Tuesday 8 May 2012

Cambridge students go mad

I picked up this lurid description of Cambridge students out on the razz from the Telegraph.

Families were disgusted to see more than 2000 drunken Cambridge University students stripping off, vomiting and drinking themselves unconscious at a riotous summer term party in a public park.

Mothers and fathers looked on in horror as the students downed excessive amounts of alcohol, then threw up just metres away from where their young children were playing.

Other undergraduates were seen urinating in the flower beds, while one was even taken to hospital by ambulance after he drank himself unconscious at the park in Cambridge's city centre yesterday afternoon.


What is this all about?

I once spent a grim weekend in the Bigg Market up in Newcastle, where I saw plenty of bad behaviour. Why is it a story when the affluent misbehave? Is a chundering Cambridge student really more newsworthy than a nauseated Geordie?

Vomit - it all looks the same the morning after.

15 comments:

Sackerson said...

I guess there's certain unspoken feelings:

1. Bright people should have something better to do with their brains, otherwise what's the point of an education?

2. These are the people who will spend the rest of their lives telling us what to do and how to live?

... etc.

Anonymous said...

Can't disagree with you Alice....the Bigg Market is a grim place at a weekend.

Unless you are part of it.

Weekend Yachtsman said...

It's different because this report was part of the Nu Puritans' anti-alcohol drive. Practically anything is grist to this mill.

Posh kids are supposed to behave better, for some reason; they never did, but the Nu Puritans don't know this.

Sackerson said...

Used to be, the upper crust knew better than to behave badly in public. Not about Puritanism per se but about social class and the pretence of a moral justification for one's privileged position.

Beth said...

Complaints about this event were first reported in the local rag, which has started paying more attention to "town versus gown" issues in recent years.

Most of the reports are stupid wildfowl-related non-issues, such as these:

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Home/Aggressive-swan-Mr-Asbo-is-finally-removed-from-River-Cam-02052012.htm

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Home/Bring-back-Mr-Asbo-protest-march-plan-08052012.htm

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Home/Dead-ducklings-found-after-riverbank-mown-08052012.htm

But also this:

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Home/Two-rowers-assaulted-in-river-rage-attack-07052012.htm

I can't help noticing that the newspaper doesn't pay much attention to the Friday/Saturday night pukefests in the big chain pubs in the town centre, which are right outside some of the colleges (Christ's, Emmanuel and Downing) but avoided by students.

Sackerson said...

All went to the bow-wows when they abolished the proctors, at least in Oxford (2003), though being chased out of the pubs by the Bulldogs ended long before that.

You can't measure your standards by the plebs, can you?

dearieme said...

Those students must be from the departments that just ignored the bank holiday and carried on teaching: Science and Engineering, mostly, I suppose.

It doesn't add up... said...

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It's an excellent reference, so I hope you can sort it. Perhaps it got corrupted in the latest update.

dearieme said...

Oops. "must" -> mustn't.

Electro-Kevin said...

It's not usually the alcohol that causes the vomitting but the dodgy kebab afterwards.

Sackerson said...

I note that the account says they vomited after stripping off but before drinking themselves unconscious. They're beginning to improve the order of events, then.

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Ralph Musgrave said...

If they vomited after stripping off, but before getting drunk, what caused them to vomit? The sight of each other’s bodies?

Yours, Terminally Confused.

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