I can still remember the first time I got drunk. I was around 13 years old. A friend had stolen some of his dad’s whisky, and we got through half a bottle together. The experience wasn’t particularly extraordinary, apart from one thing: even then I was astonished, terrified, by just how much I enjoyed being drunk. The rush, the feeling of the alcohol coursing through my veins, the way it made my worries and anxieties dissipate for a few blissful hours. I subconsciously realised something that, years later, I would spend countless hours grappling with; whatever joys I could experience sober, they would be even better with a bottle in hand.
The next few years went by relatively normally. The lack of independence borne from still living at home meant my alcohol use was kept in check. All that happened was that every week or two when me and my friends were out drinking, I’d always end up getting absolutely shitfaced – far more than anyone else.
Then I arrived at Oxford University. It only took a few weeks for my alcohol use to absolutely soar. I was 18 at this point, and without my parents breathing down my back, I was free to drink as much as I pleased. In the Michaelmas and Hilary just gone, I drank an average of around 100 to 150 units a week. I drank virtually every day – and I mean drank, enough that almost every night ended with me stumbling up the stairs to my accommodation and collapsing in bed, drunk out of my mind. I spent well over a thousand pounds on alcohol, leaving less than half of my money for other expenses.
There are probably very few environments worse for would-be alcoholics than Oxford University. The atmosphere of constant stress, the omnipresent ‘work hard, play hard’ undertone, the fact that almost every society runs countless boozy events, combined with virtually every college having a cheap and accessible bar, meant that I stood little chance. It’s true that, regardless of where I went, alcohol problems would have probably arisen. Of the three factors often leading to alcoholism – a family history of alcohol abuse, beginning drinking at a young age, and past mental health problems – I tick every one.
But Oxford undoubtedly exacerbated my issues. It doesn’t have much of a drug culture (in my experience, at least), but it has one hell of a drinking culture. Very few people seemed to notice how out of hand my drinking was getting. In a society where getting drunk regularly is a common occurrence, it’s hard to differentiate between someone who likes to drink and someone who needs to drink. When I finally began the long and painful process of seeking sobriety, the lack of support provided by the university was shocking. My addiction advisor suggested I seek out alcoholic support groups within the University. As far as I can tell, no such group presently exists.
The solution isn’t, however, some sort of puritanical clamp down on drinking among students. The vast majority of you reading this article will be perfectly capable of drinking healthily and in moderation – and I am deeply envious of you. College bars and drinking events provide most with a hugely enjoyable social space. Some alcohol free alternatives would be nice, but that’s all. Instead, the University needs to do more to assist those students who are struggling; and we all need to be more ready to look out for the warning signs of alcohol dependency. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to drink; but when we start noticing that ourselves, or others, need to drink, alarm bells should be raised.
The writing of this article marks the two month anniversary of my sobriety. These past few weeks have been tough, much tougher than I could have ever expected. But they’ve also been incredibly rewarding. Getting over an addiction requires a complete life reset; it requires reconnecting with the friends and passions that you lost to booze. The constant urge to drink still hasn’t left me, if it ever will. Knowing that you can’t under any circumstances do the thing you want to do more than anything else is torture. But finally, for the first time in many months, I’m able to appreciate the beauty of our world, the simple joys of friendship, without the distorting lens of the bottle – and that makes it all worth it.
But if there’s one piece of advice I want anyone who relates to this article to take to heart, it’s this: don’t go cold turkey. Alcohol is one of the few drugs whose withdrawal can be fatal. For me, it was so bad that I was rushed to the John Radcliffe emergency unit, suffering from delirium tremens – a condition arising from alcohol withdrawal with symptoms like tremors, delirium, hallucinations, and even seizures which could potentially lead to death. Talk to your doctor, or any other NHS resources, so you can withdraw with the help of medications to protect you.
Drinking in moderation can be great fun, but if you notice yourself or anyone else unable to put down the bottle, becoming dependent on alcohol to get through the day, it’s time to take a break. And if that’s too hard, speak to a pastoral adviser or counsellor. Alcohol nearly ruined my life. For many years to come, I think, I’ll still be grappling with its consequences. I don’t want it to ruin yours.
During exams, my friends and I formed a study group. While it took us three years to realise that studying might be important even for a History degree, the dread for our upcoming exams eventually sunk in. Amidst the panicked conversations about misogynistic late-Roman chroniclers (looking at you, Procopius) were the study breaks at some point in the day to visit a café. A European-style working day with a long lunch break was essential to feeling like a real humanities student, and spending on coffee or cake proved to be an excellent means of coping with exam stress.
Now that exams are long gone, I have found time to consider what I could write about that would allow me to reflect on my experience of Oxford as a city, and I was torn between pubs and cafés. However, having been teetotal for the first year of my degree, in lockdown for the second and a finalist for my third, my pubbing credentials are well below par. Being a sugar-addict, however, my café CV is brimming with relevant experience, and I felt the need to pay some kind of tribute to the coffee shop scene here.
Bored witless by the Law Library, I applied for a loyalty card at the adjacent coffee shop, Missing Bean, and I also occasionally resorted to the suspiciously cheap coffee in college, where the exciting catch is that the oat milk is off and the coffee tastes burnt. As Exeter’s Cohen Quad is in Jericho, Tree Artisan, located on Little Clarendon Street, became our most-visited café. To find out what coffee shop life is like in Oxford from the point of view of the owners, I decided to interview Tree Artisan’s founder and owner, Graziella Ascensao.
Tree Artisan Café now feels like a fixture of the Oxford coffee scene, but it faced challenges from the very start. Graziella moved to Oxford from Brazil at 18, and later worked in the service sector, as both a barista and a waitress, and began to save up until she could afford to open her own café. It seemed as if fate had conspired against her when the COVID-19 pandemic hit as soon as she had secured the lease for the premises.
However, consistent with the rest of her attitude connected to her work, Graziella approached the challenge with a positive mindset and turned it into an opportunity. ‘At that time, I saw it was the time to open,’ she says. ‘When people were in front of their computer all day, they wanted to pick up a coffee and go to the park’. While, due to COVID-19 restrictions, she found it harder to cultivate the atmosphere she wanted within the physical space, she managed to generate a small community of regular customers who appreciated the friendliness and good coffee on offer. ‘I found positivity in that. I am always trying to be a warm person’.
This attitude is Graziella’s main take on the difference between the culture of chain cafés and that of independent ones. She takes pride in buying everything from independent suppliers, from bread to coffee beans, not wanting to compromise the culture of a small local enterprise. ‘There is more love, more passion. With chains, whoever you are, you are a number. The staff are a number, the customers are a number, everybody is a number. It is completely different to when you have a focus on the people’.
This focus is arguably what makes Tree Artisan Café unique. After exams, my friend and I worked there one afternoon, while the café was quiet. As we worked, we noticed that the staff recognised and talked to almost every customer who walked through the door. For a generation that appreciates the personal experience afforded by food vendors, this kind of human interaction sets Tree Artisan Café apart from chain cafés, where the staff often seem stressed and keen to hurry along to the next customer. The feeling that you’re part of a community is a huge appeal, and one that makes sitting in Tree Artisan much more appealing than, for example, sitting in Café Nero.
While the independent café market in Oxford is crowded and competitive, Graziella does not feel this is a hostile environment, and rather sees a market where independent outlets do not have to try and beat each other down to stay in business. ‘Honestly, I respect all of them, because I believe in this world there is space for all of them. Tree Artisan has my biometric, it is different from all the others. It is my personal imprint on them. It is like my baby. I am not comparing to others; I love it because it is mine’.
This ‘personal imprint’ is a huge part of independent coffee outlets in Oxford, and Graziella’s experiences definitely shape how Tree Artisan operates. Having been vegan for three years, she ensures there are multiple dairy-free, gluten-free and vegan options on the menu. As a lifelong member of the allergy club myself, it is welcome to have actual choices, especially when they’re genuinely delicious and likely to even be bought by someone who isn’t allergic to the other options. The menu is also rotated regularly, according to which options prove most popular, which allows Tree Artisan to be customer-driven, rather than constantly supplying the same, bulk-bought generic options available at a chain.
Graziella’s enthusiasm talking about running her own café is infectious. ‘It is hard work,’ she tells me at the end of our interview. ‘I’m here at 4:30 in the morning every day, and I have gratitude to be here. It is my passion, I am happy to be here’. It is this highly personal desire to create a positive experience for every customer that sets Oxford’s independent outlets apart from their corporate competition, and Tree Artisan Café is the perfect example of this alternative, people-focused approach to growing as a café in Oxford.
Friday 2nd September is creeping ever closer and with a government that seems to be set on inaction until then in the midst of the biggest cost of living crisis in decades, for millions it can’t come soon enough. Before then though, 0.3% of the population will decide who the next Prime Minister is and all signs now seem to suggest that that person will be Liz Truss.
Personally, I see it as a tragedy on several levels but, above all, I cannot cease to be totally baffled by the polls that show Truss will win by such a landslide. Not only is it now with seeming daily regularity that a new independent report, financial expert, or ‘Tory grandee’ points out her economic plans are both unfundable and inadequate. More than anything, the Conservative Party Members seem set to condemn themselves to losing the next election by electing a leader and resulting cabinet that is beyond impalpable for the general population.
I suppose the first step in trying to get inside the mind of Tory members is understanding who they really are, something that is notoriously difficult and explains why opinion polls in leadership contests vary so much in comparison with those of general elections. Although the information is not officially published, Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University, concluded nearly ten years of study on this and told the FT last month that “There hasn’t been much change in the demographics of the Tory grassroots since we began our research on party members back in 2013.” The research found that, rather unsurprisingly, that members are disproportionately older men. 63% were male (compared to roughly half of the UK population), their median age is 57 (the national average is 40), and 80% fall in the so-called ABC1 category of the most highly-paid demographic group (this makes up 53% of the country). They also match the classic stereotype of being white and right-leaning on issues, with 76% voting for Brexit and 95% identifying as White British in a country where that makes up just 83% of the population. Now, that is a lot of numbers, but the fact that those voting on our next leader come from such a small and narrow segment of society is not only plainly a crazy and scarcely believable part of our democratic system but goes some way to explaining how and why they have leaned so heavily on Truss over Sunak. They have rewarded her ludicrous attempts to evoke Thatcherite policies which don’t fit the current economic climate and, much like the Foreign Secretary’s desperate efforts to emulate Thatcher’s personality and dress sense, are outdated.
