The total lowdown on O-Week parties

Whether you’re in your final year of uni or you’re about to start your degree, O-Week parties are fun, crazy and generally an all-round great experience. You get dressed up (or down), there’s alcohol mixed with games, and a lot of new people. You’ll go on pub crawls and have more than your fair share of deep and meaningful conversations with your new friends in the early hours of the morning. Hopefully, you’ll also make some new memories to last a lifetime.

But where to start? Well, lucky for you, O-Week parties don’t often need a lot of planning on your part. But just in case you’d like to know what you might be getting into, here are some common party themes you’ll probably need to prepare for.

Toga Party

It’s an oldie but a popular goodie. Every year it makes the rounds again, and it’s easy to see why. Grab your closest white bedsheet and wrap yourself in it to transform yourself into a Roman God – or, a fresh uni-goer keen to get their drink. Depending on how fancy you want to get, you can wrap a belt or rope around your waist and put some green or gold leaves in your hair.

ABC Party

‘Anything But Clothes’ – it’s exactly what it sounds like. You’re forbidden from wearing clothes, but what can you wear? Well, anything! Duct tape, bed sheets, garbage bags, boxes… the options are almost endless. Got some leftover tinsel or wrapping paper from Christmas? Easy – make it a dress.

Anything But Cups

Along the same lines as the previous theme, this party involves drinking out of, well, anything but cups. It sets up an amusing premise. Grab your nearest container and take it with you, whether it be a bottle, a Pringles container, a cleaned-out cream container, a teapot or even a trophy.

Alphabet Party

Come dressed as something that starts with the same letter as your first name. Named Alex? Come dressed as an alligator, an aquarium, or an apple. Sarah? Socks, a sweet, or a soccer player. Harry? Homeless person, Hagrid, or a hat. You get the idea. There’s room for a lot of creativity with this theme; you can go simple or go all out.

Games

Another integral part of university parties is the drinking games. There’s King’s Cup, a game where a deck of cards is spread out around a cup and you take turns drawing cards until all four King cards have been drawn. Each card comes with a task, which vary game to game. The poor sucker who draws the final King has to down the contents of the cup in the middle, which gets filled up with various drinks throughout the game.

Then there’s Centurion, the game where you’re challenged to down 100 shots of beer in 100 minutes. It sounds easy, right? It’s definitely harder than it sounds, so don’t beat yourself up when you start to feel sick around shot 63.

Beer pong is a crowd favourite. Six cups, a lot of beer, ping pong balls – what more could you want? You’ve got to bounce the ping pong ball into the other team’s cup, requiring the other team to down the beer in the cup.

For more activity and mass consumption of alcohol you can try Slap Cup, a game involving bouncing a ping pong ball and slapping someone else’s cup.

O-Week parties are a recipe for ridiculous outfits, good memories and new friends. Although, there’s more to parties than drinking games and silly outfits: be prepared for a tactical spew or two, an astounding headache in the morning, and embarrassment of facing what your drunk, past self may or may not have done. 

Peta Short

Peta Short is currently completing a Master of Communication at RMIT University.

Image: Mike Fernwood, Flickr Creative Commons license