Sunday 8th June 2025
Blog Page 1443

Interview: Marvellous Medicine

Luke Barratt
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Interview: Marvellous Medicine

Last Thursday, the Isis gig night at Cellar did what it always does, and pulled in the biggest names Oxford’s music scene. Dot’s Funk Odyssey, Garfunkel and headliners Marvellous Medicine were the three top names, and while my friends queued for me I had a few words with Marvellous Medicine – or at least as many members of Marvellous Medicine as would stay in place at one time. The band were buzzing before their set, and not only was it nigh-on impossible to keep them on topic, but it was pretty hard to hear what they were saying, as Cornmarket was packed with Oxford Uni’s koolest kidz.

Jamie, the guitarist, is very laissez-faire about the whole band, sarcastically claiming to be “very serious about music”, telling me all about their time at Truck Festival when they got back to their campsite and their tent was gone (“We would have been so angry if we hadn’t been completely fucked”) and mocking bandmate George for describing their music as “innocuous”. George and his love for Roald Dahl is the reason for the name, and he founded the band with Rob, who, as they quickly realized, “was quite keen on reggae”. The band only truly formed when more musicians including drummer Holly arrived at the university.

Marvellous Medicine have clearly done their research on inspiration Roald Dahl, telling me all about how “he had his nose cut off the first time he drove a car” (“it was pretty gnarly man,” remarks Jamie), and was blind for six months during the Second World War.
Musically, George tells us that the band is keen to “pull together as many diverse genres as we can”, and this is evident during their show – they play a couple of songs from their upcoming EP which sound more like folk than the ska reggae which they usually produce. The EP is as yet unnamed, though George and Jamie are delighted when I suggest ‘Patronus’ as the name, as they’ve just been telling me what their Patronuses they would be.

Jamie explains the natural gap between “Brookes bands, town bands and uni bands”, and George announces that they’re “trying to bridge that gap” with a gig they’re doing soon with “a massive Brookes band”. The genres explored by bands at Isis’s night are far from ordinary, spanning funk, rock, soul and reggae, and Jamie thinks this is because of the pedigree of Oxford music students, who know so much about different genres. This knowledge isevident as soon as Garfunkel take to the stage, and the crowd love it.

Apparently the band’s biggest wish for the future involves “getting more on our riders”. They’ve not thought too far ahead, but with the new EP coming out, and the fact that half the band have finished university not damaging their output, there is clearly more to come from Marvellous Medicine.

Review: Autobiography by Morrissey

Nick Mutch
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Review: Autobiography by Morrissey

Heaven knows he’s miserable, and so am I after reading this. Reader, I hurled. W H Auden said that “The interests of a writer and the interests of his readers are never the same and if, on occasion, they happen to coincide, this is a lucky accident.” This is the perfect epigraph for Morrissey’s sprawling and broken “autobiography”.

This is a bad book. This does not mean it is an uninteresting book, or even a badly written book. It is simply the result of a great artist let free to be his most overindulgent, insipid and childish. Penguin will come to thoroughly regret giving the imprimatur of its classic series.

The Morrissey that is revealed in Autobiography is a thoroughly unpleasant person, for whom the normal trials and tribulations of life are soul lashing experiences worthy. Of his rejection of a job at a local post office, he tells us he felt “now the only thing left for me was death.” In an attempt at morbid irony, he refers to working as a clerk for the Inland Revenue Department as a “fate worse than life.”

The ultimate moment of hubris comes when he has the chutzpah to seriously compare losing a royalties dispute with two of his former band members to the persecution by the British justice system that Oscar Wilde faced in his trial for homosexuality (the judge, in both cases being simply jealous of their great genius).

One of the most embarrassing aspects of his autobiography is his absurd Peter Pan complex; he wishes to forever play the role of the tortured alienated youth. His words are eternally adolescent and they sound juvenile and embarrassing, coming from a man in his mid 50’s (Morrissey is 54 as of Autobiography’s publication).