Despite this, in fact for this very reason, one would think that the constant comments from some of the Tory party’s oldest, most successful, and most well-respected names, about just how baseless much of Truss’ economic policies are, would have swayed more of the base towards Sunak. Kenneth Clark has described her approach as “nonsense and simplistic” and related it to techniques that might be used by a Venezuelan government. Former leaders Michael Howard and William Hague, as well as well-respected current MPs such as Dominic Raab, Jeremy Hunt, and Michael Gove, have all taken to the airwaves and newspapers in the past few days to speak against the idea that tax cuts can resolve the crisis. Even Lord Lamont, Treasurer in the Thatcher government remembered so fondly by much of the conservative party base, has publicly backed Sunak over the holes in Truss’ plans. It isn’t only individuals who think that her plans are misguided either: the IFS joined countless other economists last week in pointing out that her current ideas are simply unfundable unless they are accompanied by spending cuts.
What makes all of this even more crazy and difficult for me to get my head around is that the members seem blissfully unaware of just how unelectable Truss is for the electorate as a whole. With a general election looming in 2024 you would think that there would be an appetite for a relatively inoffensive leader who appeals to as broad a base as possible. Whereas Sunak has at least shown his ability to appeal to a large spectrum in the past, earning himself the nickname ‘Dishy Rishi’ during his Eat Out to Help Out glory days, Truss has never shied away from bulldozing ahead with unpopular policies and divisive comments. Whether that is upsetting Scots by saying that the best way to deal with their democratically elected leader is “to ignore her” or regular workers by telling them to put in some more “graft”, Truss trails Keir Starmer and rival Sunak in every poll of the general population. And if recent leaks of her planned cabinet are to be believed, placing Jacob Rees-Mogg as Levelling-up Secretary, she hardly appears to be planning a change of course on this front.
So – why? What is it that appeals? It might well be a case of Johnson continuity – indeed in surveys, many have said that they feel Sunak betrayed their leader by resigning and becoming one of the major catalysts for the Prime Minister’s downfall. In reality though, I think it is more of a case of the members being genuinely detached from the real world themselves. For whatever reason they don’t seem able to see their impending decision risks disaster for millions of people across the country by worsening current financial pressures as well as putting them in a catastrophic position ahead of the next general election. Two years is a long time in politics, but right now I struggle to see why on earth the turkeys are voting for Christmas.
CW : mention of disordered eating, fat phobia, body dysmorphia
Have you ever wept in a toilet stall—maybe during a particularly rough school day, maybe during a night out that went wrong—thinking that you were completely insulated from the world outside, only to realise that there’s a giant gap in the door – so whoever is walking past can definitely see you, all puffy-faced? Grace Olusola’s Vessel spoke directly to my teenage self and my current self alike, as I found myself in that exact situation after the show: watching the play felt like having my private, internal feelings about my body and food externalised and projected onto the stage at the Old Fire Station this Trinity. I felt seen.
Last summer I vented my frustrations at feeling like the only fat person at Oxford on Twitter, and my notifications pinged more than normal for a little while. Initially, I worried that a play seeking to address themes of bodies and food in the Oxford community would centre the experiences of people who are afraid of looking like me. While I do not seek to invalidate the experience of people who are insecure and conventionally attractive, there’s a difference between being insecure about having rolls when you slouch and, as the Comedienne comments, “the world decid[ing] whether you’re ugly or not for you”.
Yet Olusola and her team of six other directors have taken the wide-ranging diversity of such relationships with body image into close consideration. Vessel is made up of twelve discrete episodes, each drawing inspiration from student survey responses on questions around bodies and food. The episodes differed significantly in tone, managing to tackle these issues with sensitivity and humour, and reminded me of scrolling through TikTok: we see a spoof of 2000s fatphobic TV shows, titled ‘Formerly Grotesque Fat People Bake On Blind Dates While We Watch’, and a monologue on different kinds of Reese’s peanut butter cups, among others. In ‘Not Like other Girls’we even see a girl sniffling in the school toilets, not unlike me after the show.
The episodic structure and use of several directors is certainly a strength of the show, reflecting how our relationships with food and our bodies has as much to do with class, race, gender and sexuality as with what we see when we look in the mirror. I particularly enjoyed how the show played around with form and structure to reflect this: in ‘Femi’, Tariro Tinwaro sings of a best friend with an eating disorder “outrunning bodies like mine”, while in ‘The Comedienne’ we see Chloe Ralph hilariously enact the awkwardness of mediocre standup about her friend group and conclude “with friends this fucked up, this may be one of the few situations in life where being the fat one is actually the best status in the group.”
Olusola cites her experience as a welfare officer at St. Catherine’s College, as well as her own body image struggles, as a catalyst for Vessel: this certainly shows throughout the production, albeit not in a way that feels patronising, didactic or reductive. At the beginning we hear a voiceover announce the show’s trigger warnings, and that if at any point an audience member needs to leave and take a break, they are welcome to do so. Likewise, at the end the crew offered pens and index cards to audience members as a chance to reflect on what they had just seen.
While I did sometimes find myself wishing for more cohesion between the writing of the episodes, I enjoyed the way that each episode was announced by the pinning of a poster or a graphic with its title to a board at the back of the stage, creating a sense of collaginess and accumulation. This imagery of food wrappers and containers was neatly alluded to in ‘Motherhood’, an episode where a woman tidying the house for a date discovers her daughter’s binge-eating stash concealed between stage blocks. During the interval, a friend remarked that the episodic nature reminded her of opening a door at a house party and accidentally walking in on a conversation between strangers that you were not meant to overhear, as alluded to perfectly in a scene where we watch the awkward reconnecting between old friends gradually tip over into a painful conservation about responsibility when one is mentally ill. Olusola’s skilful writing shines through in lines like “I had a brain that betrayed me–you were the collateral”, and “sorry, force of habit, when you’re at death’s door [so often] you start leaving a key under the doormat.”
The presence of fat actors and explicitly working-class characters, albeit only a handful, on a student stage was particularly refreshing to see, although I did find myself wishing for more than a few of the twelve episodes in a show about bodies to centre their experiences.
Overall, Vessel’s careful balancing of sensitivity and humour in its treatment of the subject matter of body image and food made it an important and worthwhile watch; I can only hope that we see more stories and actors with these experiences on the Oxford student stage in the future.
Where do we go from here? Reflections on a day of unprecedented chaos in Downing Street…
The past few years in British politics have repeatedly defied belief but Thursday 7th July will go down in history as the most chaotic, bizarre, and extraordinary day that our country has seen in decades. This morning, it was barely possible to make a cup of tea before returning to the television to learn of another ministerial resignation or letter from newly appointed cabinet ministers calling for the Prime Minister to go. Chris Mason taking the phone call from Downing Street to confirm Boris Johnson’s resignation live on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme perhaps perfectly summed up the incredulous nature of the morning’s proceedings. The big question now though is what on earth happens next? Where do the Conservative party and the country go from here? As it stands, the PM insists that he will stay on until a new leader is announced, but is that really feasible? Who is best positioned to succeed him? One thing is certain, the turmoil is far from over…
Who Next? The Runners and the Riders
The main reason why Johnson has survived in post for so long in spite of countless scandals that would’ve buried leaders of the past has been the lack of an apparent successor. Now the Conservative party is facing a leadership election with contenders from across the political spectrum, as it tries to decide its future.
Liz Truss
Bookies odds – 7/1
Long-time favourite of old-time party members but counting many enemies among fellow MPs, the outspoken Truss has never been afraid to make her leadership ambitions clear. Much like Johnson, she has been happy to bend her political beliefs to fit with her rise to power after backing remain in 2016 only to become one of the biggest supporters for a hard Brexit in recent years. Brash and brazen with political stances branded by many as ‘Thatcherism on steroids’, she certainly wouldn’t offer the dramatic change in tone and direction needed if her party is to stand any chance of rescuing themselves at any approaching election. She may also struggle in early stages of the leadership race, with several MPs declaring privately that they wouldn’t back her.
Nadim Zahawi
Bookies odds – 8/1
Zahawi was centre stage in the political chaos of the last 48 hours after being appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer on Tuesday night, doing the media rounds defending the Prime Minister on Wednesday morning, and then calling for his resignation on Thursday. His political stock rose substantially as vaccines minister during the pandemic and, popular amongst his colleagues, he now appears to be one of the favourites to succeed Johnson. The only thing standing against him may turn out to be his relative inexperience in government.
Rishi Sunak
Bookies odds – 4/1
There are few men in history who have had such a dramatic rise to fame and fall from grace as Rishi Sunak. An unknown among the public when appointed as Chancellor he attracted fans throughout the pandemic with generous furlough and ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ schemes before becoming embroiled in the Partygate scandal and brought down by questions over his wife’s non-dom tax status. There’s a chance that his shock resignation on Tuesday night might just have saved his chances and he is sure to be a front runner if he can convince MPs of his credentials. Equally, his resignation letter suggested that his could be ‘his last ministerial job’ and a return to pre-political life could certainly prove to be an attractive proposition for the former banker.
Sajid Javid
Bookies odds – 7/1
Having already failed twice in leadership elections could it be third time lucky for the man who initiated the final chapter of Johnson’s prime ministerial career? Although his dramatic move and speech after PMQ’s will appeal to some, few can really doubt his own personal motivations for moving against the PM when he did and that kind of ‘snakery’ as Number 10 likes to call it has been enough to see others named Michal Gove get the sack. Javid would offer something different in terms of a political direction and would appeal as a more stable set of hands but his flip-flopping hasn’t won him many fans amongst MPs and party members.
Penny Mourdant
Bookies odds – 5/1
Who? I hear you ask. The bookmakers’ favourite that’s who! Mourdant finds herself in the bizzare position where not having any experience working in recent cabinets will be seen as one of her biggest strengths. If you are in search of a metaphor for the dire state of the Tory party then this is it. Being a long-time Brexit backer makes her palpable to the right of the party and the ERG but her membership of the liberal Conservative ‘One Nation’ caucus means that she has a fairly wide reach. She has perhaps the fewest enemies of any of the obvious contenders. Then again that is inevitable when you consider that she has never held a post of significance within government.
Tom Tugenhadt
Bookies odds – 14/1
‘The rebels’ choice’, Tugenhadt is one of the few likely runners who has spoken out against Johnson from the start. The Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee slammed him for his performance as Foreign Secretary and has remained critical ever since. His rhetoric always focuses on a renewal of traditional conservative values, the meaningful substance of that rhetoric unsurprisingly remains in the dark.
Jeremy Hunt
Bookies odds – 11/1
Hunt will undoubtedly frame himself as the man who stood up to ‘Johnson the bully’ and never served in his cabinet. In reality, insiders suggest that his close relationship with Theresa May meant that he was never invited to – a quite extraordinary thing when you consider the amount of ministers Johnson went through. Hardly a superstar as health secretary Hunt would represent a return to the more traditional style of government of Theresa May and although that be unexciting to some MPs, large swathes of party members could be convinced by a reassuring return to relative normality.
