Prosh (University of Western Australia) - History

History

In 1931, a small group of students compiled a small, satirical newspaper called the "SRUSS SRUSS Times" of humorous but possibly offensive content, as part of graduation-time shenanigans. Later in that week, the Perth newspaper The Sunday Times berated the creators of this newspaper, calling it trash and filth, and the creators were subsequently penalised, in the form of a fine payable to the local children's charity. Evidently, this punishment wasn't effective, as the tradition of publishing a satirical humour of 'ill taste' continues to this day, 80 years later, however in a much larger and slightly more organised fashion.

Over the decades of the prosh procession through the city of Perth, various floats and vehicles of dubious form and function passed through the centre of the city prior to the Hay street and Murray Street malls existence. This made both the prosh procession participants, and in turn the spectators excellent targets for interaction with flour, water and beer from the balcony of the hotels then open for trade. City council employees involved in cleaning up were often seen immediately after the last float.

Currently, PROSH (which is now one of the oldest UWA traditions) is kept alive by volunteers writing, editing and distributing the newspaper annually in April - all in the name of fundraising. Each year a new group of charities are chosen as the beneficiaries of all money raised by Prosh. In recent years, over 115,000 papers are sold on the day, with proceeds often breaking the $100,000 barrier. In 2010, all 130,000 papers had been distributed to students by 7:00am.