Friday, 20th of January 2012
Girl rejects Oxford
If you haven’t heard the name Elly Nowell yet, where have you been? In case you are wondering she is the 19 year-old student who’s been dominating headlines in recent days over a satirical email she sent to Oxford University.
Following a tough grilling for a place at Magdalen College, Elly felt that Oxford “intimidates state school applicants, distorting the academic potential of both,” and withdrew her application on UCAS. However she went one step further and emailed the college her withdrawal in a parody of their own rejection letters. After a friend posted it to Facebook, the email went viral and Elly became ‘the girl who rejected Oxford.’
Opinion is split on this story, some are cheering on Elly’s brash move, whilst others are labeling it ‘idiotic’. Personally I think that Elly’s response shows some real imagination, but it also suggests a level of teenage ignorance.
On one hand, thanks to the extortionate rise in tuition fees the student is now viewed as a consumer and universities across the country should as a result be doing more to attract candidates. On the other, a world-class institution like Oxford opens many doors for its graduates and will certainly never be short of applicants. Has Elly just thrown away the chance of a lifetime in a burst of irritation?
In this modern world of television, social media and blogging, we have come to believe that we can all voice our opinions without consequence but this is not the case. Witness the numbers of politicians and sports stars falling into the Twitter trap – Diane Abbott to name but one.
In the PR game we are out to protect the reputations of the people and the businesses we work for. By all means, we encourage clients to show some guts and do things differently, but when it comes to personal viewpoints and contentious topics you have to be careful.
In some cases taking a bold move like Elly might work out very well and generate some positive publicity but in other cases you could end up making headlines for all the wrong reasons and, the internet means these headlines can be dragged up via Google for years and years to come - so we’ll have to reach for our industrial sized PR mop to clean up the spill.
Think about the messages you are putting out there, could what you say or do come back to bite you later? If you are unsure, pick up the phone and give us a call - it’s what we are here for after all.
- Lucie
