Honorary Proletarian

Ruskin College, where I have the honour to be completeing my MA dissertation, was founded in 1898 as a workers’ college in the heart of elitist Oxford, providing the best education money could buy without the necessity of buying it.  Its buildings on Walton Street were funded (apart from one large donation) by unions, by union branches and by union members gathering pennies from their fellow-workers.  These represent not just bricks and mortar, but 110 years of British and international Labour Movement history.

Now the College’s Principal, Audrey Mullender, wants to sell these buildings to Exeter College and move the whole College to its secondary site in Headington, some way from convenient transport links (which, if you’re one of the elderly people who come to Ruskin for short courses and workshops in the holidays as part of the College’s “Ransackers” project, is quite a big deal).  One of the few arguments put forward in favour of this plan is that the Principal wants to provide all en suite accommodation for conference guests, as general secretaries and their cronies expect luxury hotel standards (when students from outside Oxford arrived for the last MA workshop they found chocolates on their pillows).  Shame on the management of a college supposedly dedicated to providing education for those who would otherwise miss out, for wasting money on such extravagance!

The planned development in Headington has three years to be largely completed and six at most to be completely operational in very detail – but it does not yet have planning permission, or anything definite enough to apply for planning permission.  There is no business plan – or at least, if there is Audrey Mullebnder isn’t telling anyone about it – and the scheme faces a potential shortfall of twelve million pounds, even after the sale of all the buildings in Walton Street, with no ideas at all as to how to raise this money (unless you count the principal suggesting weakly that the Headington canteen could be opened as a public restaurant some time in the future!)  Nor does it seem that Exeter management are entirely confident of having enough money to buy the site.

Exeter College management have at least been open with students about the negotiations (see below) – and as their message reveals, they at least appreciate the value of a central site!  By contrast, despite meeting with students several times Audrey Mullender has refused to reveal the state of negotiations or even if she was negotiating with anyone, and has tried to hide from students the names of members of the Governing Council.  She appears to be – frankly – stupid enough to believe that by doing this she could prevent anyone finding out what she was doing, when Exeter is emailing all its students and Ruskin Students’ Union representatives sit on the Governing Council!

I know Ruskin is supposed to be iconoclastic, but anyone who thinks it is a good idea to sell the college – or that they will be allowed to do so – is barking mad.  The whole scheme constitutes the most ill-thought out and fatuous bundle of plans I’ve ever come across.  Given the nebulous nature of the financial plan there is even, surely, a serious danger the College could go bankrupt.  Ruskin is irreplaceable and this must not be allowed to happen.

Announcement from the Rector of Exeter College
 
Exeter College is delighted to announce that the Governing Executive of Ruskin College has agreed to sell us its Walton Street site.

This is terrific news and an outstanding opportunity.  It effectively creates a Third Quad, expanding our space in central Oxford for teaching, research and student accommodation by roughly half.  It will bring much of our student body closer to our main site.  Together with our plans to build new accommodation for our graduates at Exeter House on the Iffley Road, it will give us some of the finest student facilities in Oxford.

As part of this historic arrangement, Exeter and Ruskin will develop a programme of joint academic, cultural and social activities.  We hope that this new relationship will, in time, expand the range of academic interests of our College, create opportunities for our graduates to undertake teaching, including teaching students from non-typical backgrounds, and widen the social and ethnic diversity of our student body.

There is still a long road between here and a move into the Ruskin site.  Ruskin will relocate most of its activities to a large site in Headington, for which it does not yet have full planning permission.  We may not be able to get on to the Walton Street site till 2011, or to inhabit it fully till 2014.  But we can begin at once to discuss how we use this fantastic opportunity for the benefit of future generations of scholars.

There is a nice historical twist to this arrangement.  William Morris was an undergraduate at Exeter College, and had close links with John Ruskin.  Ruskin College in turn was founded to educate those who were otherwise excluded from education – on principles established through the collaboration of these two social and educational pioneers.

We will be coming to the whole Exeter College community for advice and support in order realise the full potential of this exceptional opportunity; please be part of that discussion.  This acquisition will form a central part of the major fund-raising campaign that the College will launch next year to celebrate our 700th anniversary in 2014.  We will enter our eighth century with a truly exceptional range of possibilities – academic, cultural and social – to reinvigorate and develop the collegiate ideal.

Frances Cairncross

Rector
 

There were a few who were in open rebellion against the said Whiggery—a few, say two, Carlyle and Ruskin. The latter, before my days of practical Socialism, was my master towards the ideal aforesaid, and, looking backward, I cannot help saying, by the way, how deadly dull the world would have been twenty years ago but for Ruskin! It was through him that I learned to give form to my discontent, which I must say was not by any means vague…

Was it all to end in a counting-house on the top of a cinder-heap, with…a Whig committee dealing out champagne to the rich and margarine to the poor in such convenient proportions as would make all men contented together, though the pleasure of the eyes was gone from the world?…So there I was in for a fine pessimistic end of life, if it had not somehow dawned on me that amidst all this filth of civilization the seeds of a great change, what we others call Social-Revolution, were beginning to germinate.

- William Morris, “How I became a Socialist”.