Student parents have criticised Oxford University for failing to provide enough nursery places and childcare support. Oxford’s provision of financial support for student parents ranks well behind several other UK universities, where student unions frequently provide their own financial backing. Queen’s University, Belfast pays 80% of the childcare costs of its students while Keele University pays 85% of the childcare costs of its student parents, charging them only £72 a month. Oxford University nurseries charge students who manage to obtain a place on the system a total of £580 a month.
Student parents have criticised University nurseries for not being flexible to accommodating their academic timetables. Parents who want to leave their children in nursery care also face waiting lists of up to twenty-four months.The University has three nurseries of its own, providing a combined total of 161 places, as well as 58 subsidized places in private nurseries. Currently, there are 285 children waiting to receive places at these facilities and there is a typical waiting period of between one and two years. Childcare provision and support varies dramatically from college to college. 23 colleges that contributed to the building of two of these University nurseries are also given the right to place one student or staff member on a ‘priority list’. Another four colleges are privileged enough to have their own College nurseries, containing ten to 30 places each, which are cheaper alternatives to the University childcare centres. However Somerville, St Anne’s, Balliol, and Wolfson’s nurseries give priority to their College’s own staff and members, and their facilities have been criticised for poor standards of service. Kerri Hamberg, a D. Phil student with a child at Somerville’s college nursery told Cherwell that the college nursery was not as good as private nurseries outside of the city centre. “The nursery is small and oversubscribed, has limited hours (9 to 5, which makes working a full day at an office impossible), and the cost is quite high given my earning potential here. Some of the city centre nurseries I’ve visited recently are also not up to scratch; all the adequate childcare centres appear to be beyond the ring road in the villages around the city.” OUSU has said that it lacks representation on the University committee responsible for allocating funding to different schemes. Hannah Roe, OUSU Vice-President for Women, said, “OUSU VP (Women) has the responsibility of supporting student parents and representing their views to the University. However, it’s hard to address these issues at the University level, especially when OUSU doesn’t even have student representation on the Planning Resources Allocation Committee.” Roe warns that unless the University invests in childcare provision and support, it will lose out to Ivy League universities.  “Oxford needs to realise that it is competing on the international market for graduate students and academics. Currently, it’s losing.” “Oxford can’t continue to live in a world where graduates and academics having childcare responsibilities is a novelty. This isn’t just about a ‘culture’ change. It’s not just about writing some guidelines. Oxford’s greatest academic rivals like M.I.T. and Princeton are outperforming us in childcare, investing serious cash in nurseries and relief funds.”One graduate student said that Oxford had been extremely unhelpful when she faced difficulties, telling her that hardship grants were for “extreme cases of financial hardship” only. Claire Fernandez was reading for a D. Phil when her funding body’s research grant ran out during her maternity leave. When the funding body refused to extend the grant, she turned to the University for help. Fernandez said: “The University Union and Graduate Office provided no relief whatsoever when I contacted them while I was pregnant and they were not interested in providing any useful advice or support. They just referred me to my college.”

Don’t worry, this isn’t a film about clothing. Doug Liman’s fast-paced, action centred style provides some stunning visual effects in this sci-fi thriller. But be warned: watching items of knitwear on screen might provide more chemistry than Hayden Christensen and Rachel Bilson. ‘Jumpers’ are a select group of people with the power of teleportation. When David Rice (Christensen) realises he has this power, he leaves his alcoholic father to lead a new, luxurious life of globetrotting. But his actions soon attract the attention of Roland (Samuel L Jackson), leader of the Paladins, the group that seeks to destroy them. Liman seems to have focused so much on pioneering effects – such as taking the viewer through the process of teleportation with the characters rather than objectively – that he totally forgot about character development. Thus, when the fighting and chase sequences take place, they look great, but the stakes are simply not built up high enough for you to care who prevails. And at the time when the action slows and the film relies solely on human interactions, the story line is deplorably predictable and the scenes boring. The drunken father, the childhood romance, the school bully; these are the terribly clichéd characters that the story is told through that are simply lifted from countless other indistinguishable movies. Samuel L Jackson may as well have been getting some more motherfucking snakes off another motherfucking plane; Christensen could have been carrying a light-sabre throughout – you wouldn’t have noticed. None of the performances carry any panache or originality. Jamie Bell is the saving grace, playing another Jumper. By the time of his appearance, the film is screaming out for the injection of verve he gives it.Sadly, his performance, some really excellent special effects, and wonderful filming locations (like inside the actual Colosseum) are not nearly enough to save this ‘thriller’ from joining the steadily growing stream of mediocrity expelled from Hollywood’s microwave meal industry of producing quick thrills devoid of substance.By Ben Williams

