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Alcoholism at Oxford University: A Perspective

Anonymous
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Alcoholism at Oxford University: A Perspective

I can still remember the first time I got drunk. I was around 13 years old. A friend had stolen some of his dad’s whisky, and we got through half a bottle together. The experience wasn’t particularly extraordinary, apart from one thing: even then I was astonished, terrified, by just how much I enjoyed being drunk. The rush, the feeling of the alcohol coursing through my veins, the way it made my worries and anxieties dissipate for a few blissful hours. I subconsciously realised something that, years later, I would spend countless hours grappling with; whatever joys I could experience sober, they would be even better with a bottle in hand.

The next few years went by relatively normally. The lack of independence borne from still living at home meant my alcohol use was kept in check. All that happened was that every week or two when me and my friends were out drinking, I’d always end up getting absolutely shitfaced –  far more than anyone else.

Then I arrived at Oxford University. It only took a few weeks for my alcohol use to absolutely soar. I was 18 at this point, and without my parents breathing down my back, I was free to drink as much as I pleased. In the Michaelmas and Hilary just gone, I drank an average of around 100 to 150 units a week. I drank virtually every day – and I mean drank, enough that almost every night ended with me stumbling up the stairs to my accommodation and collapsing in bed, drunk out of my mind. I spent well over a thousand pounds on alcohol, leaving less than half of my money for other expenses.

There are probably very few environments worse for would-be alcoholics than Oxford University. The atmosphere of constant stress, the omnipresent ‘work hard, play hard’ undertone, the fact that almost every society runs countless boozy events, combined with virtually every college having a cheap and accessible bar, meant that I stood little chance. It’s true that, regardless of where I went, alcohol problems would have probably arisen. Of the three factors often leading to alcoholism – a family history of alcohol abuse, beginning drinking at a young age, and past mental health problems – I tick every one.

But Oxford undoubtedly exacerbated my issues. It doesn’t have much of a drug culture (in my experience, at least), but it has one hell of a drinking culture. Very few people seemed to notice how out of hand my drinking was getting. In a society where getting drunk regularly is a common occurrence, it’s hard to differentiate between someone who likes to drink and someone who needs to drink. When I finally began the long and painful process of seeking sobriety, the lack of support provided by the university was shocking. My addiction advisor suggested I  seek out alcoholic support groups within the University. As far as I can tell, no such group presently exists.

The solution isn’t, however, some sort of puritanical clamp down on drinking among students. The vast majority of you reading this article will be perfectly capable of drinking healthily and in moderation – and I am deeply envious of you. College bars and drinking events provide most with a hugely enjoyable social space. Some alcohol free alternatives would be nice, but that’s all. Instead, the University needs to do more to assist those students who are struggling; and we all need to be more ready to look out for the warning signs of alcohol dependency. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to drink; but when we start noticing that ourselves, or others, need to drink, alarm bells should be raised.

The writing of this article marks the two month anniversary of my sobriety. These past few weeks have been tough, much tougher than I could have ever expected. But they’ve also been incredibly rewarding. Getting over an addiction requires a complete life reset; it requires reconnecting with the friends and passions that you lost to booze. The constant urge to drink still hasn’t left me, if it ever will. Knowing that you can’t under any circumstances do the thing you want to do more than anything else is torture. But finally, for the first time in many months, I’m able to appreciate the beauty of our world, the simple joys of friendship, without the distorting lens of the bottle – and that makes it all worth it.

But if there’s one piece of advice I want anyone who relates to this article to take to heart, it’s this: don’t go cold turkey. Alcohol is one of the few drugs whose withdrawal can be fatal. For me, it was so bad that I was rushed to the John Radcliffe emergency unit, suffering from delirium tremens – a condition arising from alcohol withdrawal with symptoms like tremors, delirium, hallucinations, and even seizures which could potentially lead to death. Talk to your doctor, or any other NHS resources, so you can withdraw with the help of medications to protect you.

Drinking in moderation can be great fun, but if you notice yourself or anyone else unable to put down the bottle, becoming dependent on alcohol to get through the day, it’s time to take a break. And if that’s too hard, speak to a pastoral adviser or counsellor. Alcohol nearly ruined my life. For many years to come, I think, I’ll still be grappling with its consequences. I don’t want it to ruin yours.

‘Personal imprint’: an interview with the founder of Tree Artisan Café

Kenny Cota
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‘Personal imprint’: an interview with the founder of Tree Artisan Café

During exams, my friends and I formed a study group. While it took us three years to realise that studying might be important even for a History degree, the dread for our upcoming exams eventually sunk in. Amidst the panicked conversations about misogynistic late-Roman chroniclers (looking at you, Procopius) were the study breaks at some point in the day to visit a café. A European-style working day with a long lunch break was essential to feeling like a real humanities student, and spending on coffee or cake proved to be an excellent means of coping with exam stress.

Now that exams are long gone, I have found time to consider what I could write about that would allow me to reflect on my experience of Oxford as a city, and I was torn between pubs and cafés. However, having been teetotal for the first year of my degree, in lockdown for the second and a finalist for my third, my pubbing credentials are well below par. Being a sugar-addict, however, my café CV is brimming with relevant experience, and I felt the need to pay some kind of tribute to the coffee shop scene here.

Bored witless by the Law Library, I applied for a loyalty card at the adjacent coffee shop, Missing Bean, and I also occasionally resorted to the suspiciously cheap coffee in college, where the exciting catch is that the oat milk is off and the coffee tastes burnt. As Exeter’s Cohen Quad is in Jericho, Tree Artisan, located on Little Clarendon Street, became our most-visited café. To find out what coffee shop life is like in Oxford from the point of view of the owners, I decided to interview Tree Artisan’s founder and owner, Graziella Ascensao.

Tree Artisan Café now feels like a fixture of the Oxford coffee scene, but it faced challenges from the very start. Graziella moved to Oxford from Brazil at 18, and later worked in the service sector, as both a barista and a waitress, and began to save up until she could afford to open her own café. It seemed as if fate had conspired against her when the COVID-19 pandemic hit as soon as she had secured the lease for the premises.

However, consistent with the rest of her attitude connected to her work, Graziella approached the challenge with a positive mindset and turned it into an opportunity. ‘At that time, I saw it was the time to open,’ she says. ‘When people were in front of their computer all day, they wanted to pick up a coffee and go to the park’. While, due to COVID-19 restrictions, she found it harder to cultivate the atmosphere she wanted within the physical space, she managed to generate a small community of regular customers who appreciated the friendliness and good coffee on offer. ‘I found positivity in that. I am always trying to be a warm person’.

This attitude is Graziella’s main take on the difference between the culture of chain cafés and that of independent ones. She takes pride in buying everything from independent suppliers, from bread to coffee beans, not wanting to compromise the culture of a small local enterprise. ‘There is more love, more passion. With chains, whoever you are, you are a number. The staff are a number, the customers are a number, everybody is a number. It is completely different to when you have a focus on the people’.

This focus is arguably what makes Tree Artisan Café unique. After exams, my friend and I worked there one afternoon, while the café was quiet. As we worked, we noticed that the staff recognised and talked to almost every customer who walked through the door. For a generation that appreciates the personal experience afforded by food vendors, this kind of human interaction sets Tree Artisan Café apart from chain cafés, where the staff often seem stressed and keen to hurry along to the next customer. The feeling that you’re part of a community is a huge appeal, and one that makes sitting in Tree Artisan much more appealing than, for example, sitting in Café Nero.

While the independent café market in Oxford is crowded and competitive, Graziella does not feel this is a hostile environment, and rather sees a market where independent outlets do not have to try and beat each other down to stay in business. ‘Honestly, I respect all of them, because I believe in this world there is space for all of them. Tree Artisan has my biometric, it is different from all the others. It is my personal imprint on them. It is like my baby. I am not comparing to others; I love it because it is mine’.

This ‘personal imprint’ is a huge part of independent coffee outlets in Oxford, and Graziella’s experiences definitely shape how Tree Artisan operates. Having been vegan for three years, she ensures there are multiple dairy-free, gluten-free and vegan options on the menu. As a lifelong member of the allergy club myself, it is welcome to have actual choices, especially when they’re genuinely delicious and likely to even be bought by someone who isn’t allergic to the other options. The menu is also rotated regularly, according to which options prove most popular, which allows Tree Artisan to be customer-driven, rather than constantly supplying the same, bulk-bought generic options available at a chain.

Graziella’s enthusiasm talking about running her own café is infectious. ‘It is hard work,’ she tells me at the end of our interview. ‘I’m here at 4:30 in the morning every day, and I have gratitude to be here. It is my passion, I am happy to be here’. It is this highly personal desire to create a positive experience for every customer that sets Oxford’s independent outlets apart from their corporate competition, and Tree Artisan Café is the perfect example of this alternative, people-focused approach to growing as a café in Oxford.

Image credit: Emily Perkins.

What are Conservative Party Members thinking?

Oliver Hall
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What are Conservative Party Members thinking?

Friday 2nd September is creeping ever closer and with a government that seems to be set on inaction until then in the midst of the biggest cost of living crisis in decades, for millions it can’t come soon enough.  Before then though, 0.3% of the population will decide who the next Prime Minister is and all signs now seem to suggest that that person will be Liz Truss. 

Personally, I see it as a tragedy on several levels but, above all, I cannot cease to be totally baffled by the polls that show Truss will win by such a landslide.  Not only is it now with seeming daily regularity that a new independent report, financial expert, or ‘Tory grandee’ points out her economic plans are both unfundable and inadequate.  More than anything, the Conservative Party Members seem set to condemn themselves to losing the next election by electing a leader and resulting cabinet that is beyond impalpable for the general population.

I suppose the first step in trying to get inside the mind of Tory members is understanding who they really are, something that is notoriously difficult and explains why opinion polls in leadership contests vary so much in comparison with those of general elections.  Although the information is not officially published, Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University, concluded nearly ten years of study on this and told the FT last month that “There hasn’t been much change in the demographics of the Tory grassroots since we began our research on party members back in 2013.”  The research found that, rather unsurprisingly, that members are disproportionately older men.  63% were male (compared to roughly half of the UK population), their median age is 57 (the national average is 40), and 80% fall in the so-called ABC1 category of the most highly-paid demographic group (this makes up 53% of the country).   They also match the classic stereotype of being white and right-leaning on issues, with 76% voting for Brexit and 95% identifying as White British in a country where that makes up just 83% of the population.  Now, that is a lot of numbers, but the fact that those voting on our next leader come from such a small and narrow segment of society is not only plainly a crazy and scarcely believable part of our democratic system but goes some way to explaining how and why they have leaned so heavily on Truss over Sunak. They have rewarded her ludicrous attempts to evoke Thatcherite policies which don’t fit the current economic climate and, much like the Foreign Secretary’s desperate efforts to emulate Thatcher’s personality and dress sense, are outdated.

Despite this, in fact for this very reason, one would think that the constant comments from some of the Tory party’s oldest, most successful, and most well-respected names, about just how baseless much of Truss’ economic policies are, would have swayed more of the base towards Sunak.  Kenneth Clark has described her approach as “nonsense and simplistic” and related it to techniques that might be used by a Venezuelan government.  Former leaders Michael Howard and William Hague, as well as well-respected current MPs such as Dominic Raab, Jeremy Hunt, and Michael Gove, have all taken to the airwaves and newspapers in the past few days to speak against the idea that tax cuts can resolve the crisis.  Even Lord Lamont, Treasurer in the Thatcher government remembered so fondly by much of the conservative party base, has publicly backed Sunak over the holes in Truss’ plans. It isn’t only individuals who think that her plans are misguided either: the IFS joined countless other economists last week in pointing out that her current ideas are simply unfundable unless they are accompanied by spending cuts.

What makes all of this even more crazy and difficult for me to get my head around is that the members seem blissfully unaware of just how unelectable Truss is for the electorate as a whole.  With a general election looming in 2024 you would think that there would be an appetite for a relatively inoffensive leader who appeals to as broad a base as possible.  Whereas Sunak has at least shown his ability to appeal to a large spectrum in the past, earning himself the nickname ‘Dishy Rishi’ during his Eat Out to Help Out glory days, Truss has never shied away from bulldozing ahead with unpopular policies and divisive comments.  Whether that is upsetting Scots by saying that the best way to deal with their democratically elected leader is “to ignore her” or regular workers by telling them to put in some more “graft”, Truss trails Keir Starmer and rival Sunak in every poll of the general population.  And if recent leaks of her planned cabinet are to be believed, placing Jacob Rees-Mogg as Levelling-up Secretary, she hardly appears to be planning a change of course on this front.

So – why?  What is it that appeals?  It might well be a case of Johnson continuity – indeed in surveys, many have said that they feel Sunak betrayed their leader by resigning and becoming one of the major catalysts for the Prime Minister’s downfall.  In reality though, I think it is more of a case of the members being genuinely detached from the real world themselves.  For whatever reason they don’t seem able to see their impending decision risks disaster for millions of people across the country by worsening current financial pressures as well as putting them in a catastrophic position ahead of the next general election. Two years is a long time in politics, but right now I struggle to see why on earth the turkeys are voting for Christmas.  

Image: CC 2.0 – UK Government via Flickr.  

Vessel : A Review

Cia Mangat
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Vessel : A Review

CW : mention of disordered eating, fat phobia, body dysmorphia

Have you ever wept in a toilet stall—maybe during a particularly rough school day, maybe during a night out that went wrong—thinking that you were completely insulated from the world outside, only to realise that there’s a giant gap in the door –  so whoever is walking past can definitely see you, all puffy-faced? Grace Olusola’s Vessel spoke directly to my teenage self and my current self alike, as I found myself in that exact situation after the show: watching the play felt like having my private, internal feelings about my body and food externalised and projected onto the stage at the Old Fire Station this Trinity. I felt seen. 

Last summer I vented my frustrations at feeling like the only fat person at Oxford on Twitter, and my notifications pinged more than normal for a little while. Initially, I worried that a play seeking to address themes of bodies and food in the Oxford community would centre the experiences of people who are afraid of looking like me. While I do not seek to invalidate the experience of people who are insecure and conventionally attractive, there’s a difference between being insecure about having rolls when you slouch and, as the Comedienne comments, “the world decid[ing] whether you’re ugly or not for you”.

Yet Olusola and her team of six other directors have taken the wide-ranging diversity of such relationships with body image into close consideration. Vessel is made up of twelve discrete episodes, each drawing inspiration from student survey responses on questions around bodies and food. The episodes differed significantly in tone, managing to tackle these issues with sensitivity and humour, and reminded me of scrolling through TikTok: we see a spoof of 2000s fatphobic TV shows, titled ‘Formerly Grotesque Fat People Bake On Blind Dates While We Watch’, and a monologue on different kinds of Reese’s peanut butter cups, among others. In ‘Not Like other Girls’ we even see a girl sniffling in the school toilets, not unlike me after the show.

The episodic structure and use of several directors is certainly a strength of the show, reflecting how our relationships with food and our bodies has as much to do with class, race, gender and sexuality as with what we see when we look in the mirror. I particularly enjoyed how the show played around with form and structure to reflect this: in ‘Femi’, Tariro Tinwaro sings of a best friend with an eating disorder “outrunning bodies like mine”, while in ‘The Comedienne’ we see Chloe Ralph hilariously enact the awkwardness of mediocre standup about her friend group and conclude “with friends this fucked up, this may be one of the few situations in life where being the fat one is actually the best status in the group.” 

Olusola cites her experience as a welfare officer at St. Catherine’s College, as well as her own body image struggles, as a catalyst for Vessel: this certainly shows throughout the production, albeit not in a way that feels patronising, didactic or reductive. At the beginning we hear a voiceover announce the show’s trigger warnings, and that if at any point an audience member needs to leave and take a break, they are welcome to do so. Likewise, at the end the crew offered pens and index cards to audience members as a chance to reflect on what they had just seen.

While I did sometimes find myself wishing for more cohesion between the writing of the episodes, I enjoyed the way that each episode was announced by the pinning of a poster or a graphic with its title to a board at the back of the stage, creating a sense of collaginess and accumulation. This imagery of food wrappers and containers was neatly alluded to in ‘Motherhood’, an episode where a woman tidying the house for a date discovers her daughter’s binge-eating stash concealed between stage blocks. During the interval, a friend remarked that the episodic nature reminded her of opening a door at a house party and accidentally walking in on a conversation between strangers that you were not meant to overhear, as alluded to perfectly in a scene where we watch the awkward reconnecting between old friends gradually tip over into a painful conservation about responsibility when one is  mentally ill. Olusola’s skilful writing shines through in lines like “I had a brain that betrayed me–you were the collateral”, and “sorry, force of habit, when you’re at death’s door [so often] you start leaving a key under the doormat.”

The presence of fat actors and explicitly working-class characters, albeit only a handful, on a student stage was particularly refreshing to see, although I did find myself wishing for more than a few of the twelve episodes in a show about bodies to centre their experiences.

Overall, Vessel’s careful balancing of sensitivity and humour in its treatment of the subject matter of body image and food made it an important and worthwhile watch; I can only hope that we see more stories and actors with these experiences on the Oxford student stage in the future. 

Where do we go from here?  Reflections on a day of chaos in Downing Street

Oliver Hall
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Where do we go from here?  Reflections on a day of chaos in Downing Street

Where do we go from here?  Reflections on a day of unprecedented chaos in Downing Street…

The past few years in British politics have repeatedly defied belief but Thursday 7th July will go down in history as the most chaotic, bizarre, and extraordinary day that our country has seen in decades.  This morning, it was barely possible to make a cup of tea before returning to the television to learn of another ministerial resignation or letter from newly appointed cabinet ministers calling for the Prime Minister to go. Chris Mason taking the phone call from Downing Street to confirm Boris Johnson’s resignation live on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme perhaps perfectly summed up the incredulous nature of the morning’s proceedings. The big question now though is what on earth happens next?  Where do the Conservative party and the country go from here?  As it stands, the PM insists that he will stay on until a new leader is announced, but is that really feasible?  Who is best positioned to succeed him? One thing is certain, the turmoil is far from over…

Who Next?  The Runners and the Riders

The main reason why Johnson has survived in post for so long in spite of countless scandals that would’ve buried leaders of the past has been the lack of an apparent successor. Now the Conservative party is facing a leadership election with contenders from across the political spectrum, as it tries to decide its future.

Liz Truss

Bookies odds – 7/1

Long-time favourite of old-time party members but counting many enemies among fellow MPs, the outspoken Truss has never been afraid to make her leadership ambitions clear. Much like Johnson, she has been happy to bend her political beliefs to fit with her rise to power after backing remain in 2016 only to become one of the biggest supporters for a hard Brexit in recent years. Brash and brazen with political stances branded by many as ‘Thatcherism on steroids’, she certainly wouldn’t offer the dramatic change in tone and direction needed if her party is to stand any chance of rescuing themselves at any approaching election.  She may also struggle in early stages of the leadership race, with several MPs declaring privately that they wouldn’t back her.

Nadim Zahawi

Bookies odds – 8/1

Zahawi was centre stage in the political chaos of the last 48 hours after being appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer on Tuesday night, doing the media rounds defending the Prime Minister on Wednesday morning, and then calling for his resignation on Thursday.  His political stock rose substantially as vaccines minister during the pandemic and, popular amongst his colleagues, he now appears to be one of the favourites to succeed Johnson.  The only thing standing against him may turn out to be his relative inexperience in government. 

Rishi Sunak

Bookies odds – 4/1

There are few men in history who have had such a dramatic rise to fame and fall from grace as Rishi Sunak. An unknown among the public when appointed as Chancellor he attracted fans throughout the pandemic with generous furlough and ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ schemes before becoming embroiled in the Partygate scandal and brought down by questions over his wife’s non-dom tax status.  There’s a chance that his shock resignation on Tuesday night might just have saved his chances and he is sure to be a front runner if he can convince MPs of his credentials.  Equally, his resignation letter suggested that his could be ‘his last ministerial job’ and a return to pre-political life could certainly prove to be an attractive proposition for the former banker.

Sajid Javid

Bookies odds – 7/1

Having already failed twice in leadership elections could it be third time lucky for the man who initiated the final chapter of Johnson’s prime ministerial career?  Although his dramatic move and speech after PMQ’s will appeal to some, few can really doubt his own personal motivations for moving against the PM when he did and that kind of ‘snakery’ as Number 10 likes to call it has been enough to see others named Michal Gove get the sack.  Javid would offer something different in terms of a political direction and would appeal as a more stable set of hands but his flip-flopping hasn’t won him many fans amongst MPs and party members.

Penny Mourdant 

Bookies odds – 5/1

Who? I hear you ask.  The bookmakers’ favourite that’s who!  Mourdant finds herself in the bizzare position where not having any experience working in recent cabinets will be seen as one of her biggest strengths.  If you are in search of a metaphor for the dire state of the Tory party then this is it.  Being a long-time Brexit backer makes her palpable to the right of the party and the ERG but her membership of the liberal Conservative ‘One Nation’ caucus means that she has a fairly wide reach.  She has perhaps the fewest enemies of any of the obvious contenders.  Then again that is inevitable when you consider that she has never held a post of significance within government.

