Personality: Warwick’s quest to be cool

People are drawn to the personalities of universities and the older they are, the more unique ‘personality’ and identity they seem to develop. However, anyone who thinks that age is a guarantee of personality has clearly never watched an interview with Nigel Farage or Allistair Campbell.

The University of Warwick has only existed since 1965 and perhaps this is the crux of the issue; Warwick was purpose-built as a university. Warwick faces the same issues as towns and cities that struggle with poor reputations: culture and identity cannot be designed and created in a board room or by a committee, no matter how well-meaning.

The inconvenient truth to all those multi-millionaire donors who get their name plastered on one of our almost unreasonably huge and impressive buildings is that they will never be part of the Warwick identity: culture only happens by accident. Without the time and space for culture and personality to grow, Warwick will always lack the personality and appeal garnered by older universities.

I find the universities of London guilty of the same crimes as Bristol and Manchester: what culture and personality do KCL or LSE have other than that of the city that surrounds them?

All this is not to say that Warwick is alone in this struggle or that other universities have done something to improve their personal appeal. Bristol and Manchester, for example, have more appeal of culture, but this has nothing to do with their respective institutions. With or without their universities, these cities would be places with their own appeal and personality.

Unlike Bristol and Manchester, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge can claim to be a significant part of their respective cities’ identities, but that is only because they have both existed in these places for nigh on a thousand years. Moreover, both universities own a great deal of the land and property in their respective cities, so yes, Oxbridge can claim to hold more personality than Warwick, but not because they have done anything specific; they have simply been doing it for longer.

I find the universities of London guilty of the same crimes as Bristol and Manchester: what culture and personality do KCL or LSE have other than that of the city that surrounds them? It is unfair to argue that a university has a greater personality than another because of where it happens to be or when it happened to be founded. Oxford may be the oldest university in the English-speaking world, but this is not because the idea of a ‘University of Oxford’ is particularly special or better than anywhere else; it was simply a convenient place for scholarly monks to organise.

To the frustration of governments throughout the ages culture cannot be manufactured by institutions; culture is manufactured by interesting people

It is only through intellectual snobbery and clever action of university marketing departments that students can claim that their older universities, with their nuance and tradition, are somehow ‘better’.

There is one notable exception to the general rule of a university culture or personality being decided by its location or the length of its existence: art schools. Pretty much anywhere you go in the world arts universities are vibrant and cool, they ooze personality, and is that really surprising? A university attended exclusively by people studying and producing art and fashion will always have more personality than any other.

Some universities do have more personality than others but generally speaking, they have done nothing to earn it other than being in the right place at the right time.

To the frustration of governments throughout the ages culture cannot be manufactured by institutions; culture is manufactured by interesting people. Art schools cannot teach this undefinable factor of culture creation, but it is where these kinds of people end up. It is unsurprising that the institutions which can buck the trend and create real ‘personality’ are those filled with the sort of people who go on to create personality for a living.

With the exception of art and fashion schools, then, whether universities possess a ‘personality’ and how much personality they hold is not something they or their students can control. Some universities do have more personality than others but generally speaking, they have done nothing to earn it other than being in the right place at the right time.

In light of all this, you could argue that Warwick does have a personality crisis, but that isn’t anyone’s fault, and it certainly isn’t a measure of the superiority of other universities. The gloating of older institutions reeks of the rich and powerful, as those with long and grand family histories look down on the nouveau riche. They might have more history, but that is purely because of chance. The fact that a group of people calling themselves scholars happened to gather in a certain building rather than a different one in the next town over is in no way an achievement of the people who study sort of near where that first building was situated, nearly a thousand years later.