Argument over the future of St Hilda's has split the academic community. A deciding vote is expected by the end of this year.



It is the last night of the Oxford term, and small packs of bleary-eyed male undergraduates hang around outside the forbidding gates of St Hilda's College, queuing for the dance. It is easy to understand their eagerness and impatience: they are, after all, pursuing an endangered species: the Hildabeest. Last month, undergraduates at St Hilda's voted by a majority of 55 per cent, and for the first time in their 113-year history, for men to be admitted to Oxford's last women's college....

Can Oxford's last all-female college remain a man-free zone?