the day.
There were social events galore: band nights, pub crawls, and hundreds of clubs from the Beer Appreciation Society to the Footlights Theatre.
The social activities and sense of community helped students from all backgrounds to make friends and fit in.
There’s no doubt some of the old ways wouldn’t fly today, and with good reason.
Back in the late 1980s, leaders on Orientation Camps would bulk-buy alcohol for minors, and events were deemed a failure if no one needed to have their stomach pumped in hospital.
Medical students would swim in beer – literally – during the orientation ritual Skullduggery, and engineering students would bring inflatable life-size female sex dolls on pub crawls.
Despite this, student culture is worth fighting for, not just because of the floozing, boozing (and Soozing), but because it brought young people together to exchange ideas, become part of a community and make friends.
Right now we need this more than ever. Young people deserve to be socialising on a sunny patch of grass on campus, not holed up in their bedrooms watching lectures on Zoom.
What do you think? Have your say below and share your wild uni memories with us at education@news.com.au
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Originally published as Let’s bring back the 1990s-era uni culture of pub crawls and pranks (well, maybe not the five-buck chuck...)
