Sunday 26th April 2026
Blog Page 368

98% of surveyed Oxford University students vaccinated

Maurício Alencar
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98% of surveyed Oxford University students vaccinated

Oxford University have reported that 98% of students who took part in a University survey have been vaccinated. 95% of students surveyed have had both doses, and 3% of students have only been partially vaccinated.

The response rate for the survey was 49.3%. The University also stated that “there were virtually no differences in vaccination rates between different colleges and departments”.

The survey was sent to all students of the University in the 3rd and 4th weeks of Michaelmas term.

The details of each student’s vaccination status was not passed to colleges or departments. Prior to the beginning of term, St Edmund Hall and Lincoln College asked students to voluntarily take part in college-wide vaccination surveys in order to help them respond to “potential outbreaks”.

Restrictions on isolation still exist. If you test positive for the virus, you must self-isolate for 10 full days. However, government restrictions on self-isolation for close contacts loosened in mid-August. If you are in the same household as someone who has tested positive, you must be fully vaccinated, under the age of 18 years and 6 months old, or not able to take the vaccine for medical reasons to avoid self-isolation.

Image: Prefeitura de Olinda / CC BY 2.0 via Flickr

A leftist critique of Oxford teacher strikes

Tobiah
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A leftist critique of Oxford teacher strikes

In recent years, lecturer strikes have become something of a staple at Oxford, averaging about one strike per year for the duration of my studies and research so far. These strikes are typically over reasonable concerns about pay or pensions, although this is, of course, in the wider social contexts of academia being a relatively well-off occupation to begin with.

Whenever these strikes occur, there are three typical responses from the student body. Conservatives denounce the strikes as wasteful and harmful, leftists tend to uncritically support the strikes because striking is an important strategy of the labour movement, and the vast bulk of less politically engaged students tend to express a mixture of disinterested apathy, and frustration at being the ones primarily inconvenienced when they are not responsible for the issues that lecturers are striking about. This frustration is apt to discourage students from taking the strikes seriously, and even to push would-be allies away from supporting the strikes each time a new strike is called.

In this article, I intend to break ranks with my friends on the political left to offer a gentle and, hopefully, nuanced critique of the current form of these teacher strikes. I do not intend to criticise the notion of striking altogether – it is an essential tool of the worker for their own liberation. However, I do believe that a serious look at the current strategy around lecturer strikes in Oxford reveals that the present strategy is deeply flawed, exchanging long-term progress in favour of short-term and easily renounceable gains.

In order to understand why, we must recognise the contradictions that exist within a class analysis of the university organisation.

The current model of teacher strikes is based upon the recognition of class conflict between teachers, lecturers, and researchers, on the one hand, and the university as employer, including the various persons and organisations who profit from or have a stake in the university, on the other.

However, it neglects to recognise that the popular class in this university microcosm consists of more than just teachers, lecturers, and researchers, and, importantly, that this popular class in turn contains many contradictions.

On the one hand, we have the non-academic staff of the university, who, like the academic staff, must offer their bodies and time in wage-labour to the university. They have a proletarian relationship towards the university as their employer, but are separated from the academic staff by hierarchical and prestige-based relationships; as both academic staff and non-academic staff tend to see the academic staff as a class apart from their non-academic counterparts, the possibility of joint action against the university for the betterment of each is severely undermined.

On the other hand, there are the students. Students typically do not engage in relationships of wage-labour with the university, unless they act as lab assistants at some stage, and so it is not immediately apparent that they should be lumped with the popular class in contrast to the university as employer. Indeed, one could argue that students represent a kind of consumer, and therefore fall altogether outside of a dialectal class analysis of the university body. I would contest that such a view misses the material relations that hold between students and the university.

The university-as-employer holds a landlordly relationship to the students, who often depend upon university accommodation and facilities for their day-to-day living. This was a fact widely recognised by students during the previous heights of the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in rent strikes in various parts of the country. In addition, the student still finds the bulk of their day constrained by the demands of the university, and, given our current fee-paying system, students often find themselves financially exploited by the university institution – a result of the basic social fact that a degree is often essential to survival in our modern late capitalist society.

In this regard, we can see that the student does have a fundamentally antagonistic class relationship to the university-as-employer – perhaps not a proletarian relationship, but certainly a precariat and renter-dependent relationship.

Thus, we see that given a thorough analysis of the class relations at play, there is a serious possibility for unity and solidarity between the academic staff, non-academic staff, and students of the university.

It should be clear that should such solidarity be achieved, the concerns of each group would be amplified by alliance with the others. Would the teacher strikes not be more effective if students withheld fee-payments and rent until a settlement was reached? Would student rent-strikes and protests against ever-increasing student fees not be more effective if teachers and non-academic staff went on strike in solidarity? And would we not be able to achieve greater workers’ rights and a living wage for the non-academic staff of the university if students and teachers together were willing to take direct action in support of their cause?

However, it should also be clear that the present strategy for lecturer strikes does not foster any solidarity between the academic staff and these two other sectors of the popular class within the university microcosm.

When teachers strike on their own, nothing is done to help the non-academic staff of the university achieve a living wage. Is this not a slap in the face to those non-academic staff? When the teachers strike in such a way that the students are the ones who suffer most, having to continue to pay university fees whilst receiving insufficient tuition, is that not an insult to those very students?

