History
The University of Oxford's nascent students' union emerged in the 13th century. Student leaders attempted to mediate the violent clashes between "nations" at the University. Southern English, northern English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish students would frequently battle against one another, with deaths recorded as early as 1260.
Despite this ancient pedigree, the University of Oxford's governing council resisted formally recognising Oxford's university-wide student estate for some 750 years,although JCRs and MCRs came to be recognised in their respective colleges during the 19th century.
In 1961, the University Proctors banned the student magazine Isis from publishing reviews of lectures. Students resisted, and legally incorporated the Oxford University Student Representative Council (OUSRC) for the first time. They then agitated for formal university recognition of the OUSRC, and petitioned the United Kingdom's Privy Council, asking the government to amend the Oxford and Cambridge Universities Act. Rather than risk having its hand forced by legislation, the University relented, and formally recognised the OUSRC in 1970.
The OUSRC adopted its contemporary constitution in 1974, changing its name to the Oxford University Student Union.
Read more about this topic: Oxford University Student Union
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.”
—Ben C. Bradlee (b. 1921)