A Jesus College alumnus has said that “there will certainly be no mention” of the college in his will until an African cockerel sculpture “returns to its place in the hall in which [he] used to dine.”

The comments, which appeared in a letter to The Times newspaper, follow Jesus College’s decision to have the bronze cockerel “permanently removed…from its hall” last week in the face of student demands for its repatriation to Nigeria.

The letter, written by Francis Bown of London, also accused institutions like Jesus College and Oxford’s Oriel College, which has been embroiled in the #RhodesMustFall controversy, of adopting a “policy of supine appeasement” towards “silly” undergraduates.

While Jesus College said that it was committed “to work actively with the wider university”, there has been no indication that the cockerel will be put back on display in the college’s dining hall. 

A spokesperson said the college was looking into “new initiatives with Nigerian heritage and museum authorities to discuss and determine the best future for the Okukor, including the question of repatriation.”

The saga over the future of the sculpture, one of the so-called ‘Benin Bronzes’ taken from a royal palace in modern-day Nigeria as part of a punitive expedition by British forces in 1897, was sparked by a proposal by students in February.

The motion to have the cockerel repatriated to its place of origin, a proposal of which CUSU President Elect Amatey Doku was a proponent, was put forward as “both intrinsically and instrumentally good”, and was passed by a committee of students in an amended form.

However, Francis Bown is not the first to take issue with the removal of the cockerel.

Joanna Williams, a lecturer at the University of Kent and education editor at Spiked called the decision to remove the bronze from the hall “cowardly”, calling the students’ motion “another example of how students are using history as a morality play to express their own moral superiority in the present.

The University of Buckingham’s Alan Smithers struck a similar note to Williams and Bown, saying that “at present universities seem to make the mistake of taking [student] protests too seriously.”

Bown’s threat not to remember his alma mater in his will is not the first time alumni have attempted to use financial influence in an attempt to get an Oxbridge college to defy the demands of the current student body.

In January, The Telegraph reported on how the governing body of Oriel College had ruled out removing a statue of Cecil Rhodes in spite of pressure from the #RhodesMustFall movement, citing the potential for “dire financial consequences” as its rationale.

It was reported that “several alumni” had written to Oriel College, saying “they are disinheriting the college from their wills”, and that a number of six-figure donations had either been cancelled or were in doubt following the Rhodes row.

Mr Bown referred to Oriel College's decision in his letter to The Times, arguing that it shows Oxbridge colleges “care about one thing above all: money”, and that “old boys should learn the lesson.”

It is unknown whether other Jesuans have cancelled their donations or intend to disinherit the college in the wake of the Benin Bronze’s removal.