By choosing to strike whenever they might lose some degree of privilege over the non-academic university staff, and to strike in such a way that the students – with whom they should have class solidarity – suffer more than the university which is the actual target of their strike, teachers drive a wedge between themselves and the other parts of the popular class in the university setting, undermining the possibility of class solidarity and exacerbating the contradictions that already exist.

This is made even worse by appeals to false solidarity. One the one hand, striking lecturers often demand solidarity from the students, shaming students who continue to pursue their studies as strike-breakers. Yet not once have I seen a teacher strike as a response to the burdens placed on students – either fee hikes or demanding rent in the face of a pandemic. Thus, the teachers demand solidarity from the students, while simultaneously utterly refusing to show any solidarity with the students when they are exploited.

We also see another kind of false solidarity with respect to the non-academic staff. When academic staff strike, they will often use rhetorical appeals to standing in solidarity with the more precarious and less privileged non-academic staff – however, an examination of who is participating in and leading the strikes, and who benefits from the demands made, readily demonstrate that this ‘solidarity’ does not, in fact, improve the situations of non-academic staff. It therefore constitutes more of a smoke-screen, trying to use the precarious and exploited position of the non-academic staff as a cover for industrial action primarily focussed on maintaining the privileges of the academic staff. Can anyone point to even a single way in which the material conditions of cleaners, porters, and the likes, have been improved by the repeated strike action of the academics over the past half-decade?

Here, again, the method of the teachers’ strikes undermines whatever solidarity could exist amongst the popular class; by using the non-academic staff as a smoke-screen and then discarding their interests when the academic staff’s self-serving demands are met, this rhetoric undermines any trust the non-academic staff may have in the teachers’ solidarity with them. It simultaneously appears to show such non-academic staff that industrial action that claims to support them does not materially improve their own condition, which in turn may lead such non-academic staff to move away from unionisation and industrial action altogether, further aiding and abetting the exploitation of the non-academic staff by the university.

This is a recipe for long-term failure. It encourages both students and non-academic staff to view teachers as entitled, placing their own self-serving interests ahead of the needs of others, rather than recognising that it is the university who is exploiting each group in its own way. As whatever solidarity may exist here is continuously eroded, the effectiveness of future strikes decreases, and the risk of serious strike-breaking backlash – particularly from the student body – increases proportionally.

What then is to be done?

The same as is always required when there exist contradictions within the popular class. Such contradictions must be negated – that is to say, we must find and build solidarity between these three parts of the popular class within the university microcosm.

As it is the teachers who are at present effectively unionised, and also the teachers who have done most to insult the solidarity of students or non-academic staff, it is the teachers who must take the lead. Those teachers who are unionised must encourage the non-academic staff to unionise themselves, with the promise that if the university or colleges attempt to fire any member of staff for unionising, as much of the academic staff as are unionised will strike until that individual who was fired is re-instated. Only with this threat of industrial action can the fears of those in more precipitous working conditions be alleviated, and thus, the opportunity to engage in worker organisation can move from a distant fantasy to a present reality.

Simultaneously, there must be a move to unionise the students. Once, the student union would have served this purpose, but it no longer has the militancy or reach to call rent strikes or similar actions from the student body. Thus, either the student union must be radicalised again, or else a new union must be founded with an explicit focus on student-led direct action. This is likely to be the most difficult part of building solidarity, as many students suffer from the false consciousness that a capitalist understanding of the university creates, seeing themselves only as consumers and failing to recognise the ways in which they, too, are exploited by the university, or the power that student action has – both historically and in the present day.

Once both non-academic staff and students are unionised as far as possible, it will be necessary for the academic staff to take the lead on building trust necessary for true solidarity. The academic staff must be willing to give up some part of their more privileged position in the class structure of the university microcosm by being willing to strike or take other industrial action in solidarity with the concerns raised by non-academic staff and/or unionised students, whether this be fair wages for non-academic staff, opposition to disproportionate rents, protest against fee increases, or any other such concern.

If the academic staff demonstrate this willingness to suffer in their own finances in order to stand in solidarity with students and non-academic staff, this will help cover over the distrust that the previous method of striking has sown between students and non-academic staff, on the one side, and teachers, on the other. It will necessarily foster a reciprocity in solidarity, and then teachers would be able to propose future industrial action in the reasonable confidence that, rather than presenting antagonistic opposition to their strike, students and non-academic staff would be willing to take action alongside the teachers to pressure the university for more immediate and substantive improvement.

This, then, is the substance of my criticism – the present mode of striking ignores the contradictions that presently exist within the popular classes in the microcosm of the university. Teachers expect solidarity from their students, and claim to stand in solidarity with non-academic staff. But they have offered no solidarity to students in return when the students have attempted to raise protest against the exploitative practices of the university, nor have they demanded serious material improvement for the non-academic staff. They continue to exacerbate and increase these contradictions.

So long as these contradictions exist, any industrial action taken by the academic staff constitutes a grasping for short-term gains at the cost of long-term class solidarity and, by extension, at the cost of more permanent advances.

