Sunday, May 11, 2025
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In Conversation with Ted Hodgkinson

Sam Millward
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In Conversation with Ted Hodgkinson

From the window above my desk I can see straight into four of my neighbours’ offices. The workspace belonging to the family opposite sits to the side, almost in their house’s pocket. Its occupant slinks away from the rest of the building to nest in that forgotten room for 6 hours at a time. Whether I should be watching is an entirely different matter. As a rule, the British are blessed with rubber necks, prying eyes and incorrigible noses and in the second month of lockdown, looking has become what we are both born and now forced to do. Yet for a nation so deeply invested in other people’s business, in some areas stares invariably point inwards. When it comes to literature, we seem to care little for affairs outside our own country. This is a tale told by the often quoted statistic that Ted Hodgkinson, the current Chair of the International Booker Prize, relates part way through our Skype conversation. “The UK translates 3% of its literature, and this is comparatively very low if you look at almost any other country”. A recurrent feature of Hodgkinson’s career has been addressing these national blinkers. Prior to the International Booker, he held posts as a British Council literature programmer for the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, as well as managing the Santa Maddalena Foundation in Tuscany and being involved in Granta’s ‘Best Untranslated Writers’ series in his tenure as online editor. He is also the Head of Literature and Spoken word at London’s Southbank Centre. After weeks of office-peering it is refreshing to see someone seated, as he is, in a kitchen. 

I suggest that, like most news bulletins right now, we start with Coronavirus, asking about the impact that the pandemic has had on literary circles and live events. Hodgkinson is characteristically complimentary and tuned-in to the happenings of his industry in replying. 

“One of the underlying drivers for live events is that before any of this happened, we spent so much of our lives online that I think live events in some respects were born out of a desire to be in the room with an author and to hear them speak, and to have that very ancient connection to a storyteller. Live events are deliberately rooted in the physical and the real world interactions. But the sector is an immensely imaginative and ingenious one and you’ll have seen lots of digital events mushrooming up. 

“The best ones have really embraced the form, they brought the best things about the live event, the intimacy, the personal touch, the personal interaction, but they’ve embraced the digital.”

His praise and optimism jars with my now unmoving face, Skype having chosen to freeze at that exact moment. Hodgkinson goes on to talk about ‘Hay Online’, Intelligence Squared’s new subscription service and work done by the Edinburgh Fringe to go digital, stressing as he goes the supportive spirit that the community has shown. 

“I think there’s this feeling and desire to see others succeed in their various projects… it’s been actually really heartening.”

This isn’t the only positive development Hodkinson sees. When I ask which changes might stick around, he is quick to mention the new opportunities found in Covid culture. 

“More on the educational end of the spectrum, one of the things I’ve been seeing a lot of is poets and writers who’ve been running online workshops and raving about the experience, and likewise their students. This has been a slightly under used avenue for people to connect with aspiring writers. If and when we get back to some kind of normality, it will tune us in to dimensions that we previously never considered before.”

Community work has long been part of the Southbank’s mission, and it is pleasing to see that those initiatives will not wither under current circumstances. But talking further, we get to the cost of the restrictions placed on live events, even in what Hodgkinson terms a “socially- distanceable” field, hastily apologising for the neologism. The absence of intimacy and proximity between creators and audiences is clearly tangible for him, and a nostalgia fills the kitchen on the distant end of the call. 

“There is this ancient dynamic, that people do, as I see in my work all the time, really hunger after.

“If anything it will heighten our sense of what a special thing it was to be able to be in the same room as someone…you know there is such an intimacy between a reader and an author, you are completely within a world they’ve created. It can be one of the most profound kinds of connections.

“There’s a built in distance to these kind of  [virtual] interactions. Digital forms are a kind of simulation…of approximation”. Skype buffers angrily. 

“Joelle Taylor, who’s a poet very connected to Outspoken [a monthly poetry and music night at the Southbank Centre, featuring performances and workshops], said something I really love, that the audience is half the poem. It is not just about the audience’s access to the author, it is about the author’s access to the audience. They feed off each other. If you’re an author and you’re looking at a screen full of faces, that’s great and everything but it is all very fragmented and atomised.”

In much the same spirit of interaction, I now feel like an atomised audience, offering up ‘distance makes the heart grow fonder’ to compensate. Despite the distance, it is clear that these issues are central to Hodkinson’s idea of the power literary cultures hold. He discusses the very salient capacities that writers have to help us “navigate shifting social moors” and to illuminate the ways in which we “construct our language…and observe ourselves”. As well as to our own reflections in the screen, the latter point relates to another frequent reality of Hodgkinson’s work. Globalist approaches to literature and its accolades are often tasked with some kind of political purpose. This reflects the underlying assumption present in our conversation that translated fictions have a revelatory power that can offer insight into our own lives and aid in this self-observation. I ask about this political dimension, questioning how growth in translation as a practice relates to a world of Brexit, points-based immigration systems and growing isolationism. 

“I think it’s really encouraging that sales of translated fiction were up 5.5% last year, and that the sales of translated literary fiction have gone up by 20%. 

“It reflects a growing appetite for writing that represents worlds beyond our own, perhaps also writing that connects us to a sense of what unites us, what we share…as a human community beyond lines of culture and language and geography.

“Obviously behind those numbers, there is an immense amount of work going on. Translators and publishers, and authors as well are really at the coalface of this. In the last ten or so years, some people have been working on this for much longer, there has been a really concerted effort, a big push behind this.

“I think it has been helped enormously by certain prizes. I would say this wouldn’t I; the International Booker has been particularly helpful in the respect that it recognises the role of the translator”.  

Formed in 2004 to be hosted alongside the Booker Prize for fiction (formerly the Man Booker Prize), the award Hodgkinson has been steering accepts submissions from writers of all nationalities whose work has been translated into English. The prize money of £50,000 is split evenly between author and translator. Hodgkinson elaborates on the impact of the organisation, noticeably proud of what it has achieved. 

“What it did was really spotlight the translator, and recognised that this wasn’t just a case of carrying meaning in a very sort of plodding, workman-like way into another language…it was actually an art and the translator could really make a profound difference to the way an author was received in English.

“There is a silent conversation that happens between a translator and an author which is not on show in the final work necessarily, but if you’re looking for it you can see signs of the artistry, inventiveness and courage that is required to make those leaps.

“I think the International Booker Prize has been really instrumental in raising awareness of what translators do in our culture, at a moment when a lot of readers, as the statistics suggest, are looking outwards to the world beyond the Anglophone bubble.”

With his one year old son now on his knee, Hodgkinson stresses the importance of including international voices. He recalls a time in his former position at Granta, when published writers from abroad would question why their peers were not translated, noting that this oversight may be fading.

“One of the things that has been slowly shifting over the last few years, is an awareness of the fact that much of the most innovative, playful, formally ambitious and subversive writing isn’t necessarily being written in English. There are other literary cultures in the world that perhaps have a more porous notion of genre: they take a more playful attitude to categorisation, they delight in blurring the lines between novel and memoir or between, poetry and fiction. They revive our sense of the plasticity and endless possibilities for reinvention the novel presents.

