No Campus, No Student ID: Am I Really at Oxford?
Oxford University has no campus. The colleges and their sports grounds, the faculty buildings, Examination School, administrative buildings, and libraries are peppered across the city of Oxford. Even some of the houses are owned by colleges and used to provide accommodation for their students. Oxford University is an idea with no physical location, other than, in the most general sense, the city of Oxford itself. Despite knowing this, I still have an inextinguishable desire to find Oxford.
Going to the Bodleian Library
If I were to stick a pin in the map of Oxford to show where the university is, I would put it right in the center of Radcliffe Camera. And, in fact, when you put Oxford, UK, into Google maps, it shows you a picture of Radcliffe Camera. Radcliffe Camera is the round, domed Palladian-style Oxford undergraduate library that requires a Bodleian Library card to enter it. It is located at the center of Radcliffe Square and surrounded by the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin on the south, All Souls and Brasenose Colleges on the east and west, respectively, and the Bodleian Library on the north.
I describe my trip to the Bodleian Library during Nought week in a letter to my mother, dated October 8, 1986: “The other academic thing that I did was I went to the Bodleian Library to get my reader’s card. In order to do this, I had to wear my gown because the issuing of a library card is a formal occasion during which you are required to read a solemn oath promising not to deface the books. My gown is long, sleeveless, open down the front with two long streamers hanging from my shoulders. It resembles a black choir robe or graduation gown. Nobody looked at me as I walked down the street, but when I turned into the Bodleian courtyard, there was a large group of tourists. I could hear the shutters snapping away as I rushed to the Schola Musicae entrance with gown billowing behind me.” They were not taking a picture of me as an individual; they were taking a picture of Oxford. It was my first experience of being a symbolic representation of Oxford University.
The Bodleian reader’s card was the closest thing to a student ID that Oxford had to offer. However, you did not have to be a member of the university to get a reader’s card. Anybody with an academic affiliation and a demonstrated need to use the research materials could apply for one. So the Bodleian card was not evidence that I was a student at Oxford. The only thing that made me a student at Oxford was the matriculation ceremony (see Oxford before Laptops, Cellphones, and Internet) and I had nothing to show that had ever happened (though the college had a record of it). The ability to discern who belongs to the university and who does not is a murky situation—although I suspect that only insiders realize this.
I Can’t Believe I Am Here
While I had no doubt that I was truly a student at Oxford, there was a feeling for which no word exists in English. It is the feeling that a person has when they get something that they want more than anything in the world and that they thought would be impossible to get. Whether it is the prestigious university of your dreams, the high-paying job at a major company, or the beautiful person who agrees to marry you, the feeling is the same—miraculous awe, disbelief, then joyous acceptance. This is the state of mind of most Freshers coming up to Oxford. But it is not restricted to Oxford. I have seen the same feeling in my freshman students at Clemson University.
Hand in hand with this feeling was the conviction that it was only by the grace of God that I was at Oxford. I did not think that I had gotten into Oxford on my own merits, even though I had a perfect score on the verbal part of the Graduate Record Exam (GRE), which I also attributed to God’s grace. This attitude was pervasive among the students I knew Oxford. However, there were some students who had gotten into Oxford for another reason. As I explained to my mother, “I met an American engineering student who was working on his D.Phil. [the same as a PhD] and was an interesting case; his father had gotten his D.Phil. at Oxford some years ago. A Canadian woman who I met was also a ‘legacy’, that is, she got in [to Oxford] because her father did his D.Phil. at Keble.” I am sorry for those students in the sense that they experienced “entitlement” and not the euphoria of having one’s prayer answered.
Everything so far in the newsletters has been an introduction to Oxford. Next week is the first week of Michaelmas Term. I’ll see you then.