As if starting at Cambridge isn’t daunting enough, there is an increasingly malevolent and predatory threat for impressionable freshers. It doesn’t concern the possible anxiety induced by joining an institution that is academically and emotionally taxing, or having to live away from home in a city of imposing spires and grandiose buildings. Instead, it pertains to the treatment that freshers receive from older, typically male students, who treat freshers as depersonalised objects of their desire.

“A failure to reject this reprehensible activity at such a formative stage in a person’s life will result in the behaviour being validated”

Welcome to the practice of ‘sharking’, the pleasantly-named custom of older students preying upon new students. ‘Sharking’ is the explanation for those many posts on Facebook, which gain dozens of likes, simply for somebody expressing their electronic interest in attending a freshers’ club night, and why, more often than not, someone has commented with that now ubiquitous shark emoji. It’s easy to make light of this almost comical occurrence, yet, when you think about it, the idea of older men actively seeking younger, impressionable and vulnerable female students to satiate their needs or validate their status is somewhere between unpleasant and sickening. The issue, as I see it, is that a failure to reject this reprehensible activity at such a formative stage in a person’s life will result in the behaviour being validated and pave the way for it to be continued, in other spheres of life, perhaps with greater intensity and with wider and more sinister ramifications.

It’s important to note the double standards that surely exist in this scenario, just as they do in wider society. To the extent of my understanding, I haven’t encountered any women being accused of ‘sharking’. Presumably say this is because it would be seen as uncouth for a woman to objectify and prey upon a younger man, while the reverse of this seems to have little downside, and rather confers significant kudos and respect on the male who has succeeded in this feat.

‘Sharking’ is surely in the same vein as sexual assault – one can logically lead to the other. The mentality of assuming women are malleable and will inevitably acquiesce to the advances of men is not a healthy one. Objectifying women, and treating them as objects of male desire, is patently reprehensible. So why does the Cambridge community, allegedly a progressive and liberal-minded one, seem to implicitly accept and indeed encourage this behaviour from male students?

Frankly, this entire ‘shark’ metaphor is insulting – to the sharks, that is. The irony of course is that sharks are majestic, albeit vilified, ocean-going creatures; the Cambridge shark specimen is rather less magnificent. Inebriated, cocky young men cavorting around a dingy club below the Cambridge Waterstones are not the most obvious parallel to the almighty predators that grace distant seas.

Many, including the ‘sharks’ themselves no doubt, would dismiss their practice as a ‘joke’ or maybe even a perfectly benign form of ‘lad’ banter, ‘locker room banter’ even. Maybe it’s OK to agree with them and dismiss this as a lighthearted macho-fuelled expression of insecurity.

However, the election of Donald Trump – a certified, top-flight misogynist – demonstrates that dismissal of such behaviour (at any level) is simply not acceptable. Like it or not, some of the Cambridge students of today will be the leaders of tomorrow, in Parliament, in academia and, no doubt, in the City of London. If this behaviour isn’t shunned and rejected today, these practices will continue and the ‘sharks’ will be encouraged to repeat this behaviour in other spheres of life. The last thing our already unequal society needs is another generation of men who objectify women and treat them as malleable and inevitably susceptible to their predatory advances