Tom Tugenhadt

Bookies odds – 14/1

‘The rebels’ choice’, Tugenhadt is one of the few likely runners who has spoken out against Johnson from the start.  The Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee slammed him for his performance as Foreign Secretary and has remained critical ever since.  His rhetoric always focuses on a renewal of traditional conservative values, the meaningful substance of that rhetoric unsurprisingly remains in the dark.

Jeremy Hunt

Bookies odds – 11/1

Hunt will undoubtedly frame himself as the man who stood up to ‘Johnson the bully’ and never served in his cabinet.  In reality, insiders suggest that his close relationship with Theresa May meant that he was never invited to – a quite extraordinary thing when you consider the amount of ministers Johnson went through.  Hardly a superstar as health secretary Hunt would represent a return to the more traditional style of government of Theresa May and although that be unexciting to some MPs, large swathes of party members could be convinced by a reassuring return to relative normality.

Ben Wallace

Bookies odds – 5/1

The defence secretary never resigned from the cabinet but did just about manage to squeeze in a letter calling for Johnson to go before the final decision was announced.  The former soldier is broadly seen as reliable and undramatic, both potentially very attractive characteristics at the moment.  He has won international acclaim for his dealing with the Ukraine crisis and the general public would be sure to back him on that but he is notable for his lack of experience in all other areas of government.  Despite his popularity, he has also previously stated his desire to take on the role of UN Secretary-General in the future and that may yet prove to be his next step.

So, in conclusion, the race remains very much open.  Dozens are sure to declare their leadership bids over the coming days and countless campaign websites will no doubt be launched within hours but the stark reality is that none of the options are pretty for the Conservatives.  The party is in a mess, politics is in a mess.  Opposition parties insist that Johnson cannot remain PM whilst the process continues and any caretaker would get the chance to audition their potential on the biggest stage.  It still remains to be seen how long the elected leader will stay in post.  Can any of those listed above really stake a claim to Johnson’s record-breaking mandate from 2019?  A general election may very well be on the cards and, if that is the case, then the calculations change all over again for the MPs with the fate of the nation in their hands…

Your Thoughts

We asked you to sum up your thoughts about our departing Prime Minister’s time in office and departure itself – it’s safe to safe that the responses were mixed and I am happy to report that you didn’t hold back!

Charlie Aslet on the nature of Johnson’s departure:

“Boris Johnson’s resignation had as much dignity as a streaker at a football game. He clung to power until even his unkempt reflection was telling him it was time to pack it in. Some people would have thought it honourable to jump before being pushed. Not Boris. He was beaten up by all his closest friends and colleagues, his trousers hoisted around his ankles and then given a mighty boot up the buttocks before stumbling over the cliff. His only consolation as he tumbled down that rockface was that he managed to give Michael Gove a final slap in the face before he fell, giving him the sack when everyone else was resigning. In a way, I feel a bit sorry for Boris. His resignation was like the assassination of Julius Caesar, except this time it felt like he also managed to stab himself a few times before he died. But, then again, the man seems incapable of telling the truth. Even when he says he’s leaving it’s difficult to believe it will actually happen. When he says he’s actually staying, that’s when I’ll be ready to believe he’s really going for good.”

We then asked you for reflections on Johnson’s premiership:

“Good riddance babes”

“One word – joke”

And your predictions for the future:

“Same circus different clown”

“There is an unfortunate possibility that the Tories may be redeemed in the public eye”

“No chance anyone else will have anywhere near the decision-making prowess of Boris – prepare yourselves for an era of catastrophic indecision”

“I’m just sad for the people of Ukraine. Their future is now in doubt more than ever.”

“Someone equally bad or worse will become Prime Minister, there is no winning!”

Image: CC:2.0 (BY-NC-ND 2.0 via FLKR)

Putin’s ‘hockey buddy’ funded Teddy Hall and Saïd Business School

Charlie Hancock and Maurício Alencar
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Putin’s ‘hockey buddy’ funded Teddy Hall and Saïd Business School

UPDATE: On the 29th June, The UK Government announced a new round of sanctions on several high profile Russian figures including Potanin, with the aim of “hitting Putin’s inner circle”. A government statement read: “Potanin continues to amass wealth as he supports Putin’s regime, acquiring Rosbank, and shares in Tinkoff Bank in the period since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

As the Western world moves to sanction overseas Russian money, Cherwell has found that St Edmund Hall and the Saïd Business School accepted donations from Vladimir Potanin, the oligarch and metals tycoon who is the second richest man in Russia.

Potanin, 61, has a net worth of $27 billion, as estimated by Forbes. In 2020, he was included on the US Treasury’s list of 210 Russian oligarchs, businessmen and politicians under considerations for sanctions, dubbed ‘Putin’s List’. He is widely known for regularly playing ice hockey with Putin. Potanin’s fortune fell by $3 billion on the day that Russia invaded Ukraine. Potanin also served as the Deputy Prime Minister for 7 months between 1996 and 1997. 

In 1999, Potanin founded the Vladimir Potanin Foundation to “implement large-scale humanitarian programs” in the fields of “culture, higher education, social sport and philanthropy development”. The foundation donated £3 million to St Edmund Hall in 2018 to endow a research fund for Earth Sciences, and to jointly establish the Vladimir Potanin Associate Professor and Tutorial Fellow in Earth Sciences with the University of Oxford. The endowment also funded the three-year Vladimir Potanin Tutorial Fellow of Russian Literature and Modern Languages.

The foundation also granted $150,000 to the Saïd Business School in 2017 for a fellowship scheme for the Oxford Social Finance Programme. The school selected 15 Russian charity workers to attend this programme between 2017 and 2019. 

The collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s allowed well-connected individuals to profit from the bloc’s transition to a market economy by gaining control over newly privatized state assets. Many of these deals were done privately, without competition. While in office, Potanin proposed the controversial ‘loans for shares’ scheme, which is seen as having furthered the rise of the oligarch class. This scheme effectively caused the consolidation of oligarchs’ control over the Russian economy. ‘Loans for shares’ encouraged wealthy businessmen to loan money to the Yeltsin government in exchange for state-owned shares in companies, many of which extracted and processed Russia’s abundant natural resources. 

Of the programme, he told The Financial Times: “It is the biggest PR tragedy of my career. Of course, the privatisation process has to be transparent. And in our case it was not. My plan was different. I wanted to privatise the companies with banks and qualified people, raise their value, and then sell them.”

Through this scheme, Potanin and his long-term business partner Mikhail Prokhorov acquired a 54% share in Norilsk Nickel (Nornickel). The two businessmen separated their assets in 2007, leaving Potanin with 34.6% of the shares in Norilsk Nickel. The company’s total assets amounted to $20.7 billion in 2020.

On top of being the world’s largest producer of nickel, Norilsk Nickel is one of the world’s largest industrial polluters. In 2020, the company produced 1.9% of total global sulphur dioxide emissions. The company has announced that it intends to reduce suphur dioxides from its plants in the heavily polluted Norilsk region by 90% by 2025 from a 2015 baseline.

Potanin is the only Russian to have signed The Giving Pledge, in which the super-rich pledge to give a majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes. Other signatories include Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerber, and George Lucas. He said his decision was motivated by a belief that “wealth should work for public good”, and as a way to “protect [his] children from the burden of extreme wealth”.

A spokesperson for St Edmund Hall told Cherwell that the gift was accepted “in good faith and at a time when relations with Russia were in a substantially better place. This was a one-off donation and the College does not anticipate any further funding from The Potanin Foundation.

“The College is deeply concerned at the events happening in Ukraine and sincerely hopes that a peaceful outcome will soon be reached,” they added.

The Saïd Business School told Cherwell: “The grant went through the University’s robust approval process and the partnership ended in 2019. The focus of the programme is to improve the social impact and philanthropic work of charities and non-government organisations (NGOs) across the world. As a global business school with students and alumni from across the world, we have been deeply saddened at events happening in the Ukraine and hope a peaceful outcome is soon reached.”

The University of Oxford, Interros, and The Vladimir Potanin Foundation were approached for comment.

Image credit: Kremlin.ru/CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Review: “Black Lives Playlist: Track 2” by Sam Spencer

Katie Kirkpatrick
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Review: “Black Lives Playlist: Track 2” by Sam Spencer

CW: homophobia, racism

A couple of hours before watching Track 2, I saw a friend’s Instagram story pointing out the comments on a post from the official 10 Downing Street account. The post celebrated the ‘extraordinary contribution of LGBT’ people to Britain, but the comments were full of the kind of vitriolic homophobia that it’s hard to believe still exists in public spaces. It is this kind of hate, as well as the prevalence of outright racism, especially in online spheres, that makes projects like the Black Lives Playlist essential.

Track 2 is, primarily, a monologue about the experience of being Black and gay. It centres around The Speaker’s complex inner turmoil between shame and pride in his sexuality. Whilst we may now fortunately live in a world where homosexuality is far more accepted, this play serves as an important reminder that prejudice still very much exists in our society,and that microagressions can have serious consequences especially where marginalised identities intersect.

In spite of this, Track 2 never feels like a PSA about homophobia or racism. Instead, its character-driven nature is relatable to anyone who has ever felt out of place at a family party; anyone who’s questioned what they really want from life; anyone who’s kissed someone they didn’t really like and regretted it; anyone who’s looked at themself in the mirror mid-breakdown and thought, actually, they look kind of hot. This is the play’s greatest strength: writer Sam Spencer manages to both convey a very specific life experience and connect with universal feelings of anxiety and difference.

The Speaker tells us about a day spent visiting his sister’s boyfriend’s family for the first time – an experience that sparks complex emotions and difficult memories. This central narrative introduces us to the story of his ex-boyfriend, and a rendez-vous with a man from the gay hook-up app Grindr who asks The Speaker some difficult questions. Each of these narrative strands ties together cohesively. Credit must go to Spencer for creating a plot that plays out in such a satisfying manner, and to director James Newbery and assistant-director Grace Olusola for translating it onto the stage so effortlessly.

The different visions of the show’s team work flawlessly together. With one-person shows, especially those performed and directed by different people, it’s easy for conflicting creative visions to come across in the finished product, but no such issue exists here. The use of music adds to the piece brilliantly, and the colourful lighting accentuates the vivid narrative, although the lighting could perhaps have been used to accentuate key moments to a greater extent, and mark transitions between time periods more clearly. Yet, the collaborative nature of the project translates into a show that knows what it wants to be, and executes this vision immaculately. 

The greatest strength of the direction is its simplicity: the story is allowed to speak for itself, which is essential to its success. Spencer’s script never tries to be overly clever or conceptual, instead relying on its innately heartfelt character development and engaging humour. He has a talent for visceral description, making both messy hookups and family dinners crystal clear in audiences’ minds, despite the minimalist staging: The Speaker remains sat alone in a dark space throughout. The script is structured very cleverly, with the hook-up acting as a frame that gains new meaning at the end, and the sister’s boyfriend storyline leading us craftily to an emotional climax. In addition to this, Spencer’s mixing of personal anecdotes with general thoughts on the likes of Stonewall statistics and making out with girls helps the writing sit so perfectly on the line between specific and universal. If I were to be especially fussy, it could be said that the script becomes slightly repetitive at times. Some elements, such as the use of the Grindr sound effect, could do with verbal clarification for audiences less familiar with the app, and the ideas around religion could have been fleshed out further. It remains, however, a remarkable piece of writing.

Spencer also performs his writing with a real honesty, transitioning smoothly between a public-facing cheekiness and moments of serious emotional depth – there are points where we feel genuine concern for him. The only things subtracting from the performance are some issues with awkward cuts and poor sound quality – the choppy switches between cuts takes us out of a few important moments, and dialogue with the off-screen voice in the first scene is at times hard to make out. These flaws can be easily forgiven, though; the show would work seamlessly in person, but we are unfortunately still gradually exiting the age of online theatre.

Like every other theatre fan, I’ve watched a lot of filmed monologues over the last year and a half. The influence of the likes of Fleabag can be felt within this piece (what would a review of a monologue be without a reference to Phoebe Waller-Bridge or Michaela Coel?), but it’s clear that the team have taken into consideration the limits and possibilities of the form and made it work for them. With its cohesive structure, engaging character and unfaltering honesty, Track 2 takes its place as one of the best examples of what has become an era-defining genre.

Image Credit: Pete Miller.

Editorial: Russell Group Student Newspapers for No-Detriment Policy

Russell Group University Newspapers
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Editorial: Russell Group Student Newspapers for No-Detriment Policy

As the editors of Russell Group student newspapers, we are writing collectively to request a reversal of the Russell Group’s statement, 7 January 2020, ‘on ensuring fair assessment and protecting the integrity of degrees.’

As editors, not only are we students or recent students ourselves but we are also in constant contact with the students at our respective universities, as part of the function of our extracurricular roles. Apart from sharing in their collective experiences, we have a unique insight into their attitudes, viewpoints and beliefs. We speak and listen to them every day – and every day since the beginning of this academic year, we have heard students calling for more understanding, cooperation and empathy from university management. 

The statement shared by the Russell Group on 7 January showed the inconsistencies between what they and we understand to be adequate teaching. Whilst we enormously appreciate the hard work of teaching staff under these challenging circumstances and understand the complications ‘blended learning’ has presented, students have repeatedly said they have not been adequately supported throughout this pandemic. This is by no means to disregard the tremendous efforts of university staff, but it is simply a consequence of the realities of a year like none other in living memory. 

The lack of a ‘no detriment’ or ‘safety net’ policy has been a miscalculation by the Russell Group. Students across the UK have been left feeling abandoned by both the government, devolved administrations and universities themselves. 

As the editors of 28 student papers, we pick up and record the views of our students on a regular basis. What many are telling us, as a result of personal and shared difficulties, is that they do require the support a clearer ‘no detriment’ policy would deliver.

We object to the assumption made by the Russell Group that ‘emergency measures’ are no longer ‘necessary’ or ‘appropriate’. We are living through what are undeniably unprecedented times – this is a global emergency. The Prime Minister has labelled these weeks of the third lockdown as the critical point in the UK’s fight against the pandemic – death tolls are high, hospitals have reached capacity, we are still just in the early days of administering vaccines. Students, locked down in various levels of economic and social stability across the nation, are facing some of the most important exams we have sat in our lives to date – under some of the most difficult circumstances many will have faced. International students, too, have been working all term from various time zones around the globe, detached from the support of their student communities.

If anything, this point in the pandemic is perhaps the most urgent. We are now facing a mental health crisis amongst young people. Figures by WONKHE and Trendence have shown that more students feel lonely and isolated on a daily basis as a result of the pandemic. Additionally, surveys of undergraduates by various higher education policy advisers have found that over 50 per cent of students say their mental health has significantly deteriorated during the course of the pandemic. 

Students are attempting to sit assessments with a lack of resources, varying internet connections and mixed home environments. There are students without desks, who share bedrooms with siblings, who have caring responsibilities when they’re at home. Across the country, there are students from wide and varied backgrounds who are struggling to study for their final year assessments, many also affected by illness and bereavement owing to COVID-19. Students from lower income families as well as estranged students are disproportionately affected in their learning experiences this year and less able to receive the traditional means of support. They do not deserve to be dismissed.  

Yet, no one from the Russell Group denied the emergency of the situation when metal fences were erected around halls at Manchester. Universities even went as far as to declare their own local emergencies by locking down individual residences during outbreaks amongst first years. There was no denial of ‘emergency’ when students were being blamed in the media for spikes in national COVID-19 cases. 

A-level and GCSE exams have been adjusted to as if this were an emergency – so why aren’t the Russell Group responding in the same way for university students?

It should also be noted the UK government have voided themselves of much of the responsibility for the problems students face. On January 15, the Minister of State for Universities Michelle Donelan tweeted that ‘if universities want to continue charging full fees, they are expected to maintain the quality, quantity and accessibility of tuition’. A government who demands this from its universities should put support systems in place to enable it.  

You have explained to our respective Student Unions that it is more appropriate for universities to provide ‘a range of policies and tools’ to ensure fair assessment for students. Whilst we agree some universities will need to adapt their policy on an individual basis, the Russell Group’s collective position against ‘no detriment’ or ‘safety net’ policy does not match the reality of what many students have faced, and are continuing to face, this year.

In principle, a ‘no detriment’ or ‘safety net’ policy should ensure a student’s grade is not worsened as a result of the pandemic. Currently, many of your universities’ mitigatory policies amount to simply offering more time for assessments. Frankly, a matter of extra days or a week is not sufficient for the challenges that we have outlined above, which students are facing in real time.

We understand that an algorithmic approach is not entirely viable due to the lack of benchmark data for many students at this stage of the 2020/21 academic year – that’s a mathematical given. But it is by no means impossible to support an alternative ‘no detriment’ policy built for the circumstances. The University of York, for instance, is implementing a comprehensive policy, attempting to take into account the unique challenges posed by this pandemic, as opposed to reshuffling and extending existing policies. 

By readjusting the weightings of each year towards a student’s overall degree and choosing the better of the two for penultimate- and final-year undergraduates, as well as allowing first-years to re-sit up to 90 failed credits in exams, the University of York have worked to try and introduce an appropriate and fair policy. Postgraduates, who should not be forgotten in any such policy, have also been offered an assured ‘safety net’. Overall, it is certainly not perfect but it at least strives to fulfill on the principle of ‘no detriment’, allowing students to simply focus on their studies, with some confidence they will not be impacted by COVID-19, whilst preserving the value of their degrees to employers. 

We urge all Russell Group universities to introduce similarly comprehensive policies.

Whilst we understand that every subject, university and student is different, showing the understanding and empathy to their students embodied in York’s approach should be a basic requirement.

Presently, there are a small number of universities, such as Cardiff, that have recently implemented similar policies. Yet their commitment to this editorial is on the basis that students from all Russell Group universities should have the same level of assurance.

Overall, many students will of course respect and largely agree with your desire to maintain degree standards comparative to other years and to ensure, as you say, that they still ‘command the confidence of employers and professional bodies’. However, where other aspects of society have shifted or seen unprecedented measures introduced over the course of the last year, we believe a reweighting or rescaling of degrees is certainly possible. The students we write for and hear from daily are not asking for a policy that allows them to stop working or learning, but one that simply acknowledges the reality of the pandemic and its wide-ranging impact.

Ultimately, you claim you want to uphold the integrity of our degrees. Yet a university’s first responsibility is to its students and acting with integrity ought to mean upholding this responsibility. Many students across the country have not received the ‘blended’ or ‘hybrid’ learning experience they were promised; many are now separated from their campuses, with its facilities and libraries, due to a third national lockdown brought about largely by an unforeseen variant; many are facing personal, long-term hardship as a result of the virus, and/or extreme difficulties at home.

The integrity of a degree, too – students would hope – should encompass a focus on the opportunity to learn and study as well as a focus on rankings and outcomes. The integrity of university institutions should entail safeguarding the mental wellbeing of its students. Under the current plans laid out by most Russell Group universities, students are reporting to us loudly that neither of these are currently in line.

Students have not been quiet about their concerns. With exams fast approaching, and some already underway, now is the time for Russell Groups universities to act compassionately and responsibly.

Editorial: Oxford must adopt a no-detriment policy for this year’s finalists

Cherwell Editors
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Editorial: Oxford must adopt a no-detriment policy for this year’s finalists

It is an understatement to say that we are living in extraordinary times. Last March, the UK, along with the rest of the world, came to a grinding halt at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic as we tried to cope with a crisis that was entirely without precedent. The Prime Minister told us then that “things are going to get worse before they get better” – but the reality of this warning has only now been fully realised.

Ten months later, the UK has entered the worst stage of its crisis so far: tragically, cases and deaths have soared and, once again, students have been asked to study from home with Hilary term teaching moved online. However, many are highly concerned about the limited and restrained adjustments recently made by the University of Oxford to account for the deterioration of the coronavirus crisis and its impact on the upcoming term and students’ education as a whole. 

It is not unreasonable to expect that students should not be disadvantaged by circumstances wholly beyond their control. That is why the editorial boards of The Oxford Blue, The Oxford Student and Cherwell are calling on the University of Oxford to introduce a fair ‘no-detriment’ policy for finalists.

While the scale of this tragedy has been devastating in terms of loss of life, the quality of students’ education has also suffered enormously. Students have raised serious concerns in recent days and weeks about issues at home: different time zones to Oxford in their home location; a lack of space; noise; and an absence of essential work tools including a desk, books, a computer and a stable, high-speed internet connection. Furthermore, international students are faced with additional (and unpredictable) challenges, such as having to make travel plans, negotiating complex and changeable immigration policies, undergoing mandatory periods of quarantine (either in private accomodation or specialist facilities) and/or firewalled internet access. Students who are materially more privileged than others in these areas are thus at a significant advantage compared to their peers. 

Many students have also felt lonely, confused and anxious throughout the pandemic. Like the rest of the population, students have had to contend with self-isolation and the emotional impact of being unable to socialise normally with friends, family and partners. Some students have been ill with COVID-19 themselves or had to care for sick household members and loved ones whilst keeping up with the famously rigorous, unrelenting pace of an Oxford degree. The pandemic’s asymmetric demands on students means that a one-size-fits-all approach cannot be feasible and a ‘no-detriment’ policy is crucial for student success.

