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Mike Smith, is Arts and Entertainment Editor of Sheffield University's paper, Sheffield Steel Press and is in his 3rd year, studying History and Philosophy. He argues why Fresher's Week should be banned.

For the vast majority of students excessive consumption of alcohol has become the central purpose of a ritualistic ordaining festival known to many as Fresher's Week. During this week, there is a general decampment of the student population to university bars and pubs as they get to know their city and their fellow students - in the worst way possible.

By supporting Fresher's Week in its current form - a fete-week celebrating our glorious culture of binge-drinking - Student Unions around the country continue to send the wrong message to the people they are supposed to represent. But, of course, it does provide Student Union with a huge boost of cash at the start of the year so opponents will have a tough time arguing against it.

There's no point in claiming I didn't enjoy the activities. I did, very much. But I certainly wouldn't recommend it ahead of numerous other more worthy ways of getting to know people. Just walking around and getting to know the city with flatmates, trying out some of the sports and activities on offer and not feeling like all a night's entertainments can offer is sitting in a bar getting more and more drunk.

Yet, year after year, with little debate Student Unions continue this practice. Some are becoming more responsible but every university needs to do much more from the moment Freshers are welcomed to their new home. Right now, the first few weeks of university is less likely to involve 'finding your feet' than drunkenly tripping over them.

The most common way of making friends when you first start uni is to go down to the student bars. Those in favour of Fresher’s Week say that if you don't want to drink to excess you should just stick to soft drinks. But in an alien situation - especially one in which it seems the only common language is booze - it can be hard for people to avoid drinking. This is the message Student Unions continue to send out by accepting drinks promotions and failing to provide for students in the first few weeks.

It is not just the ethos of a week of excess and a another week of hangovers and recovery. It's the quanity of booze being consumed and what it leads to - the expectation that at university drinking - not studying - is what you do. Bars outside of the university can't be stopped from snaring students with cheap offers, but societies that receive university subsidies can be discouraged from spending the money on boozing.

The Higher Education Funding Council should use its power as a distributor of money to universities to put pressure on Student Unions. It should be asking them to discourage the cheapest alcohol offers and telling them to do a lot more to steer students towards something more fulfilling and productive. Replacing Fresher's Week with a totally rebranded "Intro Week" would be an excellent step. They should put on events like comedy nights, and get the sports and activity socieites started early, rather than supporting nights that centre around late-closing times and dozens of drinks offers.

It would be easy to give every new student information on a wide range of activities to do during the week. This is one easy to implement way of stemming the inevitable drift down to the bars. Intro Week could be a much more positive, less sedentary week; a time that allows you to fall in love with the city you are in, rather than mistaking having a good time for being drunk a lot. It's just too easy to sit drinking and hope that you will happen upon like-minded friends courtesy of an instition filling everyone with booze.

To say anything along the lines of “that's how it has always been”, or “you are restricting our freedom and human rights” is ridiculous. It isn't the responsibility of university to maintain tradition but to look after its students, and provide an environment that offers new skills and interests: not just another location at which you can drink yourself confident - and possibly into future problems.

The Union of Students should be progressive, and representative of the intelligence of a higher-education institions not a lower-your-IQ location for socially-enforced boozing, a place that universities become in the first few weeks of the new academic year.

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