Boo. It’s Halloween. Whether you think the festivities are fun, immature or offensive, there’s no doubt that people will be celebrating tonight. There will be drinking, possibly too much, in colleges and clubs around Cambridge. Maybe it’s time we grew up. That can be hard, though, when we are still treated like children.

We at Cambridge are supposed to be the brightest minds in the country. This can, however, leave other faculties distinctly lacking. Social skills, personal hygiene and a sense of perspective can all be found languishing in the lost property boxes of various colleges. Their rightful owners can be found anywhere from Life to the library at 3am.

Are Cambridge students especially immature? Anyone who has been on a swap may have witnessed enough gratuitous nudity to last them a lifetime. A combination of school swots who never drank before university and drinking societies that glamorise binge consumption does not always make for the healthiest of drinking cultures.

But we are, technically at least, adults. Much has been written about the failings of the Cambridge pastoral system; Cambridge Speaks Its Mind, a Facebook group started last year, shares hundreds of testimonies about the lack of support offered by colleges. Perhaps as we are all over 18 we should be left to deal with our own problems, and not take for granted the incredible education that we are so lucky to receive.

Yet on the flipside, students are routinely infantilised by the University. The majority live in college for the entirety of their undergraduate degree, which negates the need to worry about bills or set up an internet connection. Food is provided in college canteens, so no need to learn how to cook! All this frees up valuable time for studying, and leaves us woefully unprepared for the demands of the real world.

Furthermore, college discipline is often more reminiscent of an oak-panelled boarding school than a mutually respectful community. Of course, colleges are residential educational establishments, and need some rules. But when punishment for smoking on college grounds can be polishing silver, and students who gather in groups larger than four are threatened with “being deaned”, or even sent down, there is a sense that students aren’t the only ones who need to grow up.