To many of these undergraduates, the Hall offered not only a father figure but also a mothers' bosom, in a way that can be true of few colleges but my own, St Peter's, perhaps more than most. The compact quad enfolding social activity, the brotherly and sisterly affection indicated in the J. Comments Book. Indeed, to some, the college was a safe haven from the feared university. The lectures in the university were given by persons like the 'booming C.
Lewis', but by contrast there were 'quiet tutorials' with Ronnie Fletcher. David Goldstein was 'daunted by the university scene' and Geoffrey Smithers of Merton was unable to make him enthusiastic about Mercian dialects; he preferred 'to sit at the feet of Graham or Reg in their comfortable armchairs actually and talk in a leisurely, unpressured fashion'. Andrew Mourant, 'torpedoed' by the excoriations of Colin Lucas of Balliol when he 'ventured out of sheltered home waters', convalesced in the gentle tutorials conducted by John Cowdrey, whose response to almost everyone's work, according to him, was, 'very much on the right lines, I think.
The professed philosophy of John Kelly, according to Nicolas Stacey, who is surely right, was that if one could attract outstanding sportsmen to the Hall the scholars would follow and they certainly have. But one may doubt whether this is all there was to it.
We must beware of exaggerating the Hall undergraduates' fear of the university from the evidence of this book, since it lacks contributions by some of the most distinguished alumni who must have felt this fear least. It is there, however; and one cannot help wondering whether over decades, sport has not had the function of providing a corporate means of mastering this emotion and enabling the Hall to get on even terms with the university. Andrew Mourant perceptively asks what is, and will be, 'the influence of female students on a college so proud of its virility'.
Like many pieces in this book, Andrew Mourant's is written with fine insight and honesty, and makes a good read. Did he learn to write so well while studying for his third in Modern History, or more recently on the newspapers for which he has worked? That, rather than Malcolm McDonald's about our system, is the question which sets me thinking about Oxford education- and examining. Who or what is an Assessor, and what does he or she do? This question was put to me times without number during my year as Assessor.
I'm still not confident that I can give a plausible answer as to what they are supposed to do, but I shall try to give an account of some of the things I did. I had certainly expected to liaise between the College and the University, naively hoping to improve the College's position wherever I could. In fact, there was so much business, some of it was, for a time, so sensitive that it would have been tactless in the extreme to reveal what was going on, even if I had quite understood it which was mostly not the case. Besides, it would have been unkind to deprive my colleagues of a great deal of pleasurable rumourmongering.
So I did what seems the done thing: assumed a bland, and what I hoped was a judiciously blank face.
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For the Assessor, like the Proctors, is privileged to have access to all the papers and deliberations of every University committee, including the faculty boards, sub-faculties and departments. Assessor may attend, and is sometimes required to attend, every meeting from the Hebdomadal Council to the Curators of the University Parks where there is a lavish tea in the pavilion in Trinity Term , from the Delegates of the University Press to the Delegacy of Local Examinations, from the Curators of the Examination Schools to the Estates Committee.
The office of Assessor is uniquely young among the various roles in an ancient University: it goes back to the sixties of the present century at least - which has not prevented its being slotted neatly into the really archaic ceremony for admitting a Proctor or 'procurator', complete with its own Latin formulae.
But the Assessor occupies a pleasant, if spartanly furnished office right next door to the tiny office of the University Marshal which is the ante-chamber, literally, to the larger, but double room from which the Proctors operate. In one corner sits an old-fashioned safe housing the 'black books' which chronicle the lapses and proclivities of past members of the University- and of not a few survivors.
Originally, the Assessorship was devised for the benefit of the women's colleges to compensate them for not being able to elect to the Proctorship, it being recognized these were post-lapsarian, pre-Thatcher days that no woman could possibly bear the burden of policing men in this University.
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The graduate colleges, Linacre, St Antony's, Nuffield, St Cross and Wolfson and now Green were similarly disadvantaged, since they were, ostensibly, ignorant of the lore of the undergraduate jungle and consequently ill-equipped to cope with the intricacies of discipine and the conduct both of public examinations and of undergraduate societies. However, perhaps not surprisingly, because the Proctors have access to every piece of University business and are consequently, temporarily, extremely powerful figures, the graduate and women's colleges did not wish to be excluded from this privileged source of information, and so the office of Assessor was created to permit them to send a representative to the central university administration.
In earlier centuries, the Proctorial office had sometimes been monopolized by individual colleges for years together, but now a rotating cycle of office has been established, so that every twelve years or so, each college is entitled to elect a proctor or, on each third turn, an assessor. The politicking attendant upon election to the Proctorship has consequently now been regulated and banished from the wider university stage to the familiar planks of the colleges, where there is always ample salt to soothe the wounds.
