UK: Must not celebrate the past

Two Oxford University colleges are at the centre of a race row over summer balls themed around the 1920s and New Orleans.

Students claim the balls may upset women and ethnic minority students and have complained to the organising committees for the events.

Magdalen College’s £185-a-ticket ball, inspired by F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, promises to take revellers ‘back to 1926’. It has been marketed using the quote: ‘Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!’

But Arushi Garg, a Magdalen law student, has criticised the ball, saying it would force people to remember ‘a college devoid of women and people of colour’.

She told the student newspaper Cherwell: ‘1926 at Magdalen was a time when people of colour and women were entirely absent from college spaces. I felt uncomfortable with the advertising.

‘Obviously my demographic (woman of colour from a former colony that remains a developing country) makes me less likely than others to uncritically long for a past that privileged some more than others.

Lincoln College’s New Orleans ball promises ‘amazing jazz ’, ‘spectacular Mardi Gras’ and ‘clandestine magic’.

But critics, including co-chairmen of the student union’s Campaign for Racial Awareness and Equality, say it shows a ‘nostalgia for an era of history steeped in racism’.

Magdalen’s ball committee said it had taken the comments ‘on board’ and was discussing them with the college authorities.  They added: ‘We simply wanted the ball to be boldly designed, and thought that 1920s art and design would enable us to do that.

‘We are of the opinion that to undertake changes now would be to undermine the considerable amount of work our design, catering and entertainment teams have already put in to what promises to be a very enjoyable evening.’

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