“One of the things we get from writers like Han Kang, or any of the writers on the International Booker Prize list this year”, aptly digressing, he cites Shokoofeh Azar’s ‘The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree’ for its fusion of Persian epic, magical realism and political elements, “is that writers like that can be smelling salts to the English tradition and the English novel. There are many formidable and terrific writers in English, but I think that there has been perhaps a false sense of hierarchy, not through any fault of those writers, that English language writing somehow has a sense of its own exceptionalism. 

“What reading and translation can do is broaden your sense of just how big a conversation literature is, and how it allows for things which can be really enlivening. There is perhaps this wrongheaded idea that reading and translation is a sort of eating your greens or doing your homework and I find the opposite is true. It is a place where playfulness and form bending and the throwing off of convention is celebrated. It is much more a place that is filled with possibility and play.”

Every statement Hodgkinson makes is accompanied with an eager flurry of praise for the writers and translators involved. This keenness to acknowledge and commend is characteristic of the various projects discussed, but also of Hodgkinson’s conception of the role of prizes. Undeniably politicised and implicated in conversations around decolonisation and elitism, international prizes in particular offer plenty of fodder for their critics. When I ask about this, the response is measured and we joke about the perilous borders of ‘political’ discussions of culture. 

“These things aren’t perfect. They all have their limits and space in the sense that each one has a different structure. In the case of the international prize, it is really true to its aims in the sense of a very broad reach, but it also has to rely on the strictures of publishing, the financial challenges and so on and at the moment it is a really challenging period for publishers. We rely on the ingenuity and brilliance of publishers to bring us the best writing from around the world, and in a time like this it is very hard for them to do that.”

As our discussion strays dangerously closer to a verdict on prizes and their worth, Hodgkinson makes an important distinction about these various structures. 

“There are prizes where the panel is essentially an unelected group of people who preside over its selection for a long time. You still have a quite opaque system. That plays into a perception of a kind of closed doorsness. For the International Booker Prize, every year there is a new panel and the panel is selected by the Booker Foundation for their relevance and experience in the world of translation, so there is a degree of transparency… and a fairly open and public discussion of the jury.

“The constitution of a prize often mirrors its output, and therefore it is really vital that prizes are looking at the way they’re constituted in order to try and reach a wider audience. The people I know who are interested and involved in the literary prizes are really committed to reaching readers and the International Prize is very much an example of this; it is a prize for readers. 

“We don’t think of it as a kind of coronation of a book. It’s very much a collaborative, collegial community exercise. A group of people who love writing in translation coming together and reviewing and reading these books in order to celebrate the very best of them. The endeavour is not to confer some kind of power on ourselves, but to push outwards these things that are worth celebrating. 

“The most positive example I can give you is that since ‘The Vegetarian’ won the International Booker Prize, we have seen many more submissions from that part of the world, South Korea particularly, but also from Southeast Asia. Sales of ‘The Vegetarian’ went up 625%.”

Growth of the practice has also been seen closer to home. In the UK, specifically at Oxford, Hodgkinson’s Alma Mater, various projects share a similar cause with the International Booker. Events by organisations such as Queen’s College Translation Exchange and the Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation, as well as the Stephen Spender Trust all promote the practice of translation in its academic and literary settings. But the closing of distance between “popular” and “academic” work seems a less vital impact to Hodgkinson. Although we never talk specifically of responsibility when discussing how globalism has affected English publishing, Hodgkinson is enthused by the social potential translation can have.

“Your question about decolonisation. This is a very thorny one and not easily answered. There are a lot of publishers on the UK publishing scene who are actively working at pushing against this in the respect that they are trying to upend old power structures…who are beating against that current. ‘Tilted Axis’ spring to mind, a fitting name and one that deliberately invokes that sense of recalibrating the power dynamics that exist in the world. 

“You could say that the act of translation itself reverses the sense that English is the sort of supreme language and is a subversive act.” 

Ever the spokesman, Hodgkinson loyally returns to defend prizes in this context, when I ask if the distinction between national and international literatures by awards could be seen as a damaging one. 

“Juries have different priorities. So, you know, they are as imperfect as human society is as a whole. In my experience, most of the people involved in literary prizes are really passionately driven by a desire to want to connect with readers. And prizes are a way of cutting through the general noise of the media”

“And actually the language of winning and losing, as artificial as it may feel to many writers and authors, does help to kind of cut through the noise and to celebrate excellence where it exists.”

As our conversation ends I can’t help feeling that there is more to be said. Everything discussed involves ongoing projects and long processes of change to which Hodgkinson has been both party and witness throughout his career. Looking ahead, he comments that there are definitely “ways to make a syllabus [on translation] really sexy and contemporary”. “We are in a place where translation and the act of translation is really recognised as this creative act itself”, an accurate summation of his own work, and an optimistic note for the future.

The most obvious feature of arts projects during the Covid-19 pandemic has been well encapsulated by our discussion of the spirit and communities of translation: exchange, understanding and the broadening of conversations. Hodgkinson’s eagerness to promote and compliment his colleagues and other creators at every turn speaks to this, and we return home to his hopeful capital for the end of the interview.  

“London has been through so many plagues and fires in the past, we are a pretty hardy city. I admire the people who are doing inventive things in my sector, so I hope they’ll come out of this smiling.” 

The University Sexual Violence and Harassment Support Service is advising students who have been accused of sexual misconduct

Suzie Murray
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The University Sexual Violence and Harassment Support Service is advising students who have been accused of sexual misconduct

Oxford’s Sexual Harassment and Violence Support Service is quietly providing advice to students who have been accused of sexual misconduct. 

On its student advice website, the University states that the service is for students who have “experienced sexual harassment and violence in any form”. However, tucked away in the university’s policy documents, the Student Harassment Procedure notes that “sources of support and advice are also available to students who have been accused of misconduct”. 

The Sexual Harassment and Violence Support Service is staffed full time by Pete Mandeville, the project lead, and he is supported by five specialist advisors who take on the work alongside their other roles within the university. The service also seconds an Independent Sexual Violence Advocate from the Oxford Sexual Abuse and Rape Crisis Centre, Léa Maquin, whom students can be referred to via the service or independently. As stated online, the service provides advice and support to students affected by sexual misconduct. They also provide advice to colleges and can offer no-names consultations to college staff over the phone. 

The Support Service was launched in Michaelmas 2018 as a central resource for students who have experienced sexual harassment and violence, and to provide advice independent from colleges, which often have to balance their responsibilities to both reporting students and accused students.

Just as the colleges do, the University has a duty of care to all of its students, including those who have been accused of sexual misconduct. The legal guidance produced by Pinset Masons for universities responding to reports of sexual misconduct states:  

“…universities will have to take into account the interests and welfare of both students and endeavour to treat them fairly and equally when undertaking the risk assessment and ascertaining the potential effectiveness and impact of precautionary measures”

However, it goes on to add that “as far as possible, the support measures for each student should be provided separately”.

On the University’s staff advice website, they state that “the service also supports students who have had allegations made against them. They are held by a separate advisor to any reporting student to avoid conflict of interest and efforts are made to keep them separate within the service.”

