Corpus Christi has banned all undergraduates from formals for two weeks due to “unacceptable behaviour” at a dinner last week.

In an email sent to students on Saturday (25/01), Corpus’s Dean of College, Andrew Sanger, raised “reports of singing, banging on tables, general disruption, and walking through to Fellows’ rooms” at a formal the night before. He reminded students that College rules must be followed “at all times” and that “intoxication is no excuse” for breaching them.

The email warned that “it will not be possible to run Formal Halls,” if similar behaviour were to occur in the future.

In a later email to JCR president Harley Summers, the Dean announced that all undergraduate students would be banned from attending formals for two weeks due to the behaviour having been “much worse than initially reported”.

The email referred specifically to “large amounts of vomit on the floor and in the shower” and “faeces on the floor and in the bin” found in the toilets, and “a smashed glass beer bottle” found in the golden gate area of the College.

The Dean said that the offences constituted “serious breaches of College Rules” and called the fact that a cleaner had to clean up the mess “frankly appalling”. In addition to a formal and slack (bop) ban lasting from 2 February to 15 February, the JCR was also told it must pay “£200 towards the cost of cleaning” and write a letter of apology to the cleaners.

While the Dean acknowledged that the behaviour did not involve a majority of the students who attended the formal, he said that “JCR members as a whole must take some responsibility for what happened”.

This was attributed to the JCR having asked permission for the dinner to be a themed event, “which was granted on the understanding that all College Rules would be strictly observed”.

The incident comes after St John’s College students were given over 120 hours of community service by their College Dean last year following a sports day swap with Oxford that descended into “poor behaviour” including verbal abuse, urine spills, and changing rooms being “trashed”.

The JCR president told students that the sanctions should remind them that their “behaviour has consequences, and this falls dramatically short of the safe and fun environment we strive to create in Corpus.” He set a deadline of 31 January for anyone responsible to write a letter of apology and/or submit a payment to the JCR Chunder Blunder Funder, a fund which he said “exists for scenarios like this to compensate cleaning staff”.

The Dean also said that he was “disappointed” that those responsible didn’t “come forward immediately or, at the very least, the following day”. He told the JCR president that he might consider shortening the ban if “the individual (s) responsible comes forward and writes a letter of apology to the cleaners”.

Corpus Christi College was contacted for comment.