St Benet’s Hall, the last remaining single-sex Hall in the University of Oxford, has plans to accept female students in the future.

St Benet’s was originally founded by Ampleforth Abbey in order to allow its monks to study for degrees at the university.

St Hilda’s was the last all-female Oxford college to go co-educational, making the change in 2008, whilst Cambridge still has three all female colleges: Newnham, Murray Edwards and Lucy Cavendish. However, these colleges are not single-sex for religious reasons, and they are also Colleges rather than Permanent Private Halls.

However, the issue for St Benet’s is rather the fact that it is not canonically permitted to accept woman as undergraduates because they would have to live in the same building as the monks. It is an obligation for all Colleges and PPHs to provide housing for Freshers. There are currently six resident monks, four of whom are studying.

St Benet’s are looking into building another hall of accommodation to get around this problem. Professor Jeanrond, Master of St Benet’s, said that the new building would help build up St Benet’s capacity in order to make it more like other Oxford colleges. There are also plans to upgrade the existing building, which can currently accommodate twenty five students.
Another issue that would arise from having more people in St Benet’s is that the Hall is currently the only college to have a “common table,” where tutors and students eat supper together. More students would mean that they would need to have two sittings – or buy another table. This would erode one of the traditions that has been at the heart of St Benet’s culture since its foundation. The PPH is not permitted to increase the number of undergraduates, so having more women students would necessarily involve taking fewer male students. However, it would increase the capacity for graduate students: as it is, the Hall’s policy is currently that female graduate students may attend St Benet’s provided that they are living out.

Although these plans are generally regarded as a positive development by current students, Johan Trovik, St Benet’s JCR President, does not think that the lack of women is an imminent problem. He commented, “I’m very happy at St Benet’s!” and pointed out that on last year’s student baromenter “we ranked highest of all Oxford colleges on (amongst other things) overall experience and being a ‘good place to be’!”

He went on to explain, “As all other Oxford colleges St Benet’s has its own distinct tradition and idiosyncrasies. That we’re currently an all male college however, does not I think affect the satisfaction rate significantly either way. I’m happy that the Hall now is working on improving our infrastructure so that we will be able to extend our offer of a unique sense of community of learning and friendship to female students as well whilst continue to respect our student monks’ monastic requirements.”

Although women are not allowed to live on site, Johan added, “I can assure you, we’re already very welcoming to female guests!”

Oxford students joined their colleagues across the UK earlier this week to protest against the sale of student debt to private companies, announced by the government in in June.

At noon this Wednesday, a small group of students and former students assembled outside the Clarendon Building on Broad Street to participate in an “open-air meeting” and demonstrate their discontent over the loan sell-off. Balliol JCR also passed a motion on Sunday condemning the government’s plan to privatise student loans and offering their support to the protesters.

The events were scheduled as part of a wider ‘National Day of Action’, organised by the Student Assembly Against Austerity (SAAA). Over twenty six campuses from across the UK, including Oxford, LSE and Sheffield, were involved in the protest. The privatisation of student loan debt was announced as part of the government’s attempts to raise £15 billion from the sale of public assets to private companies by 2020.

Xavier Cohen, who proposed the anti-privatisation motion at Balliol told Cherwell, “For me, it’s quite clear that the government’s plans to privatise our student loans are ideological. But what I think really convinced Balliol JCR students is the threat that privatisation will entail removing the cap on the interest rates we pay back on our loans. Even if such a policy was legally covered in the small print, realistically, this would mean retroactively increasing the interest rates that students were led to believe were capped.”

David Willetts MP, the Universities Minister, swiftly defended the plans. In a public statement issued by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills he said, “There will be no change to the terms of repayment so students shouldn’t be affected by the privatisation of their loans.”

Many students, however, remain sceptical about the Minister’s promises. Olivia Arigho-Stiles from Somerville said, “This is yet another attack on the accessibility of higher education to less well-off students in this country.” Wednesday’s protest-meeting passed off without incident. One student who attended the meeting said, “The programme of debt-privatisation is wholly ideological. It is being operated entirely at the expense of all students. Either we speak out or be bled dry.”

Other students, however, disagree with the protesters and the SAAA. One Keble second-year said, “The notion that there is still a clear-cut dichotomy between public and private debt is erroneous. All public debt held in US dollars and sterling becomes private debt at some point down the line by virtue of being constituted in private reserve currency… Objections raised over the ideological nature of privatisation are misplaced.”

Local Green Party City Councillor and recent Oxford graduate Sam Hollick attended the the protest outside the Clarendon Building. He told Cherwell, “If you’re going to privatise student loans, you open them up to companies who want to make profit out of them, and the only way to make profit is to put up the interest rates on our debts. So results of this could be a hike in fees for students, even for people who’ve already graduated.”

Asked whether he was disappointed by the very low turnout at the event – only a dozen students attended – Hollick replied, “I always think that it doesn’t take a huge number of people to change the world.”

A team of Oxford Academics have devised a method of ‘tagging’ sperm using nanoparticles, which could eventually lead to diagnosing causes of infertility currently unexplained by doctors.

