I love the diction in this email (9:18 am):
"Old Bodleian open to readers and visitors. Radcliffe Camera remains closed.
26 November 2010
Following the eviction of protestors late Thursday afternoon from the Radcliffe Camera, the Library is working hard to resume normal service as soon as possible.
The Old Bodleian Library will be open to readers and visitors on Friday 26 November. We shall reopen the Radcliffe Camera as soon as possible but it is likely that it will remain closed all day to enable essential repairs to be made and cleaning undertaken as a result of the recent occupation."
Friday, 26 November 2010
Remember the Bod!
People say the British are boring; staid; implacable; even uptight. Their days consist of drinking tea (pinkies out), cheering polo matches, discussing Shakespeare, and "By Jove"-ing. I read an article from The New York Times not too long ago contrasting the decorum of the British with their continental French counterparts regarding budget cutbacks; I can bear witness to the reporter's assertions about the Brits' relative equanimity, having shaken my head in amazement at the never-ending Parisian metro strikes.
But then again, it is not every day that the Bodleian Library is held hostage.
Yes, you read right: the Bodleian Library. At 9:24 am all Oxford University students received the following email in their mailboxes: "The Radcliffe Camera and Old Bodleian Library are closed to all readers and visitors until further notice as a result of student action. We will reopen as soon as possible." "Student action," indeed! Around 70 students (Honor Code admission: my main source for statistics is the BBC website) stormed the Bastille, I mean, the Bodleian, protest signs in hand, slogans committed to memory, and hearts stirred for action. A friend told me (presumably from first- or second-hand experience) that the protesters politely asked the library staff to vacate the building, while they proceeded to hang flags--and themselves--out the windows of the library.
The implications of this were interesting to consider. In my little corner of Oxford University, nothing seemed any different. There is one book waiting for me at the Duke Humfrey reading room of the Old Bod, but it is not urgent, and otherwise my life continued to consist of the English faculty building, the Social Sciences Library (the closest place to study and obtain food), and St. Catherine's College--all within two minutes of eachother. It was hard for me to envisage the protests actually affecting my life significantly, until I received another email from the president of our college MCR:
4:24 pm:
But I must also say, with my friend Ben, that the Brits' new-realized political fervor does not altogether reflect perfectly on the Brits. Ben told me that one protestor was literally hanging out the window of the Old Library, while disgruntled postgraduate students whose studying had been disrupted erupted in a chorus of "Fall! Fall!". As Ben reflected, the groupthink mentality evinced here is not only stupid, but dangerous. What if he had fallen? Who would have taken the blame? Would it have been the politicians who haven't been seriously acknowledging students' efforts to protest imminent cuts to the university system? Would it have been the University for not taking more stringent measures against the protestors? Would it have been the leaders of the protest, for failing to remind their members that they are not on the lowest order of the evolutionary scale? Would it have been the taunting students, who bear some responsibility for encouraging the student's stupidity without an ounce of pity? Or would it have been the student himself, whose lack of common sense makes me hope he wasn't a member of the same university as myself?
Thankfully, such questions are irrelevant. The student is safe, the Bodleian is once its empty apolitical self, and it's 2:30 am and all's well. It has been amusing to see British political ardor gets its groove back. I do admire the students' efforts to take part in the political process and shed the apathy so pervasive at Princeton, Oxford, and other single-minded academic institutions. The value of an education and how much it should be funded is an important issue about which people should get excited.
But I must confess that activism which involves hanging out windows seems rather fruitless, especially when the protestors' espoused goal was NO cuts to education at all (let's face it, gents: the economy is in recession, everything must be cut, and YOU DON'T PAY NEARLY WHAT AMERICANS DO!!).
And also, I just want my library back.
But then again, it is not every day that the Bodleian Library is held hostage.
