Hall Associations and O-Camp: Orientation Games That Went Too Far, a Dorm #MeToo Complaint, and Two Months of Silence

An orientation-camp game in a hall packed with over a hundred freshmen; an accounting-department orientation activity in which female freshmen were asked to stuff balloons into their clothing as a "semi-voluntary" segment; an unidentified object of some kind in a hall tutor's office — these three incidents occurred in 2015, 2018, and 2020 respectively, with different people, different circumstances, and different outcomes. Together, though, they trace a hidden line of risk running through orientation and hall life at CityU: when the organisers, participants, and overseers of a group activity are drawn from the same pool of students, or the same hall-administration system, the real difficulty is often who calls a halt when something goes wrong, and who investigates it.

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# I. The 2015 Orientation Camp: A Standoff That "Nearly Came to Blows"

According to an Oriental Daily report of 8 September 2015^※, during a CityU O-Camp (orientation camp) activity, a video surfaced on social media the day after the incident: inside a hall packed with over a hundred students, a male student in black "swung a stick twice in succession" at another male student in blue, after which the two engaged in a physical altercation that included "chest-to-chest" contact and a standoff, before being separated by students nearby.

The report did not name the students involved, identifying them only by clothing colour; in keeping with this site's BLP policy, this article likewise draws no further inference about their identities. CityU's administration responded at the time that it "had not yet received any complaint relating to the orientation camp," and called for activities to be run "on the principle of safety and mutual respect." Some online commentators criticised the incident as damaging to the university's reputation, saying it was inappropriate for students "old enough" to be "fighting" over an O-Camp game. The report did not record any specific response from the student union on the matter.

The significance of this incident lies less in "CityU's orientation camp being especially chaotic" than in the fact that any gathering of over a hundred keyed-up young people, absent a clear dispute-resolution mechanism, carries a similar risk — it reads more as a prelude to the two more serious incidents that follow than as an isolated case.

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# II. 2018: The "Balloon-Stuffing" Controversy at the Accounting Department Orientation Day

According to a Sky Post report of 31 August 2018^※, at an orientation-day activity held by CityU's accounting department, female freshmen complained that after losing a group game they were asked, as part of a "penalty for losing," to stuff balloons into their clothing near the chest. The female freshmen criticised the segment as having a "sexualised" character; the report also noted that some senior students taking part removed their tops and bared their bodies, and that in the game's losing-penalty segment, according to the complainants' account, at least two female students, in circumstances described as "semi-voluntary," were required to stuff balloons inside their clothing.

CityU's response was that the conduct in question was "spontaneous" among students, not a segment deliberately designed by the activity's organisers. The specific body that organises a department-level orientation day — typically an affiliated society or an orientation-camp organising committee — carries front-line responsibility for activity planning and discipline under CityU's continuing "cabinet" (上庄) system; the organisational ecology of that system itself is discussed further in 〈Affiliated Societies, To Stay or Go: A Choice on 2022 Freshman Registration Day, and Cabinet Culture in the Post-Cabinet Era〉.

This incident, together with the wave of orientation-camp sexual-harassment allegations that broke out at multiple Hong Kong universities in the years that followed (see Section IV), belongs to an earlier case of the same category of problem — public attention to "O-Camp sexual harassment" in Hong Kong was not yet as concentrated then as it became around 2023, which may be one reason this type of incident did not draw sustained follow-up coverage at the time.

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

Of the three incidents, the one with the most complete evidentiary chain — and the most serious — took place in a hall rather than at an orientation camp. According to an in-depth report in HK01's "Invisible Hong Kong" column^※, in June 2020 a female CityU hall resident alleged that a hall tutor, citing "an important matter to discuss," asked her to come alone to his office; inside, the tutor swept an unidentified object across her chest.

According to the report, the hall resident subsequently complained to the hall warden, who was said to have "shelved" the matter — that is, not followed up on it promptly or actively. She then took her complaint to the university's Committee Against Sexual Harassment, but the report states the committee subsequently instructed the hall resident to keep the matter confidential, and that the entire investigation ran for two months without result.

Under this site's BLP policy, the identity of the "hall tutor" is not disclosed in this context of a negative allegation (nor was the tutor named in the underlying report); this article refers to him only by his role. The female hall resident involved, as the party alleging harm and a living individual, likewise has no identifying details disclosed beyond what the report already made public.

