Mostly popular among fresh graduating students from Nigerian tertiary institutions, Sign-Out has become a trending issue on campuses.
Sign -Out can be likened to a graduation ceremony, save that its usually on the day of the last exam papers. Students are seen, wearing white T-shirts with different splash of colors and with different inscriptions and signatures, among other things like photos of objects.
By the time exams finish, some students are so stressed out that their brains feel like lead, their minds struggle to focus and they can barely string any academic thoughts together. Strangely, their first reaction is then to go out and get drunk with excitement.
Before the wake of this new way of celebration became popular in Nigeria, Mrs Joyce Dangana, while speaking to 21st CENTURY CHRONICLE on how she celebrated her end of exams during her university days said, ‘’ in our days, we simply took pictures with friends to keep the memories. We never did all this crazy stuff’’. Mrs Dangana graduated from the university in 2004.
Ahmed Usman Husseini, a man in his late forties said he graduated from the university in 1998. ‘’We were old school. We never did all these things that these young people do these days. We had proper graduation parties’’. Husseini said, what they did in their time was to make picture albums for themselves. ‘’Even now, I have my own copy of the photo album with my classmates’’, Husseini said.
The tradition of ‘trashing’ dates back to the 1970s. In the United Kingdom, students at Oxford University were once reported to have braved the weather on a wet day to cover each other in silly string, paint and shaving foam to celebrate finishing their final exams.
Some girls were seen swigging from bottles of alcohol after ‘trashing’ each other with messy foam, while other students completely covered their faces in pink paint. involves students covering each other in champagne, confetti and other messy items at the end of their final exams.
This method of celebrating the end of exams has come under heavy criticism by many people on social media, even as some universities have banned SIGN OUT.
Certain pictures have emerged on these platforms recently, which many have described as morally upsetting. In one of the pictures, a young man is seen writing directly on a young woman’s breast. Others have inscriptions like, ‘even sign post, I won’t read again’’, ‘’16 carryovers, but we later graduate.”
Some of the write ups are rather outrageous. And many people have been discussing this and wondering what the intentions of the students might be. Recently, a story made the rounds of a certain University student whose final result was recalled for scrutiny because she wrote on her Sign- Out shirt about cheating her way through to the final exams.
Emmanuel Onchono, a post graduate student at the Nasarawa University, Keffi who agreed to have taken part in Sign Out during his undergraduate days, told 21st CENTURY CHRONICLE that students do this to show their happy mood at the end of exams, with no harm meant. He said, ‘’there is this feeling of relief after the stress of school lectures and exams, so we do Sign – Out just to celebrate. But you know, some students just enjoy mischief’’.
The Umaru Musa University, Katsina had some time last year, banned Sign- Out on campus. Mallam Bello Yusuf, a senior lecturer in the Chemistry department at the University while answering questions from 21st CENTURY CHRONICLE, said the school took the decision because “the socialization between students was becoming too immoral’’. Mallam Yusuf said, some of the students were becoming too careless in their dressings and in touching their colleagues of the opposite gender.”
Asked what alternative ways the University recommended for students to show excitement after exams, Yusuf said, ‘’some of the students have become very innovative on their own now. Some of them buy the white shirts and give them to printers to print Mathematical formulae and Chemical structures on them. And that looks good’’.
The university of Oxford in the UK, had similarly warned on its website that students could face a £300 fine over ‘trashing’ and said the practice was against the University’s Code of Conduct, although some students in the comment section wrote that they didn’t feel there was any suggestion of any wrongdoing in any of the pictures shared on the website.
Emmanuel Onchono who spoke earlier from the Nasarawa State university, said schools banning the exercise makes sense, ‘’but that’s just on campus, because Sign -Out is just one part of the whole celebration, which happens mainly off campus.
However, ‘’students should learn how to control some of their excesses at Sign- Out’,” Emmanuel said.
He added that students should control what their mischievous friends want to write on their shirts. He shared his own experience of how he took time to write on all the sensitive parts of his shirt at home before heading out.
‘’That way, they didn’t see any empty space to write crazy stuff on my chest or butt,” Emmanuel concluded.