What do you have to do to become a ‘charitable’ Oxford student? Perhaps it’s easier to say what you don’t have to do. You don’t have to have a lot of spare time, climb mountains for breast cancer or make tea and coffee in a hostel. You don’t even have to spend a day in sponsored silence, three-legged agony or waving a bucket at random passers-by. If you happened to have strolled into Merton quad last Friday you would have been witness to the climax of Merton RAG Week: the custard vote. Members of the college voted throughout the week on who they wanted to pour buckets of custard over, the prime contenders being the JCR President, members of her exec, and the Chaplain. The charitable thing to do, of course, was to give money to watch others suffer the fate of cold custard. There is a myth that if we buy the Big Issue (and recycle it after we’ve read it), we have somehow become ‘a better person.’ But at Oxford, it is possible to redefine what it means to be charitable. Charity doesn’t have to be difficult.
We all tend to ignore our dreaded bank statements and, irrespective of our charitable aims and high morals, most of us simply cannot afford to splash out on generous charity donations. You don’t have to have a smoking wallet however, as student charities such as RAG put emphasis on raising as well as giving – an ethos which paid off in £30,000 worth of charitable donations last year alone. A small lifestyle change can also go a long way. Having drunk a bottle of wine before hitting town in order to save on extortionate club drink prices, how many of us shrug our shoulders and walk past the Big Issue seller sitting by the cash point on the way to the Bridge? We tell ourselves that the £1.50 required for a Big Issue could contribute to a well needed pint or some cheesy chips whilst stumbling home. Realistically, if you bought the Big Issue instead of cheesy chips then the world would be a better place; you would both be making a charitable gesture as well as taking small steps to that supermodel waistline. You don’t have to be loaded to donate and have fun; the Entz rep at Merton was sold at a slave auction for the bargain price of two pounds.
It is also true that we aren’t all lucky enough to have six weeks of our summer to give up to volunteering at a hospital in Africa or teaching at an orphanage in India. An occasional afternoon or evening a week for KEEN can nevertheless make a big difference to people’s lives. KEEN recruits student helpers from both Oxford and Oxford Brookes to help out with mentoring and sports coaching for children and young adults with special needs in Oxfordshire, and a session of volunteering is both rewarding and fun.
Even sex can become charitable, with a fair-trade chocolate bar or a novelty RAG condom rose for Valentine’s Day. Speed dating, blind dating, crew dating and that romantic one-on-one with your significant other can all raise money for a good cause: a £5 Rendezvous ticket for Tuesday of sixth week will give you club entrance to Bar Risa and discounts of up to fifty percent off at loads of top Oxford restaurants.
Sixth week of Hilary is Oxford’s RAG week and it provides the opportunity for everyone, even the laziest or poorest among us, to do something good for charity. There are events planned that should appeal to everyone; the fit among us can sprint a few laps of University Parks in the great RAG run. If that sounds too much like hard work, the less energetic could go to a film screening. Saturday night down the pub recycling old jokes could be swapped with a night of laughter at The Big Rag Comedy Night at St John’s. And if none of that appeals, then you could always bear witness to the ritual humiliation of your friends in ‘Mr & Miss Oxford’ at the Union on Wednesday night.
We’ve all heard about ethical shopping – in fact we can’t escape from it. It seems virtually impossible to keep up with which high street chains use slave labour, which banks invest ethically, and which budget supermarket gives their battery chickens the best quality of life. Instead I propose a new concept – Ethical Clubbing. Eclectric at Love Bar on a Thursday donates a third of its profits to RAG charities, so it is possible to get that smug, feel-good charity feeling while drinking yourself into oblivion and throwing some dodgy shapes on a dance floor. Despite your pile of unwritten essays, and the fact that you promised your housemates you’d clean the kitchen, a night on the tiles with your student loan in tow would instantly make you a model citizen.
And if VK ices and sweat isn’t your scene, then the Hands up for Darfur Fashion show in Trinity might be more up your street. The event in first week of Trinity hopes to exceed the staggering £50,000 total raised at last year’s Hands up for Darfur Ball, and looks to be one of Trinity’s hottest social events. Fashionably FAIR is also geared up to set the Oxford catwalk ablaze. Following in the footsteps of last year’s sell out event Fashionably RED, which raised £1500 for Aids and HIV charity Avert, the event in third week of Trinity is promoting and selling fair trade and ethical clothing.
Whilst we can neither escape nor forget Mr Big Issue and his guilt inducing pleas, there are other ways to be a ‘good’ Oxford citizen. You don’t have to be six foot and gorgeous to get involved in a fashion show (always more of a spectator sport); public nudity can become instantly acceptable if you strip off and pose naked in a charity calendar (for the exhibitionists amongst you) and pulling that fit grad student in a charity kiss-o-gram is fun that won’t ruin your reputation on a bogsheet…
The options are endless, so I urge people to get up and get involved. While being charitable can make someone a better person, it doesn’t have to make them boring… and it certainly doesn’t have to make them well behaved.