The only thing that has ever secured long-term improvement for working people is a militant solidarity between the many parts of the popular class. Where solidarity is fostered, property-owners and employers must recognise the demands of the workers; where solidarity is undermined, power is returned to the propertied class.

As things are going, teachers can only look forward to a gradual erosion of support for their striking. While this erosion may be somewhat abated by the quick turn-over of students and the general uptick in public interest in leftist politics in recent years, it cannot be halted, so long as the present strategy persists.

However, if academic staff chose instead to put aside privilege and elitism, to recognise their class position and seek solidarity with students and non-academic staff, we could see genuine progress for all involved. A coalition of solidarity between students, teachers, and non-academic staff – especially one which challenges the inherent elitism of the university hierarchy and is based upon a horizontal organisation – could see the needs and demands of all three groups brought forcefully to the attention of the university, in such a way as the university cannot ignore.

I hope that the teachers and other academic staff of this university will see this article as an olive branch. We can work together. We can share solidarity for the betterment of all. We can unite the disparate popular classes of the university for the common good.

But if we are to do this, the academic staff must first be willing to demonstrate materially that they will give to us the solidarity that they demand from us, and they must be willing to use their own advanced position to engage their non-academic colleagues and students with unionisation efforts. Solidarity is not about the words you say, it is about the deeds you do.

If they will not, then all they are asking is that we should suffer more so that they, the most privileged of us all, may preserve their privilege still. Such is the unequivocal message of the current striking strategy.

Review: The Last 5 Years // Eglesfield Music Society

Niamh Hardman
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Review: The Last 5 Years // Eglesfield Music Society

Eglesfield Musical Society brought to life the musical hit The Last Five Years at The Queen’s College on the 4th-6th of November. Written and composed by Jason Robert Brown, The Last Five Years is the story of Jamie, a rising novelist, and Cathy, an aspiring actress. As well as telling the story of the forming of a relationship and its subsequent breakdown, The Last Five Years is also centred around the theme of artistic struggle. Exploring what it means to be a person striving to be in the creative arts, the decision from EMS to do this show was perfectly timed as the arts sector begins to recover from the effects of the last few years.

As a show with only two characters, the use of four actors in this production was truly innovative. It was able to showcase their talent in the best possible way, highlighting the actors’ strengths while elevating the characters to a level above how they have been traditionally interpreted on stage. The casting was excellent: Harriet Nokes and Grace De Souza took on the role of Cathy, perfectly paired alongside Cormac Diamond and Dec Foster as Jamie. The storytelling of The Last Five Years means that it faces the risk of being confusing for the audience: Jamie tells his story chronologically whilst Cathy tells hers in reverse. This is why having such a strong cast was so important. By casting two actors as the same character, the opportunity was presented for the performers to bring a unique spark to the character whilst maintaining that they were ultimately the same person, even down to the smallest of mannerisms.

The sheer intensity of the show means that it is often vocally challenging, and in some moments, voices were strained. However, the visible presence of the band on stage made such a beautiful expression of music central to the production. The space on stage was therefore small, but at no time felt overly confined. The stage floor was scattered with torn book pages and lighting choices were fairly stripped back but were key for determining the mood of the scene. The use of set and props were certainly creative, the most memorable being how a story was told with a clock, and later used as a driving wheel – perhaps from this we can coin the term “clockography”.

There were whimsical moments that went further to adding to the characters’ likeability. The silliness of some scenes was warmly embraced, meaning that the audience could laugh along at ease. These snippets were carefully balanced in such an emotionally intense show, and it was clear that almost every execution of direction was meaningful. The director, Ollie Khurshid, told Cherwell: “Vocally and emotionally it’s hard. It’s quite hard to get it right, tonally, as well. It was a bit of a risk. And it was a risk to do something new with the casting. Changing any classic show is risky but that’s what makes people sit up in their chairs, it makes them reconsider what they are watching. Hopefully the risks paid off.”

I firmly believe that it was this risk taken that elevated the show to a level that is entirely unique. Captivating the audience’s attention throughout, this production revelled in the most magical aspects of live theatre. And oh, how marvellous it was to return to the passionate world of student theatre!

The meaning behind the show was at the forefront of Khurshid’s direction. Speaking to Cherwell, he emphasised just how this choice in production related to some themes of the pandemic: “It strikes me in particular how isolated the characters are in the show – all but two of the songs are effectively solo numbers. Moments of connection are rare, and what the show offers its audience is this mosaic of fragmented snapshots of Cathy and Jamie. It was this aspect of the show I wanted to play with in particular, splitting each character in two and juxtaposing these pieces of their story in new ways. So, this new staging, I hope, might encourage our audience to consider a little more what exactly they are watching, who’s story is being told, and how we compromise and negotiate our identity with ourselves and others. Perhaps that’s an interesting discussion to be having after this last year.”

This production was a masterpiece in the art of storytelling, setting a strong precedent the bright future of student theatre that will emerge out of the pandemic.