Ben Wallace
Bookies odds – 5/1
The defence secretary never resigned from the cabinet but did just about manage to squeeze in a letter calling for Johnson to go before the final decision was announced. The former soldier is broadly seen as reliable and undramatic, both potentially very attractive characteristics at the moment. He has won international acclaim for his dealing with the Ukraine crisis and the general public would be sure to back him on that but he is notable for his lack of experience in all other areas of government. Despite his popularity, he has also previously stated his desire to take on the role of UN Secretary-General in the future and that may yet prove to be his next step.
So, in conclusion, the race remains very much open. Dozens are sure to declare their leadership bids over the coming days and countless campaign websites will no doubt be launched within hours but the stark reality is that none of the options are pretty for the Conservatives. The party is in a mess, politics is in a mess. Opposition parties insist that Johnson cannot remain PM whilst the process continues and any caretaker would get the chance to audition their potential on the biggest stage. It still remains to be seen how long the elected leader will stay in post. Can any of those listed above really stake a claim to Johnson’s record-breaking mandate from 2019? A general election may very well be on the cards and, if that is the case, then the calculations change all over again for the MPs with the fate of the nation in their hands…
Your Thoughts
We asked you to sum up your thoughts about our departing Prime Minister’s time in office and departure itself – it’s safe to safe that the responses were mixed and I am happy to report that you didn’t hold back!
Charlie Aslet on the nature of Johnson’s departure:
“Boris Johnson’s resignation had as much dignity as a streaker at a football game. He clung to power until even his unkempt reflection was telling him it was time to pack it in. Some people would have thought it honourable to jump before being pushed. Not Boris. He was beaten up by all his closest friends and colleagues, his trousers hoisted around his ankles and then given a mighty boot up the buttocks before stumbling over the cliff. His only consolation as he tumbled down that rockface was that he managed to give Michael Gove a final slap in the face before he fell, giving him the sack when everyone else was resigning. In a way, I feel a bit sorry for Boris. His resignation was like the assassination of Julius Caesar, except this time it felt like he also managed to stab himself a few times before he died. But, then again, the man seems incapable of telling the truth. Even when he says he’s leaving it’s difficult to believe it will actually happen. When he says he’s actually staying, that’s when I’ll be ready to believe he’s really going for good.”
We then asked you for reflections on Johnson’s premiership:
“Good riddance babes”
“One word – joke”
And your predictions for the future:
“Same circus different clown”
“There is an unfortunate possibility that the Tories may be redeemed in the public eye”
“No chance anyone else will have anywhere near the decision-making prowess of Boris – prepare yourselves for an era of catastrophic indecision”
“I’m just sad for the people of Ukraine. Their future is now in doubt more than ever.”
“Someone equally bad or worse will become Prime Minister, there is no winning!”
UPDATE: On the 29th June, The UK Government announced a new round of sanctions on several high profile Russian figures including Potanin, with the aim of “hitting Putin’s inner circle”. A government statement read: “Potanin continues to amass wealth as he supports Putin’s regime, acquiring Rosbank, and shares in Tinkoff Bank in the period since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
As the Western world moves to sanction overseas Russian money, Cherwell has found that St Edmund Hall and the Saïd Business School accepted donations from Vladimir Potanin, the oligarch and metals tycoon who is the second richest man in Russia.
Potanin, 61, has a net worth of $27 billion, as estimated by Forbes. In 2020, he was included on the US Treasury’s list of 210 Russian oligarchs, businessmen and politicians under considerations for sanctions, dubbed ‘Putin’s List’. He is widely known for regularly playing ice hockey with Putin. Potanin’s fortune fell by $3 billion on the day that Russia invaded Ukraine. Potanin also served as the Deputy Prime Minister for 7 months between 1996 and 1997.
In 1999, Potanin founded the Vladimir Potanin Foundation to “implement large-scale humanitarian programs” in the fields of “culture, higher education, social sport and philanthropy development”. The foundation donated £3 million to St Edmund Hall in 2018 to endow a research fund for Earth Sciences, and to jointly establish the Vladimir Potanin Associate Professor and Tutorial Fellow in Earth Sciences with the University of Oxford. The endowment also funded the three-year Vladimir Potanin Tutorial Fellow of Russian Literature and Modern Languages.
The foundation also granted $150,000 to the Saïd Business School in 2017 for a fellowship scheme for the Oxford Social Finance Programme. The school selected 15 Russian charity workers to attend this programme between 2017 and 2019.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s allowed well-connected individuals to profit from the bloc’s transition to a market economy by gaining control over newly privatized state assets. Many of these deals were done privately, without competition. While in office, Potanin proposed the controversial ‘loans for shares’ scheme, which is seen as having furthered the rise of the oligarch class. This scheme effectively caused the consolidation of oligarchs’ control over the Russian economy. ‘Loans for shares’ encouraged wealthy businessmen to loan money to the Yeltsin government in exchange for state-owned shares in companies, many of which extracted and processed Russia’s abundant natural resources.
Of the programme, he told The Financial Times: “It is the biggest PR tragedy of my career. Of course, the privatisation process has to be transparent. And in our case it was not. My plan was different. I wanted to privatise the companies with banks and qualified people, raise their value, and then sell them.”
Through this scheme, Potanin and his long-term business partner Mikhail Prokhorov acquired a 54% share in Norilsk Nickel (Nornickel). The two businessmen separated their assets in 2007, leaving Potanin with 34.6% of the shares in Norilsk Nickel. The company’s total assets amounted to $20.7 billion in 2020.
On top of being the world’s largest producer of nickel, Norilsk Nickel is one of the world’s largest industrial polluters. In 2020, the company produced 1.9% of total global sulphur dioxide emissions. The company has announced that it intends to reduce suphur dioxides from its plants in the heavily polluted Norilsk region by 90% by 2025 from a 2015 baseline.
Potanin is the only Russian to have signed The Giving Pledge, in which the super-rich pledge to give a majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes. Other signatories include Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerber, and George Lucas. He said his decision was motivated by a belief that “wealth should work for public good”, and as a way to “protect [his] children from the burden of extreme wealth”.
A spokesperson for St Edmund Hall told Cherwell that the gift was accepted “in good faith and at a time when relations with Russia were in a substantially better place. This was a one-off donation and the College does not anticipate any further funding from The Potanin Foundation.
“The College is deeply concerned at the events happening in Ukraine and sincerely hopes that a peaceful outcome will soon be reached,” they added.
The Saïd Business School told Cherwell: “The grant went through the University’s robust approval process and the partnership ended in 2019. The focus of the programme is to improve the social impact and philanthropic work of charities and non-government organisations (NGOs) across the world. As a global business school with students and alumni from across the world, we have been deeply saddened at events happening in the Ukraine and hope a peaceful outcome is soon reached.”
The University of Oxford, Interros, and The Vladimir Potanin Foundation were approached for comment.
A couple of hours before watching Track 2, I saw a friend’s Instagram story pointing out the comments on a post from the official 10 Downing Street account. The post celebrated the ‘extraordinary contribution of LGBT’ people to Britain, but the comments were full of the kind of vitriolic homophobia that it’s hard to believe still exists in public spaces. It is this kind of hate, as well as the prevalence of outright racism, especially in online spheres, that makes projects like the Black Lives Playlist essential.
Track 2 is, primarily, a monologue about the experience of being Black and gay. It centres around The Speaker’s complex inner turmoil between shame and pride in his sexuality. Whilst we may now fortunately live in a world where homosexuality is far more accepted, this play serves as an important reminder that prejudice still very much exists in our society,and that microagressions can have serious consequences especially where marginalised identities intersect.
In spite of this, Track 2 never feels like a PSA about homophobia or racism. Instead, its character-driven nature is relatable to anyone who has ever felt out of place at a family party; anyone who’s questioned what they really want from life; anyone who’s kissed someone they didn’t really like and regretted it; anyone who’s looked at themself in the mirror mid-breakdown and thought, actually, they look kind of hot. This is the play’s greatest strength: writer Sam Spencer manages to both convey a very specific life experience and connect with universal feelings of anxiety and difference.
The Speaker tells us about a day spent visiting his sister’s boyfriend’s family for the first time – an experience that sparks complex emotions and difficult memories. This central narrative introduces us to the story of his ex-boyfriend, and a rendez-vous with a man from the gay hook-up app Grindr who asks The Speaker some difficult questions. Each of these narrative strands ties together cohesively. Credit must go to Spencer for creating a plot that plays out in such a satisfying manner, and to director James Newbery and assistant-director Grace Olusola for translating it onto the stage so effortlessly.
The different visions of the show’s team work flawlessly together. With one-person shows, especially those performed and directed by different people, it’s easy for conflicting creative visions to come across in the finished product, but no such issue exists here. The use of music adds to the piece brilliantly, and the colourful lighting accentuates the vivid narrative, although the lighting could perhaps have been used to accentuate key moments to a greater extent, and mark transitions between time periods more clearly. Yet, the collaborative nature of the project translates into a show that knows what it wants to be, and executes this vision immaculately.
The greatest strength of the direction is its simplicity: the story is allowed to speak for itself, which is essential to its success. Spencer’s script never tries to be overly clever or conceptual, instead relying on its innately heartfelt character development and engaging humour. He has a talent for visceral description, making both messy hookups and family dinners crystal clear in audiences’ minds, despite the minimalist staging: The Speaker remains sat alone in a dark space throughout. The script is structured very cleverly, with the hook-up acting as a frame that gains new meaning at the end, and the sister’s boyfriend storyline leading us craftily to an emotional climax. In addition to this, Spencer’s mixing of personal anecdotes with general thoughts on the likes of Stonewall statistics and making out with girls helps the writing sit so perfectly on the line between specific and universal. If I were to be especially fussy, it could be said that the script becomes slightly repetitive at times. Some elements, such as the use of the Grindr sound effect, could do with verbal clarification for audiences less familiar with the app, and the ideas around religion could have been fleshed out further. It remains, however, a remarkable piece of writing.
Spencer also performs his writing with a real honesty, transitioning smoothly between a public-facing cheekiness and moments of serious emotional depth – there are points where we feel genuine concern for him. The only things subtracting from the performance are some issues with awkward cuts and poor sound quality – the choppy switches between cuts takes us out of a few important moments, and dialogue with the off-screen voice in the first scene is at times hard to make out. These flaws can be easily forgiven, though; the show would work seamlessly in person, but we are unfortunately still gradually exiting the age of online theatre.
