(OT) Bizarre goings on in St Andrews

[Rita Winston]

No: HPFGUIDX 6002

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, John Walton <john at w...> wrote:

> This has almost nothing to do with HP, but I thought I'd share 
> because it's amusing. 
> (snip)
> "Raisin Weekend". This hallowed tradition dates back to the time
> when first years (freshers) would give their "senior man" or 
> "senior woman" (aka the person who showed them round the university
> and helped them settle in) a delightful bag of raisins.

At my college, we had Orientation Volunteers at Orientation Week, and 
after Orientation Week, it was the "Warden" (called Resident Advisor 
at normal universities, a grad student who lives in the dorm to be 
available to act the part of big sister -- I now wish I had taken the 
trouble to get acquainted with my Warden then, because she has grown 
up to be quite a famous person).

At our sibling college, they were called Customsmen and Customswomen, 
and the orientation week was called Customs Week, and the Customsmen 
and Customswomen were assigned freshers who lived in their same 
dorms, so they could be available to help their freshers all year. 

> (snip) "Academic Families" have also replaced the senior man/woman,
> so you now have mothers and fathers. Another recent innovation is 
> (snip) as well as costumes for the academic children.

Do I understand this? A small group of freshers are assigned to a 
"mother" (lots of room for bad jokes there) and a "father" instead of 
a senior man and senior woman, and the "children" who are in costume 
are the freshers? The holiday at my college where freshers wore 
costumes was called Hell Week, altho' it was really only one day long. 
Each fresher was assigned (by the upperclassmen in her dorm) 
something she had to dress up as on that day, and go to all her 
classes in costume. My upperclassmen chose a theme of Cartoon 
Characters and assigned me to be Fritz the Cat, because of the mildly 
shocking behavior about which I reminisce so fondly on this list. I 
was happy to meet another cat at Doughnut Hour in Thomas Great Hall, 
but she was not a cartoon character: "I have to be my kitten, Pasha!" 
There was a period of three hours in the afternoon when all the 
freshers were supposed to be locked in the attic and presenting short 
plays for the amusement of the upperclassmen, but I missed that 
because I had a class off-campus at that timeslot. We were put to bed 
with an insultingly early curfew, but people who had 7-10pm classes 
got a pass until 11pm. As it was not true that we would be woken up 
at 5AM for pajama-clad calisthentics on the (snowy: February) quad, 
it wasn't really much of a hazing. I was much annoyed when I was a 
junior (third-year) and the freshers rebelled, saying that 
hazing is politically incorrect.

> Hermione with bushy bouffant hair, a  little light reading (several
> cardboard books) and Crookshanks;

Did she persuade a REAL CAT to co-operate all day long, or just carry 
a stuffed toy cat?