I think one of the fundamental problems with being in Oxford as long as I have (seven and a half years and counting) is that it is very easy for cynicism to sap away at one's naive enthusiasm about the university and its institutions. A case in point, yesterday, an underdog Oxford crew powered to victory over Cambridge in the annual Boat Race.
Prefacing all of this with a caveat: I am of course aware that getting a place in the first boat is a tremendous achievement, requiring a level of commitment, endurance and tenacity that I frankly fail to summon up most days in the library. Similarly, the few Blues rowers that I have met have all been pleasant, nice, and down-to-earth people who have to balance a punishing training regime with all the commitments a degree at Oxford inflicts. I honestly don't know how they manage it. What follows is in fact unconnected to the teams that row in the race.
Putting that aside for a second, though, there are reasons why I can't get as excited about Oxford winning this year's race as I might have done in the past. Firstly, I'm a little uncomfortable at the fact that the boat race is one of the most visible and well-known spectacles that the two universities are involved in. For a great number of people, one of the only concrete images that come to mind when either 'Oxford' or 'Cambridge' is mentioned is the boat race. Sadly, rowing is also seen as one of the more genteel sports, an opinion which is perhaps reinforced by BBC coverage of this year's race which at one point highlighted the fact that Oriel College had ostensibly taken over a Thames-side pub to watch the race. One could argue this is no different to a group of local football supporters all converging on a pub to watch a match. I would counter, however, that very few such groups of supporters would fork out to have a team banner displayed over the front of the building.
Secondly, the very moniker of "the" boat race is somewhat questionable and masks a deep inequality. There isn't just one race. The reserve crews also race, as do the women's crews on the following day. This latter race, however, is not seen, remaining untelevised and largely unsponsored. Thus far, there's nothing here which doesn't mirror the inequality seen in other areas of the sporting world, where womens' sport remains largely ignored and unsupported. What is disturbing, however, is that to buy the equipment and fund the training for the women's boat, the participants themselves have to pay upwards of £1,500 out of their own pocket to make up for the dearth in sponsorship and external revenue sources (this latter point comes to me via anecdotal evidence - I would be delighted if anyone more in the know were able to dispel this evidence!). To put that in context, that's more than a term's rent which the university's elite female rowers have to raise simply so that they may take their place on the team. Whilst alumni, current students and even vaguely interested passers-by flock to the river to catch a glimpse of the men's crews drifting by, the women's boat is supported only by those in the know: friends, relatives and (I would sincerely hope) the men's crews.
The more I continue with this line of argument, the more I re-raise my fears of turning into Blake's miserable Urizen so I won't go any further. Suffice to say that the longer one stays in the same place, the harder it is to retain a sense of optomistic idealism about it. Oxford is no exception. It isn't difficult to unearth examples of the worrying inequalities which pervade this university. The University is constantly castigated in the media for them (occasionally justifiably, occasionally frivolously). The Boat Race is one of the few times when our presence on the nation's TV screens is set apart from such debates as our intake and the progression of academics within the institution. Yet even the University's highest-profile sporting event, if we look hard enough, betrays some of the same disparities which prevent Oxford from being an academic utopia of fairness.
The key lesson here is probably not to look hard, isn't it?
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