Oriel College
Next Stop: Stop "H" on the map below
‘Rhodes must fall’ a student-led campaign.
This stop considers the divisive ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ student-led campaign, which saw a rise in late 2015. Inspired by similar protests from students in South Africa’s University of Cape Town, students at the University of Oxford set their sights on removing a statue of colonial businessman Cecil Rhodes from their university campus, after which a national debate ensued. The campaign was not calling for him to be erased from history, but instead questioned whether he should be so overtly ‘celebrated’. For many, he was the father of South African apartheid. When he lived in Britain, he attended Oxford’s Oriel College, where he established several prestigious scholarships for ‘future leaders’, and a statue of him still stands there today.
