Hold the beer: how university O-Week swapped parties and pranks for picnics and friendship bracelets

‘We joined the Random Acts of Kindness Club and the Ski Club’: Sascha Zarins, Sophia Duncan and Charley Bertwistle during O-Week at the University of Sydney. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian

Couch burning. Tricycle races. Beer-skolling marathons. For decades, orientation week – or O-Week – has gone hand in hand with boozing to unhealthy excess and residential college hazing.

But with drinking rates on the decline, especially among young people – and a cultural shift towards calling out poor behaviour – the orientation to tertiary life has become a much more wholesome affair.