Leaflets made by the student-run publication The Oxymoron were confiscated and banned from Freshers’ Fair last week.
Organisers were concerned that first year students would not realize that the publication, which included headlines such as ‘Rail replacement buses temporarily replaced by trains’, was satirical.
Jack Robinson, one of The Oxymoron’s editors said, “It’s the magazine-cover-style side that the Freshers’ Fair people took exception to, specifically the main article, the headline ‘Fall in JSoc membership blamed ‘on the Jews,” and the ‘Leper: Actually I’d rather be at Cambridge’ article.
“We left our supply of leaflets on the table the day before the fair, and came back in the morning to find a post-it note saying they’d had to take them away.”
The Oxymoron team was frustrated by the decision. “The guy organising it said something like ‘I know you’re being satirical, but we can’t really have these headlines in case someone takes them seriously.'”
Robinson considered the decision “pretty ridiculous – after all, we’ll be delivering copies to JCRs later this term and we’re very much of the opinion that freshers don’t need OUSU’s protection from satire.”
The Oxymoron has recently been nominated for the Magazine of the Year at the Guardian Student Media Awards for the quality of its humour.
Jake Leeper, Freshers’ Fair organiser explained his decision, “The Oxymoron’s material was removed after concerns were raised by a student as to whether it was immediately clear that the fliers they had on their stall were part of a satire magazine. With thousands of students passing through the Fair it is not always possible for them to stop and read in detail what each stall has to offer. The concern was that students would simply read the headlines and move on.”
However, George Waldersee, PPE fresher, described the move as “patronising”. He said, “This is so obviously satirical. Freshers should be able to tell the difference between satire and real life.”
Leeper said the incident had not been his decision alone. “The materials were removed only after I consulted with Eorann Lean, OUSU Vice-President. Later in the Fair the Oxymoron brought in a new publication that Stefan [Baskerville, OUSU President] said he was happy for them to have on display.”
One Jewish student, responding to the Jsoc reference, said they were not concerned by such material. Sebastian Grey, a student at Magdalen College said, “whilst it’s certainly true that people sometimes use ‘it was only a joke’ to disguise some highly unsavoury opinions, I think it’s clear that on this occasion it was anti-semitism rather than Judaism which was the butt of the joke. As a person of Jewish extraction I found it both sympathetic and hilarious.”
The Oxymoron continued to advertise at Freshers’ Fair. “We had to print off a load of new flyers to give out without the offending material, which was a pain,” said Robinson.
The Oxymoron was not the only student organization, which had trouble at the Freshers’ Fair. A number of societies were refused a stall because they failed to fill out their risk assessment form.
Andrew Griggs, a representative from the skydiving society explained, “We’d hoped that we could get a stall at Freshers’ Fair as we are a new society – just starting out in March.” The society was rejected because of a lack of proper documentation.
Griggs admitted, “It may threaten the existence of the club.” However he went on, “Ultimately the bureaucracy is there for a reason, and we wholly understand its necessity.”
The Oxford University Morris Men were also not allowed to attend; their bagman Gerard Robinson described how “bureaucracy got the better of us this year”. They registered with the proctors in the 1950s and have not been to Freshers’ Fair in about 25 years. They had not realized that the rules about what paperwork was required had changed. He said it was “a shame”.
