The arcane traditions of top-tier universities are guaranteed to alienate students from working-class backgrounds, Mei Leng Yew discovered
"You were really brave to go to a state school," coos the doe-eyed darling across the table, "I presume it was a grammar?"
"Er... no" I stuttered back in reply, "We don't have schools like that where I come from."
Where I come from is inner-city south London, working-class and ethnically diverse. The comprehensive I attended had been below-average yet aspirational. 65% of students achieved 5 A*-C grades at GCSE compared to the national average of 70% but many of those stayed on for A-Levels before going to university, becoming the first of their families to do so, myself included.
Where I am now is Durham University, at a "formal". We are waiting for the staff to serve us our three-course meal for the evening. The college master sits at the high table alongside the other tutors and we are all wearing black bat-like gowns over our cocktail dresses and sharp suits. Stern faces scowl down from the portraits hanging on the wooden panelling of the dining hall and there are candelabras on the table, between the wine and the port.
Formal is to become an event I both dread and deride. I still don't know whether my disdain stems from my discomfort or at the laughable scene of teenagers playing lord and lady. Not only am I obliged to wear heels and a posh frock, I am expected to tackle a wood-pigeon salad with an unnecessary amount of cutlery. Cutlery that I literally fail to get to grips with.
Nervousness sends my fish fork clattering into my neighbour's steak knife despite his best attempts to improve my dining etiquette.
"You must move your food to yourself, not yourself to your food. Place your knife and fork at a 45-degree angle when taking an interlude and leave them parallel when you're done. Be sure to tilt your soup bowl away from you. Away, Mei, away."
It's important to point out that the majority of my fellow students aren't snobs, despite all appearances. A close friend at university came back from a first date aghast that her companion "had no idea how to eat crab. He even tried to eat the shell". She didn't mean it maliciously and neither did the boy who critiqued my poor dining technique. They are simply baffled by our woeful lack of table manners, among other things. We are as strange to them as they are to us.
However, a sense of alienation followed me through my first year. I returned from the Christmas holidays, having worked in a bar near my home for most of it. The others returned, faces burnt red from their ski trips and clad in the latest Jack Wills clothing. In the end, it doesn't matter how well-mannered or kind-hearted they are, when you have nothing in common with someone, you soon run out of conversation topics.
The gulf between the typical Durham student and the rest of the population is also keenly felt by the locals. A "townies versus gownies" mentality is prevalent among the city's youth. They resent us because we are posh. We dismiss them because they are chavs. Neither statements are true but both groups do little to dispel the myths. They drive past us shouting abuse and hurling raw eggs at our suits and bow-ties as we totter into town to dine on Italian.
Sometimes we students deserve the abuse. You cannot dismiss the locals' hatred of us as caused by mere class resentment when photos are published in the student newspaper showing Durham students with blacked-out faces at a football social. I was the only non-white person in the office that day but I was the least surprised. After all, the Ku Klux Klan had rumbled past me on a night out only a week before.
"Would this happen in any other university? Or is it just places like this?" asked the editor, disgusted.
It's not only Durham that can make a student acutely aware of race. A friend who went up to Cambridge wrote to me a month into his first term: "It seems foolish to say that I wasn't aware I was black until I came here but I truly wasn't. Now, I cannot forget it."
This sense of being different sets in long before students begin their degree – it hinders many from applying in the first place. As the director general of the Russell Group, Wendy Piatt, points out: "Research shows that pupils from top independent schools make twice as many applications to the most selective universities as their equally well qualified peers from the best comprehensive schools. We can't offer students places if they don't apply."With this in mind, it was no surprise to learn which UK universities are the least-attended by working-class students, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency's report. To their credit, all of the four universities at the bottom of Hesa's report have attempted to address the imbalance.
While these outreach programmes are admirable, they cannot tackle the negative reputations that prestigious universities in the UK have among those unused to sending their young to higher education while blogs like this will continue to discourage working class students from applying.
It makes more sense to them to go to Leeds or Nottingham. Somewhere that has a solid reputation, doesn't ask for the very highest grades, and where they know they'll fit in.
I want to encourage all capable students reading this to aim as high as they possibly can. However, I must be honest. I chose Durham University because it offered me an excellent education in English literature. If I could choose again, I'd choose to be happy.