Orientation Camp Complete Archive: Traditions, Organisational Structure, and a Timeline of Controversies

For many CUHK students, the first week of university does not begin with the first lecture — it begins with an orientation camp, where new students are led away by Group Fathers and Mothers chanting slogans. O-Camp is a new-student rite unique to Hong Kong's universities: over three to five days it can turn a group of strangers into a "family", and in some years the games have gone past the boundary, drawing coverage in the press and discussion in the Legislative Council. This article breaks orientation camps into three layers — traditions, organisational structure, and a timeline of controversies — and works through them in turn. Customary practices are sourced item by item and fall within the domain of student self-governance; disputed incidents are based on public reporting and multiple sources are set side by side; specific living individuals are not named, and unsourced negative content naming individuals is not included.

Orientation camps (colloquially "O-Camp" in Cantonese, short for "Orientation Camp") are camp-style events that student organisations at Hong Kong universities hold for incoming students before the start of a new academic year; The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) is no exception. They are both a microcosm of the tradition of student self-governance and a recurring point where controversies have landed over the years — understanding CUHK's orientation camps requires seeing the structural roots of both its "bonding" and its "boundary-crossing" sides.

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# Part One · Traditions

# Who Are the "Group Father" and "Group Mother"

"Group Father" (組爸) and "Group Mother" (組媽) are the dedicated titles for orientation-group leaders. According to the English Wikipedia entry "Orientation camps in Hong Kong"^※, each orientation group typically has two to four leaders, mostly students in their second year or above, with some groups also inviting alumni to return to the role; their responsibilities are to look after "group members" (new students) throughout the camp, attend to their physical and emotional wellbeing, and help them settle into campus life — functioning as a kind of "family" unit, hence the names "Father" and "Mother", with new students correspondingly called "group sons/daughters".

This terminology is a symbolic vocabulary unique to Hong Kong's university orientation culture. The "parent" role is more than an activity organiser — it also serves as an anchor for emotional bonding: Group Fathers and Mothers often make handmade gifts for new students, such as hand-sewn bags or bracelets, as a mark of belonging to the group. A commonly heard saying is that "your O-Camp Group Father/Mother will get you through the hardest first week of university" — a role said to go beyond pure activity organisation and to mark the start of cross-cohort friendships.

# "Dem Beat": A Collective Performance That Grew Out of CUHK

Dem Beat (short for "Demonstration of Beat") is a collective performance tradition that originated at CUHK. According to the Chinese Wikipedia entry "Dem Beat"^※, participants wear T-shirts representing their college or department, form up in ranks, and perform by stamping heavily, clapping out a rhythm, and shouting chants; a senior member typically stands on a raised spot (such as a dining table) to lead the beat, with the rest of the group gathered around following along.

Dem Beat spans both orientation camps and department/college recruitment (上莊, "joining a cabinet") promotion — new students' first sight of seniors performing Dem Beat at orientation camp is often what first draws them to join a student organisation. It developed in parallel with, but separately from, HKU's "Dem Cheer" (which originated at St. John's College in 1912): Dem Cheer is conducted mainly in English and used chiefly in hall competitions, while Dem Beat is centred on Cantonese and appears more often at recruitment and orientation events. Critics say Dem Beat generates noise that disturbs others; in 2009, a foreign woman is reported to have objected to Dem Beat being performed at a CUHK Japanese culture festival, which drew attention.

# Signature Activities: Campfire, D-Game, and Room Game

According to a compilation by CUHK Student Press, "The Legendary O-Camp"^※, the activity system at CUHK orientation camps spans several layers:

• Campfire: one of the most ritualised traditions — after nightfall, participants gather around a campfire to sing and dance, with songs including "My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean" and a Cantonese version of Dschinghis Khan; these "O-Camp classics" are passed down from cohort to cohort and carry a strong collective-memory function.
• Situation Game / D-Game (Situation Game): the organising committee designs scenarios that prompt new students to voice views on situations framed as unfair, intended to train critical thinking and collective voice while helping group members get to know one another better.
• CU Hunt / City Hunt: a campus- or city-wide scavenger hunt in which groups complete tasks within a time limit, combining familiarisation with the surroundings and team-building.
• Room Game: an after-dark dormitory-room activity; accounts describe the atmosphere as 「好癲好喪」 ("very wild, very unrestrained") — the segment said to build the strongest sense of bonding, and also the one that has drawn the most controversy; the specific content varies from year to year and should not be treated as fixed.

