This does remind me of the year I spent at a college in Northern Italy though(http://www.ghislieri.it/index.php), where I saw a different side of things I wasn’t so keen on. There were endless ‘initiations’ where first year boys had to march round the huge dining hall in their underwear with various humiliating things round their necks, where the cleaners made up the boys’ beds but left the girls to do their own, and where there were bizarre songs and rituals that maintained the ragingly patriarchal order in the name of ‘tradition’.

Come to think of it, that wasn’t too different to my own college after all… and I seem to remember I wasn’t so bothered about patriarchy at the time, I just thought the boys were hilarious and eccentric and terribly attractive…