Quite apart from our academic work, students at Oxford University lead a life very different to that of students at other institutions, a fact which some of us seem more aware of than others. Porters who are available 24/7, kitchen staff who not only cook but serve food multiple times a day, and scouts who clean your rooms are not regular parts of the university experience, however hard it may be for some to imagine fitting scrubbing the bathroom floor into their daily schedule. For many, both from outside and within the University, this system is just another reason to regard Oxford students with a certain degree of moral distrust, and it’s not hard to see why. Surely, being treated like overprivileged boarding school children will only lead to the production of entitled students lacking in the ability to take responsibility and look after themselves, exacerbating such traits within those who have already been raised in this way.
Indeed, the system of services provided by the University was embedded exactly for the kind of people such critics would hold in disdain. The Oxford cohort of the 19th and early 20th century was almost entirely made up of men from the landed gentry and clergy; it was therefore necessary that the services provided by the University matched those that these young men had been accustomed to during their childhood. Cultural depictions of Oxford life before the 21st century, such as in Evelyn Waugh’s classic Oxford novel Brideshead Revisited, show these men in all their self-assurance, lording it over the menial labourers who are so clearly seen as belonging to a different world. Luckily, most of us have now moved away from such reprehensible treatment of those who work for our colleges, and from such discreditable attitudes towards class division. Do we then have nothing to learn from the past as regards the university’s workforce?
While I don’t pretend to harbour much nostalgia for the English culture of previous centuries, I do believe that we miss something when we view our changing treatment of our staff as merely another part of an abstract social progression. The fact is that the standard relationship between the Oxford student and the staff they interact with on a regular basis is still riddled with problems, despite the greater levels of respect, politeness, and appreciation we hopefully hold ourselves to. Fundamentally, this is because there is really no relationship at all. How many of us know the names of the kitchen staff, porters, or scouts of our colleges? And no – knowing the names of the people who run your college bar in an attempt to curry favour does not count. These staff, so deeply integral to the running of our communities, often slip into the cracks of both the everyday and the incidental. A friend who had a slight mishap with her dinner recently after a night out, for example, had to discuss her actions only with the college dean, and did not have to apologise to or even acknowledge those who had to clean up after her, a clear display of the blatant disregard we often show for our responsibilities towards our staff.
At the same time, not only do we owe something to those who serve us, but we often forget what they can do for us, outside of what we consider to be their jobs. Maybe we shouldn’t think only about the fact that we are provided with people who cook our food, deal with us losing our keys, and tidy our piles of paper, but more about the resource of being surrounded by those who might genuinely understand the specific problems of every-day Oxford life. These people have truly seen it all, and do not deserve to be treated as outsiders; they might be the biggest insiders around. When it comes to the staff who enter our rooms, I believe we can in fact learn something from stories of old, both the real and the fictional.
An article published by the University of Cambridge titled ‘The bedders’ story’ interviews Lilian Runham, a veteran ‘bedder’ (the Cambridge equivalent of the Oxford scout) who describes the motherly relationship fostered by the regular visits to a student’s room and by the relaxed rules and regulations that were once a part of the system. For Runham, this consistent contact created a high degree of comfort and intimacy between bedder and student. Bedders would often be the first to notice signs of stress, illness, or homesickness, and the students she helped would often talk to her about their problems. On the other side, 20th Century books such as Brideshead Revisited may not quite depict relationships of affection, but the interactions between students and staff, such as the frankly expressed irritation of Charles’s scout regarding his behaviour and the state of his room, sometimes seem preferable to the culture of boundaries we find ourselves so accustomed to. True, we might object to the idea of institutional moral policing that is betrayed in Lunt’s comments to Charles, but this practise is at the same time suggestive of a culture that admits that the staff around us are enough a part of our community that they might help and guide us just as much as our friends or our family back home.
I am not suggesting that you befriend those in the practise of talking to their toy bear, fall in love with two siblings, or in any other way emulate Waugh’s Oxonian protagonist, but I am asking that we all question the limited number of interactions beyond pleasantries that we have with the workforce of this university. This is, or should be, a community, but it cannot be until we treat every member of it as if they are truly part of our lives, and learn to remember that we are a part of theirs.
