ROGUES' GALLERY
For legal reasons, I cannot provide further details on the epistolary sequence presented here, which came into my hands from a ‘whistle blower’ at our university and chronicles a bizarre sequence of events at one of its older colleges.
I. DEAR ALICIA
Welcome to the College!
We're so excited, writing to a fresher from your background. I recently bought a copy of Rogues - from The Works - chronicling the picaresque escapades of 18th-century gallows fodder. Your ancestors could so easily fill its pages!
One family's story haunts me; I trust my account doesn't trigger inherited trauma? Cannibals resident on a vasty estate, consuming each other on a regular basis, until caught by King George’s men. Post-Brexit, I saw a documentary of the 'left behind', resident in a north Kent coastal resort. The resemblances were striking; education the only solution.
I link this to those brave miners in Billy Elliot, burning furniture - and pianos - to keep themselves warm at Christmas. It pains me how few of you ever graced the Royal Ballet: your only dance being the Tyburn jig!
I watched you arriving in Garden Quad, like a young mother in a shopping centre, but struggling with textbooks not grubby toddlers.
Now, to the purpose of my letter.
Rest assured, I shall follow your every step through these exciting but daunting first weeks at Oxford. May I offer you a welcoming drink in my rooms? There's no need to inform others of our arrangement.
Your affectionate Tutor,
Roland
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II. DEAR ROLAND
What a world such a name creates!
Sunlit afternoons of scattered liberal newspapers: tutting indignation over populism and terror of the masses; contagion in eating and sexual disorders. Have you reviewed our new student intake? Even to my jaded eyes, I see some outstanding ‘crumpet’ - as we once called totty, before awakening to contemporary enlightenment. I hear that one such has been receiving 'additional tutorials', in your Garden Quad equity-based emporium. According to those in neighbouring rooms, the sessions sound both demanding and exhausting.
Fill your boots, old son! When I was your age, I bagged many an impressionable fresher - though naturally middle-class girls, not estate fodder. Alicia is delightful! Her interest in non-binary literary tropes clearly needs stretching.
Did you know that our new Outreach and Diversity Fellow - Penny Spukenfielder - is an expert on the 'grooming issue'? She's written a robust dismissal of the supposed abuse suffered by working-class girls, at the hands of Islamic enlighteners. A wonderful study, drawing on Edward Said's Orientalism, the English theft of the Koh-i-Noor, and the Amritsar massacre. She demonstrates, in an evidence-based analysis, how the alleged ‘abuse’ was fake news, triggered by endemic racism. Her exemplar fact-checking, funded by the Saudi University of Sharia Law, has featured on the BBC, in The Guardian - and on James O'Brien's radio show.
However, she may be less biddable if a similar fate befalls such types at the College…
Incidentally, I have just submitted a paper to the Journal of Pronoun Irregularities in Genitally-modified Pupils, of which I see you are an editor. I trust publication is now assured?
Yours in anticipation,
Hubert
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III. DEAR HUBERT
Many thanks for your letter.
I have no hesitation in rejecting your paper, which falls below the standard required for the Journal of Genital Hacking and Puberty Blocking. As to Alicia, you have horribly misunderstood my intentions and the exhaustingly physical nature of my pedagogy. Our relationship is Platonic, in the purest sense of that classical term. Think of Socrates and his beloved pupils, before his unfortunate encounter with the hemlock
Your obsessions are disgusting; references to 'crumpet' and 'totty' fool no one. You are Oxford's most distinguished homosexualist, with many years straining at the 'coal face' in the station bogs, Abbey Road, OX2. As to your threat, I would welcome an encounter with that hag Penny Spunkenfielder; her bogus academic career is in need of a good kippering.
Yours in delighted anticipation,
Roland
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IV. DEAR COLLEAGUE
Ours is an open and welcoming environment, committed to the highest standards of intellectual enquiry, through the pursuit of equity and diversity in their truest sense. We have all agreed to this, through receipt of my letter, according to the following: Equity means that all are seen to achieve, without reference to colour, race, ethnicity, religion, class, gender, sexuality, or physical status. None of this is open to discussion; any attempt constitutes proof of a hate crime.
‘Diverse’ is the term for any and all people who operate as outlined here, in a community thus based on diversity. All views expressed in such an environment show, by definition, diversity of opinion and freeness in expression. This is how the problematic and anachronistic term ‘freedom of speech’ must be understood. There is a responsibility on all of us to ensure that we - and our colleagues - meet these requirements, both consciously and unconsciously.
This requires constant vigilance. To encourage this, I welcome reports - to be treated in the strictest confidence - of any transgressions. It is expected that a minimum of three such will be made by all staff, per term: I encourage you to show more commitment! Failure to do so implies that you reject our principles, and cannot be welcome in our community.
With sincerest thanks for your assistance in this vital project:
‘Exterminate all the brutes…’
Penny
Professor Penny Spukenfielder, Fellow in Comparative Law and Equity, with responsibility for Outreach and Diversity.
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V. DARLING ALICIA
AUBADE
Who can forget dawn over the colleges?
