University of Wales, Aberystwyth
The University of Wales, Aberystwyth is the oldest university in Wales, and currently houses some 7,000 students, one of whom is known as JTA.History
The University of Wales, Aberystwyth was founded in 1872 in the hope that the recent spat of graffiti plaguing the town’s ice-cream stands would be curbed if the local youths were too busy skipping lectures to undertake mindless vandalism. The plan was a resounding failure, and it was not until Queen Victoria granted Aberystwyth an independent police force that the Victorian holidaygoers were able to buy a ‘penny lick’ ice-cream on the prom without reading unwelcome excerpts from Virgil’s ‘Georgics’ done in crude watercolour-on-wood.
When the University of Wales was created in 1892, the college in Aberystwyth was elected de facto head of the new university, and charged with a Holy quest to ensure the college in Bangor, a dreary North-Welsh dorp, didn’t go and get any ideas.
This quest was successful until 1916, when the university’s last ever Grand Exalted Holy Chancellor was killed in action on the first day of the Somme, leaving the running of the college to his batman and deputy the Most Reverend High Vice-Chancellor, who petitioned King George V for permission to abandon the University’s original charter in favour of one which encouraged the teaching of students “anything other than bloody ice-cream making”.
The new charter was approved in 1982, just in time for the Falklands War, and JTA came to Aberystwyth to study English in 2003.