Image Credit: Eglesfield Music Society

Preview: The Last 5 Years // Eglesfield Music Society

Camille Leadbeater
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Preview: The Last 5 Years // Eglesfield Music Society

Since its premiere at the Northlight Theatre, Chicago, in 2001, The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown has been reproduced at countless theatres across the globe. Its timeless exploration of love, lust, longing and heartache has never ceased to entice theatre troupes and the depth reached by Brown in his one hour and a half script is the stuff of actor’s dreams.  Perhaps this draw has assisted to the play being as popular as when it first came out, twenty years ago. The play tells the story of the failed marriage of Jamie (Dec Foster and Cormac Diamond) and Cathy (Harriet Nokes and Grace de Souza). Cathy is an actor persistently struggling in her career, and Jamie is a successful writer.  

“It can feel daunting to perform a piece that some people are familiar with and probably have their favourite performances of, but that is also why it is so exciting to be able to bring a new take on it. The harmonies and staging Ollie and Isaac have created are beautiful and I can’t wait for people to hear and see them.” – Grace de Souza (Cathy).

It is a poignant exploration of how couples in failing marriages perpetually struggle to see eye to eye and are so often operating, portrayed quite literally here, on differing temporal planes. Those familiar with the play will know that Cathy’s story, counter to that of Jamie, is told in reverse chronological order, the only moment in which they “meet in the middle” so to speak, is in the proposal/wedding scene after which Cathy moves backwards in time and Jamie moves forward (The Next Ten Minutes). This discontinuity is all the more emphasised by the director’s decision to use two actors for each role. Nokes portraying Cathy after the wedding and de Souza before, Foster as Jamie before the wedding and Diamond after.

The musical is organised by The Eglesfield Musical Society, with Ollie Khurshid as director and Isaac Adni as Musical Director. Through this creative collaboration a truly invigorating slant has been put on a well-known and arguably over performed play. When it comes to bittersweet, tragic romance, theatre often only seems to go so far and foster limited directions. Here, however, in the intimate Shulman Auditorium, we are left feeling so deeply connected to these characters. On more than a few occasions we find ourselves almost grieving alongside the characters – special mention to Diamond’s If I Didn’t Believe In You and de Souza’s I Can Do Better Than That.

“I love how The Last Five Years is a small, intimate show: musically we’re leaning into this by doing it without mics and this helps foster collaboration between all the musicians and singers (to quote Jason Robert Brown himself: ‘it’s chamber music’). It was also great fun writing harmonies for the moments in the show where we’ve decided to add them. Finally, it’s been so fun learning and playing the (difficult but extremely well-written) piano part. – Isaac Adni (Musical Director).

Throughout the performance we realise the removal of the characters from each other and even from themselves, as emphasized by the shared roles. And yet, despite sometimes almost moving us to tears, we still laughed, (I must give immense credit here to Foster’s wonderful rendition of The Schmuel Song) we cried and we longed alongside Cathy and Jamie. The skill of Foster and de Souza to make us feel, despite our best knowledge, that these two might somehow merge their stories and find hope with one another is commendable to say the least.

It is always, of course, very daunting to be one of the first shows of the academic year in Oxford, and this always inevitably gives the rehearsal process a tight turnaround. To combat this, the cast were given the score very early on and the actors have been wholeheartedly working on this piece since the summer. This really came through as the connectedness between the cast and crew is evident throughout the performance. The vocal and emotional ranges of the actors is deeply impressive and through both song and dialogue the chemistry is plain to see. I must here celebrate the on-stage presences of both Nokes and Foster, who gave us some truly memorable emotive moments.

“Thanks to the nature of the show and its songs, we all had a lot of one-to-one time to work with Ollie and Isaac on our individual characterizations, which I think comes out in really complementary way, that still highlights the best in all of us as performers. A little later on in the process, we then brought it all together and seeing what each of us had managed to bring to the roles in our own time was a really cool thing to bounce off and add new ideas into what was already there. I think that’s how you feel when you watch the show too – between each song, the two halves, and especially in the biggest moments when those two versions of the same characters are juxtaposed. It’s been a massively rewarding show to be a part of.” – Cormac Diamond (Jamie).

I also salute the musical ensemble who gave a truly stellar performance, each performer was on top form and supported the cast in the best way possible. Indeed, this performance goes to show that a small crew is often best, as all aspects of this piece have served to complement one another. I take this opportunity to also celebrate the work of Daniel Dipper and Abigail Wallace who did an incredible job at bringing Ollie’s visions for set and lighting design to life. The lighting followed a colour scheme that distinguished Cathy and Jamie throughout, further emphasising the distinctions between them. The props, which although few, were well chosen and poignant. The single ladder, specifically, cleverly played up the power dynamics in the piece by crafting levels. The discarded scripts, book pages and scores scattered across the stage floor were a nice touch and a welcome accent on the play’s underlying themes.

“Working on this show has been such a privilege – it’s a show all four of us have dreamed of being in for a long time, and so we all jumped at the opportunity! I think what makes the show work is the melodies – Jason Robert Brown weaves them beautifully into the music, and takes motifs from all sorts of places, and inserts them elsewhere. This ultimately allows us as actors to notice where they’re the same, or where they’re different, and why this is!” – Dec Foster (Jamie).

The moments in which all four actors are on stage really showcase their collaborative talents,– perfectly synopsising the tension between the characters and within themselves, and taking note of our ever-present need for compromise and acceptance of who we are, and who our partners are. Diamond’s perfect rendition of If I Didn’t Believe In You is a perfect instance of this performance paying homage to these challenges and embracing the emotional density of this timeless script.

