Reimagining Schoolies: A rite of passage is more than binge drinking and hook-ups

As school-leavers become more diverse, it's time to do Schoolies differently, writes Helen Razer.

"These newer Schoolies are reshaping these rituals, as Australia itself is reshaped." Source: Getty Images AsiaPac

The year I ended high school was, in many accounts, the year that Schoolies officially began. Of course, the fine, white Australian rite of Going Hard™ to mark adulthood had been observed for some time, but nobody had thought to give it a name.  And nobody had thought to market budget accommodation to kids, get the local council involved, or cover the very worst tsunamis of teenage vomit on national news. 

I resisted this new thing with a name. And, no, it wasn’t because I was a good kid who shunned grog and sunburn, but because I was, by eighteen, a terrible snob. Anything that the popular people did, I reasoned, was not my cup of rum. So, I didn’t hit my parents up for the airfare to the Gold Coast. I decided—and this is entirely true—to hold a Very Serious Feminist Conference.

Oh, tens of women were to attend this event held in the local scout hall where we argued, at length and with passion, if the film Alien was good or bad for our gender. “I am really growing up,” I said to myself, as I heard terms like “patriarchy” thrown down hard like Jägermeister shots at a Queensland beach. “I am probably a woman now.”

Marking our liberty from high school is a strong urge

In other words, I did Schoolies. Sure, I did it in a pair of khaki overalls, occasionally pausing to sing a terrible Mother Earth dirge possibly called “Woman am I”. This memory is as embarrassing to me now as that formed by one of my friends in the same week. She went to actual Schoolies, and showed her boobs in a Broadbeach pub while yelling, “These are my boobs.” (Note. She is less embarrassed about showing her boobs than she is about stating the obvious.)

Marking our liberty from high school is a strong urge, and being slightly humiliated for the rest of our lives about how grown up we believed ourselves to be back then is not a bad thing.

A rite of passage is a good thing. And, notwithstanding all the images that are still generated of young women showing their boobs in pubs, and perhaps of young men showering these boobs in Jägermeister, these newer Schoolies are reshaping these rituals, as Australia itself is reshaped.

There is evidence to suggest that the people we call Generation Z—no-one has come up with anything snappier—are drinking far less than their forebears. Perhaps my generation, the parents of these babies now entering the adult world, made a good “Don’t Drink” case through our own excessive drinking. Perhaps the cool confidence of kids raised in traditions where alcohol is rarely used, or even taboo, played an even bigger role.

My Gen- X Muslim friends have raised some chic babies. (Note, do not congratulate your friend Tas’s daughter for looking like a “mipster”. She will not think you are a Cool Adult for knowing the “hip language” she disposed of years ago.) One of these babies is off to a rustic retreat for her Schoolies with a multicultural girl group where a few may drink, but most, we suspect, will do nothing more evil than moan in their stylish pyjamas about how they do not have more pairs of stylish pyjamas, how one must avoid buying pyjamas made with unfair labour and, possibly, how one of their mums has a friend who foolishly thinks she’s “cool”.

Perhaps the cool confidence of kids raised in traditions where alcohol is rarely used, or even taboo, played an even bigger role.

And boys. With European or Asian or African or Aboriginal heritage. There are plenty of boy Z children in my suburb, and I saw them last week strutting proudly, but without the frightened arrogance I remember from boys in the prelude to my own Schoolies. Some of them were even wearing “Yes!” badges last week. They are not having the Go Hard™ time I once avoided. They would have probably attended my feminist conference.

I think about these Z kids. They are, it seems to me, stronger and more compassionate and not just more tolerant of but hungrier for difference, and for doing Schoolies differently, than my lot was. And then, it occurs to me that kids are the people who have this tendency. They, on the brink of growing up, are so naturally receptive to change.

I wonder then if I should be kinder when I remember the Go Hard™ kids of my generation. All they lacked was the experience of great difference. If they’d had it in front of them and at their side, perhaps they would have cherished it, too.