Toby Donegan-Cross, Resident Tutor 2024-25, offers an honest reflection on his time in the role.
St John’s often repeats the idea and nurtures the belief that it does things differently – a conviction shared, paradoxically, by almost all other institutions. Everyone wants to be an exception; this is something of a rule.
Yet after several years at the College – as a student and this past year, Resident Tutor – I have come to believe the line is more than a slogan. To its credit, St John’s does do things in its own way.
One of the most obvious ways this is true is the Resident Tutor system.
Having Resident Tutors is an unusual arrangement but not unconsidered. While other colleges hire night porters, John’s puts four PhD students through a host of training courses, hands them an emergency phone, first aid kit, and torch, and gives them responsibility over 270 students who live on site.
Last year, I was lucky to hold one of four Resident Tutor posts. My colleagues (Magdalena, Pei-Jun and Felipe) are thoughtful, capable people, and were the best teammates imaginable. We took turns covering a week per month. This year, the brilliant Aurelia has stepped into the role I vacated.
While the college slept (or claimed to), we remained alert as the first port of call. If a situation was serious enough, we would escalate it to the College Officer, the emergency services, or both.
What happened during these nights? The discreet answer is enough to prove the system necessary, and enough to make parts of our training move firmly from the theoretical to the practised. As you will understand, I won’t say much more. The only consistency, to borrow a cliché, was the lack of consistency.
The role was not only about managing nocturnal emergencies. We were also encouraged to punctuate the social life of the college with events: treasure hunts, watercolour evenings, walking groups, study circles. Our instructions were simple: follow our interests and make them open to all.
Then there was the quieter work: conversations in corridors, the hesitant question from a first-year unsure whether their concern was ‘worth bothering us with’, the slow business of becoming known and trusted.
John’s could, like most colleges, replace Resident Tutors with night porters who work defined hours and go home. This might be more efficient financially.
But what would be lost would not appear in any budget: the sense that students are living in a place where someone – not only an employee, but a fellow student – is available if they need them. Because of their staff-student dual role, Resident Tutors share in John’s community in a unique way.
For the holder, the role could be outstandingly unpredictable. Emergencies don’t queue politely or space themselves out. Some weeks were crisis-ridden, others would pass in silence.
This could be hard to manage alongside other commitments. Obligations to research and teach did not change because you were up in the early hours dealing with something.
Yet for me, the role was an extraordinary education and character-building in the best sense. I finished the year in the post more tired but more self-assured. I left convinced that the system which had so often disrupted my sleep was indispensable, and that, in choosing to do things differently, John’s was on to something. It may not be the easiest way of running things, but it is, I think, the right one.
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