In such extraordinary circumstances – and ten months into the UK’s COVID-19 crisis – students deserve better than inflexibility and an insistence that it is possible to study as normal in such tough conditions. It is crucial to recognise the circumstances that led to the establishment of the ‘no-detriment policy’ last spring have only been prolonged and exacerbated over the course of recent months. If students are to pay full tuition fees for a severely diminished university education, it is right that the University at least intervenes to accommodate the impact of COVID-19 on our learning experience and academic attainment. 

Last year, in light of the rapid spread and impact of COVID-19, the University listened to student feedback and implemented what they called a no-detriment policy, designed to ensure that finalists did not suffer from the consequences of a global issue outside of their control. Whilst by no means perfect, this policy was executed well in many respects. The optionality from last year should be continued further given the nature of the ongoing crisis. Imposing any one formula on the entire student body will unfairly disadvantage a significant number of its members. If we prioritise simplicity, we may unintentionally neglect the nuances of the situation which we face. Decentralising choice to students means that assessment will consider principles of fairness and equity, and ensure that each student can face the challenges we all find ourselves facing on their own terms, in a way that is right for them. That is what a no-detriment policy must guarantee.

There is undoubtedly a shared interest amongst the entire staff-student body in not wanting the value of an Oxford degree to be diluted, and everyone understands the importance of ‘academic rigour’; it is why many students apply to study here. However, it is unavoidable that students will be affected to varying degrees by the pandemic. Some will feel unable to be examined at the end of this calendar year if, for example, they or a close family member fall ill and/or they have been struggling with mental health issues. Others may be able to undertake exams, but will have to do so in extremely difficult conditions. More still will need to fulfil academic conditions to begin postgraduate courses but may or may not be able to be assessed next term. It suffices to say that no one solution can accommodate all students in a satisfactory manner and, therefore, a solution similar to last year must be implemented.

Yesterday’s email from the University, however, is not only a disappointment but an insult to the entire student body. By refusing to implement a clear ‘safety net’ policy, the University is downplaying the real-world impact that the pandemic has had on students’ learning – both in terms of access to teaching and resources, and of the effect of this crisis on students’ mental health. Some individual departments have also introduced policies that represent a ‘business as usual’ approach to exams and assessments, despite students’ loss of library access, resources and study spaces. A reliance on examiners’ personal acknowledgement of the past year’s unique circumstances cannot replace a formal framework that can evaluate and mitigate inequalities in learning and attainment. 

The University has said that it will announce “additional measures” to ensure fair degree outcomes in “the middle of Hilary term”. The only way to ensure fairness is for the University – in conjunction with departments and faculties – to commit, as soon as possible, to a no-detriment policy for all those taking exams and submitting other assessments, Such measures can ensure that no individual Oxford student is unjustly disadvantaged by the effect of the pandemic on their learning in the last year and during the next.  

Oxford’s Student Union, which serves as a voice for a student body of over 22,000, has said that the University should “recognise the academic challenges by reassessing workloads and assessment practices”, calling for a “fair outcome policy” defined as “a system of policies put in place to mitigate the detrimental effects of the pandemic on students with exams and coursework this year”. This will involve the re-scaling and re-weighting of exams and coursework to reflect the impact of the pandemic on the whole cohort. At an individual level, the Student Union has called for students to be able to file for mitigating circumstances and deadline extensions – without needing to prove that the pandemic has affected their studies – and to access better financial, academic and mental health support. We wholeheartedly endorse these demands and encourage students to find out more about the Student Union’s campaign and services and attend the online workshop taking place this evening (13 January), which will address these issues.

Other universities in the Russell Group, such the University of York, have also started to implement similar ‘safety net’ policies, and the Universities of Leeds, Lancaster and Bristol are considering similar approaches. A petition by Oxford students to the Vice Chancellor to implement “fair safety nets” has already attracted almost 800 signatures at the time of writing. 

On Tuesday, the University ruled out the possibility of a ‘blanket safety net’, but given the disruption caused to the last two terms – which will likely endure even beyond Hilary term – it must now act to introduce a fair no-detriment policy which will also reflect the impact of the pandemic on assessments, just as last year’s safety net did. To fail to do so will present an entirely unfair disadvantage to Oxford students, directly undermining the University’s commitment to student welfare and academic success.

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on a whole generation of students can not even begin to be graphed on a curve. This crisis is, as we are so often reminded, ‘unprecedented’ – but extraordinary times surely call for equally extraordinary measures. 

A fair, robust no-detriment policy is one of those measures – and it must be implemented now. 

Editors-in-Chief and Managing Director, Cherwell, The Oxford Blue, and The Oxford Student

All I Want for Christmas is Food!

Katie Hollands
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All I Want for Christmas is Food!

Come Christmas, what’s on your table? Are there bowls overflowing with cranberry sauce? Plates filled with pigs in blankets? A prize bird gleaming on its platter? Traditions differ, but some dishes find their feature every year. 

For most, the star of the Christmas feast is the turkey: the plump, golden-skinned bird that takes pride of place. But different birds have had their place; peacocks, pheasants and ducks all had their time on the table and before Victorian times, a goose was the typical centrepiece of the Christmas meal. 

Henry VIII, a man then synonymous with decadence, may have been the first in England to try a turkey, but it did not come into fashion until Charles Dickens chose to emphasise the immense philanthropy of Scrooge’s gift to the Cratchits by swapping their traditional goose for turkey. No expense would be spared, and thus the Christmas turkey fell into vogue. Isabella Beeton, author of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, and the Victorian authority on all things to do with housekeeping, bolstered this new trend by proclaiming that Christmas for the middle class “would scarcely be a Christmas dinner without its turkey”. 

Two of the more controversial members of a Christmas dinner, Yorkshire puddings and Bread Sauce, both find their origins in leftovers. Although many would argue Yorkshire puddings should only be eaten with roast beef, they actually originated from the drippings of fat off mutton as it roasted. As dripping fell into a pan filled with a batter, a Yorkshire pudding – enormous by today’s standards – would grow. Anyone with a food-strict upbringing similar to my own would never imagine a Yorkshire pudding on their plate come Christmas, yet this favourite continues to divide the country. It takes just a quick google search to discover the years of articles that have piled up from yuletides arguing pro-YP or against!

Yorkshire puddings’ more traditional, but stranger cousin is bread sauce. The beige, lumpy, liquid-like substance is not much more than gloop to those who haven’t been brought up with it. But to a fan, it’s a haven of stodgy delight. Bread sauce also originates from leftovers. In the Medieval period, soups were thickened with leftover bread, rather than flour as used today. These soups were prepared for Christmas feasts and evolved into the bay/nutmeg/clove flavoured slop (can you tell I wasn’t raised on it?) that so many will douse their turkey with this week.

As with anything that has its roots in the dinners of yore, the veg on our plates at Christmas have been shaped simply by whatever our ancestors managed to grow. Brussel sprouts found their way to the UK from Belgium, being the only cold-hardy green around. Parsnips, the preferred partner to sprouts, are harvested in the winter. Their first frost causes sugars to be released from their starch stores, giving them their characteristic sweetness (you won’t find that fun fact in your cracker). 

Christmas desserts may be the most reliably underwhelming part of the day. Dessert has the opportunity to hold such creativity and glee, and yet the dry, misshapen lumps turned out year after year hold nothing but an unbelievable amount of fruit. They also hold a considerable serving of history. 

The myth of each of the thirteen fillings of Christmas cake representing the 12 apostles and Jesus is a fun tale, but the most interesting story is with mince pies. First, let’s clear it up – yes, mincemeat did once contain real meat. Dating back to the crusades when meat/spiced/fruit pies found their way back to Europe, mince pies evolved from rectangular “coffins” to round Christmas Pyes that were often found at bountiful Christmas feasts. They were famously held in disdain by Cromwell’s Puritan government because of the ‘more-gluttony-less-Jesus’ they seemed to represent. By the Victorian period, mincemeat was being prepared and jarred earlier and earlier in the year to allow flavours to mature, and hence, meat was left at the wayside – thankfully for us. 

These Victorian mince pies largely look like those we have today – buttery pastry, spiced fruit (and suet) filling, decoration with festive designs on top. Though their status as a delicious treat may be divisive, mince pies, with their undeniably Christmassy aroma, remind you it’s a special time of the year, and for that they fulfil their role as a Christmas food tradition. 

Whether you guzzle gravy or put away potatoes, your food has been through a lot to make it onto your table – so forget the Queen’s speech and tune into your food come Friday. 

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.

SU criticises colleges’ reduction of vacation residence

Imogen Duke
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SU criticises colleges’ reduction of vacation residence

Some colleges are reducing the availability of residence for students over the Michaelmas vacation. Oxford SU is lobbying to ensure international students are guaranteed accommodation for those who wish to remain, and has criticised the impact on care leavers, estranged students, and independent students.

Oxford SU passed a motion in 3rd week resolving to ask the University to guarantee all international student residence in Oxford over the vacation. The SU also resolves to push for vacation residence to be offered at 15% of usual vacation rent.

College policies do not currently fulfil Oxford SU’s requests. St John’s College has said that their vacation residence and grant scheme “will not operate as usual” during this vacation. All students have to leave, except international students whose home borders are closed and students with extended terms for their subjects.  

St John’s told students that this was to ensure staff get a break from a difficult term, and students get a break to spend some time in a “different environment” before next year.

Queen’s College emailed students saying they “strongly urge” and “expect” all UK-domiciled students to return, noting that for students with welfare concerns, the welfare services would be closed for a period over the vacation.  

They also told international students that the requirement to quarantine in their home country and in the UK is “unlikely” to be a “compelling reason” to be granted vacation residence. Queen’s said that, if borders for students’ home countries are closed, students should consider asking friends to stay at their homes. Queen’s reminded students that “there is no automatic right to stay in College”.

Oxford SU Class Act Campaign told Cherwell: “This is an issue not only for international students, but also for care leavers, estranged students, and independent students. Colleges consistently fail to provide these students with security, instead leaving individuals to negotiate with them for the right to have somewhere to stay. This is a difficult situation for everyone, but many students call Oxford their home, and must not be forgotten in this pandemic.”

One anonymous student told Cherwell: “The vacation residence policy email I received from my college was a disappointing read that placed unnecessary anxiety upon estranged students. For some of us, home life is not safe: it does not matter if this has always been the case, or if this is recent. Trinity Term lockdown was hard enough to suffer because students from other colleges were able to return – hopefully we can stay this time.

“I, like many other students, am incredibly grateful for my time at Oxford because of the freedom it gives me. It is also one of the reasons students take advantage of the vacation residence system: escape. To put it plainly, studying in college is better than working at home. We already try so hard to learn to live independently, study efficiently and strike that balance needed to be happy that if we are forced back into our older unhealthy environments no good will come of it.”

Oxford SU will further ask the University to ensure students who are required to quarantine upon return to Oxford get free accommodation, and receive food at the average price of their college’s home food.

Students who were required to quarantine upon arrival at the beginning of Michaelmas faced very varied college policies. Oxford SU’s motion stated that students were “in some cases charged extortionate rates for their accommodation”. 
Cherwell reported at the beginning of the term that Oriel College charged self-isolating international students over £700, including a nearly £30 per day food bill. Some colleges, including Hertford, Magdalen, Queen’s, and Worcester College, made accommodation free.

Image credit: Simononly/ Wikimedia Commons

Oxford University’s ties to nuclear weapons industry revealed

Ben Jacob
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Oxford University’s ties to nuclear weapons industry revealed

Freedom of Information requests submitted by Cherwell have revealed that Oxford University accepted at least £726,706 from the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), the designer and producer of the UK’s nuclear warheads, during the years 2017-19 alone.

The majority of this money was awarded to the Oxford Centre for High Energy Density Science (OxCHEDS), which advertises AWE as one of its “national partners” on its website.

AWE’s funding is mostly used by OxCHEDS to fund individual research projects and studentships, with a substantial portion (£82,863 in 2019) funding the department’s William Penney Fellowship, named after the head of the British delegation for the Manhattan Project and ‘father of the British atomic bomb’. According to the AWE website, William Penney Fellows “act as ambassadors for AWE in the scientific and technical communities in which they operate”.

This fellowship is currently shared by two professors, Justin Wark and Peter Norreys, both of whom collaborate closely with US state laboratories that develop nuclear weapons, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

AWE donations have also funded projects at the University’s Departments of Chemistry, Engineering, and Physics, a number of which are directly linked to the design of nuclear weapons. One AWE-funded paper, published in 2019, investigated fusion yield production, a vital way of testing the destructive power of a warhead prior to manufacturing, whilst another project researched methods used by nuclear weapons designers for simulating the interior of a detonating warhead.

This research also has civilian applications, and does not in itself point towards the development of nuclear weapons. A spokesperson from Oxford University stated: “Oxford University research is academically driven, with the ultimate aim of enhancing openly available scholarship and knowledge. All research projects with defence sector funding advance general scientific understanding, with a wide range of subsequent civilian applications, as well as potential application by the sector.”

However, AWE is not a civilian organisation. As Andrew Smith of Campaign Against the Arms Trade told Cherwell, “the AWE exists to promote the deadliest weaponry possible. It is not funding these projects because it cares about education, but because it wants to benefit from the research and association that goes with it”. Mr. Smith concluded: “Oxford University should be leading by example, not providing research and cheap labour for the arms industry”.

Responding to Cherwell’s findings, Dr Stuart Parkinson, Director of Scientists for Global Responsibility, described Oxford University’s ties with AWE as “shocking” and called for the work to be “terminated immediately”. He said that the findings “point very clearly to Oxford University researchers being involved in the development of weapons of mass destruction”.

In the face of this criticism, the University spokesperson claimed: “All research funders must first pass ethical scrutiny and be approved by the University’s Committee to Review Donations and Research Funding. This is a robust, independent system, which takes legal, ethical and reputational issues into consideration.”

However, there are growing concerns over the ethics and efficacy of this process, which has seen controversial donations from the Sackler family, Wafic Saïd, and Stephen Schwarzman given the green light despite internal and public protests. The committee’s deliberations are frequently subject to Non-Disclosure Agreements, meaning that they are not accountable to members of the University and to the wider public. Moreover, Freedom of Information requests submitted earlier this year revealed that the committee accepts over 95% of the funding it considers, with congregation members describing the committee as a “smokescreen” and a “fig leaf”.

In recent years, the University has faced increased opposition from student groups such as the Oxford Climate Justice Campaign and Oxford Against Schwarzman over the companies Oxford chooses to affiliate itself with through investments and donations. From this term onwards, a newly formed student group, Disarm Oxford, will be campaigning against the University’s numerous ties with the arms industry. Oxford Amnesty International is working with Disarm Oxford on the global Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, and to strive for the disarmament of the University more broadly.

Dr Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury and Chair of the Trustees of the Council for the Defence of British Universities, told Cherwell: “The recent publicity around university divestment from fossil fuels has highlighted the need for university bodies to be transparent about the ethical standards they apply to their funding, and it is encouraging to see this crucial question being raised also in the context of armaments-related funds and research.”

The combination of Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic has created a particularly difficult time for university research finances. In a marketised higher education system, seeking and welcoming money from industry partnerships seems like an inevitability. However, while some industries rely on academic research to save lives, others are predicated on taking them. With the UK confirmed this year as the world’s second biggest exporter of arms, the University’s significant ties to the development of weaponry has an alarming global significance which is now beginning to be called into question.

Oxford University leads ‘breakthrough’ in coronavirus treatment

Imogen Duke
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Oxford University leads ‘breakthrough’ in coronavirus treatment

A trial led by Oxford University has discovered that dexamethasone, a cheap steroid, can help reduce deaths in seriously ill COVID-19 patients.

The drug reduced the risk of death by one-third for patients on ventilators and by one-fifth for patients on oxygen.

Oxford University says: “Based on these results, 1 death would be prevented by treatment of around 8 ventilated patients or around 25 patients requiring oxygen alone.”

Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty has described it as “the most important trial result for COVID-19 so far”.

The British government has immediately authorised use of the drug in the NHS, saying “thousands of lives will be saved”. The government has secured supplies of dexamethasone in the UK, meaning there is already treatment for over 200,000 people.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said this is “a remarkable British scientific achievement” and that the government “have taken steps to ensure we have enough supplies, even in the event of a second peak”.

It was discovered as part of the RECOVERY trial, the Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy, which has involved over 11,500 patients at over 175 NHS hospitals in the UK.  

About 2000 hospital patients were given 6mg of dexamethasone per day and compared with more than 4,000 who were not.

For patients on ventilators, it cut the risk of death from 41% to 28%. For patients needing oxygen, it cut the risk of death from 25% to 20%.

The drug costs £5.40 per day and treatment takes up to 10 days. Professor Martin Landray, one of the Chief Investigators, has said: “So essentially it costs £35 to save a life.”

Chief investigator Peter Horby has said: “This is the only drug so far that has been shown to reduce mortality – and it reduces it significantly. It’s a major breakthrough.”

The UK Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, said: “This is tremendous news today from the RECOVERY trial showing that dexamethasone is the first drug to reduce mortality from COVID-19. It is particularly exciting as this is an inexpensive widely available medicine. This is a ground-breaking development in our fight against the disease, and the speed at which researchers have progressed finding an effective treatment is truly remarkable. It shows the importance of doing high quality clinical trials and basing decisions on the results of those trials.”

Peter Horby, Professor of Emerging Infectious Diseases in the Nuffield Department of Medicine and one of the Chief Investigators for the trial, said: “Dexamethasone is the first drug to be shown to improve survival in COVID-19. This is an extremely welcome result. The survival benefit is clear and large in those patients who are sick enough to require oxygen treatment, so dexamethasone should now become standard of care in these patients. Dexamethasone is inexpensive, on the shelf, and can be used immediately to save lives worldwide.”

Martin Landray, Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, one of the Chief Investigators, said: “Since the appearance of COVID-19 six months ago, the search has been on for treatments that can improve survival, particularly in the sickest patients. These preliminary results from the RECOVERY trial are very clear – dexamethasone reduces the risk of death among patients with severe respiratory complications. COVID-19 is a global disease – it is fantastic that the first treatment demonstrated to reduce mortality is one that is instantly available and affordable worldwide.”

Image credit to Pixabay.

Self-isolated student diagnosed with Covid-19

Imogen Harter-Jones
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Self-isolated student diagnosed with Covid-19

Public Health England (PHE) has confirmed that a student at the University of Oxford has tested positive for coronavirus (Covid-19) after returning home from a specified country.

The university has said that “Our immediate concerns are for the affected student and their family, along with the health and wellbeing of our university staff, students and visitors. The student is being offered all necessary support.”

The university has established that the affected student did not attend any university or college events after they felt ill, when they subsequently self-isolated. 

PHE has advised that the risk to other students and staff is very low and that university and college activities can continue as normal. They have also advised that the university and colleges do not need to take any additional public health actions in the light of this specific case.

A university spokesperson has said “We have worked with PHE to make sure that anyone who was in contact with the student after they fell ill have been notified and that they are able to access support and information as needed. PHE do not consider individuals infectious until they develop symptoms.”

The university is providing support for students, staff, and the wider community.

The University is sharing further updates on the current infection at  www.ox.ac.uk/coronavirus-advice.

BREAKING: Oxford announces record state school offers

Molly Innes
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BREAKING: Oxford announces record state school offers

Oxford University has announced that more than 69% of undergraduate offers have been made to students attending state schools. The increase of 4.6% is the “best percentage increase the University has ever seen.”

30.9% of offers were made to students from independent schools; this is over 12% higher than the 18% of students who attend independent sixth forms, according to the Sutton Trust (2018), and dramatically higher than the 7% of all UK students attending independent schools. 

78% of offers were made to UK applicants, 7% to EU applicants and 15% to Overseas applicants. The University specifies that ‘UK applicants are more likely to receive an offer.’ 

The University was unable to provide a breakdown of the split between Grammar, Comprehensive, Academy and other forms of state schools as they do not currently collect that data. The data on the inter-state school split is not published in the University’s annual data report either, however the May 2019 access report published by the University highlighted that ‘In 2018, 11.3% of UK students admitted to Oxford came from the two most socioeconomically disadvantaged groups (ACORN categories 4 and 56).’

Oxford’s successful UNIQ programme has led to 250 students being made offers this year. The offer rate to students who attended UNIQ programmes is 33.6%, in contrast to the offer rate of 21.5% across UK applicants. The increase in offers to UNIQ participants comes after the expansion of the scheme last year, which saw more than 1,350 pupils take part in the programme – an increase of 50%. This is the largest number of UNIQ participants to receive offers in the programme’s history, thanks to the dramatic development in 2019. 

This year, Students from POLAR4 quintile 1 accounted for 6.4% of UK offers – up by 1.4%. These students represent the areas with the lowest progression to higher education.

Dr Samina Khan, Director of Undergraduate Admissions and Outreach at Oxford, said: “We are delighted by this record number of offers to state school students, and to students from under-represented backgrounds. This creates a strong foundation for what we aim to achieve. We know that students from some backgrounds are not as well-represented at Oxford as they should be, and we are determined that this should change. Having taught in state schools during my career, I know the wealth of talent that lies there. We wish the students every success in their studies, and hope they flourish at Oxford.”

