THE CAPTAIN of Magdalen’s University Challenge team has been rusticated for a year due to poor academic performance.
Second year history student Jon Wright hopes to continue as captain despite being sent down, but has yet to hear from College authorities whether he will be allowed to continue in the role.
Wright said he would oppose any College attempts to remove him from the team. "I haven’t heard anything at all from College: this is only rustication, I’m still a student. We don’t really have anyone who could take my place on the team, so if College do have a problem with me carrying on I’ll be vigorously opposing that," he said.
Magdalen have already won through the first round, beating Liverpool 185 to 100, and have filmed their next match against Birmingham, but due to contractual agreements Wright was unable to reveal the result as the programme has not yet aired. Magdalen have previously won the competition three times before in 1997, 1998 and 2004.
He was "quietly confident" that the team had a good chance of doing well in the competition, but stopped short of predicting victory. "We don’t expect to win, but given the right opponents and right questions we could have a chance of winning," he said.
Magdalen’s Junior Dean, Dr Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, refused to comment on whether Wright would be allowed to continue as University Challenge captain, saying he would have to wait until the matter was dealt with internally.
"As its in an internal disciplinary matter we can’t make any comment. Jon is of course allowed to think what he wants, but we won’t make any comment until it has been dealt with by the College authorities. It’s the sort of thing we would have to discuss internally and with Jon before we make anything public," he said.According to Wright, he was rusticated for a year by the College due to poor academic work. "It was purely for academic reasons, just because I didn’t work hard enough, so they suggested I take a year off and regain my focus which I am now doing. I hope to get a job to give myself some structure and then work towards my penal collections at the end of Trinity Term."
