WHEN UCLU enforced a moratorium on sports team initiations earlier this year, it was a sign that the culture of intimidation, humiliation and general stupidity amongst certain sports teams might have seen its final days. Not so; with the annual Sports Society Slave Auction earlier this March, all the nasty behaviour that the Executive had been so desperate to put a stop to resurfaced once more at a night organised by… er, some of the Executive.
Piss and venom
The Slave Auction has traditionally been an opportunity for sports teams to earn a bit of money for their respective clubs, and embarrass rival teams by forcing slaves to do trivial things, like hold drinks all night. So what went wrong this year? Well, thanks to several unpleasant individuals, quite a lot…
Problems began when President-Elect for the Football team, one Fil Martin purchased two rugby players as slaves and proceeded to force them to drink his piss. Not content with this, Martin oversaw some creative agility tests involving forcing slaves to spit directly down a line on one another’s backs before rounding the whole debacle off by making slaves suck each other’s testicles. In the name of fairness, Martin wasn’t the only offender. Incensed by his actions, two members of Men’s Rugby bought some football players and ‘encouraged’ them to drink five pints of water as quickly as possible so that they could vomit on one another. If this extremely dangerous practice wasn’t enough, the football slaves were then given the opportunity to wash away the unpleasant after Richard Soames taste with glasses of their own piss and shots of other people’s saliva.
That the idiotic and sadistic actions of three individuals have managed to humiliate their respective societies has not gone down well amongst fellow players. One footballer was “repulsed” by what he had seen and had left early because of it. The events of the night had “shocked members of both teams” and Marc Davies, the Men’s Rugby President told The Cheese Grater he hoped that individuals would be punished and not the societies as a whole. Cerrtainly this seems to be the case; those who led the degradation are currently facing disciplinaries. It seems likely too that the individuals will be banned indefinitely from all Union premises; something that will pose a problem for Fil Martin if he is to function properly as President of Men’s Football next year.
Security cameraphone
But what about the fact that any of this was allowed to happen in the first place? According to those there on the night, Easy J’s was full and there was no way that the organizers, (Sports Officer and Services & Events Officer, Zoe Davies) could have effectively policed everything. So what happened to the security guards? Their job description requires them to throw people out in the event of public urination or vomiting, yet despite witnessing both of these and some other sordid proceedings to boot, at least one was seen taking photos (happy slapping by proxy if you will). The Cheese Grater has been told that the security guard who took photos was on hire from an external contractor and that the individual involved will no longer be working at UCLU.
Thankfully, some of the security staff know how to do their job and the night was eventually shut down at 11pm, an hour before it was due to finish. But why was it ever allowed to be held in the first place? After tempo rarily suspending initiations this year because they encouraged binge drinking and offensive be haviour, it seems odd that such an event was ever deemed appropriate. Nonetheless, the organizers are keen to stress that rules were made available. Whilst these rules stipulate that no illegal activities may be enforced and that sexual activities and nudity were not mandatory, they also feature a large disclaimer that absolves the Union of responsibility for actions by the slaves or their ‘masters’ and state that “Drunken consent is still consent.” So that’s alright then; the Union was ready to hand out matches and petrol but it wasn’t ready to take responsibility if the fire got out of hand.
Drunken consent
When The Cheese Grater asked Zoe why she thought it was wise to run a Slave Auction after the Union’s crackdown on initiations, she claimed that: “It was a charity event and things like that happen up and down the country”. Presumably she was referring to auctions, as opposed to forced oral sex.