Cambridge’s place in the national imagination has often put the university under the spotlight of the national media. In the past year, students and academics at Cambridge have found themselves at the centre of some of Britain’s most divisive national debates, exposing sharp fault lines in our national conversation.

Oxbridge access investigations and commentaries frequently feature in the pages of the UK’s newspapers, often used in general commentaries on social mobility, or the lack thereof, and elitism throughout the country. The past year, as always, has seen many varied pieces revealing different statistics about the state of access to the University, almost always providing further evidence to support the same conclusion: Oxbridge, despite the efforts of the universities and their students, continues to be unrepresentative of society at large, with disproportionately high numbers of students from affluent backgrounds and independent schools.

While these stories often prompt initial shock and vocal discontent, they have too frequently prompted very little change.

MPs have taken to the national press to make bold statements and offer new plans to improve access, as seen most recently as Andrew Adonis, writing in the Guardian, argued that Oxford and Cambridge must create new colleges specifically for disadvantaged students.

While access remains a serious issue for the University, often rightly called to attention by the national press, at times, even the most innocuous of stories have made the national headlines. In Easter term, Lucy Cavendish College obtained guinea pigs to help ease its students stress levels during exam term. This became the following headline in the Daily Mail: “Snowflake Students at Cambridge University are being given GUINEA PIGS to help ease their stress levels including three named after feminist icons”.

Concerned by the apparently new lows of moral dependency among millennials, some readers expressed suitable exasperation. “Frightening to think that these snowflakes could be our next world leaders”, one commented, with another asking, “Where’s the calming goat? Seriously, how will these students get on in the real world?”. The use of animals for calming purposes is common across universities, with puppy petting days available in many UK universities. However, certain media outlets chose this specific case to discuss their perception of societal ills and ‘snowflake’ culture, perhaps capitalising on the Cambridge name to add weight. Perhaps it was also to heighten outrage due to the stereotypical perception of Oxbridge as a serious place, which has produced disproportionately many of influential figures in our society, past and present, ranging from government figures to corporate magnates.

National press coverage of Cambridge is not always, however, so seemingly frivolous. The handling of certain incidents by the national press has led to targeted harassment of students.

In October, students attracted media attention when CUSU Council rejected a proposal to actively support the commemoration of Remembrance Day. The original motion, proposed and seconded by members of CUCA, sought to commemorate British war veterans, but some members of the student union desired a more internationally-oriented proposal, amending the original motion to include “all those whose lives have been affected by the war”.

Debates within the University have been spun into incidents of national, and even international, significance

Irresponsible journalism saw certain newspapers distort the facts of the event in order to provoke outrage, undermining student safety and even invading student privacy. The Daily Mail ran the headline: “Mayor slams Cambridge University students after they turn down call to promote Remembrance Day and to encourage people to buy poppies”. The Times argued that Cambridge was “rejecting Remembrance Day”.

Some who supported the proposed amendment received death threats on social media, prompting the University to issue a statement on Twitter: “We understand issues like these provoke strong views but we condemn the extreme online abuse of our students.”

Then in December, hundreds of academics and students signed an open letter calling for an investigation into the appointment of Noah Carl, a research fellow at St. Edmund’s with a background in eugenics work. At the time, Varsity reported that students at Eddie’s had raised concerns at Carl’s research interests, including his attendance at the London Conference on Intelligence, which has previously hosted academics associated with discredited “race-science”.

National coverage of the story landed the University in the centre of a debate over academic free speech which has gripped commentators on both sides of the Atlantic. Writing in The Spectator, Toby Young heralded the open letter a “scandalous shaming”: “It is typical of the underhand tactics used by the Left to discredit those who don’t subscribe to progressive orthodoxy… and helps explain why there are so few conservatives in the social sciences and the humanities.” News agencies across the Atlantic, including the far-right Breitbart News, even caught on to the story.

Other outlets defended the open letter. The New Statesman wrote on the problem the media has with students : “maybe it’s because students are a modern folk-devil, portrayed as simultaneously buffoonish and deadly.”

Frequently, debates within the University have been spun into incidents of national, and even international, significance, with Cambridge incidents used, by some commentators, often in the right-wing media, as emblematic of things they consider to be societal problems.

In an age of increasingly polarised public discourse, exacerbated by the propensity of media, particularly online, to create echo chambers, Cambridge is unlikely to cease to be examined and questioned by media any time soon. Whether this examination will seek to improve the accessibility of the University, or rather simply to fuel certain prejudices and stereotypes, remains to be seen.