Durham should be proud to be a second-rate Oxbridge

Durham University has long been considered the destination of choice for Oxbridge rejects. But this is an image some students in Durham are keen to shake off. Durham’s Students’ Union hopes to end the stereotype that it is the alma mater of choice for those who don’t make the cut at Britain’s ancient universities. It has published a 48-page ‘Culture Commission’, in which it says the label is unfair since ‘most students are not in fact unsuccessful candidates of Oxford or Cambridge.’ Rather than be embarrassed by this label, Durham students should embrace it.

This knee-jerk decision to try and rebrand Durham is hardly surprising at an institution where Rod Liddle’s appearance led to protests and which once even banned its Conservative association. Now Durham students are expressing shock at possessing a ‘core demographics of white, Southern, typically privately educated students from middle- and upper-middle-class backgrounds’. 

This shows a poor sense of history on the parts of the SU members involved.