Clean up or cough up! Students at Oxford University face £150 fine if they cover each other in shaving foam and champagne as ‘trashing’ tradition is banned
- Said to cost £45,000 a year to clean, this is the first time fines have been issued
- Three penalties have already been handed out and officials are roaming campus
- Students been told to consider nightclubs or an ‘a celebratory day out’ instead
Gown-clad Oxford University students who celebrate the end of exams by covering each other in shaving foam, silly string and champagne will be fined £150 after a ban on the tradition.
The university is clamping down on the summer ritual of ‘trashing’, seen as a rite of passage as students leave exam halls.
While Oxford has previously vowed to crack down on the tradition – said to cost it £45,000 a year to clean up – this is the first time fines have been issued.
Three penalties have already been handed out and officials are roaming campus to find offenders, according to university newspaper Cherwell. Those who fail to pay fines face ‘further disciplinary action’.
Gown-clad Oxford University students who celebrate the end of exams by covering each other in shaving foam, silly string and champagne will be fined £150 after a ban on the tradition
One student, who claims he poured ‘roughly a tablespoon of lubricant on a friend’s head’, told the newspaper: ‘I was confronted by five proctor officers. One officer asked me to show him the packet, so retrieving it from my pocket, I handed it to him. He then proceeded to throw it on the ground behind him, and issue me the £150 fine.’
Oxford students’ union condemned the ban, claiming it ‘creates a disproportionate punishment’ for poorer students.
The report told students: ‘Trashing is antisocial behaviour and has significant negative community, environmental and financial impacts on the whole Oxford community.
‘If you throw, pour or spray substances after your exams, you are liable to a £150 fine, which will be strictly enforced this year, as a breach of the University’s Code of Discipline.’
The university is clamping down on the summer ritual of ‘trashing’, seen as a rite of passage as students leave exam halls
Instead of trashing, students have been told to consider nightclubs or an ‘a celebratory day out’ as part of new guidance.
An Oxford University spokesman said: ‘We recognise that students will want to celebrate the end of their exams, and we are encouraging them to do so in a sustainable and respectful manner that is sensitive to both the environment and the wider community.
‘University teams are working with local authority community enforcement across a number of locations around the city to strictly enforce the issuing of fines to students who litter by throwing food or other materials during post-examination celebrations.’