The purpose of this Newt article is to give those of you unfamiliar with the illustrious event that is the Scholars’ Dinner (mainly Freshers, I presume) a brief insight into another, decidedly more sophisticated, facet of College life. Wow, that first sentence reads a lot like an introduction to an essay. Perhaps because essays are ALL I HAVE WRITTEN FOR THE PAST YEAR! Argh.

But all the blood, sweat, and many sleep-deprived evenings spent wrestling with the intricacies of Roman foreign policy (read nonchalantly browsing Facebook whilst pilfering the opinions of any academics whose books have had the misfortune to be read by me) have finally paid off! For now, I have witnessed the sacred rite of the swearing in of the scholars, have mingled with the intellectual behemoths of New College, have trodden in the footsteps of giants, and then watched in horror as my fellow scholars debased themselves over dinner and then made a spirited sortie into the SCR after their much-mythologised whiskey cabinet.

Oh. Where did that all go wrong? Well, the evening kicked off with the rather droll affair of signing our names into a big book, shortly followed by the rather tense affair of pledging allegiance to the College - “how the hell do I pronounce ‘fidem do’?! Oh Christ now it’s my turn! Shit!” The ceremony may also have involved a sacrifice of goats and lying prostrate before a likeness of Henry Mason (fidem do) until one experienced nirvana, but that would be telling. Byzantine and obscure like all good Oxford rituals, it was utterly pointless but a good laugh.

It did give Alan Ryan a chance to shine however, and he was eager to launch into an oratorical performance thatmade Martin Luther King look like Sarah Palin trying to talk her way out of an easy question, and left several scholars either convulsed on the floor in tears or racing back to their rooms to change their trousers. Fantastic stuff.

From then on the evening proceeded in a somewhat predictable manner, Robin Lane-Fox’s chat being the exception, dazzling in its ability to sweep from the soul-searching to the crude and then back again, just in time to say something (probably) clever in Greek. There was champagne, there was dinner with fine wine and port, and then the evening concluded with a trip to Hassan’s accompanied by a drunken Ye Chen. Hmm, maybe the life of a scholar isn’t so different after all…