"The real villains here are the press"Simon Lock

An email arrived this Wednesday morning, warning me away from “an offensive and damaging tradition of large gatherings of students coming together on Jesus Green on Sunday 1st May to participate or gawp at what has become known as ‘Caesarian Sunday’ … anti-social conduct of several students at this event [has] led to many complaints from members of the public ...”. The police are present to monitor the event. The tutor whose assistant sent the email (whom I have never met) “personally” advised me to “find a more fruitful way to enjoy Sunday 1st May than by a visit to Jesus Green”. Similar emails have been sent at many colleges.

I can see why a culture of binge drinking may worry some people, including fellows with students’ best interests at heart. I am not sure this worry justifies the severity of the ‘official’ reaction. Nor am I sure that the manufactured annual uproar in the Mail fairly represents the university that has again been ranked the best in Britain.

Obviously I do not condone excessive drinking that results in assault, indecency, or hospital visits. The administration’s recent alcohol survey is a positive development in this regard. I also don’t love informal public wrestling matches (although I wouldn’t ban them). But while I don’t have the figure or confidence to take part in anything involving whipped cream in public, I’m less sure that its use is something that the university or the police should be condemning.

At least five groups have stakes in Caesarian Sunday (and its portrayal): general society, Cambridge residents, the university (and colleges), students, and the press. From general society’s perspective, I see why drinking in excess is a worry. In recent years, the concern may only be theoretical. “It’s generally a pretty tame day”, one society President says. Another friend notes that vomiting is rare.

Some use the day to promote awareness of broader issues. Kate, a second year classicist, was pleased by the five Daily Mail photos featuring her Cambridge for Consent Ribbon last year. The group used Jesus Green to raise awareness of the relationship between alcohol and sexual assault. Kate says that Caesarian Sunday is a symptom of anti-social drinking, not a cause. I laud using the day as an opportunity for broader context and education: doing so helps participants learn respectful and responsible behaviour around alcohol from a young age.

To the extent that no-one should have to suffer trespass to land, assault, or private nuisance, I am sympathetic to the ‘picnicking families’ who live in or visit Cambridge. Authorities should deal with any instances appropriately. And Caesarian Sunday drinkers do everyone a favour if they keep some distance from families and children. But residents’ complaints about only mildly annoying behaviour risk charges of hypocrisy.

After all, 800 year-old institutions with medieval buildings, boathouses, pretty quads and chapels, and students barely here for six months each year (and who spend much of that time in gowns and circling the courts) make attractive neighbours. Our clever and concerned academics raise the standards of local schools when they send their children there. Caregivers visit often, so transport to London and tourist comforts are plentiful. This helps house prices. While permanent Cambridge residents owe us no duty, asking them to treat the two days when we act like students anywhere else with cheerful resignation, if not good-humour, seems reasonable.

Institutionally, emails like my tutor’s afford colleges distance. They can now plausibly claim no connection if harangued by the media on Monday. I hope that the senders do not take themselves, or expect us to take their suggestions, too seriously though. The thoughtful subversive has a proud lineage at Cambridge. (Think Bertrand Russell during World War I, or Emma Thompson’s recent defiance of an injunction to show a movie about fracking.) Taking collegiate warnings based on reputation lightly is an important part of who we are. Properly managed days like Caesarian Sunday are also in the university’s long-term interest. Happy memories make happy donors.

 Within the parameters of not harming anyone else or ourselves, a day drinking in a park is also no bad thing for students. For Kate, “it’s like pancakes before Lent: get this out of your system, and then get back to work. The bigger problem is the unhealthy perception that if you’re not working the rest of the time, you’re slacking.” A current Fitzwilliam parent is also unconcerned, noting that socialising in large groups builds important social bonds, bestowing an education rather than merely a degree.

It’s a hackneyed refrain, but the real villains here are the press - particularly the tabloids. The Mail and Mirror have a field day when Cambridge students lark about in pastel shorts and fancy dress, but the reality is a little different. The real story in 2015 was that there was no story. Tabloid Caesarian Sunday coverage is now the worst kind of concern-trolling and privilege porn. ‘Look at these posh drunks,’ the pictures and overblown interviews with disturbed picnickers imply, without asking what participants are studying or how their supervisors perceive them. ‘Are these really our brightest minds?’

I think they are, a bit of Sunday fun notwithstanding. The tabloids ignore the training and rehearsals that otherwise occupy us here. They are especially uninterested in the work that populates labs and libraries from Monday until at least June. The drinking society president argues “that people like to make a fuss about it mainly because of an obsession with ‘elite’ institutions. If a bunch of non-Oxbridge students decided to have a few drinks in a park, the Daily Mail would not turn up to take photos.” The annual coverage suggests a tabloid press desperate for shares and likes that reward lazy content. They should not be surprised at how little they have to say. In keeping with Cambridge’s best empiricist traditions, most famous graduates treat the Mail with the same contempt reserved for Trump’s pronouncements on race.

Caesarian Sunday this year might be literally and figuratively damp, with rain forecast and people worried about exams and work during the week ahead, while the rest of the country enjoys a shortened week. Still, there is May Week, when post-exam relief meets black tie outfits and fireworks then. Cambridge students return to their ‘rightful’ pigeonhole in the public imagination. We can then be criticised for being privileged toffs rather than a gabble of antisocial drunks.

The tabloids need this narrative. The unintoxicating cocktail of hard graft and anxiety, which more accurately represents life here, attracts far fewer clicks.