Oxford College Combines Luxury, Austerity

When a Yale graduate, Edward Harkness, walked into President Lowell's office and offered him three million dollars to found an "Oxford College" system at Harvard, Lowell took just ten seconds to accept.

Today the closest American counterpart to the Oxford College is probably the Harvard House. In order to find out how comparable the two institutions are, Rupert H. Wilkinson '61 visited New College, Oxford, while he was in England last Christmas.

To the visiting American, life at New College seems to be a curious combination of the very primitive and very elegant. Certainly the 14th Century architecture is as uncomfortable to dwell in as it is beautiful to look at. Through the magnificent arches, behind the Gothic windows, lie dark little rooms with gloomy, yellow wallpaper. Some of them have no hot water, and where this is so, their occupants have to use a great church-like building that houses nothing but baths, rows and rows of them.

The Good Life

This is the primitive side to 'New Coll.' But there are compensations. If the authorities do not maintain Quincy House standards of physical luxury, they do at least supply every three or four undergraduates with a 'Scout', a manservant who polishes shoes, brings shaving water by urn and does other odd jobs about the place. Then, again, the fan-vaulted basement, recently become a thriving barroom, serves as evidence that asceticism and the Good Life can be practised simultaneously. Do the authorities worry about liquor being served on the premises? Not a bit of it. For generations a variety of nearby 'pubs' have formed the social equivalent of Cronins, the Bick and Cambridge coffee-houses.

The New College anomaly between comfort and hardship affects matters of discipline too. At first sight, University rules and regulations seem harsh indeed. College gates clang shut at midnight and the walls bristle with wicked spikes. By day, a Proctor prowls around the University hunting for transgressors. Since tradition forbids the Proctor to undertake personally the sordid business of making arrests, he is followed by several 'Bulldogs,' gentlemen who share three characteristics: they wear bowler hats, they look like gorillas (big chests, long arms) and they run like the wind. If the traffic is heavy--and in Oxford it usually is--a good Bulldog can be relied on to catch an errant undergraduate in four minutes flat.

Unofficial Leniency

Despite the above evidence, college discipline mixes official strictness with unofficial leniency. Officially it is illegal to go to London during term-time; in fact many people do it. The authorities often show a certain chivalry toward law-breakers. The English have always made great mountaineers, and it is an accepted fact that spiked walls, a gabled skyline and gates that close at twelve will evoke the Edmund Hilary in many a student. On one occasion, quite recently, a New College climber fell from a drain-pipe and hung for some minutes skewered through the thigh before his howls brought rescue. A few days later, this notice appeared on the College bulletin board: "Men are requested to make less noise getting in at night, or else we shall be obliged to strengthen our defences."

Discipline and living conditions do not provide the only contrast between New College and the Harvard House. The entire approach to education is different. For one thing, the Oxford curriculum is not committed to a rounded, liberal arts program. The University assumes that most undergraduates have gained a broad literary background at secondary school--an assumption quite unfounded as any study of Britain's school system will show. Apart from a little political theory, the student in Modern History need not read anything outside his field. If he wants to, an undergraduate can spend all his time studying Classical Arabic or Metallurgy.

It should be said, however, that Oxford places a less constant academic pressure on the individual than Harvard does. As a result it leaves the undergraduate more time to read widely on his own account, if he so wishes. In many fields, the student is only required to sit exams twice: a preliminary test his first year and the big ordeal his third and final year. Unlike its American counterparts, the University displays little faith that men can be pressured into scholarship. This applies to faculty as well as undergraduates. The 'Publish or Perish' formula exists, but only to a limited extent.

Because it takes a relatively relaxed approach to scholarship, Oxford must tolerate the lazy professor and the student who fritters away most of his college years with endless parties. On the other hand, the Oxonian might well argue that to foster the imagination the university must allow its men leisure in which to reflect. If some people abuse the system, this must be accepted as inevitable. The university can only set the conditions for thought; it shouldn't try to organise scholarship in terms of output-efficiency.

National Outlook

The difference between the Oxford viewpoint and that of our own system probably stems from a difference in national outlook. It is no coincidence perhaps that the constitutions of the two countries show a similar contrast. Whereas the U.S. Constitution represents the belief that a desired form of political behavior can only be obtained by forging institutional checks, the British rely on more informal, internalised means of persuasion--unwritten codes and the weight of custom--to regulate the activities of government.

Besides the approach to scholarship, what other characteristics distinguish the Oxford College from the Harvard House?

Tutorial. Reading is organised around weekly essay topics suggested by the student's tutor; there is no course system as we know it. Tutorial, Oxford-style, might be called 'education by duel,' an exercise in debate as well as a test of ideas.

Lecture series are also given but, compared with Harvard, lecturing standards are low and many an instructor draws a poor crowd.

Student/Faculty Contact. In the New College dining hall, tutors not only get special food and wine but they also sit at a 'high table,' segregated from the undergraduate mob. Most of the students whom I interviewed only knew one faculty member personally: their tutor.

Extra-curricular Life. Oxford does not suffer greatly from professionalism in extra-curricular activities. Orchestras and theatrical groups come and go in lively fashion; faculty control a la Loeb would be unthinkable. Undergraduates are less apt than they are here to commit themselves to a single organization.

Generalising about student attitudes is always risky, but it is probably fair to suggest that many New College men rate their fellows by what they say--their wit and conversation--ment in extra-curricular activities. If undergraduates at Oxford do not talk more intelligently or profoundly than they do here, their conversation is possibly more flexible, certainly more racy. In Oxford Union debates, quick thinking and a compelling style count above massive research.

Admittedly, one can overdraw the picture of Oxford as a place where leisurely living and scintillating wit prevail. "We are getting dull" has been the theme of several letters and articles in recent undergraduate publications. Entrance requirements consisting entirely of a rigorous examination attach little value to the well-rounded school record or to personal evidence of untapped ability; rising academic standards and an expanded scholarship program inevitably produce fewer parties and more hours devoted to sheer hard work.

Fortunately, however, the University still contains a small minority dedicated to the 'rag'--the student practical joke. In the past six years, 'raggers' have tethered a goat on Merton Chapel roof, driven an Austin down a Botany Department corridor, rolled a barrel into a graduate student maternity ward at 2 a.m. (the authorities gave the culprit a second chance and he was expelled a year later for setting fire to a dean's mattress), shot and barbecued a member of the Magdalen College deer-park, and painted new pedestrian crosswalks in improbable places at the dead of night. Shortly after the last incident, the 'raggers' excelled themselves with a trick that required no physical effort at all.

Some construction workers were engaged one day in repairing a road near New College, when along came several 'raggers' who asked for the foreman. They warned him that a group of undergraduates had dressed up as policemen and would arrive rather than by what they do--achieve-shortly to make him stop work on that section of road. Thereupon, the jokesters took off to the nearest police station where they informed the constabulary that some irresponsible undergraduates, masquerading as workmen, were tearing the road to pieces. The conspirators then hid. It didn't take long for both sides to discover the trick but the confusion was magnificent while it lasted.

Usually less colorful than this, the informality that runs through extracurricular life does apply to the undergraduate experience as a whole. The 'New Coll.' man is much freer than his Harvard counterpart to determine the quality and scope of his education. If the curriculum is narrow, the professors distant, and living conditions rough, the undergraduate does at least have time and a wealth of opportunity to widen his own interests.