As the head of the service and its only male-identifying employee, Pete Mandeville takes responsibility for the majority of these cases himself, but he does not exclusively take on casework of this nature. This role allocation is one of several informal measures to keep reporting students and accused students separate. However, this means that students who have been accused of sexual violence are typically receiving support and advice from the most senior member of the service. Inversely, it also means that the head of the service which claims to exist for survivors of sexual violence — and indeed, the only dedicated member of staff who is employed by the university fully time — is the individual with predominant responsibility for accused students. There is not a separate advisor for accused students.

Cherwell spoke to a student who accessed the service to receive support after they had been sexually assaulted. They said: “I feel shaken, very angry and completely misinformed — this clearly is not a safe space. I don’t understand how it’s been advertised as impartial, non-judgemental and explicitly advertised as a support service for those who have experienced sexual violence when it quite clearly is not. This has made me feel (even more) unsupported by the university … I feel I was kept in the dark.”

It Happens Here, Oxford Student Union’s campaign against sexual violence, stated: “IHH are of the opinion that the SAS should maintain a level of clarity in respect of such a sensitive topic — if they keep survivors unaware, they are not allowing them to prepare or to make an informed choice regarding whether they wish to continue to use the services. 

“We believe honesty and a separation of resources as to avoid conflating the two experiences is how the SAS should proceed.”

When contacted for comment, a spokesperson for the University issued the following statement: 

“As in all areas of University welfare provision, our duty of care is to all our students,  the University has never made any secret of the fact that the Sexual Harassment and Violence Support service is intended for anyone affected. This includes survivors and those accused. 

“The marketing of the Service is focussed on our primary user group, student survivors seeking help. The communications through posters and the website reflect this focus and need, but the Service offers broader provision than is advertised to students, including training and anonymous case advice to staff. 

“Cases are allocated based on a staff member’s skill and experience level and our primary goal is always to achieve the best outcome for students and give them the support they need while they are at their most vulnerable. 

“As part of this commitment the Service offers access to a full time Independent Sexual Violence Advisor (ISVA) employed by Oxfordshire Sexual Abuse and Rape Crisis Centre (OSARCC) and seconded to the Support Service. Their role is solely focussed on the support of survivors. It is not the case that accused students represent the majority of any single staff member’s case work. They in fact make up a tiny proportion of the overall caseload (4%) and only 7% of the Service Lead’s casework. Students who use the service are invited to specify whether they wish to speak to a male or female advisor.  As the only male identifying member of the team, the Service Lead typically sees more male students than others and there is no conflict of interest caused.” 

SpeakOut Oxford have been contacted for comment. 

If you have been affected by sexual harassment or violence, there are a number of resources available to you. As well the University’s support service, you can also contact: the Oxford Sexual Abuse and Rape Crisis Centre, an independent charity in Oxford where you can also refer yourself to the university ISVA; your local GP; It Happens Here, the OUSU campaign against sexual violence; SpeakOut Oxford, an independent and student-run advocacy group; the university counselling service; and/or your college welfare team.

This article was updated on the 5th June to reflect an error in the University’s statement: the full time ISVA is seconded to the Support Service by OSARCC, not employed by the University.

Opinion – We need to change the conversation around censorship

Jess Curry
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Opinion – We need to change the conversation around censorship

A recent headline warned ‘it’s time for Boris to tackle the tyrannical silencing of free speech on our campuses’. Having not realised I was studying in an institution which the article went on to tell me was comparable to the Soviet Union (thank you Telegraph journalism), I was moved to look further. In Michaelmas alone, Oxford experienced a flurry of incidents that attracted national attention in the form of articles, tweets and sound bites warning of the dangers of ‘snowflake culture’.

In January, Merton College made an ‘overt statement that debate is not welcomed’, at least according to one Oxford historian. In closer examination, this looked like a code of conduct for a conference at which speakers must ‘“refrain from using language or putting forward views intended to undermine the validity of trans and gender diverse identities”. Given that this was a talk to explore ‘perspectives on trans intersectionality’, it seems like a moderate request that the existence of the identity of members of the panel and audience was not up for debate. What would have been added to the discussion by forcing a trans activist to spend half their time defending their existence? More recently, Amber Rudd was disinvited by the UN Women for her role in the Windrush Scandal. Oxford University voiced their disapproval, saying ‘we encourage students to debate and engage with a range of views’. This is again misleading.  Students did not protest the content of her speech, but rather the platforming of a deeply controversial character in an uncritical and didactic manner. Sara Sadoxi, a committee member of Oxford Feminist Society, drew the distinction best; “All the promotional material spoke about Rudd’s role in encouraging women to get involved in parliament and the UN,” Sadozai‎ said. “Under that context, it didn’t sound like it could ever be an open debate where views are challenged.”

I chose these examples, not to make the case for or against the decisions, but to reflect the dissonance between the dialogue as it occurred on campus and the headline that made it to the eyes of the nation. At the heart of the reporting and responses to both examples is a disagreement around the space which public figures are entitled to, and with this, a misuse of the term ‘no-platforming’. There is an irony that in these disputes ‘freedom of speech’, established in the UK by the Magna Carta for ordinary people to hold monarchs to account, is used often to advocate for figures like Rudd, who generally go quite well represented and are already in positions of economic, political and social power. The very outrage that is provoked when such figures are disinvited shows the entitlement that these interest groups still feel over academic platforms, and the other-isation of groups who shouldn’t have to feel unwelcome in these spaces. This is not an attack of freedom of speech. The issue was not that Amber Rudd speaks – no one can escape her views – but that she was given the spotlight by an international women’s organisation for an uncritical celebration of her past. For such a context, are we really supposed to believe there was not a more valuable and inclusive voice that could have been heard? More importantly, the refusal of any empathy as to how this event might impact students of colour shows that the respect Rudd felt entitled to did not seem to go both ways.

‘Politically-correct’ is a popular buzzword, although it seems an odd turn of phrase when we consider how our PM’s list of ‘un-PC’ comments have not held him back in his quest for political office.  An infuriating aspect to this issue is that the narrative being spun that ‘student thought is limited by PC culture’ is as least as prevalent as any student consensus around the importance of being politically correct. Those who are the first to label this culture over-sensitive are also often those who can’t stomach the notion of trigger warnings. This seems an odd combination of opinions, I find it difficult to believe that two innocuous letters put beside an article impact anyone apart from those they can be a great aid to. Those who complain that students are over-invested in identity politics have no such qualms around undermining us collectively as ‘privileged juveniles’. It was not only passionate fans of ‘The Female Eunuch’ who use the ‘no-platforming’ of Greer as an example of the illiberalism of the left. It’s important to ask – if there is agenda in this narrative, assuming it is not for the uninhibited discussion of second wave feminist theory – what is it?

