Co-residents at Oxford
Sir The present experiment in co-residence between the sexes at five Oxford colleges constitutes a wholly unacceptable threat to the traditional pattern of an Oxford education. The vast majority of students are opposed to it, because they enjoy and thrive on the spirit of good comradeship, which 'a manly environment fosters. In a survey I conducted at Oxford last term, amongst nearly a thousand students, 77 per cent of undergraduates and 69 per cent of. postgraduates declared themselves against Co‘residence in this university in any form whatsoever. . In a 6-residential hall or. college people are judged solely in sexual terms; a man'sacceptance or rejection being • determined by his attractiveness to the opposite _sex, regardless of his intellectual and moral qualities. This is a • disturbing and unpalatable fact, which. may shock.many and .surprise most, and which is all too often ignored by those responsible for-students.
Until now, Oxford, with its splendid tradition' and .unashamed cultivation of the manly, character-building 'sports. has not been stricken_ by the creeping cancer of decadence t6 the same extent as other places. There is ample evidence, however, that co-residence. and the simultaneous rise of petticoat' Power within the university, are now destroying our magnificent heritage of col•
lege-based sport. .
The co-residential. experiment is symptomatic of the way in which the Oxford way of life is being attacked by a tiny minority of saboteurs, who seek to alter the fundamental institutional . character of our university. Co-residence is being spear-headed an effete.
gaggle of long-haired junior dons of uncertain sex and doubtful academic pretensions. It is being forced through by a handful of the more gullible senior dons and student bureaucrats, whose rhetoric is the sullen taciturnity born of dogmatism. Some of them are members of Communist organisations, and many are the unwitting dupes of cultural forces beyond our walls, whose subversive motives are successfully camouflaged in the colours of liberal reform.
The vast majority of Oxford students and teachers do not want any part in the co-residential farce. We feel thus because we like the present system of single-sex colleges, which works well. Because we like it, we see no reason to change it. If change is forced upon us, we will fight that change, and we will defeat it. Geoffrey O'Brien Balliol College, Oxford
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