Yes, you read right: the Bodleian Library. At 9:24 am all Oxford University students received the following email in their mailboxes: "The Radcliffe Camera and Old Bodleian Library are closed to all readers and visitors until further notice as a result of student action. We will reopen as soon as possible." "Student action," indeed! Around 70 students (Honor Code admission: my main source for statistics is the BBC website) stormed the Bastille, I mean, the Bodleian, protest signs in hand, slogans committed to memory, and hearts stirred for action. A friend told me (presumably from first- or second-hand experience) that the protesters politely asked the library staff to vacate the building, while they proceeded to hang flags--and themselves--out the windows of the library.
The implications of this were interesting to consider. In my little corner of Oxford University, nothing seemed any different. There is one book waiting for me at the Duke Humfrey reading room of the Old Bod, but it is not urgent, and otherwise my life continued to consist of the English faculty building, the Social Sciences Library (the closest place to study and obtain food), and St. Catherine's College--all within two minutes of eachother. It was hard for me to envisage the protests actually affecting my life significantly, until I received another email from the president of our college MCR:
4:24 pm:
"Dear All,
As you might have noticed, some of the libraries in Oxford have been
closed due to an occupation by protesters. If you run into trouble
with your academic work because of that, please consider the following
two points:
1. Prior to deadline for submission, students may submit a written
request to the Proctors' Office seeking an extension to the deadline
equivalent to the time lost through the Bodleian Libraries' closure.
Any such request must be submitted by the student to their college
Senior Tutor...
2. Alternatively, students may submit their coursework on time and instead register a request that the examiners take into consideration the disruption in the Bodleian when marking their examinations...."Now here was disruption! I could hardly imagine the protestors having food airlifted into the upper reading rooms by helicopter (although I wouldn't underestimate those Indian delivery guys), so I imagined that the library closure would not seriously impinge on my studying. But the idea raised by the above email that the closure could last long enough to actually require the formulation of official college regulations was both scary and (let's face it) slightly thrilling. I must admit, when I read on the BBC that the protestors had been "forcibly removed," according to one witness, from the building, my self-important bubble deflated the tiniest bit.
But I must also say, with my friend Ben, that the Brits' new-realized political fervor does not altogether reflect perfectly on the Brits. Ben told me that one protestor was literally hanging out the window of the Old Library, while disgruntled postgraduate students whose studying had been disrupted erupted in a chorus of "Fall! Fall!". As Ben reflected, the groupthink mentality evinced here is not only stupid, but dangerous. What if he had fallen? Who would have taken the blame? Would it have been the politicians who haven't been seriously acknowledging students' efforts to protest imminent cuts to the university system? Would it have been the University for not taking more stringent measures against the protestors? Would it have been the leaders of the protest, for failing to remind their members that they are not on the lowest order of the evolutionary scale? Would it have been the taunting students, who bear some responsibility for encouraging the student's stupidity without an ounce of pity? Or would it have been the student himself, whose lack of common sense makes me hope he wasn't a member of the same university as myself?
Thankfully, such questions are irrelevant. The student is safe, the Bodleian is once its empty apolitical self, and it's 2:30 am and all's well. It has been amusing to see British political ardor gets its groove back. I do admire the students' efforts to take part in the political process and shed the apathy so pervasive at Princeton, Oxford, and other single-minded academic institutions. The value of an education and how much it should be funded is an important issue about which people should get excited.
But I must confess that activism which involves hanging out windows seems rather fruitless, especially when the protestors' espoused goal was NO cuts to education at all (let's face it, gents: the economy is in recession, everything must be cut, and YOU DON'T PAY NEARLY WHAT AMERICANS DO!!).
And also, I just want my library back.
Sunday, 14 November 2010
My Own Canterbury Tale: The Student's Tale
Greetings from post-GRE-literature-land! I write to you from that blissful state that is utterly without the Norton Anthology of Literature (any volume)*; that state where daily walks do not involve 3x5 flashcards scribbled with words like "litote" and "Bakhtin"; that state far enough along the progress of civilization that it recognizes the existence of the pen and the mechanical pencil. Yes, my friends, I have entered the land of the blessed.
