At 11:30pm on 17 February the normally tranquil St Hilda's College library in Oxford was transformed into a cacophony of colour and dancing. It was the culmination of a thought my girlfriend, Anna, housemate, Anders, and I had after we first saw the Harlem Shake craze that was storming the world. For us it was a great event.

Despite what the video may convey, a term at Oxford University can be quite stressful, so it was lovely to do something completely different. The reception from the 30 or so students involved was very positive and we thought the outcome was great. There was always the nagging doubt that the college would not appreciate such a stunt. However we were confident that, were we to be called up on the matter, the college would appreciate the harmless and friendly spirit in which the video was intended.

A summons to the college dean was therefore not unexpected, but more worrying was the information that librarian Calypso Nash had been called to meet with the head librarian before our meeting. We had hoped that this was nothing more than a fact-finding mission by the college, but news came to us before our meeting that Calypso had been removed from her position. For the first time, we felt awful about what we had done.

Anna was friendly with Calypso and knew how much she appreciated the job as librarian that she'd had for more than a year. Calypso had absolutely nothing to do with our stunt, it just so happened that her shift coincided with the time that we judged to be the library's least busy. I really couldn't believe that such a decision had been taken as it seemed so unjust. I tried to bring Calypso's dismissal up in our meeting with the dean (in which we were informed that we would be facing a fine) but I was told that this matter was not up for discussion.

In my opinion, an event that had brought students at St Hilda's together and was in the spirit of the St Hilda's community had turned sour and resulted in an innocent and able person losing a job that she loved.

Anna and myself resolved to do everything that we could to get Calypso her job back. I started an online petition calling for the head librarian to reinstate Calypso. This fell on deaf ears, so we utilised a more traditional form of Oxford college protest, a motion through the junior common room – the undergraduate body of college. The motion, passed unanimously on 3 March, called upon our president Esther Gosling to write to the head librarian asking for a written reason for Calypso's removal and also calling in the strongest terms for her to be reinstated.

We received the reply that the head librarian could not discuss individual staff matters. The crux of the matter is that a woman has been sacked for a reason that is completely unjust.

The media attention that this story has received has been incredible, but more importantly, we hope that this coverage will result in college making the right decision. The reaction to the St Hilda's Harlem shake can, I believe, be reasonably contrasted with the reaction to the St Catherine College's Harlem shake, which was posted on Oxford University's official Facebook page which has almost a million followers.

A spokeswoman for St Catz (as it is known) commented: "The master, professor Roger Ainsworth, says that he is very proud of the Catz students and their inspiration, motivation, organisation and creativity. He believes it to be the best example of the genre, at least in the UK." An example for St Hilda's, we think.