As with every part of our damned society and miserable life, Oxford has a hierarchy. And the worst thing that could possibly happen to you would obviously be being stuck on the wrong rung of that fancy and elusive ladder. The first step into the esteemed and crucial heights of Oxonian hierarchy is a crewdate. If you don’t crewdate, don’t expect to be featured on VERSA’S Top 10 Coolest Students (now that is the real dreaming spire). Don’t expect freshers to know your name. Don’t expect anyone to attach any worth to you. 

Now. You’re on a crewdate. (Well done). If you want to fit in, there are several traditions you need to learn about. 

First is simple and must be followed with the utmost of casual and false spontaneity. This is pennying. Pennying derives from the unit of currency – a penny, and is used in crewdates. The idea is to throw a penny into someone’s drink when they have their hand clasped around the glass. They then must down their drink. This is in the hope that you will a) get bronze poisoning b) catch Ebola c) swallow the penny, and consequently throw up everywah (erupting both the penny and your dignity out of your mouth).

So that’s pretty easy. Make sure to go to the bank in advance, and change a couple of £20 notes into pennies. This will emphasise the root of the tradition, which is erudite debauchery. It’s often successful if you chuck the penny into someone’s drink whilst laughingly crying, “Ha! I have so much money! What to do with it all?”

Sconcing is a step up from pennying, because it relies upon more than just alcohol consumption. Sconcing is a game where the group try and ridicule others, and also find out what super banterous legendary events others have committed. The best advice for this is just consistent and unceasing dishonesty. Drink constantly. At every sconce down your drink. Make sure to drink at length, so that the whole table may see that you indeed have committed said named act. 

If people seem to be starting to doubt you, then give a little laugh and exclaim your disbelief that everyone knows your stories so well. At a few points in the evening, it will be necessary for you to sconce someone yourself. If you are not indeed friends with anyone on the crewdate, the best thing is to simply make up very elaborate and niche stories (my usual one is “I sconce anyone who had sex on the Cheese Floor whilst eating a kebab”). Then if no one else drinks, just drink yourself and say, “Whoops, I forgot that was me!”

These stories will be remembered, which means the more crewdates you go on, the more people can sconce you. And then it becomes less dishonest. I mean yes, admittedly you still didn’t do any of these things, but if they all believe you did, then soon you will believe it too. And that, along with the crewdates, will bring you one step closer to being cool.

 An ill-fated night at Bridge, perhaps? Freshers’ week had seen no action for yours truly, a young gay man, whose few sexual experiences had previously entailed a Grindr-based, and wholly unsatisfying, series of sexts (oops, do you think the Tories will arrest me? Thank God for anonymity, eh?) and the odd kiss from a straight and questioning friend. I arrived at Bridge, surrounded by new Fresher friends – the week’s conversations had seemed to revolve around who Tina had pulled and what Sammy had gotten up to with that guy from Camera the night before. A series of complaints saw a large number of wing-men and women convincing me, reassuring me, doing their best. Telling me it will be alright; you’re not unattractive. Platitudes of this ilk seemed to have confronted me all week, as once again your author thought to himself, oh, if only if I was quiche. Your author is no longer the naïve fresher who went to Bridge with Tina and Sammy – he wouldn’t do either now. Oh Freshers’ Week regrets, eh – more to come. 

So, we’re in Bridge. I’ve downed a pitcher of Sex on the Beach – a cruel substitute, I thought. Suddenly, the rugby team from one of the colleges entered, having just completed initiations. This is the end, I thought. Bridge, this surprisingly tiny and inadequate club everyone in the year above idolises as a college tradition, was now overrun with the rugger lads – what hope is there for a potentially nice and friendly little gayman who will reconfirm my confidence? Oh, so little. Not that little, as it turned out. Suddenly, a new-friend approached, bringing along a rugby pal. It feels like a school-friend reunion so we all look on and think how ‘nice’ it is that at Oxford some people have half their school with them. (Lovely. Hmm.) We dance. We dance more and more – in fact, I catch the two talking. He looks at me and suddenly I can feel the sex on the beach flood through my veins. Coincidentally this is the date which made me realise that maybe a pitcher was too much. 

