Student Wackiness

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You know the kind of thing; Student Union Presidents renaming themselves Rick O'Shea or Peter Out by deed poll, bathing in custard for RAG, renaming the Student Union building after some minor celeb etc etc. Does this kind of thing still go on? Did it/does it at your college? Do you regard it as fun or just puerile?

― MarkH, Thursday, 22 August 2002 08:40 (twenty-three years ago)

it used to until I shot the ents secretary.

seriously though in my final year the SU president lived in my building and at first we thought he was just very bubbly and hyperactive, however as term wore on he started disappearing and when he was around he looked a little erm odd. Turns out the man has gone completely nutso, turns up at a hospital claiming to be Jesus, writes a new chpter of the bible.... in binary and generally running amok. Last we heard of him he'd just broken into the grounds of Buckinghma palace.

― chris (chris), Thursday, 22 August 2002 08:55 (twenty-three years ago)

mindmeld! i have just been sarcastic about this on the star trek thread. was that what prompted this question?
there was an iron stomach contest at the university i went to but our students' union building was named after nelson mandela so maybe they balanced each other out.

― angela, Thursday, 22 August 2002 08:56 (twenty-three years ago)

That sort of thing didn't go on at my uni to my knowledge, but then I never went in the SU if I could possibly avoid it.

― jel -- (jel), Thursday, 22 August 2002 08:56 (twenty-three years ago)

and the Trotter family lived in your student union?

― _chris_ (bifartdag), Thursday, 22 August 2002 09:06 (twenty-three years ago)

i remember a "chilli off" (who can eat the most green chillis smothered in omar's chilli sauce). (going back a few years now you see.) a friend of mine had to stop because his arm had become paralysed?! or so he claimed. a medic friend had an explanation, but i was just baffled. i went round cambridge as a pantomime cow (back end of) once.

― Alan (Alan), Thursday, 22 August 2002 09:10 (twenty-three years ago)

All the students at my gaff are too busy worrying about globalisation and oppressive world regimes to do anything wacky. It makes my life easier but I must say they don't raise any money for charity either so I'm not sure who is better off.

― Pete (Pete), Thursday, 22 August 2002 09:12 (twenty-three years ago)

http://ssmu.mcgill.ca/ssmu/images/page_shatner.gif

Ummmm....was this inspired by my posting about the Student Union building at my school being named after Will Shatner? He actually did go there & studied commerce. It makes about as much sense as naming it after anyone else. I think it's just campy fun but I can't believe they went through the bother of having a referendum over it. That was years and years before I ever got there, though. As for the present student union, they're too busy making deals with soft drink empires to bathe in custard.

I'm not making this up!

― Miss Laura, Thursday, 22 August 2002 09:14 (twenty-three years ago)

i once dressed as a red indian and danced like a loon to a tape of "cotton eye joe" and the theme from "rawhide" on the back of a float going around town. then i got back to college and was informed that my efforts had made the East Anglia news (i hope they couldn't see up my skirt or anything!!) from then on i VOWED that if i wanted to give money to charity it would be by direct debit.

― katie (katie), Thursday, 22 August 2002 09:27 (twenty-three years ago)

Hahaha, I'd forgotten about that.

― RickyT (RickyT), Thursday, 22 August 2002 09:31 (twenty-three years ago)

I was afflicted by self-hatred (well, hatred of students and I couldn't deny that I was one) when I was at university, so yes I avoided all wackiness. Now I say - GO WACKY! It gives you a chance to goAHH STUDENT DAYS like you've grown up or something.

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 22 August 2002 09:58 (twenty-three years ago)

if you want wacky, listen to local radio. don't live it, you'll regret it.

― g-kit (g-kit), Thursday, 22 August 2002 10:14 (twenty-three years ago)

As a students union ents rep in my time I was responsible for minor bits of wackiness including a very basic rendition of the Crystal Maze (kitkat wrappers & haiordryers) with me in very bad drag for some non-disclosed reasons. Also the controversial "Bosnia Night" - a night of "frivolous games and badly made models to raise awareness of the conflict."

― Pete (Pete), Thursday, 22 August 2002 10:18 (twenty-three years ago)

My best moment of wackiness involved newspapers in a foreign country but it was before I started college so I guess it doesn't count. Still.

