The Case for Formal Hall Every Night
Sample article. Gowns, candles and a three-course argument about whether the gowns and candles are a bit much.
This is a sample article to show how articles will look. Delete it from the /admin editor once real ones are in.
Every college has its own rhythm for formal Hall. Some do it nightly, some weekly, and some only when a benefactor needs reminding why they gave the money. I would like to make the case for more of it.
The gown is a great leveller
Put forty undergraduates in identical black gowns and something remarkable happens: nobody can tell who spent three hours choosing their outfit. The gown hides a multitude of sins, most of them involving a hoodie.
Conversation, by force
Formal Hall seats you next to whoever arrives at the same time as you. That is how a historian ends up explaining the Corn Laws to a chemist, and how the chemist ends up explaining, at length, why the soup is technically a colloid.
“Is it pretentious if it’s also delicious?”
The objection
Yes, it is a bit much. That is rather the point. You will not get many more chances in life to eat by candlelight under a portrait of a seventeenth-century bishop who would have disapproved of you. Take them.