“The rehearsal process has been a lot of fun; the best part of Oxford drama is the people and it has been really lovely getting to know the team involved. We had the score for a lot of the summer so were able to learn it enough to make the first rehearsals really productive, and then in the last couple of weeks we’ve had a lot more group rehearsals.” – Grace de Souza (Cathy).

On the whole, it is the tender moments in this play coupled with moments of pure intensity which made this production golden. Although mostly told through song, this play never fails in its purpose to tell a story and provide multiple explanations for the breakdown of a marriage.

A huge well done to all involved – a performance like this definitely deserves a longer run time. It seems an optimistic future for Oxford theatre – a final thought, however, is that I would appreciate seeing a wider participation from the global majority, to combat the underlying diversity issues that run deep in student theatre.

Image Credit: Eglesfield Music Society

‘Moral failure’ over Mosley Money

Daniel Moloney
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‘Moral failure’ over Mosley Money

The University of Oxford’s acceptance of donations from the Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust (ACMT) has come under fire this week, with St. Peter’s College in particular becoming the focus of fierce criticism.

The Mosley family’s £6 million donation to Oxford will go towards a new physics laboratory and the foundation of the Alexander Mosley Professor of Biophysics Fund. A £5 million grant gifted to St Peter’s will contribute to the construction of new student accommodation, which will be named following an internal consultation with students after plans to name the block after Alexander Mosley were shelved. Another £260,000 has been given to Lady Margaret Hall.

The fund, named after Max Mosley’s son Alexander, who died of a heroin overdose aged 39, is controversial due to its alleged connections to the Mosley family’s fascist past. Critics allege the fund is based upon the inheritance left by Max Mosley’s father, Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists and later the far-right Union Movement.

The University of Oxford’s acceptance of this “tainted” money has therefore raised important questions about the morality of Oxford’s donor system. In the same month as the donation from the ACMT, Linacre College received a £155 million donation from Madam Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao. Madam Thao has close links to the Vietnamese Government, which is judged to have one of the world’s worst human rights records.

The late Max Mosley, best known as a Formula One tycoon, is himself a polarising figure. In his youth, his association with Sir Oswald’s Union Movement is well documented. In a 1961 by-election he published a pamphlet claiming that ‘coloured immigrants’ spread leprosy, venereal disease and TB, and should be repatriated. On one march through a Jewish area of London in 1962, Max Mosley walked shoulder to shoulder with his father’s followers as they chanted: ‘Jews out!’ before fighting Jewish protesters, some of whom were Second World War veterans. In the same year he visited the Dachau death camp while en-route to a conference with several Nazis and two ex-Waffen SS officers. His support of South Africa’s apartheid regime was set out in his argument for “a complete division” of Africa into Black and White areas, which appeared in the February 15th, 1961 edition of Cherwell.

Professor Lawrence Goldman, emeritus fellow in history at St Peter’s College, accused the College on Sky News of a total “moral failure”, as Mosley had never apologised for supporting his father’s movement, which made the donations “tainted and dirty money”.

He said: “The University has gone off the scale in wokery (…) but they go ahead and take money from a fund established by proven and known fascists.

“Its moral compass is just not working anymore.”

Meanwhile the Government’s anti-Semitism Tsar Lord Mann, and Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi both objected to the rehabilitation of the Mosley family name. Lord Mann further commented:

“At a time when Oxford University are putting statues into storage or away from public display it is quite absurd to give credibility to a family who were active fascists over two generations and who led British fascism up to the Second World War.”

Oxford University and the two colleges involved have defended accepting the money. They state that the donations were reviewed by a committee in a ‘robust’ manner, taking ‘legal, ethical and reputational issues into consideration’. Lady Margaret Hall said the money “enabled a cohort of students from very diverse and low-income backgrounds to attend Oxford.”

St Peter’s said the trust’s “generous” donation will make a “transformative” difference to students.

Cherwell has obtained communications between the St Peter’s faculty and students. The email, sent to the entire student body, tells them that “If you are considering adopting any public positions on this, we do encourage you to ensure you are well informed, and that your information is accurate, before you do so.” The St Peter’s JCR chose not to comment to Cherwell when asked for their opinion on the college’s handling of the donations and subsequent public outcry. 

Several St Peter’s students declined to comment on both the donation and the communications they have received from college. However, a student who did wish to comment told Cherwell that “I fully support the college, and I have the sensation that within College, nearly everyone feels the same. This outcry feels manufactured, or at least feels external to the college community. The money is separate from the man, and Alexander Mosley wasn’t part of what happened before him”

November has so far shown that Oxford’s complex relationship with donations and endowments is far from a historic issue. As the University navigates this topic, serious questions remain over how the issues of financial support and concerns over morality and ethics can be balanced. St Peter’s College is the latest, but undoubtedly not last, institution to face these questions.

St Peter’s College told Cherwell: “In 2019, St Peter’s College received a gift of £5m from the Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust, a regulated charity that was set up in memory of a former student of St Peter’s. Alexander is remembered with warmth in College. He died tragically young. The money was given to fund a student accommodation building that will be built in the latter half of 2022 and early part of 2023. The building is due to open in Spring 2023.

