WILDNESS AT OXFORD

Greymouth Evening Star, 15 February 1932, Page 8

WILDNESS AT OXFORD

REPUTATION NOT DESERVED. Two further attempts have' been made to restrict the freedom of Oxford undergraduates— L one a petition to stop the university beagle packs from limiting hares, and the other a notice from the Chancellor that members of the university in statu pupilluuli were expected to behave themselves on the night of November 5, says a writer in the “Cape Times.” Oxford only has two bea'gle packs, one owned jointly by Magdalen, Balliol, and New College, and the other by Christ Church. The petition is by .some local women who think harehunting cruel. But the Oxford beagles are never followed in a very serious spirit, and lihe number of hares they catch is by no means a record, so that it. is unlikely that the petition will bear much fruit. But the 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 vivisectionists and those who oppose stag-lxunting. 1 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 reiilly 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 tfhat Loudon 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 dearly cherished illusions of Fleet Street.

In the ordinary life of the university any kind of “heartiness” is the subject of so much detached sarcasm that it does not survive long. Even Rugger and rowing Blues, who have the airs and status of princes of tlie blood at Cambridge, talk quite nicely and modestly when they gather in anybody’s room at Oxford. It is, in fact, almost a ground of complaint at the

numerous South Africans in the university that they have imported college patriotism and a sort of he-man loyalty into an otherwise placid state oL society.

• In addition, a clash nowadays with : the proctors and the “Bullers” whom , they take round with them to subdue : notous people is more of a bore than a .T, excitement. In the first place Bullets 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 are well off cannot afford to pav anything up to £5 in fines. I have never seen such an efficient capture as on the last occasion when I

visited Oxford. One young man dressed in kilts for an Irish dinner cam e out of a forbidden public house wiping Jus mouth. He was big, meaty and arrogant, and when the proctor <‘n k n d bl !P. f ° r 1113 nnme - he took off a Buller s hat and ran. He was no “lean sprinter, but ho had not covered the hundred yards before the “Bullers, both elderly men, • had brought hmi down and using all lhe most la.-.hionable police arm-twists, had also accounted for friends who rushed to

The reputation forz snobbishness idleness, and general arrogance which

tho university has mysteriously acquired is also completely undeserved. People with rich p°pas th ttniveresity has in plenty, but most of the undergraduates come of families with modest means, and have to work to emerge with some sort of decorative degree.