Affiliated Societies and the "Upholding" Culture: A Shoving Match at the 2014 Registration Day, and the Youth Behind the Cabinet Names

On the evening of 12 August 2014, under a driving rain, three human cordons formed at PolyU's freshman registration venue. This was not a student protest. It was a turf war over one question—who gets to recruit the new arrivals first—and it ended in a shoving match involving more than twenty people. The episode, now almost forgotten, happens to be the most honest window into PolyU's affiliated-society ecosystem and its "upholding" (上庄) culture: on the surface, orientation and bonding; underneath, a fully articulated set of rules about quotas, face, and succession.

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# "Three Human Cordons": The Affiliated-Society Battle at 2014 Registration Day

According to a report in the Oriental Daily News^※, at around 6 pm on 12 August 2014, dozens of suspected orientation-camp organisers formed three cordons outside the exit of the freshman registration area at PolyU's Sir Run Run Shaw Sports Centre, hoping to recruit new students into "unofficial O-camps" (暗O). It was raining, and some had to hold umbrellas. During the scuffle, two groups of suspected organisers, totalling more than twenty people, began arguing loudly, shoving one another and knocking over stools; the scene grew heated, and nearby students steered clear for fear of being caught in the crossfire. The two sides were eventually separated by those present, and the incident subsided. The same report quoted a PolyU spokesperson saying the University was investigating the identities and affiliations of those involved, and quoted the PolyU Students' Union saying those involved were all alumni who had already graduated.

A follow-up report the next day filled in part of the outcome: a 15 August 2014 report by Bastille Post^※ quoted the University saying disciplinary action would be taken if students were found to have breached regulations, and quoted the then-president of the PolyU Students' Union saying that the video showed members of the previous year's Sports and Publicity Sub-committee, and that referral to the Student Disciplinary Committee was not ruled out; the Union also suggested moving the registration exit further away the following year and strengthening security.

This incident is worth recording not for its severity (no one was hurt, and no one appears to have been held to account) but for what it precisely exposed: a hidden competitive chain within PolyU's orientation ecosystem—alumni ("old ghosts", 老鬼) intervening in the recruitment work of active societies, willing to resort to physical confrontation at the registration venue to win more freshmen for their mother society or mother department. It is also telling evidence that the inheritance pressure of "upholding" culture does not automatically disappear upon graduation.

credibility: multiple corroboration—The shoving incident at the 12 August 2014 registration day (three cordons, more than twenty people, knocked-over stools) and the Students' Union response that "those involved were all alumni" appear in the Oriental Daily News report of 14 August 2014; the following day's Bastille Post follow-up adds the University's stance on disciplinary action and the claim about "members of the previous year's sub-committee," with the two accounts consistent in detail. Note a slight tension between the two accounts: the Union initially said those involved were "all alumni who had graduated," while the next day confirmed the video showed members of the previous year's sub-committee. This site presents both claims as reported, without merging them into a single conclusion.

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# Big O, Small O, Unofficial O: A Stratified Orientation Underworld

To understand the context of the above conflict, one must first grasp the three-tier taxonomy of Hong Kong tertiary orientation camps. According to term explainers summarised by outlets such as UPower:

• Big O (大O, "Giant O"): The university-wide orientation camp hosted by the Students' Union; the largest in scale, usually the "official" first stop for freshmen.
• Small O (细O): Orientation camps hosted by individual departmental societies or clubs; smaller in scale, focused on bonding and succession within the department or society.
• Unofficial O (暗O, "Dark O"): Orientation camps not formally approved or registered with the Students' Union, often organised privately by individual affiliated societies, hall-level groups, or even graduated alumni. They sell themselves as "freer" and less regulated, but also carry less accountability and weaker safety oversight.

The shoving incident at the 2014 registration day, per the reported context, precisely involved different organisations competing on-site to recruit freshmen for "unofficial O-camps." Since "unofficial O" lies outside the Students' Union's formal regulatory system, this also explains why, after the conflict, the PolyU Students' Union could distance itself by saying those involved were "all alumni"—by definition, unofficial O-camps are not Union-sanctioned activities.

This stratified structure also helps explain a point stressed repeatedly in Module 19 and this module: the risk-governance boundary of orientation camps does not always align with the "union vs non-union" divide. Because unofficial O-camps operate outside formal regulation, they theoretically carry a higher risk of spiralling out of control than Big O or Small O—one reason why, after the territory-wide orientation-camp controversies of 2023 (see the "Halls and O-Camp" article), public opinion called for "unified standards": if regulation covers only Big O and Small O, grey-zone activities like unofficial O become the loophole.

credibility: multiple corroboration (terminology) / single source (direct link to the 2014 incident)—The Big O/Small O/Unofficial O terminology is used consistently across multiple media reports and features on tertiary-student culture; the 2014 incident reports do mention "suspected recruitment for unofficial O-camps," but no authoritative source explicitly defines which activity category the conflict belonged to. The causal link drawn in this section is therefore this site's reasonable inference based on terminology and the reports' context, not a confirmed official classification.

