In just over a year’s time Langwith will transfer to the sparkling new campus on Heslington East and leave Derwent to take over the tired old blocks it leaves behind. Now, as a ‘Langwithian’, you may think I would be happy about this; no longer will we be the smallest college who can never get a sports team together, no longer will others be able to mock us for our lack of en-suites and our ancient prison-style beds. However, I am not happy with the decision, and nor are many others in my position.
See, when Langwith leaves behind its dingy setting on the main University campus to inhabit the pristine palaces being created over on Heslington East, it will also leave behind fifty years of tradition, rivalry and a good deal of its college spirit.
Despite Langwith and Derwent’s accommodation not being the best the University offers by any means, the beauty of these two colleges comes from their small size and unrivalled sense of community. Derwent is not known as the ‘party college’ by chance, it is because its smallness, good location and fairly open plan design means that people get to know each other better not only between floors but between blocks and thence the entire college unites.
I believe that Derwent is actually getting the better deal in this 2012 reshuffle, since it still gets to keep the blocks which hold its history and friendly atmosphere within its walls, but the increase in size will nonetheless detract somewhat from the sense of community provided by the current situation.
Although I am extremely excited about the prospects of Langwith finally being able to genuinely compete strongly for such sports prizes as the college cup, as a college, it is going to lose what makes it special. Indeed, us ‘Langwithians’ actually bond over the topic of our lack of sporting prowess. As one of the college mottos goes, we are ‘proud to be the little guy’.
So far I have not even begun to mention the fact that the proud and definitive rivalry between York’s two smallest colleges will inevitably be destroyed by this move. The rivalry between Derwent and Langwith is one that is bred into each year’s freshers from the very beginning. Indeed, I had not even spent a whole day as a Langwith fresher before I was striding down the streets of York belting out my ‘hatred’ for Derwent. This was an act which helped bring our college together. How will it be the same when Langwith is all the way over on Hes East? What use is it telling Derwent how rubbish they are when they’re too far away to hear us?
What would make far more sense would be to make the extension on Heslington East into an entirely new college and keep York’s two oldest communities together, right in the centre of campus in the ramshackle, pebble-dashed blocks where they belong. It would hardly take a monumental effort to bring about this small change, and it is a change worth doing to preserve an age old rivalry and the very foundations of the University itself.