This is decisively not an autobiography. It is Morrissey churning words for 500 pages about whichever topics he would like to address; the reader’s interests remain a distracting sidenote. There is almost nothing for instance on the actual process of creating his immortal songs, or of the reasons for the breakup of the Smiths, or anything substantial on his social and political opinions.

Despite his famous “outspokenness” he is unusually reticent on most things that fans would wish to know about. He has a complete inability to put himself or the events in his life in perspective. Does he genuinely believe that even the most die-hard fan cares about the fact that the Smiths name was obscured by the artwork (this, predictably made him feel like he wanted to die)?

There is much introspection, but a complete inability to be self-deprecating. Morrissey was a bitter, angry young genius. Now that he is near 54, he is simply a bitter, angry old man.

Autobiography is published by Penguin Classics and is available here.

Review: Actors’ Anonymous by James Franco

William Pimlott
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Review: Actors’ Anonymous by James Franco

Kingsley amis stopped reading his son’s chef d’oeuvre Money when the character Martin Amis appeared. If that is how you react towards unconventional narrator/author relationships in novels, then James Franco’s debut novel Actors’ Anonymous might not be for you.

Luckily for reviewers, Franco uses a professor character in the book to voice criticisms of Franco’s own technique: “Stop writing. You don’t have the facility for it. You have the love, but not the skill. As I have said, innumerable times, you throw in a lot of flash, to hide a lack of substance. I think this comes from your deep fear that readers won’t accept you as an actor and a writer.” If this seems witty and self-aware, his use of (valuable) pages of his debut novel to defend himself about the time he was caught sleeping in a lecture seems less so. For those interested 1) It was an optional lecture in the evening and 2) he is a busy man.

James franco’s dubious claim that the book is indeed a novel, supported by the subtitle, “A Novel”, takes shape in two ways. One of these is a schematic where each chapter is meant to illustrate a different stage of an invented actors anonymous therapy program. Franco has fun here and some stages are indeed quite amusing.

The other technique, where characters and narrators overlap across the mostly unconnected short stories, is where his “craft” presumably comes in. Other avant-garde “novels” have had less cohesion, but then they didn’t follow on a collection of short stories. Franco does, however, hone in several disconnected chapters his own unique style, where he writes sentence after sentence of half aphorisms or lone nouns with paragraph breaks between them. No need to quote too liberally but “Facebook. I think it’s nice to have a mix of everything. Some critical writing is better than fiction. Most critical writing is better than fiction. Twitter. Google. Instagram.”, with each line being part of a separate paragraph, is a representative example.

The novel’s plot is fleshed out with the description of several actors and their unfulfilling lives, often spiced with tales of semi-autobiographical love affairs. At one point there is a (fictional?) text message conversation between him and a fan/lover. There is also a series of excruciating poems which Franco addresses to River Phoenix. In the last poem “James, it’s River”, River Phoenix (as interpreted by the poet James Franco) writes a poem back. He’s aware that most of this is trite and embarrassing, which at first seems to justify it. But we call most people who are aware that they are doing something badly, and keep doing it badly nonetheless, stupid. And the self-reflection doesn’t quite mask or distract from the crap see-through characters (real as they may well be) nor the lack of anything that would make this an artwork like those he so often takes time out to praise.

 
Franco ends up being less the ironic actor who dressed as Justin Bieber and danced with Ashley Benson to Selena Gomez’s “Love you like a love song”, clearly having a joke at our expense, and reveals himself to in fact be the embarrassingly earnest grad who praises his hero Salinger in Vice.
 
Actors’ Anonymous is published by Faber and Faber and (if you really want to spend money on 304 pages of cringingly terrible fiction) is available here. 

 

Interview: Albert Alla

Adam Whiley
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Interview: Albert Alla

Debut novelists are rarely this well-travelled. Albert Alla, who has just published his first novel Black Chalk, has lived everywhere from St Tropez to Sydney, England to France, finally settling on the Pacific Island of New Caledonia.

