The Bullingdon Club

The Bullingdon Club is an all-male, private dining club for the students of Oxford University. The club, which was founded in 1780, was originally a sporting club, more specifically, it was meant for hunting and cricket. Eventually though, lavish dinners became its principle activity. Everything about this club is lavish, fancy, expensive and extremely over-the-top. Membership, the tailor made suits and gourmet hospitality make up half the expenses. The other half are made up by remuneration in the form of on-the-spot payment for damages incurred.

The club was quite well known for it’s fancy dinners but it was even better known for its acts of vandalism and even prostitution. To them, it was about ‘trashing places’ and ‘getting girls’, while in reality, it was getting dangerously drunk, causing serious criminal damage and abusing and belittling women. Speaking of the women who were ‘hired for pleasure’, they were treated quite terribly. Forced to please the men with sexual acts at even public dinner tables- the humiliation and embarrassment was endless for these poor women. They ‘trashed places’ by absolutely damaging every inch of establishments and not even thinking twice about how this may affect the owners of said establishments or even the pockets of their institution. A party held in the academic year of 1985-86, involved the theme of ‘coming as your alter ego’, which led to two lads arriving to the party dressed up as Nazi officials.

These boys were feared by their peers and staff members alike, and even people off the campus were afraid of them. They were amused by the idea of coming off as intimidating or frightening. They had an air of entitlement and superiority; a ‘culture of excess’ is what normalised this type of behaviour.

The members of the club only included students from either extremely wealthy and powerful families or the royal family.

Written by: Kevin Manoj