The first ever Oxford Afro-Caribbean Society Ball has had to be cancelled after lack of cooperation from other universities, leaving it to pick up £3000 worth of costs.The ball, which was scheduled for Saturday of fifth week and was organised in conjunction with Durham, Birmingham and York Universities, was called off following a meeting on Monday. The Oxford society, which has around two hundred members, sold the required seventy tickets for the event, while York managed twenty eight, Durham three and Birmingham only one. Ticket-holders are now to be refunded the forty pound ticket price, leaving the Oxford branch of Afro-Caribbean Society (xACS) to come up with £3,000 towards the cost of the ball and the responsibility for ensuring that the other universities’ societies also pay their share.Ball President Ore Oyeleke, who had been working on plans for the ball for over a year, said, “The initial premise was that we would all sell seventy tickets so that we would have two hundred and eighty people.”“When I came up with the idea I wanted it to be an inter-university ball which just happened to be in Oxford. It would have been annual so next year it would have been held in York and so on.” As Oyeleke was responsible for liaising with the Kassam Stadium and the onus is on xACS to make sure that the other societies pay up.According to Oyeleke, xACS is currently receiving advice from law tutors on the issue. She said, “The emails between the universities count as legal contracts. The only problem we have now with the ACS is that events will have to be more profit-based because we owe someone money, rather than just giving our members loads of stuff.” Members of the society had being looking forward to the ball and, given the late announcement of cancellation, had already bought outfits for the event which was to be held at Kassam Stadium, which has been the venue for the Oxford University Hindu Society’s Michaelmas Term Diwali Ball. In an email she sent to members of the Oxford society, Oyeleke said that she expressed “extreme regret to have to announce that the Homeland Paradise Ball has been cancelled.” Oyeleke said that she hoped that the cancellation would not damage the reputation of Oxford’s Afro-Caribbean Society. She said, “When cancelling became an option, I was worried because as I’d put so much work into it, I thought it would damage my personal reputation. But the fact is that Oxford has the smallest percentage of ethnic minorities whereas Birmingham have maybe double that.” She adds that members have been supportive and understanding of her decision.  Although the xACS is simply a society for the appreciation of African and Caribbean culture, Oyeleke says many people mistakenly think that in order to join you have to be African or Caribbean. Oyeleke said, “At events like our street-dancing, most people who turn out are white or not Afro-Caribbean.”The xACS is now beginning plans for another big event for its leavers in the beginning of Trinity term.

From the start, There Will Be Blood instils expectation. The opening fifteen minutes set a truly epic and remarkable stage: without dialogue, lone oil prospector Daniel Day-Lewis toils ceaselessly in the depths of a forbidding mineshaft against a tense and uneasy orchestral score. It is intense and gripping, and augurs for an ambitious film. Ambition can be a dangerous thing for a filmmaker, and director/ producer Paul Thomas Anderson certainly stakes his intentions from the off – but this is what we have come to expect from the director who brought us Boogie Nights and Magnolia and he does not disappoint. Inspired by Utpon Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil!, There Will Be Blood begins in 1898 and follows the fortunes of oil prospector Daniel Plainview, played by the masterly Day-Lewis. It is a story of dark ambition: the ugly side of the American ideals of independence, entrepreneurship and competition. Its themes are not original. It depicts the terrifying greed of man and the conflict between America’s two masters – pursuit of money and religion – in its 20th century infancy. Yet Anderson has dealt with them deftly. The film is rich with symbolism and powerfully fueled by the deviance of Plainview. Day-Lewis is utterly mesmerising and absorbing in a performance that will assuredly win him his second Oscar. Anderson places him in nearly every shot, and such an intimacy would seem a brave move from the five-times Academy Award nominated filmmaker were it not for the alluring presence and performance of Day-Lewis. He has perfectly captured the disturbing nature of Plainview. It is that of a character whose conscience has long since been consumed by ambition and hate; a desire to dominate his fellow man. Yet for such a disturbing character, Day- Lewis’ charisma and voice are bewitching, delivering an ultimately moving performance. While Day-Lewis is undoubtedly the pivot on which the success of this film turns, Paul Dano provides admirable support as the unnerving preacher Eli Sunday, Plainview’s adversary. Anderson has an audacious eye for the visual. He aptly combines the panoramic with the close-up and his command of colour and imagery is excellent. The destruction of the oil derrick as a sequence is simply enchanting. The menacing score comes courtesy of Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead fame, and is a perfect complement to the dark soul of the film. There Will Be Blood is a film with distinctiveness and grand intentions, but it is also a movie that has not shied away from the edge. Ambition can be a dangerous thing, but for Anderson and Day-Lewis it is this that sets them free to create a thrilling, potent and exceptional film. By Christopher Jackson

