The dean of Wadham College has told a student union liaison meeting that he is determined to end the college’s annual Queer Bops.
Paul Martin circulated a document before the meeting slamming Queer Bop for drunkenness and saying it posed a risk to the college’s finances and reputation.
His conclusion stated that “we should not continue with the event in its current form , or with small changes: no further Queer Bops should occur.”
Martin’s proposal accused the annual event of posing “a significant reputational risk to the college”, saying it was “implicit in the current version of the event to push against the boundaries of acceptability”, citing an incident last year when organisors attempted to book strippers.
The document also raised fears that the college could be held liable for destruction or injury caused by Queer Bop revellers. Martins said he understood that “the Finance Bursar believes that future Queer Bops would be uninsurable”.
At the subsequent liaison meeting members of Wadham’s SCR raised the issue of a recent report from security company employed at the event which said an serious incident was highly probable.
“The fundamental problem here”, Martin wrote, “is excessive drunkenness, both in degree and in numbers, which overwhelms what the college can possibly do to contain the consequences.”
At the Wadham student liaison meeting on Wednesday, he stressed that “there are events that are just unacceptable, that are always going to be unacceptable.”
Martin’s suggestion has met with outrage from students.
The suggestion that the Queer Bop should be ended has met with outraged responses from students. Gemma Maxwell, a Wadham student who created a Facebook group to oppose the proposal, said she felt that the response from students had been “a general feeling of anger,” adding that there was “a definite feeling that the college had gone too far.”
She added that the Bop is “a massive part” to Wadham’s image as a “liberal and progressive institution” and “helps Oxford break away from its stereotypical image of being stagnant and boring.”
Members of Wadham’s gay community also voiced agreement with Maxwell’s statement. One first year student said, “It’s true that Queer Bop may have changed since the days it was actively concerned with gay rights. But it is still a great party and a unique selling point of Wadham. People can get drunk and/or rowdy at any bop, but none of the others have been singled out in this way. It would be a real shame if a college so celebrated for its tolerance ended up cancelling a party which promotes queer culture.”
“The gay scene in Oxford is pretty dire, and in a small way queerbop makes up for this.”
Another undergraduate said “It’s part of what Wadham’s about”.
Maxwell said she accepted that there were issues with the Queer Bop as is existed, “namely its size”. However, she claimed that the dean’s response is “just disproportionate”, adding that . However, she claimed, these were already being solved and that in recent years, the bop has been ” much more controlled than in previous years.”
Wednesday’s liaison meeting failed to come to a concrete agreement on the future of Queer Bops, with SU leaders requesting more time to discuss the matter with students.
Martin said he was determined to resolve the issue before next year, when he was due to go on leave. “It would fall to my successor to try to deal with Queer Bop proposals for MT 2010. I do not think it would be fair to hand off that responsibility when I have come to the view that it is not responsible for the college to allow this event to continue in anything like its current form.”
Wadham Warden Neil Chalmers claimed his college was still keen to promote tolerance for LGBT students, saying they were “having cordial and constructive discussions with Wadham’s SU officers about how best to celebrate diversity in sexuality and to raise awareness of LGBT issues.”
Queer Bop is traditionally the climax of Wadham’s Queer Week, held in the sixth week of Michaelmas. The event was originally a protest against Section 28, an amendment to the Local Government Act which banned schools from “promoting homosexuality”.
