The Students
The students featured in the series included:
Lucy Aitkins—Student who was ambitious to progress through the ranks of the Oxford Union. Was the primary focus of the second episode, which saw her elected as librarian, only to be stripped of the position through breaking the union’s policies on electioneering. Later elected union president and went on to become a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard University.
Natasha ("Tash") Etherington—Languages student from Crystal Palace, London. Admitted she didn’t set out to study at Oxford originally and rarely appeared at ease while studying at the college. She said her life felt "so much better in every way" whilst studying in Paris in her third year. Was the college’s LGBT representative.
Afshan Ghani—Medicine student from south Wales, of Pakistani origin. Appeared shy when in Oxford. The series saw her visit the poor village where her mother grew up in the Punjab. Took to wearing the hijab.
Ruth Hunt—The college’s JCR president. Came out as a lesbian during an interview in the college garden.
Laura Paskell-Brown—A socialist from the Manchester area, who studied Politics. First appears whilst selling the Socialist Worker magazine with her parents. Became embroiled in a storm of controversy surrounding her refusal to pay means-tested tuition fees, which were compulsory for the first time at English universities in 1998. Fell in love with a Conservative and got married in the final episode.
Read more about this topic: College Girls
Famous quotes containing the word students:
“We must continually remind students in the classroom that expression of different opinions and dissenting ideas affirms the intellectual process. We should forcefully explain that our role is not to teach them to think as we do but rather to teach them, by example, the importance of taking a stance that is rooted in rigorous engagement with the full range of ideas about a topic.”
—bell hooks (b. 1955)
“I know that I will always be expected to have extra insight into black texts—especially texts by black women. A working-class Jewish woman from Brooklyn could become an expert on Shakespeare or Baudelaire, my students seemed to believe, if she mastered the language, the texts, and the critical literature. But they would not grant that a middle-class white man could ever be a trusted authority on Toni Morrison.”
—Claire Oberon Garcia, African American scholar and educator. Chronicle of Higher Education, p. B2 (July 27, 1994)