There may have been a corresponding reduction in the stature- and in the ego- of the candidates for the job, since they do not now have to command support outside the curtilage of their own college. Of course, since the women's and the graduate colleges pressed to be admitted not merely to the manifestly inferior role of Assessor, but also to the Proctorships, the undergraduate men's colleges found themselves obliged to elect assessors on occasion- which led immediately to the role and status of the Assessor being enhanced.
Even the dress and protocol have been upgraded.
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There is an amusing file detailing the sartorial rights of assessors at ceremonies: whether they should wear bands and when, where they should process and when, and so forth. I note that the wearing of ecclesiastical bands is now progressing apace among the more senior assistant. The Proctors have on their gowns a small cloth tippet, the badge of their office- the Assessor wears a tassel only one, and worn at the back. The Assessors do not, but presumably may if they wish, attend the regular meetings of Congregation, and would then process in following the VC and Proctors and together with, but apparently, pro forma, taking precedence over the Registrar.
In recent years, the Assessor has walked bare-headed when accompanying the Registrar, and this subtle distinction not only reflects the present Registrar's natural preference, but is also practical, since only the VC and Proctors 'cap'- i. I am reminded by all this of the formal parade in Babar the Elephant. Not for the Assessor the burdensome task of conducting degree-days, attending the university sermons which ensure that for the Proctors many week-ends and parts of the vacation are nicely filled.
Statistics on the divorce-rate of proctors are not recorded. The Assessor has, then, access to every single University committee and its papers- and to its past files. This was so overwhelming a hoard, that simply coping with the papers that came in was well beyond my capabilities.
Fortunately the Proctors and Assessor usually collaborate to carve up the committee work for the various bodies, so that they are represented on almost every committee. Every week, including the week before term and also ninth and tenth week, the Hebdomadal Council met on Monday afternoon at 2. On Fridays at two p.
The Proctors and Assessor are expected to attend both the General Board and Council regularly, and much of the business inevitably overlaps. This gives a pleasant sense of deja oui", and lulls one into a sense of superiority, since one can acticipate many of the sage perceptions of members of the one body by having heard them anticipated by equally perceptive members of the other. Much of the groundwork for both bodies is carried out in committee, of which both the G B and Council have many, so that in one or other of these a rehearsal of the business and perhaps a post-mortem on its failure in the two major bodies provides a further in-depth analysis of any matter of moment in the University.
I never actually saw anyone asleep in a committee during the whole year I was in office and that is more than can be said for our would-be masters in their parliamentary sessions! The business of the General Board was more familar to me, as being more focused on academic policy and provision; Council, by contrast, ranged over many issues affecting the University, local, national and, occasionally, international.
Among the more memorable and at times sensitive matters during my time were the future of the Playhouse, the provision of a code of practice on sexual harassment- we were, it seemed, as unsure as to how this word should be stressed as we were of defining the offence- and the extension of the University's Counselling Service. No individual, not even the Vice-Chancellor or the Vice-Chairman of the General Board can be expected to carry all the business of the University in their. I do not think this view is the result of any brain-washing during my year in office!
In fact I sometimes upset one or other of the registrariat by naively blurting out that it was such a pity that such splendid minds were not bent towards some worthwhile academic venture! There were some hard decisions in which one participated without really being able to judge the full issue, and where it was good to have the wise counsels of experts- I mention only one, well-known outside Oxford, which caused me considerable sadness: the closing of the University Press's printing section only a decade after its fifth centennial.
I am unable to say that the decision was wrong,- commercially a strong case was made,- but it certainly felt wrong. Among the few specific duties of assessors is included the chairmanship of the University's Committee on Student Hardship. Here again, the experienced team from the Graduate Studies office provided guidance and information- and were always tactful in advancing sensible proposals via the chair.
Some applications for relief from hardship were of extreme complexity, choices had to be made in dispensing resources which were always smaller than one would have wished. This is an area where the University and the colleges try to work in concert to achieve a temporary alleviation of hardship brought about by unforeseen circumstances. Colleges are required to assure themselves of the financial viability of applicants before accepting them- the Hardship Committee occasionally has to refuse help to deserving cases either because the college admitted them without making adequate enquiry regarding viability or because the college on its part will not contribute adequately to relieve the hardship which has cropped up after the admission of the student concerned.
It is difficult to see how present structures could possibly cope with the administration of 'access funding' for those for whom a university education is not viable from the outset In fact, assessors are not quite as autonomous as I have suggested, since they may be, and therefore inevitably always are, required to fulfil such functions as may from time to time be required of them by the Vice-Chancellor or the ViceChairman- usually this involves conducting some enquiry or chairing a committee.
In my case, I spent most of the time from September to February examining the role and functions of the Language Teaching Centre: this meant reading through nine voluminous back files, interviewing people, holding committee meetings and then attending the Planning and Development Committee, the Finance and General Purposes Committee and the Resources Committee to discuss relevant matters arising. This task was fascinating, the more so since I was provided with excellent administrative back-up: my professional administrator somehow made wonderfully coherent minutes out of my rambling conducting of the meetings.