There were these girls selling newspapers outside the tube station. In this particular city everything was very cheap and thus we were loaded, so my friend had the bright idea that we should buy all the papers they had, costing about a tenner. We were sort of drunk at the time so I said why not. Anyway little did we know what we'd do with them, I remember thinking we'd just go back to the hotel and leave them around but buying them would be funny. So eventually the girls sold us all the papers and were well pleased cos they could go home. However as we started to leave people began trying to buy the papers off us, thinking we worked for whatever company. So we started taking the piss, and some people would come up and we'd be like "no, fuck off, they're ours, just fuck off". And they were all losing it totally thinking "i'm going to report you" or something. And then some people would come up and we'd give them like 9 papers for whatever money they gave us, others we'd just give the sport section, or rip a page out and give it to them. It was genuinely the most funny and "wacky" thing that's ever happened me. Not least when we walked down the street where another two girls were selling them and started stopping their customers from buying them and giving them papers for free instead.

― Ronan (Ronan), Thursday, 22 August 2002 10:50 (twenty-three years ago)

blimey ronan, graham to thread!!

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 22 August 2002 10:52 (twenty-three years ago)

I was going to say I agreed with N., but then I read Pete's confessions. Now I'm not so sure. Anyway, isn't growing out of sneery self-hatred more of an achievement? That's what I tell myself.

― Ellie (Ellie), Thursday, 22 August 2002 11:58 (twenty-three years ago)

My student union is actually full of generally v. good people who seem to put in sixty hour days doing things like organising free food for poor students and volunteer english teaching for temporary visa holders (ie. refugees). I take it this is rare?

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Thursday, 22 August 2002 12:17 (twenty-three years ago)

That's sixty hour weeks, obv.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Thursday, 22 August 2002 12:18 (twenty-three years ago)

'Students' are a ridiculously easy, but ill-defined (hence easy) target in British culture (elsewhere, I don't know). We should think twice before engaging in lazy mockery.

― the pinefox, Thursday, 22 August 2002 12:19 (twenty-three years ago)

Clearly pinefox, you've never been a thirteen year old girl.

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 22 August 2002 12:36 (twenty-three years ago)

I worked that out Nick when I first met him. He doesn't have the ill defined jaw of a transexual.

― Pete (Pete), Thursday, 22 August 2002 12:39 (twenty-three years ago)

Where is that in the film Nick? I've been flicking through trying to find it for ages but still haevn't got it in to my head to maybe watch the whole thing again.

― Graham (graham), Thursday, 22 August 2002 12:56 (twenty-three years ago)

Whats so bad about soft drink deals? The hippies at my school were all up in arms after adbusters ran something about it.

Well he never did anything too wierd but we had an Indian president who would say the most inappropriate comments when drunk or stoned. Rather then getting in trouble he ended up a Rhodes Scholar.

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Thursday, 22 August 2002 12:57 (twenty-three years ago)

We should think twice before engaging in lazy mockery.

but that's the best sort of mockery!

― Alan (Alan), Thursday, 22 August 2002 12:58 (twenty-three years ago)

Can't remember Graham. It stuck in my head just cause it's sampled on the Air soundtrack.

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 22 August 2002 13:05 (twenty-three years ago)

Whats so bad about soft drink deals? The hippies at my school were all up in arms after adbusters ran something about it.

I didn't say it was bad...just meant they were too busy doing other things to have time for silly stunts.

― Miss Laura, Thursday, 22 August 2002 13:13 (twenty-three years ago)

Student union members: school prefects 1 to 3 years on. They are all invited to decorate my bedroom wall with the inside of their skull and an AK47. Wackiness is a bad thing, practised by people who find Dom Joly/Chris Moyles (they are the same person, right?) funny, or go "Hey, hey, do you remember Rainbow?". Of course I remember Rainbow, it ran for about 20 years and was very succesful. You bugshit.

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Thursday, 22 August 2002 13:26 (twenty-three years ago)

N: what are you on about?

― the pinefox, Thursday, 22 August 2002 14:24 (twenty-three years ago)

Not least when we walked down the street where another two girls were selling them and started stopping their customers from buying them and giving them papers for free instead.

ho ho, humiliating poor people in the third world is always a laugh.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Thursday, 22 August 2002 14:46 (twenty-three years ago)

who guarantess it was a third world and they were poor?

― vic (vicc13), Thursday, 22 August 2002 15:13 (twenty-three years ago)

Right near the beginning after the youngest gal's suicide attempt. "Clearly, doctor, you've never been a thirteen year old girl".

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 22 August 2002 18:50 (twenty-three years ago)

I didn't say it was bad...just meant they were too busy doing other things to have time for silly stunts.
Hmmm, sounds like ours, they never did anything collectively wierd cause that would require them doing something collectively at all.

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Thursday, 22 August 2002 19:03 (twenty-three years ago)

Got it, Sterling. I thought she said it to ~~mark s~~ Danny Devito.

― Graham (graham), Thursday, 22 August 2002 19:57 (twenty-three years ago)

re. this 13-yr-old // I still don't get what you mentalists are on about.