Yet it’s Oxford that provides the setting for his first book. Following in the footsteps of Jennifer Brown’s Hate List, Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes, and Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, the story centres on Nate, a 17-year-old who finds that his friend has committed a school shooting. The focus, however, is less on the perpetator than on the effects of the killing on Nate. I ask Alla why he chose to concentrate on the character of the friend, and not the shooter.

He tells me that a teenage shooter is relatively unintresting. “What you have with a shooter is someone who is highly bullied, and the way you would make such a book interesting is by taking an anti-moral stance; you would do something like American Psycho. To make that work you would have to aim for sympathy or empathy towards horror. In books like Ameri- can Psycho, or certain TV shows, there is an anti-hero glamour that I didn’t want. Shows like Dexter or The Wire have some horrible characters, and we develop a lot of sympathy for these characters, even though their actions are des- picable.”

Instead, Black Chalk is a book about moral ambivalence. Alla tells me that this has been a lifelong obsession. “When we were growing up, and watching a movie, my father would say ‘The contrasts are tuned in too strongly’. The standard American movie has a baddie and goodie. This concept was something that was always looked on distastefully in my household. We looked for something greyer.”

But, I argue, Dexter or The Wire are centred in moral ambivalence. You want to reject those characters’ actions, and yet you’re still interested. Alla disagrees.

“The actions in those shows are still clearly wrong. Moral ambivalence exists there because the author is willing to let you understand the characters. It’s important to understand how someone sees themselves. But it is still not morally ambivalent.” In his book, Nate must remain friends with everyone, including both the victims and perpetrator of the shooting, and there is an uneasy sense of complicity in that friendship.

For someone who has evidently had such a global existence, from writing in Paris to ‘running a small telecommunications firm on an island of two thousand people and twice as many pigs’, it is interesting that he chose Oxford as the setting for his story. Alla studied here as an undergraduate and tells me, “It’s a place that grips you and it takes time before it lets go. When I wrote the book I was still in its grip. I’m not anymore, and it’s strange – when I come back I feel like a stranger.” (The TSK where we meet, for example, was, according to Alla, formerly a QI themed cafe. The more you know.) Though he started off doing Engineering and soon switched to Economics, the only thing he enjoyed was writing. “Most teenage books are really bad, and we try to hide them. But I sweated so much over it that after Oxford, there wasn’t much else I was good at. The only thing I had was writing.”

Alla is currently based in New Caledonia, another island in the Pacific, and the setting for his next book. “It’s a captivating place because it went through an independence struggle but stayed part of France simply because there was a majority of people that wanted to remain. But this was on the wave of massive decolonisation. So now it has 40 per cent who are Caracs and favour independence, 40 per cent of Europeans who are mainly against, and the remainder who are Pacific islanders who are against inde- pendence, fearing that if that happened they would get kicked out. The place is fascinating and the dynamics are fascinating. It’s the sort of place you would imagine Graham Greene setting a novel.”

Before we meet, Alla’s publicist sent me the press release for his novel, which emphasises that its themes are ‘current’. Alla isn’t sure about this description. “When does a book about a shooting become relevant? School shootings are relevant, but so are many things. But we haven’t yet become numb about them. What’s interesting about school shootings is that, in our lives, we’ve seen them become a social phenomenon. You can be certain that angry kids are considering it as we speak. But so many things are ‘current’ – to be current is to be cheap.”

Black Chalk is published by Garne Publishing and available here. 

Interview: Jim Crace

Emma Hewitt
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Interview: Jim Crace

Jim Crace’s hypnotic prose and passionately gentle political agenda has fascinated me ever since I read The Pesthouse – a vivid tale of post-apocalyptic America – when I was thirteen, and went to hear him speak afterwards at a book-signing, where I plucked up all my courage to stutter out a slightly nonsensical question.

