Residents' Association and O-Camp: Games That Went Too Far, a Hall #MeToo Complaint, and Two Months of Silence

An O-Camp game inside a hall packed with over a hundred freshmen; a "semi-voluntary" round at an Accounting freshman day in which new female students were asked to stuff balloons into their clothes; a hall tutor's office where something described only as an "unidentified object" was involved — these three incidents occurred in 2015, 2018, and 2020 respectively. The people involved, the sequence of events, and the outcomes all differ, but together they trace a hidden risk line running through CityU's orientation and hall life: when the organisers, participants, and overseers of a group activity are drawn from the same pool of students or the same hall administrative system, the real difficulty is often who should call a halt when something goes wrong, and who should investigate it.

# I. The 2015 O-Camp: A Confrontation That "Nearly Turned Into a Fight"

According to an Oriental Daily report dated 8 September 2015^※, during a CityU O-Camp (orientation camp) activity, a video surfaced on social media the day after the incident: inside a venue holding over a hundred students, a male student in black clothing "swung a stick twice in succession" at another male student in blue, after which the two had a physical clash including "chest bumping" and a standoff, before students nearby separated them.

The report did not name the students involved, identifying them only by clothing colour; in line with this site's BLP policy, this piece likewise makes no further inference about identity. CityU's administration responded at the time that it had "not received any complaints related to the orientation camp," and called for activities to be conducted "on the principle of safety and mutual respect." Some social media users criticised the incident as damaging to the university's reputation, saying it was inappropriate for the incident to escalate into a physical altercation during O-Camp. The report did not record a specific response from the student union.

The significance of this incident lies less in "CityU's O-Camp being unusually chaotic" than in the fact that any gathering of over a hundred emotionally charged young people, without a clear dispute-resolution mechanism, carries a similar risk — it reads more as a prelude to the two more serious incidents that followed than as an isolated case.

# II. 2018: The "Balloons Stuffed Into Clothes" Controversy at an Accounting Freshman Day

According to a Sky Post report dated 31 August 2018^※, at a CityU Accounting department freshman day activity, some female freshmen complained: after losing a group game, they were asked to stuff balloons into their clothes near the chest area as part of a "penalty for losing." The female freshmen said the segment carried "sexualised" overtones; the report also noted that some senior students removed their shirts during the activity, and that, according to the complainants' account, at least two female students placed balloons inside their clothes in what was described as a "semi-voluntary" manner, as required by the game.

CityU's response was that the conduct in question was "spontaneous" among students, rather than a segment deliberately designed by the activity's organisers.

This incident belongs to the same category of problem as the wave of O-Camp sexual harassment controversies that broke out across multiple Hong Kong universities in subsequent years (see Section IV) — an early instance of it. Public attention to "O-Camp sexual harassment" in Hong Kong was not yet as concentrated at the time as it became around 2023, which may be one reason this type of incident did not draw sustained follow-up reporting then.

# III. The 2020 "CityU #MeToo" Case: Two Months of Inaction and a Confidentiality Order

Of the three incidents, the one with the most complete and most serious evidentiary record occurred in a hall, not at an O-Camp event. According to an in-depth HK01 report in its "Invisible Hong Kong" column^※, in June 2020, a female CityU hall resident alleged: a hall tutor, citing "an important matter to discuss," asked her to go alone to the tutor's room; inside the room, the tutor reportedly swept an unidentified object across her chest.

According to the report, the female resident subsequently complained to the hall warden, but the warden's handling was described as slow to act — that is, without timely or active follow-up. She then turned to the university's Committee for the Prevention of Sexual Harassment, but the report states that the committee subsequently ordered the resident to keep the matter confidential, and that the entire investigation process lasted two months without a result.

Under this site's BLP policy, the identity of the "hall tutor" is not disclosed in this negative-allegation context (nor was it disclosed in the original report), and this piece refers to them only by their role; the resident, as a complainant and a living individual, likewise has no identifying details disclosed beyond what the report itself has already made public.

What makes this case especially worth recording is not "whether the hall tutor actually did this" — a question this site cannot resolve given the available evidence — but the breakdown in the handling process described in the report: from the warden to the Committee for the Prevention of Sexual Harassment, each layer that in principle should have provided protection and a response instead became, in the complainant's account, a point of delay or silencing. If this account is accurate, the issue is not merely "whether one tutor acted improperly," but "whether the university's complaint chain can actually deliver its intended function" — which is precisely one of the core "student power" questions this module returns to repeatedly (see the discussion of "oversight capacity" in Section VII of the piece on Structure and Elections).

