Refreshing

Here's a development to set the heart racing. From page 6 of today's Manchester Evening News (but not anywhere online, as far as I can see):

Undergraduates at Manchester University have banned the word 'fresher'.

New entrants will no longer be called freshers after the student union labelled the name 'patronising' and unappealing to mature students.

Freshers' Week has been rebranded 'Welcome Week'. A student union officer is quoted as saying that some new students are older and even have families.

You live and learn. I thought the determining connotation in 'freshers' had simply to do with first-year students being newcomers. Next up: babies to be renamed 'embarking humans'; newcomers to be rebranded 'future veterans'; etc.