WON'T EAT

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 18974, 26 March 1936, Page 5

WON'T EAT

STRIKE AT OXFORD ACADEMIC CALM UPSET LONDON, March S. Though a story of an eventful week at Oxford carries the headlines, "Strikes," "Debauchery," the position is not so bad as it sounds, but it is sufficient to upset the academic calm and cause much head-shaking among tht elders. The stir began when 150 undergraduates in historic Pembroke College, once'attended by Dr. Johnson, refused to eat dinner in the hall as a protest against the "expensive, unappetising food." Students picketed the hall and refused to touch the food until the authorities promised to investigate their complaints. The second sensation was the publication in an undergraduates' journal. "The Cherwell," of an attack on women's position at Oxford, written by Miss M. Laski, daughter of Mr. Neville Laski, K.C., Recorder of Burnlev.

"Oxford traditions," she writes, "cannot be assimilated to-day by women with their pitiable half-century of education. They come front school with the mentality of adolescent schoolgirls and leap into Oxford social life with the satisfaction of truant schoolgirls. "Tu summer, they paint, their toenails and stroll down High street in beach pyjamas trying to create the illusion ' that Oxford is a Riviera plage. " TJndorgraduettes frequently bocomo embroiled with the young men's fast set, throw sherry parties, and get a little drunk —no more than an incident for men, but for women straight from a cloistered home ,or school it is debauchery unexampled." Miss Laski suggests that the problem could be solved by the sexes being educated together from the earliest years.