Investigation into students forced to eat maggots claim

LOUGHBOROUGH University says it is investigating following allegations that students were forced to eat maggots at an initiation event.

Student newspaper The Tab said they received WhatsApp messages from two first year students involved in the Women’s Hockey Team freshers’ event.

The messages called the initiation ‘brutal’ and alleged that the girls who took part threw up at least once, and ‘were tricked into almost eating a live centipede’.

A Loughborough University spokesperson thanked The Tab for highlighting the allegations and told Leicestershire Live :“The allegations suggest behaviour that falls below the high standards expected of Loughborough Sport athletes and we have launched an immediate investigation.”

The Tab reports that the ‘initiation’ allegedly had five themes, which were based on different houses the girls would visit. Initiation ceremonies are events at university societies which involve new students, usually first years, undertaking a number of tasks, often involving consuming large amounts of alcohol.

The first house allegedly was themed around ‘I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!’ and the girls were allegedly forced to eat dead maggots, dog food, dog biscuits, and raw onion while drinking ‘dirty pints’ and pints of milk.

The allegations also say that the freshers were forced into these activities by older students, who reportedly almost made the freshers eat a ‘live centipede’.

According to reports, in the second themed house the girls were forced to pass spicy soup from one persons mouth to the next. The WhatsApp messages also alleged the soup had ‘gone off’.

The messages also allege that the students had ‘eggs, flour and cider’ thrown at them while walking between houses, where they were allegedly ‘made to crawl’.

At the third house, a girl allegedly got so cold that she had to be given a foil blanket to recover.

The allegations also say that at the fourth house, freshers were made to sit of the floor of a basement and answer quiz questions. When they didn’t get them right, they were supposedly made to drink shots with chili in them.

At the fifth house, a girl allegedly had Vaseline brushed into her hair and garlic rubbed on her teeth. In the messages, she also alleged that someone shaved her eyebrow.

In the allegations in the WhatsApp messages from the two students, one of them branded the initiation ‘brutal’.