Like every other theatre fan, I’ve watched a lot of filmed monologues over the last year and a half. The influence of the likes of Fleabag can be felt within this piece (what would a review of a monologue be without a reference to Phoebe Waller-Bridge or Michaela Coel?), but it’s clear that the team have taken into consideration the limits and possibilities of the form and made it work for them. With its cohesive structure, engaging character and unfaltering honesty, Track 2 takes its place as one of the best examples of what has become an era-defining genre.
As the editors of Russell Group student newspapers, we are writing collectively to request a reversal of the Russell Group’s statement, 7 January 2020, ‘on ensuring fair assessment and protecting the integrity of degrees.’
As editors, not only are we students or recent students ourselves but we are also in constant contact with the students at our respective universities, as part of the function of our extracurricular roles. Apart from sharing in their collective experiences, we have a unique insight into their attitudes, viewpoints and beliefs. We speak and listen to them every day – and every day since the beginning of this academic year, we have heard students calling for more understanding, cooperation and empathy from university management.
The statement shared by the Russell Group on 7 January showed the inconsistencies between what they and we understand to be adequate teaching. Whilst we enormously appreciate the hard work of teaching staff under these challenging circumstances and understand the complications ‘blended learning’ has presented, students have repeatedly said they have not been adequately supported throughout this pandemic. This is by no means to disregard the tremendous efforts of university staff, but it is simply a consequence of the realities of a year like none other in living memory.
The lack of a ‘no detriment’ or ‘safety net’ policy has been a miscalculation by the Russell Group. Students across the UK have been left feeling abandoned by both the government, devolved administrations and universities themselves.
As the editors of 28 student papers, we pick up and record the views of our students on a regular basis. What many are telling us, as a result of personal and shared difficulties, is that they do require the support a clearer ‘no detriment’ policy would deliver.
We object to the assumption made by the Russell Group that ‘emergency measures’ are no longer ‘necessary’ or ‘appropriate’. We are living through what are undeniably unprecedented times – this is a global emergency. The Prime Minister has labelled these weeks of the third lockdown as the critical point in the UK’s fight against the pandemic – death tolls are high, hospitals have reached capacity, we are still just in the early days of administering vaccines. Students, locked down in various levels of economic and social stability across the nation, are facing some of the most important exams we have sat in our lives to date – under some of the most difficult circumstances many will have faced. International students, too, have been working all term from various time zones around the globe, detached from the support of their student communities.
If anything, this point in the pandemic is perhaps the most urgent. We are now facing a mental health crisis amongst young people. Figures by WONKHE and Trendence have shown that more students feel lonely and isolated on a daily basis as a result of the pandemic. Additionally, surveys of undergraduates by various higher education policy advisers have found that over 50 per cent of students say their mental health has significantly deteriorated during the course of the pandemic.
Students are attempting to sit assessments with a lack of resources, varying internet connections and mixed home environments. There are students without desks, who share bedrooms with siblings, who have caring responsibilities when they’re at home. Across the country, there are students from wide and varied backgrounds who are struggling to study for their final year assessments, many also affected by illness and bereavement owing to COVID-19. Students from lower income families as well as estranged students are disproportionately affected in their learning experiences this year and less able to receive the traditional means of support. They do not deserve to be dismissed.
Yet, no one from the Russell Group denied the emergency of the situation when metal fences were erected around halls at Manchester. Universities even went as far as to declare their own local emergencies by locking down individual residences during outbreaks amongst first years. There was no denial of ‘emergency’ when students were being blamed in the media for spikes in national COVID-19 cases.
A-level and GCSE exams have been adjusted to as if this were an emergency – so why aren’t the Russell Group responding in the same way for university students?
It should also be noted the UK government have voided themselves of much of the responsibility for the problems students face. On January 15, the Minister of State for Universities Michelle Donelan tweeted that ‘if universities want to continue charging full fees, they are expected to maintain the quality, quantity and accessibility of tuition’. A government who demands this from its universities should put support systems in place to enable it.
You have explained to our respective Student Unions that it is more appropriate for universities to provide ‘a range of policies and tools’ to ensure fair assessment for students. Whilst we agree some universities will need to adapt their policy on an individual basis, the Russell Group’s collective position against ‘no detriment’ or ‘safety net’ policy does not match the reality of what many students have faced, and are continuing to face, this year.
In principle, a ‘no detriment’ or ‘safety net’ policy should ensure a student’s grade is not worsened as a result of the pandemic. Currently, many of your universities’ mitigatory policies amount to simply offering more time for assessments. Frankly, a matter of extra days or a week is not sufficient for the challenges that we have outlined above, which students are facing in real time.
We understand that an algorithmic approach is not entirely viable due to the lack of benchmark data for many students at this stage of the 2020/21 academic year – that’s a mathematical given. But it is by no means impossible to support an alternative ‘no detriment’ policy built for the circumstances. The University of York, for instance, is implementing a comprehensive policy, attempting to take into account the unique challenges posed by this pandemic, as opposed to reshuffling and extending existing policies.
By readjusting the weightings of each year towards a student’s overall degree and choosing the better of the two for penultimate- and final-year undergraduates, as well as allowing first-years to re-sit up to 90 failed credits in exams, the University of York have worked to try and introduce an appropriate and fair policy. Postgraduates, who should not be forgotten in any such policy, have also been offered an assured ‘safety net’. Overall, it is certainly not perfect but it at least strives to fulfill on the principle of ‘no detriment’, allowing students to simply focus on their studies, with some confidence they will not be impacted by COVID-19, whilst preserving the value of their degrees to employers.
We urge all Russell Group universities to introduce similarly comprehensive policies.
Whilst we understand that every subject, university and student is different, showing the understanding and empathy to their students embodied in York’s approach should be a basic requirement.
Presently, there are a small number of universities, such as Cardiff, that have recently implemented similar policies. Yet their commitment to this editorial is on the basis that students from all Russell Group universities should have the same level of assurance.
Overall, many students will of course respect and largely agree with your desire to maintain degree standards comparative to other years and to ensure, as you say, that they still ‘command the confidence of employers and professional bodies’. However, where other aspects of society have shifted or seen unprecedented measures introduced over the course of the last year, we believe a reweighting or rescaling of degrees is certainly possible. The students we write for and hear from daily are not asking for a policy that allows them to stop working or learning, but one that simply acknowledges the reality of the pandemic and its wide-ranging impact.
Ultimately, you claim you want to uphold the integrity of our degrees. Yet a university’s first responsibility is to its students and acting with integrity ought to mean upholding this responsibility. Many students across the country have not received the ‘blended’ or ‘hybrid’ learning experience they were promised; many are now separated from their campuses, with its facilities and libraries, due to a third national lockdown brought about largely by an unforeseen variant; many are facing personal, long-term hardship as a result of the virus, and/or extreme difficulties at home.
The integrity of a degree, too – students would hope – should encompass a focus on the opportunity to learn and study as well as a focus on rankings and outcomes. The integrity of university institutions should entail safeguarding the mental wellbeing of its students. Under the current plans laid out by most Russell Group universities, students are reporting to us loudly that neither of these are currently in line.
Students have not been quiet about their concerns. With exams fast approaching, and some already underway, now is the time for Russell Groups universities to act compassionately and responsibly.
It is an understatement to say that we are living in extraordinary times. Last March, the UK, along with the rest of the world, came to a grinding halt at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic as we tried to cope with a crisis that was entirely without precedent. The Prime Minister told us then that “things are going to get worse before they get better” – but the reality of this warning has only now been fully realised.
Ten months later, the UK has entered the worst stage of its crisis so far: tragically, cases and deaths have soared and, once again, students have been asked to study from home with Hilary term teaching moved online. However, many are highly concerned about the limited and restrained adjustments recently made by the University of Oxford to account for the deterioration of the coronavirus crisis and its impact on the upcoming term and students’ education as a whole.
It is not unreasonable to expect that students should not be disadvantaged by circumstances wholly beyond their control. That is why the editorial boards of The Oxford Blue, The Oxford Student and Cherwell are calling on the University of Oxford to introduce a fair ‘no-detriment’ policy for finalists.
While the scale of this tragedy has been devastating in terms of loss of life, the quality of students’ education has also suffered enormously. Students have raised serious concerns in recent days and weeks about issues at home: different time zones to Oxford in their home location; a lack of space; noise; and an absence of essential work tools including a desk, books, a computer and a stable, high-speed internet connection. Furthermore, international students are faced with additional (and unpredictable) challenges, such as having to make travel plans, negotiating complex and changeable immigration policies, undergoing mandatory periods of quarantine (either in private accomodation or specialist facilities) and/or firewalled internet access. Students who are materially more privileged than others in these areas are thus at a significant advantage compared to their peers.
Many students have also felt lonely, confused and anxious throughout the pandemic. Like the rest of the population, students have had to contend with self-isolation and the emotional impact of being unable to socialise normally with friends, family and partners. Some students have been ill with COVID-19 themselves or had to care for sick household members and loved ones whilst keeping up with the famously rigorous, unrelenting pace of an Oxford degree. The pandemic’s asymmetric demands on students means that a one-size-fits-all approach cannot be feasible and a ‘no-detriment’ policy is crucial for student success.
In such extraordinary circumstances – and ten months into the UK’s COVID-19 crisis – students deserve better than inflexibility and an insistence that it is possible to study as normal in such tough conditions. It is crucial to recognise the circumstances that led to the establishment of the ‘no-detriment policy’ last spring have only been prolonged and exacerbated over the course of recent months. If students are to pay full tuition fees for a severely diminished university education, it is right that the University at least intervenes to accommodate the impact of COVID-19 on our learning experience and academic attainment.
Last year, in light of the rapid spread and impact of COVID-19, the University listened to student feedback and implemented what they called a no-detriment policy, designed to ensure that finalists did not suffer from the consequences of a global issue outside of their control. Whilst by no means perfect, this policy was executed well in many respects. The optionality from last year should be continued further given the nature of the ongoing crisis. Imposing any one formula on the entire student body will unfairly disadvantage a significant number of its members. If we prioritise simplicity, we may unintentionally neglect the nuances of the situation which we face. Decentralising choice to students means that assessment will consider principles of fairness and equity, and ensure that each student can face the challenges we all find ourselves facing on their own terms, in a way that is right for them. That is what a no-detriment policy must guarantee.
There is undoubtedly a shared interest amongst the entire staff-student body in not wanting the value of an Oxford degree to be diluted, and everyone understands the importance of ‘academic rigour’; it is why many students apply to study here. However, it is unavoidable that students will be affected to varying degrees by the pandemic. Some will feel unable to be examined at the end of this calendar year if, for example, they or a close family member fall ill and/or they have been struggling with mental health issues. Others may be able to undertake exams, but will have to do so in extremely difficult conditions. More still will need to fulfil academic conditions to begin postgraduate courses but may or may not be able to be assessed next term. It suffices to say that no one solution can accommodate all students in a satisfactory manner and, therefore, a solution similar to last year must be implemented.
