William Pimlott says farewell to us and Oxford

The song lyric goes: “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” But in the case of being a student at Oxford it might be the opposite.

Sweet, ambrosial gifts are promised to the Oxford alumnus. But I am not talking about the much vaunted work prospects or career options. No, it is something else. After the hard years of study, the gruelling academic work and all the stress, you are awarded the alumni card, thus winning access, by a plastic, credit card-shaped ‘open sesame’, to an untold treasure cave.

The alumni card offers money off a TLS subscription, more affordable meals at Quod and, kind nature’s gentlest boon, a 10 per cent discount at all APH airport car parks!

Not all of the advantages of alumnus status are so frivolous. Certainly the continued library and online journal access seems useful and important. And yet the alumni card seems to advertise, at least through the language of 10 per cent discounts, a very particular vision of what being an Oxford student was and what the alumni experience thus should be: Blenheim Palace, Oxford Philomusica, Shepherd and Woodward, the Randolph. This differs significantly from the actual student experience, where the discounts you would really covet would be at Nando’s, JD Wetherspoon or the college washing machine.

There are two grounds on which to object to the alumni card. First and foremost, it is elitist. Although there is no need to graduate (alumni status is awarded automatically during the last term of the course), the Oxford alumni website refuses, sententiously, but not without a certain emotion, even associate membership to several other Oxford institutions.

“We regret”, the website solemnly pronounces, “that students of the following institutions are not eligible at any level: Ruskin College, Plater College, Oxford Institute of Legal Practice.” The “at any level” seems a particularly stringent regulation, given there are only two levels anyway.

But there is a further objection: what need do Oxford alumni have, already the recipients of such a privileged education, of further illustrious rewards, of which the most modest is surely the 10 per cent discount in airport lounges?

Of course even posing such a question underestimates the power of seduction of the alumni card: successfully numbing its owner by the staggering accumulation of 10 per cent discounts at expensive restaurants and hotels, the card prevents any questioning of the legitimacy of the discounts it proffers forth.

I am leaving Oxford, and so with sadness must also stop writing this column. It has been a pleasure to write, and although I too, like my predecessor, attracted some critical commentary on The Oxford Times website (most memorably “Why is this column allowed, let alone printed?”) I hope some readers have enjoyed it. The column will be taken over by extremely capable hands. I, meanwhile, will be left lurking around airport car parks, lounges and hotels.