It is remarkable, ironic thing, though, that entering said land involved passing through some of the most picturesque literary territory in western literature. In the figurative sense, this meant my reading some of the "greats" that somehow had very made their way onto my undergraduate syllabi: Henry James, Virginia Woolf (her novels, as opposed to criticism), James Joyce, Willa Cather, Herman Melville (extracts, I admit), Alan Ginsberg, Lord Byron, John Dryden, William Congreve. Some of these I liked. Those (few) of you who may troll through my facebook posts may recall my open-mouthed admiration of James' Portrait of a Lady. None of you, on the other hand, will recall the same sentiments expressed about Joyce.
Yet the afore-mentioned literary territory was also crossed in a literal sense. The GRE-literature in English subject test is only offered two places in the entire United Kingdom: Leeds and Canterbury. Considering Leeds is practically at the North Pole, I went to the latter, weaving through the maze of London Underground construction (get ready for 2012!) to cross the hundred miles or so to Canterbury.
But, really, what could be more fitting? What could be more a propos than answering a question about Chaucer while looking out the window at the gothic spires of Canterbury Cathedral?
In his defense, though, I did add to his test administering woes: I was a prime mover in the neglect of "exam conditions." Yes, I was the one who kept starting up, or at least propagating, the conversation that pervaded Room 2, the room designated for the "Literature in English" people. We tend to be by nature, I believe, a more social bunch than the physics and psychology people across the hall. So we thought it not unreasonable to discover eachother's backgrounds while waiting endlessly for the administrator to quarrel with the guy who was registered for the wrong test, the other guy who didn't inform him until late that he had medical grounds for time extension, and the girl who didn't bring any pencils (really...). This discovery, though, meant talking, even--heavens!--laughing: "Exam conditions, please. Get to know eachother later. Get to know eachother after the test. Exam conditions, please" (imagine this spoken in a slightly Indian-intoned British accent). But there was so much to talk about! The strange (for me) ineptitude of ETS in contracting out to a company that would misdirect all the test-takers to the wrong building, our relative educational backgrounds, the new financial incentives for British students to apply to American grad schools, our subversion of "exam conditions"....
So not only was my Canterbury pilgrimage a self-conscious reflection on the scene's literariness, but it also maintained the text's implicit understanding of the community-forming power of the Canterbury narrative. I arrived in the town alone. The moment I arrived at the hostel, I met an Israeli girl who would be traveling to the same test center the next morning for the TOEFL test (ahh...TOEFL...how I know thee). We shared a few awkward glances and shy smiles while waiting at the reception desk, while the poor hostel worker desperately tried to give driving instructions to some directionally challenged (and none-too-incandescent) clone-looking teenagers over the phone. A few hours later, I met a different girl, Caroline, who would be taking the same exam as I; we recognized eachother by our identical Princeton Review books. After agreeing to wake the other up if our alarms failed to sound, we crawled under as many duvets as we could scrounge from the hostel bunk beds and tried to sleep off the local frigidity. In my case, this proved unsuccessful (of course, I never sleep well before tests), but soon it was morning and we headed down to breakfast to meet up with the Israeli girl. The traditional English breakfast of ham, eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, and beans provided the aromatic setting for a lovely, if somewhat anxious, conversation about what lay ahead for us at the testing site.
By the time I left said site, my fellowship had grown even wider, as Caroline and I became acquainted with Stephany, another Cambridge MPhil student who was equally dismissive of "exam conditions". We exchanged contact info after the exam was over and promised to get in touch when we were in eachother's Oxbridge location. Then, after a quick lunch, Stephany and I left Claire at Pret to enjoy the free wifi while we meandered over to Canterbury West train station. From there it was back to London, considerably more relieved, and considerably less solitary than when we arrived.