Yesterday’s email from the University, however, is not only a disappointment but an insult to the entire student body. By refusing to implement a clear ‘safety net’ policy, the University is downplaying the real-world impact that the pandemic has had on students’ learning – both in terms of access to teaching and resources, and of the effect of this crisis on students’ mental health. Some individual departments have also introduced policies that represent a ‘business as usual’ approach to exams and assessments, despite students’ loss of library access, resources and study spaces. A reliance on examiners’ personal acknowledgement of the past year’s unique circumstances cannot replace a formal framework that can evaluate and mitigate inequalities in learning and attainment.
The University has said that it will announce “additional measures” to ensure fair degree outcomes in “the middle of Hilary term”. The only way to ensure fairness is for the University – in conjunction with departments and faculties – to commit, as soon as possible, to a no-detriment policy for all those taking exams and submitting other assessments, Such measures can ensure that no individual Oxford student is unjustly disadvantaged by the effect of the pandemic on their learning in the last year and during the next.
Oxford’s Student Union, which serves as a voice for a student body of over 22,000, has said that the University should “recognise the academic challenges by reassessing workloads and assessment practices”, calling for a “fair outcome policy” defined as “a system of policies put in place to mitigate the detrimental effects of the pandemic on students with exams and coursework this year”. This will involve the re-scaling and re-weighting of exams and coursework to reflect the impact of the pandemic on the whole cohort. At an individual level, the Student Union has called for students to be able to file for mitigating circumstances and deadline extensions – without needing to prove that the pandemic has affected their studies – and to access better financial, academic and mental health support. We wholeheartedly endorse these demands and encourage students to find out more about the Student Union’s campaign and services and attend the online workshop taking place this evening (13 January), which will address these issues.
Other universities in the Russell Group, such the University of York, have also started to implement similar ‘safety net’ policies, and the Universities of Leeds, Lancaster and Bristol are considering similar approaches. A petition by Oxford students to the Vice Chancellor to implement “fair safety nets” has already attracted almost 800 signatures at the time of writing.
On Tuesday, the University ruled out the possibility of a ‘blanket safety net’, but given the disruption caused to the last two terms – which will likely endure even beyond Hilary term – it must now act to introduce a fair no-detriment policy which will also reflect the impact of the pandemic on assessments, just as last year’s safety net did. To fail to do so will present an entirely unfair disadvantage to Oxford students, directly undermining the University’s commitment to student welfare and academic success.
The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on a whole generation of students can not even begin to be graphed on a curve. This crisis is, as we are so often reminded, ‘unprecedented’ – but extraordinary times surely call for equally extraordinary measures.
A fair, robust no-detriment policy is one of those measures – and it must be implemented now.
Editors-in-Chief and Managing Director, Cherwell, The Oxford Blue, and The Oxford Student
Come Christmas, what’s on your table? Are there bowls overflowing with cranberry sauce? Plates filled with pigs in blankets? A prize bird gleaming on its platter? Traditions differ, but some dishes find their feature every year.
For most, the star of the Christmas feast is the turkey: the plump, golden-skinned bird that takes pride of place. But different birds have had their place; peacocks, pheasants and ducks all had their time on the table and before Victorian times, a goose was the typical centrepiece of the Christmas meal.
Henry VIII, a man then synonymous with decadence, may have been the first in England to try a turkey, but it did not come into fashion until Charles Dickens chose to emphasise the immense philanthropy of Scrooge’s gift to the Cratchits by swapping their traditional goose for turkey. No expense would be spared, and thus the Christmas turkey fell into vogue. Isabella Beeton, author of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, and the Victorian authority on all things to do with housekeeping, bolstered this new trend by proclaiming that Christmas for the middle class “would scarcely be a Christmas dinner without its turkey”.
Two of the more controversial members of a Christmas dinner, Yorkshire puddings and Bread Sauce, both find their origins in leftovers. Although many would argue Yorkshire puddings should only be eaten with roast beef, they actually originated from the drippings of fat off mutton as it roasted. As dripping fell into a pan filled with a batter, a Yorkshire pudding – enormous by today’s standards – would grow. Anyone with a food-strict upbringing similar to my own would never imagine a Yorkshire pudding on their plate come Christmas, yet this favourite continues to divide the country. It takes just a quick google search to discover the years of articles that have piled up from yuletides arguing pro-YP or against!
Yorkshire puddings’ more traditional, but stranger cousin is bread sauce. The beige, lumpy, liquid-like substance is not much more than gloop to those who haven’t been brought up with it. But to a fan, it’s a haven of stodgy delight. Bread sauce also originates from leftovers. In the Medieval period, soups were thickened with leftover bread, rather than flour as used today. These soups were prepared for Christmas feasts and evolved into the bay/nutmeg/clove flavoured slop (can you tell I wasn’t raised on it?) that so many will douse their turkey with this week.
As with anything that has its roots in the dinners of yore, the veg on our plates at Christmas have been shaped simply by whatever our ancestors managed to grow. Brussel sprouts found their way to the UK from Belgium, being the only cold-hardy green around. Parsnips, the preferred partner to sprouts, are harvested in the winter. Their first frost causes sugars to be released from their starch stores, giving them their characteristic sweetness (you won’t find that fun fact in your cracker).
Christmas desserts may be the most reliably underwhelming part of the day. Dessert has the opportunity to hold such creativity and glee, and yet the dry, misshapen lumps turned out year after year hold nothing but an unbelievable amount of fruit. They also hold a considerable serving of history.
The myth of each of the thirteen fillings of Christmas cake representing the 12 apostles and Jesus is a fun tale, but the most interesting story is with mince pies. First, let’s clear it up – yes, mincemeat did once contain real meat. Dating back to the crusades when meat/spiced/fruit pies found their way back to Europe, mince pies evolved from rectangular “coffins” to round Christmas Pyes that were often found at bountiful Christmas feasts. They were famously held in disdain by Cromwell’s Puritan government because of the ‘more-gluttony-less-Jesus’ they seemed to represent. By the Victorian period, mincemeat was being prepared and jarred earlier and earlier in the year to allow flavours to mature, and hence, meat was left at the wayside – thankfully for us.
These Victorian mince pies largely look like those we have today – buttery pastry, spiced fruit (and suet) filling, decoration with festive designs on top. Though their status as a delicious treat may be divisive, mince pies, with their undeniably Christmassy aroma, remind you it’s a special time of the year, and for that they fulfil their role as a Christmas food tradition.
Whether you guzzle gravy or put away potatoes, your food has been through a lot to make it onto your table – so forget the Queen’s speech and tune into your food come Friday.
Some colleges are reducing the availability of residence for students over the Michaelmas vacation. Oxford SU is lobbying to ensure international students are guaranteed accommodation for those who wish to remain, and has criticised the impact on care leavers, estranged students, and independent students.
Oxford SU passed a motion in 3rd week resolving to ask the University to guarantee all international student residence in Oxford over the vacation. The SU also resolves to push for vacation residence to be offered at 15% of usual vacation rent.
College policies do not currently fulfil Oxford SU’s requests. St John’s College has said that their vacation residence and grant scheme “will not operate as usual” during this vacation. All students have to leave, except international students whose home borders are closed and students with extended terms for their subjects.
St John’s told students that this was to ensure staff get a break from a difficult term, and students get a break to spend some time in a “different environment” before next year.
Queen’s College emailed students saying they “strongly urge” and “expect” all UK-domiciled students to return, noting that for students with welfare concerns, the welfare services would be closed for a period over the vacation.
They also told international students that the requirement to quarantine in their home country and in the UK is “unlikely” to be a “compelling reason” to be granted vacation residence. Queen’s said that, if borders for students’ home countries are closed, students should consider asking friends to stay at their homes. Queen’s reminded students that “there is no automatic right to stay in College”.
Oxford SU Class Act Campaign told Cherwell: “This is an issue not only for international students, but also for care leavers, estranged students, and independent students. Colleges consistently fail to provide these students with security, instead leaving individuals to negotiate with them for the right to have somewhere to stay. This is a difficult situation for everyone, but many students call Oxford their home, and must not be forgotten in this pandemic.”
One anonymous student told Cherwell: “The vacation residence policy email I received from my college was a disappointing read that placed unnecessary anxiety upon estranged students. For some of us, home life is not safe: it does not matter if this has always been the case, or if this is recent. Trinity Term lockdown was hard enough to suffer because students from other colleges were able to return – hopefully we can stay this time.
“I, like many other students, am incredibly grateful for my time at Oxford because of the freedom it gives me. It is also one of the reasons students take advantage of the vacation residence system: escape. To put it plainly, studying in college is better than working at home. We already try so hard to learn to live independently, study efficiently and strike that balance needed to be happy that if we are forced back into our older unhealthy environments no good will come of it.”
Oxford SU will further ask the University to ensure students who are required to quarantine upon return to Oxford get free accommodation, and receive food at the average price of their college’s home food.
Students who were required to quarantine upon arrival at the beginning of Michaelmas faced very varied college policies. Oxford SU’s motion stated that students were “in some cases charged extortionate rates for their accommodation”. Cherwell reported at the beginning of the term that Oriel College charged self-isolating international students over £700, including a nearly £30 per day food bill. Some colleges, including Hertford, Magdalen, Queen’s, and Worcester College, made accommodation free.
Freedom of Information requests submitted by Cherwell have revealed that Oxford University accepted at least £726,706 from the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), the designer and producer of the UK’s nuclear warheads, during the years 2017-19 alone.
The majority of this money was awarded to the Oxford Centre for High Energy Density Science (OxCHEDS), which advertises AWE as one of its “national partners” on its website.
AWE’s funding is mostly used by OxCHEDS to fund individual research projects and studentships, with a substantial portion (£82,863 in 2019) funding the department’s William Penney Fellowship, named after the head of the British delegation for the Manhattan Project and ‘father of the British atomic bomb’. According to the AWE website, William Penney Fellows “act as ambassadors for AWE in the scientific and technical communities in which they operate”.
This fellowship is currently shared by two professors, Justin Wark and Peter Norreys, both of whom collaborate closely with US state laboratories that develop nuclear weapons, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
AWE donations have also funded projects at the University’s Departments of Chemistry, Engineering, and Physics, a number of which are directly linked to the design of nuclear weapons. One AWE-funded paper, published in 2019, investigated fusion yield production, a vital way of testing the destructive power of a warhead prior to manufacturing, whilst another project researched methods used by nuclear weapons designers for simulating the interior of a detonating warhead.
This research also has civilian applications, and does not in itself point towards the development of nuclear weapons. A spokesperson from Oxford University stated: “Oxford University research is academically driven, with the ultimate aim of enhancing openly available scholarship and knowledge. All research projects with defence sector funding advance general scientific understanding, with a wide range of subsequent civilian applications, as well as potential application by the sector.”
However, AWE is not a civilian organisation. As Andrew Smith of Campaign Against the Arms Trade told Cherwell, “the AWE exists to promote the deadliest weaponry possible. It is not funding these projects because it cares about education, but because it wants to benefit from the research and association that goes with it”. Mr. Smith concluded: “Oxford University should be leading by example, not providing research and cheap labour for the arms industry”.
Responding to Cherwell’s findings, Dr Stuart Parkinson, Director of Scientists for Global Responsibility, described Oxford University’s ties with AWE as “shocking” and called for the work to be “terminated immediately”. He said that the findings “point very clearly to Oxford University researchers being involved in the development of weapons of mass destruction”.
In the face of this criticism, the University spokesperson claimed: “All research funders must first pass ethical scrutiny and be approved by the University’s Committee to Review Donations and Research Funding. This is a robust, independent system, which takes legal, ethical and reputational issues into consideration.”
However, there are growing concerns over the ethics and efficacy of this process, which has seen controversial donations from the Sackler family, Wafic Saïd, and Stephen Schwarzman given the green light despite internal and public protests. The committee’s deliberations are frequently subject to Non-Disclosure Agreements, meaning that they are not accountable to members of the University and to the wider public. Moreover, Freedom of Information requests submitted earlier this year revealed that the committee accepts over 95% of the funding it considers, with congregation members describing the committee as a “smokescreen” and a “fig leaf”.
In recent years, the University has faced increased opposition from student groups such as the Oxford Climate Justice Campaign and Oxford Against Schwarzman over the companies Oxford chooses to affiliate itself with through investments and donations. From this term onwards, a newly formed student group, Disarm Oxford, will be campaigning against the University’s numerous ties with the arms industry. Oxford Amnesty International is working with Disarm Oxford on the global Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, and to strive for the disarmament of the University more broadly.
Dr Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury and Chair of the Trustees of the Council for the Defence of British Universities, told Cherwell: “The recent publicity around university divestment from fossil fuels has highlighted the need for university bodies to be transparent about the ethical standards they apply to their funding, and it is encouraging to see this crucial question being raised also in the context of armaments-related funds and research.”
The combination of Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic has created a particularly difficult time for university research finances. In a marketised higher education system, seeking and welcoming money from industry partnerships seems like an inevitability. However, while some industries rely on academic research to save lives, others are predicated on taking them. With the UK confirmed this year as the world’s second biggest exporter of arms, the University’s significant ties to the development of weaponry has an alarming global significance which is now beginning to be called into question.
A trial led by Oxford University has discovered that
dexamethasone, a cheap steroid, can help reduce deaths in seriously ill COVID-19
patients.
The drug reduced the risk of death by one-third for patients
on ventilators and by one-fifth for patients on oxygen.
Oxford University says: “Based on these results, 1 death would be prevented by treatment of around 8 ventilated patients or around 25 patients requiring oxygen alone.”
Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty has described it as “the most important trial result for COVID-19 so far”.
The British government has immediately authorised use of the drug in the NHS, saying “thousands of lives will be saved”. The government has secured supplies of dexamethasone in the UK, meaning there is already treatment for over 200,000 people.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said this is “a remarkable British scientific achievement” and that the government “have taken steps to ensure we have enough supplies, even in the event of a second peak”.
It was discovered as part of the RECOVERY trial, the Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy, which has involved over 11,500 patients at over 175 NHS hospitals in the UK.
About 2000 hospital patients were given 6mg of dexamethasone
per day and compared with more than 4,000 who were not.
For patients on ventilators, it cut the risk of death from 41%
to 28%. For patients needing oxygen, it cut the risk of death from 25% to 20%.
The drug costs £5.40 per day and treatment takes up to 10 days. Professor Martin Landray, one of the Chief Investigators, has said: “So essentially it costs £35 to save a life.”
Chief investigator Peter Horby has said: “This is
the only drug so far that has been shown to reduce mortality – and it reduces
it significantly. It’s a major breakthrough.”
The UK Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, said:“This is tremendous news today from the RECOVERY trial showing that dexamethasone is the first drug to reduce mortality from COVID-19. It is particularly exciting as this is an inexpensive widely available medicine. This is a ground-breaking development in our fight against the disease, and the speed at which researchers have progressed finding an effective treatment is truly remarkable. It shows the importance of doing high quality clinical trials and basing decisions on the results of those trials.”
Peter Horby, Professor of Emerging Infectious Diseases
in the Nuffield Department of Medicine and one of the Chief Investigators for
the trial, said: “Dexamethasone is the first drug to be shown to improve survival
in COVID-19. This is an extremely welcome result. The survival benefit is
clear and large in those patients who are sick enough to require oxygen
treatment, so dexamethasone should now become standard of care in these
patients. Dexamethasone is inexpensive, on the shelf, and can be used
immediately to save lives worldwide.”
Martin Landray, Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, one of the Chief Investigators, said: “Since the appearance of COVID-19 six months ago, the search has been on for treatments that can improve survival, particularly in the sickest patients. These preliminary results from the RECOVERY trial are very clear – dexamethasone reduces the risk of death among patients with severe respiratory complications. COVID-19 is a global disease – it is fantastic that the first treatment demonstrated to reduce mortality is one that is instantly available and affordable worldwide.”
Public Health England (PHE) has confirmed that a student at the University of Oxford has tested positive for coronavirus (Covid-19) after returning home from a specified country.
The university has said that “Our immediate concerns are for the affected student and their family, along with the health and wellbeing of our university staff, students and visitors. The student is being offered all necessary support.”
The university has established that the affected student did not attend any university or college events after they felt ill, when they subsequently self-isolated.
PHE has advised that the risk to other students and staff is very low and that university and college activities can continue as normal. They have also advised that the university and colleges do not need to take any additional public health actions in the light of this specific case.
A university spokesperson has said “We have worked with PHE to make sure that anyone who was in contact with the student after they fell ill have been notified and that they are able to access support and information as needed. PHE do not consider individuals infectious until they develop symptoms.”
The university is providing support for students, staff, and the wider community.
Oxford University has announced that more than 69% of undergraduate offers have been made to students attending state schools. The increase of 4.6% is the “best percentage increase the University has ever seen.”
30.9% of offers were made to students from independent schools; this is over 12% higher than the 18% of students who attend independent sixth forms, according to the Sutton Trust (2018), and dramatically higher than the 7% of all UK students attending independent schools.
78% of offers were made to UK applicants, 7% to EU applicants and 15% to Overseas applicants. The University specifies that ‘UK applicants are more likely to receive an offer.’
The University was unable to provide a breakdown of the split between Grammar, Comprehensive, Academy and other forms of state schools as they do not currently collect that data. The data on the inter-state school split is not published in the University’s annual data report either, however the May 2019 access report published by the University highlighted that ‘In 2018, 11.3% of UK students admitted to Oxford came from the two most socioeconomically disadvantaged groups (ACORN categories 4 and 56).’
Oxford’s successful UNIQ programme has led to 250 students being made offers this year. The offer rate to students who attended UNIQ programmes is 33.6%, in contrast to the offer rate of 21.5% across UK applicants. The increase in offers to UNIQ participants comes after the expansion of the scheme last year, which saw more than 1,350 pupils take part in the programme – an increase of 50%. This is the largest number of UNIQ participants to receive offers in the programme’s history, thanks to the dramatic development in 2019.
This year, Students from POLAR4 quintile 1 accounted for 6.4% of UK offers – up by 1.4%. These students represent the areas with the lowest progression to higher education.
Dr Samina Khan, Director of Undergraduate Admissions and Outreach at Oxford, said: “We are delighted by this record number of offers to state school students, and to students from under-represented backgrounds. This creates a strong foundation for what we aim to achieve. We know that students from some backgrounds are not as well-represented at Oxford as they should be, and we are determined that this should change. Having taught in state schools during my career, I know the wealth of talent that lies there. We wish the students every success in their studies, and hope they flourish at Oxford.”
The number of offers made to young people from areas with the lowest progression rates to higher education have increased. Students from POLAR4 quintile 1 accounted for 6.4% of UK offers – up by 1.4% from 2019 offers.
In 2015 the University made 56.7% of their offers to students from state schools. Across the past five years, there has been an increase of 12.4% in state school offers. This comes after pioneering Oxford schemes have taken place, from the UNIQ programmes to Lady Margaret Hall’s Foundation Year and University College’s bridging scheme. It also coincides with the University’s formation of the Foundation Oxford and Opportunity Oxford schemes.
Opportunity Oxford launched at the end of the previous academic year, and this week more than 100 candidates from under-represented backgrounds received offers to study as a part of the scheme. Dr Andrew Bell, Coordinator of Oppertunity Oxford and University College Senior Tutor, has stated:
“Opportunity Oxford is a major new initiative to increase the number of offers made to UK students from under-represented backgrounds, and to provide academic support to those students to ensure that they have the best possible start to their university careers. This year, more than 100 offers have been made under the scheme across 28 colleges. We anticipate making 200 offers per year under the scheme from 2022 onwards. We’re really excited to have launched Opportunity Oxford, and we very much look forward to welcoming our first cohort to Oxford later this year.”
This article was updated at 20:02 15.1.20 to clarify POLAR.
Further clarification was made at 00:11, 16.1.19 concerning Opportunity Oxford.
White curtains quiver in the non-existent breeze that haunts
the clinical interior of the Hayward gallery. With that slight movement, too,
the image projected onto the curtain sways – Victoria Sin’s wide eyes flicker
involuntarily as the camera slowly zooms into their face. In sparkling lingerie and full drag inspired
by Cantonese opera, the model, laid out demurely across
a satin curtain, stares back at the starers; sometimes sultry, sometimes vulnerable,
always, somehow, piercing.
“Look. Look. Look – At her.”
Victoria Sin’s A View from Elsewhere, Act 1, and She Postures in Context, three film-art pieces projected onto a curtain-enclosure, embody the spirit of the Hayward’s latest exhibition Kiss My Genders. The exhibition, made up of over a hundred artworks by thirty different international artists, centres around gender identity and fluidity. Physically enclosing their viewers in the wavering medium of cloth and projection, Sin appears to comment on the insubstantiality of gender boundaries, but in subverting perspective and viewing experience, also draws attention to the role of performance, presentation and spectatorship in all elements of identity. Hayward claims the exhibition focuses on “content and forms that challenge accepted or stable definitions of gender.” Paintings of hunter-gatherer tribes with drag elements question the West’s suppression of third-gender narratives, while sculptures made of artificial oestrogen and testosterone break down, biologically, what it means to be “male” or “female”.
