BY ANNABELLE LIANG

GONE are the days when university freshman-induction camps were to be feared, with ragging and its links to alleged abuse even topping newspaper headlines.

In 2008, six students from the National University of Singapore (NUS) reportedly left a camp on the first day because they were uncomfortable with the activities conducted.

However, the climate of fear has given way to a climate of hyper-control and mollycoddling. Far from being a stern rite of passage which freshmen vividly recall, mine was simply a "strawberry" camp. (Too strawberry for my taste, I dare say.)

"Orientation camps are tamer nowadays, as organisers are more wary about newspaper reports on close contact between participants and games with sexual overtones. In the past few years, they consciously avoided games which may be sexually offensive," a 23-year-old graduate from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), who attended her orientation camp in 2006, told my paper.

Things were far wilder then. She recalled a game where guys swung cucumbers strapped to a string around their waists, and girls had to catch it with a container that they wore around their waists.

When it was her turn to facilitate camps in the subsequent four years, the activity was scrapped as it made freshmen uncomfortable and many complained thereafter.

A 22-year-old third-year NTU student described an activity in her freshman- orientation camp in 2008, where she was made to believe that she was drinking water from a toilet bowl during her initiation.

"I was so scared that I felt like crying, but they pressured me to drink it," she said.

The activity was also subsequently removed from the initiation process, as the subsequent organisers found it unnecessarily humiliating.

NUS freshman Natalina Pereira was glad that there was neither close-contact nor reportedly sleazy games during her recent orientation.