Oxford and colonialism

South London Application Conference

Having had to cancel all our school events during lockdown, we instead organised and hosted virtual school visits via Microsoft Teams and Zoom. We delivered over 30 sessions during the initial lockdown period on the application process and personal statements for year 12, as well as more general sessions about university and Oxford for some of the younger pupils. Our fabulous student ambassadors have continued to support these events by joining the meetings to take part in a Q&A section.

Although it is not the same as being able to show off all the wonderful things about Mansfield in person (especially our lunches!), we have found that this new way of working has allowed us better to connect with schools and colleges that may have been reluctant to travel all the way down to Oxford, such as those in our link areas of Hull and East Riding. It has also been very important for us to continue offering as much support as we can to our schools and colleges during these uncertain times.

The College Open Days are usually a major event in the outreach calendar, giving prospective students a chance to get a feel for Mansfield by meeting our current students, taking a tour of the College and asking questions about the application process and life at Mansfield. In May it was announced that the University would

be holding Virtual Open Days for the first time at the beginning of July, and from that point it was a race to try and put together material that could capture the spirit, energy and ethos of Mansfield for a prospective applicant. We recorded and edited 21 videos, including ‘Ten things you should know about Mansfield’ (did you realise that the Eleanor Roosevelt statue is one of only two statues of women in Oxford?), a 360° tour of the College, and three demonstration interviews. On the day, we had hundreds of visitors to the page and 11 helpers (nine of them pictured previously) on hand to answer questions via the chat function. Although we could not provide doughnuts and ice creams for the student helpers as usual, we did have a Teams call running in the background to keep each other entertained. Our JCR Access Officer, Fran Rigby, even created some Mansfield-themed ‘TikToks’ – though we are not sure how many prospective applicants these convinced!

While it has been a difficult year overall for outreach, the restrictions encouraged us to find new and interesting ways to engage with young people across the country and around the world. The coming year will doubtless bring more challenges, but we shall continue to provide as much support as possible, in as many different ways as we can think of, to anyone who is considering studying at university.

Lucinda Rumsey speaking to the Croydon Children’s University group

York Application Conference

Helping to place 2020 in context, Dr Helen Lacey, Supernumerary Fellow in History, reflects on medieval responses to ‘contagion’.

In the years 1348-50, the Black Death decimated the medieval population: almost half the inhabitants of England are estimated to have died. Nor was this the end of the threat; successive outbreaks of plague in the following decades kept the population level low. People responded to the challenge of protecting themselves from the ‘miasmas’ of disease in a variety of different ways. Some measures seem alien to us – flagellation to atone for God’s punishment, for instance, or vomiting daily from an empty stomach – but others sound strikingly familiar.

In Italy (one of the areas hardest hit by plague) cities like Milan set up ‘exclusion zones’ and built plague hospitals for victims outside the city walls, although the constructions were sometimes beset by delays. Limitations on travel were also put in place. In Pistoia, civic authorities issued ordinances to regulate people’s behaviour and prevent the spread of infection, as A Chiappelli charts in his 1887 edition of Archivio Storico Italiano. Interestingly, these ordinances were amended over time, in response to changing conditions:

[2 May, 1348] So that the sickness which is now threatening the region around Pistoia shall be prevented from taking hold … no citizen or resident of Pistoia, wherever they are from or of what condition, status or standing they may be, shall dare or presume to go to Pisa or Lucca; and no one shall come to Pistoia from those places; penalty 500 pence…

No crier, summoner or drummer of Pistoia shall dare or presume to invite or summon any citizen of Pistoia, whether publicly or privately, to come to a funeral…

So that the living are not made ill by rotten and corrupt food, no butcher or retailer of meat shall dare or presume to hang up meat, or keep and sell meat hung up in their storehouse or over their counter; penalty 10d…

For the better preservation of health, there should be a ban on all kinds of poultry, calves, foodstuffs and on all kinds of fat being taken out of Pistoia by anybody…

… anyone can denounce an offender before the podestà or capitano, and receive a quarter of the fine if the accusation is upheld; the word of one man worthy of belief is to be sufficient evidence of guilt, or the statements of four men testifying to the common belief.

© Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford

[Revisions of 23 May] Chapter 1 to be entirely revoked…

[Revisions of 4 June] At the burial of anyone no bell is to be rung at all, but people are to be summoned and their prayers invited only by word of mouth.

In England too, we see measures designed to limit the spread of disease. In Durham, residents were threatened with steep fines by the borough courts if they received visitors from infected areas. In Hereford the decision was taken to hold markets outside the city walls. Newcomers were suspected of transmitting infection and some civic authorities ordered patrols to ‘search within their several boroughs for all new comers and such as may prove infectious persons whereby the city may be in danger of infection by the plague or any other noisome disease’ (Rochester, 1467). The names of any suspects were to be reported immediately to the mayor and aldermen so that the necessary steps could be taken for their expulsion.

By 1518, Cardinal Wolsey had introduced quarantine measures in response to an outbreak of plague in London. Medieval medical understanding may have differed from our own, but the authorities of the period certainly recognised the need for restrictions on movement.

This article has been adapted from a piece written for Mansfield’s online ‘Isolation Conversations’ series, which saw Mansfield Fellows write articles on the theme of isolation from the perspective of their own disciplines.