One impact of the undermining of student culture is the implicit undermining of the causes that generally thrive within it. ‘Social justice warrior’, like ‘millennial’ or ‘snowflake’ has become an accusation which trivialises and thus delegitimizes the argument a young person wishes to make before they have opened their mouth. Remove the negative perception, and those on the right would have to make a greater effort to engage with the arguments themselves.  But it is all very well to complain that social justice interests are misconstrued.  The larger danger here is the weaponization of outrage – that the unlikable, ivory-tower student image is having a guilt by association impact on other issues. In the run up to last year’s election, The Times reported that the Conservative Party was said to have polled LGBT issues to see if legislating against this group could be used to win votes in Northern, working-class constituencies. Such speculation should be incredibly alarming and points to a culture war that attempts to divide traditional left-supporting groups. There is a truth in that principles alone don’t cause change, that activists must be actively conscious of how they are received by the wider public.

The first step to reclaiming agency around media narrative, which I hope I have given fair reasons to be concerned about, is to meet in the middle with mainstream concerns around free speech and dialogue. Bridge building is quickest as a two-way process, and one that we must engage in if we don’t want to end up stranded and ineffectual. When attempts to engage with this question are treated with the dichotomising response that I outlined at the beginning of this article this is disappointing and frustrating, but makes it even more crucial that our push back comes from the centre rather than being forced to a similarly illiberal extreme. We shouldn’t be led by the nose into conceding the untrue claim that to defend a diverse 21st century student body we have to destroy founding academic liberties and principles, but fight for the middle ground which preserves a vibrant educational climate whilst respecting everyone’s dignity.

Moreover, if we understand that trigger warnings, selective platforming and re-appraisal of core literature all have a place in at university, then we must also understand that, if we don’t want to live up to the caricature painted of us, this is a delicate and nuanced process of give and take. My experiences as a white, British woman don’t give me the education to reckon where this line should be drawn on a university level compared to students who face more aggressive, harmful and insidious bigotry.  In my own degree, reading Classics prompts a difficult negotiation between reading as a wannabe academic and as a 21st century woman. However, I am also aware that when I read a rape scene in Ovid, whilst I find it repulsive and upsetting in one light, I can use it to aid my understanding of the gender dynamic of the era. Less palatable and equally true, is that I know that is not the main justification for why I read it – that there is a literary quality that is not mitigated by the misogyny it is partially shaped by with.

The University’s free speech charter and even the recent SU motion are both overly vague in setting out a criteria for the trade-off between the inherent literary or academic value of a text and the dangerous or upsetting content that it may also contain – the process is thus ongoing as we decide where the boundary between these concepts must fall. Part of the danger of the binarising process that we can see playing out in mainstream media is that it  makes it harder to address these types of questions without being aligned to the camp of ‘overly-PC’ or ‘oppressive’. For example, after he signed a letter in support of Germaine Greer’s lecture at Cardiff University in 2015, Peter Tatchell was ‘no-platformed’ for his stance on ‘no-platforming’. I have to question if Fran Cowling, the LGBT representative from the National Union of Students, thought that she was making the best use of her limited airtime by refusing to share a stage with a man who was arrested 300 times in the fight for LGBT+ rights. Some can make the argument that Tatchell committed a trans-unfriendly act in signing the letter but there is no case that he is a transphobe. It is horribly wrong that a man who, attending Pride in Moscow, was beaten to the point of brain injury by neo-nazis could be the subject of a tweet; ‘I would like to tweet your murder you fucking parasite.’ Attacking established leftists for differing not in visions of what the world should look like but of the best mechanisms to achieve this leads to the accusations of arrogance that end up alienating this generation of activists from the last.

After her invite was rescinded, 56-year-old Rudd urged students to “stop hiding and begin engaging”; an example of perhaps the most pervasive misrepresentation that students are subject to. Students do not hide, and the claim that they do is ironically used to avoid engaging with them. This was the route taken by Rudd, who at no point took her disinvitation as a suggestion to apologise for or even acknowledge the harm and alienation that her political career had caused the young women who her talk was supposedly to represent. The snowflake image does a huge disservice to the efforts and achievements of young activists around the world. The media need to stop getting away with claiming otherwise.

Oxford’s bike black markets and other vicious cycles

Alex Fleming-Brown
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Oxford’s bike black markets and other vicious cycles

When you find yourself locked in a stranger’s car, alone, behind an MOT station 30 miles away from college, half an hour until your tute; something’s gone wrong. 

Frustrated by my pedestrian existence, I decided to buy a bicycle. What I didn’t know was that this decision would take me on a very Oxford odyssey: encounters with angle-grinders in Garsington, thinly veiled hostage negotiations in a field in Abingdon, and a chat with a 9 year old about the Nigerian Naira’s dependence on petroleum exports.

I got Jeremy’s number from a mate in college. Jeremy was evidently the go-to man, the real McCoy. I was assured that he had sold somewhat functional bikes to at least three vague acquaintances. They were also cheap. With these strong endorsements, and negative 1.5k in my Santander account, I boldly sent off my first text.

“Hi Jeremy, I’m looking to buy a bike in Oxford and my mate X gave me your number. Best, Alex”.

3 hours later, the cogs of Jeremy’s tightly run global business empire whirled into action:

“Hi Alex, here is my address for the bikes – OX4 XXX, XXXXX Road. I’m open all day. Let me know if you need to be picked up or you are unable to use your own or public transport. If you use a taxi i will refund. Thanks.”

Professional. Responsive. Transparent. Flexible. Generous. What else should I have expected from Oxford’s premier bike merchant? I scoffed at my initial hesitation to contact him; I was in the hands of a pro. I googled the address and saw that it was 15-minute drive out of Oxford. It was too far to walk, so I had a choice: the generous offer of a refundable taxi, or being picked up? I eventually opted for the latter, in a bid to strengthen my position in subsequent price negotiations. Also, since his job was literally selling transport to people because they had no other means of traveling, asking for a lift couldn’t have been an uncommon request.

“Thanks for your swift response. Would it be possible to pick me up from Holywell Street at around 4:30?”

“Yes I will pick you up at 4:30pm. Can i pls have the post code? Thanks” – I admired his stylised informality: selective decapitalisations and general aversion to punctuation. Every interaction exuded confidence and a relaxed manner indicative of vast experience.

At 4:27pm a text comes through: “Sorry im rushing for emergency at the hosp. Can we pls do tomorrow?”

 An emergency! And at the hospital! How dreadful! I needed a cigarette and a lie down before I was able to compose a response. I eventually found solace in his confidence that we would be able to “do tomorrow”, since it at least implied that the medical emergency was not life threatening. I messaged him the following morning and after minimal back and forth, he arranged to pick me up at 1:30pm.

At 1:42pm a black Honda (whose back window had been repaired/replaced with cling film) eventually screeched to a halt outside New College plodge. It was at this moment I had my first inkling that this bike deal might not go as smoothly as I had hoped. But I nodded at the driver and confidently got into the (bicycle) dealer’s car. (Full disclosure: I also took a furtive photo of the car so I could lecture my friends on not judging books by their covers whilst they salivated over my gleaming bike.)

The 15 minutes flew by. He gave me a potted history of his life: his childhood in Lagos, his wife, his children, and his aspirations to graduate from a masters programme next year. I was inspired by his story and chatted with an ease I have failed to muster with any hairdresser or trained psychotherapist since. To my disappointment he made no mention of yesterday’s ‘accident’, but this modest reticence only added to my admiration of his resilience and professionalism. 

