the boat race
- Thread starter jayeola
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tom_craggs
Well-Known Member
I would have gone down to watch but was not in London. In answer to the original thread, I'll be watching the race.
You make very well argued points mrs qoud, it's hard to argue with you on the money side of things, I think when I went to City of Oxford their memebership fees were about £250-£280 - a fraction of the cost of say joinging a golf club, I guess I was talking about elitism in terms of a overall culture for the sport but perhaps it was just one or two expereinces which have created a predjudice within me. Certainly cannot say £200 or so a far is over priced...it's not given the equipment intensity of coaching, boat club hire etc etc. My running club fees are £25 a year and I formally earn way more than that back through reduced race fees and money of equipment etc...but then the club has very few running costs so it's not a fair comparison.
Funny article by the way!
You make very well argued points mrs qoud, it's hard to argue with you on the money side of things, I think when I went to City of Oxford their memebership fees were about £250-£280 - a fraction of the cost of say joinging a golf club, I guess I was talking about elitism in terms of a overall culture for the sport but perhaps it was just one or two expereinces which have created a predjudice within me. Certainly cannot say £200 or so a far is over priced...it's not given the equipment intensity of coaching, boat club hire etc etc. My running club fees are £25 a year and I formally earn way more than that back through reduced race fees and money of equipment etc...but then the club has very few running costs so it's not a fair comparison.
Funny article by the way!
tom_craggs
Well-Known Member
Must have been an aazing experience...slightly fills me with dread though...
fredfelt
Mostly unknown member
It was epic. We had a bit of a headwind so it took 40 hours in total. I did 15 of them (I didn't mention there were three teams and a support boat). I was lucky enough to be rowing when the sun came up. I feel drawn to live in Holland, or on the coast, so I can take up the sport again.
Donna Ferentes
jubliado
...and the fact that (as I recall) about 50% of a college's sports budget goes on fucking rowing.
As far as being elitist is concerned, I think it adheres the the normal Oxbridge rule of "we don't care what your background is so long as you don't rock the boat".
As it were.
tom_craggs
Well-Known Member
Yes maybe that is more what I mean but not finding the right words...
Then again maybe I just didn't fit in.
I've gone swiming three times in a scull, all three because i wasn't paying enough attention to where i was going. Your shoes get soggy after you've capsized twice in one outing.
Once a month for the first nine months here
I wor shit
But where does that money come from?
My college (of 6-700 people) has eight eights (i.e. 8 x eight (wo)man boats - four men's, three women's, one either), three single sculls, three fours and a pair.
They're getting a new £24,000 women's eight for next term. That's been paid for by sponsors, sourced by the college's Master (who's a rowing fanatic). Most of the eights would've been £14-£18,000(ish).
Pretty much every single one of the eights has been bought by an old boy / old girl... One of the men's eights is brand new, and has been untouched since it was bought 2yrs ago. A college old boy died, and left money in his will for a men's eight. But... we already had a men's eight. Bought by another college old boy a couple of years before that. So the newest eight is just sitting there, waiting for the current first men's eight to get old enough to become the second men's eight.
I don't think any of that money's come from other areas of the college's potential sports budget, and there's little to no chance that the old boys would've given it to anything other than an Eight That Will Row In May Bumps (yearly races). Rowing just happens to be an area of pathological nostalgia for some extremely rich old blokes who spent their formative years in an extremely elitist university... The people who are in those boats - IMO - are rather less elite these days.
*sigh*
I think that's particularly true of undergrads. Who go straight from home and good A-level results into a community of 2-500 other undergrads. Wherein everything is parochial. Everything is pastoral. Everything is shaped. Birthdays are celebrated by going to Formal (i.e. put on your suit, go into a big hall, have a three-course meal, get moderately drunk, everyone is frightfully nice, £50k of silver out on the tables). Skater subcultures are virtually non-existent. There are no goths. Drugs - if present - are often well hidden. Alcohol is socially respectable. The nightlife (in Cam) is awful.
And... everything is parochial. Closed off. Limited. You are At This Wonderful August Institution. You Must Buy Into It. There Are No Options. The Walls Are Close. Your Friends Are Within These Walls. They Go To Formals...
And it ends up being a shaping and filtering process... people have too much to lose by not wearing the suits. By not buying into the 'undergraduate family' they're assigned, consisting of two older 'parents' and two new 'children'. By dressing like a skater. By being visibly bombed on phet. And if something looks Wrong... or Non-Conformist (In An Unsafe Way...) then you've instantly got a personal tutor, a director of studies, a college dean, a college nurse, possibly a college counsellor, and a college head of pastoral services (along with intense monitoring of wellbeing by peers) ALL waiting to have an informal chat, and make sure everything's ok...
