One of the beautiful things about Cambridge is that once you’re in, you’re in. Whatever odds you have overcome, they are a fact of your past. They make interesting conversation yes, but they no longer define you. You can do anything you want, in any society, for any newspaper or back in college on your JCR. The world is your oyster. Except that it isn’t. If the findings in this week’s Varsity investigation are anything to go by, this egalitarian utopia we have entered is not quite as pretty as we once thought it to be.

I thought the same when I arrived – it is very easy to let yourself believe that the subconscious and perhaps – dare I say it – conscious biases that affect society at large are absent in Cambridge. But when you look at the most influential positions – such as JCR presidents and newspaper editors – a different picture emerges.

The most uncomfortable statistics relate to newspapers. Are you privately educated and male? Head to The Tab. In the past three years, 80 per cent of editors have been men and 90 per cent have been privately educated. Privately educated and female? Varsity is the place for you. But state educated and female? Only three out of 29 newspaper editors since current third years matriculated have fit this bill (all of them at TCS).

What becomes apparent is a self-perpetuating culture of those in positions of influence who appoint their own replacements, choosing people who look a lot like themselves. Where this trend comes from is unknown. Is there a willful desire to select people like ourselves? Possibly. Is it unconscious? Probably. Or, just as worryingly, is there a degree of self-selection in applicants who don’t see people like themselves at the top of the tree already? Likely too.

The gender picture at the Union is also unpromising. In the period studied, there have been only two female presidents. When it comes to JCR presidents, there are almost twice as many male presidents as female, and the statistic is even worse when you remove all-female colleges from the sample. The situation for women is, bluntly put, bleak.

What is going on here? The answer may come from a closer inspection of the demographics at play. It seems that when leadership is democratic, such as with JCRs and the Union, the person we see at the top looks a lot like the larest demographic they represent – most colleges have slightly more male students, some have significantly more. It stands to reason that, if we follow the theory that people elect others like themselves, there will tend to be more male JCR presidents. It would also be interesting to know how many women stand for election at all.

Most colleges have more stateschooled students than any other demographic. It makes sense, therefore, that more JCR presidents will be from such a background – as they are. At the Union again, assuming that the membership is largely representative of wider Cambridge, the educational background corresponds. It seems that whoever you are, when it comes to choosing someone, whether as your leader or your successor, you are likely to pick someone in your own image.

For me, that is a concern. Many of us come to university to meet people from a range of backgrounds and indeed genders. The fact that we cannot see past these attributes when picking the people to wield power in our tiny model of a society shows this may not have happened as much as we like to tell ourselves. Are we putting image above other factors, like character or – God forbid – policy?

One last strand needs investigating: exactly which schools are we talking about? For the state sector, the last place pupils attended before coming to Cambridge was normally either a high performing sixth form college or a grammar school. Very few seem to make it through the comprehensive system, make it to Cambridge and make it to the top. Collapsing all non-private schools into “state” is lazy. It hides a world of differing standards and expectations. We too are lazy when we make decisions on such a simple criterion. The same is true when we look at the private schools assessed. They don’t tend to be your run of the mill establlishments: A Sutton Trust report published earlier this year about the educational backgrounds of those in positions of authority in British society drew the following conclusion:

“Ten leading independent schools accounted for 12 per cent of the leading people for which schools data was available. These are: Eton College; Winchester College; Charterhouse School; Rugby School; Westminster School...” The list goes on.

The same is true in Cambridge. A majority of those schools highlighted by the Sutton Trust take pride of place on the CVs of the Cambridge great and good. It is a roll-call of established, southern, mostly London-centric public schools.

People from all backgrounds should be able to aim for the top. You cannot criticise a person for doing the best with the cards they have been dealt. What should be of far greater concern, however, is that once the high achievers reach the top – a place from where they have real influence – they replace themselves with people who look an awful lot like them. All three papers are guilty. As an electorate, it isn’t ideal either.

If the Sutton Trust is to be believed, we, the Oxbridge-educated, are going to be in a great many positions of power in the generations to come. If we close the door on those who don’t look anything like us, the social mobility of Britain is going to continue at the pathetic rate at which it currently stands. I think we can do better.