The method uses a specific type of nanoparticle, synthesised by the University’s Department of Engineering Science, which attach to the sperm with no detrimental effects. The porous silica nanoparticles can be filled, or alternatively coated, with compounds to identify, diagnose, and perhaps even treat the causes of infertility. They are extremely small, at about 140nm- over 1/700 of the width of a human hair.

“An attractive feature of nanoparticles is that they are like an empty envelope that can be loaded with a variety of compounds and inserted into cells,” said Dr Natalia Barkalina, lead author of the study from the Nuffield Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Oxford University. “The nanoparticles we use don’t appear to interfere with the sperm, making them a perfect delivery vessel.”

The researchers successfully tested the method on boar sperm, showing how the nanoparticles associated well with the sperm whilst not causing any problems with sperm health. Dr. Barkalina remarked, “it seems to be a very simple and efficient method”.

Indeed, this method is not at all trivial. Senior author Dr. Kevin Coward commented, “Previous methods involved complicated procedures in animals and introduced months of delays before the sperm could be used. Now, we can simply expose sperm to nanoparticles in a petri dish. It’s so simple that it can all be done quickly enough for the sperm to survive perfectly unharmed.”

After this initial success the team intends to investigate whether they can fertilise eggs with tagged sperm in a model organism like the boar. Coward added, “We want to try and ‘probe’ or interfere with known biological systems to gain more information with respect to infertility. Eventually, we want to extend to look at the interaction between the human egg and sperm.

“Within a few years [we] may be able to explain or even diagnose rare cases in patients. In future we could even deliver treatments in a similar way.”

It is still early days, but the method seems to be a promising tool and has positive implications for infertile couples. The team observed, “this system should provide a swift and effective research tool which may lead to new understanding or new treatments.”

The work originally began in Spring 2011 and started life as a short project on the Msc in Clinical Embryology. Since then patent applications for the technique have been made by Isis Innovation, Oxford University’s technology transfer arm.

In a victory for proponents of greater equality at Oxford, Merton College has voted to reorganise the way in which disabled, female, LGBTQ and ethnic students are represented.

The motion, proposed by Tanvi Mehta and Will Bennett, was passed unanimously by the college’s JCR and completely overhauls the pre-existing structure for the representation of student minorities.

It removes the positions of Equal Opportunities Representative and International Students’ Representative from the JCR committee, replacing them with representatives for Gender Equality, Disabled Students and Ethnic Minority and International Students. They will collectively sit on a newly formed Equality Sub-Committee, with an LGBTQ Representative, and ensure equality of opportunity along with the prevention of all types of discrimination at Merton.

Tanvi Mehta, one of those who proposed the motion, stated her aim as making the college more inclusive. She said, “Merton is already incredibly open-minded and welcoming, so I feel like this motion only creates a more intuitive and clear structure to maintain that environment!

“I proposed the motion partly because it’s hard for a single Equal Opportunities rep to be involved in/attend all the relevant Equality Campaigns or meetings and it therefore makes sense to expand the team of people working on equality issues. But it’s also because we felt that a single individual isn’t really able to be representative of the various different groups that come under the purview of Equal Opportunities, because they sometimes don’t have an understanding of the issues that all these groups face.”

She added, “With the Equality Sub-Committee, we’re also aiming for better representation of different groups on the JCR committee, and by extension, better representation within the college and University.”

The motion has met with the approval of the college JCR president, Christian Ruckteschler, who took an active role in drafting it. He stated, “in my opinion this reform has the potential to greatly improve the effectiveness of equality representation and advocacy at Merton-both with respect to students and to college. The next few months will show whether this hunch was right”.

The other proposer, Will Bennett, was optimistic about its impact, commenting that it would achieve, “better representation of minority groups so that people who feel discriminated against know who to go to, and feel their voice matters. Merton and other colleges need to get more involved with these issues, seeing that although we are 900 years old, the issues that matter are the ones which are changing the dynamics of the student body today”.

However, he acknowledged that there might be some problems with the new arrangement, terming it “cumbersome”. He stated, “This need to maintain a fluid approach to the difficulties of representing a diverse student body is emphasised in the JCR’s minutes, which state that “maybe in 10 years, we’ll have to change the reps again to redefine them for that generation”.

Interest within the college did not match the proposers’ enthusiasm, however, with one Merton student commenting, “As a fourth year who’s never been particularly interested in the JCR, I can honestly say I couldn’t care less about any motion discussed in that most tedious of bodies.”

With the exception of this Merton dissenter the move has met with almost unanimous praise with Charlotte Hendy, the OUSU Vice President for Welfare and Equal Opportunities, stating “I fully support the motion brought by Merton JCR regarding changes to membership of the Equality Sub-Committee. Increasing the range of student representation on committees directly affecting student experience is always welcome. This move particularly so, as by allowing students with direct and relevant experiences to represent those with differing needs may mean that we are nearer to acknowledging the true nature and extent of diversity among the Oxford student body.”