Image Credit: Bruno Girin

In the inquest of an Exeter university student who died in November 2006, the coroner has declared that the 18yr old student lost his life as a result of alcohol poisoning.

The coroner’s report was given on the 26th February 2007 to the inquest in Exeter.

The student, originally from Hampshire, had joined Exeter Uni’s Golf Club at a fancy dress social event.

Gavin Britton, the first-year Accountancy and Finance undergraduate was taking part in the University’s Golf Club’s initiations, for which the team were playing pub golf on the night that he died.

University golf team member Alexander McGregor told the inquest “Everyone knew what was going on. No-one was pressurised into going along,”.

Dr Earland, the coroner said: “I am satisfied Gavin voluntarily drank the alcohol that killed him and had done so on previous occasions.”

As a result of the death, the Exeter Guild, the equivalent of a Student Union, urged committee members in 2006 to be responsible.

Plans at the time included, according to Expose (the publication of Exeter Guild), “a strict range of penalties” being put in place; it also claimed that “club captains will be withdrawn from their courses and fined £500 if they are found not to have taken responsibility for their team”.

According to the British Universities Sports Association (BUSA), “Conducted correctly, inductions and rites of passage can serve as important tools for creating tradition that can, in a number of situations, promote bonding, membership, unity, collaborative team-building, and an added sense of individual and group responsibility.”

Initiations were described within a Southampton Union’s Union Council motion, who have banned them, as “any act whether physical, mental, emotional, or psychological, which subjects another person, voluntarily or involuntarily, to anything that may abuse, mistreat, degrade, humiliate, harass, or intimidate him/her, or which may in any fashion compromise [a person’s] inherent dignity as a person”.