Oxbridge is embarrassed by what makes it exceptional
The one time I was approached by the police for “possession” was during my student days at Oxford. Wild thing that I was, I’d bought some milk and cornflakes and happened to be strolling past the Examination Schools when, out of nowhere, a copper sprang out and eyed my bag. “I’ll be taking those”, he said. The university authorities had begun to clamp down on the tradition of “trashing” – smothering exam finalists in champagne and confetti-like substances – and I looked suspicious.
That was over a decade ago. Now comes news that anyone caught trashing in Oxford will be fined £150 or, if they fail to pay, face disciplinary measures. This will be good news to those who’ve been on the receiving end of an unfortunate dollop or been tasked with cleaning it up.
But I can’t help but feel a tinge of sadness at the end of an Oxford tradition. Trashing may have been one of the newer customs, but it was part of what made the university distinctive. Indeed, increasingly it feels like the things that have made Oxford and Cambridge so unique throughout history are at risk of extinction or the chop.
Recent years have seen students repeatedly debate whether they should abolish the traditional gown and sub fusc worn to exams on the grounds that they could be deemed elitist. The proposal is periodically shot down – over 75 per cent voted in favour of retaining the garb in a student union referendum at Oxford in 2015 – but still a feeling persists in certain quarters: Oxbridge is embarrassing.
Latin at dinner, formal hall and arcane ceremonies involving walking around quads backwards at night are seldom shouted about. Peculiar traditions are downplayed in favour of a narrative that emphasises Oxbridge’s ordinariness. Must efforts to promote inclusivity require a denial of what makes the universities exceptional?
Last month, the vicechancellor of Cambridge spoke candidly of reducing its private school intake “by welcoming others”, a message that has attracted criticism from some independent school leaders. In 2020, 68.6 per cent of offers from Oxford went to state-educated pupils, and at Cambridge the figure was 70.6 per cent.
The statistics, one would hope, speak for themselves. Oxbridge isn’t the island of toffs that it once was. Earlier this year I interviewed members of the Oxford Union debating society, where Boris Johnson cut his teeth, and found it to be genuinely diverse.
Nonetheless, it seems that many authorities are so uncomfortable with accusations of elitism that they are clamping down on the wrong things. Instead of focusing on harmless rituals, they should more rigorously defend academic freedom.
Similarly, they should challenge decisions like those by Jesus College in Cambridge to spend £120,000 on a failed effort to remove a memorial to a 17th-century benefactor over his supposed links to slavery, or to be less than transparent with regard to the funding of its China Centre. At Oxford, the historical acceptance of money from the Sackler family for a library in their name – given the role of some members in the current US opioid crisis – arguably provides more food for thought than confetti throwing.
When the universities are galloping at such speed into the future, the quirks that made them so extraordinary in the past ought to be celebrated all the more heartily. There’s nothing embarrassing about them.