College Ball Planning To Display Live Shark, Students Threaten Boycott


An Oxford University college is planning to display a live shark in a tank to entertain guests at its annual ball.

The plan has prompted several students of Somerville College, Oxford to boycott the ball. Others have also written to college principal Dr Alice Prochaska, urging her to “use your authority to prevent any live animals from being used at the ball.”

In all, a dozen students have contacted Prochaska to express concern. Clare Phipps, who graduated in 2011, and Matthew Hawkins, a history graduate, are amongst them. Phipps tells The Guardian:

“We’re primarily concerned about the shark. We don’t know where it came from in the first place, whether it was bred in captivity or captured in the wild, and we can’t find out as the committee won’t give us the details of the company they hired it from. I am worried about the unnecessary stress for the animal of being transported and lots of people gawping at it.

“There is a difference from a shark in an aquarium because that has an educational purpose, informing people about conservation, and often zoos are involved in breeding programmes and so on. This is about nothing more than showing off. We’ve got so much money sloshing around we can hire a shark.”

Tickets for the ball, which has been as advertised as “one night of decadence, debauchery and indulgence,” cost at least £110 ($168).

Hawkins adds:

“It’s worrying that a leading educational institution such as an Oxford college would allow that view of nature to be perpetuated, of animals as an extravagant, gaudy show. If the organisers won’t cancel the shark then we won’t attend and we will ask others to boycott the event as well.”

Ball committee chair Sam Levin declined to reveal the source of the shark or the cost of hiring it to The Guardian. However, he did say the animal had been with the hire company for five years and that the tank could be quickly cleared if the fish became distressed.

He said the idea of having a shark at the ball was inspired by 1996 film Romeo and Juliet. In the Baz Luhrmann movie, the star-crossed lovers meet while gazing through a fish tank.

What do you think of having a shark at a college ball?

Share this article: College Ball Planning To Display Live Shark, Students Threaten Boycott
More from Inquisitr