David Cameron’s Oxford days
Clean slates and dirty laundry David Cameron’s Oxford days
David Cameron does not regret his Oxford days, and this can only be a good thing. After all, no one can really claim that a few boozy nights in the mid 1980s has any bearing on the Tory leader’s abilities as a politician. Cameron will be comforted too by the fact that it is no easy business to dig up dirt on someone who graduated twenty years ago; old acquaintances must be tracked down, and the Bodleian’s yellowing copies of ISIS must be leafed through.
However, the situation will be very different for the Oxonian politicians of tomorrow. This newspaper, and our august red-headed cousin, both maintain comprehensive online archives. The student hack of tomorrow, armed only with Google, will make short work of finding long-forgotten scandals. By 2025 some pimpled twenty year old will probably be selling the events of this evenings’ Presidential Drinks to the Evening Standard for the price of a round of drinks in the Bridge.
So, hacks and upstarts beware, these may be your halcyon days, but they are not off the record.
A safe haven John Githongo
We as Oxford students often encounter corruption in our day to day lives. Our student societies offer a sorry saga of electoral malpractice, including but not limited to regular ‘cash for votes’ scandals. Of late too we have been offered financial awards to sell our essays through the internet, and occasionally some of our number try to sell themselves through the same medium.
Moreover every year the cycle of interviews and admissions leads to renewed, and usually unfounded allegations of impropriety. However, it must be conceded that this is graft on a small scale. Oxford functions as a university, and the United Kingdom as a nation state only because it is relatively free of corruption. Of course our society is not perfect, as recent scandals over cash for peerages have revealed, but the situation is much better than elsewhere in the world.
If it were not for the systems of checks and balances that exist in public life, and more immediately in the administration of the university, then our hospitals, police and transport systems would all cease to function in the way we are accustomed for them to do so.
Here in Oxford there would be an accepted price for a first class mark in finals, admission would be wholly dependant on parental wealth, and the venerable Rad Cam would have been sold to unscrupulous developers for conversion into Oxford’s first genuine super club. It is apt then that this week we report on the fascinating story of John Githongo, Kenya’s anti-corruption Czar. Githongo has been called back to Africa from self-imposed exile to face a lawsuit.
Events in Kenya may seem far away and irrelevant to sixth week of Trinity Term in Oxford - just another flight of student journalism fantasy. However, in this case nothing could be further from the truth. Kenya may be a top destination for Gap Year students to breast feed orang-utans and commit other acts of altruism, but this week events there have a much more profound relevance for us. John Githongo is currently in residence at our very own St. Anthony’s college. St.
Anthony’s exists in the liminal spaces of the undergraduate consciousness. We are often aware of it only as an uninspiring crew date destination, and through the perpetual rumour that it ‘runs the foreign office.’ However, it is unfair to tarnish St. Anthony’s with the casual slur of ‘random graduate students’. It is, in fact, a world class centre of teaching and learning, particularly in International Relations.
As such we should all be able to forgive the college the fact that its students appear to be full-fledged grown-ups who are not very good at rowing. It is impossible to predict how the Githongo case will resolve itself, and more generally whether Kenya and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa will be able to extricate itself from the mire of corruption.
However, what we must ensure is that the University of Oxford continues to offer a sanctuary for individuals whose actions have rendered themselves unwelcome in their own societies. We should applaud the bravery of individuals, particularly in the field of academia, but also politics and our personal favourite of journalism, who have been willing to speak our against the status quo. And, more pragmatically, we should offer them jobs.
Oxford is a far richer place for the presence of bold, brave faces from around the world. It adds variety to the academic experience if your tutor does not just tend a Summertown herbaceous border at weekends, but instead fights crime and battles international corruption. Long may this continue. Therefore we at The Oxford Student salute John Githongo for his bravery and service to the people of Kenya.
Furthermore we hope that our university will continue its enlightened policy of offering sanctuary to those whose integrity has forced them to leave their homes and families.
1st Jun 2006