Oxford university

Do today’s students care about free speech? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Brendan O’Neill and Harriet Brown from the University of Oxford debate this week’s cover feature on the ‘Stepford Students’ and the rise of group think among undergraduates. Brendan and Harriet discuss the Oxford Students for Life debate cancelled this week, following a student backlash. James Forsyth and Alex Massie also look at Scotland’s new First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and the significance of her ascension to leader of the SNP. Many unionists had hoped and predicted he party would collapse after a ‘No’ vote for independence. Sturgeon appears to have proved them wrong. And Michael Lind looks at the similarities

As the BA flight from Warsaw landed at Heathrow, I felt a little tremor of anxiety, though it wasn’t anything to do with fear of flying. I was here for the Pembroke College gaudy. I had never attended a reunion before, and I had doubts about it. What if the people I really liked didn’t show up? What if I didn’t remember somebody’s name, while they remembered me? Above all, did I really want to see a bunch of old people claiming to be my contemporaries? It turned out to be a delight. It was lovely to be woken again by the sound of the bell from Tom Tower, which

I was pleased to read this week that my old headmistress, Judith Carlisle, has launched a campaign to root out perfectionism in girls’ schools. Her initiative, which she is calling ‘The death of Little Miss Perfect’, is designed to ‘challenge perfectionism because of how it undermines self-esteem and then performance’. After 11 years in selective all-girls education, I’ve experienced the perfectionism Ms Carlisle describes. I was, indeed, a prime example: disappointed with anything less than an A*, I felt relief rather than joy when I found out I’d been offered a place at Oxford. The pressure my classmates and I put on ourselves was immense. It extended into all areas

It is now two decades since I lived in Oxford. I was then a drunk and lonely puddle of a person, with only a gift for screaming; but no matter how low I sank, to paraphrase Alcoholics Anonymous literature, I never sank quite as low as to consider eating at the ’bab van (kebab van) outside Univ (University College) on the High (High Street); I preferred to dine in Hall (a hall). Oxford, you see, has its own native dialect, a sort of pidgin posh best worn with a depressed carnation and a giant inedible chip made of class terror. Perhaps the roots of my eventual redemption were in that

According to the university’s own statistics, Oxford is one of the worst places in the country to be a female student if you’re hoping for a First Class degree. In all three of Oxford’s academic divisions, men were more likely to get a First in 2013 than women: there was a gender gap of 5% in the humanities, 10% in mathematical, physical and life sciences and 8% in medical sciences. As a Historian, I’m 10% less likely to get a First than one of my male counterparts. Nationally, there’s virtually no discrepancy at all – in 2013, 18.3% of women got Firsts compared to 18.5% of men. But it’s odd

It’s Boat Race time again and as soon as the BBC starts its broadcast on Sunday there will be those who invade Twitter and such places, having a moan faster than the Bullingdon Club can trash an Oxford curry house. Why’s it always the same two teams in the final? The more strident will demand why licence fee payers’ money is being spent on a private race that’s of no interest to anyone who wasn’t educated under one set of dreaming spires or the other. It’s amazing how many people went to Oxbridge, in that case. Why do more than seven million viewers tune in each year, and why has

The press love a bit of Oxbridge competition, but Oxford is embroiled in a far older and more ruthless rivalry: town vs. gown. It was in a dispute between the university and city of Oxford that Cambridge University has its foundations. In 1209, according to Roger of Wendover’s chronicle, an Oxford liberal arts scholar accidentally killed a woman. The Mayor led a group of townspeople to the killer’s house, only to find that he had fled – instead, they seized the three innocent scholars with whom he rented the house and hanged them. Fearing future tyranny and terrified of their fellow citizens, an exodus of Oxonians left the dreaming spires

I remember telling my friends that I was going to row at Oxford. I could picture myself in flattering Magdalen College Boat Club lycra, a rosy glow on my cheeks as I enjoyed boat-based camaraderie with my team mates on a crisp spring morning. I didn’t even make it to the river. After a week of leaving grimy gyms with sore muscles and a sense of inadequacy, I jumped ship. My only contact with the sport since has been bumping into the rowers on my corridor on the way to the shower, on the rare occasions when I’m up before 10. Back from their 6am appointments with frostbite on the

On waking up (at noon) on Thursday morning, I found I had a text from one of my fellow History freshers. Sent at 6am and accompanied by a screenshot of a half-finished essay: ‘WHY am I still up?!’ The all-nighter is a notorious Oxford experience, and not one I thought I would ever have to sample. ‘I’ll be fine getting the work done at university,’ I blithely assured those warning me of how unstructured a History student’s life is, ‘I like to keep busy.’ What I failed to appreciate is that it’s impossible not to be busy at university. School without lessons was dire — by Tuesday afternoon of the

I’ve been at university for 17 days, and yesterday had my fifth contact hour: my second tutorial. ‘Tutes’ are what an Oxford education is all about. They’re the reason any self-respecting applicant will give when asked why they’re putting themselves through a three-month ordeal of entrance tests; essay samples; interviews, and an agonising, Christmas-ruining wait. Of course we weren’t swayed by the architecture, the prestige or the challenge: what we really wanted, my sixth-form self often insisted, was the chance to be ‘taught by the people who write the textbooks’. It’s now dawning on me that we’re not really ‘taught’ at all — not in the conventional sense. What we’ve

My freshers’ pack (a yo-yo, two balloons, a sachet of instant hot chocolate and a condom) is barely visible beneath English Historical Documents, volume 1. Two nights of dancing knee-deep in foam has taken its toll on my shoes, and I feel slightly tricked – encouraged to partake in a week of university-approved partying, and then, two days in, given a 19-item reading list and an essay due in for next week. School friends’ Facebook pages are torturous: three weeks into term at other universities, yet to hand in their first piece of work and seemingly out every night. At dinner the conversation has morphed from ‘So where are you from?’ to ‘You haven’t started writing yet either,

Trenton Oldfield, the Australian who was fished out of the Thames last year when disrupting the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, is now out of prison and has written a piece for tomorrow’s Spectator about his experiences. In it he reveals that the Metropolitan Police have offered to help him protest at the 159th Boat Race taking place this weekend. This is what he has to say: ‘Throughout the week, via lawyers, I have received some elegantly crafted emails from Scotland Yard’s Liaison Gateway Team (‘a small unit of officers dedicated to facilitating peaceful protest’). They ask how they can help me organise a protest at the university boat race this year.