Last week, a calm-before-the-storm feeling pervaded the cobbled streets and luscious  green quads of Oxford University — the jewel in the crown of this country’s world-renowned  reputation for academic excellence and rigour. There was a tense atmosphere ahead of the much anticipated address by gender-critical author Dr Kathleen Stock at the Oxford Union, following an unsuccessful campaign to de-platform her on the basis of her alleged desire to endanger the lives of trans people. Anyone who has engaged with or listened to Dr Stock would find this baffling, given her calm demeanour and record of being a life-long defender of women’s rights from the perspective of her own lesbian sexual identity.  

My journey to being cancelled, now unsuccessfully thanks to the bravery of this publication, began last year when I was forced to suspend studies just two terms into my first year as an undergraduate reading Theology and Religion at Christ Church, one of the University of Oxford’s most renowned colleges. I did so on medical grounds, after a pernicious campaign of vitriolic abuse both online and in person directed towards me by a large chunk of the student body at both my college and at the University as a whole that drove me to breaking point.  

The reason for this social ostracisation was that I had the temerity to be both a proudly gay man, and a Conservative. Within weeks of my arrival at Oxford, the supposed defenders of gay rights at, the Oxford University LGBT+ Society (an official student society in receipt of funding and protection by the official Student Union) had removed me from their WhatsApp group chat, after what I was told by one of the chat admins of two primary concerns that made me a supposed threat to the safety of other queer students.  

The first was that I was believed to be behind a leaking of screenshots that “doxxed”  queer students (I wasn’t and there is no evidence that I was). The second concern was that I was a relatively old fresher, at 25 years, due to several gap years travelling and working around the globe thus gaining more real-world experience than most bright-eyed freshers. It was never really explained to me why this was a problem — surely they didn’t believe that the potential for me to use the group chat as a means of flirting with students a few years my junior (which I never did) was problematic legally or otherwise? Furthermore, I need not talk  at much length about the self-evident hypocrisy of a society founded on the basis of ending  discrimination of queer students openly discriminating against me, a queer student, on the  basis of the oft-repeated concern for the “welfare” of these fragile young snowflakes.  

I am still enjoying my time away from Oxford after extending my period of suspension as a means of avoiding the hysterical air that has infected the university in recent months. I only go up to Oxford on occasion to see friends or, as I did so this past Tuesday, attend potentially historic events at the Oxford Union. This, I believe, has given me a somewhat unique perspective on the University’s current woes due to pernicious jiggery-wokery being weaponised by an extremely vocal but small minority of the student population.  

I have, ever since the Union’s announcement of Dr Stock’s visit to its hallowed chamber, had the temerity to unreservedly and repeatedly defend both the Union’s right to platform her, and her, I believe, completely sensible gender-critical view points. After the event, unsuccessfully cancelled even by a hysterical eccentric gluing themselves to the stage and the braying and screeching nose-pierced mob outside the gates, I posted a triumphantly toned tweet in which I used the terms “blue haired trans-loonies” and, to describe the Oxford  LGBT+ society, “Oxford woke mafiosos” (which I think is quite justified given what I have  outlined in this preface).  

For this crime of exercising my right to freedom of expression, the Cherwell  newspaper u-turned on their promise to publish my piece on Oxford admissions interviews which you can now read in full below.

* * *

As I noted in Cherwell when I was placed #29 on the 2022 BNOC list, I have applied to Oxford six times. On three of those occasions, I was interviewed in person in Oxford: at Magdalen, Exeter and Harris Manchester Colleges. You might think I would look back on these years with regret, as I was only made an offer after interviews on Microsoft Teams at Christ Church in the winter of 2020. However, in a peculiar sense, I have fonder memories of my unsuccessful applications to Oxford than my lone successful one.

Why might this be? Because the (genuine, in-person) Oxford interview is a treasured part not just of this university’s but the country’s cultural heritage, that offers my recollections not just nostalgic platitudes on which to metaphorically dance upon, but actual usable lessons about Oxford life that have been immensely valuable in my time since being an actual rather than an aspiring student of this place.

What are these lessons? Let’s consider them here.

Firstly, the whole point of the Oxford interview is to simulate the circumstances and atmosphere of a tutorial. Lest there be another pandemic, our tutorials are not in most instances taking place online, and there are many obvious and other unobvious reasons as to why the dynamics of a two-way discussion may vastly differ when online as opposed to in person. Off the top of my head, some ways in which the two cannot be compared like-for-like are as follows.

