Tradition and modernity, black-tied

The useful part

Tradition and modernity, black-tied – The Oxford Student The interior of the Dining Hall at Keble College, Image credit: We go home for the summer vacation speaking about Michaelmas reading lists, memories of Mayday at 6am, the Glink, the Balliol Blue, pee-and-pee, Union drama and what have you, as if the University had us in a perpetual chokehold. With one article questioning the ambiguities woven into formal attire, and another article crying "sacrilege," The Oxford Student seems to be haunted with Oxford's dinners.

How it works

• However, if anyone feels alienated by the argument that the purpose of formal attire is to further uphold the atmosphere initiated by monks, I would want them to know they are not alone.
• However, I am very familiar with small, subtle discriminatory acts which do make one feel like they should not have attended.
• The aspect uniting these two voices is none other than the Oxford man's best friend: history.
• More specifically, the communal, celebratory, and intellectual history behind this Oxford tradition.
• I am not trying to suggest that either author is deliberately excluding groups of people by anchoring the history of formal dinners only to its monastic beginnings.

What to take from it

You finally got there because in those clothes "everybody is equal." But this does not feel quite right. The reason why I was caught so off-guard at the notion that " [f]ormal attire is a great equaliser " at Oxford is not because I believe certain groups within the student body and staff should feel out of place. You only need friends – ie, your community – whose behaviour and conversation creates a safe space for you – ie, do not make you wish to climb under the tiles of the dining hall.

Example or evidence

• As argued in both articles, formal attire is flexible, up for interpretation, and that is exactly the magic of it.
• The expression, appearance, and performance of that tradition should not privilege the institution's white-and male supremacist history over the brilliant minds shaping it today.
• While I am compelled by the democratic and inclusive ideas of belonging that underlie formal dinners and their dress codes, at least according to the two aforementioned articles, I am also sceptical about...
• There honestly is not too much about that particular period in history that I can truthfully, deeply respect.

Details worth keeping

What I did not expect is this summer's formal madness. Having read the rather non-committal argumentation of the former article – leaving space for play while also enjoying the tradition – and the nearly pearl-clutching conservatism of the latter, I felt like my two cents would make for an adequate weigh-in for such a discussion. I also understand that neither article wishes to push Oxford back to the olden days when men did not bathe, or – God forbid – when they were Catholic.

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