The infamously exclusive Bullingdon Club announced this week that its members will undergo a series of sensitivity courses with the intention of making current members more comfortable with increasing diversity in the historic Oxford society. “We want to eventually open our doors to different kinds of people who didn’t just attend Eton or Harrow. In fact, we’re considering letting in a few students who attended Winchester College and maybe even some from Wycombe Abbey,” said the current President of the Bullingdon, who insisted that he remain unnamed because he will probably be Prime Minister one day.
“It will be difficult for our members to accept some of these changes, but these courses will help with our growing pains. Most of us, after all, have never even spoken to a man with no title or who attended anything less than the 10th or 11thbest boarding school in England, but the world is changing and so must we,” continued the President of the more than 200-year-old dining club with a reputation for its privileged members and bad behavior.
“Our club famously was the playground of prime Ministers and Princes, but we’d like it to also be a playground for a few Foreign Ministers and Viscounts, perhaps even a Baron or two,” said another member who spoke on the condition of anonymity so that no one would later be able to find footage of him “doing anything unsavory with… for example… a pig’s head.”
According to the Club, sensitivity courses will feature a session on common courtesy including how to ask questions designed to put people at ease such as, “what is your name?” and “how are you?”
Another course will train members how to refrain from commenting on the quality of tailoring on another man’s suit as well as a crash course on when it might be inappropriate to throw empty champagne bottles against the wall or trash a restaurant. “It seems such behavior might make new members of, well, lesser backgrounds… such as those from, say, Abingdon or, Heaven forbid, Sevenoaks… rather uncomfortable.”
The Club will remain closed to female students and also to just about everyone else, but the Club insists that real progress is being made, however gradually. “This is a big step for us and, one day soon, you might even see someone who isn’t even reading PPE in our illustrious society,” said the President.