“To ensure that the donation can do good for the College and its students without distraction, the Trust has invited the College to choose a name for the building in consultation with its students. This is a welcome offer which the College has accepted.  Since the building does not yet exist, there is time in hand to develop the process and run these College conversations in thoughtful and exploratory ways that will have a lasting legacy. Student representatives have welcomed the naming project ahead. 

“The AMCT donation was reviewed and cleared by the University’s central and independent committee to review donations, ahead of being approved by the College’s Governing Body.”

The Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust has been approached for comment.

Image Credit: Jcrue/CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Persephone review: ‘Created with love and dedication’

Georgia Lin
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Persephone review: ‘Created with love and dedication’

In Persephone, the familiar Greek gods who structure the dynamic story are flawed: Zeus is an egotistic adulterer, Hera is cunning and wears a power suit, and Hades’ self-loathing perpetuates the grimness of the Underworld. In Emma Hawkins and Carrie Penn’s new musical, it is the women that shine; the titular Persephone is initially presented as a sheltered lamb, protected by her cautious mother Demeter, the goddess of harvest and agriculture. 

As the story develops, Persephone moves through her well-known myth through classic musical theatre tropes; in her opening number she dreams of a tomorrow where she will be free to explore the world, uninhibited and unburdened with Hades by her side. However, Persephone presents a more nuanced, complicated version of her journey. The musical incorporates several beautiful, free-flowing dance numbers between Persephone and Hades that establish their connection (and its eventual rupture) in contrast to the tense relationship between brothers Zeus and Hades that results in delightful, well-sung duets throughout the performance. 

Emma Hawkins’ direction allows her characters to think about and perhaps regret their decisions, reflected in recurring motifs of white roses and the push and pull enacted by the four-person Greek chorus narrators. On Persephone’s folk-rock musical style, Hawkins said she was inspired by her rural upbringing going to “barn dances and fiddles around the fire”. “We felt that reflected in the narrative itself because Persephone comes from a very isolated part of the rural countryside while Olympus is from a ‘little old town’”, a refrain echoed throughout the show by its stellar Greek chorus. In discussing her overall inspiration for the show, Hawkins was “interested in the Greek myths and how they look at the condensed parts of humanity that have become timeless and archetypal, and they also lend themselves really well to musical theatre because it’s high drama”. 

Persephone certainly delivers on the promise of suspense, tackling intense themes of mental illness, sexual violence, and survival that may be difficult for audiences to process. Though the scenes do not explicitly depict such situations, it is a credit to the performances by the cast and crew that the effect of these moments linger long after you leave the Playhouse. 

Persephone showcases women’s agency at its core: our protagonist chooses whether or not to eat the pomegranate seeds that would bind her to the Underworld for six months of the year; she chooses to return to the living world but seeks out shelter with Aphrodite instead of immediately returning to Demeter; she chooses to depart the Underworld when Hades becomes self-destructive. The emphasis on the bonds forged between women, regardless of the circumstances that led them there, is palpable in Persephone. The intimate and fraught relationships between the goddesses frame the show’s emotional core and shift the gaze away from the lavish heroics attributed to male gods; the women are interesting, complex, and more than just the companions of other immortal beings. 

The standouts of the show include the portrayal of Aphrodite, who plays her role as a surrogate mother with gentility while deftly being a belting, liberated goddess of love, skipping across the stage at the same time. The actress who embodies Hera offers a new interpretation of her as more than just an embittered wife; we see her wrestle for moral clarity as parallels her and Persephone’s dual struggles in loving deeply flawed gods of lighting and hell. 

It is evident that Persephone was created with love and dedication to the art of musical theatre and the misrepresented character of Persephone herself. Hawkins praises her creative team: “It’s amazing having this experience because you would never be able to put on an original musical in a 600-seat proscenium arch theatre. Getting to work with so many talented people (…) it’s easy to forget that these people do their degrees as well, they’re not just technicians and actors.” Commendation should also be given to Hawkins’ role as set designer, which produced haunting depictions of the Underworld through detailed paper theatre designs and the swift movement of trees that serve as a reminder to Demeter and the power of nature. 

Eat a pomegranate seed and enter the Underworld — Persephone is a new musical which was well worth experiencing. 

Oxford celebrates Diwali

Antara Singh
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Oxford celebrates Diwali

Oxford University India Society (OIS) and Hindu Society (HUMSoc) led the celebrations for Diwali last week by hosting various events. Other colleges and the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies also held their own celebrations to mark the festival. 

Diwali is known as the ‘Festival of Lights’ (from Sanskrit: Deepavali, meaning ‘row of lights’) and it is the most important festival of the year for Hindus, Sikhs and Jains. It took place on Thursday 4th November 2021, but often celebrations last the whole week.

The festival marks the beginning of a new year and the triumph of good over evil. The most common narrative of Diwali is in Hindu mythology; it is the day when Lord Rama returns home to Ayodhya with his brother and his wife Sita, after 14 years in exile and after having defeated the demon king Ravana.

For Sikhs and Jains, there are also other reasons for Diwali celebrations. Regardless, it is a festival that celebrates family, new beginnings, and the triumph of light over darkness. 

