"SPINSTERISH DONS" AT OXFORD

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 28, 27 October 1937, Page 5

"SPINSTERISH DONS" AT OXFORD

-Press Assn.-

Wild Roysterings of Undergraduates CLASS SNOBBERY

(By Telegrapb-

-Copyright.)

(Eeceived 27, 8.45 a.m.) LONDON, Oct. 26. Undergraduate orgies at Oxford and tke effect of " spinsterisk dons" at women 's colleges are described by Mr Keitk Briant, last year's editor "of tke university magazine Isis. Mr Briant asserts tkat akout 20 per cent. of the girl 'students become unduly sopkisticated tbrougk their experiences with men while attending the university. He describes parties of equal numbers of undergraduates and undergraduettes and the even wilder roysterings confined to men. Mr Briant considers the wildness of undergraduattes is due to "spinster dons," who are rarely fit to be placed in absolute control of young women. The girls are expected to look and dress like pr^-war spinsters. If they are pretty and well-dressed and are asked to dances, they are regarded as an undesirable influence, and dances are considered immoral. For this reason students go to dubious river haunts and undesirable roadhouses. Mr Briant also denounces class snobbery. He says Oxford proctors are paid to snifE our romances between students and the so-called lower classes. One undergraduate who wished to marry an intelligent girl working in a bakery was threatened with expulsion, Mr Briant said. Thus Oxford had upheld the principle that working girls were as immoral as non-working girls are virtuous. "Mr Briant suffers^from a pre-oc-cupation with undergraduate morals from which most undergraduates are entirely free," deelares Mr George Edingcr, an Oxonian, in the Daily Sketch. "I know a youngster who spent -four years at Oxford and told me he did not hear sex mentioned. He is just as typical as Mr Briant 's drunken immorals. The truth ahout Oxford won't be written, first of all because it is impossible to generalise, secondly because it is uninteresting. "Nevertheless, the influx of women dons more closely in touch with the world would improve and humanise the women 's colleges. Oxford v?ants greater toleration in dealing with undergraduates, who aTe a normal crossseetion of the country."