Rectorial

It is also worth mentioning in passing – Sandy's full account does not include this aspect – that rectorials then included an event the like of which health and safety today would never now sanction – an organised and ferocious battle in the Marischal College quadrangle between the respective supporting groups on a two-by-two elimination basis.

In 1993 Sir William Kerr Fraser, who as president of the SRC in 1951 organised the flour-spattered installation of the nationalist John MacCormick as Lord Rector of Glasgow University, told me that rectorials weren't what they were in his day.

This is in direct contrast to Edinburgh, where local shopkeepers and places of entertainment have been known to keep their calendar by university terms and know exactly when graduations, rectorials, and rags take place.