6 x 7s - A Unique UCT Tradition

Last week, I was lucky enough to witness an old, annual UCT tradition. The six by sevens. Now, I suppose I'll just start from the beginning.

I was in a small group discussing something in my Traditional Religion course, when a girl asked "What are you doing today around 4-5pm?" I asked why. She explained that the six by sevens would be happening today. Here is the premise as it was described to me:

Lots of students get together on the cricket field, say 150 or so. They each bring a six pack of beer, and will start doing laps around the field. After each lap, you take a break and drink a can of beer. Thus... after seven laps, you've had six beers. I don't think many people actually get to the seventh lap. The other part of the event is that most people have also drank some color of food dye, and many are also dressed pretty random.

The result: around the fourth lap people start puking funny colors. And the point of the game is to puke on other people. So you end up getting very drunk people chasing one another puking everywhere. My mouth stood open when she finished telling me what would happen. "I have to see this," I thought. So I went home and got my camera.

When we arrived, I started seeing all the costumes, which were matching for some of the 'teams'. And what ensued was not very much more complicated than what was described to me, with a few exceptions. It was surprisingly well run, and college debauchery at its finest. Something that would certainly not be allowed on UW's campus.

Campus security was there, but only to make sure things went well. They said last year it was not allowed, and consisted of people running around the field, drinking, being chased and tackled by security (perhaps more fun). Also, remember that the word here is "chunder", spoken chun-dah. . As in: Bru! You just chundered all over my back! (which happened a lot). There were even cases of people spinning one another, or ganging up as a group and chundering on one person.

Lots of observers.

It must be a white student's tradition, because everyone was white (and blue, I guess). I'm still trying to figure out the race relations at the university, and in general I suppose, so it is one of the first things I notice. There was also a troop of 12 guys in diapers, although from speaking to some people I found out that they are called the dummies, and are some elite group that you have to be invited into. They had a full marching routine with chants and everything, it was impressive.

The dummies.

If you'd like to see the full scene, click on the title image up top. Otherwise, I feel like the rest of the story would be best told through photos: