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Campus Help
Posted on January 31, 2010 by Editor
Personal Safety
By Lisa Brigham
I don’t judge. I don’t preach. I just educate. I may not have a doctorate or a melodramatic TV show like Dr. Phil but I do have some knowledge on O-week, first year and the rest of your life at Rhodes. Write to me and ask me your questions on love, life, sex and rock n’ roll and I’ll try my best to help! Right now there’s one thing you need to know if you’re in first year. Seal clubbing.
In high school you were the biggest and the best and the most respected. You would walk through the hallways in your Matric attire and everyone would step aside. Now you’re at Rhodes. You are first years and whether you know it yet or not you have automatically stepped down to the lowest of the low. For the most part most people won’t judge you for being younger than they are but during O-week both girls and guys in first year will be ‘fresh meat’ and ‘free game’ for guys and girls who make Seal Clubbing a seasonal sport.
Seal clubbing is based on the idea of the more literal, arctic sport where hunters trek around seal colonies with heavy wooden clubs and beat baby seals over the head for their young and valuable meat and skin. Seal clubbing at Rhodes follows the same sort of process. Older, more experienced students prey on younger and more oblivious first years with charm and wit – i.e. the metaphorical club- and basically get a first year –i.e. seal- into a ‘naps situation’.
If inebriated and perhaps experiencing some typical first year feelings to rebel and make the most of newly found independence these ‘seals’ will fall for the charm and risk of it all. The reality of it all is that for the most part you will wake up with a hang over, a bruised ego from being kicked out of a strange digs or res room and performing the ‘walk of shame’ as you try and find your way back to your new res or digs. This ‘walk of shame’ will probably be accompanied by a number of fellow students clapping you out and labelling you before you’ve had a chance to start your three to four year degree.
So far you’ve not only learnt some important campus lingo but been educated in the reality of campus life. The only reason myself and most of my friends were not ‘clubbed’ could be put down to one over-educated girl letting us know on our walk down to the pub crawl. Not everyone is so lucky.
During O-week, the ‘morning after’ pill is sold out in most chemists and issued dry from the san. This alone indicates the sheer amount of sex let alone unprotected sex going on in O-week. Even if you are one of the ‘lucky’ ones to avoid teen pregnancy STD’s and HIV are still real risks which may only be made apparent well into your first year when memories of drunken encounters are all but distant memories.