You can’t have failed to notice the huge amount of media coverage The Tab has received recently. Massive outrage just because Cambridge students have decided to do something a little less pretentious, a little less stereotypical than the rest of the world would have us be. In any other university (well, except Oxford) having a tabloid edge to a student newspaper wouldn’t cause anywhere near this much controversy.
The Guardian, the Daily Mail, the Sun, all national newspapers: all felt that ‘Tab Totty’ was shocking enough to justify nationwide media coverage. Were those photos of a legal, consenting and over-age student in a bikini really so scandalous as to justify that? Hardly. I’ve seen worse on my Facebook news feed. Which leads to the inevitable conclusion that its because it was a Cambridge student in the bikini.
We’re just students. Normal, almost socially acceptable teenagers doing all the things that 19 year olds like to do on a daily basis. Yes we’re at a really good university, but why do the public assume we have to be a little bit weird, or a little lacking in social skills/ human contact to be here? Walk down Kings Parade and on any given day there’s hundreds of tourists crowding the streets, desperate to catch a glimpse of the elusive ‘Cambridge Student’, often seen cycling with textbooks in the basket, hurrying back to it’s normal habitat of the library. Now Cambridge is a nice place, and obviously they’re there because they want to see all the pretty buildings too but being gawked at by tourists because you accidentally wore college stash on your “can’t be bothered to dress up jeans and hoody day” is bad for the soul, while getting photos taken of you when you’re just out running errands is surely an invasion of some privacy right.
Tourists-sure, come visit, Cambridge the town loves that; we off those red tourist buses and everything- but don’t make the students feel like circus freaks. It’s bad enough having random members of the public wandering around the colleges which, though to them are just a novelty of the university, are our homes during term time. If you actually think about it, it’s really quite bizarre to have trip groups having a nosy round where we eat, sleep and shower.
But those who make the pilgrimage down here aren’t the only ones to subscribe to the Cambridge phenomena. Google ‘Cambridge myths’ and there’s 4,130,000 results. The University’s Wikipedia page even has a separate section devoted to them. Google ‘interview myths’ and you’ll find even more. Anyone not here builds up this mythological idea to such an extent that ‘Cambridge’ stops seeming like a real place. There’s an assumption that either we’re all posh twats who join secret societies to mock anyone without a country house in Warwickshire or we’re socially incompetent nerds who though able to cite Pi to the 75th decimal can’t hold a conversation with anyone that doesn’t occur through an internet chatroom, preferably on a Dungeons and Dragons fan site. That’s all very well, but the reality is we’re a bunch of kids studying at university just like goodness knows how many other 19-21 year olds in the UK.
The stories I hear from my friends at other ‘good’ universities are usually much more shocking than Tab headlines, but just because a group of Cambridge students end up going out, getting drunk and doing something stupid one night suddenly it’s worthy of the national press. The ITV show ‘Trinity’, set at a fake Oxbridge college, is a prime example of the ridiculous fascination people have with Cambridge, and while the myths are fun, and while there are a few slightly bizarre traditions (week starting on Thursday anyone?) it’s still a normal place. And there is no legitimate reason why we should receive backlash for acting in the same way as every other university student in the UK, just because we achieved getting a place at this one. We’re not particularly special, we’re not circus freaks; we’re just people trying to live in this ever so slightly bizarre bubble of a university. So leave us be, yeah?
Related Articles
No related articles.
‘The masses feel that drunkenness, stupidity, and immorality should be their own special property and that if any of us makes an ass of himself he is poaching on their preserves’ – Oscar Wilde
I reckon he's on to something there.
The only reason the nation is outraged when we're drunken fucktards is because there is a good chance that a large proportion of us will be running the institutions that govern their lives, be it banks/governments/TV /journalism or whatever.
Thus, although being pissed off about it, we can understand their concern….
x
I'm not attacking you for going "too far" (hilarious as a concept given the inconsequentiality of the outpuit thus far), I'm attacking you for not having the "balls" (blatant sexism, oh yes) to go far enough. If you were to do so you'd find your readership increasing massively.
This is a fairly right wing country and you'd be surprised at how equally that is reflected in the student body at Cambridge. Go on – go out on a limb.
Choose rabble-rousing.
Choose demagoguery.
Choose the populares.
And have some fun. You've seen the liberal campus elite squirm thus far. Now shove the Tab so far up their collective asses they have an aneurism.
I completely agree with your article in as much as there is no real reason why the fuss that was made should be made, and there is no reason why Cambridge students shouldn't be allowed to do these things that other students do but not get the same lenient treatment.
But lets be honest, Cambridge students are usually a bit weird, quite commonly do seem to lack what might be considered the norm for social skills. A fair few of them do fall into the stereotypes of the posh elitist societies or the nerds (not so sure about the incompetence part), and if people still doubt that Cambridge ISN'T the real world after being here, then God help us if they are indeed one day running the institutions that govern our lives. Certainly that last part isn't unique to just Cambridge, but Oxbridge certainly have their own distinct slant compared to other research centres, and the distance between reality and the worlds of the Oxbridge student are generally much further than those of other students it is true.
And, before anyone feels the need to have a crack, no I'm not some angry outsider. Like I say, I agree, the Tab has had an unfair amount of flack for some of those things, but some of the points in this article seem to attempt to paint a more flattering picture. Ok so it isn't like anywhere else, but so what. You all enjoy it don't you?