ORGIES AT OXFORD

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23333, 27 October 1937, Page 9

ORGIES AT OXFORD

PARTIES OF EQUAL NUMBERS " SPINSTER DONS " BLAMED CLASS SNOBBERY DENOUNCED (United Press Association) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) LONDON, Oct. 26. (Received Oct. 26, at 10.15 p.m.) Undergraduates' orgies at Oxford and the effect of " spinsterish dons " at women's colleges are described by Mr Keith Briant, last year's editor of Isis. Mr Briant asserts that about 20 per cent, of the girl students become unduly sophisticated through their experiences with men while attending university. He describes parties of equal numbers of under-: graduates and undergraduettes, and even wilder roysterings confined to men. Mr Briant considers the wildness of undergraduettes is due to "spinster dons," who are rarely fit to be placed in absolute control. Young women and girls are expected to look and dress like pre-war spinsters. "If they are pretty and welldressed and asked to dances they ars regarded as an undesirable influence, and dances are considered immoral. For this reason students go to dubious river haunts and undesirable roadhouses."

Mr Briant also denounces class snobbery. He says: " Oxford proctors are paid to sniff out romances between students and so-called lower classes. One, undergraduate who wished to marry an intelligent girl working in a bakery was threatened with expulsion. Thus Oxford upheld the principle that working girls are as immoral as nonworking girls are virtuous." GREATER TOLERATION NEEDED LONDON, Oct. 26. (Received Oct. 27, at 0.30 a.m.) "Mr Briant suffers from a preoccupation with undergraduate morals from which most undergraduates are entirely free," declares Mr George Edinger, an Oxonian, in the Daily Sketch. " I know a youngster who spent four years at Oxford, and he told me he had not heard sex mentioned. He is just as typical as Mr Briant's drunken imm'orals. The truth about Oxford will not be written, first of all because it is impossible ,to generalise, and secondly because it is uninteresting? Nevertheless, an influx of women dons in closer touch with the world would improve and humanise women's colleges. Oxford wants greater toleration in dealing with undergraduates, who are a normal cross section of the country,"