He made my day by dedicating my copy of the novel to the girl with ‘the smartest question in Cambridge’ – I hope I don’t disappoint him six years down the line. 

 ‘It was June 1963, I was seventeen, and I guessed correctly I’d done badly in my A levels. I reckoned I could be like Jack Kerouac.’ Crace is explaining how he ended up taking what we students might nowadays call a ‘gap year’.

‘I’d wear a lumberjack shirt, smoke a lot of dope, knock out three weeks of “continuous bop prosody” and become a famous novelist before the summer was over. It didn’t happen.’ Instead, Crace returned to England, where he studied English Literature in Birmingham and ‘loved it.’

But the best-selling novels, Whitbread Awards and Man Booker shortlists were still many years away. Jim Crace has always been a stalwart socialist, and wanted to shake up the status quo. He worked for the VSO (Voluntary Services Overseas) in Sudan and became a freelance journalist which he counts as ‘more important than fiction’. I ask him to explain.

‘When I spot people reading one of my novels, I can pretty accurately predict how they vote, what newspaper they read and how they feel about red meat. They are all versions of me. So what’s the point of preaching to them? They’re already on my side. But when I was a journalist, my articles would be seen by more than a million people every Sunday. Few of them were clones of me. Good journalism can make converts.’ So what should a young activist do to make a difference? ‘Take to the streets and not to the word processor… I want that to be true even if it isn’t.’

Journalism was also ‘a lot more fun – it dangled me from a helicopter over the Atlantic; it took me running with Daley Thompson; it lost me in the desert several times; it put me in the Ritz with a Bond Girl; it had me tip-toeing through land-mines in remote Cambodia… Plus, it taught me how to make every word count.’

There would have to be a really good reason to quit, and there was – a sinister dispute with the Sunday Times. ‘In 1986 I had a long story spiked for what the gossip columns called “quasi-political reasons” by the then-editor. It concerned the Broadwater Farm riots where PC Blakelock had been murdered the year before. I dug up some uncomfortable details about any number of prejudices.

My discoveries were subsequently vindicated – but too late to save the article (and too late to block the prejudices of the editor). As it happens, the spiking coincided with the sale in America of my first book, Continent. I could afford to be principled, so I left journalism.’

 Crace’s novels retain his political convictions, albeit tacitly. Take his second book, The Gift of Stones, a political allegory for Thatcherite Britain but set in the Stone Age. I wonder if Crace’s latest novel, Harvest (shortlisted for the Man Booker and currently up for the Goldsmiths Award), is political too?

‘Yes, but subtly, hesitantly, furtively so. The message of the book is all smoke and mirrors. It’s not a placard or a slogan or a leaflet, though its subject matters – dispossession, xenophobia – would readily lead themselves to some sloganeering.’

 The riveting novel revolves around an isolated village of farmers in medieval England, forced from their land to make way for sheep. The protagonist of Harvest shares Crace’s fascination with nature – I wonder if he is similar to him in any other ways.

‘None of the characters in my novels are self-portraits. My narrator, Walter Thirsk, is an uneducated man with great sensibilities and an ability to express himself well. Critics have said such a man could not display such narrative gifts. These are the same people who say a glove maker’s son from Stratford-upon-Avon with “small Latin and less Greek” could not have written the Shakespeare plays. It’s a class judgement and it’s snobbery. I used Walter to contest that attitude.’

I ask if Crace thinks Oxford should do more to contest the state/private school imbalance. ‘Personally, I’d like every fee-paying and selective school in the country to close because no-one any longer saw any benefit in them.’ Crace was opposed to the Man Booker opening its doors to American novelists, worrying the prize would lose its Commonwealth ‘focus’. So is an institution like Oxford valuable in upholding British tradition, or archaic?

