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.