Common Diwali celebrations include lighting lamps and candles around the house and on the street, often accompanied by fireworks and family celebrations. The return of this and more open, communal celebration after Covid has been particularly welcomed.

Oxford India Society organised a Diwali Dinner last Friday in Christ Church College’s Great Hall. It was a night of Indian food and sweets, musical performances and attire.

India Society’s president, Jay, told Cherwell that “it was a huge success with a lot of demand,” with Christ Church College entirely full.

Many more informal events were also planned to celebrate Diwali: two Bollywood BOPs at the Varsity Club have been hosted, as well as bhangra classes, a popular style of Punjabi dance, and Bollywood film nights.

The Student Union also hosted a Diwali Mulakaat (a large meeting along with festivities) on Wednesday 3rd November, accompanied by Indian food and music. A similar event was hosted by the Centre for Hindu Studies on Diwali itself. Unfortunately, explains Jay, the annual Diwali Ball had to be postponed to Hillary Term for various reasons. Nonetheless, Oxford has been rife with celebrations and a return to community after Covid has been strongly embraced.

Oxford students told Cherwell about how excited they were with the return of Diwali celebrations this year.

Harini Iyer, a first year Geographer at Hertford College, remarks that “I was a little worried that Diwali wasn’t going to be as communal as it is at home, but the range of events planned has allowed me to celebrate in just the same way at university”.

Geetika Kumar, a second year Medic at Corpus Christi College and Communications Officer of the Oxford India Society, told Cherwell: “We have been so pleased with how the events have been run this Diwali. Due to Covid last year, our Diwali celebrations were seriously disrupted, so it is lovely to see a return to normality and community”.

Image: Nrjtks via Pixabay 

Colleges raise transgender flag for trans awareness week

Charlotte Keys
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Colleges raise transgender flag for trans awareness week

Some Oxford colleges, such as Balliol College and Merton College, raised the transgender pride flag for trans awareness week this November. 

The week commencing the 13th November starts Transgender Awareness Week. The LGTBQ+ focused charity GLAAD describes the week as a time when “transgender people and their allies take action to bring attention to the community by educating the public about who transgender people are”.

The week finishes with the transgender day of remembrance (TDOR) which is taking place on Saturday 20th November. TDOR is held to honour the memory of the transgender people who lost their lives due to acts of anti-transgender violence throughout the year.

Balliol College LGBTQ+ rep, Charley Archer, told Cherwell: “I think it’s really important to use trans awareness week as a way of keying in on trans issues which are still unfortunately really prevalent, but also to celebrate being trans in a world which often shames us, and the flag is a big symbol of that.” 

The trans pride flag was created by Monica Helms, an openly transgender American woman, in 1999. The flag’s colours of light blue and pink play on the traditional colours for baby boys and baby girls; the white line in the middle representing intersex, transitioning, or a neutral or undefined gender. Helms has stated that the flag is symmetrical so that “no matter which way you fly it, it is always correct, signifying us finding correctness in our lives”.

Archer also said: “we are raising the flag for trans awareness week as an act of support and pride in the trans community of Balliol and the university as a whole”. Charley shared that Balliol had further plans for trans awareness week including a “trans pride-themed bop for the whole college”. 

The flag has been seen in recent years on the railings outside the Radcliffe Camera which has been used as the site in Oxford for people to gather and honour trans lives on TDOR. Last year they remembered the 242 lives of transgender and gender nonconforming individuals who had lost their lives to anti-trans violence. A statement reminded the public that the figure did not include trans individuals who may have taken their own lives due to the transphobia they have faced.

The flag has been seen in recent years on the railings outside the Radcliffe Camera which has been used as the site in Oxford for people to gather and honour trans lives on TDOR. Last year they remembered the 242 lives of transgender and gender nonconforming individuals who had lost their lives to anti-trans violence. A statement reminded the public that the figure did not include trans individuals who may have taken their own lives due to the transphobia they have faced.

Last year colleges, including Magdalen, raised the trans pride flag for trans awareness week. This tradition is being continued in 2021 as a symbol of solidarity. 

Oxford University LGBTQ+ society (OULGBTQ+) said: “the flying of flags representing underprivileged groups in society can have a huge impact on the welfare of such groups” and that “it can show respect and appreciation” for the trans community. 

OULGTBQ+ says that the tradition of Oxford university “can be intimidating places for LGBTQ+ people”. The society says that “by flying the LGBTQ+ flag from the college flagpole, colleges make a bold statement” that they are both “welcoming and accepting”. Doing this also provides a ”statement of recognition of a minority that is often invisible”.

Image credit: Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

A secret science: What cisgender people don’t know about voice

Ruskin Harding
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A secret science: What cisgender people don’t know about voice

You hear a voice call out your name. Before you turn around, you know it’s a woman. How?

Most people assume people sound male or female because of pitch. In my experience, this includes everyone from my linguistics tutors to speech-language pathologists – who are trained to treat hoarseness and swallowing problems, but to whom trans people are routinely referred to anyway. There’s even a whole industry which markets dangerous and expensive vocal surgeries to desperate trans women on the faulty premise that gender is based on pitch.

