“We’d Rather be at Oxford than St John’s”. Discuss.

If you live in Cambridge, have been to Cambridge, or have heard of Cambridge, you’ve likely heard the song.

If you have not, here is a brief reminder of the lyrics:

“We’d rather be at Oxford than St John’s,
We’d rather be at Oxford than St John’s,
We’d rather be at Oxford,
Oh we’d rather be at Oxford,
Oh we’d rather be at Oxford than St John’s.”

Does St John’s College truly deserve this ghastly reputation? Surely not. Being the hard-nosed, fearless investigative reporters that The Tab has always (or at least since this Michaelmas) been proud of, we in the debate section decided to get to the bottom of the issue.

(For reference, the Oxford version of this song is titled ‘I’d rather be a leper than a Tab’, and is inferior in a number of ways.)

CHRIS PIKE (Debate Editor at The Tab Oxford) knows nothing about St John’s College, and doesn’t really see the need to find out.

I’ve never been to Cambridge, and don’t really have any desire to go either.

As far as I can see, Cambridge is just a bizarre social experiment. Around a thousand years ago, a large group of posh people decided to go and set up a university in Oxford. The less socially capable of them found that living in an actual city among real people was too challenging, and so Cambridge was created, in a field a few miles down the road, so that posh people could frolic gaily amongst their own.

As a result, I’ve chosen to stay firmly in my university city and be around actual humans. I can’t tell you the first thing about St John’s College or why it is so hated among the student body of its own university. However, here are just five reasons to convince you why I’d definitely rather go to Oxford than St John’s.

1. John’s is in Cambridge: I think I’ve explained myself enough on this. I like human contact too much to go to John’s or any Tab college.

2. It’s hated by its own student body: Now I can’t help but feel that if members of the same university feel that John’s is an objectively shit college, there’s very little hope of anyone from rival universities thinking any better of it. Oxford is visited by tourists the world over who are all desperate to attend here. St John’s is scorned by people who study in almost identical establishments.

3. A quick glance at Wikipedia: “The college’s alumni include nine Nobel Prize winners, six prime ministers of various countries, three archbishops, at least two princes, and three Saints.” I get the feeling these guys don’t spend much time in Cindies, nor do they have very many friends.

4. Their fellows are the only non-royals allowed to eat unmarked mute swans: Oh do fuck off.

5. It’s actually quite beautiful: If there’s one thing that unites Oxford and Cambridge students, it’s our explicit hatred of any institution which manages to look nicer than our incredibly nice, 13th century college.

Oxford: “it’s so good, everyone left”.

XAVIER HETHERINGTON 

The reason Cambridge is meant to hate Oxford and vice versa is to show everyone else (especially Durham) how contemptibly short they fall in comparison to both. Only Oxford is worthy of mention by Cambridge and only Cambridge by Oxford, and that mention has to be nasty. At least, that’s the general idea. Of course, an opinion of that sort, farted out into the polite company of the wider world, is likely to merit the response: ‘What a c***!’. Quite so.

With what sphincter-loosening bafflement then would the gentle, non-cantab public observe the sneering bedevilment of St John’s by the other Cambridge colleges? Quite some sphincter-loosening bafflement is the answer. To know why St John’s is so reviled requires some insider knowledge.

The first thing to consider is that envy will always breed hatred. St John’s is the second richest college of the university and the second largest. It is beautiful and full of wild-life; I saw a swan in second court yesterday and was terrified by a heron on the paddock. It is academically lax enough (St John’s that is, not the heron) to permit the pursuit of other things but not to the extent that it suffers morons lightly (although it does).

But Trinity is larger, richer, arguably more beautiful, more prestigious academically etc. why should hoards of drunken youths not chant ‘I’d rather be at Oxford than Trinity?’ If envy were the sole motivator, perhaps they’d do just that. Although it doesn’t quite scan as well. But there must be something more. One informer, not to be named lest they mess him up, blames the history of St John’s rugby team – the Red Boys, which for many generations before my arrival was a powerful and influential force in college. These large men could be seen rumbling about college like fleshy tanks, incensed as bulls by the red which they themselves were wearing, unaware that they were at once the cause, agent and object of their own testosterone-laced rage. To speak to them was more a fool’s errand than a cycling tour of a Syria in a t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan “I Love NY”.

However, things have changed over the years. The Red Boys have evolved/devolved (according to whom you ask) into rather more civil types. Just the other day, I heard one call across the court to his friend : ‘Oh Ignatius, won’t you help me with my shoelace here!?’ And reports have been flying in recently of some rather stiff stamp-collection competitions bubbling up among the group.

So, with the historical cause of that most unpleasant chant now absent, it seems St John’s has become a good place to be. It still has the looks and the luxury of wealth, but without that terrible feral quality to its society which has cowed men of my stature for so long.

I haven’t explained why Oxford is bad because I didn’t feel I needed to.

Amen.

Better or worse than Oxford? You decide.