For some background for this post, here are two articles (2nd one is better)...
Booze, shaving cream, and shockingly intimate familial relations make University of St. Andrews's "Raisin Weekend" one of the most reliably amusing events of British higher education.
Each fall, on Scotland's foggy eastern coast, the hallowed, medieval halls of the University of St. Andrews play host to one of the strangest -- and messiest -- rituals of contemporary European civilization.
"Raisin Weekend," the crazed, carnavalesque kickoff to St. Andrew's academic year, may indeed at one time have had something to do with raisins. These days, though, the focus has drifted away from dried fruit and towards a naughtier combination of objects: alcohol, foam (generally taking the shape of shaving cream), and police reports.
The origins of Raisin Weekend remain shrouded in mystery, an obscurity all too appropriate for a festival whose very tradition is rooted in mocking tradition. For a university sometimes accused of having built a reputation for stuffy poshness -- its most famous recent alumnus is Prince William -- Raisin Weekend promises the ultimate retort, styling itself as a wild, bachannalic rite of passage for baffled first-year students.
The idea is that after two days and two nights of stealing property, swilling alcohol, dressing up in (and intermittently stripping out of) makeshift costumes, pouring beans on the heads of innocent townspeople, and
biting the heads off of innocent chickens, students will have no other choice than to grant St. Andrews their lifelong allegience.
At the heart of this initiation process is the "academic family," an organ which, far from serving any scholastic purpose, functions like a cruel caricature of the "buddy systems" favored by less imaginative institutions. Each first-year student assumes for the duration of festivities the title of "academic child." He or she is then joined to both an "academic mother" and an "academic father" chosen from later years. These figures serve as their child's spiritual -- and quite often carnal -- tutors for the rest of the boozy ordeal.
The duties of the academic mother, according to a special Raisin Weekend guide written by the university's student union, begin with throwing her children a "tea party" on Sunday afternoon, with "the tea often being replaced by alcohol." Mothers are instructed to "ply (their) kids with party food, making sure they have eaten something" before everyone moves on to the father's party. Mothers are also required to dress up their children in outrageous costumes and to wrap them in "raisin strings," which are simply threads attached to some chosen object deemed both "fun" and "representative" of the child in question.
Academic fathers are charged with chaperoning their children throughout the night's parties -- a duty that often ends with romantic trysts between father and child if circumstances and sexual preference permit. In return for this "paternal" stewardship, academic children are supposed to bestow gifts upon their fathers. Traditionally, children were supposed to gift their fathers with a pound of raisins, but in recent times a bottle of wine has been the custom.
In gratitude for the gift, fathers award their children with "Raisin Receipts." These are no ordinary records of transaction. Most academic fathers choose to print their receipts -- really just a scribbled latin phrase -- onto large and hulking objects. As the student union guide advises fathers, "the receipt can take any form you choose -- from an abandoned piece of furniture to a stuffed animal." The guide cautions, however, that fathers make sure they don't print their receipts on someone else's property, pointing out that what students reasonably "might view as a prank, the police will view as theft or vandalism."
On Monday, comes the climax. Child and parent alike congregate in the quadrangle of St. Salvator's College where they then participate in the largest out-door shaving cream fight on the planet. Academic children come in costume and must bring their unwieldy "receipts" along with them.
Every year, the university warns students to rein in their antics or face cancellation, and every year, the police records pile up, offering an amusing chronicle of that year's transgressions.
The student union, painfully aware of that their beloved tradition runs the pepetual risk of abolition, pleads with students to behave. Their strategy, oddly enough, is to appeal to the students' sense of posterity: have fun, get pissed, but "please don't be the generation of students who killed Raisin Weekend."
Raisin Weekend – the what, how and why of a quirky St Andrews University tradition
If you go down to the Quad today, you’re in for a big surprise…On the second weekend in November, St Andrews University undergraduates celebrate Raisin weekend. On the following Monday, first-years participate in a huge foam fight in St Salvator’s Quad. The whole town cooperates; the police close roads, the university issues safety advice, and older students… well… they mostly take pictures.
Where did this bizarre tradition come from? What’s behind it? Here’s what we discovered.
Sources are hazy on exactly when it started. Some say that the Raisin tradition is only about a century old, while others assert that Raisin weekend has evolved since the infancy of St Andrews University, in the 1400s.
The Museum of the University of St Andrews has a board dedicated to the earlier, more sedate traditions of the Raisin weekend: First-year students (called ‘bejants’ and ‘bejantines’) would be assigned academic ‘parents’ – older students – to initiate and orientate them into the ways of the university and town. Once the bejants and bejantines had been in St Andrews for a few months, they would thank their ‘parents’ for their help by giving them the gift of a pound of raisins.
