The first term of college is many young women's first experience of leaving home and adult life, which makes the #freshersweeksexism of laddish university culture so hard to stand

This week, a special council at St Mary's University in Canada is reviewing orientation activities carried out at the university, after a video was posted online showing 80 student leaders celebrating the first week of the new university term. They were chanting (in front of new first-year students): "Y is for 'Your sister', O is for 'Oh so tight', U is for 'Underage', N is for 'No consent', G is for 'Grab that ass'." The story came just weeks after a poster advertising a freshers' week event at Cardiff Metropolitan University prominently featured a picture of a T-shirt bearing the words: "I was raping a woman last night and she cried."

Freshers' week might be famous for its club nights, drunken antics and stolen traffic cones, but it also marks another important milestone – the first time many students leave home and experience the world as adults. And for many young women in particular, it starkly reveals the way the world views them, and their place in it.

It started subtly this year, with an article promoted to prospective students in an email from Ucas. It described their future university housemates, including, "The mum figure: Ensures your house will never run out of boring things like clingfilm," and "The dad figure: "You'll need someone to sort out the house bills."

But before the ink was dry on Ucas's apology, many students arriving at university for the freshers' experience this week were experiencing far worse incidents of sexism.

One student tweeted the Everyday Sexism Project a photograph taken from a stall at the Freshers' Fair at her university, showing a poster emblazoned with the words: "F*** ME I'M A FRESHER".

And when we asked others to share their experiences of #FreshersWeekSexism the responses came thick and fast:

Halls rep to a fresher: "I'm going to treat you like a dolphin, segregate you from the group until you give into me". @EverydaySexism — Tanya Lane (@lanacus) September 18, 2013

@EverydaySexism A classmate laughed when I said I wanted to play football for the Uni team, assuming that women can't play football. — Pouneh Ahari (@pounehahari) September 18, 2013

What is my uni @uniofleicester doing to combat #FreshersWeekSexism? Hiring half-naked women to dance on stage @EverydaySexism — Izzie (@izziecervi) September 18, 2013

@EverydaySexism Someone on my facebook had just used the phrase "It's not rape if it's freshers" #FreshersWeekSexism luckily not at my uni. — Matthew Quanstrom (@Matthais03) September 18, 2013

One young woman reported that the phrase "fresher fishing" was used at her university to describe "lads preying on fresher girls". Another wrote to the project website after hearing a halls rep (one of the older students supposedly there to help younger students settle in) saying: "Getting spiked is lucky, it means someone really wants to get with you."

True to form, the Lad Bible pitched in with an article entitled "A LAD's Alternative Guide to Uni Housemates", which included this advice: "The most important thing for any LAD at uni is going out to get smashed, and to get some back doors smashed in!"

For one first year, the first experience of sexism this freshers' week came when "we were in the queue for tickets and the guys were going through each girl in the queue labelling them 'fuckable', 'passable', or 'munter'." Later, inside the club, she watched as her friend was approached by a student adviser who they had earlier met at their freshers' accommodation: "He started dancing with her and pinned her against a railing in the smoking area despite her protests and pushing on his chest. 'Give me 3 reasons why I can't take you home right now' is what he kept saying to her as she tried to get him off her. He is an older student. They are employed by the university to make us feel safe. What a joke."

Other students reported similar incidents of being grabbed, touched and harassed during the week – one was working on a stall at the Freshers' Fair when her breasts were groped by a stranger.

In their very first week away from home, these young women were sent the message, loud and clear, that they were seen as sexual prey, and that their bodies were public property. It's a problem throughout university culture, not just during the first week, and universities desperately need to get more proactive about tackling it.

But amid these rage-inducing incidents, there was a definite glimmer of hope this week. Compared to last year, when freshers' nights with themes such as "Rappers and Slappers", "Pimps and Hoes" and "Geeks and Sluts" crowded the university calendars, far fewer comparable events have emerged so far this year. And following the resurgence of an enthusiastic feminist movement at universities across the country in the past year, there was evidence of a significant backlash against freshers' week sexism. Edinburgh University has banned the Robin Thicke song Blurred Lines . Glasgow University Union, which made headlines in March for misogynistic heckling against two female speakers, chose the topic of banning lads' mags for its freshers' week debate. Bristol, Sheffield, Sussex and Goldsmiths Universities are all running zero tolerance campaigns on sexual harassment.

And one mother reported a brilliant piece of advice given in her son's college orientation, which should be adopted as a motto at universities across the UK: "Consent is really too low a bar. Hold out for enthusiasm."