Re: Dick's College?


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Posted by Alan Hakim on October 23, 2005 at 18:07:34 from 212.137.234.38 user awhakim.

In Reply to: Re: Dick's College? posted by John Nichols on October 23, 2005 at 15:56:32:

To answer John's numbered questions (the others have rather too wide a scope):
1. Cambridge (and I think Oxford is the same) requires all its undergraduate students to belong to a college. That means that to get access to the university's educational facilities, you have to be accepted by a college. They have considerable independence, hence varying entry criteria within a broad uniform policy.
2. The bulk of lecture and laboratory facilities are provided by the university. The lecturers etc ('Dons') usually belong to one of the colleges, but that is not essential. It's certainly preferable for them. Colleges provide 'supervisions', small weekly seminars where a few students meet a Don, read some prepared work set the previous week, and discuss it. Therefore John is right to say colleges have experts in different fields. However, for less popular subjects, it is possible to go for supervision to a specialist Don in another colege.
3. The Tripos is the end-of-year exam. Passing it is the way to graduate. Readers whose classical education goes further than Captain Flint's will recognise that the name is not because the Tripos is in two parts (in two different years). The story is that in the Middle Ages, exams were conducted by disputation with the Dons, a forerunner of supervisions. The candidate had to sit on a three-legged stool. (That's not even Latin, it's Greek.) Any Wagner fans can compare Act 1 of Die Meistersinger.
4. University discipline has changed a lot since Roger's day, and I doubt that the Proctors still pick up the minor misdemeanours they used to handle. They are the University's internal police, and are, of course, supplied by senior members of the colleges. In the 1930s, the usual crime they were looking for was being out of college in the evening without wearing an academic gown. Almost any undergraduate could get caught up for that: it's easy to forget to put it on. And what was the penalty? A fine of – yes – 6/8d.
The word Proctor is a medieval derivation from the Latin 'procurator', and has nothing to do with Proctology, which comes straight from ancient Greek.
And I'm sorry, I don't know Roger's college.


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