yellow-beak

The designation, "bejaunus" or bajan, which signifies yellow-beak ( "bec jaune"), seems to have been given almost everywhere to the freshman, and the custom of receiving the fledgeling into the academic society was, towards the close of the Middle Ages, no mere tradition of student etiquette, but an acknowledged and admitted academic rite.

Life in the Medieval University Robert S. Rait

Some times it was a béjaune, or yellow-beak, as they called the newcomers at the University—whom he had thoroughly badgered as a welcome—a valuable custom which has been carefully handed down to our day; now he had been the moving spirit of a band of scholars who had thrown themselves in classical fashion on a tavern, quasi classico excitati, then beaten the tavern-keeper “with cudgels of offensive character, ” and joyously pillaged the tavern, even to staving in the hogsheads of wine.

V. Further Particulars of Claude Frollo. Book IV 1917