From college puffers and scarves to the hallowed halls of the Union and even Boots, college crests decorate Cambridge, dividing the university up into 31 colleges. For many, they are a badge of honour and are worn with pride, providing a sense of belonging, community and individuality. For others, crests and the collegiate system as a whole are a banal and tribalistic means to elitism, spurring an already prestigious institution to cultivate additional gratuitous rivalry.

For me, college puffers (for example) form a spot of contention. For many, I am sure they represent a sense of belonging and create allegiance, not animosity, providing identification for a community and not identification of the enemy. However, are they not in fact, an assertion of perceived superiority? They may be symbolic of our communities within the larger university, but they have aligned with the tribalism of school uniforms. I thought we had escaped this, but it seems as if it remains in the production lines of Ryder & Amies.

“From the very beginning, Cambridge life was marked by college competition and judgement”

Relatively trivial debates about the integrity of college stash aside, it is clear how the ranking of colleges permeates through university life. As a fresher, Camfess represented an ultimate dictionary to the terms and rituals surrounding this esteemed university. From pidges to plodges, I quickly picked up the lingo and became clued up on the stereotypes that represented each college. From the very beginning, Cambridge life was marked by college competition and judgement.

Camfess rankings act as the ultimate mirror, reflecting how we are perceived. Like the Buzzfeed quizzes of the 2010s, of course we want to know what Hogwarts house or part of the Midlands we are. But for me, it was a reflection that I didn’t identify with and exacerbated my already monstrous imposter syndrome. For Cambridge students, the composition fallacy applied to colleges emphasises a fear that is common in this environment; that they don’t ‘fit in’ with their college, or maybe even Cambridge.

In many contexts stereotypes serve as jokes because, at the end of the day, Cambridge is Cambridge- right? But stereotypes also serve to exclude. It’s often worth considering the salience of stereotypes. The newer colleges (Homerton, Girton, Medwards, Churchill etc) tend to draw assumptions of pooling, feeding elitism which is augmented by the fact that a lot of these colleges were started as (or still are) women’s colleges. Homerton and Churchill incidentally have the highest state school proportions of any Cambridge College. Surely, questions must be raised, asking if the ranking common in so much talk of the colleges is thinly veiled classism and misogyny.

“You fit into your community because you can sneer at the arrogance of Trin-mos until the Kings’ cows come home”

Much of the tradition surrounding college life revolves around activities that are mired in money and an elite lifestyle. Upon discovering that university chants and college calls are taken from rowing events (a prestigious and expensive sport), I realised that in participating in it my worst fear had materialised; I belonged at Cambridge. So much inter-collegiate competition is demonstrative of the exclusiveness of the university as a whole. The language, the pride and knowledge allows us to retreat into the bubble, surrounded by the political microcosm of university life and to feel secluded within this. BBC notifications can be ignored for eight, not long enough, weeks as they are replaced by Camfess posts and college stash. Union drama replaces national politics and College marriage replaces Covid.

No one really cares about the competition, but appearing to care demonstrates a level of insider knowledge. It feeds our superiority complexes and our sense of belonging, outweighing the imposter syndrome at some level because wearing our college puffers and stash means we are now in on the joke. In the most superficial way, inter-college competition creates a culture of belonging internally. You fit into your community because you can sneer at the arrogance of Trin-mos until the Kings’ cows come home.