The Tab’s Guide to the Goldrush

An erotic fever is sweeping the streets of Oxford.

Post-trashed finalists are drinking and going out for the first time in months. They only have three or four weeks of student-hood to savour for the rest of their lives.

They are feverish with excitement. Their inhibitions have been left in Exam Schools. They are burning with desire.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Goldrush.

In the dreamy post-exams haze, between fifth week and the end of term, those coming to terms with the end of student life face several daunting questions.

Will I meet people after Oxford?

How will I talk to people without being able to fall back on common student cliches?

Are my best romantic hopes mere office Christmas parties, and Tinder scraps?

How many years/weeks after I leave will it be acceptable to stop going to Bridge?

Normally, Oxford’s integrated college structure and small-town social scene means that gossip spreads like wildfire. People can’t go about their private business without their respective college’s Gossiping Illuminati spreading the information to every corner of JCRs and societies.

The effect of this is that Oxford lends itself to a conservative eroticism. With the knowledge that everyone will know about anything you do, and will be discussing it before you’ve even finished the act, experimentalism is in short supply.

Not so in the Goldrush.

A man, worn out from the Goldrush

The usual romantic paradigm of small talk in the Rad Cam, pleasantries in the Missing Bean, and then artificial drunken flirting in smoking areas, has gone out the window.

There were reports surfacing on several blogs early in 5^th week that Tinder had crashed in the Thames Valley Area with the onset of the Goldrush. Swipe-right ratios had tripled.

Anuba is overflowing with hormones by 10.05pm every night. There are rumours surfacing that crewdates do not last more than ten minutes before full-on orgies immediately break out, wreaking havoc with Arzoo’s health & safety standards.

Regent Park’s Ball in 7th Week has the name ‘Final Fling’

Reading the various amateur analyses of the Goldrush on various student websites, the conventional wisdom is that people are motivated by an explicit desire to find a boyfriend/girlfriend before they leave.

But this would be to read far too much rational choice and coherence to participants’ behaviour. This is little measured or calculated about people’s decisions in the month of the Goldrush (which is being proposed to Parliament to replace the month of ‘June’, although progress is slow).

Like any socio-cultural phenomenon, the Goldrush has its dangers. The ‘Goldrash’ is what you’ll get if you don’t take sexual health seriously.

Important to know though, is that the ‘Rush is not just limited to these three weeks of the year. Here at the Tab we have done some research into the different Goldrush types throughout the year.

Proto-Goldrush

The Proto-Goldrush was an embryonic form of the real Goldrush, and it happens towards the end of Hilary term. The prospect of a few months hard revision and sexual frustration in the diary made people look not for a ‘Final Fling’, but for a ‘Penultimate Fling’, before library living begins.

As phenomena, the Proto-Goldrush and the real Goldrush are very much two sides of the same dirty coin. The Proto- form only displays minor hints at what the real Goldrush features a few months later.

In this respect, it is but a teasing trailer for the authentic experience to come.

Neo-Goldrush

The Neo-Goldrush is a revisionist form of the Goldrush, occuring around the start of the following Michaelmas term, but crucially before Freshers’ Week.

Freshers’ Week is infamously inhibited and conservative for the Lotharios and Lothariannes of Oxford, despite its reputation.

But turn up a few days or weeks before that nervous, disorientating week to settle into your new house or lodgings, and you may see whispers or glints of a Neo-Goldrush on offer.

No-one has come back yet. The judgemental eyes of a JCR are nowhere to be seen. Who has to know?

(N.B. While the normal Goldrush seems to primarily be a psychological release, the Proto- and Neo-Goldrush are a lot more about anxiety and fear).

Xeno-Goldrush

The Xeno-Goldrush is a special case, and is the label scholars use to refer to Goldrush elements which happen around the world at many different times (xenos (Greek): ‘other’ or ‘alien’).

Any time, any place – if you bump into an old acquaintance for one night while travelling and are leaving that country the next morning, or see your ex-Roppongi romance while doing an internship weekend away at a Holiday Inn off the M3 – you don’t need me to point out the obvious ‘Rush potential.

Whether the Xeno- form of the Goldrush shows that it is a globalized trend is a question that is beyond the scope of this current investigation, but points the way for future analysis.