What makes this case especially worth recording is not "whether the hall tutor actually did this" — a question this site cannot settle given the available evidence — but the breakdown in the handling process described in the report: at every level from the hall warden to the Committee Against Sexual Harassment, mechanisms that in theory should have offered protection and response became, in the complainant's own account, episodes of delay or silencing. If that account is accurate, the issue is not only "whether one tutor acted improperly" but "whether the school'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 mechanisms in 〈CityU Student Union Structure and Elections〉).

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# IV. From "Two Months of Inaction" to Formal Procedure: What CityU's Current Anti-Sexual-Harassment Mechanism Looks Like

Short answer: CityU now has an independent Committee Against Sexual Harassment (CASH), with both formal and informal complaint procedures, and lists "preventing sexual harassment" training as a mandatory item in undergraduate orientation — but no publicly available channel has been found in which the mechanism commits to a specific investigation timeline, which is also where the "two months without result" concern from the 2020 case still lacks an institutional response.

According to the official CASH page^※, the committee comprises a chair (a senior academic or administrative staff member), several ex-officio members (including the Director of Human Resources, the Dean of Students, and the Dean of Graduate Studies), and up to ten other academic or administrative staff, with no more than two representatives from the same college/department to ensure diversity of background; appointments for the chair and non-ex-officio members run on an "initial three-year term, with subsequent appointments staggered." The committee's functions include promoting awareness of the university's sexual-harassment policy, reviewing inconsistencies within that policy, and informing staff and students of their right to complain to the Equal Opportunities Commission, the police, or the courts.

According to the CASH page on "Procedures for Handling Formal Sexual Harassment Complaints"^※, formal complaints follow a process separate from informal mediation, with the relevant documents available as English and Chinese PDFs; according to the 2025 orientation checklist^※, "Preventing Sexual Harassment at CityUHK" is listed as a mandatory item for undergraduate orientation, requiring students to complete an online training module and pass a scenario-based quiz, with the CASH email address and phone line fixed as the enquiry channels.

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# V. The Wider Context: The 2023 Wave of O-Camp Controversies Across Hong Kong Universities

Placing CityU's three cases within the wider Hong Kong context, the string of sexual-harassment, sexual-assault, and even public-morals allegations that broke at multiple Hong Kong universities' orientation camps around 2023 is important background for understanding why this category of incident has drawn increasing public attention. According to an RFA Cantonese report of September 2023^※, orientation camps at several universities that year were reported to involve indecent games, leaked videos, and allegations of sexual assault and indecent assault that in some cases led to police investigation; the then-chairperson of the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC), Chu Man-kin (朱敏健), said at the time that the traditional orientation-camp format combined with insufficient student awareness of risk had led to a "string" of sexual-harassment and sexual-assault incidents.

According to Sing Tao Daily^※ and an RTHK report^※, following this wave several Hong Kong universities revised their orientation-camp guidelines: activity content must now be submitted for university approval in advance, games with sexual suggestion or degrading content are banned, and drinking and late-night activities are restricted, with violators facing disciplinary action up to and including expulsion. The EOC provided online anti-sexual-harassment training to about 2,000 staff and students across the eight UGC-funded universities in 2023, and by August of that year had already run 33 on-campus training sessions to raise sexual-harassment awareness.

As for CityU specifically, no independent report has been found in publicly available sources detailing its own specifics within this territory-wide reform (for example, its exact approval process or any disciplinary cases arising from violations). In keeping with this article's principle of presenting only what the record supports, it does not graft other institutions' reform measures onto CityU as though they were policies CityU itself has implemented, and records only the climate of public discussion CityU faced against this backdrop.

For a sense of how specific a case from the same period can get, the judicial process in one HKU orientation-camp indecent-assault case offers a useful point of comparison. According to a report by The Witness^※, in a 2023 game called "Train Through the Tunnel" at an HKU School of Nursing orientation camp, a female freshman alleged she was touched on "both sides of her chest" by a 20-year-old male student from the same group; the defence contended the contact was in fact on the underarm. According to a Ming Pao report of 6 May 2024^※, the presiding magistrate ultimately ruled that the witness had not been able to reliably identify the assailant, and the defendant was acquitted. That case then gave rise to a "secondary" controversy: according to a report by i-CABLE^※, three internet users "doxed" and disclosed the complainant's personal information online after the verdict, and were subsequently convicted of "inciting others to disclose personal data without consent," with one sentenced to imprisonment and the other two to community service; the police publicly condemned this "online vigilante" conduct, stressing that victims must not be allowed to suffer a second injury. This case illustrates that the complexity of orientation-camp sexual-harassment disputes lies not only in whether the allegation itself can be proven criminally — the "beyond reasonable doubt" threshold for criminal evidence is inherently higher than for an ordinary administrative inquiry — but also in the fact that, once a controversy escalates, secondary harms such as online doxing can generate new legal liability faster than the original incident itself. By contrast, the three CityU cases recorded in this article have not entered judicial proceedings, and public discussion has so far remained at the level of media reporting and university responses, with no comparable court ruling or derivative case having emerged.