Even on days with Finals, that inky dark
into blue-gold stone...it's all gone now,
not the view but the content. We might as
well be staring over tower blocks in Hull.
Partly invasion, but more a collapse from
within - their decades long marching into
this hollowness - which an old man sees
but says nothing of, for fear it's getting worse.
I could go now and tear the whole place down,
but only in my head, which is failing anyway,
soon to be served them on a platter, in a
formal dinner for cannibals or verminous
natives, gaping at what was theirs.
See, you moved me to poetry!
How I envy your effervescent youth, even in these benighted times. Long ago I saw this Arcadian city - just once - in its pristine glory.
Beware one Hubert, Tutor in Urban Psychogeography.
HE MUST NOT SEE THIS POEM!
That rancid old fruit is monitoring us for Spunkfielder - the absurd ‘Outreach and Diversity fellow’ - to whom you owe nothing.
‘Mum’s the word’, as we English used to say.
All my love,
Roland
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VI. DEAR PROFESSOR SPUKENFIELDER
First, let me say how much I welcomed your Open Letter to colleagues at College.
Like you, I believe battle must ruthlessly be joined, with those omnipresent forces of reactionary bigotry infesting Oxford. To that end, I have been monitoring Dr Roland H, particularly his activities with a fresher named Alicia Swinedyke.
He has been sending the girl execrable poetry, dining with her at Wetherspoon’s - and playing her recordings of Nigel Farage berating Herman Von Rompuy - ‘Rumpy Pumpy the Belgian Perv’ - as he labels this distinguished European.
But my concerns about him long predate these latest events. He is an atavistic return to the dark days of monocultural Oxford. A gin-soaked old sot, whose appalling behaviour saw him imprisoned for ‘fornicating with a fireplace’, whilst on sabbatical at the University of Aberdeen.
In Oxford itself, he narrowly escaped imprisonment for defacing a sign outside his local gastropub - from ‘All dogs are welcome!’, to ‘All w*** are welcome!’. I beseech that my use of quotation marks and *** ensures I am safe? Can I also stress that I’m ashamed to be a honky.
Most appallingly, Roland has developed a loathing for the Keble expert on occultism and Congolese magic, Professor Deidre Pumkiss. He attended her lecture ‘Salem and denial of the female orgasm’ dressed as Vincent Price in Witchfinder General, then showered the distinguished Antipodean with cockerel blood. For this, he was sent back to Aberdeen, on emergency sabbatical.
To assist with your proceedings, I have made clandestine recordings of Roland and Ms Swinedyke, wrestling with late-Victorian Romantic verse at all hours.
With warmest regards from your ever-vigilant colleague,
Hubert
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VII. DEAR PENNY
In response to your and Hubert's allegations, please be assured, I have no intention of resigning my fellowship. There's more chance of a D-colour diamond dropping glinting from my arsehole than that happening.
Now, I've been reading your publications, on 'Comparative Law and Equity'. What utter buffoonery; you owe everything to bullying and fraud. Through moral cowardice, self-deception and fear, the academic world pretends to accept you. It’s now in need of defenestration, corrupt and useless, as rancid and rotten as the pre-Reformation monasteries. 'One can wake a man who’s asleep, but one can’t wake a man who’s pretending to be asleep.'
I intend to fight you and all that you represent, without a care for the damage I suffer.
Rest very uneasily. I already know many things about your bizarre activities, in the ‘Trans’ or ‘Non-binary’ world; the scandal that was covered up following a spate of High School suicides in Nebraska. Do you remember the DeLillio family - now sadly minus their two sons? They certainly recall you with great clarity, if not much fondness. Their account of your involvement is now safely online; I have also sent copies to the University authorities.
I trust this approach is diverse, equitable and welcoming enough?
With greetings from a grateful colleague,
Roland
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VIII. DEAR COMMUNITY
I have today initiated action to prevent trans-genocide occurring, in our very midst. My harrowing experience of this necessitates such firmness. I have no hesitation in sharing full details from my past:
Whilst facilitating High School workshops in my home state of Nebraska, I took swift action for twin boys from the DeLillio family, ensuring their liberation from an extreme environment of familial oppression, blue-collar restriction and trailer-trash prospects. They were freed from a truly deplorable environment, thanks to my intensive counselling.
Both individuals were assisted in rejecting their birth sex, in a discrete and painless surgical intervention, re-establishing themselves at my remote prairie ranch and clinic. Sadly, repeated nativist legal harassment left them with no choice other than to 'de-life' themselves, making the ultimate sacrifice in their personal liberation. The charges of assisted suicide I faced were dropped, on the personal insistence of Governor Ronald D. Gritman III (now known as Roxanna Spukenfielder II).
The College - and Oxford University - were fully aware of these events, on my appointment. Indeed, they were a contributing factor, when I was head-hunted for this crucial role.
Any further discussion of this is contrary to our principles of equity and diversity. Have a kind day!
Yours,
Penny Spukenfielder,
Realignment Facilitator and Fellow in Comparative Law/Equity