A few days before my first exam, tired and fed up with 17th century political thought, I left the library for bed. As I left, three intoxicated choral scholars decided it was their duty to remind me of my place in the elite Cambridge world – in between raucous laughter, they repeatedly shouted ‘commoner’, at me. Despite the fantastic work of Cambridge University and its students to improve access, in 2014, applications for my local area (the North East of England) made up only 1.6 per cent of the total applications to Cambridge, compared with the 14.3 per cent from Greater London. Furthermore, students from independent schools constituted 37.8 per cent of successful applications, despite only accounting for some 18 per cent of the UK student population at sixth form level.

From individual events run by college JCRs to university-wide open days, via CUSU schemes such as the shadowing scheme, Cambridge is certainly outshining Oxford in its access work, breaking down barriers which might prevent students from applying. However, there is still much more to be done: there are countless incidents where current students, including myself, have been made to feel unwelcome and out of place in Cambridge’s hallowed halls. The question remains: how can we make Cambridge an environment where all students feel welcome?

As a state-educated woman from the North East, Cambridge wasn’t built for me. It was designed as a place that deliberately declared I did not belong: I am not a man, I haven’t had thousands of pounds thrown at my education, and I wasn’t encouraged to apply here by my school. I was apprehensive at first about coming to Cambridge, worried that it would be filled with the country’s richest and most privileged elite. Teachers at my school repeatedly asked me, ‘Do you really want to go to Cambridge? Everyone is going to be posh or boring! Aren’t you better off at Newcastle, or Sheffield or Liverpool?’.

Upon arrival, I was pleasantly surprised to find that my initial preconceptions were, on the whole, inaccurate. I sighed with relief to find other northern freshers from York and Manchester. I laughed with my new friends at the fact that we had no idea what on earth the ‘velouté’ or ‘panacotta’ were as we ate matriculation dinner. Cambridge was a strange and daunting place, with quirky traditions and unusually-frequent fancy dinners, but everyone adapts, and it all became the norm surprisingly quickly.

Yet we cannot deny that the Cambridge lifestyle is specifically designed for the privileged elite. Divisions between ‘us’ and ‘them’ are instilled from our first day here with the ‘town vs gown’ divide. On the first night, second years warned us of the trials and tribulations of a Friday ‘Dangerspoons’, otherwise known as the night out for Cambridge residents. From the beginning the ‘town vs gown’ distinction is made extremely clear, as we’re encouraged to adopt an entitled mind-set whereby we believe we have more of a right to be in Cambridge and call it ours than the people who have lived here a lot longer. Access isn’t just about deconstructing the way Cambridge appears on the outside. Access must also be about deconstructing and challenging behaviour from within. How can we expect to persuade prospective students or the world that Cambridge isn’t reserved for the white, male upper classes elite while we as students perpetuate behaviours that suggest otherwise?

Don’t get me wrong: I love formals as much as the next person. I’m not talking about removing all the unique, and often very fun, aspects of Cambridge. I’m talking about questioning how we carry ourselves during these events. Are you that person in your gown, black tie, or drinking society blazer shouting abuse at Anglia Ruskin? Are you playing boozy croquet in red chinos, shouting how we’re ‘oh so Cambridge?’. 

When you make these hilarious comments, is your justification that you actually went to grammar school not private school (although, of course, you leave out that it was one of the top in the country), and you don’t really think those things you said on Tab TV about poor people? Of course, were you simply being ironic? A privately-educated Cambridge student in black tie recently told me, his ‘commoner’ comment was ‘just something meant as a joke’ and ‘totally doesn’t reflect his true thoughts’.  Repeating these remarks or behaviours, which purposefully uphold a damaging and negative stereotype, stemming from an exclusive and elitist history, lose their irony extremely quickly when we take a step back and look at the wider context. Through this seemingly calculated irony, the reputation of the University of Cambridge as a finishing school for the upper echelons of society continues to be systematically perpetuated.

I came from a pretty good state school – three other students in my year came to Cambridge. I was given support by my secondary school which I know many other state schools cannot offer. While I didn’t go to Westminster or Harrow, both my parents attended university and I recognise that I owe some of my success to this privileged upbringing. We can’t help where we come from, but we can help how we act. We have a responsibility, being at one of the top universities in the country, to think about how we act. So stop trying to be an ironic caricature of yourself – you’re not being ironic, you’re embarrassing.