Eventually the car stopped, and I was somewhat surprised to be led through the front door of a small suburban house. It only got stranger from there. He proceeded to guide me through to the back garden of what he now referred to as his home, where I was greeted by the sight of over 300 bicycles. Each bike exhibited a different stage of decomposition: most of the frames were missing at least one wheel whilst others had surrendered to rust decades ago. Presumably some were also camouflaged by the tetanus-riddled fauna of spokes, chains and brake wires. Through this metallic morass, Jeremy nimbly waded. He plucked out one bike (or most of it) after another until he found one which I liked. At a distance of 10 metres, I fell in love with a battered old racing bike frame, mottled in chipped sunset paintwork. The fact it was missing both front and back wheels phased neither me nor Jeremy, who set about finding suitable substitutes. Within minutes he had assembled a beautiful new mongrel before my eyes, never before ridden. I was encouraged to take it on a ‘test drive’.

I hadn’t ridden a bike regularly since I was 5. I am naturally lanky and malcoordinated. I will also do anything to avoid a situation in which I am publicly seen to be making a fuss. This cocktail of hamartia meant that the ‘test drive’ consisted of me wobbling along the pavement for ten metres, falling off whilst trying to disembark, and then blurting out “it’s perfect, I’d love to buy it”. He asked for £80, I offered £50. We met in the middle at £65 and shook hands. This might have been where the adventure ended had there not been one further, minor wrinkle to be ironed out.

On inspecting the bike more closely, I discovered a unique feature which Jeremy had neglected to advertise: there was a “kryptonite D-lock” still secured through the bike frame. But before I could raise an eyebrow, Jeremy anticipated my fears and reassured me that the bike was an old one of his brother’s, and he had simply lost the key. Out of the 300 bikes in his back garden, the likelihood that I should have picked out a family heirloom seemed like an extraordinary piece of fortune indeed. However, without waiting for my response, Jeremy immediately started to search for tools to remove the lock, with a speed and alacrity which confirmed that no impediment would prevent this sale from going ahead. On even closer inspection I noticed that the D-lock was not only attached to the bike frame, but also to another ring of metal–similar to the sort that are sometimes nailed onto walls for cyclists to secure their bikes. A cynical observer might claim that the bike looked like it had been forcibly ripped from the side of a building.

From the comfort of your lockdown boudoirs, I imagine it is easy for you to say what you might have done instead. I promise you it is much harder when you are actually in a man’s kitchen, with no alternative means of getting back to college, whilst he road-tests various weapons from his power tool arsenal in front of you. It gets harder still when one of his children comes downstairs and makes you a cup of tea whilst you wait.

After 15 minutes of fruitless angle-grinding, bashing and hacking, the ever-resilient Jeremy devised a new plan. He explained that he had ‘friends nearby’ in possession of the requisite tools to remove the lock. At a certain point you just have to accept that you are in too deep to bail. So, once again, I boarded the Honda, bike in tow, and went to meet Jeremy’s ‘friends’.

Jeremy’s description of ‘nearby’ turned out to be as flexible as his conception of what constituted the saleable condition of a 2nd hand bike. We drove for a further 30 minutes, deeper and deeper into the Oxfordshire countryside whilst he elaborated on his political leanings. I was interested to discover he was a “One Nation” Conservative and an ardent advocate for corporal punishment. Halfway through his assessment of the Thatcher administration, I spotted a sign saying that we were passing through Garsington. Three turns later, he pulled up behind an MOT garage. Springing out of the Honda, Jeremy whistled at his friend who slid out from beneath a car, and the two of them wheeled my bike around a corner into the sunset, leaving me locked in the car, alone. 

After 40 minutes with no sign of man nor bike, I shared my live location with a friend on facebook along with a signed will that any remaining organs should be donated to science.

However, once again, my fears were unjustified, and our returning hero Jeremy rolled into sight. He proudly encouraged me to examine the recently unfettered bike and asked me if I was happy with it. As a prisoner in his car, parked on the private land of his ‘friends’ ’ MOT station, I did not think it polite to demur.

3 hours after Jeremy originally picked me up, I was returned to Holywell Street. 24 hours later, the bike’s rear hub decided to stop working. Naturally this happened whilst negotiating the Cowley Roundabout, calculated by the Department of Transport to be “the Second Most Dangerous Roundabout In Britain”. The bike is now rusting in my garden instead of his. If you recognise any of its parts (the wheels don’t match so it must have a minimum of 3 previous owners) then let me know and I can return the relevant remains to you. Unfortunately, I strongly suspect that cutting off the D-lock removed the only working thing on that bike. 

A man’s best friend

Anna Robinson
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A man’s best friend

As a child, I developed a strange habit: whenever I wanted anything, I would make a PowerPoint. My younger self had a compulsion to set out an argument that developed over twenty slides, replete with rainbow gradient backgrounds and fancy transitions. I would then come downstairs and solemnly ask my family to convene in the living room for some important business; I would present my masterpiece in all seriousness and await my parents’ verdict. When I was ten I successfully persuaded them to take my brother and I to CenterParcs. Intoxicated by the sense of omnipotence this victory gave me – an ability to momentarily topple the power dynamics of the family unit to get my own way – these PowerPoints were henceforth prolific. I think my parents must have been secretly laughing at me, but whatever it was, something worked. If I wanted something I didn’t pout or cry; I retreated to my father’s study and made a presentation.

One day I set my sights on my biggest task yet. I wanted a dog. I gathered my family in the living room and went through my carefully prepared slides. I got my brother to hand out accompanying visual aids (cute puppy pictures I’d found on Google). I even drew up a contract which I was willing to sign, pledging to walk the dog every day, clear up its mess, love it forever, etc. My parents said no. I stopped making PowerPoints and told them I would never speak to them again, then probably went to my room and cried.

It wasn’t until a year later, when we moved to the countryside, that my parents changed their minds. It was a compelling need to fit in with the local residents, rather than my immaculate PowerPoint, that made the difference. We moved to a place with more pets than people; every single one of my neighbours has a dog.  Acquaintances are recounted in relation to their animal: ‘you know – Smudge’s owner’. On walks, dog is invariably greeted before the human. Christmas cards are signed by every member of the family – including the dog, often in a different handwriting that attempts to emulate some form of canine cursive. As a teenager I earned more money dog-sitting than baby-sitting.

Initially, I think it was mostly a desire to be socially visible that my parents rescued a three year old Jack Russell called Freddie. Over the years I watched my parents, previously cat-people who hated mess, become absolutely enraptured by this four legged, fourteen kilogram animal. Every morning I could hear my dad go downstairs and talk to the dog while he made his breakfast, asking how he slept, what his day was looking like, did he have any strange dreams? I doubt my dog had complete comprehension as to what my dad was saying – but dogs do have a talent for understanding; it is usually just an ability to perceive what is beyond words. I always thought my dog could feel how I was feeling. If I was sad, he knew, and would come and sit with me quietly, occasionally giving me a little affectionate head-butt as if to remind me he was there for me, that I mattered to him. In peak A-Level stress season, my mum had two ports of call for advice: ‘do some exercise’ or ‘go sit with the dog’. The latter was always the preferable. In very basic scientific terms, I believe this was because time with pets is said to increase levels of oxytocin (a stress-reducing hormone) and decrease the production of cortisol (a stress hormone which I discovered in abundance alongside my Chemistry A-Level). 

