Dons & Dont’s

“IF you thought the hallowed quadrangles of Cambridge University echoed to nothing louder than earnest debate, think again.”

Sadly, we do not think that. For as long as Anorak can remember we have laboured under the impression that the university is a haven for Russian spies, luvvies and Prince Edward.

The Mail’s news that the Cambridge should be viewed by anyone as a bastion of earnest debate is the real shock.

But the story makes its pitch and sticks with it. And readers learn that the university is a sink of “high jinks – including brawling, theft and indecent exposure”.

The catalogue of crimes – the paper calls them “misdeeds” – features such heinous felonies as “being drunk in the library, food-throwing, stealing wine, flooding a study and rudeness to porters”.

Under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, the paper has discovered the levels to which this once great institution of learning has sunk.

At Trinity Hall three post-graduate students (social security for over-achievers) were fined £40 each for being under the influence in the library. Another was “ticked off” for “pinching” wine from the dons’ dining table.

The language might be arcane and not heard in public since Old Mr Anorak was rusticated for his part in the great suet pudding caper of 1927, but it is no less shocking for it.

The list of crimes goes on. And we advise anyone going up to Cambridge this September to think on. College is not all binge drinking, shagging and vandalism.

It’s quaffing, japes and mischief-making. Hurrah!

Posted: 23rd, August 2006 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink