The School’s archive features a vast array of magazines and pamphlets produced by students over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Student newsletters, known variously as New College News, New College News Sheet, New Col, and The Mod-erator were produced in fits and starts from the 1960’s through to 2007. A common theme that pervades these publications is the sense of ownership that the authors and contributors felt towards the School.
The student illustrations that featured in the School’s magazine testify to the light-hearted relationships fostered in the classroom. In September 1977 the in-house newsletter featured ‘through the looking-glass’ inspired student sketches (including the then Dr John Gray as Carroll’s hookah-smoking caterpillar). An uncatalogued student comic produced in 1978 and entitled ‘Blik’s 7’ illustrates the theological humour found among the New College student body. The advertisement for the comic featured upon the New College News-Sheet (the student-led and more informal predecessor to the Bulletin) reads:
C. S. Lewis wrote science fiction, George MacDonald wrote fairy tales – certain New College students have blended the two together and produced “Blik’s Seven, destined to titillate your literary, humorous and theological tastebuds. Read it and play “spot the lecturer”; perhaps even “spot the student”… Lecturers cannot afford to miss this opportunity of seeing how their beloved pupils are exercising their varied talents
(New College News-Sheet, 6 February 1978, No. 13 – AA 1 16 15)
Such good student-staff associations were evidently not commonplace across the university; the New College Bulletin stated in February 1978 how ‘the location and size of the Faculty have helped the formation of good staff-student relations which have been noted for special mention by the “Alternative Prospectus” for the University produced by the Student Association’ (New College Bulletin, February 1978, No. 8, p.1 – AA 1 16 3-5).