Essentially, in a world that is full of complexities, stresses and changes, one constant is canine affection. Every time they see you, you are the most important person in something’s life. Imagine feeling like that every time you walk through the door. I think we all have some innate narcissism that tells us we are the centre of the universe – a system of belief that is ironed out by existence in what my parents term ‘the real world’. But to Freddie I really was the centre; his existence seemed to orbit around loving his family. And when he sneezed it was so cute my heart would hurt.

Whenever Freddie got overexcited, he would run outside and chase his tail – once or twice he even caught it. He would sit on your feet under the dinner table because he didn’t like to touch the cold tiles. He ran in his sleep. He always had the hiccups when we were watching television. When we walked along the sea, on a promenade about two metres above it, he would sprint along the edge, barking at the unremitting waves.

When my twin brother and I went off to university, my mother worried about empty nest syndrome. I think she coped by turning the dog even more emphatically into her baby. When we returned after the first semester, we were shocked to find her pushing him around in a pram. He had started having trouble walking, and the vet suggested this so that he could still get out and see the world. He was still very happy, but by now he was an old dog and needed a lot of care. For the last several months of his life, my parents put as much on hold as they could to spend time with him. Some relatives and friends found this difficult to understand – surely he’s just a dog? But Freddie was part of the family. I think a lot of it was gratitude; this dog had enriched our lives since the day we got him. But how can you say thank you to a creature that doesn’t understand gratitude? Loving us was just something he did.

When I made that PowerPoint I was desperate for a dog – I thought it would provide an endless source of cuteness and bragging rights over my pet-less friends (I was a very mean-natured eleven year old). I envisioned dressing it up, teaching it tricks and frolicking in a couple of sunflower fields. I wanted a golden retriever: I would call it Princess. Instead we got Freddie – he didn’t like wearing bandanas, and could just about manage to ‘sit’ when bribed. But I am so grateful for him. He simply made every day that bit happier.

Going for a run – a reality check

Ben Jureidini
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Going for a run – a reality check

‘Running’, says American long-distance champion Kara Goucher, ‘allows me to set my mind free. Nothing seems impossible, nothing unattainable.’ Now, I’m not sure how she feels when she enters the second kilometre of a five-kilometre run, but whatever it is, does it come in pill form? No, safe to say, as I shuffle out the door in my dad’s old trainers, avoiding eye contact with my year 5 teacher, who seems, alongside what can only be described as everyone I’ve ever met, to have picked this exact moment to walk past my house in a government-compliant parade, a great many things seem impossible, returning with my dignity, and my ankles intact most definitely amongst them. 

I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to say that by 300m in I’m on the brink of cardiac arrest. I’ve seen Big Little Lies, and I can tell you that going for a jog looks as much like Reese Wetherspoon and Nicole Kidman dramatically powering down the California coastline as Ben Mitchell looks from one episode of Eastenders to the next. Running, in popular culture, is almost ubiquitous with meditation, with getting some quiet time to oneself, with setting your mind free. Part of me wonders whether any of these script writers have, you know, run, before. Even Claire Underwood, far from pulling one of her intercostal muscles from manically inhaling after two laps of the park, manages to plot the overthrowing of Xi Jinping or something – I never really watched House of Cards. If these characters sweat, they glow, and most of them, somehow, go for runs in the morning: if I went for a 5km run at 8:00 then, upon returning around lunchtime, I’d be incapacitated for the rest of the day, wondering if I can blame the woeful performance of my respiratory system on psychosomatic coronavirus. I was promised that running would clear my head, but, as I approach the third kilometre of what can probably only be called a jog with Holly Willoughby levels of optimism, not only am I equally stressed about essays/exams/the impending recession as I was on the sofa, but I’m also in agony, absolutely knackered, and bordering on the tachycardic. 

It’s not just my shins that running ruins, either. Through some perverse Pavlovian conditioning, the songs on my running playlist, when they screech out of the radio, make me come out, somehow, in both a cold sweat and a hot flush. The first bars of ‘Break my Heart’ by Dua Lipa now immediately raise my blood pressure to levels that probably constitute a pre-existing health condition. 

This self-flagellation in the name of being able to nonchalantly ‘go for a run’ – as if I lived next to Battersea Park, returning home to my walnut milk and mango smoothie, before sitting down to begin work for whatever sector of the finance industry I happen to have sold my soul to – coincided almost with leaving the house becoming illegal. It was as if, now that exercise was restricted to once a day, I was immediately compelled to actually use this gift in the name of individual liberty. Now, I thought I was doing pretty well by about week three: sure, I was working at a pace only a few orders of magnitude off the half-life of Xenon, but at least I was running, right? Then, with the kind of catastrophic impact I presumed confined to the Cretaceous period, that ‘Run 5, Nominate 5, Donate 5’ challenge spread through Instagram like a – well, it spread quickly. Suddenly, my half hour 5k runs were not ‘a step in the right direction’, but a pathetic, directionless shuffle. Friends who I can absolutely guarantee have never even powerwalked, let alone run, were posting times which I’m pretty sure qualified them for the 2024 Olympic team. ‘Yeah,’ I laughed with them, ‘isn’t my time tragic? … damned shin splints…’ 

When I first ran in under half an hour, I thought I was basically on par with Kara Goucher. I knew I wasn’t that fast, but little did I know I was running at the pace of, and I quote this from a friend, ‘my diabetic mother’. ‘Join Strava!’ they said, ‘we can track each other’s runs!’ Frankly, I think this is the kind of thing George Orwell feared in 1984. I’m already haunted by the Alexa-like voice in my earphones that updates me on the quality of my run: ‘Heart rate: maximum’, she tells me, with a tone I can only compare to the safety video on an Easy-Jet flight that tells you to remain calm and breathe normally on the off chance you’re hurtling into the Atlantic ocean, ‘Intensity level: 5. This exercise is extremely strenuous for you, be sure to rest after! Distance: 1.8 Kilometres.’ To make matters worse, at the end of each run, she has the audacity to tell me that I’m ‘below average’, and that, get this, that run decreased my fitness by 4%. I tell myself, naturally, that this is a GPS error. It’s the tech that’s malfunctioning, not my heart. I turn Dua Lipa off, try not to vomit, and limp back home like a wounded elephant. My face the colour of the BBC breaking news banner that scrolls across the screen whenever Boris Johnson/Dominic Raab/one of the other ones walks into the press briefing, Hollister tracksuit bottoms drenched with sweat, I ring the doorbell:
‘How’d it go?’
‘Yeah, it was good: nothing felt impossible, nothing unattainable, you know, the usual.’ 

