Once a term, my college has a ‘Superhall’ dinner. Despite the absurd name, it is a rather nice occasion: four-course, black-tie, costing between £30 and £35 depending on whether you want alcohol – to be sure, a highlight of term. But since last Easter, a new addition has been made to the dinners: five ‘welfare officers’.

Being a welfare officer at Superhall involves not drinking wine and eating a quite good dinner for free. (A convenience if you forget to book.) But the reason why these offices of the JCR state have been introduced is a furore following a marriage formal during which someone threw up in the dining hall, just before dessert.

There is no better example of the bureaucratising urge to solve problems – or rather, perceived problems. Such a bureaucratic spirit embodies the rationalist mindset the political philosopher Michael Oakeshott’s ‘Rationalism in Politics’ skewers. He demonstrates how one who claims to be a rationalist, with their rational solutions, is more often than not wrong because they misidentify an apparent problem that must be solved. So it is with introducing ‘welfare officers’ as a catch-all solution to a supposed problem – or to make it appear like a solution has been attempted.

Whatever next? Welfare officers manning the library in high-vis jackets lest someone consumes too much Pret coffee or Red Bull? It makes one think that if only Shakespeare gave Othello his own welfare officer he would have seen through Iago’s trifles and wouldn’t have murdered the love of his life. But there was also a sense of inevitability about Othello’s downfall: while undone by his rage, it is also what made him the soldier he was in the first place.

The whole thing is ridiculous. It hasn’t been thought out. It’s the manifestation of the knee-jerk bureaucratising tendency so deeply woven into the fabric of a JCR – a sort of JCR ethic

There is a similar sense of irrevocability for the risk of someone throwing up at a plush Cambridge dinner. A welfare officer can’t do much other than clean up the mess. Maybe they’ll see someone turning green across the other side of the hall and save them before it’s too late. But my bet is that they’ll have a mouthful of food and be in flowing conversation about this malicious article to even notice. Welfare officers aren’t the solution, they just get a free dinner; and the rhetorical veil that gives legitimacy to a ‘welfare officer’ is easily lifted. In reality, the only people who will have to clean up will be, as it was before the officers, the person who was sick after being given a mop and bucket by the catering staff. The only serious solution would be to ban alcohol – entirely untenable.

The whole thing is ridiculous. It hasn’t been thought out. It’s the manifestation of the knee-jerk bureaucratising tendency so deeply woven into the fabric of a JCR – a sort of JCR ethic. It has a deadening effect on the spirit of a joyful and expensive dinner. All fun is stifled by the prigs and bores who must solve a problem, somewhere, somehow, no matter how (non-) existent it may be, nor how impossible. Unintended consequences are all but ignored.

And so it is that welfare officers are far from ideal dinner guests: their presence offers little by way of welfare, and much by detumescence.