UNIVERSITY LIFE

Evening Star, Issue 21012, 28 January 1932, Page 13

UNIVERSITY LIFE

MOVE AGAINST FREEDOM Two further attempts have been made to restrict the freedom of Oxford undergraduates—one a petition to stop the university beagle packs from hunting hares, and the other a notice from the Chancellor that members of the university in statu pupillarii were expected to behave themselves on the night of November 5, says a writer in the ‘ Cape Times.’ Oxford only has two beagle packs, one owned jointly by Magdalen, Bailie], and New College, and the other by Christ Church. The petition is by some local women who think hare-hunt-ing cruel. But the Oxford beagles are never followed in a very serious spirit, and the number of hares they catch is by no means a record, so that it is unlikely that the petition will bear ranch fruit. But tho mere fact that it has been presented has caused a considerable amount of irritation, probably because undergraduates have recently been wrongly blamed for rags perpetrated on vmsectionists and those who oppose stag-hunting. I have several times tried, but in vain, to probe the mystery of how Oxford acquired its reputation for wildness. It is by far the gentler of. the two universities, and when anything really tough does happen in the West End, it is usually started by Cambridge people in plus-fours, while those who come from beneath the dreaming spires look on with bored disdain. This ill-fame is probably due to the fact that the London newspapers keep livelier correspondents at Oxford than they do at Cambridge, and also to the fact that, like Al Capone, South African lion stories, and the “ modern girl, witless rags at Oxford are one of the most dourly cherished illusions of Hcet In the ordinary life of the university any kind of u heartiness ” is the subject of so much detached sarcasm that it does not survive long. Even Ruggei and rowing Blues, who have the airs and status of princes of the blood at Cambridge, talk quite nicely and modestly when they gather in anybody s rooms at Oxford. It is, in fact, almost a ground of complaint at the numerous South Africans in tho university that they have imported college patriotism and a sort of he-man loyalty into an otherwise placid state of society. In addition, a clash nowadays with the proctors and tho “ Bullers whom they take round with them to subdue riotous people is more of a bore than an excitement. In the first place, “ Bullers ” are now not nearly so gentle as they were in the less democratic days before the war, and in the second place even undergraduates whose parents aio well off cannot afford to pay anything up to £5 in fines. . I have never seen such an efficient capture ns on the last occasion when 1 visited Oxford. Ono young man, dressed in kilts for an Irish diiinei, came out of a forbidden public house wiping Ids mouth. He was big, meaty, and arrogant, and when the proctor asked him for his name, he took off a “ Buller’s ” hat and ran. He was no mean sprinter, but he baa not covered the hundred yards before the “ Bullers,” both elderly men, had brought him down, and using_ all the most fashionable police arm-twists, had also accounted for friends who rushed to his aid. .... The reputation for snobbishness, idleness, and general arrogance which the university has mysteriously acquired is also completely undeserved._ leople with rich papas the university has in plenty, but most of the undergraduates come of families with modest moans, and have to work to emerge with some sort of decorative degree.