Wadham has been gripped by a row over a pub crawl where girls dressed as foxes were ‘hunted’ by boys dressed as huntsmen.
The reaction to the event by JCR Women’s Officers led to a Facebook group being set up called ‘Wadham women’s reps fuck off back to Hilda’s’, which was been subsequently taken down and its creator forced to apologise.
The event was a variation on the traditional ‘pub golf’ format, where a specified drink must be consumed at each pub on the crawl. The group of girls ‘foxes’ set off about half an hour earlier than the boy ‘huntsmen’, and then the boys attempted to ‘catch’ them, while the girls attempted to avoid capture.
The event caused controversy when it was promoted by the Entz Reps in an email to the entire college. In particular, the forfeits for a girl who was ‘caught’ were seen as offensive to women. The email read, “FORFEITS include being tied to the hunter who catches you for the entirety of the evening, and if a girl manages to stay ahead, she’ll be armed with a marker pen…”
Rob Powell and James Illingworth, who organised the pub crawl, both strenuously deny any sexist agenda. Powell said, “I just thought of it as fancy dress: when you go out, it’s much more fun to go out in fancy dress.”
Illingworth agreed. “There was no degradation of the girls: they were fully clothed, all they did was to wear fox horns and ears. There was no sexual aspect – we just had a laugh and a giggle with them,” he said.
There was, however, such concern about the event that the Women’s Officers sent out a further email, in which they stressed that the event had not been organised by Entz. “It isn’t like a bop and so please don’t feel pressured to attend if you’re worried about it or feel that it is offensive or dangerous in any way. You won’t be missing out on a college organised night out,” they wrote.
However, some felt that in doing this the Women’s Officers had acted beyond the capacity of their role. One girl who attended the event said, “I felt we were being patronised and told we were sluts and too stupid to know we were being objectified.”
In response, a Facebook group was set up, entitled, ‘Wadham women’s reps fuck off back to Hilda’s’.
It referred to the fox hunting pub crawl and also to the decision two weeks ago to give students the option to opt out of Wad Words, the College’s gossip paper. Its description read, “First Wadwords, second chasing girls rounds pubs. Jesus I’m offended to be at your college! Can u please stop complaining about everything.” The creator of the Facebook group was on Wednesday morning brought before the Warden for harassment. The Facebook group has since been taken down, and the group’s creator has been asked to write letters of apology to the two Women’s Officers.
He maintains, however, that the Women’s Officers interfered unnecessarily in this case. “The event was an unofficial pub golf night and they should not have used their status to make people feel guilty about attending,” he said.
He added, “I personally disagreed with the theme of the event due to the fact that I am strongly against fox hunting. My protest was to attend the event as a ‘pub golf cowboy’ – I still had fun and made my point. In my opinion if they disagreed with the event they should have just voted with their feet and not attended.”
The Women’s Officers, Ché Ramsden and Jo Skapinker, said that the problem was not the event itself but the fact that it was advertised across the whole college. “As soon as it was advertised to the entire college, it could no longer be seen simply as ‘a fun night out between a group of friends’, and the potential risks increased. The dynamic of a night out is obviously different when it is not your friend, but a relative stranger, who you are tied to, and there is the potential for this to happen when anyone in college is free to turn up,” they said.
Hayley Elsley, one of the three Entz reps, said, “It was a bit naïve of us to send out the email without thinking about the consequences.”
Wadham SU President Leonora Sagan defended the actions of the Women’s Officers. “The women’s reps really were only doing their job, which is to represent the views held by any number of Wadham women when they are called to do so. It is their constitutional duty, and therefore would have been wrong of them not to say anything,” she said.
OUSU VP for Women Hannah Roe agreed. “Not all students will want to talk publicly about issues that upset them – so women’s officers have a welfare responsibility to be a supportive contact. by Jack Farchy, Deputy News Editor