‘Oxford University is certainly archaic. The past is replayed there every day. Traditions are rehearsed and upheld. But ruling class traditions aren’t the only ones in Britain. Ask yourself the question, is an institution like Oxford University valuable in upholding immigrant tradition, or working class tradition, or Northern tradition, or Socialist tradition, or (add to the list yourself) tradition – and the answer is clearly No. That is not a condemnation of OU (or not entirely); it is merely what you see reflected if you hold up a mirror to the place.’

My final question to Crace is why he has decided Harvest will be his last novel. His answer is typical of the man who has made time to be interviewed by a persistent fresher during the drama of two major award nominations: ‘Because I’d like to be more useful – for a while, at least.’

Harvest is published by Picador and is available here. 

"Sexist embarrassment" condemned

India Miller
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"Sexist embarrassment" condemned

A drinking society at St Hugh’s has offered its “most sincere apologies” for invitations it sent out inviting students to a ‘fox hunt’, which had been due to take place this evening. The letter of apology from the Black Cygnets was emailed to the JCR mailing list and addressed to Dame Angiolini, Principal of St Hugh’s College, and college students. It said that the event “will not take place this year or ever again.”

The letter was sent following an emergency JCR meeting at the college on Wednesday evening in which a motion pertaining to the condemnation of the Black Cygnets was passed by a significant show of hands. The motion mandated the JCR to issue “a formal statement of dissociation from, and condemnation of, the Black Cygnets.”

Invitations to the fox hunt were pidged to selected students earlier this week. Women taking part in even were instructed to “pass the following obstacles”, including a set drink to consume at a number of different pubs, with “huntsmen in pursuit”, in order to “evade mauling”, according to the invite.

The letter of apology acknowledged the negative reaction to the invitations by many students at the college and across the University. It stated, “Whilst the theme of the event and the language used in the invitations was clearly in poor taste and could reasonably be interpreted as aggressive, sexually or otherwise, this was not at all reflective either of the intentions of anyone involved or the actual tone of the event itself. The event was wholeheartedly intended to be humorous for all involved and not as a trivialisation of women.”

The letter continued, “Given the grave offense and disgust this year’s fox hunt invitations have caused and in recognition of the role such an event could be seen to play, though unintentionally, in the perpetuation of male privilege, rape culture and hetero-normativity, we have decided to cancel this year’s event and bring an end to this misguided tradition permanently.”

The writers of the letter also alleged, “The rendering of the event, both by the JCR and the student press, presents it as being far more sinister than it is in reality. Although conventionally the two groups in the pub crawl have generally complied with gender division, this is not enforced at the event itself, with male members of the society having run as foxes in previous years and vice versa.

“Additionally, the non-members invited are equally spread across both gender and year group, not selected from amongst first year women. Furthermore the invitation process involves consultation with our friends of both genders, and guests are invited according to whether they would enjoy the pub crawl and not on the basis of sexual attractiveness.”

A statement from the JCR said, “The JCR condemns the Black Cygnets and disassociates itself entirely from this society and its actions. The JCR supports the enquiries of St Hugh’s College to render effective the ban on the Black Cygnets and will support any JCR member who wishes to assist this process in their personal capacity.”

Carenza Harvey, the fresher who proposed the JCR motion, told Cherwell, “I definitely think that similar societies have been allowed to exist and get away with their actions for too long. It is appalling that this sort of behaviour can still take place in a university which is supposed to be a centre of learning and progression – it is this sort of conduct which perpetuates the negative stereotypes already surrounding Oxford.”

A university-wide initiative across JCRs has been proposed by some to tackle the unacceptable sexism present in some of these societies. Some JCR presidents contacted by Cherwell said that their colleges were absent of such societies. Navjeev Singh, President of St Peter’s JCR, said, “St Peter’s prides itself on being inclusive and welcoming. There is absolutely no space for misogyny in this college.” He added, “JCR presidents have been speaking to each other to pool ideas to ensure that these things are eliminated. It should not be an inevitable part of life in Oxford.”

