Comments on: York Sport Slams Hockey Initiation

By: LL

LL — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 02:52:40 +0000

Just shut up. All of you.

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By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 16:38:00 +0000

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of initiations in general or the content of the Hockey initiations, the defence that “our initiations aren’t as bad as there initiations” is unbelievably weak. You can’t defend a war because it was shorter than someone else’s or a crime because it was less severe than someone else’s.

Naturally all adults have a right to choose whether or not they partake in these bizarre and frankly perverse tests of what exactly? weirdness? But where is the dignity in it?

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By: Mungo

Mungo — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:36:55 +0000

“Chemically impossible” to put a goldfish in a blender? And they say that science GCSEs are getting easier. Pah!

A lot of this story does seem overblown and I take the point of the people associated with the club that it might be exaggerated somewhat. Regardless, at the start of the year Emily Scott said in no uncertain terms that any club found to be holding any kind of “initiation” ceremony, or even using the word initiation to describe any club organised events would be reprimanded by YorkSport. Whether you agree with it or not (which personally I do) regardless of any exaggerations it’s pretty stupid to hold initiations, take pictures, film them, put them online and not expect consequences.

I’m off now to test out the PH balance of my housemate’s goldfish.

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By: Student

Student — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 13:30:42 +0000

I think Vision are completely justified in reporting the story. Clearly a number of those involved are trying to downplay the situation as is in their interests to do so, but in reality it must be seen for what it is: disgusting, immature and socially exclusive, which is unacceptable for a YUSU-funded sport club. This is the kind of thing that gives universities bad reputations. Re: the Nouse and YUSU comments, is it not conceivable that Nouse got the story from yusu.org, where it had in turn appeared as a result of complaints to YUSU? I don’t think in this instance it’s a case of YUSU leaking the information to Nouse.

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By: Person 1

Person 1 — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 13:05:35 +0000

I cannot believe that a paper that supposidely claims to have the standards that Vision has can have printed the goldfish story. I know for a fact that someone claimed goldfish were involved as a piss take about how bad people really think this is (infact what was claimed if i heard right is chemically impossible and vision should know that). How can vision have heard this off someone and printed it as fact when they havent even researched it?

This isnt a post on whether i agree with the initiation or not, i just find it disturbing that UHYC is been vilified over a lot of things that never happened, and that instead was heresay that Vision decided to print instead of checking the facts first. Also, people can look badly at the hockey club ONLY if we were the only club on campus to do this, which is so far from the truth it isnt even funny. Most sports teams run initiations. Also, has anyone asked how many of the YorkSport members have done initiations for various clubs? Highly hypocritical of them

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By: Khronos

Khronos — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 12:37:51 +0000

First of all it should be pointed out that the orange stuff in the blender (to my knowledge) wasn’t goldfish. As far as I know this was a member of UYHC trying to show that if you feed Vision some bullshit which shows the club in a worse light, vision won’t question the validity they’ll just swallow it up and make it part of the main story.

I can only assume that asking two random anonymous sources around campus (who weren’t at the “freshers lunch” and can’t even really claim that they are anything whatsoever to do with UYHC) was simply to get the desired “disgusted” response. Instead of asking any of the freshers involved their opinions, as judging by the comments left by most of the UYHC freshers on both this page and nouse’s page, the response would have been much different.

There’s also a comment on here saying that they had to down fish heads? I can only assume you’ve half heard the story and have very little knowledge of either biology or the average size of fish head/an oesophagus.

This really goes to show that most of what people outside of UYHC know about this event (apparently also including Vision and Nouse) is a form of chinese whispers which from the start was based on rumours and a couple of facebook photos.

The fact that UYHC hold the “freshers lunch” at the end of the year rather than the start, if anything should not be criticised but followed. If “initiations” are going to happen (and they are, whether non-sports people like it or not) they might as well be held after the season is over so as not to put off freshers at the start of the year, who might otherwise be playing the highest standard of sport that this university has to offer.

I would also like to point out that the way UYHC president Mark Inman has been portrayed in both this and the nouse story as some sort of campus villain feeding off the misery of freshers is highly unfair. He was simply trying to defend a club that he’s put a lot of time and effort into. A club that (with the exception of this half-baked “news” story) has had a fantastic year. The only club to turn a loss from last years Roses into a victory this year, with most teams in the club being promoted this season in their respective leagues and with the mens 1st XI securing the Bucs cup silverware.

If anything UYHC has done nearly all it can to improve the name of this university this year. Why tarnish that with what can hardly be called news? (Students at universities do initiations for sports clubs, shock horror! Who would have guessed?)

If it weren’t for UYHC and the experiences I’ve had playing for this club I don’t think I’d be half the person I am today.

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By: dddd

dddd — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 23:44:11 +0000

is the orange stuff in the blender a goldfish?

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By: JJ

JJ — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 20:45:59 +0000

KK’s right. It’s bullshit. How about you ask the freshers who were actually involved, and the freshers who decided not to be involved, instead of TELLING everyone how horrific it was? You don’t really have a clue. You’re just basing it on speculation, Josh Mangham – and you’ve assumed it was significantly worse than it was.

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By: Another anon.

Another anon. — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 18:39:40 +0000

Not up on THIS thread – I meant the Nouse thread. Darn.

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By: Another anon.

Another anon. — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 18:38:05 +0000

I see no reason to doubt the authenticity of the “ex-hockey fresher”
post (way up on this thread), and I’ve seen that kind of thing going
on at the hockey Christmas port thing. Groping, and a girl looking
very shocked and upset. Everyone needs to slow down a bit, read
the “ex-hockey-fresher” post, and start thinking about how to make
sure that these kinds of thing don’t happen again. But perhaps things
won’t improve until the elder statesmen like Rob, Billy and Lion summon
up enough moral courage to condemn this kind of stuff outright, instead
of expressing, at most, mild disapproval. Someone inside the club needs
to take the lead on sorting this out….

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