The number of offers made to young people from areas with the lowest progression rates to higher education have increased. Students from POLAR4 quintile 1 accounted for 6.4% of UK offers – up by 1.4% from 2019 offers.

In 2015 the University made 56.7% of their offers to students from state schools. Across the past five years, there has been an increase of 12.4% in state school offers. This comes after pioneering Oxford schemes have taken place, from the UNIQ programmes to Lady Margaret Hall’s Foundation Year and University College’s bridging scheme. It also coincides with the University’s formation of the Foundation Oxford and Opportunity Oxford schemes.

Opportunity Oxford launched at the end of the previous academic year, and this week more than 100 candidates from under-represented backgrounds received offers to study as a part of the scheme. Dr Andrew Bell, Coordinator of Oppertunity Oxford and University College Senior Tutor, has stated:

“Opportunity Oxford is a major new initiative to increase the number of offers made to UK students from under-represented backgrounds, and to provide academic support to those students to ensure that they have the best possible start to their university careers. This year, more than 100 offers have been made under the scheme across 28 colleges. We anticipate making 200 offers per year under the scheme from 2022 onwards. We’re really excited to have launched Opportunity Oxford, and we very much look forward to welcoming our first cohort to Oxford later this year.”

This article was updated at 20:02 15.1.20 to clarify POLAR.

Further clarification was made at 00:11, 16.1.19 concerning Opportunity Oxford.

Kiss My Genders – Celebrating identity with the Hayward Gallery

Charlotte Hall
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Kiss My Genders – Celebrating identity with the Hayward Gallery

“Look.” A voice whispers – slowly, sensually.

White curtains quiver in the non-existent breeze that haunts the clinical interior of the Hayward gallery. With that slight movement, too, the image projected onto the curtain sways – Victoria Sin’s wide eyes flicker involuntarily as the camera slowly zooms into their face. In sparkling lingerie and full drag inspired by Cantonese opera, the model, laid out demurely across a satin curtain, stares back at the starers; sometimes sultry, sometimes vulnerable, always, somehow, piercing.

“Look. Look. Look – At her.”  

Victoria Sin’s A View from Elsewhere, Act 1, and She Postures in Context, three film-art pieces projected onto a curtain-enclosure, embody the spirit of the Hayward’s latest exhibition Kiss My Genders. The exhibition, made up of over a hundred artworks by thirty different international artists, centres around gender identity and fluidity. Physically enclosing their viewers in the wavering medium of cloth and projection, Sin appears to comment on the insubstantiality of gender boundaries, but in subverting perspective and viewing experience, also draws attention to the role of performance, presentation and spectatorship in all elements of identity. Hayward claims the exhibition focuses on “content and forms that challenge accepted or stable definitions of gender.” Paintings of hunter-gatherer tribes with drag elements question the West’s suppression of third-gender narratives, while sculptures made of artificial oestrogen and testosterone break down, biologically, what it means to be “male” or “female”.

But more than just gender identity, the exhibits are an expression of the individuality and the internal or cultural conflicts of the artists. Amrou Al-Kadhi teams up with Holly Falconer to explore what he describes as the “disorienting” experience of being drag as a person of Muslim heritage by modelling as drag persona Glamrou wrapped in a Persian carpet. Cloned in different poses through triple exposure to express the incongruence of these disparate cultures, Al-Kadhi demonstrates their successful unification in the persona of Glamrou. Meanwhile Juliana Huxtable’s photographic self-portraits deflect identity-labels entirely; using makeup, costumes and fantasy backgrounds, she deflects the reductive categorizations ascribed to her as a “black intersex artist” by creating personalized embodiments of mythology, sci-fi and super-heroes. Kiss My Genders thereby becomes an exploration not only of the boundaries perceived in gender – but of individuals’ cultural identity experiences.

With this exhibition, an art assistant explains, the Hayward is attempting to break the mould of LGBTQ+ and gender-related exhibitions, which often focus on the violence and oppression experienced by these communities. Instead they want to celebrate different identities. Nonetheless, the exhibition is palpably political: Zanele Muholi explores black lesbian and transgender experiences in South Africa through photography – and acts of violence are still an all too present component of that. In her series Crime Scenes she stages the aftermath of brutal murders, photographing the upturned feet of model corpses buried in sheets of plastic and litter. Paintings like YESSIR! Back off! Tell me who I am, again? combine illustration and collage to satirize the way gender transition is spoken about. The artist, Flo Brooks, depicts a fictional cleaning company scrubbing away at a therapist’s room, reflecting his experience of the “hygienic spaces” he experienced while transitioning; “spaces designed to clean, conceal and correct” things socially considered “dirty, abnormal or other” – but also addresses the way transgender issues are generalised and “sterilized” through neat clinical terms. Artists in Kiss My Genders marry the intensely personal with the social, emotional with the playful, and at the same time evoke all the contrasting feelings of pride, comfort, fear, frustration, belonging and exclusion.

The exhibition succeeds in its “celebration” and “expression” of identities – but the presentation, at times, is confusing. The works of some artists are split across multiple floors, the labelling unclear, and it is generally worth asking the art assistants to talk you through the rooms – difficult, when the gallery is at its busiest and a shame for an exhibition set on “opening doors.” Perhaps this is all the more noticeable as the exhibition appears to be catered towards an audience that identifies with binary genders – many of the artworks require the context of the theme or artist in order to be appreciated. Often, however, this is used in a positive way; many of the exhibits are truly thought provoking.

Most strikingly, Something for the Boys takes us through a spiral of ruched curtains in metallic pink – as if we are walking into a private adult show, yet at the same time, as if we were walking onto a stage. In the centre of the spiral we find ourselves in a circular womb-like room with a screen. Cutting between various LGBTQ+ spaces in Blackpool, the projected film shows an increasing disconnect between sound and image; a drag queen mouthing to “I am who I am” off-sync, interjected with a club-dance choreography, stills of gay clubs, the camera panning over pornographic videos and fetish-wear, and back to the drag queen – except this time she just mouths, and all we can hear is industrial sounds – once again connecting gender-identity and sexuality to cultural identity as a whole. But there is also something intimately performative about the display – the gesticulations and dances, unhinged from their appropriate music, seem to point to a theme of performance and spectatorship at large. And suddenly, that circular room no longer feels like a private theatre. It starts to feel like a stage, and the question crosses our minds – who is really the performer here, the drag act, or us, playing up to our female/male expectations? Just as Victoria Sin’s insistent murmurs, Kiss My Genders seduces its audience into truly looking – and becoming aware of the instability of their perspective in the process.

This year’s NUS conference – how your delegates voted

Sam Millward
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This year’s NUS conference – how your delegates voted

The National Union of Student’s annual conference took place between Tuesday and Friday of this week. Five of Oxford’s seven elected delegates were present and voting in Glasgow, with two not voting on any motions.

The voting records of all delegates are available for viewing online, whilst a list of the motions discussed over the three day event can be found here.

This conference saw the election of Zamzam Ibrahim as NUS President. Ibrahim, the former president of the Salford University students’ union, vowed in her manifesto to hold a National Student Strike, calling for free education, an improved student maintenance allowance and the return of the post-study work visa for overseas students.

Among the motions discussed, Oxford SU delegates voted to support the Mental Health Charter. This would seek to improve standards of mental health provision and funding across universities, acknowledging alarming rates of student suicide and the ongoing “mental health crisis”.

All Oxford delegates voted against the motion to revoke gender quotas within the SU. The proposer highlighted the now-increased presence of women in the organisation, since the rule’s creation in 2014, as well as the potential harm to non- binary individuals that a 50% female quota poses. The last 5 NUS presidents have identified as female, with racial discrimination featuring more often than gender inequality in this year’s manifestoes.

The conference itself was marked from the outset by sitting president Shakira Martin’s admission of the NUS’s financial trouble. Telling the conference that “we should have run out of cash”, Martin stated: “We are having problems that we need to sort out”.

This follows the November announcement that the NUS was unable to pay off a £3m deficit, cutting half of its jobs as a result. However, all Oxford delegates voted against a review of the NUS’s finances.

Closer to home, Oxford SU is continuing the hunt for a VP for Charities and Community, a position unfilled by Hilary term’s election. President Joe Inwood also penned a letter this month, calling for the university to revoke the honorary degree given to the Sultan of Brunei.

Oxford SU has been contacted for comment on the proceedings.

Tracey Emin’s A Fortnight of Tears: an unflinching study of the haunting power of trauma

Beth Simcock
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Tracey Emin’s A Fortnight of Tears: an unflinching study of the haunting power of trauma

It is a Sunday and some weeks since Tracey Emin’s latest London solo show at White Cube Bermondsey first opened to the public. Yet the people of south-east London have emerged in droves, so that at lunchtime the gallery is still milling with visitors – the fullest I have ever seen it. It is testament to the magnetism and celebrity of an artist like Emin that people continue to flock so dutifully to the austere, white-lit and grey-walled gallery to see a show entitled A Fortnight of Tears, when outside it is one of the sunniest days of the year so far. Outside, the faint hum of pop music floats down from the nearby park, while a yellow Labrador lolls out into the sunshine on the corner opposite. The scenes inside Emin’s exhibition, however, tell a starkly different story. 

Emin’s show is a broadly autobiographical survey of love and loss. It is a tour de force in sculpture, neon, painting, film, photography, and drawing. The artist’s uncanny ability to stage life’s ordinary tragedies, and to be entirely candid about the experience of female pain, is on display as masterfully as ever in the demanding spaces of the White Cube. Decades of dirty laundry are paraded through the gallery; the horrors of a 1990 botched abortion, rape, and the death of her mother are the dominant topics of expression. Though much of the language and subject matter has been a constant throughout her career, it is evident that Emin has come some way from her days as a party-girl enfant terrible of contemporary British art. There is a discernible grown-upness about this exhibition; familiar, ugly subjects are returned to with a new seriousness and sensitivity, though the bite is doubtless still there.

The South Gallery I houses ‘Insomnia Room Installation’. Huge Gilcée print iPhone selfies of the artist reveal a tormented Emin in various states of physical and mental injury over four years of sleepless nights. The pictures are double hung almost up to the ceiling in a manner that falls somewhere between a teenage girl’s bedroom and a French salon. Unframed and pinned in each corner, they lift off the wall slightly, a pencil signature just visible on each bottom-right corner. We are invited to share the unhappy bed. As the first room of the show this sets the tone for the rest: sad, intimate, and earnest.

Alongside the ‘finished’ works further on in the gallery, four cases containing sketches and writings on paper, maquettes, and memorabilia are exhibited from the artist’s archive. These sketches – some on notepad pages branded with the names of hotels – are reminiscent of those doodles we draw out on paper absent-mindedly, while taking a phone call or sitting in a lecture. They have a day-to-day feel about them. The cabinets are organised thematically under the topics of love, sex, death, and fear. Indeed, these are the subjects to which the artist returns obsessively, and which percolate through every room of the gallery, bleeding into each other at the edges.

Paintings around the cabinets line the wall like the Stations of the Cross. But Emin’s protagonist keeps falling down, stumbling with her proverbial cross with little sense of any eventual redemption. We are inclined to believe that these are self-portraits, though the women’s faces are almost always obscured. Emin’s girls have soft, protruding (pregnant?) bellies, clubbed feet and hands, blurry faces, and masses of dark pubic hair. The viewer is struck by the way that the swollen nipples, breasts, and genitals always seem to be most in focus.

‘I Watched You Disappear. Pink Ghost’ is the first picture in a brilliant triptych of portraits in the Ashes Room. Blurred as if captured through tears, steam, or the fogging lens of memory, a soft rosy body floats behind the canvas, which itself perhaps imitates a shower curtain. To the right a painting about the death of Emin’s mother, ‘I Was Too Young to be Carrying Your Ashes’ ruptures any impression of shy, warm womanhood that might have been offered by that tipsy pink. Thick red paint then erupts through the curtain-canvas; with a sudden and regrettable violence, this is the moment the Hitchcockian knife wielder plunges his weapon. The picture is an open wound, a bloody, weeping sore. ‘You Were Still There’ then resuscitates a dissected body. The womb is darkened with movement like the impact of a punch. The colours shift throughout from the pink-red blushes of the Madonna to the grey blackish-blue bruised body of Christ. A punishing and merciless life-cycle is acted out.

Emin proves herself here as a painter and a sculptor of bodies, rather than figures; her subjects are not idealised forms that exist outside of the self, but those that are an extension of it. In the best of these works, the intimate understanding of the body and of a personal psychology comes out beautifully raw. They are positioned firmly within the artist’s own identity, and in the bodily violence that is the source of so much of her trauma. The bodies that Emin paints are much better than the large sculptures that dominate the space because they still feel alive – trapped between soft and hard lines, pushed and pulled and beaten out on canvas and paper. Corporeal suffering is not only acted onto the body, but oozes out from within it into art.

Love, desire, and violence are intimately linked in Emin’s world. The interactions between bodies in the paintings are like the kiss in Giotto’s frescoes, where two faces collide into one, eyes open; somehow unromantic, while still wholly passionate. The word ‘longing’ seems to have come up in titles and prose again and again throughout the exhibition. In her 1996 film How It Feels – a fitting endnote to the show – Emin comments on her abortion: “I will never really get over it”. This sits at the core of all the artwork – the wanting, the not getting, and the not getting over.

“What this whole show is about is releasing myself from shame. I’ve killed my shame, I’ve hung it on the walls,” Emin claims. Women wracked with grief and desire, aching and desperate, contort themselves with it, she seems to be saying. Everything is deeply felt and then neatly hung up. The exhibition is entitled A Fortnight of Tears because, Emin claims, that is the longest she has ever cried. For all its wailing and thrashing, this grieving process has produced an exhibition of staggering emotional complexity.

Oxford Professor criticises use of gender hormones as “unregulated live experiment on children”

Christopher Sinnott
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Oxford Professor criticises use of gender hormones as “unregulated live experiment on children”

Content warning: transphobia

An Oxford University professor has come under public scrutiny after contributing to a front page story in the Times criticising the use of hormone blockers on young people as “an unregulated live experiment on children.”

Professor Carl Heneghan, a fellow at Kellogg College and the director of the Centre of Evidence-Based Medicine, provided a comment piece to the newspaper as a supplement to an investigation into the Gender Identity Development Service Clinic, which the Times described as “the only NHS gender clinic for children”.

Professor Heneghan’s appeal was made on the basis of medical skepticism over the practice, writing that: “the majority of drugs in use are frequently supported by low-quality evidence about their use beyond the usual age for puberty, or in many cases no evidence at all”.

The piece to which Professor Heneghan contributed sparked a significant outrage, with prominent figures criticising the Times for its coverage. MP for Cardiff South Stephen Doughty tweeted: “It’s not just the shocking 1980s style headline – @thetimes @TimesLucy have given us a bumper edition of prejudice against the #Trans community today. Do they have *any* idea or even care about the harm this risks causing?”.

Speaking to Cherwell, Professor Heneghan stood by his comments, saying: “the development of these interventions should occur in the context of research. Treatments for under 18 gender dysphoric children and adolescents remain largely experimental.

“There are a large number of unanswered questions that include the age at start, reversibility; adverse events, long term effects on mental health, quality of life, bone mineral density, osteoporosis in later life and cognition.”

Responding to the issue for Cherwell, transgender campaigner Fox Fisher wrote: “The University of Oxford has a responsibility to make sure all students feel safe to attend the school – behaviour of this sort should never be tolerated and jeopardises the well-being of students and the integrity of the institution.

“Look at any modern research in anthropology, sociology, biology, psychology or psychiatry – all indicates that trans children benefit massively from being allowed to express themselves.”

In a public statement regarding the article, the Oxford Student Union LGBTQ+ Campaign condemned the article and urged both members of the LGBTQ+ Community and its allies to launch official complaints to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (ISPO).

The statement read: “Transphobic, fear-mongering articles being given priority in national news is unacceptable. Although the article includes information and statements from the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) that refutes its own main line of argument, emphasis is still placed upon unsupported and dangerous viewpoints.

“The prominence of this article within the issue of The Times clearly means to stir up misinformation which will exacerbate the difficulties transgender and gender nonconforming children and teenagers face in the UK.

“The article additionally relies on a statement from Carl Heneghan, who is a senior tutor at Kellogg College. His words attempt to give credibility to a transphobic rhetoric which is harmful to transgender people both within and outside of the University. It is deeply concerning that Dr Heneghan’s attempt to sow confusion about the treatment of trans children by conflating different treatment methods and rejecting information from the GIDS itself is being legitimised by the name of the University in this way.

“Conspicuously absent from both pieces are the voices of transgender people who have used the services provided by GIDS. Ignoring the perspective of the people who matter most in this issue, transgender children, is entirely unbalanced reporting.

“As such, both pieces fail to contribute to any kind of representative discussion on gender dysphoria, perpetuating only a transphobic editorial line.”

This article will be updated as we receive more information.

OUWAFC take on the Tabs

Cerys Baines
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OUWAFC take on the Tabs

On a sunny but very windy afternoon on Sunday 10th March, the Women’s Football Blues faced Cambridge in their annual Varsity match at the Hive Stadium in Barnet. The stakes were high – with their BUCS season drawing to a close, this game was the climax the team had been preparing for all season. Perhaps the fact that Oxford had already faced Cambridge twice in their BUCS run this season made the competition even fiercer; a 0-0 draw between the two sides in late January demonstrated that Varsity was either team’s for the taking.

Both teams got out of the blocks fast at the start of the game, making for an exciting first half. Although Cambridge did seem threatening at times and were putting Oxford under a lot of pressure by playing a particularly high line, the Dark Blues were able to keep them at bay and captain Lucy Harper led her defence well to snuff out any hope of glory for the Cambridge attack.

Oxford were equally keen to apply the pressure in the Cambridge half and wingers Erin Robinson and Katie Plummer made some great runs down the pitch which were difficult for the Light Blues cut out. However, with the Oxford forwards often being found offside, it was hard for them to break the deadlock and consequently the teams went into halftime with the score still at 0-0.

However, early in the second half, Cambridge were able to break Oxford’s resolve, and after a fumble in the box the ball came out to the edge of the area for Cambridge’s Ashcroft to propel a shot into the top right of the goal and put the Light Blues ahead. Two minutes later, the Tabs extended their lead after a corner that was not cleared up by the Oxford defence.

Despite this, Oxford did not let their heads go down and the next ten minutes of the game were extremely tense, with the Dark Blues desperately trying to close the gap between the two teams. Eventually, first-year duo Taiye Lawal and Rani Wermes were able to link up in Cambridge’s box, before Wermes went down from a foul and earned Oxford a penalty. Substitute Monique Pedroza stood up to the plate and smashed the ball high into the net to put Oxford level, much to the delight of the Dark Blue crowd.

Unfortunately for the Oxford team, as the match drew on they were unable to find any more luck in the Cambridge half, and at the other end of the pitch, Cambridge were awarded a penalty from a rather dubious handball and were able to make it 3-1, effectively sealing the deal and winning the game.

As the final whistle blew, Oxford were clearly filled with despair over their loss. However, such a valiant performance gave them much to be proud of, and the Dark Blues will be hoping to work harder than ever next season to claim back the trophy.

Despite this loss, the Women’s Reserves (the Furies) were able to find success against Cambridge Reserves (the Eagles) on home turf at Iffley on Saturday of 7th Week. The Furies found themselves 1-0 up after a through ball from Jasmine Savage reached the feet of captain Rebecca North who slotted the ball firmly in the back of the Cambridge net. However shortly after, Cambridge managed to breach Oxford’s defence, and after a two on one situation with Oxford’s last woman, were able to equalise with a short range shot on goal.

Going into the break the score remained 1-1, but neither team had any luck in the second half either, meaning at the end of the 90 minutes, the game went straight to penalties. The tension in the stadium was riding high, but Oxford kept their cool. After four goals from four Furies and three goals and a miss from Cambridge, the final Eagles penalty taker was hoping to keep her team in the game. However it was not to be, and an admittedly easy save from goalkeeper Emmie Halfpenny saw the Furies win Varsity for the second time in a row.

As the whole of the Oxford team sprinted from halfway to celebrate with their keeper, it was easy to see just how much this Varsity win meant for the Furies, who had worked so hard throughout the season for this moment.

With one cup spending a year at The Other Place, and the other cup held firmly in Oxford’s hands, all we can do now is wait until next year to see if OUWAFC are able to do the double over Cambridge.

OULC chairs accused of ‘misleading and unfair’ conduct over attempt to control club’s relationship with the media

Angus Brown
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OULC chairs accused of ‘misleading and unfair’ conduct over attempt to control club’s relationship with the media

The co-chairs of Oxford University Labour Club have issued a statement to committee members demanding that all contact with the student press be approved by the executive, Cherwell can reveal.

Aiming to centralise the executive’s control over the club’s relationship with student media, the co-chairs recently claimed that committee members were constitutionally required to consult the co-chairs on statements to the press.

