Oxford could let students cover Rhodes with graffiti

WHEN Oxford University students failed in their bid to force a college to remove a statue of Cecil Rhodes, they threatened to vandalise it.

It ended up being covered with protective netting, pictured, but now, in a bizarre attempt to defuse the row, the university may erect a replica that radicals will be allowed to daub with graffiti.

The idea is being proposed after a year of protests, led by the Rhodes Must Fall movement, over the statue of the Victorian businessman and politician at Oriel College.

Students say Rhodes, who served as prime minister of the Cape Colony in southern Africa from 1890 to 1896, was a racist whose statue offends them.

He was, however, a significant benefactor of the university and international scholarships are still awarded in his name.

The row has embarrassed the college, which rejected demands to remove the statue only after alumni threatened to withdraw millions in donations if it caved in.

The proposal for a second statue for students to vandalise is part of an attempt to dissociate the university from colonialism without harming its reputation.

While they would be allowed to put graffiti on the replica, they would be barred from disfiguring it with swearwords or obscenities, a university spokesman said yesterday.

It is one of a number of ideas put forward by academics in the Working Group on Oxford University and Colonialism, which has received £20,000 from the university.

Other ideas include erecting statues of figures such as Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King, new courses based around women, gay and black or Asian figures, and an exhibition on colonial history and the university’s role in it.