# 上莊 ("Joining a Cabinet"): Putting "Student Self-Governance" in the Hands of Each Cohort

"上莊" (sheung6 zong1, "joining a cabinet") is a term specific to Hong Kong universities, referring to joining the "莊" (zong1, i.e. the executive committee or cabinet) of a student organisation and taking up an officer role. "莊" comes from Cantonese and broadly means the term-limited executive team of a student organisation. At CUHK, the student union, college student unions, and various departmental or interest societies all operate on a "莊" basis, with each term's cabinet having its own name; "上莊" means committing substantial time and effort to organising activities and running the organisation, and is regarded as a marker of deep involvement in campus life. Around "上莊" a whole set of campus vocabulary has grown up, covering recruitment ("收莊", "recruiting a cabinet") and handover ("上莊/落莊", "joining/leaving a cabinet"). Orientation camp is precisely the venue where each "莊" presents itself to new students and recruits for the coming term — Dem Beat and 上莊 are thus two ends of the same recruitment chain.

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# Part Two · Organisational Structure

# Big O and Small O: A Two-Track System

According to the CUHK official orientation page^※, CUHK's student-led orientation activities are organised at two levels: "Big O" (College O-Camp) is organised by each college's student union or college bodies, with the aim of building new students' sense of belonging to their college; "Small O" (Faculty/Department O-Camp) is run by faculty or department student unions, with the focus on helping new students get to know their field of study and meet classmates in the same department. A CUHK first-year student will typically attend both a college Big O and a department Small O, forming a "dual-track orientation" experience in which the college handles the whole person and the department handles the academic side.

Content varies by organiser; according to official descriptions, typical activities include ice-breaking games, academic sharing sessions, and campus tours; some Small O programmes also include an overnight outdoor camp for stronger bonding. College Big O at CUHK is usually held from a few days to a week before new students arrive, and is, for many CUHK alumni, among the most vivid memories of "the first week of university".

Source: CUHK official orientation page^※; Wikipedia — Orientation camps in Hong Kong^※

# JCNSO: The University-Level Coordination and Oversight Framework

In response to controversies over the years, the main institutional framework at the university level is the Joint Committee on New Student Orientation (JCNSO). According to the CUHK official orientation page^※:

• JCNSO is chaired by a chairperson appointed by the Vice-Chancellor (Dr. Fred Ku held the role in 2024), with membership drawn from the colleges, the Office of Student Affairs, the Admissions Office, and student union representatives;
• its functions include coordinating orientation activities across colleges and departments, approving activity plans, determining activity budgets, and submitting an annual report to the university;
• all camp participants are required to complete the Equal Opportunities Commission's "campus sexual-harassment prevention" online training module before the camp;
• camp staff must attend two mandatory training sessions, including an anti-sexual-harassment briefing; anyone who does not attend is barred from taking part in orientation activities;
• each camp must appoint 2 mental-health ambassadors and 2 anti-harassment ambassadors.

Lingnan University has moved student-led orientation activities to administrative review by the university, one of the strictest measures among the 2023 reforms. CUHK, by contrast, has kept the basic framework of student self-governance while strengthening oversight through training and committee review, rather than taking over direction of the activities entirely.

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# Part Three · Timeline of Controversies

The central tension in orientation-camp culture is how to balance the intensity of a shared experience against respect for individual boundaries. All the controversies below are based on public media reporting; matters concerning the reputation of specific living individuals fall outside the scope of this article.

# 2002 "New Asia Sauna": The First Public Controversy

According to Orientation camps in Hong Kong (Wikipedia)^※ and Varsity's 2011 report^※, the most widely noted historical incident in CUHK orientation-camp history took place in 2002: students at Shaw College used banners and chants during orientation camp that implied female students at New Asia College engaged in sex work, and some of the chant wording was also said to be insulting to people with disabilities — the incident was widely reported by the media under the name "New Asia Sauna".

This was the first time CUHK's orientation camps drew large-scale public criticism, prompting a series of negative reports on O-Camp culture from outlets including Apple Daily and Oriental Daily, and setting a precedent for over a decade of media scrutiny of orientation camps that followed. Varsity's retrospective noted that the incident sparked ongoing discussion among CUHK students over whether the O-Camp tradition was worth keeping and where the line for games should be drawn; the then-JCNSO chairperson also acknowledged that resistance to changing the tradition was considerable, because members of the previous organising committees had themselves gone through the same games.

