Caloiros

The semester begins and the new students into universities and polytechnics all over Portugal begin their humiliation. They have their faces painted, they wear identity cards hanging round their neck, they kiss the ground, they allow themselves to be humiliated by the old-time students.

I dislike every moment of it. I hate to see the students being paraded round the grounds, shouted at, and obeying orders given them by their "elders" dressed in black suits, with white shirts and black ties.

Why, oh why, do they go through it? My friend in San Francisco would explain it through the S & M lens - the "top" and the "bottom", the dominator and the submissive.

At least in his S & M community there would be a meta-reflection about the processes, rather than "scenes" taking place in the name of tradition with the power issues behind them studiously repressed.