WRITING UPON STONE

There are time when a grave wrong has been committed and a murmur of discontent arises within this College; there are times when the members of this College are divided into two opposing camps, of revision and reaction, of temerity and tenacity, of alarum and alls-well; there are times when this College, having suffered for decades the deprivation of some natural privilege, moves as one man against the sands of time, sweeping them into the sea and laying bare the bedrock of justice and liberty.

But this is not one of those times.

For the awful crime of which that oft-criticised oft-vindicated weary defendant, the status quo, stands accused is that this College's Junior Common Room does not possess a written constitution. A quality which in a country would mark that country as a civilised and godly land whose inhabitants live together in an atmosphere of trust and confidence and friendship, is seen in a Junior Common Room by those too near-sighted to view such matters without distortion as marking that Junior Common Room as a decadent and corrupt organisation whose leaders trample heedless over the bodies of those lesser men who get in their way. And what has the status quo done to deserve this persecution?

No-one will dispute that this College is a more civilised and pleasant place than any other college. No-one will dispute that that atmosphere of peace and tranquility which in other colleges has been lost to the winds of change has in this College been retained and enriched by the gravity of College life. No-one will dispute that this College excels both in work and in sport, yet without unseemly effort and without quite justifiable vanity. And no-one will dispute that, in these respects, this College should remain unchanged.

Yet there are those who want this College's Junior Common Room to have a written constitution.

They wish to set aside trust and to use instead a bridle-and-bit which will chafe when it is a little too old and which will chafe when it is a little too new. They wish to save machine-oil by installing a computer which will run a machine without being un-nerved by its squeaks; to avoid the inconvenience of continual maintenance by leaving it to run that machine deafly until the machine breaks down, then repairing it and rewriting the computer's programme. They wish to cross a desert not with compass and commonsense but with a fixed rail-way which unpredictable shifts of sand will soon and surely block or undermine.

They think they're writing upon stone!