Durham students call for formal dinner ban to shed elitist label

DURHAM students’ union is demanding an end to “sinister” formal dinners in an attempt to stop being known as “Oxbridge rejects”.

A culture commission established by the Russell Group university’s union found that the idea of “Durhamness” appeals to the “core demographics of white, southern, typically privately educated students from middle- and upper-middle-class backgrounds”.

The Oxbridge-like stereotype of Durham acts as a “magnet” for students, but “there are students who resent this comparison, particularly the misnomer of the ‘Oxbridge reject’”, the union said.

The body’s 11 student or graduate commissioners have spent two years interviewing dozens of Durham students about campus culture, which they called a “bubble of elitism in north-east England” from a “bygone era”.

The commission’s final report, published this week, found that “students feel an overwhelming pressure to not only exist but to thrive within a coopted version of an Oxbridge experience” and use “the ritualism of formals, to signal their proximity to this trope”.

Formal gowned dinners, which have been a central feature at Oxbridge for centuries, “represent a more sinister history of oppression”, the commissars said. Durham students told the union in interviews that “privilege [is] codified in traditions like formal dinners”, with one even reporting they would “never again” attend a formal dinner because at one they witnessed “they were banging cutlery on the tables – it was so childish and disrespectful to the staff.”

It comes after a row over free speech following a student walkout during an address by Rod Liddle, a journalist, who students accused of making “transphobic, sexist, racist and classist remarks”.

The university said: “We are working to build an environment that is respectful and where people feel comfortable to be themselves and to flourish; where equality, diversity and inclusivity are valued and difference is celebrated.”