But more than just gender identity, the exhibits are an expression of the individuality and the internal or cultural conflicts of the artists. Amrou Al-Kadhi teams up with Holly Falconer to explore what he describes as the “disorienting” experience of being drag as a person of Muslim heritage by modelling as drag persona Glamrou wrapped in a Persian carpet. Cloned in different poses through triple exposure to express the incongruence of these disparate cultures, Al-Kadhi demonstrates their successful unification in the persona of Glamrou. Meanwhile Juliana Huxtable’s photographic self-portraits deflect identity-labels entirely; using makeup, costumes and fantasy backgrounds, she deflects the reductive categorizations ascribed to her as a “black intersex artist” by creating personalized embodiments of mythology, sci-fi and super-heroes. Kiss My Genders thereby becomes an exploration not only of the boundaries perceived in gender – but of individuals’ cultural identity experiences.
With this exhibition, an art assistant explains, the Hayward is attempting to break the mould of LGBTQ+ and gender-related exhibitions, which often focus on the violence and oppression experienced by these communities. Instead they want to celebrate different identities. Nonetheless, the exhibition is palpably political: Zanele Muholi explores black lesbian and transgender experiences in South Africa through photography – and acts of violence are still an all too present component of that. In her series Crime Scenes she stages the aftermath of brutal murders, photographing the upturned feet of model corpses buried in sheets of plastic and litter. Paintings like YESSIR! Back off! Tell me who I am, again? combine illustration and collage to satirize the way gender transition is spoken about. The artist, Flo Brooks, depicts a fictional cleaning company scrubbing away at a therapist’s room, reflecting his experience of the “hygienic spaces” he experienced while transitioning; “spaces designed to clean, conceal and correct” things socially considered “dirty, abnormal or other” – but also addresses the way transgender issues are generalised and “sterilized” through neat clinical terms. Artists in Kiss My Genders marry the intensely personal with the social, emotional with the playful, and at the same time evoke all the contrasting feelings of pride, comfort, fear, frustration, belonging and exclusion.
The exhibition succeeds in its “celebration” and “expression” of identities – but the presentation, at times, is confusing. The works of some artists are split across multiple floors, the labelling unclear, and it is generally worth asking the art assistants to talk you through the rooms – difficult, when the gallery is at its busiest and a shame for an exhibition set on “opening doors.” Perhaps this is all the more noticeable as the exhibition appears to be catered towards an audience that identifies with binary genders – many of the artworks require the context of the theme or artist in order to be appreciated. Often, however, this is used in a positive way; many of the exhibits are truly thought provoking.
Most strikingly, Something for the Boys takes us through a spiral of ruched curtains in metallic pink – as if we are walking into a private adult show, yet at the same time, as if we were walking onto a stage. In the centre of the spiral we find ourselves in a circular womb-like room with a screen. Cutting between various LGBTQ+ spaces in Blackpool, the projected film shows an increasing disconnect between sound and image; a drag queen mouthing to “I am who I am” off-sync, interjected with a club-dance choreography, stills of gay clubs, the camera panning over pornographic videos and fetish-wear, and back to the drag queen – except this time she just mouths, and all we can hear is industrial sounds – once again connecting gender-identity and sexuality to cultural identity as a whole. But there is also something intimately performative about the display – the gesticulations and dances, unhinged from their appropriate music, seem to point to a theme of performance and spectatorship at large. And suddenly, that circular room no longer feels like a private theatre. It starts to feel like a stage, and the question crosses our minds – who is really the performer here, the drag act, or us, playing up to our female/male expectations? Just as Victoria Sin’s insistent murmurs, Kiss My Genders seduces its audience into truly looking – and becoming aware of the instability of their perspective in the process.
The National Union of Student’s annual conference took place between Tuesday and Friday of this week. Five of Oxford’s seven elected delegates were present and voting in Glasgow, with two not voting on any motions.
The voting records of all delegates are available for viewing online, whilst a list of the motions discussed over the three day event can be found here.
This conference saw the election of Zamzam Ibrahim as NUS President. Ibrahim, the former president of the Salford University students’ union, vowed in her manifesto to hold a National Student Strike, calling for free education, an improved student maintenance allowance and the return of the post-study work visa for overseas students.
Among the motions discussed, Oxford SU delegates voted to support the Mental Health Charter. This would seek to improve standards of mental health provision and funding across universities, acknowledging alarming rates of student suicide and the ongoing “mental health crisis”.
All Oxford delegates voted against the motion to revoke gender quotas within the SU. The proposer highlighted the now-increased presence of women in the organisation, since the rule’s creation in 2014, as well as the potential harm to non- binary individuals that a 50% female quota poses. The last 5 NUS presidents have identified as female, with racial discrimination featuring more often than gender inequality in this year’s manifestoes.
The conference itself was marked from the outset by sitting president Shakira Martin’s admission of the NUS’s financial trouble. Telling the conference that “we should have run out of cash”, Martin stated: “We are having problems that we need to sort out”.
This follows the November announcement that the NUS was unable to pay off a £3m deficit, cutting half of its jobs as a result. However, all Oxford delegates voted against a review of the NUS’s finances.
Closer to home, Oxford SU is continuing the hunt
for a VP for Charities and Community, a position unfilled by Hilary term’s
election. President Joe Inwood also penned a letter this month, calling for the
university to revoke the honorary degree given to the Sultan of Brunei.
Oxford SU has been contacted for comment on the proceedings.
It is a Sunday and some weeks since Tracey Emin’s latest London solo show at White Cube Bermondsey first opened to the public. Yet the people of south-east London have emerged in droves, so that at lunchtime the gallery is still milling with visitors – the fullest I have ever seen it. It is testament to the magnetism and celebrity of an artist like Emin that people continue to flock so dutifully to the austere, white-lit and grey-walled gallery to see a show entitled A Fortnight of Tears, when outside it is one of the sunniest days of the year so far. Outside, the faint hum of pop music floats down from the nearby park, while a yellow Labrador lolls out into the sunshine on the corner opposite. The scenes inside Emin’s exhibition, however, tell a starkly different story.
Emin’s show is a broadly autobiographical survey of love and loss. It is a tour de force in sculpture, neon, painting, film, photography, and drawing. The artist’s uncanny ability to stage life’s ordinary tragedies, and to be entirely candid about the experience of female pain, is on display as masterfully as ever in the demanding spaces of the White Cube. Decades of dirty laundry are paraded through the gallery; the horrors of a 1990 botched abortion, rape, and the death of her mother are the dominant topics of expression. Though much of the language and subject matter has been a constant throughout her career, it is evident that Emin has come some way from her days as a party-girl enfant terrible of contemporary British art. There is a discernible grown-upness about this exhibition; familiar, ugly subjects are returned to with a new seriousness and sensitivity, though the bite is doubtless still there.
The South Gallery I houses ‘Insomnia Room Installation’. Huge Gilcée print iPhone selfies of the artist reveal a tormented Emin in various states of physical and mental injury over four years of sleepless nights. The pictures are double hung almost up to the ceiling in a manner that falls somewhere between a teenage girl’s bedroom and a French salon. Unframed and pinned in each corner, they lift off the wall slightly, a pencil signature just visible on each bottom-right corner. We are invited to share the unhappy bed. As the first room of the show this sets the tone for the rest: sad, intimate, and earnest.
Alongside the ‘finished’ works further on in the gallery, four cases containing sketches and writings on paper, maquettes, and memorabilia are exhibited from the artist’s archive. These sketches – some on notepad pages branded with the names of hotels – are reminiscent of those doodles we draw out on paper absent-mindedly, while taking a phone call or sitting in a lecture. They have a day-to-day feel about them. The cabinets are organised thematically under the topics of love, sex, death, and fear. Indeed, these are the subjects to which the artist returns obsessively, and which percolate through every room of the gallery, bleeding into each other at the edges.
Paintings around the cabinets line the wall like the Stations of the Cross. But Emin’s protagonist keeps falling down, stumbling with her proverbial cross with little sense of any eventual redemption. We are inclined to believe that these are self-portraits, though the women’s faces are almost always obscured. Emin’s girls have soft, protruding (pregnant?) bellies, clubbed feet and hands, blurry faces, and masses of dark pubic hair. The viewer is struck by the way that the swollen nipples, breasts, and genitals always seem to be most in focus.
‘I Watched You Disappear. Pink Ghost’ is the first picture in a brilliant triptych of portraits in the Ashes Room. Blurred as if captured through tears, steam, or the fogging lens of memory, a soft rosy body floats behind the canvas, which itself perhaps imitates a shower curtain. To the right a painting about the death of Emin’s mother, ‘I Was Too Young to be Carrying Your Ashes’ ruptures any impression of shy, warm womanhood that might have been offered by that tipsy pink. Thick red paint then erupts through the curtain-canvas; with a sudden and regrettable violence, this is the moment the Hitchcockian knife wielder plunges his weapon. The picture is an open wound, a bloody, weeping sore. ‘You Were Still There’ then resuscitates a dissected body. The womb is darkened with movement like the impact of a punch. The colours shift throughout from the pink-red blushes of the Madonna to the grey blackish-blue bruised body of Christ. A punishing and merciless life-cycle is acted out.
Emin proves herself here as a painter and a sculptor of bodies, rather than figures; her subjects are not idealised forms that exist outside of the self, but those that are an extension of it. In the best of these works, the intimate understanding of the body and of a personal psychology comes out beautifully raw. They are positioned firmly within the artist’s own identity, and in the bodily violence that is the source of so much of her trauma. The bodies that Emin paints are much better than the large sculptures that dominate the space because they still feel alive – trapped between soft and hard lines, pushed and pulled and beaten out on canvas and paper. Corporeal suffering is not only acted onto the body, but oozes out from within it into art.
Love, desire, and violence are intimately linked in Emin’s world. The interactions between bodies in the paintings are like the kiss in Giotto’s frescoes, where two faces collide into one, eyes open; somehow unromantic, while still wholly passionate. The word ‘longing’ seems to have come up in titles and prose again and again throughout the exhibition. In her 1996 film How It Feels – a fitting endnote to the show – Emin comments on her abortion: “I will never really get over it”. This sits at the core of all the artwork – the wanting, the not getting, and the not getting over.
