The College and the University are at pains to remind students every year about the need to ensure that celebrations at the end of exams do not cross a boundary between enthusiastic exuberance and anti-social behaviour. The latter can damage our reputation if it becomes disorderly or hooligan-like behaviour.
Please give particular consideration to the following points:
- Throwing food, drink and other things around causes distress and inconvenience to passers-by and members of University staff.
- Some students emerging from exams may not feel at all celebratory and may feel intimidated by crowds of screaming people or of others who mistakenly feel that spraying or throwing things is acceptable.
- Especially where they take place in public rather than University spaces, excessive celebrations cross from over-exuberance into breaches of the law.
- Even in more private spaces such as the Sidgwick Site or Sports Centre excessive behaviours could still lead to accusations of bullying, criminal damage or even assault.
If you go to wait outside anyone’s final exam, please pause to consider the impact that anti-social celebrations may have on others and on both your own and the College’s reputation. Sharing a celebratory plastic cup of sparkling wine with a friend is one thing; spraying it around F1-style or, still worse, throwing food is anti-social. In recent years some of the activities that have taken place have amounted to anti-social behaviour. Repeated in a city centre on a Saturday night they would lead to arrests for public disorder. They have no place here.
Students whose behaviour crosses the line and becomes excessive will render themselves liable to police action, to University discipline and to College sanctions.
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