Jailbreak. If you’ve been at all aware of the goings on in Cambridge over the last couple of weeks, this word will no doubt conjure up images of onesie-clad couples posing for endless selfies in noteworthy places: beside Trafalgar Square, the Eiffel Tower or even Christ the Redeemer; you name it, it’s been done. This frenzied competition all happens in the name of charity, the student-led Cambridge RAG to be exact. There remains, however, a question of how successfully and efficiently Jailbreak raises money, with annual controversies emerging over the way in which money is raised and how it is spent. RAG organises a host of other events throughout the year, including the highly anticipated Blind Dates next week. But is the very way in which the charity operates and organises events belittling the philanthropic foundations of RAG? Does the focus on student fun obscure the real reason for the charity and, if so, are there alternatives?

Most universities in the UK and Ireland have a RAG society. Cambridge RAG has committees of college representatives, and every year RAG selects 5 local charities and 5 national or international charities to support. The charities that have been chosen for this year range from the Cambridge Rape Crisis Centre and Foodcycle Cambridge to Médecins Sans Frontières and Save the Children - a diverse collection and without doubt all fantastic causes. Their methods of raising money are equally diverse, from events such as LOST, Come Dine with Me and Firewalk, to ‘challenges’ in Borneo, Uganda and Kilimanjaro. I have nothing against these initiatives. I am however uncertain as to whether there is adequate emphasis on charity. Looking more closely at Jailbreak we begin to see the cracks in this event-focused approach.

The conditions of Jailbreak are pretty straightforward; each team pays a sign-up fee of £40, and is required to raise £200 before the Jailbreak begins. This year 27 pairs of students took part, each trying to get as far away as possible. Alex King and Daniel Rasbach made it to Istanbul, but were not the pair who made it furthest away. Since then, King has made a stand over the structure of the event. Their tickets to and from Istanbul were funded by donations, and both were dissatisfied at having to tell people who donated that their money was ‘going to charity’ when actually it was paying for the next ticket to somewhere further afield. The most awkward situation arose when people assumed the money was going straight to charity rather than travel. The pair ultimately decided to match the £202 they raised for travel in a donation to charity. Another pair didn’t even make it out of the UK as they refused to spend the money raised on flights. 

It is worth taking the environment into account too; the winning pair made it to Rio, an equivalent of a 2.97 tonne carbon footprint. To put this into perspective, the average carbon footprint of a person from the UK per year is 7.1 tonnes. Is it acceptable to raise money for charity in such an environmentally unfriendly way? In the long term, this is detrimental to overall social benefits and may be a root cause for many of the problems the charities are trying to resolve. I agree that charity fundraising should be fun and accessible to everyone and the success of jailbreak is evident in the figures; it has already raised £10,000, and organisers are aiming for £30,000 once the final collection deadline comes around. However, I am questioning the way in which Jailbreak is currently being run and the real ethics behind it.

The sleek RAG website is full of gloss and adventure, promoting trips of a lifetime and ‘funny stories’, making it feel more like a company for those of us who missed out on a 'Gap Yah', needing to flee our comfy Cambridge bubbles and find ourselves in Borneo in the name of charity.

But that’s just it isn’t it: this ‘all in the name of charity’ business. My concern is that RAG focus too heavily on those who are fundraising, and not enough on the actual charities - how they have been helped and why they require more support. Having said this, surely it’s better to have fundraising rather than none at all? And if, for the sake of popularity, it needs to be jazzed up and made into an experience, then so be it. It is hard to see another successful alternative, and the numbers speak for themselves: 2600 Rag Blind Date forms were sent in last year. Perhaps it is due to the depth and breadth of the charities RAG gives to that therefore leaves the focus on the raising rather than the giving, and this ultimately can be no bad thing.