This immediately raised the question of why it should be anticipated that I would want to leave this Hall. I was right to be suspicious as I subsequently met no-one from any other College who had such a clause attached to their offer. Indeed—I didn’t meet any one in Hughes Hall who was subject to it. So, as far as I’m currently aware, it was unique to me.

It’s been recently (re-)pointed out how malicious this clause actually is. It actually flies in the face of University policy and the policy of the other Colleges that have always allowed changes in ‘exceptional circumstances’. (Until recently, what constituted ‘exceptional circumstances’ went undefined). It is further indication that I was singled out for ‘special’ treatment.

As coincidence (?) would have it, the Physics Department Secretary phoned shortly after it was received with some mundane questions about my funding forms. I took the opportunity to raise the matter with her. (She was initially under the mistaken impression that it would be possible to change College once I got there. That year’s inter-college agreement to make transferring impossible, and the proposed increase in the expansion of graduate numbers, had only just come in).

Over the next couple of weeks, I had several phone conversations with her in which things seemed to be moving. Documents obtained recently (Sept ‘07) under the Data Protection Act confirm my impression of the time—that a place in Trinity was not out of the question, and Robinson College had offered to take me on the strength of my 1st Class degree—even though they were officially ‘full’. An Assistant Registrary, based in the Board of Graduate Studies, noted that it would be surprising if Trinity wouldn’t consider me if my supervisor to be—Professor Sir Michael Pepper FRS—asked. However, Pepper wouldn’t approach Trinity himself.

With the benefit of hindsight, these and other signs of being part of a pilot scheme were already in place.

In the midst of this activity, without any more telephoning, the Department performed a volte-face and sent me a letter saying they had entered Hughes Hall as my College on my Research Council funding forms and told me bluntly to accept Hughes Hall’s offer.

I had been predestined for Hughes Hall by design.

I have long known that Pepper played some role in the pilot scheme—until recently I had assumed it to be a ‘second tier’ role—though it appears now that he was much more senior in the scheme than I had assumed. (When my Toshiba supervisors raised the College problem with him, he told them that his ‘hands [were] tied’. I also observe that a more recent student, writing on the Graduate Union Forum, has the equivalent Toshiba project to mine, and has also been assigned to Hughes Hall).

During my Research:

I don’t wish to dwell on the minutiae of my experience while I was in Cambridge—though the general themes and some of the psychological warfare I became subjected to—when I objected to the situation—are touched upon in the ‘Warning Pages’.

Despite all of the University’s machinations, I came to Cambridge determined to get involved and hoped that Hughes Hall would soon become my College. My good will was cruelly betrayed.

Hughes Hall was not like the other Colleges, lacked facilities, and the physical nature of the site itself made community impossible. What was worse, the attitude of the staff was that I must be a ‘nobody’ for having been placed in Hughes Hall ! I could only watch as my friends and colleagues excitedly started to enjoy the experiences of their proper College lives.

It is a very unpleasant experience to realise that one has been scammed out of a proper place at the University—particularly right at the start of a three year degree.

What was kept extremely quiet at the time was that Hughes Hall was in fact not a Cambridge College at all—even in statute—and only became one (in name) in 2006.

When I raised concerns in 1994, and made it clear that I expected to be reassigned to a proper College, I became subjected to psychological warfare—with the seeming aim of wrecking my confidence enough to suppress my dissent.

I would have left the University—at least physically—after about 6 months, but at this time I was led-on by my supervisor’s College—Trinity—to expect a place for the second year. Tellingly, in a later internal document between Trinity’s ‘Tutor for Advanced Students’—Dr Christopher Morley—and the then Master of Trinity—Sir Michael Atiyah—Morley states that he was usually reluctant to see any student wishing to ‘transfer’, but that he ‘thought that there might be special reasons in [my] case, and agreed to see [me]’.

In the event, the place at Trinity was reneged upon, and due to intensifying disillusionment and the impending arrival of a fresh intake of students—who would no doubt (mostly) be repeating the enthusiasm of those placed in the proper Colleges the year before—I decided not to return to the University as a ‘member’ of Hughes Hall.