Blog 5: Mechoneo

 Hi everyone! For this blog I’m going to share mi opinion, and my experience as well, about the “mechoneo”. This is an old Chilean tradition in the Universities of Chile and it’s the equivalent to a initiation ritual for those who enter to study. In consequence, the new students are called “mechones”.

I think it has a good spirit, to introduce newer students to college life, but in the practice there are so many cases which ended bad, whit accidents and aggressions. In the newest and most well-known cases, there are 12 students who ended up with burns on their skin as a result of a mixture of chemicals in “Universidad Austral”, a student who died because she was hit by a train in Valparaiso, and a 7 month pregnant was attacked in Concepcion. Things like these motivate universities to ban these activities.

In my personal experience, I was “mechoneado”. In my case it was really disgusting, we had to “swim” in a mini-pool full of garbage and then kiss a pig head. Next, they put caramel on our armpits and eggs in our head, and there we went to ask for money, with 30°C in the center of Santiago and a putrid smell. When we stop asking for money, all the “mechones” were exhaust and went to our homes and the older students spend half of the money we collected that day!

In conclusion, the “mechoneo” should be a social instance without violence, which new students should enjoy. This tradition must reformulate its activities.