Student union shuts down rugby club over initiation ritual
THE UCL students’ union has shut down its controversial men’s rugby club and withdrawn its funding after team members attempted to hold a banned initiation ceremony.
Attendees were required to sign non-disclosure agreements to prevent the union from finding out about it, The Daily Telegraph understands.
The event was none the less reported on Tuesday and it did not go ahead as planned.
The ban means that UCL Men’s Rugby will receive no funding for a year, cannot train on university pitches and will be removed from its league.
The union said that it will attempt to enter players not involved in the initiation into other rugby teams.
The ban follows an incident in June, when UCL Men’s Rugby team members were disciplined and banned from university bars for sexist chanting.
In a video seen by The Telegraph, team members on a bus sang about “treating” a woman to a “threesome”.
The team was placed on “suspended disaffiliation”, but has now had funding and union support fully withdrawn.
A union representative confirmed that the team had broken a regulation banning sports teams from “initiations, peer pressure and hazing”.
Sports team initiations typically involve “challenges” for new team members, often involving heavy drinking.
The union regulation bans members being “forced or pressured against their will into taking part in any club or society activities or events”.
It is unknown what challenges were planned, but it is understood that new members were made to sign NDAS preventing them from reporting the event.
A UCL students’ union spokesman said: “After investigating, we have taken the decision to disaffiliate them from the union, effective immediately.
“We will work hard to ensure that the actions of a small number of individuals will not impact those wishing to participate in rugby and we will seek opportunities for students not subject to these complaints in external clubs.”
In December 2016, Ed Farmer, a Newcastle University student, died after drinking 100 shots on an initiation bar crawl, an inquest ruled in October.
UCL Men’s Rugby’s captain and secretary were unavailable for comment.