Teh One Who Knocks
05-08-2013, 11:17 AM
Students at Cambridge University have launched a petition against the “sexist” jelly wrestling contest between bikini-clad girls at their end of exams garden party.
By Hayley Dixon - The Telegraph
http://i.imgur.com/BPDZ5hW.jpg
The petition, which dismisses the competition at the Wyverns drinking society's Suicide Sunday party as "misogynistic" and inappropriate in the modern age, already has 891 signatures.
The calls for a ban come at the start of the end of term drinking season, which saw drunken students wreck a curry house when they ran amok in a giant food fight on Sunday night.
The festivities – which culminate in June on “Suicide Sunday” at which the jelly wrestling take place – have begun despite warnings from the university colleges.
The half-naked wrestling competition caused embarrassment for the prestigious university when, five years ago, a 23-year-old student was arrested and cautioned for assaulting a spectator.
The celebrations had to be held in a new location the following year after officials banned students from holding them on university land.
But now the online petition demands a complete end to the event, which sees two bikini-clad girls fight each other in a paddling pool of jelly for cash and attracts hundreds of spectator.
The petition by Nina de Paula Hanika a student at Magdalene – the college with which the Wyverns society is associated - calls for the gentlemanly drinking society to end the tradition.
“This particular event is not ‘just a bit of fun’,” she told the student newspaper The Tab. ”To use that tired excuse is to ignore the huge number of women who have contacted me to tell me how personally degraded, devalued and marginalised even the idea of this has made them feel.”
She said men had also complained that they felt uncomfortable with the sport.
The petition describes the competition “clearly sexist, misogynistic and completely inappropriate as entertainment for 2013.”
The complaint claims that the jelly fight portrays women as “only good for their bodies, and that in order to contribute socially they must be sexualised objects.”
The complaints from fellow students draw more attention to the end of term drinking celebrations, which saw more than a dozen people fighting in a restaurant on Sunday as rival groups pelted each other with food, plates and cutlery.
Some took off their shoes and used them as missiles and a glass bottle hit a girl on the head, witnesses have claimed.
A male student was thrown from his chair and pushed down the stairs and a table was broken in half.
Police were called to help evict the students from the Curry King restaurant but there were no arrests.
Owner Ali Rana, 40, said: "The room was a mess. There was broken glass and food all over the carpet, the furniture was smashed and we didn't finish cleaning up until 4am.
"We had lots of business on Sunday, as it was a Bank Holiday, but many of the customers on the ground floor were shocked and angry.
"They couldn't believe how the students had behaved. We like to have students at the Curry King but there's a minority of them who ruin it for everyone else."
The fight is said to have erupted after a member of Girton College's Green Giants stole a bottle of Pimm's from Jesus College Caesarians. The bottle was then thrown at the Caesarian in a challenge to fight.
One eyewitness said: "Everyone was drunk from having been on Jesus Green - someone from one of the colleges strawpedo-ed two bottles of wine straight away.
"Many of them arrived with no top on. Someone threw a punch, and when one of the boys came over to break it up, he ended up punching his own friend in the face."
Cambridge officials had urged students to avoid the drunken scenes of previous Caesarian Sundays and “find a more fruitful way” of spending it this year.
The day had earlier passed off calmly with around 2,000 students gathering in the city's Jesus Green park.
By Hayley Dixon - The Telegraph
http://i.imgur.com/BPDZ5hW.jpg
The petition, which dismisses the competition at the Wyverns drinking society's Suicide Sunday party as "misogynistic" and inappropriate in the modern age, already has 891 signatures.
The calls for a ban come at the start of the end of term drinking season, which saw drunken students wreck a curry house when they ran amok in a giant food fight on Sunday night.
The festivities – which culminate in June on “Suicide Sunday” at which the jelly wrestling take place – have begun despite warnings from the university colleges.
The half-naked wrestling competition caused embarrassment for the prestigious university when, five years ago, a 23-year-old student was arrested and cautioned for assaulting a spectator.
The celebrations had to be held in a new location the following year after officials banned students from holding them on university land.
But now the online petition demands a complete end to the event, which sees two bikini-clad girls fight each other in a paddling pool of jelly for cash and attracts hundreds of spectator.
The petition by Nina de Paula Hanika a student at Magdalene – the college with which the Wyverns society is associated - calls for the gentlemanly drinking society to end the tradition.
“This particular event is not ‘just a bit of fun’,” she told the student newspaper The Tab. ”To use that tired excuse is to ignore the huge number of women who have contacted me to tell me how personally degraded, devalued and marginalised even the idea of this has made them feel.”
She said men had also complained that they felt uncomfortable with the sport.
The petition describes the competition “clearly sexist, misogynistic and completely inappropriate as entertainment for 2013.”
The complaint claims that the jelly fight portrays women as “only good for their bodies, and that in order to contribute socially they must be sexualised objects.”
The complaints from fellow students draw more attention to the end of term drinking celebrations, which saw more than a dozen people fighting in a restaurant on Sunday as rival groups pelted each other with food, plates and cutlery.
Some took off their shoes and used them as missiles and a glass bottle hit a girl on the head, witnesses have claimed.
A male student was thrown from his chair and pushed down the stairs and a table was broken in half.
Police were called to help evict the students from the Curry King restaurant but there were no arrests.
Owner Ali Rana, 40, said: "The room was a mess. There was broken glass and food all over the carpet, the furniture was smashed and we didn't finish cleaning up until 4am.
"We had lots of business on Sunday, as it was a Bank Holiday, but many of the customers on the ground floor were shocked and angry.
"They couldn't believe how the students had behaved. We like to have students at the Curry King but there's a minority of them who ruin it for everyone else."
The fight is said to have erupted after a member of Girton College's Green Giants stole a bottle of Pimm's from Jesus College Caesarians. The bottle was then thrown at the Caesarian in a challenge to fight.
One eyewitness said: "Everyone was drunk from having been on Jesus Green - someone from one of the colleges strawpedo-ed two bottles of wine straight away.
"Many of them arrived with no top on. Someone threw a punch, and when one of the boys came over to break it up, he ended up punching his own friend in the face."
Cambridge officials had urged students to avoid the drunken scenes of previous Caesarian Sundays and “find a more fruitful way” of spending it this year.
The day had earlier passed off calmly with around 2,000 students gathering in the city's Jesus Green park.