Sunday’s Magdalen JCR meeting saw the decision taken both to spend £2,500 on a garden party at Magdalen, and the failure of a motion to buy an alpaca as a “means of relaxation.”

The decision to spend £2,500 on a garden party at Magdalen, passed unanimously but was later hailed as “excessive.”

The party, to be held on 1st June, follows last year’s Diamond Jubilee Garden Party, described in the motion for this year’s event, as “a stonking success.” However last year the Diamond Jubilee Garden Party’s organiser, Hamish Hunter told Cherwell that “the rarity of the event” was why it was “generally thought that it was worth celebrating the landmark in style. There was recognition that the Diamond Jubilee was a very special event and the Magdalen JCR should join the national and college celebrations.”

This year the budget has been raised by £300 to £2,500 in order to try and “allow all members of the college to enjoy the highest quality garden party in Oxford at minimal battel costs.”

Magdalen fresher Jack Barber commented, “The party will provide a good opportunity for students of all years to come together and have a good time.”
However, Elisabeth Brierley, a Magdalen student said, “Although the garden party is a good idea, especially as Magdalen isn’t having a ball, spending £2,500 seems a bit excessive. Surely, they could spend half the money on the garden party and spend the other half on a more worthy cause, like a hardship fund.”

In the same meeting a motion to buy an alpaca failed when concerns were raised about the real amiability of these animals.

The motion noted that “many members of the JCR would appreciate having an animal to pet or generally spend time with as a means of relaxation.”
Eden Bailey, the proposer, commented on the failure of the motion, “Some members of the JCR had personal experience with alpacas which was not as positive as my research had suggested so I am not entirely gutted (like a fish) that the motion did not pass… I hope that [Magdalen JCR members] were not fabricating information in order to foil my humble attempt to support student well-being.”

She further said, “I fully intend to continue my quest to improve welfare of students through nature but my next attempt at doing so will be even more heavily supported by research. There is hope yet. Perhaps in the form of terrapins.”

A gender segregated talk on Monday caused concern among Oxford students.

The talk, entitled ‘Quran and Sunnah: The Final Revelation’ was held at the City Council-owned Asian Cultural centre. A poster circulated online read “Men and Women welcome – Fully Segregated”.

The talk was advertised online by the Interesting Talks in Oxford Facebook page. However, the advert caused concern among visitors to the Facebook group because of the  planned gender segregation of the event. Subsequently, the original poster withdrew the advert from the Facebook page. 

The Interesting Talks Oxford website is run by eight volunteers, six of whom are Oxford students. An ITO spokesperson said, “ITO does not condone or condemn the talks it lists on its website and calendar, but recognises that the content or arrangements of some talks may cause upset. We feel that it is important that all talks are listed so long as the information they provide is accurate and clear.”

DaruTawheed, a group which organises lectures and prayer groups for the Muslim community in Oxford, arranged the talk. A DaruTawheed spokesperson told Cherwell “The majority of our attendees feel that it is necessary to segregate between sexes because mixing between men and women is prohibited by Islamic legislation…due to our religious beliefs we won’t be able to offer this or offer partial segregation either.”

Earlier this year, a UCL society caused controversy by enforcing gender segregation during an “Islam or Atheism” debate. The Islamic group was subsequently banned by UCL’s governing body.

DaruTawheed is not a university-affiliated group, and the event did not take place on university premises.

Chiara Giovanni, a Magdalen student, commented, “I think it’s appropriate if everyone attending is absolutely fine with it, but I think as it’s not a prayer meeting but a seminar, full segregation is unnecessary.”

“Another key factor is how the segregation was enforced: side by side is fine, but relegating women to the back smacks very strongly of a gender hierarchy. As this is a rather niche event, I doubt the segregation will cause any problems and whether or not such division should be a factor of a social event at all is another question entirely”.

At Jesus College there have been complaints over the number of posters for Labour, during last week’s local election campaign. Students alleged that the poster dwarfed those of any other political party, and they were later removed.

During last year’s local council elections the local Labour candidate was invited into Jesus College to canvass votes room to room, a fact which “certainly annoyed a lot of people”, according to JCR President Andrew Rogers.