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# "Chatting Cabinet" (傾莊), "Showing Cabinet" (曬莊), "Old Ghosts" (老鬼): A Complete Succession Ritual

"Upholding" is not a one-off election vote but an entire social ritual spanning months, with its own fixed vocabulary:

• 傾莊 (Chatting Cabinet): Students interested in upholding meet current cabinet members to understand the society's structure and division of duties; the first step in forming a cabinet.
• Forming a ticket (组班底): After cabinet-chatting, aspiring candidates get to know one another and piece together a candidate cabinet list.
• 曬莊 (Showing Cabinet): Candidate cabinets "expose" themselves to the whole student body through flyers, posters, and similar means, seeking votes.
• 老鬼 (Old Ghosts): Former cabinet members who have since graduated or stepped down. Old ghosts typically "interrogate" the new candidate cabinet at consultative assemblies, drawing on their own experience—a role that at some other institutions (such as CityU) has even escalated into publicly flipping tables (see next section). PolyU society culture has a similar cross-generational Q&A tradition, but this site has found no public reports of "table-flipping"-level conflict at PolyU itself.

The core function of this ritual is passing organisational memory from one cabinet to the next—cabinet names, event traditions, sponsor contacts, and past financial experience all survive informally through the "old ghost" role. This is also why this site has repeatedly stressed in the "Cabinet Finances and Black-Box" article: every executive committee and review council is made up of "newcomers," and while the old-ghost system provides some transmission of experience, it may equally become a concern where "informal influence" overrides formal oversight mechanisms—especially where large financial decisions are concerned.

credibility: multiple corroboration—The definitions and workings of 傾莊, 曬莊, and 老鬼 can be cross-verified across independent sources including features by the CU Student Press and the Hong Kong 01 "Five Things About University" series; these are cross-institutional cultural phenomena common to Hong Kong tertiary institutions, not unique to PolyU.

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# "Table-Flipping" Culture: A Cautionary Tale from Other Institutions, PolyU's Restraint

In 2015, at a candidate consultative assembly of CityU's College of Business and its constituent societies, a sitting student leader, displeased with the performance and attitude of the candidate cabinet members, lost his temper, "flipped the table," and berated the candidates with profanities, demanding they stand and receive a dressing-down—the incident was filmed, went viral online, and became the representative case of the "dark side of upholding culture" in Hong Kong's tertiary institutions. The individual later joined the police force and, in a media interview years afterwards, admitted his outburst had been "immature, not sensible."

This CityU case is worth mentioning here because it draws a clear line: the "interrogation tradition" of old ghosts toward new cabinet members, once uncontrolled, degenerates from the transmission of experience into public humiliation. In public records, this site has found no reports of "table-flipping"-level conflict at PolyU society or Students' Union consultative assemblies—which may reflect genuine restraint at PolyU, or may simply mean such events never entered public reporting. Following this site's principle of "state plainly when no evidence is found; do not speculate," the CityU case is presented here only as an industry-wide reference, not as a specific comment on PolyU society culture.

credibility: multiple corroboration (CityU case) / unverified anecdotally (whether similar events occurred at PolyU)—The 2015 CityU table-flipping incident was cross-reported by outlets including Hong Kong 01 and Ming Pao, and confirmed by the individual in a later interview; whether similar events occurred within PolyU societies, this site found no public reports and therefore makes no claim, only noting the verification result.

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# The Internal Economics of "One Cabinet": Favours, Responsibility, and Friction

Within upholding-culture circles, it is often said that "one cabinet is one team, one whole"—cabinet members are in theory expected to be mutually understanding and share the workload and responsibility. But according to a survey of articles sharing university-life experience, real-world "upholding" usually comes with quite specific interpersonal friction:

• Uneven workload distribution: Some cabinet members invest far more time than expected in society affairs, event planning, and external liaison, while others are comparatively passive; over time, resentment builds.
• The double burden of studies and cabinet duties: As experience-sharing articles note, "balancing studies and upholding is genuinely not easy—the workload on both sides is very heavy." This is also why many tertiary students, when listing "upholding" among their "five things about university life," attach cautionary advice.
• High pressure during campaigning: The "showing cabinet" phase is widely regarded as the most gruelling part of the entire upholding cycle; candidate cabinet members must continuously find ways to reach potential voters and win support, with pressure concentrated in a narrow campaign window.

Most of this friction never enters public reporting, yet it forms the everyday backdrop to "why, every year, there are people unwilling to form a ticket and run." The macro explanation for the wave of cabinet vacancies certainly involves changes in the political environment (see the "Broken Succession" article), but "upholding" itself, as a high-intensity, low-reward form of volunteer labour (usually no substantive compensation beyond networks and experience), has long had a natural attrition rate. When political and institutional pressures pile onto this pre-existing fatigue, cabinet vacancies become all the more likely to occur.

credibility: multiple corroboration—Descriptions of the workload, interpersonal friction, and campaigning pressure of "upholding" can be cross-verified across multiple university-life experience articles from Hong Kong 01, Tutor Circle, and others; these are common knowledge across Hong Kong's tertiary institutions, not unique to any single institution.

