At Wadham’s Student Union meeting last Sunday, a motion proposing the restoration of formal hall was voted in, after the event name was changed to ‘guest night.’
The original motion, proposed by Matthew Burnett and Ali Hazrati, called for a weekly formal event on Friday nights, with the wearing of gowns encouraged but remaining optional. “The impetus for this motion was the general dissatisfaction with college hall, especially in regard to the lack of special occasions to which we could invite our friends and family. A large majority of students share this dissatisfaction,” Hazrati said.
After substantial amendments, the motion was passed. The new motion laid out plans for the creation of a weekly three-course guest night, priced between £10 and £15, with no specific dress requirement.
A heated discussion took place as students took issue with the suggested dress code. Wadham’s Access Officer Loukia Koumi said, “I think it is very important that gowns are not introduced as dress code (optional or not) as we are the only college who does without them entirely and this fact contributes greatly to our college ethos and helps us to portray the accurate image of a liberal and progressive college, which is so important from an Access point of view.”
Tom Clarke, who suggested the amendments to the motion, said, “Less legitimate, in my opinion, was the objection based on maintaining Wadham’s uniqueness. A lot of people like the idea of their college being the special one and this is very true of Wadham students. This point in itself seems quite petty.
“We shouldn’t want our college to be an arbitrarily different environment. We should just want it to be a positive environment,” he continued.
The inflated dinner cost also caused concerns about the event becoming exclusive.
Emily Cousens, an ex-Access Officer of Wadham, calculated the impact of such a price rise, “A weekly dinner of £10 in hall has the effect of pricing people out of hall by increasing the termly cost of Friday meals by almost £66. This is a significant amount of money for most people. The price and quality distinction ruins the sense of community by imposing a heirarchy between hall and our earlier dinner sittings in the refectory. Establishing a day every week where only rich students can have the privilege of eating in a beautiful, historic hall goes too far.”
However, second-year classicist Tom Clarke suggested that it might benefit those on a tighter budget. “It is difficult to imagine anyone who is eligible for a student loan not being able to afford an extra £6.50 once every few weeks. Everyone eats out a few times a term and £10 doesn’t go very far in Nandos. These same students were simply being given the chance to vote on whether or not they would like to spend those ten pounds in hall instead of Nandos. Sharing a three-course meal of good food, cooked for you by excellent chefs, with your friends, for £10, is absolutely impossible outside of college. It is exactly the people on a tight budget that this sort of thing would be most beneficial to,” he said.
The amended motion passed with around one-third of students voting against and two-thirds voting in favour.