For one is that it is far easier to conceal lethargy and inadequacy in the online arena — given that we are mostly under the teaching of tech-illiterate boomers, it is far too easy for many of us (including myself at several points during my degree, I must admit) to commit an act of False Flag accusatory terrorism on our unsuspecting MacBooks. “I’m sorry I’m late, my laptop froze” is a much easier excuse to pass off than the truth, which is that you are suffering from the unfortunate combination of being both still drunk and hungover from your visit to Bridge the night before — something which is far less easily explained when sat in a dusty room, still ensconced by that oh-so-recognisable Jäger-bomb-de-parfum in front of a tutor with two teenage kids who knows precisely what’s up. But forget about honesty in academia for at least a minute (which I presume most of you won’t find particularly difficult) and consider what is lost through a Teams call. Half of your body language is cropped by the camera; the nuances of your facial expressions are blurred by the degree to which the coalition government invested in fibre optic broadband in your particular postcode over 10 years ago. It is simply not an accurate representation of yourself — it is a pixelated caricature of who you wish to present yourself as with varying degrees of success based upon your own degree of technical knowledge and ego centric abilities.

Given these uncomfortable facts of modern life, the unilateral move to online interviews risks tutors making the wrong decisions about who is a good fit for this university’s method of teaching. Furthermore, much has also been already made about the disparities in access to the appropriate equipment across schools in this country, and I don’t wish to dwell on that as others have put it more eloquently that I can, but it is worth remarking upon nonetheless.

Returning to the value of the in-person interviews themselves, there are a number of things I feel it necessary to touch upon about those experiences that I feel to this day positively enriched my life, even if I hadn’t continued to pursue an undergraduate degree here and never became an Oxford student, but nonetheless were immeasurably valuable in preparing me for life as an Oxonian. Getting a room in college, going to hall, hanging out in the JCR, and going on group tours of the city all gave prospective applicants a real sense of the character of any given college and indeed the university in a way that a short stop on an open day (or indeed any “Offer Holder’s Open Day” as is now proposed as some sort of cure-all for the issues that I have presented here) never will. I have several friends who either took solace in an Oxford rejection because their experience at interviews wasn’t one they particularly enjoyed, or even some who received offers but turned them down because they knew, having essentially been an on-site student for three or four days, that Oxford wasn’t for them.

On the positive side of this coin, should you receive an offer, having had the chance to meet some of your future classmates and go to G&Ds for ice cream or play pool with them, you are put at far more considerable ease before your arrival. What exists now, since Covid, and will exist going forward, is an anxiety-inducing wait to see what your college and its inhabitants are actually like, which happens after you have to decide whether you want to go or not.

Aside from this, there is a broader point I’d finally like to make about what the Oxford interview means in our culture. The act of schools sending their best and brightest up to Oxford every December to be trialled and tested is an almost fabled tradition in our nation’s story at this point. Are we really throwing away what made, for instance, Alan Bennett’s “The History Boys” such a compelling piece of art for millions both here and globally with such flippancy? This decision reeks of cultural vandalism, and I believe that those involved in the move have chosen expediency over the preservation of what makes Oxford, well, Oxford.

Taking the humanity out of the admissions process is beginning to take the humanity out of Oxford itself

A cavalier approach to rejecting or curtailing the traditions and customs that characterise an Oxford degree has risen precipitously in the past decade, to the point where the drip-drip of institutional unravelling is giving us, as a community, a sort of collective cultural tinnitus in which we are all increasingly irate about pretty much everything, pretty much all of the time. Taking the humanity out of the admissions process is beginning to take the humanity out of Oxford itself, and we are all worse off for it.

As Junior Common Rooms seem so willingly available to schedule motions of condemnation these days for pretty much any issue that causes even mild distress or discomfort to anyone, perhaps they could use their collective power to fight this measure. There are rumours of some sort of a rebellion against the change at Oriel, and good on them if so. Your college year group is only ever as good as the one that comes after it — so, for the sake of future freshers, please spare them this Covid-induced technological malaise that is set to plague this (at least currently) world-leading university for generations to come. Our tutors, as we all know, require a few nudges to accept responsibility for their duty towards us and towards the preservation of this great institution. So, nudge away.