"'Admittance Is Not The Same As Acceptance': Classism, Oxford & Me"

June 15, 2022 3:12 AM

Article by novelist Louisa Reid about her time at Oxford University in the 1990s. In an interview, The Poet author Louisa Reid: Posh boys have "learned how to make privilege hot", Reid talks about class, her novel in poetry, Charlotte Mew, the lack of women's writing on A level syllabuses, poetry in prisons, and, in passing, The Archers.
posted by paduasoy (19 comments total)

What an odd article, but an interesting read. I nearly got whiplash from the final paragraph, in which the author declares how good her Oxford education was really.

As someone who briefly attended the other blue university, and had had what sounds like a strikingly similar childhood to the author up to that point, none of her university experience sounds very familiar. I suppose it depends who you mix with? This is not to deny the validity of the criticism; simply to recognise that if it’s possible to spend a year there and not have the same experience, then such behaviour can’t be all-pervasive.
posted by breakfast burrito at 4:10 AM on June 15, 2022

PLEBSOC FTW!
posted by lalochezia at 5:12 AM on June 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

I was also an Oxford undergrad in the 90s, and this checks out if my own experience is anything to go by.

The final hedging (and the reassurances that you can be a nice person from private school) are meant to pre empt accusations of sour grapes, I suspect.
posted by Ballad of Peckham Rye at 6:17 AM on June 15, 2022 [3 favorites]

> none of her university experience sounds very familiar. I suppose it depends who you mix with?

I guess so. I think the culture varies quite a lot from one college to another, too.
posted by vincebowdren at 6:39 AM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

Considering Andrew Sullivan—Irish Catholic, LMC and gay— was there 10 years earlier, I’d say she had a fairly easy time.
posted by Ideefixe at 7:08 AM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

Admittance but not acceptance was definitely my ivy league experience. Plus, I was reminded on numerous occasions that women has only been allowed to attend a mere 17 years earlier, and only then to make it easier for the men of privilege to get laid. Not shockingly, I met so many rich but mediocre students there, mostly men.

Recently, I had surgery at Stanford hospital. Though I am incredibly grateful for the skill of the surgeons and the incredible kindness and care of the nursing staff, they also made me drive 120 miles to get a covid test the night before, because a nose swab from anywhere else was just not good enough (wtf).

Admittance is not acceptance, but also, arrogance is not excellence.
posted by birdsongster at 8:23 AM on June 15, 2022 [3 favorites]

“Admittance Is Not The Same As Acceptance”: Classism, Oxford & Me

Sentence about Oxford needs Oxford comma, film at eleven.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:26 AM on June 15, 2022 [8 favorites]

It took me an hour to realize that her job stacking frozen food in Iceland, during which I pondered quite a lot about how a Mancunian teenager had ended up working in a grocery store in my homeland in the early 90s, referred to the British supermarket chain.
posted by Kattullus at 8:58 AM on June 15, 2022 [5 favorites]

On the Iceland thing, it's also important to note that supermarkets are class markers in the UK. Iceland is definitely working class, with perhaps some lower-middle class shoppers. It sells mainly frozen food (hence the name) and is the opposite of aspirational. As a contrast, Aldi and Lidl are known for being inexpensive but middle class people will advertise that they shop there.

I suspect you could have her experience of irritating posh students at Exeter, Durham, Bristol, and Newcastle universities as well as Oxbridge if you picked the wrong halls of residence. You could have had it at Birmingham University in the 1990s and that has never been fashionably with ex-public school pupils. And lecturers at redbricks could be similarly dismissive of people with strong regional accents. I went on an accepted students overnighter at a college at the other blue university and met someone who had been to Winchester. Nice bloke, not at all the type described in the article, but then my uni subject was always one for the geeks. Basically, it's not Oxbridge that's necessarily the problem.
posted by plonkee at 11:15 AM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

Had I been bred with the sociopathic belief that privilege was mine by right, maybe I’d have stuck two fingers up at that opinion. that " “You’ve never lived up to your potential.” Those words were the parting shot fired by one of my tutors just before I took my finals."