We dance together and kiss. He asks me to go home straightaway and naturally I assent – thank God, finally some action, I thought. We walk home and just outside Worcester (a red herring, perhaps?) we kiss again, only this time I start to realise that perhaps it wasn’t a very good kiss. Still hopeful we plow on and arrive back at mine where we go upstairs and get off a bit more before we decide mutually this was a mistake and move straight to sex. As he mounts, I suddenly realise there is no way this is going to work. No one is in the mood anymore. Him lying on top of me, I grab my phone. He continues to attempt some kind of oral pleasure on me, but I’m much more interested in Doodlejump. A high score. Perhaps the night wasn’t as wasted as I thought.

TW: Rape, sexual assault

On 24th December, 2014, I was raped by two men, both of whom I considered to be very dear friends of mine. All three of us went to high school together, and I had known them for four years. They were also ‘friends’ of my boyfriend, who also went to high school with us. All four of us had been hanging out together regularly for years, and I trusted them wholly. 

That night, Daniel* and Jesse* invited me over to Jesse’s house to drink with them. My family wasn’t celebrating Christmas Eve that night, and my boyfriend was spending the evening with his parents, so I agreed to go. When Daniel and Jesse picked me up from my house, they handed me a bottle of Jack Daniels and told me that I needed to “catch up” with them. I took a couple of swigs from the bottle on the way to Jesse’s house, and when we got there, we briefly spoke to Jesse’s family before heading upstairs to continue drinking. After taking a couple of shots with Daniel and Jesse, I began to feel very intoxicated. I told them repeatedly that I couldn’t drink anymore, but they kept telling me to take more shots and insisting that I needed to “catch up” with them. I remember taking one more shot, for a grand total of three shots, before I had to sit down on the bed and feeling like I couldn’t stay awake. I remember feeling someone get on the bed, and opening my eyes to see Jesse staring at me, watching me intently as if he was waiting for something. I closed my eyes again, drifting out of consciousness, and felt Jesse move in for a kiss before my memory goes blank (later I would conclude that I was drugged). 

The next thing that I remember is coming to, lying face down, with my pants around my ankles, while Jesse was on top of me. When Jesse finished, I remember laying on my side, pants still around my ankles, thinking, “Did that just happen? Is that what I think it was? Did Jesse rape me?” I felt so confused and disoriented; like I was dreaming, and I wasn’t sure if it had actually happened or not. Then, I felt Jesse lay down behind me in a spooning position, and start to touch me, initiating sex again. My memory goes blank again after that, and the next thing that I remember is hearing Jesse say, “Daniel, you can come out now.” After that, my memory becomes very unclear, and I just remember a series of flashes of what happened. I remember one of them being on top of me while the other one was shoving his penis in my mouth. I remember not being able to hold my head up, so whomever was in front of me seized a fistful of my hair to do it for me. I remember them taking turns on top of me and me not knowing which one of them was on top of me. I remember hearing them laughing, like they had some kind of inside joke that I wasn’t in on, and I remember hearing them moaning. I remember thinking, “I need to stop this,” but I felt totally paralysed and powerless; I felt frozen, like I couldn’t speak or move. At one point, I mustered up the strength to slur out “Stop! Stop! Stop!”, and one of them responded with something along the lines of “We’re almost done”. When they were finished, I laid face down on the bed, pants still around my ankles, feeling exposed, and burning with humiliation. I remember thinking “I need to pull my pants up” but, again, I felt paralysed. I’m not sure how much time passed, but sooner or later, I felt one of them pull my pants up. After that, I remember going into the bathroom and throwing up and then asking them to take me home. I don’t remember how I got home or how I even got inside my house, but my family told me that when I got home, I was crying and that I couldn’t sit up or stand; they told me that I had to be helped to the bathroom and held up to throw up so that I didn’t choke on my own vomit. 

My mum convinced me to report it to the police the next day, Christmas Day. After I made a police report and Daniel and Jesse were questioned, I was told that no legal action was going to be taken because there was no “probable cause” to make an arrest. Daniel and Jesse’s stories matched mine, except according to their versions, I took off my clothes and put them back on myself, and it was consensual sex. Because it was two against one, and there were no witnesses, there was no case. 

After doing some investigation of my own, I came to find out that Jesse had been charged with sexual assault in high school, and that he almost wasn’t allowed to walk at graduation for an incident in which he exposed himself at school. I also learned that another girl came forward and said that Daniel had raped her two years earlier. Upon presenting this information to the police, I was told that there was still no probable cause for an arrest. Today, my rapists walk free. 

*The names in this article have been changed