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# After the Vacancy: Society Ecology Shifts to the SAO System

After the PolyU Students' Union entered a prolonged period without an executive committee in 2022 (see the "Broken Succession" article), the administrative work of affiliated societies and departmental societies—registration, event applications, venue booking—shifted increasingly to the Student Affairs Office (SAO) system (see the "Student Organisations" overview article, §3.1). The impact on "upholding" culture itself is structural rather than cosmetic:

• The societies still exist: the day-to-day operations of departmental societies, interest clubs, and non-local student organisations have largely continued; freshmen still see orientation booths, recruitment publicity, and "cabinet-chatting" invitations.
• But the succession chain of the "central cabinet" (the Students' Union itself) is broken: without an executive committee, there is no legal sense of "Students' Union old ghosts" to pass organisational memory to the next generation; the Review Council and the interim administrative committee serve as custodians rather than incubators of new cabinets.
• At the society and departmental level, "upholding" culture is in some ways more resilient than at the Union's central level: while the administrative channels for registration and resources have changed, the social foundations of these organisations—departmental camaraderie, hall belonging—did not disappear with the Union's dissolution.

This echoes the observation in the "Student Organisations" overview: PolyU student self-governance has not vanished, but its boundaries have been bureaucratised. "Upholding" culture remains alive at the society and departmental level, but it has lost the central Students' Union that once served as the top-level node for succession and coordination.

credibility: multiple corroboration (overall framework)—For the administrative shift of societies to the SAO system after the cabinet vacancy, see the sources cited in the "Student Organisations" overview; this section is a comprehensive observation and does not represent an additional independently verifiable fact.

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# Three Pandemic Years: Another Rupture in Society Ecology

Before the 2022 Students' Union vacancy, PolyU and the territory-wide society ecology had already weathered an earlier, more widespread shock—the campus restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2022. According to a survey of public reports, universities including HKU, HKUST, PolyU, and HKBU did not object to student organisations holding physical orientation events during the pandemic, but subject to participant caps and health measures; university-wide "Giant O" camps hosted by students' unions disappeared entirely across the eight UGC-funded institutions for a period—owing not only to pandemic restrictions but also to the simultaneous cabinet vacancies at multiple students' unions.

PolyU societies thus effectively weathered two consecutive shocks from 2020 onwards: first the pandemic shrank or moved online cross-institutional recruitment, orientation camps, and other gathering activities; then the 2022 Students' Union vacancy further weakened the organisational resources and coordination capacity at the "central cabinet" level. That societies and departmental organisations largely maintained operation through these two successive shocks is, in a sense, testimony to the resilience of "upholding" culture—even with the highest-level students' union paralysed, the adhesive of departmental camaraderie, hall belonging, and shared-interest communities still sustains grassroots organisations.

credibility: multiple corroboration—Participant caps during the pandemic and the territory-wide disappearance of "Giant O" camps can be verified through public reports; the analysis of the compounding effect with the 2022 vacancy is this site's synthesis and does not represent an additional independently verifiable fact.

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# Society Naming and Cabinet-Name Culture: A Low-Key Carrier of Collective Memory

Beyond formal organisational names, PolyU affiliated societies and departmental societies customarily adopt an informal "cabinet name" (莊名) at each annual changeover—usually carrying cultural, philosophical, or humorous connotations, serving as the collective identifier of that cabinet (see the "Student Organisations" overview article, §11, "An In-Depth Read on 'Upholding' Culture"). This practice is not unique to PolyU but is a shared phenomenon across Hong Kong's tertiary institutions: the students' unions and affiliated societies of HKU, CUHK, and CityU each maintain their own traditions of past cabinet names, and some departmental societies even keep complete chronologies of past cabinet names as an informal archive of organisational memory.

Cabinet-name culture is worth recording in this article because it offers a low-sensitivity, high-continuity carrier of organisational memory—unlike formal archives such as financial reports or election results, cabinet names tend to circulate through word of mouth within societies, orientation introductions, or social-media bios; even where formal archives are missing, past cabinet names may remain one of the few clues for outsiders tracing a society's longevity and succession lineage. That PolyU's "焕曜" cabinet name (elected 2021, dissolved January 2022) could be repeatedly cited in subsequent reporting is precisely because the name itself carries a specific historical moment, making the abstract "28th Executive Committee" concretely identifiable and memorable.

credibility: multiple corroboration—Cabinet-name culture as a phenomenon common across Hong Kong's tertiary institutions can be verified through feature reports by the CU Student Press, Hong Kong 01, and others; the specific reference to "焕曜" as the cabinet name of PolyU's 28th Executive Committee can be verified through the sources cited in the aforementioned "Broken Succession" article.

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