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# VI. What Role Did Hall Associations Play in These Incidents?

One point that needs particular clarification: in the strict sense, the "hall association" (a self-governing body formed by hall residents themselves, responsible for hall orientation and floor activities — see 〈Hall and Hostel Culture〉) is not, in existing public reporting, a direct party responsible for any of the three cases above. The 2015 orientation-camp clash concerned overall activity order at what the university characterised as an "O-Camp"; the 2018 balloon incident concerned an accounting-department orientation day, whose organising body, according to the report, was more likely a departmental society or orientation organising committee; and the accountability chain in the 2020 hall sexual-harassment case ran "hall tutor → hall warden → Committee Against Sexual Harassment," which is the university's own hall-administration system (the Residence Life team), not the self-governing hall association.

This distinction matters: it means that CityU's hall association, as a student self-governing organisation, appears in the verifiable controversies on record more as a participant or bystander than as a directly accountable party — the parties that genuinely need to be asked about oversight responsibility are, respectively, the specific bodies that organise orientation camps (departmental societies / O-Camp organising committees) and the university's administrative system within hall life (hall wardens, hall tutors, the Committee Against Sexual Harassment). This is a reminder that when discussing "campus sexual harassment" controversies, responsibility should not be attributed indiscriminately to "student organisations," but traced to the specific level and type of body that failed within the chain of events.

# VII. Why This Type of Controversy Looks "Scattered" Rather Than "Systemic" at CityU

Compared with the sexual-assault and indecent-assault allegations that broke in succession at HKU, CUHK, Lingnan University, and other institutions around 2023 — some of which reached the stage of police investigation and court trial — the three publicly verifiable CityU cases appear more scattered and less systematically tracked, whether measured by the scale of media exposure or by the transparency of subsequent handling. This "scattered" pattern admits two possible explanations: one, that the actual risk in CityU's orientation camps and hall life is genuinely comparatively lower; two, that even where similar incidents occur, they do not necessarily enter media view or form a verifiable reporting chain — particularly when the handling process itself tends toward "inaction" and "confidentiality" (as in the case described in Section III), incidents are harder to leave a public trace of.

This article's operating principle is: neither assume CityU is "safer" merely because fewer cases have surfaced, nor portray CityU's orientation culture as "especially bad" on the strength of one or two severe cases — both simplified narratives go beyond what the available evidence supports. CityU's hall system has in recent years entered a two-site expansion phase with the opening of the Lee Shau Kee Student Residential Village at Pak Shek, Ma On Shan (see 〈Hall and Hostel Culture〉 and 〈How Hall Places Are Allocated〉); whether the new residential village has its own independent hall-association structure, and whether orientation-camp rules have been updated accordingly, remain questions requiring continued tracking. The formal complaint procedure and orientation-training requirement mentioned in Section IV should, in theory, cover both hall clusters simultaneously, but no publicly available information has been found breaking down implementation details by hall location.

::：Source Limitations All three cases in this article are drawn from single or limited media sources; publicly available material currently lacks corroboration from any internal university investigation report, disciplinary-hearing outcome, or judicial-proceeding record. Under this site's BLP policy, all living individuals subject to negative allegations in this article are left unnamed and referred to only by role; should reliable sources disclose specific handling outcomes in future (for example, whether the tutor was disciplined, or whether the complaint was substantiated), this article's statements should be updated accordingly. This article does not stretch to graft cases from other institutions onto CityU as though they were CityU's own events for lack of case volume; all content concerning institutions other than CityU is clearly labelled with its source and institution name. :::

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# Update (September 2026): The Management Sciences Discipline Association's Orientation-Camp "Princess Carry" Controversy and the Dissolution of Its Cabinet