― the pinefox, Thursday, 22 August 2002 20:40 (twenty-three years ago)

who guarantess it was a third world and they were poor?

i) Ronan mentions that it was a city where everything was cheap. So it could be Portugal or Eastern Europe, same thing really.

ii) Rich dilettantes do not sell newspapers on the side of the road.

I don't know, basically I liked that story up until the bit about giving the papers away to stop other people selling it, at that point it turned into the worst kind of middle class boorishness.

I have never done anything boorish.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Friday, 23 August 2002 14:35 (twenty-three years ago)

re. this 13-yr-old // I still don't get what you mentalists are on about.

The Virgin Suicides, to which Air did the soundtrack. I'm sure it's all very tender and meaningful.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 23 August 2002 14:42 (twenty-three years ago)

Haha it is not tender but brutal in soft haze cintematography and memory lost in fear of itself.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Friday, 23 August 2002 18:48 (twenty-three years ago)

What uni do you go to Tim? At mine the Student Union seem only concerned with organising live "entertainment" and free beer.

― Andrew (enneff), Saturday, 24 August 2002 00:04 (twenty-three years ago)

COUCHBURNERS!

― di smith (lucylurex), Saturday, 24 August 2002 01:01 (twenty-three years ago)

At my local university campus I saw a young man get his butt waxed and then eat the wax strip.

― spectra, Saturday, 24 August 2002 06:17 (twenty-three years ago)

Since when Portugal is Third World?

RONAN BACK TO THREAD

― vic (vicc13), Saturday, 24 August 2002 07:56 (twenty-three years ago)

It wasn't as though they were in rags, to be honest I'd say they were students.

― Ronan (Ronan), Saturday, 24 August 2002 11:06 (twenty-three years ago)

Andrew, I'm at Monash Uni Clayton Campus. Last year's union were a bit like what you describe, but this year the balance has been pretty spot on - political and committed but not idea-devoid megaphone-happy socialists (which is sadly the norm for leftist student unions)

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Saturday, 24 August 2002 11:39 (twenty-three years ago)

Student wackiness is a terrible thing, but worse still is ex-public schoolboys getting involved in student politics who know the right postures but don't really get it. I was reading some stuff by someone just like that, ex-Eton, intelligent but in a wider sense dumb, who was explaining that he was an anarchist, and getting seriously involved in politics. Four lines later (literally) he was complaining that his tenants don't treat him with sufficient respect.

I'll take men dressed as women pushing bathtubs down the streets ahead of those people any day. (This obviously does not mean that I am against the death penalty for this latter group.)

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 24 August 2002 12:44 (twenty-three years ago)

I staged a mock-kidnapping of several (willing) students in an electoral campaign publicity stunt. I realised I'd gone too far when a little girl hid behind her mother's leg after seeing my gun and balaclava. It went wrong when a rival decided to kidnap ME instead.

From then on I played it safe and kept a small pink bunny wabbit hostage, until I found out that the gun I'd borrowed was an actual real firearm that had been disabled in some way.

I didn't win.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Saturday, 24 August 2002 15:39 (twenty-three years ago)

It wasn't as though they were in rags, to be honest I'd say they were students.

fucking students.

I'm so moralistic.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Monday, 26 August 2002 09:41 (twenty-three years ago)

don't forget the wheely bin incident on baldwin street.

― di smith (lucylurex), Tuesday, 27 August 2002 20:35 (twenty-three years ago)

haha ned will soon "remember" it!!

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 27 August 2002 20:37 (twenty-three years ago)

Help help!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 27 August 2002 20:38 (twenty-three years ago)

six years pass...

http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/news/Bristol-student-charged-Italian-Job-driving/article-434952-detail/article.html#StartComments

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41B6JZH63BL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

― The Slash My Father Wrote (DJ Mencap), Wednesday, 29 October 2008 11:20 (sixteen years ago)

Isn't "appropriate" the most anti-life word in the English language?

― synths and drum machines (e.g. Simmonds) (Marcello Carlin), Wednesday, 29 October 2008 11:21 (sixteen years ago)

''The car conked out and it's just been left there in a right state."

― Carrie Bradshaw Layfield (The stickman from the hilarious 'xkcd' comics), Wednesday, 29 October 2008 11:31 (sixteen years ago)

"It was like something out the movies."

Don't encourage him.

Also how long before this thread gets blessed by ILX's own 'wacky student'?

― milling through the grinder, grinding through the mill (S-), Wednesday, 29 October 2008 11:39 (sixteen years ago)

Hey, I happen to like Matmos

― The Slash My Father Wrote (DJ Mencap), Wednesday, 29 October 2008 11:43 (sixteen years ago)

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