Why did these questions need to be framed in such sexually explicit ways? What was the point?

Victoria Ward of The Telegraph UK reports.

Graphic content of Cambridge University law exam stuns students

The uninitiated might consider a Cambridge University law exam to be a rather dry, impenetrable affair, full of technical jargon and obscure legal references.

However, the Cambridge students who sombrely filed into a lecture hall to sit a criminal law paper this weekend, found that the reality was somewhat more colourful.

Asked to select two questions designed to test their knowledge on a range of legal issues, they were presented with a graphic depiction of a fictional college drinking society’s initiation ceremony involving oral sex, male rape and naked torture.

The question provoked incredulity amongst many undergraduates, one of whom described it as “horrific”. Others took umbrage at the “total misrepresentation” of most student clubs and societies.

More than 200 students, most of them freshers, from the university’s 23 colleges sat the three-hour exam at the prestigious Faculty of Law on Saturday morning.

Question nine, which was in three parts, began with a short introduction:

“Sandra is President of The Vizards, a College drinking society. She is organising the initiation of new members. After a great deal of alcohol has been drunk, the members of the society form a circle around Billy, Gilbert and Richard who are to be initiated.”

The question then described three initiation rituals in which a male student was blindfolded and given oral sex by another man, another was subjected to an indecent assault with a bottle and a third died from an infection after his pubic hair was removed.

The students were asked to say which offences, if any, had been committed.

Within hours of the end of the exam, many had used social media to express their horror and surprise.