Nobody at the University of St Andrews in Scotland seems to remember how Raisin Monday became a giant foam fight. For 600 years, first-year students have taken part in the ritual of thanking older students for mentoring them through their first few weeks of university life. Traditionally, freshers would give their elders a pound of raisins – hence the name.
This Monday however, hundreds wore fancy dress as they streamed on to St Salvator’s lower college lawn at 11am armed with cans of shaving foam, covering one another in soapy clouds as they have for the past few decades. Groups of students dress as Smurfs, mice, bananas, grandmas, sunflowers and chefs to participate in the annual rite of passage. The theme for each group is chosen by second- and third-year students, known as “mums” and “dads”, who have been matched with the first years.
The proud “parents” stand on the edge of lawn screaming and waving to their “children”. Within minutes, the smell of shaving foam fills the square as cans are emptied over other students. It quickly becomes impossible to distinguish between costumes.
Getting to do something like this brings everyone together,” says Freya, a first year whose group has been dressed as periodic table elements by their chemistry student parents. Simon, who is part of the same family, says: “When you are covering each other in shaving foam, how much more bonded can you get?” Everyone involved recognises that this activity is particularly strange in a crowded field of unusual university rituals. At Merton College, Oxford, students walk backwards around Fellows’ Quadrangle when the clocks go back in October.
In Aberdeen, each new rector is carried around campus on the back of a stuffed bull by students. There is a serious point to the St Andrews ritual at this isolated university on the east coast of Fife, the third oldest in the English-speaking world. More than half of the small town is made up of students – who come from all over the world – and the tradition helps break down barriers between students.
Deborah, an American medical student, is looking out at her academic children in the crowd. Her group has dressed as the blue-skinned supervillain, Megamind, from the animated DreamWorks film. It wouldn’t be feasible at a bigger place.
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