# The Dispute over Game Boundaries: Physical-Contact Games

According to Varsity's 2011 report^※, the games that drew controversy typically involved physical contact, such as a biscuit-stick game (participants do sit-ups to catch, with their mouths, a biscuit stick held by a partner, with some pairs ending up kissing as a result) and an apple game (male–female pairs jointly bite a suspended apple without using their hands). The then-JCNSO chairperson acknowledged that more than half of the new students surveyed said they felt "comfortable" with the activities, though some considered certain games "pointless and unacceptable"; the biggest resistance to changing the tradition came from committee members who had themselves enjoyed the same games as first-year students.

This is the structural root of the dispute over boundaries: when organisers treat "extreme experiences" as the source of group bonding, it becomes difficult for boundaries to be drawn from within.

# 2019 CUHK Engineering O-Camp Incident: Escalation to the Criminal Level

According to HK01's 2019 report^※, during the CUHK Faculty of Engineering orientation camp held from 14 to 17 August 2019, a female first-year student reported finding what appeared to be semen on her thigh after waking on 15 August; the incident subsequently became public when it was posted on 30 August on "CUHK Secrets", an anonymous confessions page, drawing wide attention. Following a police investigation, a 28-year-old man surnamed Cheung was arrested and charged with two counts of indecent assault; the case was first heard at Shatin Magistrates' Courts on 4 September 2019 and adjourned to 30 October for further hearing. The organising committee of the Faculty of Engineering orientation camp issued a statement declaring "zero tolerance" for any criminal conduct and stating it was cooperating with the investigation.

Prior to this, criticism of game boundaries had mainly remained at the level of "inappropriate" or "over the line"; this case escalated the controversy to one with a public criminal-justice record, and directly drove CUHK to strengthen its oversight mechanisms.

# The 2023 Territory-Wide Wave: A Gap in Sexual-Harassment Law Reaches the Legislative Council

In August–September 2023, alleged sexual-assault cases were reported one after another at orientation camps of several Hong Kong universities: at an HKU Nursing Society orientation camp, a 20-year-old student was arrested on suspicion of indecent assault; at the Education University, a series of allegations arose across multiple orientation camps, with a 28-year-old man who had taken part in six orientation camps facing allegations of sexual assault from at least four women, including allegations of voyeuristic filming, indecent assault, and rape. According to HKFP's October 2023 report^※, all eight publicly funded universities were either affected or responded quickly, with institutions announcing review mechanisms one after another.

On 6–7 October 2023, the Legislative Council's Panel on Education held a dedicated meeting on the issue. According to SCMP's May 2024 report^※, a lawmaker described orientation camps as having become "licensed collective sexual harassment", and called for stricter enforcement and heavier penalties; the Chairperson of the Equal Opportunities Commission said the Commission had written to universities in April 2024 requesting anti-sexual-harassment training for student organisers.

Key background figures: according to SCMP's September 2023 report^※, a 2019 study by the Equal Opportunities Commission found that nearly 25% of surveyed university students (basis: the EOC's 2019 survey on sexual harassment among university students) had experienced sexual harassment in the preceding year, but only 2.5% had reported it to the university or to law-enforcement authorities. On the legal side, the Sex Discrimination Ordinance originally covered sexual harassment in workplaces and educational institutions, but a regulatory gap exists for conduct between students during extracurricular activities; Hong Kong is studying amendments to the Sex Discrimination Ordinance to close this gap.

# Timeline at a Glance

# Self-Governance or External Oversight: Where This Debate Leads

In orientation-camp culture, the moments that build the strongest sense of togetherness are often the shared ordeal described as 「好癲好喪」 ("wild and unrestrained") — and this is precisely the source of the dispute over boundaries: when extreme experiences are treated as the source of bonding, it is hard for boundaries to be drawn from within. Hong Kong's university student community has long tended to favour "self-governance before external review", a position that first emerged after the 2002 "New Asia Sauna" incident and again became a focal point of debate in the 2023 Legislative Council discussions. The institutional direction since 2023 has not been to abolish the student-led orientation framework, but to add two lines of defence within it — mandatory training and committee approval. The tug-of-war between external intervention in this underlying tension and the tradition of student self-governance continues to this day.

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# Further Reading

• Residence, Hall Culture, and College Traditions
• A History of Student Social Participation
• A History of Student Movements and Student Organisations
• Student Union and Hall Resident Association Controversies

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