Censorship Attempts
If there is one thing Linacre College does not tolerate, it is criticism in any form.
A member of the college posted the following review on the college facebook page:
I believe it is one of the worst, if not the single worst college in Oxford. I say this from my personal experience, as well as measured metrics such as student satisfaction and college affluence -- both of which Linacre is at of the bottom of the list.
A large portion of the Linacre population never actually applied for Linacre; approximately half of them are people who declined to select a preferred graduate college and therefore got assigned to Linacre. (The other large group consists of those who study environmental science and apply for Linacre in pursuit of one its "green" scholarships.) This in itself creates a division within the college in terms of culture.
Of course, there are nice people there, and it is an international community, as can be said about every college. I don't know why the other reviewers think that this makes Linacre a decent college. I will say that several of the other reviewers are heavily involved in the social committee and therefore may not be representative of the typical Linacre student.
Objectively, it has some of the worst academic facilities: The library is tiny and only seats about 10 people, internet connectivity is poor and flaky -- the wifi works sporadically and there are many blind spots. The only decent facility is the gym, as long as you catch it at a time when the facilities aren't reserved.
Aesthetically, it is among the ugliest colleges. There are no elegant buildings, no grass except a small patch behind one of the buildings. The courtyard is a barren field of wobbly tiling centered by a sad looking fountain shooting a pathetic stream of dirty water. The dining hall looks like a military mess hall.
The college has a heavily left-wing political and social climate, and subsequently shoves environmentalism and LGBQT agenda down your throat -- unfortunately these are not optional and in fact are mostly unavoidable. For example, they have a film society that primarily play LGBQT films. The common room is often booked for LGBQT events. On certain days they only serve vegetarian food in the dining hall. The buildings are designed to be "green" which means they are dark and suffer from very poor ventilation.
If you signed up for an education and just want to socialise with your peers with no interest in other agendas you are out of luck -- you have to choose between speaking up and being branded a "bigot" or suffer silently. The majority of students choose the latter. As I mentioned, Linacre is at the bottom of the student satisfaction rankings. The common room starts out at the beginning of the year full of optimistic people, but eventually they learn what Linacre is really like, they catch on that other colleges have better bars and better events, and by the end of the year Linacre is deserted, as it should be.
Finally, they blatantly refuse to allow transfer to any other college. Once they get you, you're stuck. Unfortunately, Linacre is a trap for those students who were naive enough to not select a better college.
So in summary, Linacre is to be avoided at all costs. For me it has been a terrible experience as well as effectively the most expensive gym membership I've ever had -- as that is the only college facility that I use.
The consequence was full scale panic on the side of the college as they desperately scrambled to cover up the review.
After a long series of back and forth messages including the Senior Tutor at the time (Asma Mustafa) and the college principal (Nick Brown) who tried to argue that the review was incorrect, despite being shown evidence for every point made.
Eventually, Asma Mustafa sent the following message:
Thank you for bearing with me while we decide how to deal with our Facebook page. The problem is that as administrators we had no editing rights over reviews and comments. This meant that we were unable to edit, correct or withdraw comments that are unsuitable or offensive, and this could potentially escalate. We have decided to move to another format of page with no reviews, similar to that used by many other Oxford Colleges. I wished to inform you of this decision and the reasons for it.
Once you’re back, please do let me know if you’d like to meet and talk things through - I want you to know that you are a member of our College, even if you feel you’re struggling with it. I’ll try to help in ways that I can.
Best wishes
Asma
What's fascinating about this is their admission that they feel it is a "problem" that they cannot edit people's reviews. As a consequence, they chose to shut down and remove all possibility of reviews or comments, to make sure nobody could say anything they didn't approve of.
As another example, Catherine Walter recently appointed herself, among other things, as the one and only moderator for the Common Room Facebook group. Many students have complained about the resultant dictatorial nature of the environment, as she will remove any content she does not like. She often deletes messages for the simple reason that she disagrees with what was said, and subsequently stamps it as "sexist" as justification.
For example, here is Catherine's excuse for deleting a post which questioned the effectiveness of consent workshops. Instead of putting forth a reasonable debate, she decided to delete the post and send this email:
I have deleted your post in response to Tom Samuelson's call for consent workshop facilitators from the Linacre Common Room Facebook page.
I deleted this post as being offensive relating to sex, since it is intentionally or recklessly aimed at deterring students from becoming informed, where that information is likely to lessen the incidence of sexual assaults (Jozkowski, 2015).
I have informed the Senior Tutor.
Yours with all best wishes
Catherine
A very recent and fascinating example of Linacre's censorship culture can be seen in Nick Brown's attempt to shut down this website.