Prosh? What’s Prosh?

Every year, uni students (and not uni students) come together at UniMelb for five days of furious competition, witty and gruesome challenges, fabulous costumes, astonishing milk-crate usage, and shared insanity. For this one glorious week in the second semester, classes are skipped, and leave is taken off work, all in the name of making a whole lotta mischief.

“Social anxiety fears Prosh.” - Anonymous Prosher

This year, Prosh is raising funds for Transcend Australia. Transcend Australia’s vision is that trans, gender-diverse and non-binary children are affirmed, supported and embraced, and given every opportunity to thrive and flourish.

Prosh is a charity initiative organised by six Judges who were selected from the preceding year’s winning teams. Your team can win Prosh by collecting the most points, which are granted by the Judges throughout the week. While competitors seek out the honour of being crowned winner of Prosh Week, the stakes are low and the irony is high: many people take part to just be themselves and do dumb shit in a safe environment. Some might say that the real prize of Prosh is the crazy stories and the friends you make along the way.

To best describe the week as it is known today, Prosh is a series of unique events that run across the days of Prosh Week. This year, Prosh Week runs from the 19th to 23rd of August.

The first event was a tremendous Opening Ceremony in which teams intimidate us all with their breathtaking (super silly) dances and costumes. Other events include the traditional billy kart race around uni, ‘Proshession’, a 24-hour road trip across the state, and the 24-hour Scavenger “Scav” Hunt. Scav starts promptly at 10am Thursday to 10am on Friday, with teams spending hours making, collecting, finding, building and improvising the hundreds of Scav items, all to be presented one by one to the Judges on Friday. The collective delirium-induced creativity of this display is truly astonishing (and truly horrific). 

“The Judges love repetition. Repetition, repetition, repetition…” - Proshua

It’s often told down the grapevine that the word ‘Prosh’ stemmed from the word ‘procession’, and originated from public student processions that began in 1905. These spectacles involved satirical tableaus on trolleys and carts moving through the streets of Adelaide, followed by concerts, academic caricatures, variety acts and farces. In the 50s and 60s crowds would flock to watch marches of up to 30 or more floats around lunchtime on Procession Day. Adelaide students published a satirical Prosh newspaper from 1954 onwards.

Today, Prosh keeps many of the popular traditions and is constantly birthing new ones too. The Prosh that exists now continues to build a community that is safe and accessible. 

Each Prosh is unique, and made its own by whatever new ideas and silliness Proshers bring to the table.

Photos of Prosh from a '67 Farrago: