Cherwell slammed as Hilda's hit back after 'sexist' article
Hilda’s JCR has united in anger over an article printed in the Cherwell last week in their regular column ‘Passe notes’. The JCR committee are in the process of drafting a response to the newspaper after the article criticised the college for their “perennial placing in the Vauxhall conference of Oxford’s academic league”. “The Hildabeasts actually do no worse than girls elsewhere in Oxford. They just haven’t got any boys to get firsts for them. Proof indeed that curly handwriting and diligence can only get you so far,” it said.
The column went on to describe “notorious 4am fire drills, when the bewilderhildabeasts standing outside in the rain are invariably gravely outnumbered by shifty looking men in ill-fitting borrowed pink dressing gowns.”
JCR President Ailbhe Menton said that certain aspects of the piece were inflammatory. “It was the inaccuracy of the piece which annoyed people the most - we haven’t always been at the bottom of the Norrington table, for example.” A communique was sent to the JCR Committee on Monday about a possible reply to the article, and members are currently drafting a college response. Some students, however, did not take the article seriously. One, who wished to remain anonymous, said that they were “not rising to it”.
“The current feeling is that it’s just a bit wide of the mark. The atmosphere in Hilda’s is so far removed from what they described that it’s almost irrelevant.
“It’s such an old, stale stereotype. If they’d been able to come up with something a bit more original then maybe we’d have been a bit more bothered,” she added.
The Student Union VP (Women), Ellie Cumbo, said: “As a former Hildabeast myself, and a current equal rights campaigner, I would like to send an impassioned ‘tut, tut’ in the Cherwell’s general direction.
“On the other hand, we should remember that it was intended to amuse and not to offend - and had it not been so laboured, so toe-curlingly derivative, and so utterly lacking the slightest hint of originality, it might have succeeded.
“These people can’t help not being funny, and it would be wrong for society to discriminate against them for it.”
Cherwell editor George Davies said he was “sorry that some people found the piece upsetting. “While we regret any offence caused, we also hope that at least some of our readers enjoyed the article in the spirit it was meant.”
17th Nov 2005