Others emphasised the importance of the role in JCRs in abolishing unacceptable conduct at drinking events. Magdalen JCR President Amelia Ross told Cherwell, “It’s really great to see the JCR coming together to condemn the group. It’s through decisive collective action that demonstrates that these societies, and their behaviour, are seen as unacceptable by a large majority that eventually they will dwindle and disappear.”

However, mixed views were expressed on the possibility of action by OUSU to try to eliminate misogynist drinking events. Jane Cahill, one of the candidates for the OUSU presidency, was doubtful about whether the student union should intervene. She said, “These things aren’t inevitable and students shouldn’t have to put up with it. However, I don’t think the student union should be intervening in cases regarding JCRs and colleges… àJCR Presidents should work together on strategies to tackle these problems, but ultimately it is the colleges who are responsible for the actions of their students and should be disciplining people involved where necessary.”

Sarah Pine, OUSU Vice President for Women, said, “I’m sure the decision to condemn the society was a simple one. Reports of preying on young women, using language of hunting around sex, and rating women through oppressive standards of beauty is oppressive. Some of this behaviour feeds into sexual violence – women’s choices don’t fit into a framework of being ‘caught’ by men.”

She added, “We all have the capacity to act in ways that challenge misogyny. There are OUSU initiatives on sexual violence. We encourage a healthy understanding of sexual consent through the sexual consent discussion groups, which any common room can request.”

OUSU candidates in website controversy

Joe Iles
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OUSU candidates in website controversy

The OUSU presidential election had a turbulent first week with all three main contenders involved in website controversy.

After Reclaim OUSU came under fire for an unfortunate website gaffe last week, with Nathan Akehurst’s page telling viewers that “Nathan sucks really bad”, Jane4Change has been accused of “stealing” from the website of design company Mixd. The Jane4Change website has since been taken down.

The remarkable similarity of the two sites prompted Mike Danford, the creative director of Mixd, to claim that Jane4Change had “stolen” from their website and that Will Neaverson, who designed the website, “shouldn’t have done it”. He also commented that some of the Jane4Change website was still drawing on the hosting resources of the original design, consuming some of their bandwidth.

Danford stressed that the code had been carefully adapted in a process that obviously required some skill.

Jane Cahill was quick to distance herself from the process of the website design, commenting to Cherwell, “Our team were not aware of the technicalities of website, we didn’t have a huge number of resources to put together a sophisticated software for this election. The website editor has apologised to the company involved which is right and we have taken down the design.”

Rival president candidate Alex Bartram, however, felt it cast doubts on the efficacy of Cahill as a potential president commenting, “Jane4Change haven’t been able to put a website up for their campaign on a budget of over £200 without using somebody else’s. How they’ll manage to run a Student Union and get a whole new building with an uncosted plan is entirely unclear.”

Nathan Akehurst was equally dismissive, saying, “It’s surprising that such a carefully planned political machine is capable of such a basic mistake. I would just sincerely like to express my hope their policies are more original than their website and their team name.”

Alex Bartram has also been criticised this week for his use of ‘NationBuilder’, an advanced tool for political campaigns utilised by major political parties for national elections. The tool allows users to accumulate large amounts of data in order to conduct more targeted campaigning, for example by sending specific policies to specific groups of people.

Bartram said that he was excited by using the tool for the campaign, commenting, “We think its capacity for information storage is incredibly useful even for a (relatively) small-scale campaign like the OUSU elections.

What it means is we can match up a huge amount of different people with the specific policies, areas, or interests that we’re addressing, and really target our campaign on the basis of that.”

The other, candidates, however, expressed bewilderment at using such a sophisticated piece of software for a student election.

Jane Cahill of Jane4Change commented, “We find it amusing that a candidate who claims he is not a typical student politician is using an invasive technology which the Labour party uses to stuff people’s inboxes with targeted mailings and to manipulate Facebook newsfeeds.

Firstly, it’s weird to use that in a student union election, and secondly I don’t want to see elections decided by the quality of software over the quality ideas and experience. More broadly, we wouldn’t be comfortably holding as much information on students as it required to, say, target an email on a sports policy, or an academic policy.”

