Every great academic institution needs certain things: a library, a study room with questionable chairs, and at least one scholar who brings footnotes into casual conversation. But there is one office more essential than any of these; an office so vital, so foundational, that it is astonishing more colleges have not yet recognized its importance. I refer, of course, to the cake officer.
At my previous academic home, the august and sugar-fortified halls of Christ Church, Oxford, the office of cake officer was treated with the reverence it deserved (or at least tolerated with bemused admiration). So, when I arrived at Green College, a community famed for its interdisciplinary brilliance and an unusually high density of people who can describe a black hole, defend it in court, and then write a hauntingly beautiful poem about the experience, I felt a deep, solemn duty: a duty to instate the Right Honourable office of cake officer. Not to bake the cakes, of course. In this case, I was an ideas person. Visionary, not whisk-wielder. But the structure—the institutional scaffolding of cake—that was my calling.
And the college responded. In what can only be described as a landslide victory of both democratic passion and sweet-toothed enthusiasm, resident members Jeremy and Michele were overwhelmingly elected as Green College’s first co–cake officers—or, as they have been styled with appropriate gravitas, the co-cake bosses.
On November 26, 2025, they took up the baton—or rather the wooden spoon—and inaugurated their term in office with the kind of culinary diplomacy that brings a community together. After the college’s Coffee House performances, they emerged bearing a Danish apple-pie-style cake (a kind of dessert that reassures you that the universe is fundamentally benevolent), a pumpkin cheesecake (autumnal, and unquestionably decadent), and a homemade caramel sauce (which was so smooth, it should honestly qualify as a graduate thesis).
It was, in short, a triumph. And as I surveyed the dining hall—scholars of all disciplines united by the universal language of dessert—I knew we had done something important. Something historic. Something that future Greenies will read about in the archives and whisper: ‘Ah yes, that was the moment civilisation advanced.’
Because truly, every college needs a cake officer. They may not admit it yet. They may fear the disruptive innovation of institutionalized dessert. But one day, they too will understand. And when that day comes, Green College will stand proudly at the forefront, fork in hand.
To Jeremy and Michele: may your cakes rise, your sauces thicken, and your wooden spoons never splinter. Green College salutes you. And to the rest of the student world: you’re welcome. We’ve shown you the way.
Post by: Dr Judith Valerie Engel, Green College resident member