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Baptisms: students can’t be forced to drink

From now on, forcing students to drink any beverages during initiation rituals will be strictly prohibited. This applies to both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. The new rule is being introduced in this year’s version of the “initiation decree”, which representatives of student unions, higher education institutions and the city of Ghent signed yesterday.

In the “initiation decree”, all involved parties agree on a set of rules and regulations to ensure that nothing goes wrong during the traditional initiation rituals or so-called “baptisms” a large amount of first year students take part in. For the first time, a handful of student unions without official recognition signed the decree as well.

“This year, we contacted the non-recognised student unions ourselves to ask whether they wanted to sign the decree. Everyone we spoke to, agreed to do so”, said Joyce Albrecht, Ghent University’s student manager.

Under the new regulations, the police will have to be informed about all initiation rituals beforehand. The initiation decree has existed since 2007 and is renewed each year. Thanks to stricter monitoring, the amount of complaints with regard to initiation rituals has fallen sharply.
 

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