Freshers’ Week is a time for rituals, and none is older or more reliable than the outbreak of freshers’ flu, the bacterial and viral fiesta that takes place when illnesses from various parts of the country find an abundance of new hosts in which to multiply. Students are arguably more effective at spreading disease among themselves than they are at doing anything else in their first week at university. The combination of libertarian attitudes to snogging and medieval standards of hygiene means that undergraduates take to flu like Frenchmen to high-tar cigarettes.

This usually results in little more than a spike in the sales of Sudafed, but universities are genuinely worried this year about an outbreak of swine flu. The student union at Leicester University, for example, is anticipating having to cancel some freshers’ events. Other seats of learning have drawn up plans to quarantine students in their halls of residence in the name of keeping their undergraduates alive. This is worrying indeed.

What price death when the alternative is a generation of students who have no idea whether it is possible to drink a half pint in every pub in the high street of their university town?

Do university authorities have no regard for the fast food industry? Freshers’ Week is to kebab shop owners as the Grand National is to bookies. They set themselves up for the financial year and establish a loyal customer base at the same time.

Freshers’ Week is, for most students, the high-water mark for frivolity. The rest of student life is comparatively staid compared to the orgy of permissiveness that comes with the sudden realisation that you have all of the freedoms of adult life without any of the responsibilities. Those living in catered halls of residence do not even have to buy their own lavatory paper.

To be slightly melodramatic, it is the supernova of childhood — the last fireball of a dying star that will soon collapse under its own weight and begin to suck light out of the universe.

Rules are so fluid that it is considered perfectly all right to decorate your room with clumsily whittled ornaments acquired on your gap year, or quasi-humorous posters about the merits of drinking beer.

Activities that would be cringeworthy at any other stage of life are suddenly encouraged. There are, just this once, no penalties for wearing a leather waistcoat, subsisting on a diet of cooked-breakfast-in-a-tin, professing an interest in Scientology, opining that the world can only truly be understood through the films of Wim Wenders, wearing your hair like Danny from McFly, or drinking a volume of cider that would elicit a disapproving glance from Oliver Reed.

During Freshers’ Week, as in traditional festivities such as Twelfth Night, judgment is suspended and eccentricity celebrated. Although swine flu is unlikely to prohibit all of this exuberance, it seems likely that the most extravagant parts will be curtailed. This may have its advantages. Freshers’ Week can be disconcertingly expensive at a time when you need to set aside money for less hedonistic accessories, such as books vital for your course. Freshers are under constant pressure to buy tickets for events — usually with dubious-sounding names such as The Romp — with the threat that failure to attend will result in social ignominy. The threat is always empty. It is easy to make friends in other ways, and doing so while in swine flu quarantine may be as good as any other.

A reduced amount of hedonistic behaviour may also inhibit another important ritual: forming a large and unwieldy group of friends in the first week and then attempting to avoid them for the rest of the year when you discover that they are ghastly. This tradition of shedding acquaintances may seem unnecessary, but is an extremely effective way of working out what makes a good friend. Like mumps, it is an experience worth going through early. Working out that you dislike someone only after you have agreed to share a house with them is nothing short of disastrous.

The most important thing to remember, however, is that there is nothing to fear. There will be so many people of your age from such a diverse cross-section of society that you will always find someone to like. No matter how shy or eccentric you are, there will be people who understand you or who make you look exuberant and suave by contrast. Revel in it — and remember to wash your hands after sneezing.

The knowledge
Unavoidable topics of conversation include:

A levels, gap years, sex, politics, vegetarianism and the weirdo at the end of the corridor.

Apparently esoteric gap year activities, some distinctly unpleasant, will have been undertaken by a surprisingly large number of people.

Retro is cool in clothes, children’s television programmes and gadgets such as a SodaStream. You will be showered with freebies, all of which will be worthless.

Guitars and bongos will be endearing at first, then will either be forgotten or become monstrously irritating.

There will be Goths. They usually study physics. Girls who wear pink pashminas and drive Volkswagen Polos study history of art.

The library will have three copies of a text considered indispensable to 1,000 students.

SOURCES: The Bluffer’s Guide to University, Times archive

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