Traces of the potentially deadly Legionnaires’ disease have been discovered at St Hugh’s during routine annual testing for the bacterium.Legionnaires’ disease is a form of pneumonia that is carried through the air in fine droplets of water. It has an incubation period of two to ten days and has a fatality rate of between five and ten percent. The disease is particularly dangerous for the elderly.The outbreak at St Hugh’s occurred in the Rachel Tricket Building (RTB) which contains the JCR as well as student accommodation.Mary Kerr, St Hugh’s College Bursar, said that the College had followed expert advice in dealing with the outbreak.She said, “Following advice from the College’s specialist environmental contractor, the water system was immediately treated with chemicals to kill the bacteria.“As an added safeguard the College has installed replacement shower heads with integral legionella filters,” she added.Nikita Malik, JCR Vice-President, said that no students are believed to have caught the virus.
Malik said, “We’ve given lots of warnings about symptoms and how people should respond if they suspect they’re infected.”She said that changing the shower heads has caused disgruntlement among students in the college.She said, “We’ve had lots of complaints people have been irritated by college putting special filters on shower heads to keep out the bacteria.“The water pressure on the second and third floors is practically non-existent.” “College has offered alternative accommodation for people who want better facilities, but the bedrooms they’re offering aren’t en suite,” he added.But Kerr said that there was no animosity between students and the College. She said, “The College has remained in close contact with the JCR Committee and the individual students occupying the affected rooms.“They have fully understood the situation and we are extremely grateful for their co-operation.”

When you are a drug smuggler, looking inconspicuous is a blessing; when you are a restaurant, it is not. Why is it that I have lived in East Oxford since the start of the year, and have only just acknowledged the existence of Door 74? The answer is probably a combination of its darkly painted exterior, modest size, and the fact that I didn’t expect to find a restaurant serving food of this kind, this good, at this price on Cowley Road. However, now Door 74 is firmly on my radar, I’m not letting it escape.

The restaurant itself is a relatively small space, so I was concerned about the degree of privacy we would have. Nothing induces self-consciousness more than entering a restaurant in which the noise level peaks at ‘loud whisper’, and the sound of repositioning your wine glass causes other diners to glance over. Luckily, despite our visit being a mid-week dinner, each chunky wooden table was full (mainly of hip young couples and pairs of women), so the atmosphere felt intimate as opposed to oppressive. The lighting is just right: spotlights, fairy lights and candles, and the table cacti, mosaic-topped bar, dark wooden carved ornaments and chalked-out board menu ensure that the interior looks trendy but feels relaxed. My companion, as if formulating a Door 74 tagline, cringingly remarked, ‘This is the kind of place you can come on a date and be sexy!’ And I’m afraid, embarrassing as it is to admit, he is absolutely right.

The menu, comprising half a dozen starters (around £4 – £6) and seven mains (£8 – £14), ticks all the main buzz-word boxes; ‘organic’, ‘free range’, and ‘local’ all make strategic appearances, and dishes come and go according to what is in season. The red onion tart tatin with mixed leaves (£5.95) set us off to a good start; the pastry was thin, crisp and herb-flecked. The whole king prawns with chilli, garlic, and parsley (£6.25) were also excellent, and the griddled crostini was a welcome touch. My main, a parmesan and herb-crusted chicken breast served with aioli, salad and garlic roast new potatoes (10.95) was the obvious winner, with the aioli (homemade garlic mayonnaise with the slightest hint of saffron) tying the dish together well. Unfortunately, the beef burger with onion marmalade and chunky salad (£7.95), although perfectly cooked, was served in an overly-charred bun, which we thought was a bit of an oversight. Portions were surprisingly generous, but left just enough room for the dark chocolate semifreddo with vanilla ice-cream (£3.95). Our superhuman waiter Jack was attentive, friendly, and accommodating, despite being the only front of house staff member, and I am convinced his presence added to the laid-back ambience.

