Freshman dies after ‘initiation’ party where students bobbed for apples in urine

Students bobbed for apples in a mixture of booze and urine as part of a drink-fuelled initiation ceremony where a British student died, an inquest heard.

First-year economics student Ed Farmer, 20, died after being found slumped in a corridor not breathing at the end of a student society’s night out in Newcastle in 2016.

Although he was rushed to the hospital, he died the next day with his parents at his bedside.

During the initiation, freshmen had their heads shaved by older students and drank vodka from a pig’s head after visiting bars in the city center.

The inquest previously heard that 100 treble vodkas were consumed by the 40-strong group in just seven minutes at one of the stops on the undergraduate bar crawl.

CCTV footage shown to the inquest showed Ed being carried by two friends in a Metro station at one point in the evening because he was too drunk to walk.

He was later discovered not breathing at around 4 a.m. by the chairman of the Agricultural Society, James Carr, and driven to the hospital.

The court was told that if Ed had been taken to hospital sooner, he may have been saved.

Newcastle University had banned boozy initiations, leading to one student suggesting that others should deny knowledge of the ceremony in which Ed died.

Jonathan Hedley told the inquest he sent a WhatsApp message to other students as a “joke” telling them to pretend to not know anything about the event.

He said the message – which was sent before he realized how serious the situation was – read: “The three D’s boys, deny, deny, deny”.

The secret ceremony began with an invitation being sent to first-years for the bar crawl telling them to bring $39, lubrication, swimming goggles, a Kinder egg candy and a train ticket.

Society chairman James Carr admitted that the first-years drank more on the night with the second- and third-years “egging them on.”