Rogers told Cherwell, “The role of the JCR is to be political, without being partisan.

“If you weren’t going to vote, or if you wanted to vote for someone else, you don’t want to think that your JCR is entirely pro-Labour.”

It was eventually agreed by the JCR committee that an equal number of posters, and a full list of candidates should be placed in the JCR and all of the college’s residential buildings.

Images of Jesus College’s conservatory windows, covered in Labour posters, were shared on the Facebook campaign page of University Park’s candidate Joe Ottaway.

New research by Oxford University is trying to demonstrate how the mathematics underpinning Darwinian natural selection can be used to further our knowledge about black holes and the origins of the universe.

The Oxford-based team, which includes evolutionary theorist, Andy Gardner, and theoretical physicist, Joseph Conlon, have been working on a paper which builds on the ‘cosmological natural selection hypothesis’ – a theory first advanced in the 1990s which uses the mechanics of natural selection to explain the apparent ‘fine-tuning’ of the universe’s basic parameters.

Cosmological natural selection proposes that new universes are actually born inside black holes. This means that a ‘multiverse’ of many possible universes could be shaped by a process similar to natural selection so that successive generations of universes evolve to become better at making black holes.

Speaking to Cherwell, lead author Dr Gardner explained the significance of the
research: “The Standard Model of physics has 30 parameters, and the values of these parameters seem to be entirely arbitrary, but cosmologists have suggested that if they were even slightly different then the universe would not be able to support life.”

“For example, if the cosmological constant was very slightly higher or lower, then the universe would either have very quickly collapsed in on itself or else very quickly undergone a heat death, before stars and galaxies had a chance to form. Cosmological natural selection leads to the idea of the universe being adapted to produce black holes, and in order to have black holes you need stars, so that is one possible explanation for the apparent fine-tuning.”

The paper itself proposes that Price’s theorem – a basic equation from the science of evolutionary genetics – can capture the process of cosmological natural selection and explain how the universe seems ‘designed’ for the purpose of making black holes in the same way that a fish can appear ‘designed’ to swim or a bird can appear ‘designed’ to fly.

Speaking about his motivation for conducting the research, Dr Gardner said: “I’m an evolutionary biologist, and I’m interested in the fundamentals of how selection gives rise to adaptive design, so it was interesting to explore how the logic of Darwinism plays out in a non-biological medium. The idea that cosmological natural selection has led to the universe being designed to produce black holes had not previously been expressed in a way that evolutionary biologists would consider mathematically proper, and so this is
what the paper is doing.”

One second-year Hertford physicist commented on the research, saying
that: “Cosmological natural selection is a highly speculative topic.” Adding that: “Still, we should always be open about which avenues of investigation we decide to pursue. Some of our greatest discoveries in physics were only made after pushing a concept to its logical extreme.”

A report of the research is due to be published in the online journal Complexity
later this year.

A fire broke out in a student’s room at Worcester College early last Saturday, 4 May, causing extensive damage to the room and forcing the evacuation of the building for 90 minutes. 

The incident took place at 7.30 in the morning in the Ruskin building. A second  year student, who wishes to remain anonymous, was using her hairdryer when it caught fire. In panic, she dropped the flaming hairdryer onto her bed, which then also caught fire.  

Students from the Ruskin building were evacuated for 90 minutes. Upon their return, a pervasive smell of smoke is said to have lingered. The student’s room where the fire began was “completely soot-coated” and her mattress was reduced to just its springs. No other rooms suffered damage.

It remains unclear when, or if, the student will be able to move back into her room this term, and how much of her possessions are recoverable.  

While most students evacuated Ruskin quickly, one student took five minutes to emerge “in a dressing gown reading a book” assumedly thinking that it was a false alarm. He was subsequently told off by the porters. 

The Ruskin building is one of Worcester‘s newer accommodation blocks, having been built in 2007.  

Worcester College did not respond to requests for comment. 

An attempt to repeal Wadham’s recent “zero tolerance” motion concerning sexual harassment failed in the Wadham Student Union. Proposed by Luke Buckley and seconded by Charlotte Goodman, the new motion failed by 51 votes to 38.

