U. of Padova: new grads get hazed

[hoosier]

(If you Google "hazing" images, you'll find this from some European school, including a photo of a girl standing in her undies reading her poster.)


Students like this one from the University of Padova all undergo a demented hazing upon graduation. After leaving your final exams, your friends and family are waiting with a laurel wreath to drape around your neck and soon enough they expect you to strip down to your underwear. They then subject you to various liquidy food items on your body and perhaps a gauntlet of slapping before making you stand on a bench with a bottle of champagne to read the story of your life as written by your friends on a poster sporting a mean caricature of yourself. Every time you make a mistake you have to drink from the bottle. Intimate sexual details are often included for everyone's amusement. My friend Mario explained this to me and showed me the poster from his graduation. He said you really have no choice to be subjected to this treatment because your friends would beat you otherwise (note that the girl above has a very red bottom from various spankings anyway). This tradition had to be the most interesting cultural artifact I came across in all my travels!