# IV. The Broader Context: A Wave of O-Camp Controversies Across Hong Kong Universities in 2023

Placing CityU's three cases within the broader Hong Kong context helps explain why this type of incident has drawn increasing public attention. Around 2023, multiple Hong Kong universities' orientation camps saw a wave of allegations of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and even indecency offences. According to an RFA Cantonese report from September 2023^※, that year several universities' O-Camps were reported to involve indecent games, leaked videos, and even allegations of sexual assault or indecent assault that were the subject of police investigations; Ricky Chu, then chairperson of the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC), said at the time that the traditional O-Camp format combined with insufficient awareness among students had led to a "series" of sexual harassment and sexual assault incidents.

According to Sing Tao Daily^※ and RTHK reporting^※, following this wave, several Hong Kong universities revised their O-Camp guidelines: activity content must now be submitted for prior approval by the university, games with sexual innuendo or a demeaning character are prohibited, and drinking and late-night activities are restricted, with violators facing possible disciplinary action up to expulsion. In 2023 the EOC provided anti-sexual-harassment online training for roughly 2,000 staff and students across the eight publicly funded universities, and had by August of that year already held 33 on-campus training sessions to raise awareness of sexual harassment.

As for CityU specifically, no independent reporting has been found in currently available public sources on the specific details of its participation in this sector-wide overhaul (such as its particular approval process or disciplinary cases arising from violations); in keeping with this piece's principle of presenting only what the material supports, it does not graft other institutions' reforms onto CityU as though they were CityU's own implemented policies, and records only the public climate CityU faced in this broader context.

# V. What Role Did the Residents' Association Play in These Incidents?

It should be clarified that, in the three cases above, the "Residents' Association" in the strict sense (the self-governing body formed by hall residents themselves, responsible for hall orientation and floor activities — see Section VII of the piece on Structure and Elections) is not, in currently available public reporting, the party directly responsible. The 2015 O-Camp clash involved order issues within the overall "O-Camp" activity as characterised by the university; the 2018 balloon incident involved an Accounting department freshman day, with the organising unit, according to the report, more likely being the departmental society or an O-Camp organising committee; the accountability chain in the 2020 hall sexual harassment case runs from "hall tutor → warden → Committee for the Prevention of Sexual Harassment," which is part of the university's hall administrative system (the Residence Life team), not a student self-governing body such as the Residents' Association.

This distinction matters: it means that CityU's Residents' Association, as a student self-governing organisation, appears in the currently verifiable controversial cases more often as a participant or bystander in the activities than as the party directly responsible. The parties whose oversight responsibility genuinely warrants further scrutiny are, respectively, the specific units that organised the O-Camp (the departmental society / O-Camp organising committee), and the university's administrative system within hall life (the warden, hall tutors, the Committee for the Prevention of Sexual Harassment). This is a reminder that, in discussing controversies involving "sexual harassment on campus," responsibility should not be broadly attributed to "student organisations" in general — rather, the specific level and type of body that failed within the chain of events should be clarified.

# VI. Why These Controversies Appear "Scattered" Rather Than "Systemic" at CityU

Compared with HKU, CUHK, Lingnan University, and other institutions that saw a series of O-Camp sexual assault and indecent assault allegations around 2023 — some of which have already reached the stage of police cases or court proceedings — CityU's three publicly documented cases so far appear, both in the scale of media exposure relative to their severity and in the transparency of subsequent handling, more scattered and less systematically tracked. This "scatteredness" itself has two possible explanations: one, that the actual risk in CityU's orientation and hall life is genuinely comparatively lower; two, that even when similar incidents occur, they do not necessarily enter media view or form a verifiable reporting chain — particularly when the handling process itself tends toward being slow-walked and kept confidential (as in the case described in Section III), incidents are less likely to leave a public trace.

This piece's approach is: neither to assume CityU is "safer" merely because fewer cases have come to light, nor to portray CityU's "orientation culture as especially egregious" on the basis of individual serious cases — both simplified narratives go beyond what the currently available evidence can support. CityU's hall system has recently entered a two-site expansion phase with the opening of the Ma On Shan Pak Shek Lee Shau Kee student residence village (see Module 21, "Hall and Residential Life"); whether the new residence village has its own independent Residents' Association structure, and whether O-Camp regulations have been updated accordingly, remain questions requiring ongoing tracking.

::: 資料侷限 All three cases in this piece derive from a single or limited number of media sources, and currently available public material lacks corroboration from internal university investigation reports, disciplinary hearing outcomes, or judicial proceeding records. Under this site's BLP policy, no living individual subject to a negative allegation in this piece is named; each is referred to only by role. Should reliable sources disclose specific handling outcomes in future (such as whether the tutor was disciplined, or whether the complaint was substantiated), this piece's account should be updated accordingly. This piece does not stretch to graft cases from other institutions onto CityU for want of more of its own cases; any content concerning institutions other than CityU is explicitly labelled with its source and the institution named. :::