Criticism from The Crimson

Laylah
Mon, 12 Mar 2007 07:49:41 +0000

I may as well weigh in, since I posted a comment on the Crimson website…

I think that some of the complaints made by the two students were legitimate. The library system IS old and needs to be overhauled, and the computing facilities ARE old-fashioned.

But essentially, what these students seem to be complaining about is the fact that Oxford isn’t Harvard. The system of teaching and learning is different to what they were used to, but why didn’t they research this first? It is interesting that neither of these girls mention their colleges at all, since the college is the social and academic base of a student’s life at Oxford.

I was actually shocked by the fact that these girls expected to be treated ‘better’ because they’d won a Rhodes scholarship. It smacks of an arrogance and sense of entitlement that is antithetical to everything academia stands for.

(Grrr. Sorry if I come across as angry, but I think that these two girls have done their fellow Harvard students no favours in writing this op-ed.)