In a message sent to members of the club’s committee, co-chair Grace Davies said: “If any of you guys are approached by OxStu or Cherwell please please [sic] let us know.

“We’re keen to have a say in all communication going to the media and the constitution says that you should consult the co-chairs – I’ll be quite sad if I see peoples quotes in papers and me and Arya didn’t know about it first.”

Despite Davies’ claims that it is a constitutional requirement for members to consult the co-chairs before approaching the press, Cherwell could find no evidence of such a rule in the club’s constitution.

The club’s co-chairs responded to a request for comment by claiming “The comment regarding consulting co-chairs was intended to extend to, but only to, members of the club speaking on behalf of the club. The position of co-chair is the only position which has the mandate and official capacity to speak on behalf of the club.

“There was no intention to limit comments to press when speaking on individuals’ own behalf and in a personal capacity, and the intention was instead that any comments made officially by the club were decided by the entire committee, with both co-chairs being able to gauge the position of the entire club.

“Individual members of the OULC executive making comments on behalf of the club, does not follow the convention of the Labour Club, and can lead to confusion about the official position of the club.”

“We’re upset that a member of the club felt it was an attempt to censor their personal expressions of their views and would reassure them that this in no way our intention.”

“The publicity officer is elected to manage media and communications, and as such their role is to oversee comments made to the press, working alongside the co-chairs.

“This is a well established convention. Whenever possible, we try to reach agreement about statements to the press within the OULC committee so that the entire committee has a say in our official position, rather than individuals who do not have the mandate to decide OULC’s official position to the press. 

“The established interpretation of the constitution and other documents referred to in the constitution, is that only co-chairs can be ultimately responsible for any pronouncements made on behalf of the club.”

Despite this claim, no mention is made of members speaking on the club’s behalf in the original message.

One OULC member, speaking anonymously, told Cherwell that: “Though of course I understand why the Labour chairs want to centralise a lot of communication to the press, to act as though it is a formal rule is misleading and unfair.

“Moreover, on certain issues the ability to voice dissent via the press is valuable, and the Labour club will ultimately be weaker for the absence of honest disagreement with the party line.”

Oxford Boat Clubs announce crews for April’s race

Cal Flintoff
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Oxford Boat Clubs announce crews for April’s race

Oxford University Boat Club (OUBC) and Women’s Boat Club (OUWBC) this morning confirmed their crews at the City Hall, London for next month’s Boat Races.

The Men’s boat is identical to the crew that was named for last weekend’s fixture against Oxford Brookes, a race that was postponed due to high winds.

The crew weighs in at 719.6kg, 19.6 kilos lighter than the 2018 crew but nonetheless a shade heavier than their Cambridge counterparts, who weighed in at 718.3kg.

In the Women’s boat Oxford will concede roughly a 10kg swing, with the boat tipping the scales at 568.8kg compared to the 578.3kg of the CUWBC.

OUWBC will head into the race with 2 returning members of last year’s defeated crew, naming both Beth Bridgman of St Hugh’s and Keble’s Renée Koolschijn, although both have shifted position in the boat, with Bridgman moving from Stroke to position 6, and Koolschijn from Bow to position 3.

The situation is mirrored in the Men’s boat as OUBC president Felix Drinkall and Christ Church student Benedict Aldous – who last year replaced Joshua Bugajski at the eleventh hour in a decision shrouded by illness – are the only survivors in a youthful-looking crew.

The average age of the Oxford Men’s boat is 21.8 years-old, a historically low figure accentuated by the presence of four undergraduate scientists in the aforementioned duo of Drinkall and Aldous, as well as Charlie Pearson and Tobias Schroder.

This is in stark contrast with the CUBC crew, who sport an average age of 26.3, after the decision to include two-time Olympic gold medallist James Cracknell in the boat. Cracknell qualifies for selection as he is studying for an MPhil in Human Evolutionary Studies at Peterhouse College, floating the idea on Twitter as early as July 2018 alongside the hashtag “#NeverTooOld”.

The OUWBC crew have an average age of 23.9 years-old, slightly younger than the 24.3 years-old of the Cambridge Women’s crew.

The Light Blues comprehensively swept all 4 races last year, including a first victory in eight years for the Cambridge reserve boat Goldie over Isis, a dominance hitherto unseen since the move to stage each race on the same tideway in 2015.

Cambridge now lead the standings in the Men’s race 83-80, whilst they boast a greater advantage in the Women’s race, notching 43 to Oxford’s 30.

This year’s Boat Races take place on Sunday 7th April, with the Women’s race commencing at 2:15pm, followed by the Men’s race an hour later at 3:15pm.

The bookmaker William Hill has priced up the Men’s Race on their website, rating it a closely-fought affair, going 8/11 about Oxford and evens for Cambridge, with the possibility of a dead heat rated a 50/1 chance.

OUBC Crew:

Bow: Achim Harzeim, Oriel, 26yo, 88kg

2: Ben Landis, Lincoln, 24yo, 82kg

3: Patrick Sullivan, Wadham, 23yo, 92kg

4: Benedict Aldous, Christ Church, 21yo, 94kg

5: Tobias Schroder, Magdalen, 19yo, 94kg

6: Felix Drinkall, LMH, 19yo, 84kg

7: Charlie Pearson, Trinity, 20yo, 82kg

Stroke: Augustin Wambersie, Catz, 23yo, 89kg

Cox: Anna Carbery, Pembroke, 21yo, 54kg

OUWBC Crew:

Bow: Issy Dodds, Hertford, 69kg

2: Anna Murgatroyd, ChCh, 68kg

3: Renée Koolschijn, Keble, 73.8kg

4: Lizzie Polgreen, Linacre, 60.7kg

5: Tina Christmann, Worcester, 72.2kg

6: Beth Bridgman, St Hugh’s, 70.4kg

7: Liv Pryer, Teddy Hall, 77.3kg

Stroke: Amelia Standing, St Anne’s, 74kg

Cox: Eleanor Shearer, Nuffield

Corpus Christi JCR calls for Parks College plans to be stopped

Charlotte Moberly
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Corpus Christi JCR calls for Parks College plans to be stopped

Corpus Christi College’s JCR Executive Committee has sent an open letter to the Vice-Chancellor objecting to the proposals for a new postgraduate college. The letter argued the University had failed to engage sufficiently with University members regarding the proposals, and suggested that “this college has no goal other than increasing student numbers.”

Parks College, a new postgraduate college proposed by the University to begin accepting undergraduates in 2020, aims to “draw together researchers from different disciplines to explore some of the big scientific questions of our time.”

The new college will use the Radcliffe Science Library site as part of the library’s redevelopment. The college will also aim to provide accommodation elsewhere. The Corpus Christi Executive Committee believe that “The “co-location” of Parks College and the Radcliffe Science Library will undermine both.  Every space is temporary: a room will one day be a library, the next, a seminar room, the day after, a public exhibition.

“How can academia flourish without a permanent space? The students and fellows of Parks College will instead remain confined to their respective Departments, defeating the ideal of interdisciplinary studies.”

Students also raised concerns about their opportunities to engage with the University on the Parks College proposals. During a JCR meeting about the letter, its author, Ed Hart, said: “I think it’s important to push against the lack of communication. It is a huge project and was pushed through within three months.”

In the letter, the committee wrote: “The proposal has been made with little to no attempt to engage with University members. The proposal was first mooted in August, in the provisional 2018–23 strategic plan, and it was presumed the creation of any college would be closer to 2023 than today.

“The plan was confirmed after the end of Michaelmas term 2018, after the publication of the final Gazette of the year, preventing serious discussion of it.

“Now, it is to be rushed through Congregation, with plans to hire fellows in just three months’ time. Meanwhile, student and faculty publications fume incredulously and faculties have been left expressing surprise that an important laboratory may become a dining hall.

“We find it concerning that such a monumental decision has been made without adequate consultation of the students you claim to represent.”

The committee also raised concerns about the purpose of the college, since it does not have an overtly outreach focus.

They said: “The proposed college fails to embrace Oxford’s long history of founding colleges to include those from marginalised backgrounds and to improve the lives of those outside the College system. Consider the foundation of the women’s colleges, the foundation of Mansfield College for non-conformist Christians and the foundation of St Catherine’s and St Cross for those without college affiliation.

“Parks College fails on both counts, its website paying lip service to “[embracing] internationalism and diversity” and the benefits of college life.”

“120 years ago, Ruskin College, Oxford, was founded to expand education access to adults with few or no qualifications. It embodies many of the qualities admired in the University’s own colleges. Parks College has none of them.

“The University offers nothing – a half-hearted college, cynically preying on outsiders’ unfamiliarity with Oxford – in return for self-aggrandisement and tuition fees. This proposal demeans the University and the Colleges. It must be reconsidered.”

Responding to the letter, Professor Lionel Tarassenko, Senior Responsible Owner for the Parks College Project, said: “Parks College addresses one of the key education priorities in the University’s Strategic Plan, which is to increase the intake of graduate students across all four divisions by up to 850 a year by 2023, while maintaining quality.

“It will enable the University to grow the number of graduate students, but without upsetting the balance between undergraduate and postgraduate student numbers in mixed colleges or imposing unrealistic targets for growth in the existing graduate colleges.

“The proposed new graduate college will actively promote interdisciplinary exchanges between researchers from across the four academic divisions. It will offer graduate students a rich and stimulating intellectual and social experience, on a par with that at the other graduate colleges.

“And, as with other graduate colleges at Oxford, it will have an outward-looking and inclusive ethos, which embraces internationalism and diversity. As with St Cross College when it was founded, the Fellows of the college will be University professors and researchers who do not currently have a college affiliation.

“Far from leading to a loss of library facilities, the Parks College project presents an exciting opportunity to redevelop the science library and its services to align more closely with the needs of scientists in the 21st century – students, researchers and other academics.

“The proposals for the new college have been discussed with graduate student representatives, the staff of the Radcliffe Science Library, and at meetings of numerous University committees, including the Curators of the University Libraries, Education Committee, Conference of Colleges Graduate Committee, Conference of Colleges, Finance Committee, Personnel Committee and Council. Throughout this consultation process, the plans have been gradually evolving to take on new ideas and to ensure that concerns raised are understood and addressed.

“The plans for the new college and the allocation of space were approved by Council on 11 March, and will now be put before Congregation in early Trinity term. The OUSU VP for Graduates is a member of the Programme Board which is responsible for the development of the plans.

“We are actively encouraging students to participate in the planning for the new college. We have been running Q&A events for students in partnership with OUSU, and we are inviting students to help shape the academic blueprint of the college at a series of focus groups, which will take place in late April and early May.”

In the motion for the JCR Committee to sign the letter, the Corpus JCR President Rhiannon Ogden-Jones was also mandated to discuss the issue with other JCR presidents and the Corpus MCR to seek their support. The motion was passed with 13 votes for and 2 against.

The University have been contacted for comment.

Lord Adonis: I “can’t wait” to debate Nigel Farage at the Oxford Union

Christopher Sinnott
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Lord Adonis: I “can’t wait” to debate Nigel Farage at the Oxford Union

Cherwell can reveal that Nigel Farage is expected to speak at the Oxford Union on Thursday’s eighth week debate on Brexit.

The announcement of Farage’s appearance had not yet been made by the Oxford Union, but instead was pre-empted by Labour peer and People’s Vote supporter Andrew Adonis, who this morning tweeted: “I’m debating Nigel Farage at the Oxford Union on Friday. Can’t wait”. Given that Oxford Union debates are, under normal circumstances, held every Thursday of term, and that the Union’s term card places the Brexit debate on Thursday 7th March, it is not known whether the date announced by Lord Adonis is correct.

The specific motion that will be debated at the upcoming Brexit debate and which speakers would be attending has been kept a secret from the Union’s members throughout the term. The Oxford Union’s website has for weeks read “speakers to be announced”.

Cherwell has contacted representatives of Nigel Farage, Andrew Adonis, and the Oxford Union for comment.

It is not yet known which other speakers from the student body or elsewhere have been confirmed to speak at the event.

Along with the Union debate, Adonis also announced on Twitter he would be speaking at Leeds, Eddisbury, Oxford, Llanelli, Swansea, and Wrexham in the upcoming week.

The Oxford Union organised a now-famous debate on Britain’s membership of a European community in 1975, two days before the referendum which saw Britain’s voters consent to membership of the EEC. Speakers in proposition included Edward Heath and Jeremy Thorpe, while Barbara Castle and Peter Shaw spoke in opposition.

More on this story is expected to follow.

Controversy over Pride flag at Queen’s College

Sam Millward
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Controversy over Pride flag at Queen’s College

There has been significant disagreement between staff at Queen’s College over the decision of the college to fly an LGBTQ+ rainbow flag in recognition of LGBTQ+ History Month, after the college Provost, Professor Paul Madden, opposed the move.

In a meeting on the 13th February, which was attended by representatives from the JCR and MCR and a number of college fellows, the Governing Body passed the unreserved motion to raise the flag for the remainder of the month with a vote of 18-3.

The vote came after the Provost had excused himself from debate on the matter.

However, Cherwell understands from sources present at the meeting that, following the vote, the Provost ruled against the majority, instructing that the flag not be raised for more than the originally planned one week.

No statement has yet been given to explain this decision.

Upon the Provost’s overruling of the vote, Cherwell understands that a fellow left the session in protest at the decision, not returning for the duration of the meeting.

A few days later, an email was sent to the JCR President and Vice President by the Dean, informing them of a change of college policy, stating that the flag would fly for the month as a whole.

When contacted for comment, the Provost did not offer any explanation of his decision. Both the Senior Tutor and Dean also declined to comment personally.

Speaking to Cherwell, a spokesperson for the college said: “As has been customary for a number of years, instruction was given by the Provost to fly the rainbow Flag in the first week of February.

“After it was taken down, the Provost received representations that, in view of the observation that it had become customary among the colleges for the flag to be flown throughout February, the College’s position seemed anomalous.

“He therefore reviewed the decision and gave the instruction that the flag should fly for the whole month and it was remounted on the morning of Thursday 14th February.”

The decision stands in the context of the fact that all other colleges on the high street have flown the rainbow flag for at least a week in February, with many flying it for the whole month.

The disagreement comes just a couple of weeks after Cherwell’s revelation that more than 100 serving Oxford clergy have signed a petition opposing a call by local bishops for “an attitude of inclusion and respect for LGBTQ+ people,” with staff from two Oxford colleges among the signatories.

Responding to the issue, Queen’s JCR President Ebrubaoghene Abel-Unokan said: “The original decision not to fly the LGBTQ+ flag for the entirety of LGBTQ+ history month was, in my opinion, an oversight by the College. It was an anachronism from the College’s past that does not reflect our varied and inclusive community of students and staff or acknowledge and value the contributions they make to the life of the College.

“It is a de facto tradition for the LGBTQ+ rep of our JCR to request that the College fly the flag for the entire month, and I’m incredibly pleased to see that this year Florence Darwen was successful in lobbying the College to change its policy.

“I’d also to thank the Senior Tutor, Nicholas Owen, and the Dean, Chris O’Callaghan for the roles they played in securing the change.

“The JCR has always championed progressive political beliefs, and I would like to think that this is but one step in the consolidation of those views into the College’s practices.

“I have little doubt that this will continue as Queen’s welcomes Dr Claire Craig CBE later this year, who will be the first woman in the College’s history to hold the position of Provost.”

Oxford University LGBTQ+ Society told Cherwell: “While we haven’t been contacted directly by Queen’s students regarding this issue, and are therefore uncertain about the nuances of this particular situation, we as a Society strongly encourage colleges to fly the LGBTQ+ Flag for the duration of pride month.

“It is an important symbol of tolerance and acceptance, which promotes the wellbeing of LGBTQ+ students.

“It is extremely disappointing when college officials do not understand the value of celebrating their LGBTQ+ students and sending a welcoming message to potential applicants.

“We run a campaign service to help students enact change in their colleges, and would strongly encourage Queen’s students to get in touch with us, with the aim of improving provisions for LGBTQ+ students by rectifying this issue.”

McGrath and ‘Together’ slate sweep Michaelmas 2019 Union election

Christopher Sinnott
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McGrath and ‘Together’ slate sweep Michaelmas 2019 Union election

Brendan McGrath will be Union President next Michaelmas after receiving 84 more first preferences than rival James Lamming.

Candidates on McGrath’s ‘Together’ slate also secured the positions of Librarian-Elect (Mahi Joshi), Treasurer-Elect (Shining Zhao), and Secretary (Amelia Harvey).

Three out of the four Standing Committee candidates nominated by the ‘Together’ slate also won election, compared to two of Lamming’s six candidates for the ‘Engage’ slate.

Two independents, Mo Iman and ex-Logistics Officer Nikhil Shah, complete the seven-member standing committee.

However, ‘Engage’ had some success in the election, as the most popular candidates in both the Standing Committee election (Spencer Cohen) and Secretary’s Committee election (Chengkai Xie) were from the slate.

Speaking to Cherwell about the result, James Lamming said: “Whilst this obviously was not the result the Engage team had hoped for, I can without any doubt say that Brendan will put together a fantastic term card, as one of the most diligent and dedicated members of Union committee I have ever worked with during my time at Oxford.

“I am immensely proud of the team myself and my officers put together.”

The election of Brendan McGrath as president of the Oxford Union comes after a turbulent term for the current Librarian, after members saw a motion for impeachment being filed against him, and his first candidate for Treasurer, Lee Chin Wee, being disqualified from running for the position.

McGrath declined to comment to Cherwell on the election result.

Those members elected will be expected to follow through with the pledges made in their manifestos. The ‘Together’ slate claimed that it would introduce member-speaker roundtable events, make the Union’s financial accounts transparent by publishing a fully audited account online, and implement a strict ‘zero tolerance’ policy on bullying. The ‘Engage’ slate’s pledges included a bar happy hour with pints costing £1, livestreaming events on the Oxford Union app, and holding more female-led debate events.

McGrath, Joshi and Zhao will serve their terms as officers in Michaelmas Term 2019, while Secretary-elect Amelia Harvey will assume her post next term in Trinity.

New data reveals suspension gender gap among postgrads

Libby Cherry
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New data reveals suspension gender gap among postgrads

New data shows that 8.7% of female postgraduates suspended their studies in 2016/17, one-third higher than the rate for men (6.5%). The gender discrepancy was mirrored in withdrawal rates, which were 1.37% for men compared to 1.64% for women.

The data, obtained from the University by Cherwell, reveals a consistent gender disparity in suspension and withdrawal rates over the previous 8 years.

Suspensions are when a single student pauses their study during a given year, with one student potentially accruing multiple suspension ‘counts’, in the rare event that they do so more than once.

Withdrawals are when a student completely withdraws from their programme of study. This does not include those that have been transferred to a different programme of study.

A spokesperson for the University told Cherwell: “These numbers are relatively low so we should be careful about drawing conclusions from them without understanding the context. We offer high levels of academic and pastoral support to our graduate students through their departments, colleges and central University services.

“There are many reasons why a student’s status might be suspended, including health, maternity or paternity, personal circumstances, academic difficulties and disciplinary matters. Suspension is often a voluntary decision by a student, and in most cases students return from periods of suspension to successfully complete their course.”

A History Masters student at St Catherine’s, Hannah Grange-Sales, told Cherwell: “Women are conditioned to believe they are less intelligent than men, therefore there is both a real and imagined need to work harder to be considered men’s intellectual equals.

“Girls and women are also taught from an early age to internalise ‘unbecoming’ emotions, such as anger, frustration and hopelessness.

“Considering the historic argument against women’s right to education that they do not hold the mental rigour to undertake study, there is a double pressure to overcome this stigma and maintain a facade of capability when, for a variety of personal reasons not linked to their intellect, this may not be the case.

“The increased pressure for women to prove themselves intellectually coupled with the internalisation of emotion can surely be considered a factor in the higher rate of mental health issues amongst female students.”

The overall suspension rate for all postgraduate students has also increased year on year from 2013/14 to 2016/17 from 5.98% to 7.93%, although there was a slight decrease last year to 7.5%.

The withdrawal rate has remained consistent at about 1.5%, peaking in 2013/14 at 1.82%.

There was also a marked contrast between those on research and taught postgraduate degrees, with the former having consistently higher levels of suspension and withdrawal. In 2016/17 just under 10% of research graduates suspended their studies compared to 6% of taught graduates. This figure decreased slightly to 9% last year.

Cherwell understands that the disparity in the figures could be due to the length of postgraduate research degree, which are typically three years. Taught degrees can be as short as 9 months, meaning that there is less opportunity for students to suspend or withdraw from their studies. Just under 52% of enrolments in 2017/18 were in taught degrees.

Oxford SU VP for Graduates, Alison D’Ambrosia told Cherwell: “It is a ticking time bomb the issue of graduate student welfare. With a huge increase in graduate numbers over the past several years, we have seen minimal investment in their welfare provision and support.

“From a counselling service that is only open during term time to students been pushed from college to department to seek help, more needs to be done to properly support the graduate student body. It seems that the first call of action is for students to suspend rather than tackle the causes of suspension and offer proper support for students.”

