THE "FUN" OF THE UNDERGRADUATES.

Waikato Times, Volume VIII, Issue 416, 14 January 1875, Page 3

THE "FUN " OF THE UNDERGRADUATES.

Oxford Commemoration brought out a good nmster of undergraduates in the galleries of the Sheldonitui Theatre, and judging by the reports, these young swells conducted themselves in a disgracefully boisterous manner. " For a livelong hour," one reporter says, " they literally pelted the unoffending crowd in the pit with chaff. The man with the eye-glass was peremptorily ordered to take it out ; gentlemen with blue or red ties were summoned vociferously to quit the building ; and any individual who was luckless enough to enter the building without doffing his. hat, at once was greeted with a volley of objurgation. The Dons whose duty it was to escort the ladies to their seats, were the special objects of undergraduate 'humour.' Tica^ after time, as they escorted a lady to her pik^ they were bidden, with stentorian shouts, 'not to -squeeze her hand.' and were admonished that their wives had their eyes upon them. Nor did the ladies escape scot free. Any lady whose personal charms, or still more the color of whose dress, attracted the notice of the nndergraduate mob, was welcomed with cheers for the lady in red. white or blue, as the case might be. Nor was the pelting which the pit sustained entirely of a verbal character. The gods above kept up a fire of pellets of paper aimed at any bald head which served for a target ; and 1 on one or more occasion they shied down half-pennies and oranges. However, the pleasure of pelting palls, like aU other pleasures, after a time, and the undergraduates beguiled the hour of waiting by stamping, hooting, cheering, singing I snatches of " He's a jolly good fellow," and gene-, rally making as much noise as possible * > *'. At a quarter past twelve, the Vice-Chancellor, preceded by the, proctors and *the bull- dogs, and followed by the heads of houses, advanced along a passage made- through the crowd, and took his' seat in the raised chair at the east end of the building. Dr. Liddell, who is Vice-Chancellor for the year, is well fitted by his stately air and presence to fill the position of the chairman of such a gathering as this, but he was manifestly annoyed at the constant interruptions with which he, in common with all the other speakers, was greeted by the students in the gallery. Whenever they began shouting he stopped speaking, and the more he stopped the more "the lads shouted ; so that, if there was not a natural limit to the power of shouting possessed even by youthful throats, the Ensecnia would never have been brought to a close. By a series of broken sentences, stopped every minute by shouts of "Speak up 1" « Make haste 1" " Cut it short 1" and so forth, the Vice-Chancellor informed the audience that this convocation had been called together for the purpose of admitting to the degree of Doctor of Law, Mr. Justice Mellish, Sir Garnet "Wolsley, Sir Erskine May, and Professor Carus." Another reporter says :—": — " The whole Commemoration scene was one brutal and disgraceful riot. The ruffianly blackguardism was continued) literally without one mo/ment's pause to the very end of the ceremony of conferring the degree. Not one word was the ViceChancellor allowed to say without the grossest and most brutal interruptions."