WOMEN AT OXFORD

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 80, 1 October 1938, Page 19

WOMEN AT OXFORD

"CAUSE OF LOST

HOMES"

A DON'S OBSERVATIONS

Oxford, the ancient and conservative English university, has always been considered the province of men. Few colonials realise that a fifth of the students are women.

In the following interview with the "Sydney Morning Herald" Mr. Alan Brown, law Fellow of Worcester College and the youngest don at Oxford, who recently returned to Sydney on vacation, tells how women have become a familiar part of the University scene in spite of the prejudices which still exist.

"When Oxford University first set the seal of its approval upon the movement for the higher education of women by admitting them to its degrees there were many to whom it seemed that the famous 'home of lost causes' had made itself the cause of lost homes. That was fifty years ago. Today women, students, or undergraduettes, as they are called, are a familiar,part of the University scene, and it has been proved that higher education and the matrimonial state are not incompatible.

"But at Oxford it often seems that the undergraduette is admitted only on sufferance," Mr. Brown said. "The number of "women students," Mr. Brown explained, "is limited by a statute of the University to one-fifth the number of men. There are still some dons, interesting survivals of a more heroic age, whose rugged masculinity leads them to exclude all women from their lectures, and, even though the undergraduette now takes part in most of the activities of the place, Oxford remains a man's university." IMPROVEMENT IN DRESS. Mr. Brown said that this fact is perhaps nowhere better demonstrated than in the shop windows of the town, which are devoted almost exclusively to men's clothes in a manner which seems to fascinate feminine visitors to the University nearly as much as do Bond Street windows. The undergraduate dresses mostly in grey flannels and a sports coat of check pattern. Colour is given by bright polo sweaters, and there is none of the formality of London dress; except, of course, for evening wear. "The familiar allegation that the undergraduette dresses badly is made less frequently today. In dress as in looks there has been a steady improvement in recent years." Mr. Brown said that, in his view, the number of women in proportion to men at Oxford should be increased to at least one-half. He believes that their influence on Oxford has been good. One change often attributed to the coming of the woman student has been that the sherry party has taken the place of the old pre-war breakfast party as the most popular form of social entertainment in the University. , When reminded of the familiar argument that women who marry after taking a university degree have wasted their time and money, Mr. Brown said that that seemed to show a strange conception of the purpose of university education. A girl did not need to be a "blue-stocking" to benefit by her years at the university. Mr. Brown added that there are al-. ways a number of Australians in the! i women's colleges at Oxford, and all j lof them seemed to do well. Perhaps some day a benefactress would do for women from the" Dominions what Cecil Rhodes had done for men. Oxford's 1 position as the senior university of the English-speaking peoples and the centre lof learning which approximated most nearly to a world university made it of particular interest to Australians in England. TRADITIONS OF THEIR OWN. The undergraduettes play their part in almost every walk of University life, though they are, of course, excluded from membership of the various social and dining clubs, and are still debarred from membership of the Oxford Union. Hockey, tennis, and lacrosse are the chief games played by women at Oxford. A woman's crew has become a regular feature on the river, but cricket is left to men. The women's colleges, although all built within the last fifty years, have been modelled on the centuries-old men's colleges, and already have many traditions of their own. Worcester College, of which Mr. Brown is a Fellow, has one famous woman connected with it, for it is said to be haunted by the ghost of Amy Robsart, whose body was laid out in one of its rooms before burial. At one stage in the college's history a woman upset the ordinary routine of the academic life —when Charles I and his Queen visited Oxford the Queen was so charmed by the wit and good looks of the young Lovelace, then a member of Worcester College, that instructions were given for a degree to be conferred on the sixteen-year-old poet lat once!