In a right lather! Students at St Andrews University celebrate Freshers’ Week with messy foam fight at traditional ‘Raisin Monday’ party

• Hundreds of students gather for massive foam fight as part of traditional welcome to St Andrews University
• Freshers were covered in foam in a tradition thought to date back to 1413, when St Andrews was founded
• Raisin Monday comes from ‘children’ giving older students raisins to thank them for welcoming them
• The children would provide a receipt and failure to give one would result in a dousing in the local fountain 
• The raisin gift was traded in for a bottle of wine in recent years but this year students donated to a food bank 

Students at St Andrews University celebrated Freshers’ Week with a messy booze-filled foam fight at the traditional ‘Raisin Monday’ shaving foam party. 

Freshers, known as ‘children’, were pictured in fancy dress and doused in foam on St Salvator’s Lower College Lawn, known as The Quad, at the Fife university.

Students were left covered head-to-toe in the foam, which was so thick some were even able to style their hair using it, amid piles of shaving foam bottles. 

Others meanwhile found the time to make a romantic gesture amid the madness, with some couples kissing while covered in the foam. 

Students at St Andrews University celebrated Freshers’ Week with a messy booze-filled foam fight at the traditional ‘Raisin Monday party’

Some students found the time to make a romantic gesture amid the madness, with some couples kissing while covered in the foam 

Freshers, known as ‘children’, were pictured in fancy dress and doused in foam on St Salvator’s Lower College Lawn, known as The Quad, at the Fife university

Bottles of shaving foam are pictured during the annual ‘Raisin Monday Shaving Foam Fight’

Raisin Monday weekend is designed to help new students integrate more easily into life at the university, whose alumni include the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. 

It comes from the time when freshers were ‘adopted’ by senior students and even now each first year student is invited to join a ‘family’ of senior students. 

The celebrations are believed to date back to when the university was founded in 1413 and are named after the tradition whereby ‘children’ gave older students, their academic ‘guardians’, a pound of raisins to thank them for welcoming them to St Andrews. 

The parents would then expect to the children to present a receipt written in Latin and failure to produce one resulted in a dousing at the local fountain.

Students were left covered head-to-toe in the foam, which was so thick some were even able to style their hair using it

A student dressed in a makeshift toga who has been covered in shaving foam and able to style his hair into a mohican 

Nowadays the pound of raisins is usually a bottle of wine and the children are doused in foam instead.

More recently however, students have engaged in a more responsible and sustainable Raisin Weekend and this year those taking part donated items to a collection for the Storehouse foodbank in St Andrews. 

The custom ends the following day with a procession and foam fight in the heart of the campus of the university.

After the foam fight, students were hosed down by the University’s Deputy Principal and Master of the United College, Professor Lorna Milne.

Professor Milne will be stepping down at the end of January 2023 to undertake a period of research leave.

Nowadays the pound of raisins is usually a bottle of wine and the children are doused in foam instead of water from a local fountain

More recently however, students have engaged in a more responsible and sustainable Raisin Weekend and this year those taking part donated items to a collection for the Storehouse foodbank in St Andrews

The custom ends the following day with a procession and foam fight in the heart of the campus of the university

Source: Read Full Article