Nathan Akehurst of Reclaim OUSU was also sceptical about the use of the website, commenting “I don’t think using advanced software in a student union election is necessary, and if what I’ve heard about privacy issues is correct then it is worrying. At the end of the day, nothing beats a face to face conversation about what we want out of our union, and that’s what I hope these elections will be won on.”

Bartram, however, was keen to stress that NationBuilder would not allow Team Alex to access any private information from Facebook profiles.

One Wadham student commented on the election that they were “shocked” and “confused” about how “the dark games of politics had transcended into OUSU”.

Languages in decline

Cameron Quinn
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Languages in decline

UK universities are witnessing a startling decline in the number of students studying modern foreign languages, recent government statistics show.

The figures, compiled by UCAS, indicate an overall drop of between 12 and 14 percent in the number of students accepted to study modern foreign languages at British universities between the 2011 and 2012 admissions cycles.

The marked drop in language students coincides with an overall decline of 210,670 in the total number of students applying to university, attributed by many to the implementation of the government’s new tuition fee regime, which saw fees nearly triple in many cases from £3,290 to £9,000 per year. But the overall drop in applicants represents a change of only 7.4%, as compared with a 13.4% drop in language applicants.

The latest figures illustrate the continuation of a long-standing trend. Decreasing demand for language courses has led many universities to reduce the range of languages they teach, or to shutter their language departments entirely: last month, the Guardian reported that between 1998 and 2013, the number of universities offering single honours language degrees dropped from 93 to 56 – a change of 40%.

Prof. Katrin Kohl, fellow in German at Jesus College and a founder of the Oxford German Network, explained why modern language courses in the UK are particularly vulnerable: “Wherever English is spoken as a native language, there is a certain problem of motivation for students when it comes to foreign languages. English is now a global lingua franca, and most English speakers can get by quite happily in other countries just speaking English. Students don’t see why studying other languages might be useful.”

Institutional pressures may also be having an effect on students’ decisions not to pursue languages. In 2004, the Blair government abolished the requirement that all pupils study at least one foreign language to GCSE level, which meant fewer pupils chose to pursue languages to A-level.

Yet even those students who do study languages at A-level can face especial difficulty. “It is well-known that there is a problem of severe grading when it comes to language A-levels,” Kohl said. “The fact is that fewer A*s are awarded in languages than in other subjects.” This disparity can discourage students from pursuing modern languages, which can seen to be risky or overly difficult subject choices.

Oxford itself seems to have escaped the broader trend of decline in demand. The university has not experienced a comparable long-term drop in language applicants, but instead has seen a very minor on-average increase (1.1%) in applications to language courses between 2007 and 2012, despite a 5% drop between 2011 and 2012. This may not be cause for celebration, however. Kohl told the Guardian, “We’re reaching the position where language competence is a privilege of the privately educated elite, and language degrees are restricted to Russell Group Universities.”

This is troubling, she says, because studying languages confers important personal and social benefits: “learning another language is intellectually enjoyable, but it also gives us first-hand awareness of cultural diversity, enhances our ability to use language more generally, and benefits us cognitively in particular ways, in the same way studying music or maths does.”

Anna Berger, a first-year French and Philosophy student at Magdalen, echoed these sentiments, saying she chose to study French because it offers “an alternative way to see the world.” Not only that, studying a language allows one to explore a breadth of different topics: “In languages you try to have an overview on one culture, so [you] have the possibility to work interdisciplinarily.” This gives direct access to “the best ingredients to a humanistic world view: literature, art, history, philosophy,” Berger said.

Kohl suggested a number of possible ways to increase interest in language study. She underlined that the problem of severe grading ought to be addressed immediately, and that “dull” school syllabi should be “revisited”. She also suggested that the government should proactively support and invest in language teaching, which can be especially expensive, both at school and university levels. Through the Oxford German Network, Kohl seeks to promote interest in German language and culture in the local community by establishing links between the University and local schools, organisations, and businesses.

