Spirit of the Hall: A podcast for Aularians by Aularians

From the Development and Alumni Relations Office

Whilst this year has been disrupted, it certainly has not dented Hall Spirit both amongst current students and Old Members. 1,454 Aularians have continued to make generous gifts, donating a total of £3.4m and pledging a further £2.6m. This represents another record breaking year of Aularian philanthropy both in the number of donors and in the overall sums committed. Thank you. Your gifts have enabled us to provide hardship funding to those most impacted by the effects of Covid, to endow two Tutorial Fellowships to secure teaching at the Hall in perpetuity, to keep the library open throughout the entire pandemic, to carry out essential work to upgrade the Besse building and to provide additional pastoral care to support students living in bubbles or in isolation.

The Hall is now developing its transformative additional student accommodation at Norham Gardens. This will allow us to offer bedrooms to all undergraduate year groups for the first time in our 750-year history and, in keeping with our strategic aims, the new campus will be certified Passivhaus to ensure the very highest environmental standards are reached. Of course, this important project will only be possible with Aularian support and we look forward to updating you on our ambitious plans.

Our events programme moved online with a diverse range of topics ranging from comedian Al Murray (1987, Modern History) discussing his new book through to broadcaster Wilf Frost (2005, PPE) interviewing his former tutor, and now Shadow Home Secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds (1998, PPE) about life in front-line politics. We were also delighted to partner with the SEHA to launch Aularian Connect where you can pick-up the latest Teddy Hall news and connect with other Aularians.

This year we bid farewell to Sally Brooks (née Smith) after 10-years of outstanding service. I know Sally will be missed by many Aularians and we wish her well as she takes on the next challenge in her career.

Thank you once again for your support. When Aularian gifts combine together they create significant impact. If all those who matriculated in the 1990s gave just £20 a month this could fully fund the tutorial system each year. This is why every gift, of every size, matters and I hope this edition of The Aularian, and our infographics opposite, provide a sense of the impact your funds have on the Hall and its students.

Floreat Aula!

Gareth Simpson Fellow & Director of Development

Thank you for your support £6m

Of Aularian gifts were committed in 2020/21. £3.4m was received and a further £2.6m pledged for future years.

1,454

Of Aularians made a gift, that’s 15% of contactable alumni.

609

Aularians made a gift after speaking to a student during one of our telephone campaigns. 150 of these made a gift for the first time.

371

Aularians from 19 countries donated £123,000 during September’s Giving Day.

Aularian relations 34

The number of countries from which Aularians joined one of our online events.

18m

Books have been sold by speakers in our Aularian Author series.

1,214

Aularians are using Aularian Connect to network and offer (or find) mentoring advice (for more information please see page 18).

The impact of your gifts

Aularian gifts are used to provide direct support to students, develop our historic estate and to fund our education and research. In addition, during this difficult year, your funds enabled us to put a number of special initiatives in place to maintain Hall Spirit.

Education and research Student awards

0

Missed weeks of teaching throughout the pandemic.

12

Newly appointed Early Career Fellows provided additional teaching and student support throughout the year.

2

Tutorial Fellowships were fully endowed thanks to major gifts.

Countless hours delivering teaching via Zoom and teams.

71

Undergraduates (17%) received a means-tested bursary to support their studies at the Hall.

£2,760

The average value of each undergraduate bursary award.

20

Graduates received a Hall scholarship.

282

The total number of bursaries, scholarships, awards and prizes provided by the Hall.

Library

1

Days the Library was closed this past year.

88

Socially distanced seats available in the Library 24/7 (second highest across all colleges).

180

Books sent to students at home during the winter lockdown.

859

Books purchased as a direct request from students.

20

Minutes fastest time between new book request and providing the book to the student.

Queen’s Lane enhancement

54

Refurbished bedrooms in Besse.

70%

Of Besse rooms that are now en-suite.

Maintaining Hall Spirit

4

Marquees erected to provide students with additional space in which to safely socialise.

80

Meals delivered to the bedrooms of isolating students in a single night.

365

Days in which student meals were served in Hall - including Christmas Day.

5

Socially distanced Christmas dinners.

1

Click and collect Buttery Bar.

4,266

New tiles on Besse roof.

Retiring Fellows reflect on their time at the Hall

Professor Adrian Briggs, Fellow and Tutor in Law

Adrian joined the Hall in 1980 and is the current Sir Richard Gozney Fellow and Tutor in Law and Professor of Private International Law.

