Headlines
24 hours inside the OA4P encampment
Mud swamps over grass where disintegrating cardboard and puddled tarp trace a crude footpath; wooden pallets provide the only solid ground. Upon this foundation lies Oxford’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment, a community supported by donations where students learn from teach-in lectures and look after one another. As a Cherwell journalist embedded in the camp for the first night, I didn’t scrounge for polished statements but documented the mundane details of life in the “Liberated Zone.” Here’s what I observed.
Masks On
Sprung up during the pre-dawn hours...
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Features
Sharron Davies, the Oxford Literary Festival, and the place for transgender athletes in professional sport.
The bell chimed for 2 o’clock on Thursday the 21st of March and the doors closed for the Oxford Literary Festival’s most controversial talk: ‘Sharron Davies, Unfair Play: The Battle for Women’s Sport.’ I...
WaterTok, Stanley cups and the half-empty glass of consumerism
We all need to drink more water. A 1998 New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center survey of 3003 Americans found that 75% of those interviewed were ‘chronically dehydrated’ — a condition apparently characterised by fatigue,...
Philosophy and Technology: Science’s moral afflictions
On March 28th in a dingy Manhattan courtroom, unrepentant crypto-mogul Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison. This landmark sentence came after an appeal by his lawyers against Bankman-Fried’s conviction in November...
Oliver Twist, a Sceptical 9th Grader, and an Orthodox Monastery: The Making of a New Generation in Northern Kosovo
Eager hands reach toward the ceiling as children at the Ismail Qemali school in Mitrovica, northern Kosovo, desperately try to attract the attention of an author who has come to talk to the pupils about her new book. They want to know more about the central character - a...
Tristram Hunt: the Politics of Repatriation
If you came here for a vicious takedown or a strident defence of Tristram Hunt’s position on “colonialism and collecting”, you might be slightly disappointed. Now, it’s clear that the important conversation over decolonisation has continued to ring out across this university’s faculty and student body – reverberating strongly...
How To Grieve a Stolen Diary
Elizabeth Bishop’s poem ‘One Art’ is beautiful because of its hypocrisy. The speaker exalts loss - of places, names, houses, their mother’s watch - with an odd joviality. You’re sure, reading it for the first time, that there must be something disingenuous going on here. The act of writing...
Profiles
An interview with Federico Enciso, Paraguay’s First Openly Gay Politician
I am not going to lie. I myself was pretty much oblivious to Paraguay’s existence before being introduced to the documentary, 108: Cuchillo de Palo. Set during Stroessner’s dictatorship, it goes in search of the truth surrounding the director’s uncle, a gay ballet dancer who was found dead in...
“They’re side notes in history”: In conversation with Bluestocking Oxford
Perhaps you’ve heard the term ‘bluestocking’ before. Though it came to be used as a misogynistic pejorative, its origins lie in 18th-century Britain, when groups of women would attend literary societies, which provided a space for literary, artistic and intellectual discussion.
I spoke to Olivia Wrafter, Editor in Chief, and...
Culture
Ten Years to Save the West by Liz Truss review: Revenge of the lettuce
I have met Liz Truss only once. It was in Oxford Town Hall in November of last year and I had tried (without success) to smuggle in an iceberg lettuce under my shirt. The lettuce having been confiscated, I made my way into the hall. Very soon Truss climbed...
Cherwell Introducing: Phoebe Blue
Joining me this week is the radiant Phoebe Blue, a 2nd year classicist at Balliol, singer-songwriter, and bassist. Meeting me on a blustery Saturday afternoon outside the Ashmolean, Phoebe told me all about her neo-soul sound, her first busking experience at age nine, and the importance of songwriting as...
Life
Navigating being a baby adult
After complaining that the Easter hunt had gotten too hard this year, my parents were quick to decide that it had in fact been my last hunt as I was an “adult” and it was “getting a bit ridiculous now”. I took this news super well and felt like...
‘Women in STEM’ – empowerment or disempowerment?
We’ve all heard the phrase ‘woman in STEM’; the term is now so well-known that it has left its textbook definition behind and become a sort of half-ironic, half-genuine, inside joke. I’ll use it to comfort my biologist friend through her multiple hour-long lab sessions, I’ll even use it...
