Rosie Best

College family, a concept which is not as loving as it sounds. With the arrival of the newest batch of freshers imminent we must put our broodiness aside and consider whether a college orphanage may be a healthier, happier place for them.

For most, the Cambridge student is a mysterious breed; their way of life seems foreign and exciting. For me, the introductory email from my surprisingly ordinary parents robbed me of this illusion. The discussion of mundane topics such as supervisions and reading lists, while helpful, brought me back down to Earth with a thud and I no longer felt elated at the prospect of joining what I considered the academic elite, but that the daily grind was already beginning. Sadly, this is the case for many new students every year.

The college family can also be misused – affording new students a safety blanket which encourages the evading of character-building experiences that should be a natural part of anyone’s first term. Warning: introducing your child to other freshers, guided tours, and so on provides them with a sheltered upbringing and may cause overdependence in the future.

Another inevitable flaw of this system is parental favouritism. The implementation of college families encourages forced friendships with people you might otherwise have avoided and, for the majority of college families, this results in the neglect of one child who is ‘forgotten’ when the other sibling is taken on a punting trip or on a family night out. In this case, your family are the friends you cannot choose.

Becoming a college parent, or college married, can also be a shockingly disappointing experience. At what point do we decide that the ‘marriage’ metaphor has been extended far enough? First-years compete with their peers for the most extravagant proposal and it has become an accepted practice to change one’s status to ‘engaged’, making Facebook friends cringe as they scroll through their news feed. The start of second year also marks the birth of new children and the receipt of emails is eagerly anticipated. But every day another child makes the decision to reject their college parents and, this time, it is the parents who are disillusioned with their ‘happy families’ ideal.

Please, take a chainsaw to your own family tree and safely dismantle the monstrosity before it inevitably bears the rotten fruit we will all eventually be forced to taste.

Lana Crowe

Joining Cambridge is the closest I will ever get to an induction into the mafia. After being made an offer that you can’t refuse, you are introduced to a system of indestructible hierarchy (only Dons can walk on the grass), feuding powers (there’s clearly some unfinished business between Trinity and John’s) and foreboding euphemism – because a trip to the Van of Life is not as innocent as it sounds. And at the heart of all of this – as any fan of mob movies will know – lies the family.

The college parenting system usually provides every fresher with their first point of contact with the student body. It emphasises, to someone who only knows Cambridge from an icy interview experience and defamatory articles in the Daily Mail, that to join a college is to become part of a close-knit community who eat, sleep, work and play together. Having someone there to answer questions before you arrive is not only helpful, but removes some of the mystery of ‘the Cambridge undergraduate’. We’re not all guffawing, port-drinking, Bamber-Gascoigne-looking geniuses fresh out of Brideshead Revisited. Being in a ‘family’ is an ice-breaker: a ready-made relationship to rely on when you can no longer cope with awkward introductions. Plus, it’s a great conversation-filler when mingling in Freshers’ Week – a smooth follow-up when you have already established what your names are, what you study, where you’re from and where you’re living in college.

Being college parents can be as beneficial as having them. It’s a great opportunity to take on a role of responsibility: becoming someone that others can look up to and rely on is a challenge, and to give someone the same guidance that you once received is satisfying. I have reflected on the difference between myself as the college child and myself now as the parent; I’m happy to say I’m pleased with the comparison. I’ll organise the teas and answer questions proudly, knowing that the fearful fresher of my past is gone. And I won’t be surprised when some smashed school-leaver I hardly know shouts “Mum!” and leaps into my arms in Cindies on Wednesday night. We’ve all been there, my child.