Freshers’ week in 2023: ‘It was a strangely sexual environment’

Over the next few weeks, thousands of first-year university students around the UK will be doing one or more of the following things: eating rank kebabs, having bad sex, binge drinking snakebites, waking up spooning empty takeaway boxes. Pre-drinks will be followed by pub crawls that wind up in the local Pryzm. And September will end in a localised plague of sorts – freshers’ flu – the inaugural lurgy of the British university, and the karmic punishment for sharing drinks and snogging your course mates.

That’s the idea, at least. But ambiguity surrounds whether that kind of freshers’ chaos is a thing of the past. Are we not living in the era of the so-called “puriteen”? And an entire generation of sober, prudish youngsters eager to turn their backs on the adolescent hedonism of their millennial and boomer forebears? Actually speak to young people today, though, and it turns out things are a bit more nuanced.

Elliott Middleton is about to be a second-year maths and sports science student at the University of Loughborough, and tells me that his freshers’ week experience last year went as expected. “I went out maybe six nights in freshers’ week,” he says. His standout moment, though, wasn’t in a dingy nightclub but rather in a moment of improvised bonding with his flatmates. “It was the end of the night, and we were walking home. We were steaming! It took us so long to get home, so we found this patch of grass and just watched the sunrise.”

Middleton is part of a sports society and tells me that some of the more notorious initiation challenges of yore – think being stripped naked by your peers, or piercing each other’s ears, or imbibing your teammates’ urine – haven’t totally gone away, but that things generally seem to be more pared back now. “[They’ve] been toned down,” he says. “You hear stories about crazy things that happened in previous years, but now there’s a lot less pressure for people who don’t drink.”

Of the four students I speak to, all are quick to reject the “puriteen” label, especially when it comes to freshers’ week. Inaya Anyaegbunam, 20, is a politics and digital cultures student at Norwich’s University of East Anglia, and tells me that hookup culture is very much alive during that frantic first seven days. “It felt like there wasn’t much else to do other than get s***-faced and find someone to shag,” she tells me. But Anyaegbunam found that her peers’ desire to pair up felt like the sole intention of freshers’ week. Which essentially took the fun out of it. “It was a strangely sexual environment and I sensed there was a bit of panic in people who wanted to hook up and have this ‘freshers’ experience’. Guys would only be interested in getting to know you if they fancied you and I found that really isolating.”

Ruby Cronin, a 20-year-old textiles student at Manchester Metropolitan University, tells me that she felt like she could go at her own pace throughout freshers’. “I’m quite an independent person so some nights I would just stay in because I’m very good on my own,” she says. “I remember a few nights I sat out and was like, ‘I’m not going, I’m going a bit too hard.’ I didn’t feel any pressure to go out and get drunk but I think it would have been difficult to make friends if you didn’t drink and get involved.”

While Middleton was impressed with his freshers’ experience in Loughborough, other students tell me that the events they attended felt outdated and slightly cringeworthy. Anyaegbunam, who moved from London to Norwich for university, says that some of the events she attended for her freshers’ week felt like enforced fun, describing them as having “unsupervised school disco vibes”. As the week went on, she began to tire of freshers’ week parties altogether. “I just felt really isolated, so I called my sister, and I was just so upset, and she was like: ‘Leave! You’re not having fun!’. It’s funny because I met some girls at the chip van and asked for their names. We started talking on the road for half an hour and we ended up becoming friends and I just stopped going to freshers’ events after that.”

A glance at this year’s programming at a number of big universities shows lots of UV paint parties with confetti showers and face painting stations. In Leeds this week, there is a silent disco, a K-pop party, and a “beach party” (think Hawaiian shirts and grass skirts). In Birmingham, there’s a “David Attenborough jungle rave” (a club night in appreciation of the man himself), a “Drakeover” event (a club night playing music exclusively by Drake), and a traffic light party (you wear green if you’re single, red if you’re not and orange if… it’s complicated).

For Cronin’s induction week, she remembers arriving at a foam party club night, getting soaked, and then leaving within 30 minutes. Other clubs were offering neon parties, ABBA discos and themed fancy dress nights. “We left and went to some clubs in the gay village instead, because we enjoy those places more than the bigger, slightly cringe clubs,” she laughs. “But I think the best nights in freshers’ week are when we just end up getting drunk in the flat and [don’t] bother going out. It felt like proper bonding time.”

The idea that you have to go clubbing to make friends also means that freshers’ week can be difficult when you’re trying to make meaningful friendships. Libby Connor, a 20-year-old history student at the University of Bristol, compares freshers’ week to a chaotic “speed dating” experience. “For the whole of freshers’ week, I just felt like I was rushing through people, trying to meet as many of them as possible,” she says. “But when I wouldn’t gel with them, I’d literally come back from a night out thinking, ‘oh God, what a waste of money!’ It could get so awkward – I just wish we went to the pub instead of always going to the club. I found myself getting bored quite easily… I’d Irish exit a lot! To be honest, lots of my friends didn’t enjoy freshers that much… second term was way better.”

Money plays a huge factor in your experience of freshers’ week, too. Connor spent £70 on a wristband that gives you entry to the main freshers’ events in Bristol, but soon regretted it. “I got conned into buying [it] because they really try to scare you into buying it on social media,” he recalls. “But when I got to my halls, nobody had brought those wristbands, and they were going to different events. It was such a waste of money!”

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Anyaegbunam also suggests that even if you have an incredibly social freshers’ week, it doesn’t guarantee long-term attachments. “I genuinely had two friends until December,” she says. “It took ages until I had a group of friends and felt like I had a bit of a community.”

It also appears as if universities and local club promoters are struggling to keep up with the growing demand from freshers’ students. A glance at the events available to students at King’s College London this freshers’ week shows that there will be more on offer than in previous years: an R&B bottomless brunch, an ABBA disco club night, and a lock and key party (you locate the person who has the key to your lock and vice versa). But there are also more relaxed events: a fresher’s breakfast, time-out yoga and an alcohol-free paint night.

Students at King’s College London are becoming increasingly keen to attend events centred around mental health and sobriety, according to a students’ union spokesperson. “We’re seeing that students are seeking advice on their wellbeing lots more,” she says. “There’s less of a stigma now about attending these wellness events and students are keener to take time out so they don’t have burnout. We don’t want students to think that they have to maintain a facade.”

It’s important to remember, though, that freshers’ isn’t a one-size-fits-all experience. It doesn’t matter if your idea of fun is a yoga party or a David Attenborough jungle rave, the true magic of the week lies in embracing its unknowability – the carnage, the inevitable highs and lows, the friendships that’ll last for the duration of a cocktail and the ones that’ll stick. It’s life, essentially, condensed into a week.