Julie Oh, there are many Oxford traditions. Oxford is a very old university, the oldest English-speaking university

in the, in the world. And so there are many traditions which are associated with the colleges, with the times of the year, and with sport, and with eating, for example.

Eugene Each college is very different um, from um, the others, and it has its own character. Some colleges are

very conservative, and some are much more liberal and have a tradition of um, kind of liberal politics. But there are also some specific traditions.

Julie Formal Hall is when we all eat together here in college, the professors and the students. Usually it takes

places at seven o'clock in the evening, and the professors sit on high table which is the table over here, and the students sit on common table, which are the tables here. But everybody eats together. It's a very beautiful evening because there are, there's a special meal and we eat by candlelight.

Eugene I think er, the traditions that make Oxford so unique are firstly the Oxford Union and er, secondly, May

Day. The Oxford Union being a debating society where speakers come from all around the world to address the students and even allow themselves to be questioned by the students, making it a very interesting forum. Julie My favourite is er, May Day. And May Day is the first day of May, and we have a tradition called May

Morning, and on May Morning everybody gets up very early and the students have a celebration. There is a choir which sings on top of the tower at Magdalen College and all the people of the town and all the students go to listen to the singing. So it's very nice.

Eugene The tradition that er, was most important to me was probably Summer Eights. I was a rower. And Summer

Eights is a rowing competition, held in May in the summer term. And in this competition, each college is trying to improve its place which it won the previous year and gradually work its way up the river.

Julie When the students take exams, they must go to a special building and it's called Examination Schools. And

also they must wear a special uniform, so they wear E. gown like mine, a black gown, and they wear a white shirt, arid the men wear a white tie and black trousers. The women wear a white shirt and a black skirt or black trousers. And they must wear this uniform, which has a Latin name - sub fuse — and they must wear this uniform in order to take their examinations.

Eugene I think the Oxford traditions lend character to the place and it's such an old institution, it should have

traditions, but they can be very inconvenient. For example, sub fuse. This is the uniform that we are required according to the university rules, to wear.

Julie They also wear flowers in their buttonholes, and those flowers are carnations. And they wear different

colours, the students wear different coloured flowers for different examinations. So when you take your first exam you wear a white flower, and when you take your second exam you wear a pink flower, and when you take your final examination you wear a red carnation.

Eugene So we have to dress up in a full black suit, starched collar, white bow tie and carry a mortarboard. And to

write an exam in the summer heat whilst wearing all that which you're not allowed to take off is um, uncomfortable.

Julie I really like the Oxford traditions, I think it's part of our history, and part of um, being a student or a teacher

here at Oxford University.

Listening in

Passage 1

Interviewer Can you tell me something about the Ivy League? You're a professor at Harvard, is that right? Professor That's right, yes.

Interviewer Tell me how many universities are there? How many institutions?

Professor In total there are eight institutions: There's Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth,

Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Interviewer Ah, OK. And what's the sporting ... I believe there's some link with sports.

Professor There certainly is, yes. Originally the Ivy League referred to the sports teams from the universities

which competed against each other, especially in football, basketball and ice hockey. Now sometimes these universities, institutions, chose their students on the basis of their skills at these particular sports. But in the last 50 years, Ivy League schools have accepted a wider range of students because it wasn't possible to be both world-famous for research and also top class in sport.

Interviewer And what about their academic importance? I gather they're academically very, very important,

they're very well-known.

Professor Absolutely at the top. They're near or at the top of the USA colleges and university rankings. And

they're almost always in the top one per cent of the world's academic institutions for financial resources.

Interviewer And what does it mean socially to go to an Ivy League university?

Professor Certainly if you've been to one of these institutions, you are presumed or assumed to be at the top end of

the scale. The Ivy League institutions have a reputation for social elitism, many of the students are rich, intellectual, white Anglo-Saxon, protestants. Not all of them of course, but quite a lot of them.

Interviewer And do you know ... why's it called the Ivy League, what's the origin of the name?

Professor There are a number of stories, derivations, but possibly it's based on four universities, and IV, the letters

IV, that's the Roman numeral for four. Another more likely story is that ivy plants, which are symbolic of the age of the universities, you know, would be grown at the walls of these universities, these institutions, they cover the walls of the buildings. The term was created by a sports journalist, I think in the 1930s.

Interviewer Right, OK. And which is the oldest university?

Professor The oldest goes back to the 17th century, that's Harvard which was founded in 1636. And the youngest

of the institutions is Cornell which was founded in 1865.