Institutional Identity at the Personal Level
“That’s what writing is good for. Taking the big mess of experience and thought and trying to impose a coherence on your life. If your writing has an autobiographical element, then it becomes an attempt almost to create a work of art out of a life that while you’re in it always feels fixated on the future or regrets about the past. To bring it into view as a kind of whole that makes sense, I guess that’s the task of living altogether” (from Matthew B. Crawford’s interview with Ryan Holiday).1
Up to this point, I saw myself primarily as an impoverished graduate student, focused on my classes and friends. The first of many identity shifts took place when I found myself in an institutional role at Oxford. We all have to do “admin” things in our personal lives or at work. Committee work is notoriously tiresome, especially when it requires a group to set priorities and achieve consensus. This might strike you as a particularly boring topic for a newsletter. However, to omit this part of my experience at Oxford would be a distortion of my time there, so let’s just say that some parts of life are more interesting than others.
Perhaps an Honor
I wrote to my mother: “Another piece of news is that I have been elected GRC representative of Keble college. The GRC stands for ‘Graduate Representative Council.’ (It is a little like Student Council, I suppose.) Each college elects one of their graduate students to represent them on the council, which consists of a representative from each college of the University. This group then serves as an advisory group to the Oxford University governing bodies on matters relating to graduate students. It means that I will have an opportunity to meet people from other colleges. It also makes me an officer of the MCR (Middle Common Room). So I will be involved in the decision-making for the MCR and have certain privileges, such as a key to the wine cellar. And finally, I have been assigned to the ‘academic planning’ committee of Keble College. This committee makes decisions on college admissions. My term of office begins at the start of Trinity term (around April 25th). I am, by the way, the only woman officer in the MCR (there are six other officers).”
While I viewed my committee work as an honor and an opportunity to be more of an insider at Oxford, many others would have viewed it as an unpaid, dull waste of time and distraction from academic work. I do not have any records of the GRC work that I did during Trinity term 1987, but I have some accounts of what took place the following fall.
What Does Lynn, If That’s Her Name, Want?
In a tape that I sent to my housemate/boyfriend in the first week of November 1987, I recounted the following story about the inner workings of Keble college.
“On Wednesday night, I had to go to the GRC meeting where they discussed the major report that has come out on the provision of graduate education. I just saw the summary and conclusions. I haven’t seen the really damaging remarks in the body of the report. But that should be coming out next week. Essentially, the main thing was to fulfill my minor duties, which means simply two meetings per term.
I would really like to know what is going on with you and the Tutor for English. [My housemate and the Tutor for English both studied the writings of seventeenth-century religious radicals and knew each other.] He rather annoyed me last night at an open meeting that the college had. The Warden [of Keble], the MCR [graduate] president, and the JCR [undergraduate] president decided to hold an open meeting for the college where everybody associated with Keble would be invited. So that means the porters, the scouts, the students, the dons—everybody could attend. It was going to be led by the three of them. They had four topics scheduled for discussion. I wasn’t particularly interested in them; however, I thought I should go as graduate representative because I felt fairly certain that no other graduates would go, which in fact was the case. There was only one other graduate student besides myself that showed up, and, of course, there were predictably about forty or fifty undergraduates. Various members of the staff, not very many dons, the Bursar, the Senior Tutor, and the Dean (administrative types) were there.
I didn’t say anything during the first three-quarters of the meeting. The last topic though was the college fund-raising plan. (I forgot what the exact title of it is.) The Warden explained how Keble had five million pounds of endowment and that the college used the interest from the endowment to fund various aspects of the college. They had decided two or three years ago that they wanted to double the size of the endowment to ten million. The first year they raised a million externally by going out to various granting agencies. The second year, which was last year, was directed internally at the old members and that’s why they had a series of Gaudies last year. So apparently all those Gaudies were not part and parcel of the way things are but rather part of the special fund-raising project they were engaging in last year. That’s a relief! And they raised another million. This coming year they are trying to get money from businesses both here and abroad in the US, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Canada. So after explaining how they were trying to get the money, the discussion turned to what the money was being used for.
The JCR members were very vocal about what they thought the money should be used for. I felt that I should, not because I have any personal dissatisfaction with the provisions that are made for graduate students, I felt that as the graduate representative I should at least suggest that they consider using some of the money to address the forty recommendations presented in the Committee on Graduate Studies report that had just come out and that some effort might be directed at raising money to address some of those concerns.