Although I am taking early retirement, 97% of my working life, and almost two-thirds of my actual life, has been spent as Fellow and Law Tutor at the Hall. I joined a Governing Body some of whose members had served in the Second World War with honour and distinction, and whose lingering ration book mentality meant that we allowed ourselves to live a sufficient rather than a sumptuous life. Tutorial Fellows of the Hall were paid significantly less than their counterparts elsewhere in Oxford, but we knew that we belonged to the most beautiful college, and most spirited community, in Oxford. We can certainly still make that last claim, but everything else has changed. All those who close the office door for the last time probably look around and think that the job they are leaving is not the one which they took. There is certainly some truth in that as far as I am concerned. Administrative coercion, increasingly supplemented by demands that one undertake courses to correct latent shortcomings, has taken root in university life like Japanese knotweed. A general sense of external mistrust – that one can no longer trust a Tutorial Fellow to do what he or she was appointed to do or a Governing Body to see that it all runs as it should – seems to hang in the air. It is right to be sad for those whose recent appointment may mean that they see all this nonsense as normal. It really isn’t.

And yet the life of a Law tutor in St Edmund Hall is intensely rewarding: it was, it is, and I have no doubt that it will forever be. To tell the honest truth, life as the junior Law tutor is greatly to be preferred to being the one with whom the buck occasionally had to stop, and I had this privilege of juniority for almost thirty years. I discovered in the best possible way that no two students learn alike. I marvel how no two students tread the same path when they leave us to find all manner of wonderful (okay, mostly wonderful) things to do. And I affirm, as I trust that they all know, that whenever they make contact – even when this is the thin disguise of a request for a reference – or come back to visit, they are never unwelcome, even if a without-notice knock at the door can require a little impromptu juggling. The responsibility, the honour, and the joy of looking after the law and lawyers of St Edmund Hall now falls to others. I trust that they will, decades from now, be able to look back and see something every bit as beautiful as the picture I have in my mind’s eye as I retire.

Floreat Aula.

“The life of a law tutor in St Edmund Hall is intensely rewarding.” Professor Nicholas Davidson, Fellow and Tutor in Modern History

Nick joined the Hall in 1998 and is an Associate Professor and Tutor in Modern History and Archive Fellow.

I first visited Oxford when I was an undergraduate, with a friend who shared my interest in architectural history. We had stopped in the city while travelling between the Fens and my family home in South Wales. We viewed the obvious sights; and also Queen’s (we agreed that we preferred the architecture of its near namesake in Cambridge). We then looked in on the neighbouring college through its modest entrance on the Lane. We agreed that the Hall’s Front Quad was the most attractive college space we had seen in the city, a judgement reinforced by our view of St Peter-in-the-East as we walked across the churchyard. I had no idea then that I would later be elected a Fellow of the Hall, and would be able for a time to occupy what used to be known as the VicePrincipal’s Study on St. IV, with its privileged view of the College Library from its long windows.

One of the more unusual features of Oxford is that academics often have two employers: their Faculty or Department as well as their college. In recent years, I have spent more time in the College, especially when I was Dean. But I probably spent more time in the Faculty during my first few years in Oxford, when I held a number of formal roles, including a period as Vice-Chair of the Faculty Board (in effect, deputy head of the Faculty). I was very involved then with Faculty business, and especially with teaching, library provision, and appointments. As a result, I played a part in the pioneering globalisation of our syllabus during the early 2000s, which resulted in a transformation of the nature and content of my own tutorial teaching. While I never abandoned my research on Italian history, I helped to design and establish new papers on Eurasian empires and world religions, which have attracted large numbers of highly committed students.

At college level, that change in our syllabus coincided with significant changes in the student body. An increasing proportion of the Hall’s undergraduates now come from ethnic minority backgrounds, attended state schools, or live in areas of socio-economic disadvantage. Their overall numbers are also increasing: in 1998-9, there were fewer than 520 students in the College; now there are more than 750. These higher numbers have prompted a series of major building projects: most notably the William R. Miller Building, the Jarvis Doctorow Hall, and the Mingos Suite, while more recently we have embarked on a major re-development of the Besse Building (my base for most of my time in Oxford) and an ambitious plan for further development at Norham Gardens.

My years as Dean however gave me an additional perspective on college life. Quite rightly, our provision for student welfare has been expanded and enhanced in recent years, not least with the appointment of our College Counsellor. That process encouraged closer relations with others in the University who support our students, and with the presidents and the welfare representatives in our JCR and MCR, who have played such an outstanding role during the recent pandemic.

The dedication in fact of everyone in the College during the past two years has been especially impressive: evidence that this College, with its unique history and its remarkable resilience, has maintained its commitment to scholarship, to education, and to the well-being of all its members even during the most testing times. So the Hall remains for me the most attractive college in Oxford, and not just visually.

“We agreed that the Hall’s Front Quad was the most attractive college space we had seen in the city.”