According to the SU’s recently published counselling report, postgraduate students were proportionally less likely to seek help than undergraduates, with 10.8% of postgraduate researchers and 9.2% of taught students receiving counselling to 12.3% of undergraduates.

The report added that the lower take up of provision could be due to cultural differences. In 2016/17, 64% of graduates were non-UK students.

University offers no deal Brexit advice for EU students

Ayesha Seghal
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University offers no deal Brexit advice for EU students

The University has released advice for EU staff and students in preparation for a no deal Brexit.

The new website explains that the University is now “making preparations” for the possibility that Britain leaves the EU without a deal, which will go ahead if no withdrawal agreement is in place by March 29th.

A no deal Brexit would be likely to include EU citizens entering the UK being treated as third country nationals, no longer subject to EEA immigration rules and requirements. This would mean EU students would pay higher tuition fees than they do now and may need new visas to conform with new immigration laws.

Research staff may lose the opportuning to access EU research funding, which totalled £78 million in the academic year 2017/18. The University may also lose the opportunity to participate in pan-European collaborations.

Given the growing uncertainty, the University is now advising EU students to ensure they have all relevant paperwork up to date.

The University stresses that EU citizens will still be able to apply to study at Oxford, and that “all Oxford University staff from the EU will have the same right to work in the UK whether a withdrawal deal is agreed or not.”

A spokesperson for the University said to Cherwell: “Given the ongoing uncertainty about the implications of the UK leaving the EU, the University is working hard to understand and manage the impact on our staff and students.

“Dedicated web pages with the latest information about the implications of Brexit have been set up for staff and students and these will be updated regularly. The pages consider all possible outcomes of the current negotiations, including the possibility of the UK leaving without a deal.

‘Whatever the outcome of current negotiations, the University of Oxford is, and intends to remain, a thriving, cosmopolitan community of scholars and students united in our commitment to education and research.

“The departure from the EU will not change this; our staff and students from all across the world are as warmly welcome as ever.”

The Students’ Union reaffirmed the need for advice, stating: “Students need guidance as soon as possible. If a no deal Brexit does happen, students want the University to quickly provide information about the impact it’s going to have on them.

“Graduate students from the EU could face serious disruption, particularly those studying for 1-year masters programmes. There are major issues outstanding, especially around the future of the Erasmus programme and future prospects for research students. The only way to avoid this mess is a People’s Vote with the option to remain.”

With just over six weeks left until the Brexit deadline, the University will continue to update their page with more information as it is available, and individual colleges may be providing specific information directly to students before the end of Hilary Term.

For more information, or to keep up to date on the University’s advice, visit the University’s Brexit advice page for students and for staff.

Union Librarian Brendan McGrath avoids impeachment

Christopher Sinnott
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Union Librarian Brendan McGrath avoids impeachment

Brendan McGrath, against whom a motion for impeachment was filed on Thursday 7th, has won his vote not to be impeached by 400 votes to 189.

A notice has been pinned on the Oxford Union noticeboard that reads “The Librarian remains in office. The Motion of Impeachment is unsuccessful”.

The 68% vote in favour of McGrath comes after the 12 hours of deliberation that an impeachment motion in the Oxford Union entails. On the day of the vote supporters and allies of McGrath mobilised a “Vote No” campaign on Facebook, posting social statuses that presented McGrath’s potential impeachment as symptomatic of ‘toxic politics’.

More on this story is expected to follow.

Fixed-term contracts disproportionately held by women and minority groups

Editor
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Fixed-term contracts disproportionately held by women and minority groups

A greater proportion of women and those from BME backgrounds hold fixed-term contracts at the University.

In 2018, the proportion of women in fixed-term contracts was consistently higher across the academic divisions, with the sharpest disparities in the Social Sciences where 56% of women were in fixed-term contracts compared with just 45% of men.

In the Medical Sciences Division, 85% of those from BME backgrounds were found to hold fixed-term contracts in 2018 in comparison to just 68% of those who identify as white.

For Social Sciences the respective figures were 66% to 45%, and in the Maths, Physical, and Life Sciences, the figures were 74% to 43%.

Overall, the proportion of all those of fixed-term contracts has increased significantly from 2008 across all divisions apart from Medical, with the Humanities Division seeing the biggest increase in the use of fixed-term contracts, from 23% to 32%.

In 2018, just under 50% of staff from the Maths, Physical, and Life Sciences, Social Sciences, Medical, and Humanities divisions, were on fixed-term contracts.

The University’s policy on ending fixed-term contracts requires dismissal to be “fair and transparent.”

Employees are informed three months before the end of their contract is “at risk”. When it is not possible to extend or renew the contract, an employee will be informed of the fact a month before its termination.

A University spokesman told Cherwell: “Oxford is the UK’s most successful University in attracting external funding to support our world-leading research. The funding packages support jobs for researchers at every career stage, including fixed-term posts. The larger number of fixed-term contracts results from this increased funding success, opening more opportunities for the next generations of world-class researchers. We have had particular success in attracting talented women to progress their careers with us, including those areas of the sciences where they have been traditionally under-represented.

“We do recognise that fixed-term work can create uncertainties and practical difficulties. We make extensive efforts to support staff on these contracts, including through personal and career development opportunities.

“All staff at Oxford, whether on permanent, open-ended or fixed-term contracts, benefit from our generous employment packages and support for future development. We are also working hard on moving staff onto open-ended and permanent contracts wherever possible. A growing proportion of these contracts are held by women, while the proportion of all staff on open-ended contracts in the sciences is now growing faster than those in fixed-term posts.”

The University’s policy is to ensure departments are “keeping contracts under active review and transferring staff to permanent or open-ended contracts wherever funding permits.”

The proportion of staff working on open-ended contracts in the sciences is now growing faster than those on fixed-term contracts. For example, in 2008, 75% of staff in Medical Sciences were on fixed-term contracts and 4% on open-ended contracts; By 2018, fixed-term contracts had fallen to 72% and open-ended contracts risen to 8%.

The proportions of women in permanent and open-ended positions has increased in some sectors. In Medical Sciences in 2008, 45% of permanent contracts and 53% of open-ended contracts were held by women. By 2018, women held 52% of permanent and 57% of open-ended contracts.

However, in a 2016 report the UCU also included open-ended contracts within their definition of insecure contracts, because their “employment is dependent on short-term funding.”

Their report read: “Employers like to emphasise the degree of choice and agency available to workers on casual or as they like to call them ‘flexible’ contracts, but it is obvious that your enjoyment of choice and flexibility will be shaped by which category you are in.

“It’s simply impossible to imagine that a workforce of this magnitude is comprised entirely, or even largely of the people who conform to the employers’ caricature of the jobbing professional who relishes the flexibility.”

Oxford UCU representative Patricia Thornton told Cherwell: ”Regardless of whether the University wishes to accept the UCU’s calculation of the HESA data on precarious contracts or not, it’s clear that in many divisions, the numbers of staff on casualised contracts have been rising.

“It’s important to note here that “open-ended externally funded contract” staff, whilst sometimes not counted as casualised, effectively face the same level insecurity: their employment is terminated if and when the external source of the funding is withdrawn. The key difference here is that, whereas a fixed-term contract employee is given an end date at the point of hire, the staff member on an open-ended externally funded contract is not; which is arguably even less secure for the member of staff, whose employment can come to an end suddenly and without sufficient warning if the funding is withdrawn.”

Just under 5% of staff in the Medical, Maths, Physical and Life Sciences, Social Sciences, and Humanities cumulatively are in open-ended or externally funded contracts in 2018. The figure was just 2.3% in 2008.  

Thornton continued: “Casualised contracts not only create a two-tier workforce within the university, with casualised members of staff effectively carrying out many, if not all, of the same duties as their permanent counterparts on a day-to-day basis, paid lower salaries and afforded a greatly reduced level of protection (and fewer benefits), but they also magnify pre-existing inequalities within the workforce, like the gender pay gap and the persistent underpayment of minority ethnic staff.

“There is a significantly higher proportions of women than men in fixed-term contracts across the divisions, and, disappointingly, that proportion has actually increased marginally since 2008 in the Social Science and MPLS Divisions, and increased significantly in the Humanities Division.

“Equally disturbing is that, despite Oxford UCU’s persistently raising this issue with the administration, and despite various commitments that have been verbalised across the university, the percentages of staff on fixed term term contracts have instead risen since 2008.”

One representative of the ‘Academic Precariat’ group, pointed out that these figures fail to account for those that have already left the sector due to casualisation.

They told Cherwell: “There are plenty of us around, but very little data or interest in us. I left the sector for a range of reasons, but most of them related directly to insecure employment and its consequences: a two-tier system in which casual teaching and research staff undertake work that mainly just enables senior academics to bring in big money projects, lack of respect for intellectual ownership of teaching/research materials produced on these contracts, feeling and being utterly disposable, lack of investment and interest in supporting career progression (why should they, when to offer us more secure employment would be to remove the props fora system which values REF and big grant money above all else?).

“Another big factor in my decision to leave after my short-term postdoc was the minimal prospect of ever being able to secure a contract long enough to actually qualify for maternity pay in the near future.”

The hypocrisy of aestheticised wilderness

Ava Doherty
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The hypocrisy of aestheticised wilderness

We seem to have been locked in an eternal attempt at domination over nature for millennia. My recent trip to Thailand shifted this into clear focus: perhaps the attempt was never really about humans over nature. Perhaps it was humans versus anything that refuses to behave itself.

When I was in Thailand, I saw signs telling tourists not to anger, feed, touch or otherwise harass the animals. Sensible enough. Yet tourists, and occasionally locals, still seem determined to test the boundaries.

I watched a pig bite down on a plastic water bottle handed to it by a boy on holiday. The pig squealed and fought back when the boy tried to pick it up. He dropped it. I felt shocked and unnerved at his behaviour, but clearly I could not intervene; it was not my place, and his family was there.

And there it was: an acute example of our relationship with nature in miniature. We like animals right up until they stop being cute.

The pig had not suddenly become aggressive for no reason. A teenager had put a plastic bottle in its mouth, invaded its space and then tried to grab it. It reacted like an animal. Yet somehow the animal becomes the villain: ungrateful, dangerous, and stupid. We are remarkably good at creating the conditions for conflict and then blaming nature for responding to them.

The double standard becomes even stranger when we compare animals with humans. When a person causes harm because they ‘didn’t know any better’, we often regard that as an extenuating circumstance. With animals, ignorance is rarely afforded the same generosity. An animal trapped in a man-made environment can respond according to instinct and still be punished as though it possesses the same understanding and intentions as a human being.

And before anyone reaches for the familiar argument that humans are more intelligent, we should be careful about confusing intelligence with moral entitlement. Being clever enough to build skyscrapers, develop financial markets, and create nuclear weapons certainly does not give us a sense of moral superiority over the natural world. We cheat, lie, and steal, and are not the perfect paragons of morality we assume ourselves to be. Besides, anyone who has watched five minutes of reality TV anywhere in the world might want to reconsider how confidently we use ‘intelligence’ as our species’ trump card.

The more interesting problem is what happens when humans’ supposed love of nature meets modern consumer culture. We don’t simply want nature; we want nature packaged for consumption.

Our consumerist tendencies towards nature are best seen through the ‘cottagecore’ trend: curated hiking trails, luxury eco-resorts, wellness retreats, and the endless Instagramming of supposedly untouched landscapes. Nature is wonderful, as long as it is photogenic, accessible, and preferably equipped with decent Wi-Fi.

This is the deception of capitalist aesthetics. We take something wild, unpredictable, and inconvenient and remove the parts we dislike before giving it attractive branding and selling it as an authentic experience.

Nature, but with a convenient booking link. Mud is no longer mud; it is an obstacle on the hiking trail. Insects are not part of an ecosystem; they are pests. Decay is not part of nature’s cycle; it is something to clean up. And an animal behaving like an animal is an affront to our sanitised version of nature. Thailand makes this contradiction particularly visible. Islands are marketed as pristine escapes while motorways and industrial-scale ferries help move ever-growing numbers of people towards these supposedly untouched places. Humans want wilderness – but we also want convenient infrastructure capable of delivering us directly to it. Ideally, between 10 am and 4 pm, with a return transfer.

Our environmentalism therefore has a surprisingly low tolerance for actual nature. As soon as it contradicts our perfect reality, with biting animals, unbearable heat, or a lack of creature comforts, we turn against it. This reveals something deeper than hypocrisy; it reveals our obsession with control.

We have spent centuries trying to place ourselves above the natural world rather than recognising that we are embedded within it. We pave it, fence it, landscape it, label it, and commodify it. We make it predictable enough to enjoy and tame enough not to frighten us, because genuine nature is volatile. It grows where we don’t want it to grow. It dies, rots, bites, floods, escapes, and refuses to care about our schedules, property boundaries, or aesthetic preferences. This is precisely what makes it frightening.

The fantasy of the sovereign human depends on believing that we exist outside of nature and are capable of mastering it. But this is not the case. We are animals who build unusually elaborate buildings and maintain an impressive capacity for self-delusion. The pig did not violate some sacred contract with humanity when it bit the bottle; it simply behaved like a pig.

Perhaps the lesson is not that nature needs to be taught how to live alongside us. Perhaps we need to learn how to live alongside something we cannot completely control. Does the responsibility not lie with humanity to learn to live alongside the uncontrollable force of nature rather than vice versa? The battle was never between humans and nature. It was humans versus our own arrogance, the desire to dominate, sanitise, and commodify a world that we are terrified to admit we never truly controlled in the first place.

‘One Night Only’ (2026) and the death of romance

Willow Jopp
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‘One Night Only’ (2026) and the death of romance

Romance movies are, on the whole, my favourite movie genre. But good romance movies, like good romantic relationships, are hard to find, and easy to mess up. It is hard to walk the line between too much (the near-pornographic 365 Days saga, for example) and too little (the chemistry-less Twilight series). Luckily, a filmmaker can make their own job a little easier through certain techniques which instantly boost the pheromones that their film gives off. One of the easiest is to set the film in a typically ‘romantic’ city, and few settings do more emotional heavy lifting than New York. It is a city which has produced some of the best romance films of all time; Will Gluck’s latest attempt to revive the rom-com genre, One Night Only, is not one of them.

The film’s premise is eyebrow-raising, to say the least: America is under a fascist government which mandates that unmarried people can only have sex on one night each year. It makes One Night Only into the kind of movie which is condemned to be remembered only by the lunacy of its premise, like M. Night Shyamalan’s Old. One Night Only follows singles Allie (Monica Barbaro) and Owen (Callum Turner) as they navigate The Night, and supposed ‘hijinks’ ensue. I would go into more detail about the plot, but about two-thirds of the way through, I felt my eyes glaze over as I waited desperately for the film to be over. It was both unromantic and unfunny, much like Will Gluck’s previous ‘rom-com’ Anyone But You (2023), starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell, another pair of leads with no chemistry. What these films have in common, and the reason why they both fail, is their lack of actual romance. Both films are about two people who are not at all interested in one another, and are actively pursuing other people, until the final fifteen minutes. Both films attempt to create the ‘enemies to lovers’ trope, but have none of the sexual tension needed to make it work. The characters are essentially in two different plots for the entirety of the film, only crossing paths a few times across the night. And for a film about sex, One Night Only is as unsexy as it gets. Sex is everywhere in One Night Only as a concept – and as a source of panic – but almost nowhere as an expression of feeling. That might be fine if the film were more cynical, but it still wants the emotional reward of a traditional rom-com ending. The problem is that romance cannot just be switched on after ninety minutes of avoidance. A film can be chaste and feel charged; it can be explicit and feel completely dead. But One Night Only fails to commit in either direction, leaving a product with no sex, no desire, and no reason to watch. The film’s obsession with sex makes its lack of intimacy more obvious. Its fundamental problem is that it does not seem interested in desire as an emotional state, and instead uses it solely as a plot mechanism. The film is so focused on the flow of its events that it neglects the fact that romance, in films as in real life, needs time and attention. One Night Only does not so much revive the old rom-com as it does imitate its surface features. It has the attractive leads, and it has the energy of New York at night. But the old rom-com worked because it believed in its own emotional stakes. One Night Only feels embarrassed by romance, so it hides behind its premise.

It is clear that Gluck aimed to revive the once-beloved rom-com style of the ‘90s and ‘00s, but he ignores the reason why these films stopped being made in the first place. The truth is, being the lead in a cheesy rom-com is no longer a viable strategy for self-respecting actors – too many careers have been killed by bad rom-com movies. That is not to say that Turner and Barbaro are bad actors, but they are both relatively early-on in their careers as leads, with Eternity and A Complete Unknown having their respective biggest parts to date. If an actor is to pursue a romantic role, it is much more preferable to be in a dramatic, or ‘artsier’, movie, like Timothée Chalamet in Call Me by Your Name. Gluck’s films tend to hire first-time writers, unfortunately leading to disappointing scripts – the most important element of a ‘comedic’ movie. In short, Hollywood just doesn’t support rom-coms any more, and if One Night Only is the best the genre has to offer in 2026, I doubt that that will change any time soon. 

Part of the genre’s lack of success among modern audiences may come from the increased cynicism towards ‘fairytale’ romances, which feel far removed from the newer social dynamics which define today’s relationships. In the case of One Night Only, the main problem young viewers seem to have found is how ‘straight’ it is: “I need straight people to be exiled”, reads one Letterboxd review. “Straight people want to be oppressed soooo bad”, reads another. Of course, Letterboxd is no longer the space for focused film criticism and discussion that it once claimed to be, but it is clear that people just do not resonate with this type of film anymore. For me, the film’s problem is not its ‘straightness’, but the reliance on the assumption that a man and a woman placed inside a high-concept premise will automatically generate romance.

So I cannot in good conscience recommend you see One Night Only. It made me sad. It made me wish I was watching a better movie. So instead, I will recommend a better movie about people finding love in New York at night: Moonstruck, starring Cher and Nicolas Cage. It has all of the same ingredients as One Night Only, but uses them to create something with an immense level of charm – it understands what those ingredients are for. What Moonstruck understands, and One Night Only does not, is that romance is not the same thing as sex. Cher and Nicolas Cage do not need a dystopian law to make their attraction interesting, as the film gives them tender moments of loneliness and grief which humanise them, and allow the protagonists to properly understand one another. Yes, it may be melodramatic, but I’d rather that over the lifeless, unromantic energy of Gluck’s movies.

What the movie is ultimately missing is not attractive leads, or a unique premise, or attempts at comedy – it is sincerity. And that is what makes a romance worth watching. One Night Only is not proof that the rom-com is dead. But it is proof that a rom-com without romance is just a long night.

What’s in a (mispronounced) name?

Emma Heagney
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What’s in a (mispronounced) name?

When you read the byline for this article, how did you pronounce my surname? Chances are, you worked through it phonetically, elongating the vowels as you went along. It’s well-intentioned, but categorically incorrect. Should it irk me as much as it does? Perhaps not – after all, ‘we’re in England, we speak English’ – but it does truly grind my gears to feel so detached from my own surname. It sometimes feels as though I have a double life: the name which connects me to my family, and the name I’m known by to doctors, colleagues, and even my college tutors. If you also find yourself in the ‘difficult-to-pronounce-name’ club, you might feel the same as I do.

When I matriculated in 2023, I felt the same mix of thrill and nerves as any fresher does. The imposter syndrome was slowly settling in, and I was eager to hear my name read loud and clear at my college’s traditional admissions ceremony. As the Dean waded through the alphabet, beckoning forth each anxious fresher, I reflected on my journey to Oxford: the first from my school to attend such a prestigious institution, the child of working-class parents, descended from recent economic migrants. I quite literally could not believe I was there, and my belief remained suspended as the Dean confidently called upon the Other Me. Such a pivotal moment found its place in the pattern of misunderstandings I am so used to.

Everyday occurrences are lifetime occurrences, and these uncomfortable situations are just that. Sporadic trips to the doctor are where the Other Me is most present, with my ears attuned to listen out for her name, rather than my own. It is somewhat demoralising to mentally assent to this name, telling the doctor, the barista, the panel interviewing me for a graduate job, that “yes, this is she”. Hearing my tutors mispronounce my name hits the hardest – they know my thoughts, inside and out, how my mind works, the embarrassing mistakes I make in my essays, but do they truly know me? The simple facts of my life, my identity? They are hardly at fault for making such a minor error, but I once again feel stuck, too stubborn not to let it affect me, but too afraid of being seen as pedantic that I rarely choose to correct them.

For the first twenty-odd years of my life, the spectre of the Other Me was little more than a minor inconvenience. But as I continue to mature and develop a professional career, my name has come to represent much more than the string of syllables I answer to. Greater opportunities often mean greater disclaimers – when I spoke at a conference last year, I had to awkwardly ask the host to pronounce my name correctly. This approach has the warning label that I might offend someone for possibly thinking them too stupid to pronounce it, but I also risk not being introduced by my actual name. Particularly in the journalism industry, having byline recognition is ever-important for building a reputation. Nevertheless, I am still overwhelmingly met with a chuckle and “I definitely would have pronounced it the Other Way”.

Growing up also means thinking about my future and all the things that come with it: career, children, and marriage. Do I change my name? Do I get rid of these insecurities once and for all? For the vast majority of human history, this would not even be a question, and my family name would pass from my father’s to my husband’s. In many ways, it is a privilege that I have the choice to be able to cherish the name I grew up with, warts and all.

