Fagging

Fagging, a custom prevalent at some of the older English public schools, including Eton, Harrow, Westminster, Rugby, and Winchester. Boys below a certain form or class in the school are obliged to perform in rotation for the upper boys such offices as cooking their breakfasts, cleaning their studies, running errands, or long-stopping at cricket. Possibly originating in the rule of the strongest (though scholars also to some extent were at the beck and call of the fellows in the earliest Oxford colleges), the practice, though very carefully regulated, is maintained from a regard to tradition, and even defended as a useful discipline. It is not, however, imitated at the newer schools.