Finally I think health and safety regulations have gone one step too far, after hearing a report that bosses at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge banned graduates from throwing their mortar boards into the air after their graduation ceremony because this has now been regarded as a safety hazard.

What is the world coming to?

For a student at university, it is a rite of passage to receive your degree, and gives you an enormous sense of achievement to be able to celebrate this.

It is an age-old tradition, and one of those moments that provides a memorable photo for not only you but your parents.

The basis for this ban at the university, is that a student got hit over the head with a mortar board in the midst of celebrations, and they did need stitches. Only thing is, this happened seven years ago and is the only accident of this kind that has happened, and the chance of this happening again is relatively low.

It would be more likely for someone to get a pigeon diving at them in a photo or a conker falling on their head.

Question is, why ban it now after all this time and not seven years ago?

Students have had this tradition at university since 1912 and now it has been deemed a safety hazard.

Graduation days are such a memorable experience, and mine was no different. It’s what you work towards for three years, and to have that tradition taken away is ridiculous.

Situations like this make you think what will be the next thing to go in our society – perhaps they will ban people taking graduation photos because the flash of the camera could damage someone’s eyes?

The worry is now that all the other universities in the UK are going to get on the bandwagon to protect their students from their own mortar boards.

I can understand that hundreds of hats flying into the air do have the potential risk of someone getting knocked on the head, but hundreds of universities up and the down the country do not seem to have this earmarked as a hazard, so why should they?

It’s the students that are the ones who are going to miss out, not the university bosses; they should be able to have their say about this, after all, for most students getting your degree is something you are only going to do once in your lifetime and why should they have the fun and celebrations taken out of the day.

They are a group of adults and not children after all, so I am sure they would be able to celebrate without knocking each other out.

It is just such a shame that our country is ever shifting into a nanny state, trying to wrap everyone and everything in cotton wool, and the people who are missing out is us the general public, and not those who are making up all these rules.

There must be so many other issues that put us at a greater health and safety risk than a stray mortar board or two.