But warts, they still are. The story is a common one: a non-English name, brought to England by those once under British rule, mispronounced by many, but representing the few who keep our history alive. While I complain endlessly about the problems brought on by my name, my grievances do not stretch far beyond the conceptual, and as a white woman, I certainly do not experience the racism and xenophobia that other people with the same problem often do. But the sentiment nevertheless remains, that our family names hold meaning, not only because we share them with those we love, but because they represent entire histories and peoples. Mine, in particular, is a rarity – I have never met anyone with this name that I am not related to.

Changing my name is not on the cards, at least for the foreseeable future. On the one hand, I am swayed by the desire to change and therefore be seen and understood on my own terms, as myself, but on the other hand, I would not have it any other way. For all its downsides, this lifetime occurrence is my lifetime occurrence, and it would not be my name if I didn’t have to spell it out every time I said it to someone new. ‘Being me’ means having this name, and I will make peace with it being unique, even if it means being a ‘Heegney’ instead of a ‘Heagney’.

Visual politics in Oxford’s streets

Jiayue Shi
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Visual politics in Oxford’s streets

One of the most enduring images of grassroots politics is the pamphlet and the pamphleteer: the putting up of flyers, the taking over of public surfaces, the giddy circulation of agitational print, the vexation of the powers that be. “Is not all the controversy, whose slaves the poor shall be?” demanded a Leveller pamphlet in 1648, during the English Civil War. If, in the past, such material emerged from societies of lettered men and small printers, today Oxford residents walking down Cowley Road or George Street will easily find entire ecosystems of posters covering abandoned shops, construction hoardings, and disused telephone booths. They call out to passersby to campaign for affordable rent, attend an internationalist feminist protest, organise against animal abuse, or, provocatively, to smash the Epstein class. The peeling leaflets reveal older ones underneath. Lampposts and bus stops throughout town have an impressive past (and present) life in stickers. The distribution of print as a means of political communication remains as strategic and ungovernable as it has historically been.

It is just as well that street posters appear and crumble away through storied cycles of their own; yet much of mass organising today has migrated online, and finds its widest reach and most calculable impact there. It leaves the impression that physical media is somehow marginal, or touchingly quaint. Who takes notice of these posters? How do they speak to us, or fail to? In practice, different causes and their aesthetics find themselves fighting for space, literally, on Oxford’s streets. Paper is ephemeral; flyering is decentralised; anyone can as freely put one poster up as tear down another. This quiet, tactile, relentless agency shapes what our streets look like all the time. Street posters form a living, changing map of the communities and persuasions that inhabit a town.

You might begin to plot that map at the closed Debenhams in Oxford city centre. It is a hotspot for flyering of all kinds, due to the significant foot traffic the intersection receives. In May, the shop’s exterior displayed Stand Up to Racism’s “Oppose Tommy Robinson” posters – one of them already half-ripped – under which lay Together Alliance’s older, anti-far-right protest posters from March. Later that month, these remnants were also pasted over by the Oxford Renters Union’s newest campaign leaflets, to be found on various deserted shop windows and scaffolding sites elsewhere in town as well. The Union tells Cherwell that these leaflets are a crucial link between the Union and anyone struggling in a housing system that, year by year, increasingly disadvantages the socioeconomically vulnerable.

Those current leaflets all concern the Union’s resisting rent increases campaign, part of a broader national campaign demanding an end to unaffordable housing. They all display a QR code that takes you directly to the Union’s home page. In it, one finds the pledge to challenge the next rent increase at the First-tier Tribunal, as well as information on renters’ rights, legal recourse for when a landlord hikes up the rent, and exactly how much money one could save by making an appeal at a rent tribunal, even if the appeal fails. A mass campaign at a tribunal could delay verdicts, thereby extending the rent freeze period, and possibly help lower the fair market rate for everyone. For many, the public flyer provides an entry point to all of this.

Union spokesperson Maisie Wilson told Cherwell: “Leaflets and posters help us reach people who don’t have easy access to social media – which will be more and more people if we don’t fight the housing crisis. 

“When we’ve leafleted about events, many people, especially older people, have said how glad they are that we leafleted: they wouldn’t have known about it otherwise as they don’t have an online presence. Our Union is for everyone who rents, not just those who are tech savvy!”

Oxford City Council reported in March 2026 that the number of Oxford households requiring temporary accommodation had more than doubled over the past several years. Homeless Oxfordshire drew attention to the fact that, in 2024-25, the number of Oxford households owed a prevention duty (meaning they faced imminent eviction) had risen by 111%. The rising threat of homelessness comes from the nationwide cost-of-living crisis, rapidly increasing local private rents, and the shortage of affordable social and private housing in Oxford and its environs. Excluding London, Oxford consistently yields the highest average rent in the UK. The average monthly private rent in Oxford increased by 6.6% in the twelve months leading up to May this year, and had, in August 2025, reached a staggering 11.7%.

Those struggling to keep a roof over their head, or to accommodate a family, hardly have the luxury of spending hours on the internet untangling policy documents to figure out what rights they are entitled to and how to uphold them, or seeking resources for collective advocacy for affordable rent. The visibility and simplicity of Union flyers lining a city’s main streets make such resources patently more accessible, and offer up the plain fact that a struggling renter is not alone. Wilson also states that the Union would like to further increase their accessibility by producing leaflets and posters in other languages. Immigrant households are, after all, more likely to be in the private rent sector due to lower home-ownership, and were the head of 22% of households assessed to be homeless or at risk of homelessness in the 2023-24 financial year.

“Grassroots activism is still vital in political organising, and it is very important that this is seen to be taking place within people’s own communities rather than exclusively online”, the non-profit animal rights organisation Animal Aid told Cherwell, echoing the Union. “And physical media is vital for this.”

Indeed, there is an entire repertoire of visual strategies surrounding the work of being seen, and of being seen in community. With the survival of the Ultimate Picture Palace at risk due to Oriel College’s graduate accommodation plans, a notable number of shops in Cowley have put up “Save the UPP” flyers on their doors and shop windows. A bold icon of the deeply beloved local independent cinema is depicted against a simple green, pink or red background, and one only needs to take a walk in the area to feel the solidarity. Oxford Stand Up to Racism and Animal Aid both supply leaflets to groups and individuals to use as they choose, with the former stating that, aside from putting up posters in city streets for the general public to see, “flyering from campaign stalls and distributing posters for workplaces are also important to involve people in collective activity”.

Joseph Miller, the director of PauseAI UK, a volunteer-led movement dedicated to incentivising governments to regulate frontier AI development, similarly says that flyering is “a good activity in itself, for the community to work on, for people to get to know each other and contribute in a useful way”. These posters visualise the identity and stated goals of a cause as much as mutual recognition between its people.

Thought also goes into where the flyers go up, or, more precisely, where they are allowed to. The latter-day pamphleteer in this country deals less with persecution of free speech than with the fine tangles of public property. Flyposting on public property is not permitted and could lead to legal ramifications; Oxford City Council investigates resident reports, submitted via FixMyStreet, of unauthorised posters, stickers, and advertisements, then works to remove them from street furniture within seven working days. Flyposting on private property, such as empty shops, is the responsibility of the property owner. The reactive nature of anti-flyposting law enforcement means that pockets of the flyer landscape could get systemically rubbed out every once in a while, or, alternatively, preserved for an impressive duration if no one is offended enough by the sight to report it. Organisations tend to post on surfaces that are highly visible in high-footfall areas, and whose legal ownership isn’t quite so straightforward or sacrosanct in practice.

“We mostly just find those spots where you can put wheatpaste on a surface and then stick up the poster and not have it be in anybody’s way”, says Miller. “So these are places like electrical boxes…or building sites where there are lots of people passing by.” 

Quantity, however, might matter more than the exact location: “Often just having it in lots of different places is more important than where it is, because people might not notice it the first time or the second time, but the third time they see it, they’ll actually look at it.”

After all, we, the passersby, are vital participants in this politics of looking and seeing. The posters, small or large, plain or strikingly designed, each in their own way call for our attention and reaction. Often they persuade the viewer to take practical steps: to sign a petition, attend an event, participate in a boycott, seek help, or make contact with an organisation. When asked how PauseAI links bottom-up involvement to its lobbying of national or even global institutions, Miller explains that their flyers and events encourage people to show up at protests, sign open letters, or email their local MPs for support on such issues as PauseAI’s ongoing AI liability campaign. The campaign pushes for the UK Parliament to introduce legislation holding AI companies accountable when their models enable critical harm, such as security breaches of national infrastructure and biosecurity threats.

Regarding the people that tend to respond to PauseAI’s projects, Miller observes that “our biggest demographic is people who work in AI themselves, people who are experts in technology in some way”. The tech industry in London has provided a large inflow into the movement, as has climate change activist circles, and academic populations in cities such as Leicester and Oxford itself. There may be a limit to how far posters can induce someone to reconsider an opinion or notice something they previously hadn’t, if they don’t go out of their way to look at them. What the posters are best at, perhaps, is inspiring action in towns already politically amenable to what the posters call for, and in people for whom AI, or rent, or Oxford Union platforming, or the far right, is already a pertinent issue.

Still, leaflets and posters might simply seek to educate. According to Miller, PauseAI is interested in raising awareness of AI’s risks, including deskilling workers, facilitating cyberattacks and other safety hazards, and enabling an “extreme concentration of power to a small number of tech companies”. This may be done through talks and discussion groups advertised by flyers, or information shared by the flyers themselves.

Likewise, Animal Aid told Cherwell that their leaflets “may simply exist to inform the public about an issue”. On their anti-horseracing leaflets that have appeared on High Street, most of the space is taken up by information on the British horseracing industry, whose profit-driven exploitation of racehorses is well documented. “Around 200 horses are killed each year on British racecourses”, the pamphlet reads. When their racing careers are over, large numbers of thoroughbreds “are sent to the slaughterhouse…either unwanted or broken down through injuries”. It also tells the story of the racehorse Underwriter, who, upon his retirement, was sent to a sale and to almost certain death, until the Hillside Animal Sanctuary in Norfolk rescued him by bidding directly against the slaughterhouse. “Many horses are not so lucky”, the text reminds us. The bottom of the sheet shows Animal Aid’s contacts, and the option to donate to a sanctuary.

There is a simple humility to these walls of paper-and-print, which speak of affairs vast and small to whoever might listen, emerging and dwindling wherever there is street activity. Among the hundreds of other things that constitute life in Oxford, the streets themselves tell us what manner of a place it is we inhabit, and how we move through and belong to it. They are a palimpsest of how people make their demands known, and where we finally pick up on what others have been saying, perhaps for a very long time.

Journey to decentre of the earth: Wilful ignorance of men

Nora Miles
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Journey to decentre of the earth: Wilful ignorance of men

When I went back to my high school last year to talk to prospective applicants, the number one thing I was asked was: “Are all your conversations, like, really smart?” And I felt a slight sense of shame to admit that they weren’t. I recognise that it’s pretentious to want to discuss philosophy at brunch or the political and economic state of the world right now in the queue for the club, but I do sometimes lament the extent to which my conversations are filled with gossip – and it’s almost always gossip about boys. 

So a few weeks ago, when I came across creator cc’s thoughts on TikTok, who had captioned her video: “POV: trying to make plans with the friend that decentered men”, I stopped and paid attention. It featured a presentation of successive, slightly outlandish activities. “Sorry, I can’t hang out today”, she announces: “I’m working a NASCAR race.” Or she would be studying Spanish in Mexico, or being a seatfiller at the VMAs, or doing a matcha workshop, or going to the outdoor library, or working as a TV extra. 

Carmin is not the first to use the term ‘decentering men’, and as an amateur internet sociologist, I will take it upon myself to try to define it for you. As I understand it, to decentre men is to construct an ascetic resistance to the parameters of your own thoughts. To recognise a masochistic obsession with the male gender, and to focus on yourself, with force. To denounce men is not to completely reject romance, or develop cynicism regarding love; it is simply to carve out time where those things don’t consume you. To resist the temptation to obsess over being perceived. To reclaim solitude, or time with friends, as a space for reflection, and not for courtroom-grade crush interaction cross-analysis. 

Far be it from my job to tell you how to live your life, but in my opinion, such a mindset can hardly be a bad thing. I was lucky enough to be able to talk to the account owner, Carmin, about her content, and we discussed the benefits of taking time for yourself in this way (though, perhaps, less extravagantly) in order to reinforce your sense of self outside of your relationships with men: “A lot of people are afraid to spend time by themselves but, because of that, they’re missing out on things that would have otherwise in some capacity, and the majority of us have concrete plans for the future, or at the very least a concrete desire to do something meaningful, whatever that may look like. been great experiences.” 

I pointed out that almost all of the activities which she showcases on her account involve taking part in some kind of in-person activity. Carmin believes that this is key to widening your outlook: “There’s no substitute for putting yourself out there and trying new things IRL”. Here, then, is a tangible step to be able to take in Oxford. Although Carmin definitely takes the cake when it comes to adventure, there’s so much that you can do in Oxford on your own to try to tap into your own sense of independent free spiritedness. 

“It’s like you’re charging different parts of yourself, when I’m by myself I can have that time to reflect.” When considering this more closely, the challenge then is not to not let men invade these reflective spaces. Even taking a walk has been appropriated through a lens of desirability. Your ‘hot girl walks’ score negatively on the Bechdel test, and you should be honest with yourself about it. Social life has become cloaked in this strange level of self-denial. You’re not going to the club ‘to dance with your friends’ if you spend the whole time constantly looking over your shoulder at the men around you, and that’s ok! But so is a night in where no one desires you. 

Although the term ‘decentering’ is a modern one, or one that seems to have gained popularity on digital platforms at least, it has roots in centuries’ worth of feminist ideology. The problem that this phenomenon seems to attempt to tackle is similar to the one that De Beauvoir identified in 1949: “Defined to the sphere of the relative, destined to the male since her infancy, accustomed to seeing him as a sovereign whom she cannot hope to equal, the woman, who has not stifled her claim to be human, will dream of overcoming herself by uniting with one of these sovereign beings” (translation my own). 

Betty Friedan continued this feminist psychoanalysis by trying to draw attention to “the problem with no name” – an inexpressible dissatisfaction with a life lived revolving around men. But when I picked up a copy of The Feminine Mystique, I was struck by how different the modern picture really is. Friedan explains that when she interviewed seniors at Smith Women’s College (at some point before 1963), she observed that “many of us could not see ourselves beyond the age of twenty-one”. I don’t think this is true today. I think almost every woman at Oxford does want to use her education in some capacity, and the majority of us have concrete plans for the future, or at the very least a concrete desire to do something meaningful, whatever that may look like. 

The problem no longer lies in the disruption of aspirations, but in the suppression of the means to achieve them. The obfuscation of the end goal and the onset of a certain kind of oxymoronic mania sees a brilliant woman concern herself with whether or not her tits look good while she sits in the library, pushing the limits of her field. We are not Friedan’s prospective trapped housewives. The modern “feminine mystique” is such that women need to be simultaneously ambitious and desirable, that we pursue greatness but without relinquishing the need to be looked at while doing it.

Oxford is a city filled with the smartest girls hand-picked from all around the world for their genius, and who pursued their best interest so ferociously that they managed to gain admission through sheer hard work. 

The women of Oxford conduct ground breaking research, translate in and out of dozens of languages, and consider books in ways that no one ever has before. We wake up at 6am to play sports, we volunteer to give back to the city, we write, we dance, and we sing. Are you really going to look me in the eye and tell me that the floppy-haired boy in hall is the most important thing in the world to you right now? 

How Student Founders Choose Their First Office or Retail Space

External Contributor
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Moving out of a dorm room or campus incubator into an actual commercial lease is one of the earliest, and honestly one of the trickiest, strategic bets a student-run startup ever makes. This guide walks through it step by step – from figuring out if you’re even ready, all the way to what to watch for buried in the fine print of a lease.

Step 1: Figure Out If You’re Actually Ready

Signs you’ve outgrown home or campus operations

A lot of student ventures start somewhere unglamorous – a dorm room, a home office, a shared desk at a campus incubator. That’s fine, honestly. It’s how you validate an idea without burning cash on rent before you know if anyone wants what you’re selling. But a few signs tend to show up when it’s genuinely time to move on: a team that needs regular in-person collaboration, growing client meetings, inventory that’s quietly taken over multiple rooms, or foot traffic outpacing whatever space is currently available. Student entrepreneurship isn’t some fringe activity anymore, either – GEM data shows 18 to 24 year olds in the US are now tied with 25 to 34 year olds as the most entrepreneurially active age group, with youth early-stage activity up 2.5x over the past decade. GUESSS’s global student entrepreneurship survey found that among students already founding a venture, 43.7% have written a full business plan, which says something about how many ventures reach that point where informal space just stops working.

Take an online retailer, for example – once inventory occupies multiple rooms of an apartment, that’s usually the tell. A software startup might hit the wall sooner, once confidential meetings or frequent team syncs become genuinely awkward in a shared co-working lounge with strangers walking past every five minutes.

When waiting makes sense

Not every startup benefits from leasing right away, and this part gets skipped over a lot, oddly enough. Businesses running mostly online, with remote teams or unpredictable revenue, can preserve real capital just by staying in coworking spaces a bit longer than feels comfortable. Delaying a lease buys flexibility while the product gets refined and demand gets validated, without locking into an occupancy obligation before it’s actually needed. There’s no prize for signing a lease early.

Match the space to the business model

What kind of space actually gets needed depends entirely on the business itself – there’s no universal answer here. Consulting firms want meeting rooms and professional polish; retailers care about visibility and product displays. Manufacturers, food businesses, and logistics companies often need specialized facilities from day one, no way around it. The goal isn’t leasing space for the sake of having an address. It is to choose commercial space that actually supports daily operations and leaves room for where the business is headed next, not just where it happens to be right now. Understanding what to evaluate before signing a lease – from location and layout to future scalability – can make that decision much easier.

Step 2: Pick the Right Type of Space

Traditional office space

Traditional offices suit businesses built around collaboration or confidential client work, like software companies, accounting firms, legal practices, consulting businesses, and marketing agencies. Longer lease terms can offer more stability too, particularly for companies with predictable staffing needs that aren’t going to double overnight and blow up the whole plan.

Retail space

For customer-facing businesses, location is often the whole game, and there is not really a workaround for that. Retail properties get evaluated on visibility, pedestrian traffic, accessibility, parking, and who else is nearby. A great storefront helps enhance customer experience, sure, but the less glamorous stuff – storage, deliveries, layout – matters just as much even though it’s a lot less exciting to think about when you’re touring a space for the first time.

Flexible offices and co-working

Plenty of early-stage startups keep choosing flexible space simply because it avoids long-term commitment while still offering professional amenities like furnished workspaces and meeting rooms. And honestly, this whole sector has picked up serious momentum this year. The global flexible workspace market sits around $29 billion in 2026, growing 14% annually, and industry commentary now describes flex space as “the default conversation” for tenants of nearly every size, not just startups dabbling in their first lease. In India specifically, co-working operators leased 8.6 million square feet in just the first half of 2026 alone – a 32% jump year-over-year – now capturing nearly a quarter of all new office space taken up nationally. Yes, monthly costs look higher on a per-square-foot basis, and that math bothers some founders at first glance. But the ability to scale quickly tends to be worth it during periods of uncertain growth, and the broader market seems to agree: lease terms are shortening everywhere, with 5- and 10-year deals giving way to 1- to 3-year agreements as more companies, not just students, start prioritising adaptability over commitment.

Step 3: Build a Realistic Budget Before Searching

Calculate total occupancy costs

Rent is only one component of the overall cost of leasing commercial property, which is the part that catches a lot of first-timers off guard. Founders should also budget for utilities, internet, insurance, maintenance obligations, security deposits, furniture, equipment installation, signage, parking, and any applicable common area maintenance charges. Understanding total occupancy costs upfront prevents unpleasant surprises after signing a lease – and by then, it’s usually too late to renegotiate.

Protect cash flow

Young businesses should ensure occupancy costs remain sustainable relative to projected revenue, not hopeful revenue – there’s a real difference between those two numbers, and founders who confuse them tend to regret it. Maintaining adequate cash reserves provides flexibility to manage seasonal fluctuations, unexpected expenses, or slower-than-anticipated growth. A conservative approach here often supports stronger long-term stability than maximising office size early, even though the bigger space always looks tempting during a walkthrough.

Plan for growth without overspending

Choosing space that accommodates realistic expansion is important, but excessive square footage just creates unnecessary financial pressure without actually helping much. Leasing only what’s needed today, while preserving room for future expansion, usually strikes the best balance between flexibility and cost control.

Step 4: Evaluate Locations Like an Experienced Investor

Understand your customer

A good location begins with understanding the people being served – local demographics, accessibility, visibility, transportation options, and general convenience. Retail businesses often prioritise customer traffic; service providers may care more about parking or proximity to business districts. It really depends who’s walking through the door.

