When initiation ceremonies go wrong

The secretly-filmed video of a university initiation ceremony that went too far, in which a fancy dress SS commander forces a row of boys wearing plastic bag balaclavas to line up, parade and then retch out what they'd been made to drink (right), will earn at least one student a stern word from the University of Gloucestershire authorities and some short-lived campus infamy.

The ritual, presumed to be the work of one of the university's sports clubs, combined inspiration, it seems, from Nazism, Abu Ghraib and the chain-gang from O Brother, Where Art Thou?. But while the video, obtained by the BBC, was shocking, it won't have surprised students.

University poses a challenge for young sportsmen who earned easy popularity at secondary school. The vastness of campus life threatens them with anonymity. For many, 'the club' offers both a haven and the heirarchies they are used to from school. In the absence of adult supervision, the older students

are able to lay down the law. Where traditions are not imposed by history, then it falls to the big men on campus to make up their own rituals.

Initiation rites are nothing new - Roman soldiers had to pass the same sort of entrance exam that aspiring student hockey players face today. But if university staff turn a blind eye, they tend to snowball. Those forced to gobble a mixture of Baileys, Guinness and lime cordial from their shoes one year will be in charge 12 months later, and expect the next intake to suffer even more.

One student said that at an agricultural college, "the freshers went round to someone's house, to a room that was covered in newspaper, and were forced to piss into a pig's head, then drink from it."

In 2006, 18-year-old Gavin Britton had to do a round of 'pub golf' for his initiation at Exeter University. Hours later, still wearing fancy dress, his dead body was found slumped in a street.