University College Oxford Record 2020

MASTER’S
NOTES
In March of this year a virus, alien
and invisible, originating 6,000
miles away, succeeded in closing
the College down for the first time
in its 770-year history. The medieval
plagues, civil war and two world wars
ravaged the lives of the college community
incomparably more, but did not force Univ to
lock its doors. The epidemic’s scale and danger
stole upon us with frightening speed; within a
fortnight the College moved from assuming
that, with a few sensible precautions, life would
continue more or less as normal, to entering into
full lockdown. Steadily and unnervingly, the lights
went permanently out in the Hall, the kitchens,
the library, the Chapel and the student rooms.
The few students who could not return home
were re-housed on Merton Street or up in
“Stavs”, living as Oxford residents rather than
Univ students. Only a couple of porters were left
in place alongside the Master and his wife who
presided over a ghost college from the comfort of
their spacious Lodgings, and the Master’s Garden
as their exercise yard during home detention.
The prohibition on returning to College for
the Trinity Term was particularly disappointing
for our Finalists. For them the last term is very
special, a time when they share with their close
Univ friends the frisson of Finals, the celebrations
and good-byes. The College could only promise
to give them a terrific party when they returned
in 2021 to collect their degrees at graduation.
Lockdown did not mean close down. The
physical stillness and quiet of the College belied
frenetic efforts over the Easter vacation to
ensure that the College could operate its “core
business” in Trinity Term. A crisis team of Andrew
Bell, Andrew Gregory and Angela Unsworth
(respectively the Senior Tutor, Chaplain and
Welfare Fellow, and Domestic
Bursar) led the transition to a
fully functioning online college.
Tutorials, revision classes, Master’s
collections – all continued. Governing
Body and the College committees met,
deliberated and conducted College business.
The University swiftly and rightly decided to
organise online, un-invigilated “open-book” Finals
examinations. It offered students the choice of
taking Finals or accepting an unclassified “Degree
Deserving of Honours” (equivalent to aegrotat);
the overwhelming majority chose the former.
Despite the dispersal of us all to home
confinement, we did our best to sustain the
College as a community, to keep in touch and
look after each other, albeit remotely. Fellows
kept in frequent and regular touch with their
tutees; the Chapel Choir continued to rehearse;
Choral Evensong was broadcast on the website
every Sunday evening; and the JCR and WCR
played their part.
In turn Univ made what contribution it
could to alleviate the national crisis in its many
forms. The College website’s “Univ and the
Coronavirus” vividly describes the role played by
our medics. In recent years Univ has significantly
expanded its supernumerary fellowship of senior
researchers in the biomedical sciences and in
tandem its intake of doctoral students in the
same fields, in line with the University’s huge
expansion in medicine and allied subjects. The
College could not hide its pride at the thought
of so many Univ Fellows and graduates working
in the labs and hospitals on the multi-dimensional
challenge of understanding the COVID-19 virus
and of containing its impact. But they represent a
small proportion of our Old Members, whether
clinicians, hospital managers or researchers, who
4 University College Record | October 2020