Just when they promise they’ve changed, they go and do it again. Last Trinity, an OUCA candidate in a hustings told racist jokes in an effort to get elected. Now, we see female speakers subjected to sexist abuse in an effort to silence them. The President at the time responded by explaining “there was a great deal of noise [and] I did not hear a racist joke”. Likewise, the current President first claimed innocence, refusing to acknowledge anything offensive was said and banning members from talking about what happened. Last time, they were rewarded with affiliation to the party’s youth wing. Now, Conservative Future’s President has gone so far as to attack condemnations of sexism as part of a partisan attack on Conservatism.
Both events point to an institution which is out of touch with the modern world. Yet the student response to this year’s sexism has been much weaker than last year’s racism. The abuse, it shouldn’t be forgotten, occurred at a cel
ebration of OUCA’s reformation. And yet, we are supposed to applaud OUCA for banning the individual concerned! The President of UCL Conservatives downplays the remarks by saying “every group has at least one or two abhorrent individuals”. This is nonsense. When I was co-chair of OULC, the greatest extremism I had to deal with was calls for more nationalisation. In OULD, the Greens, or any other normal political society, we might have to deal with people we don’t like or those we disagree with. Not chants of “Kitchen! Kitchen!”
This isn’t a partisan attack. If this sort of thing happened in the Labour Club or any other political society, I would want to criticise it. But OUCA is a circus. It attracts people who want to pretend they are Edwardian aristocrats who can live their lives without concern for how it affects those around them.
I got in touch with the person who told the joke, Vitus van Rij. He says “I can certainly confirm that other speakers have been heckled by other attendants of the debate”. We don’t know whether this is true, but in a society with a record of Nazi salutes and sexist abuse, it doesn’t sound surprising. This society shames Oxford students, reinforcing Decline and Fall stereotypes of the university. Card-carrying Tories included, don’t get involved with this self-indulgent and fantasising organisation. It’s an embarrassment.
