Benedictus Benedicat

If my old friend Dr Serenhedd James had not already been a National Treasure, then he would have attained that status with this:

Freshers’ week at Oxford begins this weekend: from all across the country, and indeed the world, young hopefuls who have satisfied the university’s stringent admissions requirements will soon be starting the first day of the rest of their lives. College social-media accounts are groaning with messages telling them all how welcome they will be, and doing their best to use humour to dispel the nerves. One head of house sportingly allowed himself to be filmed wandering disconsolately around his empty quads, crying “Is anybody here?!”

I always feel a bit sorry for the freshers, all of whom have already excelled in one way or another simply to have got this far. Today, most of them are the cleverest people they know; tomorrow, most of them won’t be. Impostor syndrome hits hard, and comes and goes with the terms and the tide. The Sorting Hat has done its job, however: now there are routines to be learnt, a city to be explored, and customs and traditions to be embraced. The last bit, inevitably, brings out the hand-wringers in their droves.

Writing in the Financial Times last week, the food writer Ajesh Patalay talked about what dinner – “formal hall” – is like at “modern, progressive” Worcester College under the new provost, Lord (David) Isaac. In 2019 the then-acting provost, Professor Kate Tunstall, tried to abolish grace and other traditions “in an attempt to be more inclusive”. When the proposal was put to the Junior Common Room at Worcester, it fell. “Surprisingly,” wrote Patalay, “the undergraduates voted overwhelmingly to retain these customs.”

“Surprisingly.” I sometimes wonder whether the pearl-clutchers who are shocked that so many young people like nice things with historic hinterlands have ever met an undergraduate, or indeed remember being one. Sitting down to a meal together is the backbone of any residential community, academic or otherwise, and it’s not as though there aren’t less-formal eating options for those with neither the time nor inclination to put on a jacket and throw on a gown. “Informal hall”: the clue’s in the name.

A wise former colleague, elected to a fellowship at one of the grander colleges from the other side of an ocean, wryly observed that “formal hall is intimidating: once”. All you need to do is to get stuck in: if you know which utensil to pick up first, then crack on. If you don’t, then glance around and see what other people are doing. Say “thank you” when the staff bring you your plate, and “thank you” when they take it away. You got into Oxford: you’re bright enough to work this out as well.

Alas, if only it were that straightforward: the assault on formal dining in the colleges started years ago and continues apace. Students are deprived of delicious things like octopus, which was taken off the menu at Somerville in 2019 (evidently a bumper year), in case its unfamiliarity makes them uncomfortable. Read it and weep: in case something unfamiliar causes students discomfort. At a university: a place of learning and encounter intended to stretch and broaden young minds.

Meanwhile, those who come from backgrounds in which formal dinners are not a regular feature are frequently given the impression that they should be abolished on their behalf. That’s a kick in the teeth for a kid from a comprehensive school in the Rhondda, who’s won her place at the table only to find that it has been hastily unlaid for her – so that she can feel more welcome. I remember a student in exactly that situation. “My grandfather was a miner,” she said. “He’d have died of pride to see me eating here.”

A grammar-school boy from Lancashire summed it up more gruffly in a JCR meeting: “I hear that some of you are trying to abolish formal hall because people like me don’t enjoy it. Well, I bloody love it, so there.” It did not go down well with his self-appointed gatekeepers, which he loved even more. In another moment of lunacy a member of the same crowd exasperatedly told one of his contemporaries that it was socially unacceptable of him to identify as working class if he didn’t have a regional accent.

How does this madness begin? Principally, with the peevishness of people with power. I once witnessed a college officer (not at my present institution, certainly) pronounce solemnly, during the first pastoral-team meeting of an academic year, that “we need to look out for our non-traditional students, because they might meet someone from Eton and that would be very distressing for them.” I thought briefly that she was making a joke at the expense of a stereotype, then remembered that she was entirely humourless.

I’m still none the wiser as to how she drew that conclusion, save from her own confirmation bias and the echo chamber that she inhabited on the internet. At the time I decided that her galloping prejudice was more usefully noted quietly and discussed elsewhere, but she put it to energetic use later and I wish now that I’d told her there and then where to go. The disagreeable irony of someone purportedly in charge of welfare for all students being only interested in the welfare of some speaks for itself, every single time.

Ahead of a different freshers’ week, in days before the mob went for JK Rowling, another colleague observed that the one point of reference that all the new students had was probably Harry Potter. “They’re coming for the Hogwarts experience,” he noted. “Why not just let them have it?”

Why not, indeed? You don’t need to cast a spell to keep the magic alive: all you have to do is encourage people to look smart, sit on a bench, eat a meal, and enjoy each other’s company. Oh, and leave the virtue-signalling at the door.