The most curious institution of Oxford, explained
I studied at Oxford. There, I said it. If that bothers you, feel free to stop reading.
Why it bothers people is another story entirely. The UK being the hot Eton mess of class that it still is, there's an assumption that you must have been "born with a silver spoon in your mouth" to have even dared consider studying there. This is no small matter: people have terminated conversations with me on learning my dark secret. Never mind that your intrepid reporter was not to the manor born, although privileged to be brought up in a house where the family came together of an evening to watch Newsnight and Question Time, the kind of programmes only Auntie Beeb could love, and heckled (an important subskill of critical thinking). In fact, I spent most of my three years in the dreaming spires being treated like a grubby oik by public school types, who could be distinguished by their wearing of proper coats that cost money and made them look like tubes, and their obvious ingestion of copious amounts of rather pricey drugs.
There's a lot of nonsense talked about Oxford, to be sure, but it's also a strange old place. Students at the university are regularly baffled by bizarre news - in 2001 it was that secretive all-fellows (no students) college All Souls was to hold its centennial "hunting the mallard" procession, commonly known as the Duck Dance. A closed ceremony, of course. But the old chestnut about attending exams in a full suit of armour (known as full fusc) entitling the wearee to a glass of sherry has long been discredited, and probably happened in Cambridge, where people are just plain weird.
No, in reality scholar's gowns, mortar boards, black ribbons/ white bow ties, dark suits and black shoes (sub fusc) are sensibly only worn for the university entrance ceremony (matriculation), graduation, public examinations (mods, prelims, finals), in-college examinations (collections), termly reports (er, collections), major public lectures and the evening meal (formal hall). Naturally there is an elaborate range of colourful sleeves, sashes, tassels and pompoms that denotes increasing seniority within the university system. Undergraduates traditionally do not wear their mortar boards until they have their first degree, so they are primarily used to keep pens in.
The frequency with which you are required to wear sub fusc depends to a huge amount on which college you go to, and I deliberately picked one where I'd need to dress like a penguin as little as possible. The differences between colleges form another important part of the system that is absolutely terrifying from afar, but soon becomes second nature. Your social life will largely revolve around your college, and as I chose to go to the most left-liberal of all of them (for what that's worth in Oxford), this meant regular 'Queer Bops' where the fellas would wear our clothes and we'd wear variations on very little. It was extremely important, at the end of every bop, that we played 'Free Nelson Mandela' and gave each other piggy-backs, even though by the time I got there Mandela was so free he was President. Oxford values nothing more than tradition, even when meaningless.
Coming tomorrow: tutes, beta plus plus minuses and the Bod.
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