“Bitches, come out of your burrows like rabbits, you are nymphomaniac whores, I promise you that you are all going to fuck in the capea, let’s go Ahuja!”: these are the runaway screams of a student from the Elías Ahuja Male Residence Hall in Madrid towards the students from another girls’ school. An event that has escalated into a political debate due to the sexist message it represents and that shows not only the lack of sexual education of many young people, but also the tacit silence that institutions, centers and students have around them. the toxic culture of colleges and his hazing.
First thing: what happened? A video that has gone viral on TikTok shows the events that took place on Sunday night when a group of young people looked out of one of the center’s windows and one of them began to yelling and insulting students from the nearby Colegio Mayor Santa Mónica. After that, all the rooms raised the blinds of one of the school’s facades in unison and all the students began to chant sexist chants.
Here you can see the full video:
“Bitches, come out of your burrows. You are all nymphomaniacs. I promise you that you are all going to fuck in the capea” This is sung by the Elías Ahuja Male Residence located in front of a female residence. Then they will wonder why we are afraid of the street. pic.twitter.com/sI2dqczOfI
– Rita Maestre 🌾 (@Rita_Maestre) October 6, 2022
The management of the center, attached to the Complutense University and managed by the order of San Agustín, has not been slow to condemn the events in a statement: “We consider them incomprehensible and inadmissible, both in form and substance. In addition to being contrary to the ideology and values of the center”. In fact, that same night the director and the security guard went to the area of the rooms, identified several young who were participating and expelled them.
There are several more expelled although they have not detailed the exact number because the investigation continues to identify “anyone who may have uttered any type of insult or disrespect.” In addition, the center, which has apologized to the girls’ school, Santa Monica, will force all its residents to participate in conferences awareness raising and social volunteering.
in herd What bestiality. I dont give credit. The center condemns these behaviors. It seems that they will take action. So much to do. pic.twitter.com/x4ZkbShDLT
– Javier Mantrana (@Javier_Mantrana) October 6, 2022
The controversy, as expected, has spilled over into the political sphere, which has shown its outrage. The Minister for Equality, Irene Montero, has assured on Twitter that “it is the most obvious sign that sexual education is needed and that from the institutions we stop legitimizing sexist discourses that deny violence against women”. Pedro Sánchez has done the same and has highlighted that “it is especially painful to see that the protagonists are young people”.
Hazing, the scourge of the educational system
All this takes us to the roots of the problem, which, as argued in this 20 Minute opinion piece Borja Terán not only reflects that we are in the middle of 2022 and gender aggressivenesswhere women are objectified, are still internalized, but speaks of the toxicity still present in many Halls of Residence in Spain.
The very fact that the recording has been published on TikTok shows another obvious symptom: hazing has reached social networks. Now the bullying does not only exist in the physical realmbut also in the digital one, which supposes a double sentence for those who suffer it.
A practice rooted in university society. What was born as a way to integrate students has ended up becoming the owner of hundreds of media because sometimes the price of that integration is too high. Let us remember that a few years ago the viral video of the aggression in the Diego de Covarrubias college in Madrid already put the debate on the table and we told the controversy in Magnet.
The justifications and silence around hazing is especially more scandalous when situations of violence occur. Above all from the side of the administrations, which is key: it is normalized as it is, as an unavoidable phenomenon. And it underscores the need for academic institutions to show their bigotry early on and support students afraid to speak out.
And it is that to verify how normalized this culture is in the world of universities, it is only necessary to see the response of the women’s college to which the insults of the Elías Ahuja students were supposedly directed: “We would like to express our support. Despite of the seriousness of his words, it is a tradition among colleges”.
The fight has been going on for a long time. In 2013, the Association of Residence Halls published the guide Hazing No to combat this scourge, emphasizing that “mistreatment, harassmentfree submission, humiliationharassment… can never be justified, and even less for fun or for the sake of a misunderstood integration” and that these activities should not have a place in universities. Hazing that, in reality, they are reportableaccording to the portal Legal Newsboth by administrative means (Vice-Rectorate for Students) and by judicial means.
In fact, this was to be the first school year in which hazing was prohibited by law. The university coexistence lawwhich ended with be approved in februarycollects in its article 11 that hazing is a very serious offense. And it stipulates sanctions and expulsions of between two months to three years from the university for those who carry them out or force someone to do them, in addition to being recorded in their academic record.
However, unfortunately, as we have seen recently, there is still a long way to go to completely eradicate them.