Students who did not repay their parents in this way were often ‘punished’ by older students. To avoid mistakenly throwing a ‘good’ student into one of the town fountains, it became customary for parents receiving their pound of raisins to write out a receipt in Latin for their academic child. Then, whenever challenged, the bejant or bejantine could produce their raisin receipt to avoid being drenched.
In English, a rough translation of a typical raisin receipt is “I, _________ a third year/fourth year/graduate fellow member of this celebrated university of St Andrews who with great natural ability and toil studies _________ gives this to you, _________ my beloved bejant, of tired and invalided mind, from _________ who studies _________ and as thanks for this will accept from you one pound of raisins”
In more recent years, the raisin weekend has developed into a slightly more raucous event. Instead of raisins, first years now typically give bottles of wine to their academic parents. The raisin receipt is not longer written on parchment, but on a large object like a huge stuffed animal, or an old piece of furniture that the bejant/bejantine must drag around on Raisin Monday.
And then there’s the foam fight. Academic mothers create elaborate fancy dress outfits for each of their children to wear on Raisin Monday, and then the children parade through town to St Salvator’s Quad, where all manner of wet substances are thrown around in a huge foamy water fight. As the bell of St Salvator’s Chapel strikes twelve, the festivities end and the fully-initiated first-years head back to their halls to clean up.
Loura Brooks remembers, “the older students in my first year made sure all the showers in Andrew Melville Hall ran cold by using up all the hot water!”
I am excited, but a little nervous to see what happens to this place starting tomorrow. One of my flatemates made a packed with someone to drink from now (Saturday night) to Monday night constantly, with no sleep. Interesting...
We had a whole hall meeting on Wednesday about Raisin Weekend. I love our warden. Not many people do, becasue he has an annoying voice. But, I think he is hilarious. For example, he said that "when you drink you get hot, and take off your jacket and jumper, and if it is later, something else. Then you walk back to DRA.. Let me direct you to a calender... IT IS NOVEMBER.... Let me direct you to a globe... THIS IS SCOTLAND." I was laughing so hard. He also told us to help anyone we see "passed out in a bush" on the way back to DRA from town.He also said that when we walk back to DRA in the cold, with few closes on, then he has to wrap us in a silver, "American space," foil- like blanket to worm us up, and carry us up 4 flights of stairs to our bed, in his boxers. I was again laughing!
Some other people spoke, a police office, someone from the Students' assosiation and someone from something like student services. The one from the police told us what would happen if we were caught with stolen property.(The raisin receipt has a tendency to be stolen- from stone garden benches to B&B signs. Some of the speakers encouraged us not to take it and tell our dad that we want something more creative and inventive. Apparently, every year on Monday morning the townspeople call in with lots of complaints.And every year, the police and student association calm them down and let it continue as tradition). He said that the police station is a 30 minute drive away. After being processed and released, you have to take the bus back- in whatever you are wearing. The person from the department I can't quite remember, said that she will be working at the first aid station, set up in the chapel's building. They also have their own ambulance for the day. She said that every year she helps students, especially from DRA (since there are so many of us out here), get back safely, since they were passed out in the street.
The person from the Students' Association/ student union and the warden, Mr. Oliver Jackson-Hutt both seemed to be okay with the tradition of raisin weekend. They both said it was a right-of-passage. (The warden again said don't drink too much and "DON'T FORCE ANYONE TO DRINK ANYTHING THEY DO NOT WANT TO!" The warden shared that he was dressed in a toga on his raisin Monday with 2 feet of snow on the ground. The other guy said that he was dressed as Robin Hood- in very tight tights, that "left nothing to the imagination." He also said that his "brother" had it worse, he was the girl from Robin Hood. Even the lady that helps drunk people in the streets, laughs about what she has seen people bring as their receipt. Last year, she saw people carrying a double bed, with a guy sitting on top of it. But if it does not fit in a skip- I have no clue what that is, but I think it is small, then you are not allowed to go into the quad where the foam fight happens. I just wonder how all these drunk people from the night before or going to get up and be in town by 11am- maybe they just don't go to bed...
This is also the week that Tesco and Morrison's (grocery stores) decided to have a sale on alcohol. And, Morrison's had a shaving cream sale as well. I got 2 cans at Morrison's and one at Tesco. I heard the town runs out of shaving cream this weekend. But on Thursday-Saturday I did not have a problem finding any.
My flatmates are planning on being drunk for breakfast tomorrow. So, I guess the madness begins at 8am. It sounds like the uni students go crazy for the next 48 hours!
P.S. I played roller hockey tonight with the club and had a blast. I scored a goal (by hitting the post becasue there were no goalies). All but 2 guys are puck hogs. But, they all stop looking at a girl playing once they see me play, especially my shot.