Ironically, the most prim, proper, formulaic and Shaped Cambridge people I've met have been those who've come from the roughest London / Glasgow estates and who've been through the full Cam undergrad system...
IMO there's also a lot more diversity and freedom in grads. Who have a bit more time and space to develop. And who know that not buying into a claustrophobic social system won't be the end of the world - and who consequently have more of a chance to take it or leave it.
But, yeah... I don't think it's so much 'as long as you don't rock the boat'... I think it's more that the shaping and... informal pressures... are so intense that very few people are likely to.
Donna Ferentes
jubliado
I dunno. I think that in some ways it resembles many situations involving race, which itself is often not an issue unless somebody's perceived as a troublemaker, when suddenly, spoken or unspoken, it is.
I'm sure you're right about the graduates - provided they spend much, much less time within the bubble than do the undergrads.
But it can be a nasty place if you don't fit in, and the fastest way to not fit in is to say you don't.
I'm sure you're right about the graduates - provided they spend much, much less time within the bubble than do the undergrads.
But it can be a nasty place if you don't fit in, and the fastest way to not fit in is to say you don't.
I think I'd just like to offer a slightly different to Mrs Quoad's interesting and totally valid one.
Having been an undergraduate and graduate there I'd like to argue that it is possible, if extremely difficult, to break the college mold. I did, and that with the help of local, tiny, subcultures. There are goths in Cambridge, there is even a regular goth club night, it's a bit cack, but, hey... The quantity of drugs consumed by the kids who do organise themselves to either run or attend decent events is fairly startling , you can go out to a college bar on a Wednesday night and find kids on 2-CB, and afterpartying on silly amounts of ketamine.
There is, however, an enormous disjunction between that culture and the rest of the more-traditional, mainstream, culture. Among graduate students things are different. However, while they are culturally less hidebound, and more interesting generally, the motive force behind the partying is still firmly with the undergrads and the locals.
I probably shouldn't have started this post because I can't quite be bothered to write lots more, but that's a crude summary of my views.
As regards the elitism, there is plenty of it, but it is bought into by the naive, who've just come from boarding school/insulated home-environment and haven't quite got the life-experience required to see beyond/through the microcosmic social-pressures.
Having been an undergraduate and graduate there I'd like to argue that it is possible, if extremely difficult, to break the college mold. I did, and that with the help of local, tiny, subcultures. There are goths in Cambridge, there is even a regular goth club night, it's a bit cack, but, hey... The quantity of drugs consumed by the kids who do organise themselves to either run or attend decent events is fairly startling , you can go out to a college bar on a Wednesday night and find kids on 2-CB, and afterpartying on silly amounts of ketamine.
There is, however, an enormous disjunction between that culture and the rest of the more-traditional, mainstream, culture. Among graduate students things are different. However, while they are culturally less hidebound, and more interesting generally, the motive force behind the partying is still firmly with the undergrads and the locals.
I probably shouldn't have started this post because I can't quite be bothered to write lots more, but that's a crude summary of my views.
As regards the elitism, there is plenty of it, but it is bought into by the naive, who've just come from boarding school/insulated home-environment and haven't quite got the life-experience required to see beyond/through the microcosmic social-pressures.
mattie
missing in inaction
Does choice of college have much impact, in your experience? A mate of mine finished off his PhD at the Whittle labs in Cambridge, one colleague of his was at Selwyn and another St Edmund's. Selwyn was horrendously formal, St Edmund's more like a 6th form common room.
We had a night in Queens', Christ that was murder (well, almost, if I'd had my way - how can people who've had help from so many people be so ingracious?)
All in all, not that gutted I didn't put in the nine months of 34-hr training weeks, then 
And... yes, Mattie. It does make a difference. Each college is very much a community with it's own flavour and hue. There's also a tremendous difference between undergraduates, and graduates...
And... yes, Mattie. It does make a difference. Each college is very much a community with it's own flavour and hue. There's also a tremendous difference between undergraduates, and graduates...
Clint Iguana
not an undercover cop
Some interesting sociological insights here.... who won the race though? 
Why the sad face?!
I know several Cambridge (and ex-Cambridge) rowers of various hues who won a few quid from betting on Oxford to win
Looby
Well-Known Member
Why the sad face?!
I know several Cambridge (and ex-Cambridge) rowers of various hues who won a few quid from betting on Oxford to win
I always cheer on Cambridge. I secretly wanted to go to Cambridge for years but I managed university of brighton for 2 1/2 terms.
wtf?
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