Image credit: Tirachard Kumtanom via Pexels

The true cost of moving the Tokyo Olympics

Lucy Tansley
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The true cost of moving the Tokyo Olympics

In March, the news was declared, inevitable yet disappointing, that the Tokyo Olympics, scheduled to take place this summer, would be postponed due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. It was indubitable proof – not that we needed it – that Covid-19’s effects were of global magnitude. The first time that the Games have been postponed, and the first time not to take place on schedule out of the war-time years, the decision has sent shockwaves throughout Japan and the sporting community across the world.

The financial impact of moving the Games is huge; one estimate from a Japanese economics expert places the additional cost at around £4.7billion. Organisers now face the challenge of footing the bill for the upkeep of the forty-two venues planned to be used for the Games, with some, including those for wrestling, fencing and beach volleyball, needing to be dismantled or freed up for other usage in the interim.

Yoshiro Mori, president of the Organising Committee, commented in an interview that if the Games had to be postponed again in 2021, they would have to be “scrapped”. An eight-year gap between Games would be a long wait indeed, and for athletes whose fragile window of sporting excellence relies on the carefully honed four-year build-up to the tournament, the news will have derailed many a precisely-planned training schedule.

International swimming and athletics associations have already confirmed that their scheduled World Championship competitions next year will have to be pushed back until 2022 to avoid taking place too close to the Olympics. These economic and logistical effects, the unwieldy iceberg beneath the tip of the IOC’s announcement, will have a lasting impact on the sporting world for years to come.

For sports like gymnastics, where female athletes tend to peak in their mid-teens, a year is a lifetime. US swimmer Ryan Lochte, due to turn thirty-six this summer was aiming to become the oldest gold medal-winning swimmer in history, but a year may rule out the possibility of him, and other athletes at the end of their careers, of being in with a competitive chance of attending the Games.

But perhaps giving the spotlight at this moment to athletes like Lochte (who, incidentally, was banned from competition for ten months after the last Olympics for falsely claiming to have been robbed at gunpoint whilst in Rio de Janeiro for the Games) removes attention from those who will be more impacted by the postponement. Sports and athletes with limited funding may struggle to continue until next summer; USA Cycling have reportedly furloughed or laid off 40 percent of their staff, with USA Rowing similarly cutting down their staff by a third.

Even more overshadowed are the Japanese workers who will lose out on business and financial security as a result of the postponement. The organising committee employs around 3,500 people, and with the added financial strain of the unexpected change in plans, many will lose their jobs.

The question that emerges from all this is, of course, who will pay? Expenses rise and stadiums and arenas are lying dormant as the world waits for the corona-storm to wane. The official figure for the total cost of hosting the Games is £10.4billion, although reports estimate that in actuality it is nearly double this; more than half of this money has come from Japanese taxpayers, and any increase in expenditure will surely leave them more out of pocket. 

However, amidst it all, there are positives to take away from the situation. The New York Times reported that swimmer Rudy Garcia-Tolson, a five-time Paralympic medal winner, had decided to retire after Rio 2016, but had taken news of the postponement to use the next year to get back in training and give it one last shot. The Games, when they do take hopefully do take place, will be the ultimate symbol of triumph despite adversity. Japan, whose success in securing the Olympics in 2013 was partly down to the IOC’s aim of bringing hope after the misfortunes of 2011, when the country was hit by an earthquake and tsunami, killing 20,000 people and triggering the Fukushima nuclear disaster, is a nation used to overcoming challenges, and their vision for the historic tournament will no doubt be carried through, albeit a year later than scheduled.

Debate over whether or not the Games should have been postponed is a non-starter; the risk to all involved remains unquestionably high. But the real question now remains of who will pay the price, and bear the cost, of the Olympics’ unexpected legacy in Tokyo.

Student art: only for the privileged few?

Megan Whitlock
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Student art: only for the privileged few?

Whether you love it, hate it, or love to hate it, it is undeniable that the student art scene remains a fundamental space for young creatives to explore their self-expression while at university. The breadth and diversity in voices, the chance to define and redefine yourself and the potential to be subversive is what makes student art so incredibly fascinating for myself and many others. However, amidst the highly competitive nature of “putting yourself out there”, the question of who exactly these spaces are for all too often gets brushed under the rug.

In an ideal world, art would be for everyone. We even hear it in the way that we describe our artist friends as “gifted”, “talented” and having “a natural flair.” Natural talent doesn’t discriminate, and anyone can be born a creative genius – or so it goes. In fact, after decades of funding cuts to state schools, the skinning of arts departments and subjects, and a lack of lower class and state-educated representation in the creative industries, it should come as no surprise that those from privileged backgrounds are given a leg up in the art world as early as university.

According to a BBC survey of over 1200 schools, 9 in 10 admitted to cutting back on lesson time, staff or faculties in at least one creative arts subject, and the gradual decline in those taking arts subjects has been well-recorded. Like many other state school students, I was warned against “narrowing my options” when I expressed an interest in taking an arts subject instead of an extra science at GCSE (a concern that definitely was not echoed when I suggested taking history or computer science instead). Yet how can pursuing a career path in the creative industries be deemed as a one-way ticket to an impassable dead end, when that same industry brought in over £111.7 billion to the UK economy in 2018 alone? Clearly there’s opportunity there – but for who?

In a world where the arts will always be first on the funding hit list, countless students are not given the adequate resources or spaces to explore their creativity in an uninhibited way, purely for personal development, without the pressure of matching a specific style to attain the correct grade and ensure the school meets its targets. Though it is far from the fault of the dedicated arts teachers working their hardest, for many, school art classes bring back memories of frayed paintbrushes, limited and well-worn materials and dossing around with friends for an hour. A disadvantaged background further exacerbates these problems, as the necessity for part time work around studies and expenses of materials or classes means that students are often left without the opportunity to develop their creative skills beyond a limited classroom hour a week.

In comparison, advantaged and privately educated students can afford extra-curricular classes to compensate for cuts, attend schools where donors and fees ease financial pressures on departments, and have adequate classroom sizes and spaces for studios and stages. These privileges help students develop the confidence to network, as well as provide the tools to explore and express themselves in articulate and creative ways from a young age. Of course, this is not to deny the amazing hard work, talent, and dedication of these students. But when given ample opportunity to practice, the likelihood of finding friendly faces already involved in the scene at your chosen university, and experience in working with a variety of styles and mediums, it is natural that the process of getting a foot in the door may be a bit easier. For those with nobody to instruct or invite them to the right events, limited access to materials and time, and little prior exposure or experience in various approaches, the student art scene can appear utterly baffling at best; inaccessible at worst.

Student art is brilliant because it is an expression of the student voice. Arguably, we will never have as much opportunity to experiment and try new things as we do at university. Yet when one group of people has an advantage over the other, part of the student voice is muffled, and creative industries truly do become the “narrowed opportunity” our teachers warned us about. As other pervasive structural inequalities, from race, sexuality and gender, reinforce these problems, the result is that the artistic voices of minorities end up being ventriloquised and sanitised through a predominantly privileged perspective.

Whether it’s through establishing more beginner’s spaces or holding more workshops on how to respond to commissions and pitch, we need to ensure that our student art spaces are accessible and enabling. We need to create an environment in which everyone can have the confidence to put their work forward, regardless of experience, and receive the feedback and exposure that’s needed to grow. After all, art can never be representative of the student voice if only one type of voice is heard.