Despite this, average male and female ranges have plenty of overlap, and cis women with voices lower than most men still sound unmistakably female. For trans people with vocal dysphoria these misconceptions matter. And so, over the past decade, trans people themselves led by pioneering microtonal musician and voice teacher Zheanna Erose have pieced together the components that actually constitute vocal gender to construct a scientific framework that joins up the biomechanical, acoustic, and perceptual aspects of voice.

The pitch of your voice is determined by how fast your vocal folds flap together. If they flap together 150 times a second, it creates a pitch of 150 Hz. Importantly, this also generates higher frequencies, called harmonics, at integer multiples of this base pitch. So a voice with a fundamental frequency of 150 Hz will also contain peaks at 300 Hz, 450 Hz, etc, decreasing in intensity as they get higher.

The biggest component of vocal gender perception is the size of your vocal tract. Luckily, this is something you can learn to control, as required for certain styles of singing. Smaller spaces amplify shorter, higher-frequency wavelengths – compare blowing air over a half-full bottle of water to a mostly empty one. This is called resonance. The space in your throat and the space in your mouth each amplify a band of frequencies, the first and second formants (R1 and R2). While R2 plays an important stylistic role in voice, and determines the pitch when you whistle, the perception of gender is primarily derived from the ratio between the fundamental frequency and R1. This means there are times where you can actually create a more feminine sound by lowering your pitch. 

However, changing your resonance isn’t enough to sound natural. The physical amount of vocal fold mass being used to create sound needs to be taken into account. Testosterone-exposed vocal folds are thicker, leading to greater preservation of the intensity of higher-frequency harmonics, and therefore a ‘buzzier’ sound. Learning to stretch the vocal folds to engage less mass allows you to create a ‘lighter’ quality that sounds proportionate to a small resonance. What’s more, the less the mass of your vocal folds, the easier it is to make them vibrate faster, thus raising and expanding your vocal range.

These are the biological components of vocal sex. Culturally, however, there’s also a big difference in the way men and women tend to communicate emphasis and nuance. Women rely more heavily on variation in pitch whereas men rely more on volume. ‘Feminine’ intonation in an otherwise male-sounding voice is responsible for the stereotypical ‘gay guy voice’. Exploring this behavioural side of voice is invaluable for uncovering the full variety of expression available to you, regardless of the extent and contexts in which you choose to use it. Typical levels of feminine intonation feel much more exaggerated at first than you’d expect; I remember trying to record what I thought was the most over-the-top intonation possible and playing it back to hear a perfectly average woman.

We hear these qualities in people’s voices all the time but picking them out is like trying to describe a colour you don’t have words for. The first step is to listen. After that, there are exercises to point you in the right direction, but real progress primarily comes from exploration and playing around, and it’s far from linear. Gradually, you will find that these properties intersect and interact, and new ones emerge with their own intersections and interactions, until the boundaries of sounds blur and collapse into a single infinity.

Remember that using your voice should never be painful; half the point of practice is discovering how to produce sounds in the most comfortable, effortless way possible. Then it can become intuitive. Eventually, you need to let go of the details and the goal, and just let yourself wander around in the endless space of possibilities.

Oxford identify gene that doubles COVID-19 death risk

Oliver Hall
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Oxford identify gene that doubles COVID-19 death risk

A team of scientists at Oxford University have identified a gene present in 60% of people of South Asian descent that doubles the risk of respiratory failure from COVID-19.

The group was led by Professors James Davies and Jim Hughes at the University of Oxford’s MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine and published their revelatory findings in the journal Nature Genetics.  They had previously already identified a stretch of DNA that appeared to significantly affect over-65s but had been unable to establish how exactly the genetic signal functioned.

Since then, they have begun using ground-breaking AI technology to analyse how the strain affects hundreds of different cells from across the body.  From here, they discovered that the cells in the lungs were disproportionately affected and since then they have used new techniques to ‘zoom down on the DNA at the genetic signal’ and establish its effects.

The high-risk gene is thought to prevent cells in the lungs and airways from responding to the virus as they should, therefore, increasing the risk of organ failure.

Dr Downes, who led the team behind the discovery, noted that the use of artificial intelligence was crucial as it allowed the team to focus on so many different genes at the same time.  He said, ‘Surprisingly, as several other genes were suspected, the data showed that a relatively unstudied gene called LZTFL1 causes the effect.’

The findings are particularly significant as they may go some way to explaining why people of South Asian descent have been so disproportionately affected by COVID-19.  One of the most substantial unexplained issues of the pandemic is how those from different ethnic backgrounds have been impacted and appeared to respond to treatment.  So far, it has largely been blamed on socio-economic factors, but this suggests that some of the explanation could lie in genetic differences.  The gene is thought to be present in at least 60% of those with South Asian ancestry, in contrast with just 15% of people of European descent and 2% of those from African-Caribbean backgrounds.

It is important to note that as the gene has been shown to affect the lungs and not the immune system as a whole, the benefits of vaccination are largely unaffected.  As Professor Davies stated: “Although we cannot change our genetics, our results show that the people with the higher risk gene are likely to particularly benefit from vaccination. Since the genetic signal affects the lung rather than the immune system it means that the increased risk should be cancelled out by the vaccine.” 

Image: qimono via pixabay

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