THE "FUN" OF THE UNDERGRADUATES.

Evening Star, Issue 3733, 9 February 1875, Page 3

THE "FUN" OF THE UNDERGRADUATES.

Oxford Commemoration brought out a great muster of the under graduates in the galleries of the Siheldonian Theatre, and judging by the reports, these young swells conducted themselves in a disgracefully boisterous manner. “For a livcbmg hour,” our reporter says “they literaTy pelted the unoffending crowd in the pit with chaff. Tlie nu.n with the eyegla-a was premptorily ord' red*,o take it out ; gentlemen with bine or red ties were summoned vociferously to quit the building ; and any'’ individual who was luckless enough to enter the bui’ding without doffing his hat, at once was greeted with a volley of nbjcreations. The Rons, whose duty it was to escort the ladies to their sea s, were the special objects of undergraduate ‘ humor.’ Time after time, as they escorted a lady to her place, they were bidden, with st n tori an ahoiffs ‘not to squeeze her hand.’ and were admonished that th dr wives had their ey< s on them For did the ladies escape scot free. Any lady whose personal charms, or still more, the coW of whose dress attracted the notice of the undergraduate mob, was welcomed with cheers for the lady in red, white, or blue, as the case might bo. Nor wa< the pelting which the pit sustained entirely of a verbal character. The gods above kept up a fire of pellets of paper aimed at any bald head that served f r a target; and ou more than one occasion they shied down half-pennies and oranges However, the pleasure of pelting palls, like all other pleasures, after a time, and the undergraduates beguiled the hour of waiting by stamping, hooting, cheering, singing snatches of ‘ He's a jolly good fellow,’ and generally making as much noise as possible. . . At a quarter past twelve the Vice-Chancellor, preceded by the proctors and the bull dogs, and followed by tbe heads of bouses, advanced along a passage made throu'gh the crowd, and took his seat in the raised chair at the east end of tbe building. Hr Liddell, who is Vice-Chancellor for the year, is w.-i fitted by his stately air and presence to fill the position of the chairman of such a gathering as this, hut he was manifestly annoyed at the c nstant interrapt ions which he, in c»mmon with a'l the other speakr-rs, was greeted by the students in the gallery. Whenever they began shouting ho stopped speaking, and the more he propped the more the lads shouted ; ?.o that, if there was not a. limit to the power of shouting poseesed even by yomlfful throats, tho Kncamnia would never have been brought to a elos". By a series of broken sentences, stopped every other minute by i shouts of ‘Speak up !’; ‘ Make, haste !'; ‘Cut it short!’ and so forth, the Vice-

Chancellor informed the audience that this convocation had been called together for the purpose of admitting to the degree of 1 doctor of Law Mr Justice Mellish, Sir Garnet Wolsley, Sir Erskine May, and Professor Cams.” Another reporter says: “The whole Commemoration scene was one brutal and disgraceful riot. The ruffianly blackguardism was continued, literally without one moiiwnt’s pause, to the very end of the ceremony of conferring the degree. Not one word was the Vice-Chancellor allowed to say without the grossest and most brutal interruption. ”