Although I felt she did all the work, the experience of what administrative back-up could and should be made me appreciate fully the excellent service the University can call on in coping with the manifold demands made on us by an unsympathetic government intent on short-. I also felt I learned a great deal about communication: from the dialogic mode to satellites, from 'chalk and talk' to 'hands-on' technology, and, most important, when to hold one's tongue.
At the same time I felt, however briefly, part of the General Board team and I can fully understand its impatience with those who impede the detailed work often of many weeks and hours of committee deliberation on what appear footling points.
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As my Review Body's report took shape I felt much happier with the assessorial role and I look back to that hectic period with some gratitude. But there were social distractions too!
My weight, but not my authority, increased by nearly three-quarters of a stone during the year. Inevitably, these social jamborees were most prominent in the very first term of office when one was least well-prepared for them. A memorable day for the College as well as for me was the Encaenia- since in the Hall was the venue for the holding of Lord Crewe's benefaction for Senior Doctors and Heads of Houses of the University. There was a splendid spread in the Wolfson dining-hall: and the front quad in the brilliant sunshine was at its very best, peopled with Oxford's brilliantly-robed academic peacocks, lining up to process along New College Lane to the Sheldonian, a scene captured by some of Julia Johnson's splendid phootgraphs.
This time nobody played 'The Teddy Bear's Picnic' as the animated crocodile moved off, led by the Marshal and bedels and the Chancellor and his page, the two Proctors, then the Assessor, followed by the Vice Chancellor and the High Steward, Lord Wilberforce. The Chancellor, Lord Jenkins thoroughly entered into the spirit of the occasion, benevolently capping the crowds at the end of New College lane like the pro he is. Since the honorands that year included the German Bundesprasident, Richard von Weizsacker, my German relatives were startled by unexpected glimpses of me on German TV among the ceremonial trappings Then lunch in All Souls' Library, followed by coffee on the oval lawn, then off to change for the Garden Party at St John's with a marvellous tea and colourful company- more wives with bigger and better hats.
Then off to change for dinner and a Gaudy at Christ Church. Not a cloud in the clear sky which glowed a pale, luminous turquoise, lifted straight from one of the Renaissance pictures in their own gallery. The buildings stood out as though painted in the sharp shadows of the evening light - Tom Quad lying empty in the warm sun, impeccably swept, and yet foreshortened and reduced to a human scale by the sense of the occasion. It was also a day of vanity and indulgence I shall never forget and I was so high on adrenaline and drink that I was able, for the first time I think, to associate myself with the assessorial role completely and utterly, feeling totally relaxed and happy.
A very great deal of thought and care went into the planning and presentation of the launch and of the co-ordination of all related sectors of the University and, more tricky, of the Colleges. But overshadowing this in my memory is yet another glorious July evening, Tuesday. This is the first dinner- a magnificent cold collation- to be eaten there since I shall never work in that part of the Library again without a gastric pang.
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Prince Charles spoke elegantly and a good deal more frankly about the vital importance of preserving the Library's resources and maintaining its position as a centre of world-rank than any member of the University could ever have done- it was an outspoken and completely focus sed performance which made the occasion honestly what it was: a fund-raising drive. When, later that evening, he was presented with His unique silver Reader's ticket a distinguished colleague and Emeritus Fellow of this college quipped that His Royal Highness might find it helpful that the Chancellor's Access-card No.
The day dawned as grey as the evening before had been balmy: by lunchtime it was raining champagne-buckets. Nevertheless we were cheerful enough: to my delight I discover that Nature has endowed me with the right ears to support a top-hat. We had a speedy and comfortable trip, basking on our selfesteem and when we arrived in the metropole we discovered that we also had royal weather: despite a brisk wind the day was fine and dry. Meanwhile lightning was striking in Oxford. The Delegacy of University Police has been driving Proctors to the Palace for years, and the Marshal advised us to park in the Mall and walk in and out, so as to avoid the inevitable lengthy delay waiting self-consciously for 'our' car to be called out over the loud-speakers.
So we walked in, part of a would-be elegant line of guests, with the ladies for the most part looking like elegant t!! As we came out onto Nash's Terrace there stretched before us on the left side of the Lawn what seemed like two hundred metres of tea-tent, a single line of awnings placed end-to-end in which an army of tea-ladies were serving a lavish tea with a great choice of sandwiches, cakes, ice-cream and so forth.
Small tables were set up in front of the awnings and a military band was playing in a small band-stand by the lake. On the right side of the lawn nested a very large single marquee roped off from the rest: this was the diplomatic enclosure. A Garden Party consists of some 8, people, and we decided not to trouble Her Majesty by telling her the latest news of Her loyal subjects in Oxford: Her Son had after all been dining with us the night before.
Instead, we walked around the splendid but unpretentious gardens themselves, visiting the Waterloo vase, tennis court, and the flamingoes and the obligatory ablution marquees, complete with mahogany hat-stands.