Alexander Ewing just cannot resist taking the bait from Nick Hilton

The other Senior Common Room contributors to this space have so far avoided penning a riposte to Nick Hilton’s recent column, claiming that undergrads, like him, are Oxford’s “true elite”. “Oxford is a city [note: not just the university] of, and for, undergraduates”, he claims.

I’ll take the bait.

To remind regular readers: in a previous column I listed off the basic college pecking order, descending from dons to undergraduates, in order to make the point that Junior Deans are, awkwardly, members of all three common rooms (Senior, Middle and Junior).

I did not think this was an outlandish way of going about the basics.

But irked and suffering from lower-rung envy, Mr Hilton launched a scattergun salvo aimed at Junior Deans (like me), DPhil students who teach first-years (like me) and rated undergraduates at “central colleges” as more important than those at places like St Catherine’s (where I hold a lectureship).

I presume Pembroke, where he is a denizen, remains within his definition of central. Tucked away in Christ Church’s shadow, it is just about on the edge, I reckon.

Sigh. We can excuse undergraduate ignorance to a degree.

After all, few of their lot know of anyone who resides outside the colleges, apart from perhaps the “so unfair” bouncers at the Purple Turtle nightclub — a popular hangout among the elite.

In my humble opinion, though, Oxford’s ‘real elite’, if I’ve interpreted his concept correctly, are of course many distinguished academics, but also people like Christopher Brown (CBE), director of the Ashmolean, and Euton Daley (MBE), until recently the long-serving leader of the Pegasus Theatre.

Even The Oxford Times’s Christopher Gray trumps the average three-year resident.

Moreover, since he is a final-year English student, I worry about Mr Hilton’s ability to correctly interpret a text.

He took from my column that Junior Deans are in it for the title and the pedestal, addicted to the awesome power of the decanal fine.

Hardly. As I intimated, we are usually broke international postgraduates, cleaning up vomit in order to survive.

Nothing makes me more miserable than fining or having to evict Oriel undergraduates from benches reserved for Senior members. Hierarchy like this is so medieval.

I’m more concerned about our pair of ducks, yearly residents of First Quad, who recently suffered from a migration to Second Quad on the orders of the Senior Fellow.

Unfortunately, it is more difficult for the porters to feed them there due to marauding squirrels.

I’ve gone to the UN. The ducks are terrified and starving in this wilderness.

Hopefully the undergraduates will recognise my efforts. You see, like the Oriel ducks, I am also an endangered species.

This is thanks to a recent university directive urging colleges to exclude internationals on Tier-4 visas from Junior Dean positions.

This will wipe out the large majority of our ranks. Without a student protest, I’m likely to end up in the university’s Museum of Natural History — stuffed, and displayed next to the Dodo.