Chilean Inexplicable Traditions · Global Voices
Rosario Lizana

Photo by nstark
This is your first day in university. You feel all the expectations in your skin.  You feel proud of your self because you passed the national test, which gives you the necessary points you need to apply for university. Everything is new: faces, places, conversations, smells, and people.
Suddenly, an egg smashes into your face. Welcome to university!!! Automatically your status is “mechón” (that means lock, but the translation is freshman”). Every March and April, when all the new students enter university, the upperclassmen offer them a welcoming that is called “mechoneo”. The date of the mechoneo is secret and sometimes focuses on making student pass through embarrassing situations.
In “Choose Your Destiny”(ES)  a post titled “expensive mechoneo”  refers to graduate students that gave a beating to three new students at a mechoneo party. It ended with one broken nose. Universities are working to end the practice, but some times people just ask for it. “Funkshop”(ES) a new student posts, “today I awake with only one purpose: to be mechoneado. How can be possible that it is the 28th of March and they haven’t gotten us wet yet? I feel like they forgot about us”.  On other hand, Marcelo posted,  “yesterday at 5 o’clock the entertainment activities started with the support of the Student Union. Our students have understood the message; that the eradication of violence and humiliation as a start to university life… was a necessary evolution.”