Analyse the local business environment

Neighbouring businesses can significantly influence commercial performance, more than people expect going in. Complementary retailers, restaurants, and professional services may increase customer activity, while excessive direct competition might need a closer look before committing. Growing neighbourhoods with planned development often offer stronger long-term opportunities than mature markets that have already hit their ceiling.

Think beyond today’s needs

Commercial property decisions should support future operations as well as current requirements. Hiring plans, delivery access, employee commuting patterns, logistics, parking, and transportation infrastructure all deserve a seat at the table before signing anything. It’s genuinely easy to plan only for today’s five-person team and forget about the fifteen-person team that shows up six months later.

Step 5: Understand Commercial Lease Terms Before Signing

Lease length and renewal options

Lease duration influences both flexibility and financial commitment. Shorter leases provide greater adaptability, while longer agreements may offer stability and potentially more favourable rental terms. Renewal options should be reviewed carefully too, so they actually line up with anticipated growth rather than working against it.

Rent structure and additional costs

Commercial leases vary a lot more than most people expect walking in. Under a gross lease, many operating expenses are generally included within the rent. Modified gross leases split certain costs between landlord and tenant, while triple net (NNN) leases typically require tenants to pay base rent plus specified operating expenses on top. Understanding these differences is really the only way to compare properties on total cost rather than just the advertised rental number, which can be misleading on its own.

Negotiable lease provisions

Many commercial lease provisions are negotiable, more than founders often realise. Tenant improvement allowances, expansion rights, renewal options, signage rights, and early termination provisions may significantly influence long-term flexibility. Carefully reviewing lease terms before signing helps avoid unexpected obligations that surface later.

Step 6: Avoid the Common Mistakes

Leasing too much space

New businesses often overestimate future staffing or inventory requirements – it’s a natural instinct to plan big. Excess square footage increases rent, utilities, maintenance, and furnishing costs without necessarily improving productivity at all. Starting with appropriately sized space usually provides stronger financial flexibility down the line.

Choosing prestige over practicality

A prestigious address may enhance image, but it doesn’t automatically improve business performance, no matter how good it looks on a pitch deck. Convenient access, functional layouts, and operational efficiency often deliver more long-term value than a prestigious location alone. Commercial space should support business objectives, not just project status to whoever’s watching.

Ignoring future flexibility

Business needs rarely stay static, and pretending otherwise is a common trap. Companies that overlook expansion rights or adaptable lease structures may face expensive relocations as staffing or customer demand evolves. Planning for flexibility from the beginning reduces disruption later – a lesson the broader flex-space industry has clearly taken to heart too, given how fast shorter, more adaptable leases have become the norm in 2026.

Step 7: Run the Search Process Properly

Define business requirements

Before touring anything, write out a checklist covering square footage, layout, budget, customer access, parking, tech needs, storage, accessibility, and anticipated growth. Having objective criteria makes property comparisons a lot more consistent than just going with a gut feeling after one visit.

Compare multiple properties

Evaluating several commercial properties reveals valuable insight into local pricing, amenities, lease structures, and neighborhood differences. Comparing multiple options using the same criteria usually leads to better decisions than just committing to the first suitable spot that comes along. Documenting strengths and weaknesses for each helps simplify the final call.

Complete due diligence before signing

Before executing any lease, founders should inspect the property thoroughly, estimate total occupancy costs, review lease terms, confirm zoning compatibility, understand maintenance responsibilities, and evaluate future expansion opportunities.

Following a structured process like this reduces risk and helps make sure the selected property supports both current operations and whatever comes next.

The Takeaway

Selecting a first commercial space is a lot more than finding somewhere to work: it’s a strategic milestone that shapes customer experience, employee productivity, operational efficiency, and financial performance for years afterward. Successful student entrepreneurs take the time to honestly evaluate whether they’re ready, choose property matching their actual operating model, build realistic budgets, understand lease structures, and prioritise flexibility alongside affordability.

The strongest real estate decisions come from disciplined planning, not excitement about finally having a “real” address. Businesses that align property selection with long-term strategy and financial capacity tend to grow more sustainably while taking on less unnecessary risk. And given how much the flex-space market has grown just this year, with lease terms shortening across the board to match, student founders are honestly stepping into one of the more forgiving leasing environments in recent memory. The ideal first space isn’t the biggest or the flashiest one – it’s just the one that gives the business room to grow into whatever it’s actually becoming.




A solo diner’s paradise: Rincha Café review

Prity Laloux
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A solo diner’s paradise: Rincha Café review

As the sun shone over Oxford and my collections drew ever closer, I decided I needed a change of scenery from the panicked atmosphere of my college hall. So, I headed to Rincha Café to sample some Thai specialities and catch up on reading. I was excited to try this casual, sunlit spot, open continuously from 10:30am-8pm, so I could enjoy delicious food while watching the sun set over Oxford. 

I often approach solo dining with a bit of apprehension. I always worry that I will be the only solo diner in the restaurant, or that everyone else is judging my attempt at reading while slurping down noodles. Fortunately, Rincha Café appeased these fears immediately. As I walked in, armed with my Plato and performative wired earbuds, I was greeted by smooth jazz, a wealth of individual seating, and many students with open laptops and noise cancelling headphones. I had found the perfect place for my solo dinner. 

My fears abated, I took my seat across from another reader, and set out to decide on my meal. This was no easy feat, considering the sheer number of options on the menu. In the end, I decided to try the Thai pork meatballs as a starter, the chicken mixed dry noodles as a main, and the mango sticky rice (obviously) as a dessert. I placed my order at the counter, and the food arrived only minutes later, served by friendly and welcoming staff. 

The skewers were a lovely balance of sweet, spicy, and savoury, with the tamarind sauce providing a tangy contrast to the pork meatballs. I will say that the flavour of the pork is quite pronounced, so I would skip the dish if strong meat flavours are not to your taste. The portion was generous, with three skewers that had four meatballs each, but not so large that I did not want to eat my main. 

While I had set out to have a semi productive dinner, this task was made tricky by the delicious chicken noodles I was served next. This dish commanded my full attention. The moment it was set down at my table (almost as soon as I had finished my starter), the peppery smell of the sauce had me salivating. The bowl was loaded, to say the least. Thin rice noodles coated in a sweet and peppery sauce, a pile of minced chicken, three generous chicken meatballs, a handful of soybean sprouts, and coriander to top it off made me question whether I had over ordered. My book lay forgotten beside me as I focused on constructing the perfect bite. The different elements provided a satisfying balance of chewy, spicy, savoury, and fresh. I must admit that I was almost defeated by the sheer amount of ground chicken in my bowl, which might not be a problem for protein-lovers. 

Next came the star of the show, the love of my life: mango sticky rice. This mini dish came in a small plastic cup, the perfect portion size after my previous two courses. There was definitely more mango than sticky rice, but when the mango is perfectly ripe, that can never be a complaint. The sticky rice itself was warm with a pleasant coconut flavour, yet not overly sweet. The perfect end to the meal. 

While the prices certainly do not make it an everyday treat, considering its location and the fact that it is an independent business, I felt they were fair. In a city where everything can feel rushed and overwhelming, the calm setting and friendly service at Rincha Café are a welcome addition to the hustle and bustle of Broad Street

A day at the races: Corpus Christi 2026 Tortoise Fair

Abigail Christie
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A day at the races: Corpus Christi 2026 Tortoise Fair

Oxford is full of weird and wonderful traditions, and the Corpus Christi tortoise race certainly takes the cake for the latter. What likely began as an informal competition between Corpus students some 100-150 years ago, has now blossomed into a day-long affair of tortoise-related festivities and slow-speed racing, attracting hundreds of spectators from across the University and the wider public. Tickets quickly sold out for what can only be described as the highlight of the Trinity social calendar, with numbers capped at 725. Having won the 2025 tortoise race, and despite a few hiccups in previous years, Corpus’ own tortoise Foxe was favoured to win this year. 

I was lucky enough to be able to sit down and chat with Vivi, Corpus’ JCR tortoise-keeper (custos testudinum), in the week leading up to the race. I began by asking what exactly the role entailed, and the position turned out to be more varied than I expected. Vivi told me: “You [get] a big book of standing orders, and most of it is about organising the tortoise fair. But you also have to say that you will sign your life away for Foxe’s wellbeing. […If] the building was on fire, and I could either save Foxe or […] myself, I do have to say that I will go and save Foxe”. 

Vivi described admin, and event-planning, as a large part of the role, with some aspects being fairly time-consuming: “I got into the position on the Saturday of week eight in Michaelmas and then started working immediately. It’s a lot of ordering merch, and I’ve got volunteers in from the charity that we supported [RSPCA Oxfordshire]. You have to work out training for people, how many tickets you’re selling, and where you’re selling them. There were lots of emails in college about what’s going on, and lots of health and safety meetings”.

On the day, occasional spells of June sunshine accompanied the thoughtfully curated schedule of events. Entering through Corpus’ front quad, the RSPCA stall, and tables of tortoise merch greeted incoming visitors, with displays ranging from tote bags and t-shirts to tortoise plushies and face-paint. The wafting scent of the barbecue encouraged foot traffic to move through the college, before visitors arrived in the gardens, where live music, tortoise figurine painting, and dancing were all taking place. The joint efforts of Vivi, volunteers from Corpus and RSPCA Oxfordshire, and the wider college community certainly paid off – almost everywhere you looked, there seemed to be a beaming face sporting a tortoise t-shirt or holding a tortoise plush. 

Aside from the actual tortoise race, the event of the day that attracted the most spectators was the human tortoise race. As a fresher, I remember learning there was a vacancy in my college’s JCR for the position of Tortoise-Keeper. I was (understandably) very excited at the prospect of looking after a tortoise, only to be met with the mildly terrifying reality that my college did not, in fact, have a pet tortoise, and the Tortoise-Keeper was actually required to don a costume and attend all tortoise-related events as if they were one. Needless to say, I did not apply and, to the best of my knowledge, the position remains empty. 

But there was a very different atmosphere on the day: at 2.45pm, the Tortoise-Keeper announced the human tortoise race, and encouraged any volunteers from the crowd to step up. The two individuals dressed as respective halves of a tortoise were the first to enter, followed by an enthusiastic group of people happily exercising their free will. The contestants were required to eat a head of lettuce as messily as possible, and then crawl to the finish line. A humorous array of crawls across the grass ensued, with Corpus bringing victory home. 

Although 2026 marks the 52nd tortoise race, its documented history is not exactly linear, with it having only become a consistent annual event in the last few years. When speaking to Vivi about its history, they referenced a document known as the Illustrious History of Tortoises, which has been passed on from predecessors. “I think there was a year in the 70s when Blue Peter entered a tortoise, and I think that same year they painted designs onto the top of the tortoises so you could see where they were from. It’s been relatively recently that it’s turned into a sort of fair event. It used to be just an inter-college thing and now it’s more open to the public to raise more money for charity”. 

As the afternoon progressed, crowds started to gather around the hexagonal race track for the event everyone had been waiting for: the tortoise race. The growing anticipation drew spectators in surprisingly early, with people sitting down at the track for over an hour before the race began in order to secure an unobstructed view. Tortoise enthusiasts of all ages rallied together at the fence-posts, keen for the race to begin. There were five competitors for the 2026 race: Foxe (Corpus), Bernard (Corpus), Kale (Nuffield), Truffle (Regent’s Park), and Wendy (Balliol). Excitement only intensified at the sight of the Tortoise-Keeper laying down a ring of lettuce for the tortoises to race towards. From where I was sitting, a firm fanbase had their hearts set on Wendy as the winner, despite her being the smallest and the youngest (at only three years old). Wendy had been socialising with her tortoise-keeper throughout the day, winning the hearts of everyone she crawled by, with her pancake-shaped shell. 

After a best-of-three race was declared, the tortoises each started their crawls towards victory. Truffle and Kale were unperturbed by the pressure of winning, and the cheering of the crowds, each taking the distance to the lettuce in their own stride. Wendy, being the smallest by far, still gave it her all and made a beeline for the lettuce as fast as her little legs would allow. Foxe seemed less concerned this year with winning glory, and more focused on trying to bite Wendy. Speaking to Vivi about Foxe’s personality, I learnt that he seems to have a penchant for biting and a long history of grumpiness. Nevertheless, victory was still brought home to Corpus by Bernard, who reached the lettuce to a chorus of victorious celebration. 

The painstaking thought and effort put into the organisation of the tortoise fair, and the dutiful care taken of Foxe by the Tortoise-Keeper and his caregivers in the lodge, embody how Oxford’s communities are more than meets the eye. Animals, though a minority at the University, tend to shine light where it is needed the most. Discussing their importance, Vivi summarised it best: “Animals really help it feel like somewhere you live, rather than just somewhere you work.” 

How Does A Custom Paint By Number Kit Turn Photos Into Artwork?

External Contributor
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Have you ever seen a special picture and wished you could make that memory into a beautiful picture? Most individuals have the thought of turning their favourite images into their own pieces of art, yet feel confused as they are not aware of how to draw or paint. Others have trouble with colour selection, drawing the right shapes, and making their image appear as a real artwork.  

A custom paint by number kit makes this possible by transforming your photo into a guided painting design that is easy to follow. Instead of starting with a blank canvas, you get a clear layout that shows you where each color belongs. This allows you to enjoy creating artwork while keeping the details and emotions of your original photo.   

From uploading your favourite photo to adding the final brushstroke, here’s how the entire transformation comes together.

Transform A Photo into Custom Paint by Numbers Design

When you choose a custom paint by number kit, your favourite photo begins its journey from a simple image into a painting design. The initial step is to prepare your photo so that the significant information is visible and that the photo is made to fit into a paint-by-numbers format. This helps create a strong base for your artwork.   

Your photo is carefully converted into a numbered outline that shows different areas of the image. Rather than having to sketch the picture yourself, you are given a ready-made design that emphasises the shapes, features, and key elements of your photo. This simplifies the artwork to recreate.   

The transformation process aims at retaining the identity of your image but making it easier to paint. Details such as faces, pets, objects, and background are well-organised in a way that they can be identified. When done right, your picture is turned into a detailed painting blueprint.

Match Colours and Break Image into Paintable Sections

Once your photo becomes a painting blueprint, the next step is organising colours and dividing the image into smaller sections. Each part of the design receives a number that connects with a specific paint colour. This creates a simple roadmap that helps you understand how the image will be recreated. 

The colours are selected to represent the different shades and details found in your original photo. Light areas, darker tones, and small changes in colour work together to create a more realistic appearance. Because every shade has a place, you can follow the design without guessing. 

Breaking the image into smaller sections also makes the artwork easier to approach. A detailed photo may look complicated at first, but dividing it into numbered areas makes the process more manageable. Each section plays a role in bringing the complete picture together.

Use Numbered Guides to Recreate Every Detail

After the design and colours are prepared, the numbered guide helps you start creating your artwork. The numbers on the canvas correspond to a particular paint colour, and they indicate where to apply each shade precisely. With this basic system, you can concentrate on a single section of an image at a time.   

You do not have to learn some complicated painting techniques or how to make shapes out of nothing. Instead, you can match the numbers with the colours and slowly fill each section. As you go on, small segments start joining up to create the image you chose. 

The numbered guide gives you confidence throughout the painting process because every step is clearly planned. Whether you are painting a family photo, a pet portrait, or a favourite place, the guide helps you recreate the important details. You can enjoy the creative experience without feeling pressured.

Build Layers That Bring Original Photo to Life

As you add more paint to the canvas, you begin to see your photo appear in a completely new form. Each layer of colour adds more depth, detail, and structure to the artwork. The simple numbered sections gradually combine to create a complete painted image. 

You may notice a person’s features becoming clearer, a pet’s details starting to show, or a landscape gaining more shape and dimension. Different shades work together to create contrast and make the artwork feel closer to the original photo. This is the stage where your painting starts to feel truly personal. 

The layering process also allows you to enjoy the progress along the way. Instead of only focusing on the finished result, you can appreciate how every painted section contributes to the final artwork. With each layer, your canvas moves closer to becoming a reflection of your chosen memory.

Turn Finished Painting into Lasting Personalised Keepsake

Once the final sections are painted, your photo has transformed into a handmade artwork created through your own effort. The finished canvas is not just a copy of your original image; it represents the time, care, and creativity you invested in the process. This personal connection makes the artwork feel unique. 

A completed painting can become a meaningful addition to your home or a thoughtful gift for someone special. Whether it captures a family moment, a beloved pet, or a memorable place, the artwork carries a story that goes beyond the image itself. It becomes something you can appreciate for years. 

The journey from photo to painting gives you a different way to preserve memories. You begin with a digital picture and finish with a handmade creation that reflects your personal involvement. This transformation is what makes a custom paint by numbers experience so memorable.

Conclusion

A custom paint by numbers kit gives you a simple way to turn your favourite photos into artwork without needing professional painting skills. Your photo becomes a guided design, your colours create the details, and your effort brings the finished canvas to life. 

Instead of keeping special memories only as digital images, you can transform them into something you can touch, display, and enjoy. With the right guidance and a little creativity, you can create a personalized artwork that holds both the story of your photo and the experience of making it. 

The Growing Demand for Affordable Medical Alert in Canada

External Contributor
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Aging can raise a lot of new issues about personal safety. Even a simple slip, a sudden health problem, or being alone can become an emergency if help is not provided immediately.  

Meanwhile, numerous families are concerned about their elderly relatives, particularly when they are unable to be with them full-time. Consequently, most Canadian homes have made it a priority to find a viable means of staying safe without compromising independence.  

Luckily, medical alert systems provide a good solution. They offer rapid access to emergency help and enable people to have independent lives both at home and on the move. Even better, more affordable alternatives have made these systems available to a greater number of individuals in Canada.  

So, why is the demand continuing to grow?  

The Aging Population Is Increasing the Need for Everyday Safety

The aging population in Canada is one of the reasons why more people require affordable medical alert in Canada. Most elderly people desire to be independent, but wish to have prompt assistance in the event of an emergency.  

Actual risks at home can be falls, mobility problems, and chronic illnesses. A medical alert system can be used to contact trained responders quickly, potentially shortening response time in an emergency.  

Such systems are also easy to operate. They are convenient for seniors with various needs and levels of comfort due to clear buttons, voice communication, and reliable connections. Those convenience features are important when time is of the essence. It provides families with greater assurance of daily safety.

Affordable Pricing Makes Medical Alert Systems Accessible to More Households

Price has been a traditional obstacle to many families thinking about personal emergency response systems. However, affordable pricing options have changed that. Nowadays, there are numerous providers that provide more flexible monthly plans without big initial investments or long-term contracts.  

This low cost ensures that more older people can enjoy the security technology without needlessly putting extra strain on family finances. Families are able to select a plan that suits them and still obtain necessary emergency monitoring services.  

Also, competitive prices have made more Canadians compare the available prices. Instead of medical alert systems being considered as a luxury, they are increasingly being viewed as an investment in long-term health and safety.

Desire to Age Safely at Home Is Stronger Than Ever

Most seniors desire to stay in what is familiar to them as long as they can. By being at home, they can continue doing things their way, maintain their independence and keep in touch with their communities. Consequently, aging in place has become an increasingly popular option in Canada.  

Medical alert systems facilitate this objective by offering instant access to help in the event of an emergency. It is possible to call for assistance for a fall, acute illness, or other medical issue, by pressing a button. 

Moreover, home and mobile medical alarms can help users monitor their protection at home and even outside. This mobility allows the elderly to keep doing things they love on a daily basis with more confidence and less fear of being left alone in case of an emergency. 

Faster Access to Emergency Assistance Improves Health Outcomes

In a medical emergency, every minute counts. Timely access to professional help may minimise complications and enhance recovery, especially when it comes to falls, strokes, or heart-related diseases. 

Medical alert systems are created to reduce the time lag between an emergency and help provision. Users can now instantly access trained monitoring professionals through their devices rather than having to look up a phone or wait until someone has noticed that something is amiss.  

Two-way communication can also be provided in many systems, providing emergency responders with an opportunity to evaluate the situation and organise suitable help. This direct relationship assists in getting the appropriate support to the user as fast as possible.

Modern Features Like Fall Detection and GPS Provide Greater Peace of Mind

Today’s medical alert systems offer much more than a basic emergency button. Advanced features have improved both convenience and safety, making these devices more valuable for seniors and their families. 

For example, automatic fall detection can send an alert even if the user is unable to press the emergency button. This feature is particularly helpful for individuals with mobility limitations or health conditions that may prevent them from calling for help. 

Similarly, GPS-enabled devices provide protection beyond the home by allowing emergency responders to locate users when assistance is needed outdoors. Combined with 24/7 monitoring and two-way communication, these features create a more comprehensive safety solution that supports independent living while offering reassurance to family members and caregivers.

Conclusion

The growing demand for affordable medical alert systems in Canada reflects changing lifestyles, an aging population, and a stronger focus on independent living. More Canadians are recognizing that these devices offer practical support without adding unnecessary complexity or financial strain.  

From faster emergency response to advanced features like fall detection and GPS, medical alert systems continue to improve everyday safety for seniors. As technology becomes more accessible and affordable, choosing a reliable medical alert system is becoming an important step toward maintaining independence while ensuring help is always within reach when it matters most.

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