In 1925, Kollege residents organised a first-year initiation ceremony in the old Pretoria Church Square that members of the public could pay to watch. According to UP archives, this raised £197. This tradition continued for several years and eventually, in 1931, it was formalised into a university-wide event after TuksRes students held a procession through the streets of Pretoria to collect money for a nearby hospital. This was the first university-wide, annual initiative dedicated to collecting charity donations at a South African university, and it was known as Reach-Out And Give or, as it is known today, RAG.
Since then, RAG has traditionally been one of the biggest annual events at UP, with students making parade floats, crafts to sell, holding inter-residential competitions, and performances to collect funds. In an interview with PDBY, a UP alumni from the 1990s described her experience of RAG with great fondness. She described handing out flyers and booklets for RAG when she was a first-year. “We spent a whole morning harassing motorists to buy these from us. It was a competitive exercise because the first team who could sell all their booklets could go for a beer! But mostly, it was about the fun. Pretoria was aware that it was RAG-time,” she said. In her second year, she helped create floats for the RAG parade. She described, “It was a lot about the party and building a float. Nirvana, Pink Floyd, Madonna, and Michael Jackson played around each float building team at LC de Villiers (can’t say I helped much with the building, but we were there). There was definitely a live music event, and the party continued until the morning.”
But have we lost the magic that RAG used to hold for so many UP students? In a poll done by PDBY, less than half of respondents said that they attended RAG this year. For more insight, we interviewed one of the TuksRes House Committee members in charge of the RAG portfolio. She mentioned, “It is really challenging to get people to participate, not just [in] RAG of Hope Day but [also] leading [up] to RAG of Hope Day because we have to make crafts and everything.” She explained that the biggest problem with low turnout leading up to RAG of Hope Day is having to prepare the crafts during the day when most students, especially the first-years who are the most involved in residence activities, have class.
When asked about RAG of Hope Day itself, the HC responded: “Students don’t usually seem excited for RAG of Hope Day because I feel like for people to be excited [about] a cause like this, you have to show them the direct impact. So people don’t usually get excited without seeing the direct impact. They know RAG Hope Day is a fundraiser, but they don’t really know the impact that they’re making if they come.” RAG of Hope Day is an opportunity for students to make a real difference in their communities, but so few students actually know where the raised funds go. Eventually, the idea of RAG of Hope Day as a fundraiser for a good cause falls flat.
In spite of the low enthusiasm, the HC member mentioned the success their residence had in selling crafts at the event. “The bags sold out so quickly, like people were even pre-ordering them. It was so crazy,” she explained. The HC described some of the details that the university shares with them when organising RAG, including: the residences figuring out which crafts to make, the university telling the residences which materials to use for the crafts, assigning stations for residence students to help make them, organising the stations to sell them, and working out the rest of the logistics. It is clear to see that the decline in RAG of Hope Day is not the fault of the students working to bring it to life, but rather a result of less student participation and general apathy across the university.
It is easy to claim that an underrepresented and underappreciated event is not worth attending, but if no students participate, traditions will not be able to survive. If we resign ourselves to apathy towards university traditions, how long will it be until Tuks loses student culture altogether?
Visual: Mila Jordaan
