My room in College brings me tremendous joy. In the evening the sun sets over the Bridge of Sighs; and when I wish to procrastinate from work, I can distract myself for hours watching the Cam flow by. Punting tourists, I have discovered, fall into the water much more often than you might think, so my concentration is occasionally punctured by the sound of splashing and cries for help. A friend of mine pointed out that Virginia Woolf’s Jacob Flanders, while a student at Trinity, lived where I do now, in “Nevile’s Court, at the top”. “Reaching his door”, Woolf writes in Jacob’s Room, “one went in a little out of breath”. I know the feeling – but a spot of strenuous exercise, walking up three flights of stairs, is a small price to pay for stunning views and wooden beams. I’ve always wanted a room with beams.

“Even during term-time, I am constantly reminded of who my room really belongs to”

I love my room, but it isn’t really mine. Like the O2 Arena, the Cambridge Science Park, and the Suffolk town of Felixstowe, it belongs to Trinity College, Cambridge, one of the wealthiest landlords in the UK, who squats like Smaug atop their money-pile.

Even during term-time, I am constantly reminded of who my room really belongs to, my residency being subject to all manner of conditions. Some of these are fair: the College should, after all, strive to be a communal environment in which everyone is safe and happy. Some, however, seem pointless and arbitrary. Leafing through my “Accommodation Handbook”, I find a litany of rules and restrictions, most of which are not supplied with any explicit justification. “Students must NOT bring any furniture into College”, it says, capital letters condescendingly driving home the point: and thus we are condemned to shabby chairs and lumpy sofas. “Large screen TVs are”, for some reason, “also not permitted”.

The pandemic restricted everyone’s liberty, and most colleges saw fit to restrict our liberty in their petty fiefdoms more doggedly than even the government. It seems like most people I know got “deaned” at least once last year, for such heinous crimes as hosting friends in their rooms. But, on the flipside, the fact that bedders were no longer coming into our rooms afforded some students an opportunity to break College rules away from the watchful gaze of our landlords.

A friend of mine at Trinity smuggled one of those contraband “large screen TVs” into his room, and a PlayStation to boot, which, when he succumbed to COVID, doubtless made his days in isolation pass by quicker. Someone else I know adopted a kitten for company. Most infamously, a chemistry student, dubbed “Richard” (not his real name), kept a hot-tub in his room for a year without his College knowing.

“We should be able to do as we please in the rooms that we pay for”

Some were shocked by Richard’s antics when they were revealed last week – but what really was the scandal? A student, an adult, purchased a hot-tub with his own money (£200, quite the bargain), and moved it into his own room. I am sure his quality of life improved immensely. As far as I can tell, the hot-tub did nobody harm, except perhaps the group of freshers who reported “leaving with rashes, having sat in water full of everyone’s bodily fluids for hours” (the exact nature of these “bodily fluids” remains unclear). I’d be tempted to take inspiration from our hot-tub hero, though I doubt I’d be able to manoeuvre one up my staircase, and it wouldn’t chime with the Cottagecore aesthetic anyway.

The photo that graced last week’s front-page shows eight students relaxing in Richard’s hot-tub. I imagine them grinning as they luxuriate in their bubbles, and each others’ bodily fluids – though their faces had to be blurred out, so that they wouldn’t get caught, and so Richard wouldn’t land in trouble. How sad it is, that they must have their fun in secret.

I support a very simple principle: that we should be able to do as we please in the rooms that we pay for. Something interesting pertaining to this has recently happened at Caius. Much attention has been spent, and much ink spilled, on the College Council’s controversial decision to take down the “Progress flag”, which customarily flies during LGBT History month. But whatever the merits and demerits of this decision, it was intended, according to the College’s statement, to “complement a recent amendment to Regulation 22 to support freedom of individual expression”, allowing “the display of any legal flag, poster, or similar, by students in their rooms and windows, including outward-facing ones”. This is a triumph for students’ freedom of speech, and I hope other colleges will follow suit.

I long for the day when Richard will be able to relish his hot-tub without fear of reprisal from his College landlord, perhaps with a flag of his choosing fluttering outside his window, showing off his happy face to the world, with a sparkle in his eye, and knowing that he is free.