This is the only line that gets me negatively. I mean putting that much on a tutor without any ability to self-reflect (is it true, did I try/work hard, did I sabotage or surpass my potential, was it taken from me, did I do something more important?) by the time you are 18-20 years old. I think that's a derth of self-confidence. But to assume the only options are 'sociopathically ingnoring' or 'blithely accepting', - that's just depressing.

Based on the last paragraph, she has learned that. I wish she would have had something to say about that realization. Though I have to say that even if she had, her overall point "admittance is not acceptance" would still hold true.

As a contrast, Aldi and Lidl are known for being inexpensive but middle class people will advertise that they shop there.
Supermarkets are class markers in the US too, and though class markers are weaker than the UK (I guess, no 1st hand experience) Aldi is considered a lower than middle class grocery store.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:34 AM on June 15, 2022

I went to Oxford from a comprehensive school (in the south of England) a few years after her, and didn't have similar experiences at all. I found my niche and occupied it quite happily. There were some posh boys around, some of them quite mediocre, others highly intelligent.
posted by altolinguistic at 11:36 AM on June 15, 2022

I read a handful of chapters of her book Lies Like Love to try to get a sense of what her interior voice might be like, and found her to be very talented indeed, easily capable of sounding the emotional depths, and so dark that I was afraid to keep reading.
posted by jamjam at 1:28 PM on June 15, 2022

Basically, it's not Oxbridge that's necessarily the problem.

Eh. I only saw it as a visiting graduate student, so way out of the mainstream of student culture, but--as someone who was visiting from the US equivalent--I was pretty shocked by how comfortable people were with being openly hierarchical. Like, Harvard and Yale's housing systems are supposedly modeled on Oxbridge's, but there aren't "rich" and "poor" residential colleges/houses! At least within the structures of the university itself, all students are equal. That's not the end of the story, of course, as the students do go out of their way to recreate their own little social structures in various noxious ways, but at least it's not baked into the fabric of the universities. And as gross as Skull & Bones and its ilk are, the open shitheelery and naked contempt for everyone not their kind of the Bullingdon just doesn't have an equivalent.
posted by praemunire at 2:36 PM on June 15, 2022 [6 favorites]

as someone who was visiting from the US equivalent--I was pretty shocked by how comfortable people were with being openly hierarchical. Like, Harvard and Yale's housing systems are supposedly modeled on Oxbridge's, but there aren't "rich" and "poor" residential colleges/houses! At least within the structures of the university itself, all students are equal.

Yeah, my experience at a US ivy was more that people just ...sort of assumed richness on everyone's part? None of the rich kids were scouting out subtle or unsubtle socioeconomic divisions; that calculus is what you do when you AREN'T rich, and have to figure out who is, so you don't get in over your head on the bar tab or accidentally agree to do a spring break on a yacht in the Mediterranean. (Friend: all you need to pay for is the airfare though! Really, Eric? That's all? LOL.)

honestly the line that caught my eye was that apparently nobody had cauliflower crudites in 1994? which...that truly must be a UK thing, because cauliflower/broccoli/carrot crudites were errrrrrrverywhere when I was growing up in the 80s/90s.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 6:51 AM on June 16, 2022 [4 favorites]

Like, Harvard and Yale's housing systems are supposedly modeled on Oxbridge's, but there aren't "rich" and "poor" residential colleges/houses! At least within the structures of the university itself, all students are equal.

I'm not sure I understand. There are very real differences between individual Oxford/Cambridge/Durham colleges, depending on their wealth, whether they are former women's colleges, which parts of the university they are close to, what kind of reputation they have built up (eg Kings College, Cambridge is known for being leftie and state school friendly despite being a very old foundation). Some college have a much higher proportion of private school educated students than others. This may or may not mean they have a higher proportion of very posh students (there are more normal private schools as well as places like Eton.)