As soon as I finished talking, I heard someone say from the back, “Can I ask Lynn a question?” I thought, who’s that that knows me. Then he said, “Oh, I think that’s her name.” I turned around and it was the Tutor for English. The comment ‘I think that’s her name’ was totally gratuitous. He knows that’s my name. He knows perfectly well that’s my name. Why he wants to act at this open meeting . . . after he did say my name, then he shouldn’t try to act like he didn’t know it. Then he said, “The graduates are supposed to be provided for by the university. What is it that they could possibly want?”
I was really annoyed because I wasn’t speaking out of any personal grievance. I was speaking in an institutionally representative capacity. The other thing that annoyed me was that the Graduate Council had decided a week ago that we would as a group decide which of the forty things should have priority and which we should make an attempt to accomplish within our colleges. And that decision had not yet been taken. So I wasn’t even in a position to say, well, the college should provide office space for graduate students (that was one of the forty items). I didn’t say that. All I said was “I refer you to list of forty recommendations” because I didn’t want to single out any of them in particular, as the priorities had not yet been set by the council. I didn’t want to give a false impression to the Warden as to what we wanted.
His attitude really annoyed me: (1) that he vaguely pretended that he didn’t know me; and (2) that the college has little responsibility toward graduate students. Certainly, the Warden understood the point I was making. You’ve got twenty undergraduates saying what they want and one person who stands up to say, by the way, don’t forget there are graduate students at Keble. What makes him think that graduates aren’t important, don’t really exist, don’t need to be taken into account, or that the college has no particular obligation to graduate students? It seemed to me that should not be the attitude someone in his position should be taking. I hope it is not representative of how the Senior Common Room views graduate students. I felt like there was something behind the comment that was not related to me.”
By the time I finished this story, my annoyance had exhausted itself like a deflated balloon that had blown around the room bouncing off the walls. If you ever get involved in committee work, I recommend that you find a friend, partner, sibling, or parent to listen to the frustrations and annoyances that will inevitably result.
The Tutor for Graduates Party
It did not take me long to forgive the Tutor for English. Only a week later, I ran into him at the Tutor for Graduates party, as I recounted to my housemate/boyfriend:
“I had a reasonably long conversation with the Tutor for English at the Tutor for Graduates party, which actually was a good time to talk to him. He had had a couple glasses of wine and was a little bit more relaxed than normal.
He did make a special point to emphasize to me how much respect he had for you [my housemate] personally and for your work, and he told me he liked you a great deal. I felt that he was very genuine.
Also, he apologized to me for saying that comment at the meeting. He tried to say that he was half-asleep and wasn’t really paying that much attention. That’s why he asked me because he wasn’t sure if he had missed something or not. I think you’re right. Sometimes he does have a tendency to open his mouth a little too quickly, without thinking. He doesn’t have quite the degree of restraint which someone older has. I assume that in time, when he gets older, he will develop a greater degree of restraint in his responses. He is a little too quick and lively to say things and do things.
Anyway, I think he has a very positive and respectful attitude toward you and a genuine personal liking for you. And apparently, he likes me well too, or at least he seems to. I did tell him that we were planning to “legalize” our relationship after ten years, and he thought that was very funny. He said it was typical Ranter behavior, whatever that means. I told him that you would never dare to mention the word “marry” and that you would only say “legalize.” He thought that was very appropriate that you would invent your own term to describe what you were going to do. He was positive about it and said that he and his girlfriend occasionally discussed the possibility of doing that when they ever got to see each other, which was usually only between terms because during terms they were too busy to have much of a relationship. It doesn’t surprise me because I often see the light on in his office till fairly late at night. I think he does genuinely work very hard.”
Thank you for reading today’s newsletter and staying till the end.
I enjoyed the read! I sense that at a place such as Oxford, labels or titles for people might be very important. In your text, you mention: graduate students, porters, scouts, the dons,
the bursar, the senior tutor, the dean, the warden - all the actors on the stage. On the other hand, maybe it is just my K-8 work environment, mostly limited to students and teachers.
You have away with words! It makes for a very interesting story to say the least