In an Instagram post published on the 24th of January, the St Hugh’s College Ball Committee announced that they are having to cancel the college’s 2023 ball due to a lack of tickets being sold.
The ball, which was due to be held on Saturday the 29th of April, was to have a ‘Swan Lake’ theme, referring to both the famous ballet by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and the swan as an icon and companion of St Hugh of Lincoln, the namesake of the college.
This comes just 12 days after the tickets, costing £125 for St Hugh’s students and £135 for students of other colleges, were made available to purchase on Fixr. The Instagram post states that anyone who had bought a ticket will be refunded, although ‘this won’t be immediate’, and the remaining tickets are now no longer available to purchase on Fixr.
Alongside the lack of tickets being bought, the committee’s Instagram post also blames ‘the cost of living and rising prices’ as other factors that have made it impossible to go ahead with the plans to transform ‘the length of our [St Hugh’s] grounds’ into ‘an enchanted woodland’.
The Swan Lake themed ball would have been the first ball held at St Hugh’s in 3 years due to Covid.
One disgruntled student took to Oxfess to say they would rather the committee had put on a ‘scaled-down event than no ball at all’.
Image Credit: Fittoprint (Public Domain)
Image description: St Hugh’s College