Even in other British universities which don't have the same kind of collegiate structure, can have a wide variation in their halls of residence. There can be differentiation on price, features, location. There is often a particular hall which is attractive to ex-public or boarding school pupils.

The privileges and advantages that accrue to public school pupils are real. Going to Oxbridge doesn't by itself give you access to all of those advantages. This is, in my understanding, similar to Harvard and Yale not giving you identical advantages to someone who also went to a New England prep school. Also, at many universities in the UK there are groups of former public school pupils who basically don't really mix with more typical students, including those who went to other kinds of private schools. This really isn't limited to Oxbridge - one of the most popular universities with the boarding school crowd is Newcastle. It's a great place but the city is not exactly renowned as a bastion of privilege.
posted by plonkee at 7:05 AM on June 16, 2022

honestly the line that caught my eye was that apparently nobody had cauliflower crudites in 1994? which...that truly must be a UK thing, because cauliflower/broccoli/carrot crudites were errrrrrrverywhere when I was growing up in the 80s/90s.

I'm lower-to-middle middle class and British, I've never been served cauliflower or broccoli crudites, although, I'd say that bell peppers, carrots and cucumbers with dips would be eaten by middle and working class people nowadays and are not class markers in and of themselves (although the choice of dips can be, as captured in some excellent Catherine Tate 'posh people' sketches). I have no insight into what upper class people eat.
posted by plonkee at 7:10 AM on June 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure I understand.

I'm not sure what you don't understand? There are no redbrick residential colleges (Yale) or Houses (Harvard). There's not an equivalent term. The residential buildings vary a bit, but are generally built to the same standard and, for each group built at the same time, the same style. There used to be some social sorting, but assignments were randomized in the 80s(?), which busted that up. Almost all instruction is offered by the university, not the residential colleges/Houses. So you are not automatically allocated greater or lesser resources through and with the blessing of the institution itself.

I understand the historical reasons for the Oxbridge setup, but I consider it thoroughly unfit for a democratic society, and a contributor to the continuing ruling of the UK largely by a small circle of upper-class twits.
posted by praemunire at 9:11 AM on June 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

(although the choice of dips can be, as captured in some excellent Catherine Tate 'posh people' sketches

Ha those are good! They even hit on Iceland the grocery store mentioned. Catherine Tate - Posh Family driving , egg race, and deadly yogurt

baking and dangerously low on supplies
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:11 AM on June 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

I understand the historical reasons for the Oxbridge setup, but I consider it thoroughly unfit for a democratic society, and a contributor to the continuing ruling of the UK largely by a small circle of upper-class twits.

The problem in Britain is not that Oxbridge colleges perpetuate the elite by denying resources to undergraduate students at Oxford or Cambridge University based on their choice of college. The problem is that access to power is disproportionately given to Oxbridge students who are already part of the elite by virtue of their family background and exemplified by their prior attendance at a public school. Even if all Oxford colleges had access to identical pots of money, men* who went to Eton, Harrow, or Winchester and then attended Oxford would still be overrepresented in the ruling elite - and that is the fundamental problem.

The majority of students at St John's, Oxford and the other wealthy Oxbridge colleges attended state schools. In fact, St John's accepts a higher proportion of students from less advantaged areas than the University's average. Going to a richer college rather than a less wealthy college doesn't seem to make a difference to them.

Similarly, Oxbridge are not outliers in the proportion of privately educated students they admit. Edinburgh, Durham, St Andrews, Exeter, Imperial, LSE and UCL all have been 32% and 38% private school admits. Oxford has 38% and Cambridge 32%. A former polytechnic has nearly 30% private school admits.

*The three schools I listed are boys schools.
posted by plonkee at 9:45 AM on June 16, 2022 [2 favorites]