Kebab van owner Ali becomes JCR honorary member

Emma Cookson
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Kebab van owner Ali becomes JCR honorary member

In a motion passed last week, Ali, owner of the kebab van opposite St Anne’s, has been made the second honorary member of their JCR. Following in Cher’s footsteps, Ali has now been welcomed into the bosom of the St Anne’s community.

The motion, proposed by student Jonny Adams, argued that Ali’s is an essential part of St Anne’s late-night culture and that the JCR should support Ali in his honourable mission to provide St Anne’s students with high quality grub.

Mr Adams went on to say that Ali is a “beacon of all of St Anne’s values: equality, inclusivity, and greasy kebab meat. Ali would never judge you, no matter how incapacitated you are, and that’s why we all feel he’s a part of our JCR. Last week we appointed Cher as our first honorary member, and I think that everyone wanted an honorary member a little closer to our homes, and our hearts.”

Ali was overjoyed by the news, although slightly distracted due to a night-time rush of inebriated students. Once convinced that it did not mean he would have to become a student and study at St Anne’s, he did express his delight in his honorary membership status: “I am very happy and feel included. It is good that they like my food. We have a lot of students coming here.”

Serving out quality nosh for over twenty five years, Ali’s certainly is a Woodstock Road institution. As St Anne’s ex-JCR President Oscar Boyd declared, “Ali is like the best parent a student could ever ask for, providing delicious food at any hour of night and offering words of advice that few would ever ignore. Apparently he’s one miracle from being canonised but we felt he needed to be honoured for all the great work he’s done already. “

The general St Anne’s consensus does seem to be overwhelmingly pro-Ali, with one second year stating,“I bloody love Ali’s. It’s the absolute highlight of my night”.

Wadham tortoise survives fire

Megan Gibbons
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Wadham tortoise survives fire

Wadham’s tortoise was caught in a blaze on Monday  after a lamp which was left on overnight to keep him warm started a fire in his enclosure.

The beloved tortoise, Archibald Manshella, who is still in his first year at Wadham, escaped unscathed after four fire engines were called out to attend the scene.

Wadham’s tortoise officer, Joseph Williamson, explained how the tortoise survived the blaze. He told Cherwell, “The UV heat lamp got too close to the wooden side of the tortoise’s enclosure and it caused a very small fire. The vivarium that the tortoise lives in is large in size and so he simply snuggled up on the other side, well away from the fire. The UV lamp caused an area of burning around 10cm in diameter.”

He noted that Archibald has recovered well from the incident. He said, “The tortoise is absolutely fine, if anything his encounter has made him more active and excitable than ever and he was promptly eating a nice bit of watercress minutes after he was taken out of the enclosure.”

He added, “No person or tortoise was hurt in this incident and the response of both the college members, staff and fire department was rapid and efficient. I would personally like to thank the Oxford Fire Department particularly for their help in the incident.”

Williamson also said, “There won’t be any formal sanctions for this incident, as far as I know, due to its accidental nature. I and the SU President, Anya Metzer, are now working with the college to make sure this doesn’t happen again and how to maximise the welfare of the tortoise in the future.”

SU president, Anya Metzer, assured that plans are being made to ensure Archibald’s future safety: “I have met with the Senior Tutor and the Tortoise Officer to discuss the incident and future course of action.

“The Tortoise Officer is looking into ordering a fire-proof vivarium but since hibernation time is nearing the tortoise will soon be moving into a fridge, which is where they are left to hibernate.”

She commented that Archibald is an important member of the JCR because, “in the event of a tied vote in the SU the tortoise gets the deciding vote. The tortoise always votes in favour of the motion due to its ‘radical desire for change’.

“Everyone is very thankful that the tortoise is OK as his welfare is paramount and he is much loved in the SU.”

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