On the evening of 27 August 2026, an orientation camp run by the 30th-term cabinet of CityU Student Union's Management Sciences Discipline Association (管理科學學科聯會, nicknamed online 「煊管」 ("Xuanguan")) saw an incident of misconduct during its "Disco Night" segment: according to an HK01 report^※, a video circulating online showed a long-haired female student 「僅脫剩紅色胸罩」("left wearing only a red bra") being lifted by a bare-chested male student in what the footage showed as a 「公主抱」("princess carry"), while 「旁觀學生情緒高漲，不斷揮動螢光棒及吶喊助興」("onlooking students grew visibly worked up, waving glow sticks and cheering throughout").

Within two days of the incident coming to light, the responses of the university and the organisation involved can be summarised as follows:

The university's account: this incident prompted CityU to reiterate its existing requirements for student organisations that run O-Camps — according to the HK01 report, 「舉辦迎新營的學生組織亦必須遵守由學生發展處提供的相關指引，並完成包括由平等機會委員會主辦的『防止校園性騷擾訓練課程』等指定培訓」("student organisations holding orientation camps must also comply with the relevant guidelines issued by the Student Development Services office, and complete designated training, including the 'Preventing Sexual Harassment on Campus' training course run by the Equal Opportunities Commission"), a requirement that applies to all student organisations running orientation camps, not only the cabinet involved in this incident; the university also stated that it 「對任何形式不當行為採取零容忍態度」("takes a zero-tolerance approach toward any form of misconduct"). According to the RTHK report, the Student Development Services office will subsequently 「將為同類型活動的舉辦者提供更多學生活動管理工作坊」("provide organisers of similar activities with more student-activity-management workshops"), and has set up a hotline to offer psychological support to students affected by the incident.

The cabinet's account: its statement acknowledged 「現場管理與監察不力」("inadequate on-site management and oversight") and presented its dissolution as a response to the seriousness of the incident; no report has been found in which the cabinet gave further detail about the specific course of events shown in the video itself.

This site does not adjudicate the specific conduct of the individual students involved; none of the reports name any of those involved, referring to them only by descriptors such as 「涉事學生」("the students involved") or 「一名赤裸上身男生」("a bare-chested male student"), and in keeping with this site's BLP policy, this article likewise draws no further inference about their identities. Credibility: multiply corroborated — the course of the incident and its aftermath have been cross-reported, with no contradicting details, by six or more independent outlets including HK01, Wen Wei Po, RTHK, and UDN.

Set against the three earlier cases covered in Sections I to III, this 2026 case shows one clear change in how CityU governs orientation-camp risk: in the 2015, 2018, and 2020 cases, the university's response was generally slow to materialise (in 2015 it said 「未收到投訴」("it had not received any complaint"); in 2018 it characterised the conduct as 「學生自發」("spontaneous among students"); in 2020 the investigation dragged on for two months without result). In the 2026 case, by contrast, less than a week elapsed between the incident coming to light and the university setting up an investigation committee and the cabinet apologising and dissolving, with the investigation itself 「完成」("completed") within two days and its disciplinary outcome announced. This shift in response speed, set alongside the gap noted in Section IV between a more complete system on paper and the absence of any public commitment to a timeline, forms a new piece of evidence that readers may wish to weigh for themselves; this article does not, on the strength of a single case, assert that CityU's oversight of orientation camps has 「根本改善」("fundamentally improved"), and no publicly available material has been found in which the university draws an explicit comparison with how long the 2020 case took to handle.

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# Related Reading

• 〈CityU Student Union Structure and Elections: Separation of Five Powers, the Disaffiliation Referendum, and the Fight to Defend Council Seats〉 — the full context of the council oversight mechanism and the fight over council seats mentioned in this article
• 〈Affiliated Societies, To Stay or Go: A Choice on 2022 Freshman Registration Day, and Cabinet Culture in the Post-Cabinet Era〉 — the organisational ecology of departmental/affiliated societies' "cabinet" system, the front-line organisers of orientation days
• 〈Hall and Hostel Culture〉 — a detailed account of the two hall clusters at Kowloon Tong and Ma On Shan, and the warden/tutor/RA system
• 〈How Hall Places Are Allocated: The Two-Tier Scoring-and-Ballot System and the "Commuter" Fate of the Ma On Shan "New Village"〉 — the hall-allocation mechanism and the administrative gap between the two hall sites

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