*Except for pleasure reading. :)
It is remarkable, ironic thing, though, that entering said land involved passing through some of the most picturesque literary territory in western literature. In the figurative sense, this meant my reading some of the "greats" that somehow had very made their way onto my undergraduate syllabi: Henry James, Virginia Woolf (her novels, as opposed to criticism), James Joyce, Willa Cather, Herman Melville (extracts, I admit), Alan Ginsberg, Lord Byron, John Dryden, William Congreve. Some of these I liked. Those (few) of you who may troll through my facebook posts may recall my open-mouthed admiration of James' Portrait of a Lady. None of you, on the other hand, will recall the same sentiments expressed about Joyce.
Yet the afore-mentioned literary territory was also crossed in a literal sense. The GRE-literature in English subject test is only offered two places in the entire United Kingdom: Leeds and Canterbury. Considering Leeds is practically at the North Pole, I went to the latter, weaving through the maze of London Underground construction (get ready for 2012!) to cross the hundred miles or so to Canterbury.
But, really, what could be more fitting? What could be more a propos than answering a question about Chaucer while looking out the window at the gothic spires of Canterbury Cathedral?
Of course, I did miss the question on the pardoner's tale (really, was I supposed to read ALL of them?!). Nevertheless, the setting did make the entire experience more enjoyable. The stage 4-Kohlberg guy running the test center did seem much more comical than irritating by the contrast between his inane fastidiousness and the flying buttresses looming out the window.And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blessed martyr for to seke
In his defense, though, I did add to his test administering woes: I was a prime mover in the neglect of "exam conditions." Yes, I was the one who kept starting up, or at least propagating, the conversation that pervaded Room 2, the room designated for the "Literature in English" people. We tend to be by nature, I believe, a more social bunch than the physics and psychology people across the hall. So we thought it not unreasonable to discover eachother's backgrounds while waiting endlessly for the administrator to quarrel with the guy who was registered for the wrong test, the other guy who didn't inform him until late that he had medical grounds for time extension, and the girl who didn't bring any pencils (really...). This discovery, though, meant talking, even--heavens!--laughing: "Exam conditions, please. Get to know eachother later. Get to know eachother after the test. Exam conditions, please" (imagine this spoken in a slightly Indian-intoned British accent). But there was so much to talk about! The strange (for me) ineptitude of ETS in contracting out to a company that would misdirect all the test-takers to the wrong building, our relative educational backgrounds, the new financial incentives for British students to apply to American grad schools, our subversion of "exam conditions"....
So not only was my Canterbury pilgrimage a self-conscious reflection on the scene's literariness, but it also maintained the text's implicit understanding of the community-forming power of the Canterbury narrative. I arrived in the town alone. The moment I arrived at the hostel, I met an Israeli girl who would be traveling to the same test center the next morning for the TOEFL test (ahh...TOEFL...how I know thee). We shared a few awkward glances and shy smiles while waiting at the reception desk, while the poor hostel worker desperately tried to give driving instructions to some directionally challenged (and none-too-incandescent) clone-looking teenagers over the phone. A few hours later, I met a different girl, Caroline, who would be taking the same exam as I; we recognized eachother by our identical Princeton Review books. After agreeing to wake the other up if our alarms failed to sound, we crawled under as many duvets as we could scrounge from the hostel bunk beds and tried to sleep off the local frigidity. In my case, this proved unsuccessful (of course, I never sleep well before tests), but soon it was morning and we headed down to breakfast to meet up with the Israeli girl. The traditional English breakfast of ham, eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, and beans provided the aromatic setting for a lovely, if somewhat anxious, conversation about what lay ahead for us at the testing site.
By the time I left said site, my fellowship had grown even wider, as Caroline and I became acquainted with Stephany, another Cambridge MPhil student who was equally dismissive of "exam conditions". We exchanged contact info after the exam was over and promised to get in touch when we were in eachother's Oxbridge location. Then, after a quick lunch, Stephany and I left Claire at Pret to enjoy the free wifi while we meandered over to Canterbury West train station. From there it was back to London, considerably more relieved, and considerably less solitary than when we arrived.
*Except for pleasure reading. :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)