Intro week β 24 years ago the acclaimed Danish author was pressured by tutors to do things at intro camp that she has since been ashamed of. She is tired of sauna clubs, slut-shaming, and violent intro games which, according to her, help foster a sexist and transgressive study environment.
If you have experienced sexism or any other offensive experiences during your intro programme, the University Post would like to hear your story. A couple of days after this, an email appeared in my inbox from the author Sissel-Jo Gazan. Sissel-Jo Gazan wrote that if the University Post wanted to follow up on the debate about the intro weeks, she would like to share her own story. Her story was from back in , but the experience β and the shame β still affected her more than twenty years later.
As a new student on the biology programme at the University of Copenhagen, she was urged to simulate intercourse with a cucumber while covered in mayonnaise and wrapped in plastic cling film. But she demanded β and later received β an apology from the tutors.
But even though I was also strong at the time, I was still too afraid to say: What the hell are you asking me to do, assholes! I really think it says a lot about how others can find it difficult to be in these situations,Β« says Sissel-Jo Gazan. Sissel-Jo Gazan was 23 years old in when she was on her first and only intro camp. It was on the island of Langeland, and she remembers it very clearly.
From the outset, there was this atmosphere of new students being humiliated, she says. This culminated on the night race. At one of the posts everyone had to tongue kiss one of the tutors. The race ended up at the beach, where Sissel-Jo Gazan and another woman were tied up in cling wrap plastic, had mayonnaise smeared all over them and asked to simulate an orgasm.