No refunds for £57,200 Saïd Business School MBA

Felix O'Mahony and Tilly Walters
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No refunds for £57,200 Saïd Business School MBA

Students studying on the Saïd Business School MBA programme have been told that they will not be offered a partial refund on their £57,200 course fees, despite 98% of students believing that the quality of education has become “worse” or “significantly worse” since the School moved teaching online due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The School has further asked students to find pledges for stipends to support themselves if they want to participate in internships this summer. A survey conducted across the MBA student body revealed that just 6% of students would participate in a self-funded internship, compared to almost 60% who would participate in an internship if supported by a stipend from the Saïd Business School.

MBA students voted in a ‘steering committee’ after tuition went online in mid-March. An open letter to the Dean stated that they wanted to “…work with you to find ways to make up for the online-only experience, which has already fallen below our expectations”. Of their concerns, financial assistance was the priority (refund, stipends and a hardship fund), as well as the possibility of course flexibility, and other issues caused by the online-only format of tuition. 

Following a meeting on the 27th of May, the Dean of the School, Peter Tufano agreed to personally provide £10,000 in support of the stipend program, as a symbolic gesture of support. However, a cost analysis conducted by members of the MBA course shows that this would provide sufficient funding for approximately 3 internships. The same analysis estimated that between 100 and 200 students want to take up an internship with the School this Summer.

By comparison, Harvard Business School has offered to subsidise internships for any MBA student undertaking an internship by $650 per week for up to 12 weeks.

Students have also raised concerns about the management and communication from the Business School. Shortly after the announcement that the MBA course would move online, the Dean, Peter Tufano, hosted a virtual ‘town hall’ where, students were told, administrative officials would “answer any questions you may have to the best of our abilities”. However, Cherwell understands that the Dean did not answer the four most popular questions at the event, concerning refunds, and the lack of representation of the Covid steering committee at the event. These questions were instead answered in writing and posted on a forum for students to access following the event.

Regarding refunds for MBA students, a spokesperson for the SBS told Cherwell: “The School is following university policy on refunds and focusing all its resources on protecting the long-term future for its programmes, their students, and alumni. While we have had to deliver the MBA in a different format to the one we all envisaged at the start of the year, we are proud of the way our faculty, staff and students have come together to make this the best experience it can be in these extraordinary times.  We have not altered the content of courses or the rigour of the assessments.”

Responding to a request for comment Peter Tufano, the Dean of the Saïd Business School, said: “I did promise to students that I would work with the MBA class on raising funds to pay for unpaid internships with deserving organizations.  Indeed, I am working with some excellent students and Oxford Saïd colleagues on this plan, which we have labelled the Oxford Saïd Service Corps.   This work is in process and I am personally involved with it, as I had promised.”

The Saïd Business School is Oxford University’s business school. It offers a number of courses, with its MBA (Master of Business Administration course) being the most popular. The School is the most subscribed-to department for postgraduate study, with almost 3,000 students applying for the 850 places offered in 2018.

Friday Favourite: Revolutionary Road

Alice Peat
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Friday Favourite: Revolutionary Road

If I were to tell you that this novel is great because it’s ‘mesmerising’ and ‘powerful’ and ‘you simply can’t put it down’, you might just smile politely, say you’ll read it and soon forget all about it. Like so many brilliant pieces of writing, Revolutionary Road has often been reduced to a few meaningless (albeit well-meaning) clichés. If I were to tell you that it’s great because it’s probing, suffocating and at times unbearable, you might think twice about reading it. Now, more so than ever, books are a mode of escape. Richard Yates’ book doesn’t give us a warm, comforting literary landscape to flee to when we fall on hard times. Instead, what emerges is an unsettling, topical interrogation into the nature of conformity, set in an ‘age of anxiety’ which seems rather too similar to our own.

First published in 1961, Revolutionary Road is a story of ordinary circumstances. We’re cast into the landscape of the 1950s post-war boom: an age of optimism, consumerism and the growth of the suburban America which we might recognise today. In this shiny landscape of gleaming cars and new housing estates, the protagonists, Frank and April Wheeler, though restless and unwilling to conform to the expectations of small-town life, find themselves falling into the trap of banality. Frank works in a corporate office job in New York; April, falling pregnant seven years earlier than intended, is a housewife and a “mildly talented” drama school graduate. A seemingly comfortable, though monotonous, life is characterized by visits from nosy neighbours and drinks with friends.

From the outset, we sense tragedy. The “final dying sounds” of the opening scene and the toe-curling failure of April’s am-dram performance give an undercurrent of something darker bubbling beneath the surface of their daily life, from time to time rising up and threatening to submerge the characters and readers alike. Yates cleverly conceals how this tragedy might come about, often concealing its lurking presence as the plot winds its way through various false hopes and nostalgic flashbacks. Even after the lights go down on the high school stage of April’s performance, there continues to be a profound sense of actors stumbling about a stage which dissolves all around them, straining to reach a concrete ideal which evades them throughout. The only power they have, it seems, is the pain they can inflict upon each other.

In face of this futility, Frank and April revel in highbrow discussion. The epigraph taken from Keats, warns us of a story where “passion is both meek and wild!”. Frank, envisioning himself as smooth-talking Sartre, appears passionate about the “hopeless emptiness” of modern day America, often descending into empty rhetoric about the “endlessly absorbing subject of Conformity”. They enter into Meaningful, Intellectual discussions, purely designed to illustrate their own superiority which transcends the lowly, wasted existences of those who surround them. These discussions culminate in a grand plan to escape to Paris. The reader, as foolishly as the characters, is briefly caught up in the whirlwind of believing that things could be different, that they could reach Paris and have a whole new life outside of the cage of suburbia. Believing in the characters’ dream is the equivalent to believing in our own far-fetched fantasies. Yet the prose, which continually slips between an impersonal narrator and Frank’s continuous reveries, betrays his true, meek desire. Frank doesn’t want to go to Paris; he wants to live in a society where he understands his prescribed role. He wants to hold a “tamed, submissive girl […] who promised to bear his child”.

There’s never been a shortage of repressed women in literature. Madame Bovary, Yates’ favourite novel, depicts the trials of a woman trapped in provinces. Just like Emma Bovary, April is determined to flee to Paris. And just like Emma, though we see the beauty in April’s dream, the patriarchal structure which defines her husband’s worth and her own lack of independence means this desire is futile. An early manifestation of toxic masculinity, Frank’s insecurities make a life beyond the boundaries of ‘typical’ family roles an acute threat to his very being. April’s own thought process is kept hidden from us until the very end, until it’s too late. When the lurking tragedy suddenly comes to fruition, the reader must witness its transformation into a mere piece of neighbourhood gossip, by the society April despised so much.

In this new ‘age of anxiety’, where we’re increasingly invited to consider our own roles and beliefs, Revolutionary Road reflects on what it means to conform. Along the way, Yates’ disturbingly perceptive prose points us in the direction of uncomfortable truths. As much as we may resent it, we recognise aspects of the characters in ourselves. Though our societies may change and develop, human nature does not.

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