The original motion encourages the Wadham SU to “To implement a Zero Tolerance policy for all bops, Wadstock and Queerfest.” The policy will entail suspected perpetrators of sexual harassment or assault being immediately ejected from the premises by security staff. In addition to this, a record will be kept of any alleged perpetrator who has been ejected and this will then be sent to college harassment officers.

The motion also specified that the “Zero Tolerance” policy must be advertised at the events and in relevant handbooks. The policy stated that “ignorance of this policy will not be considered a valid defence” and “there are no exceptions to these rules.” This initial motion passed with approximately two thirds of the student vote.

Speaking out against this policy, Luke Buckley proposed a motion to revoke the previously implemented “Zero Tolerance” policy on sexual harassment. His new motion noted that “sexual harassment is a complex and endemic problem” and that “no-one should have to suffer sexual harassment”.

However, it also argued that “the stigma, shame and humiliation associated with a wrongful accusation would be seriously damaging to the psychological, emotional and social wellbeing of the wrongfully accused” and “would be impossible to avoid given the nature of forceful removal.” The motion added, “even if an accusation was publically…revoked, shit sticks.”

Had it passed, Buckley’s motion would have mandated the SU to “open up a period of consultation to review the efficacy of college policy.” This consultation would include the college sexual harassment officers, the SU women’s officers, the welfare officers, the SU president, and any other interested parties. In addition, the motion would have mandated the SU to “consider running a student-led and discussion based sexual harassment workshop at least once a year.”

Buckley, a DPhil student in Criminology, said his research concerns “the tragic failure of zero-tolerance policies and the transnational movement of left-wing resistance that has met them around the globe. Empirical studies…find almost unanimously that the combative, exclusionary and punitive nature of zero tolerance policies often exacerbate the very problems which it was intended to alleviate. My point is…that these policies will make the situation worse, rather than better.” 

Buckley told Cherwell, “We have a conscientious student body that want to make the college environment safe and enjoyable for everyone. That is an honourable intention. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I think it sends out the wrong message completely. For a start, by having this policy, it almost suggests that we haven’t been able to work through this problem by dialogue and discussion.”

He said the policy would make people feel “nervous or unsure about what constitutes an “unwanted’ advance or not.

“By immediately excluding people no matter what the circumstances you breed a culture of resentment and recrimination.”

Buckley also claimed that the vote was “hijacked” by a group of Wadham feminists who used Facebook as a means of galvanising support for the original motion. Several feminist groups have recently been founded in colleges, including the “Raising Consciousness” group at Magdalen, and the “St Anne’s Feminist Discussion Group”.

Sarah Pine and Maeve Scullion originally proposed the “Zero-Tolerance” Motion on 21^st April.

Scullion told Cherwell, “Since the motion was passed (back in 1st Week), members of the SU have been working with the College – including the Warden, Sir Ken Macdonald QC – to rewrite the motion so that the policy will be workable practically and contain no terminology that can be misconstrued.”

Pine stated, “The motion came from recognising the extremely high levels of sexual assault and harassment. This isn’t an Oxford-specific problem, but it affects students here as much as it does anyone else. Zero tolerance is a tool which students can use to tackle harassment and assault. OUSU consent workshops, information campaigns and feminist organising play the role of awareness raising instead.”

Jack Kelleher, a student at Wadham, spoke in favour of Buckley’s motion and the revocation of the initial “Zero-Tolerance” Motion. He said, “There was a general misunderstanding at the meeting of what a zero-tolerance policy actually is…A zero-tolerance attitude, which of course we should maintain towards sexual or any other form of harassment, is not the same thing as a zero-tolerance policy.

“The name masks what is actually a policy denying the accused the right to defend themselves. Such a policy is anti-democratic, authoritarian and, as it transpires, illegal.”

He continued, “It is far more damaging for an institution which identifies with the left wing to impose an authoritarian measure like the zero-tolerance policy than it is to repeal such a measure. We would be cast as immature, reactionary and tribalistic young know-it-alls without any sort of grasp on the complexities of such a deeply sensitive and important issue, and this would not be a fair reflection of the college at all.”