Door 74 also does weekend brunches from 11-3, plus weekday lunch specials (£5.95 inc. a drink) which they unfortunately don’t advertise. Therefore I am taking it upon myself to spread the word: your radar would be all the more stylish if Door 74 was on it.

Costume is an integral, if not essential, part of any piece of drama – be it stage, film, or serialisation. It would certainly be a shock if actors entered the stage sans costume, that is to say stark naked. In the case of many prestigious actors – Judi Dench, Richard Griffiths, Patrick Stewart – the sensation would be an entirely unwelcome one. Some productions might be fittingly performed without clothes on, however. Pinter’s Birthday Party, for example, would be absurd if the actors performed in their birthday suits.It is taken for granted in most forms of theatre that costume is a part of the illusion of reality on stage used to create suspension of disbelief. It is easy to bring to mind period dramas where every element of costume is painstakingly reproduced to an incredible degree of accuracy. There was even a fad in the nineteenth century called ‘archaeological realism’ in which costumes and sets were historically accurate to the point of having actual functioning war engines on stage during siege scenes. However, this is an extraordinary length to go to in order to establish suspension of disbelief – too far, in fact, were the siege engines to go off accidentally.Consider a school nativity play: a horse costume does not have to look exactly like a horse in order to tell the audience of beaming parents that the character actually is a horse and to capture their attention (however, small children may attempt to authenticate this by urinating on stage). In fact, the real function a costume serves is to tell the audience something about the character wearing it. In some modern theatre, the actors will simply wear neutral, black clothes; they can change character easily, the spectacle of the costume doesn’t detract from the action on stage, and any individual detail of costume employed stands out much more.Sometimes, the idea of costume at all is a hindrance. Some performances of forum theatre are conducted in a public space, without making it known that the drama is a fiction; the actors then try to get any spectators of the action involved. The whole idea, in this instance, is to appear inconspicuous – the actors do not want to alert the public to the fact that a performance, as such, is happening. Costume becomes ‘anti-costume’: it attempts to show that the character is not a character at all.So, thesps: dress up, dress down, or take a leaf out of Daniel Radcliffe’s book and undress. Avoid horses, though. There are laws about that. Whatever you do, you’re showing us a part of your character.By Ryan Hocking 

The long night of the soul is a wellworn theme. Yet Tennessee Williams’ The Night of the Iguana has a far from familiar feel. In the claustrophobic heat of Mexico, the play portrays a night of despair as Shannon (Sam Aldred) battles his ghosts. Shannon is a defrocked priest, clinging desperately to his job as a tour guide.
The play opens as he arrives at a hotel, tour group in tow. As the play progresses, Shannon hovers on the edge of emotional collapse, while the tourists grow ever more mutinous. Shannon must battle the emotional blackmail of Charlotte, a sixteen-year-old musical prodigy who he has rather unwisely slept with, and the attacks of her ‘butch vocal coach’, Miss Fellowes. In the midst of this an unlikely bond springs up between Shannon and Hannah (Thea Warren), a spinster staying in the hotel. The play sparkles with wit and insight, and the odd bleakly comic line eases the emotional tension.
Sam Aldred steals the show as Shannon. He dominates the stage, and captures the distracted air of a man haunted by the figures of his own mind. His performance is vehement enough to be unsettling, yet skilfully avoids tipping over into melodrama. Arabella Lawson seems to make a sufficiently frantic, if slightly screechy, Charlotte. Yet the initial scene between Shannon and Hannah could have been more credible and intimate. Without a strong bond between Shannon and old spinster Hannah, there is nothing to relieve the play’s introspection. The exploration of Shannon’s demons is perceptive, and Aldred brings it to life. Despite its over-intensity, the play left me itching to read the rest of it, and brought back half-remembered lines of Tennessee Williams that A-level had not quite managed to ruin. Well worth seeing, but not for the emotionally unstable.
By Elizabeth Bennett