“What this whole show is about is releasing myself from shame. I’ve killed my shame, I’ve hung it on the walls,” Emin claims. Women wracked with grief and desire, aching and desperate, contort themselves with it, she seems to be saying. Everything is deeply felt and then neatly hung up. The exhibition is entitled A Fortnight of Tears because, Emin claims, that is the longest she has ever cried. For all its wailing and thrashing, this grieving process has produced an exhibition of staggering emotional complexity.
An Oxford University professor has come under public scrutiny after contributing to a front page story in the Times criticising the use of hormone blockers on young people as “an unregulated live experiment on children.”
Professor Carl Heneghan, a fellow at Kellogg College and the director of the Centre of Evidence-Based Medicine, provided a comment piece to the newspaper as a supplement to an investigation into the Gender Identity Development Service Clinic, which the Times described as “the only NHS gender clinic for children”.
Professor Heneghan’s appeal was made on the basis of medical skepticism over the practice, writing that: “the majority of drugs in use are frequently supported by low-quality evidence about their use beyond the usual age for puberty, or in many cases no evidence at all”.
The piece to which Professor Heneghan contributed sparked a significant outrage, with prominent figures criticising the Times for its coverage. MP for Cardiff South Stephen Doughty tweeted: “It’s not just the shocking 1980s style headline – @thetimes @TimesLucy have given us a bumper edition of prejudice against the #Trans community today. Do they have *any* idea or even care about the harm this risks causing?”.
Speaking to Cherwell, Professor Heneghan stood by his comments, saying: “the development of these interventions should occur in the context of research. Treatments for under 18 gender dysphoric children and adolescents remain largely experimental.
“There are a large number of unanswered questions that include the age at start, reversibility; adverse events, long term effects on mental health, quality of life, bone mineral density, osteoporosis in later life and cognition.”
Responding to the issue for Cherwell, transgender campaigner Fox Fisher wrote: “The University of Oxford has a responsibility to make sure all students feel safe to attend the school – behaviour of this sort should never be tolerated and jeopardises the well-being of students and the integrity of the institution.
“Look at any modern research in anthropology, sociology, biology, psychology or psychiatry – all indicates that trans children benefit massively from being allowed to express themselves.”
In a public statement regarding the article, the Oxford Student Union LGBTQ+ Campaign condemned the article and urged both members of the LGBTQ+ Community and its allies to launch official complaints to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (ISPO).
The statement read: “Transphobic, fear-mongering articles being given priority in national news is unacceptable. Although the article includes information and statements from the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) that refutes its own main line of argument, emphasis is still placed upon unsupported and dangerous viewpoints.
“The prominence of this article within the issue of The Times clearly means to stir up misinformation which will exacerbate the difficulties transgender and gender nonconforming children and teenagers face in the UK.
“The article additionally relies on a statement from Carl Heneghan, who is a senior tutor at Kellogg College. His words attempt to give credibility to a transphobic rhetoric which is harmful to transgender people both within and outside of the University. It is deeply concerning that Dr Heneghan’s attempt to sow confusion about the treatment of trans children by conflating different treatment methods and rejecting information from the GIDS itself is being legitimised by the name of the University in this way.
“Conspicuously absent from both pieces are the voices of transgender people who have used the services provided by GIDS. Ignoring the perspective of the people who matter most in this issue, transgender children, is entirely unbalanced reporting.
“As such, both pieces fail to contribute to any kind of representative discussion on gender dysphoria, perpetuating only a transphobic editorial line.”
This article will be updated as we receive more information.
On a sunny but very windy afternoon on Sunday 10th March, the Women’s Football Blues faced Cambridge in their annual Varsity match at the Hive Stadium in Barnet. The stakes were high – with their BUCS season drawing to a close, this game was the climax the team had been preparing for all season. Perhaps the fact that Oxford had already faced Cambridge twice in their BUCS run this season made the competition even fiercer; a 0-0 draw between the two sides in late January demonstrated that Varsity was either team’s for the taking.
Both teams got out of the
blocks fast at the start of the game, making for an exciting first half.
Although Cambridge did seem threatening at times and were putting Oxford under
a lot of pressure by playing a particularly high line, the Dark Blues were able
to keep them at bay and captain Lucy Harper led her defence well to snuff out any
hope of glory for the Cambridge attack.
Oxford were equally keen
to apply the pressure in the Cambridge half and wingers Erin Robinson and Katie
Plummer made some great runs down the pitch which were difficult for the Light
Blues cut out. However, with the Oxford forwards often being found offside, it
was hard for them to break the deadlock and consequently the teams went into
halftime with the score still at 0-0.
However, early in the second half, Cambridge were able to break Oxford’s resolve, and after a fumble in the box the ball came out to the edge of the area for Cambridge’s Ashcroft to propel a shot into the top right of the goal and put the Light Blues ahead. Two minutes later, the Tabs extended their lead after a corner that was not cleared up by the Oxford defence.
Despite this, Oxford did
not let their heads go down and the next ten minutes of the game were extremely
tense, with the Dark Blues desperately trying to close the gap between the two
teams. Eventually, first-year duo Taiye Lawal and Rani Wermes were able to link
up in Cambridge’s box, before Wermes went down from a foul and earned Oxford a
penalty. Substitute Monique Pedroza stood up to the plate and smashed the ball
high into the net to put Oxford level, much to the delight of the Dark Blue
crowd.
Unfortunately for the Oxford
team, as the match drew on they were unable to find any more luck in the
Cambridge half, and at the other end of the pitch, Cambridge were awarded a
penalty from a rather dubious handball and were able to make it 3-1,
effectively sealing the deal and winning the game.
As the final whistle blew, Oxford were clearly filled with despair over their loss. However, such a valiant performance gave them much to be proud of, and the Dark Blues will be hoping to work harder than ever next season to claim back the trophy.
Despite this loss, the
Women’s Reserves (the Furies) were able to find success against Cambridge
Reserves (the Eagles) on home turf at Iffley on Saturday of 7th Week.
The Furies found themselves 1-0 up after a through ball from Jasmine Savage
reached the feet of captain Rebecca North who slotted the ball firmly in the
back of the Cambridge net. However shortly after, Cambridge managed to breach
Oxford’s defence, and after a two on one situation with Oxford’s last woman,
were able to equalise with a short range shot on goal.
Going into the break the
score remained 1-1, but neither team had any luck in the second half either,
meaning at the end of the 90 minutes, the game went straight to penalties. The
tension in the stadium was riding high, but Oxford kept their cool. After four
goals from four Furies and three goals and a miss from Cambridge, the final Eagles
penalty taker was hoping to keep her team in the game. However it was not to
be, and an admittedly easy save from goalkeeper Emmie Halfpenny saw the Furies
win Varsity for the second time in a row.
As the whole of the Oxford team sprinted from halfway to celebrate with their keeper, it was easy to see just how much this Varsity win meant for the Furies, who had worked so hard throughout the season for this moment.
With one cup spending a year at The Other Place, and the other cup held firmly in Oxford’s hands, all we can do now is wait until next year to see if OUWAFC are able to do the double over Cambridge.
The
co-chairs of Oxford University Labour Club have issued a statement to committee
members demanding that all contact with the student press be approved by the
executive, Cherwell can reveal.
Aiming to centralise the executive’s control over the club’s relationship with student media, the co-chairs recently claimed that committee members were constitutionally required to consult the co-chairs on statements to the press.
In a
message sent to members of the club’s committee, co-chair Grace Davies said: “If
any of you guys are approached by OxStu or Cherwell please please [sic] let us
know.
“We’re
keen to have a say in all communication going to the media and the constitution
says that you should consult the co-chairs – I’ll be quite sad if I see peoples
quotes in papers and me and Arya didn’t know about it first.”
Despite Davies’ claims that it is a constitutional requirement for members to consult the co-chairs before approaching the press, Cherwell could find no evidence of such a rule in the club’s constitution.
The club’s co-chairs responded to a request for comment by claiming “The comment regarding consulting co-chairs was intended to extend to, but only to, members of the club speaking on behalf of the club. The position of co-chair is the only position which has the mandate and official capacity to speak on behalf of the club.
“There was no intention to limit comments to press when speaking on individuals’ own behalf and in a personal capacity, and the intention was instead that any comments made officially by the club were decided by the entire committee, with both co-chairs being able to gauge the position of the entire club.
“Individual members of the OULC executive making comments on behalf of the club, does not follow the convention of the Labour Club, and can lead to confusion about the official position of the club.”
“We’re upset that a member of the club felt it was an attempt to censor their personal expressions of their views and would reassure them that this in no way our intention.”
“The publicity officer is elected to manage media and communications, and as such their role is to oversee comments made to the press, working alongside the co-chairs.
“This is a well established convention. Whenever possible, we try to reach agreement about statements to the press within the OULC committee so that the entire committee has a say in our official position, rather than individuals who do not have the mandate to decide OULC’s official position to the press.
“The established interpretation of the constitution and other documents referred to in the constitution, is that only co-chairs can be ultimately responsible for any pronouncements made on behalf of the club.”
Despite this claim, no mention is made of members speaking on the club’s behalf in the original message.
One OULC member, speaking anonymously, told Cherwell that: “Though of course I understand why the Labour chairs want to centralise a lot of communication to the press, to act as though it is a formal rule is misleading and unfair.
“Moreover,
on certain issues the ability to voice dissent via the press is valuable, and
the Labour club will ultimately be weaker for the absence of honest
disagreement with the party line.”
Oxford University Boat Club (OUBC) and Women’s Boat Club (OUWBC) this morning confirmed their crews at the City Hall, London for next month’s Boat Races.
The Men’s boat is
identical to the crew that was named for last weekend’s fixture against Oxford
Brookes, a race that was postponed due to high winds.
The crew weighs in at 719.6kg, 19.6 kilos lighter than the 2018 crew but nonetheless a shade heavier than their Cambridge counterparts, who weighed in at 718.3kg.
OUWBC will head into
the race with 2 returning members of last year’s defeated crew, naming both
Beth Bridgman of St Hugh’s and Keble’s Renée Koolschijn, although both have
shifted position in the boat, with Bridgman moving from Stroke to position 6,
and Koolschijn from Bow to position 3.
The situation is
mirrored in the Men’s boat as OUBC president Felix Drinkall and Christ Church
student Benedict Aldous – who last year replaced Joshua Bugajski at the
eleventh hour in a decision shrouded by illness – are the only survivors in a
youthful-looking crew.
The average age of the
Oxford Men’s boat is 21.8 years-old, a historically low figure accentuated by the
presence of four undergraduate scientists in the aforementioned duo of Drinkall
and Aldous, as well as Charlie Pearson and Tobias Schroder.
This is in stark contrast with the CUBC crew, who sport an average age of 26.3, after the decision to include two-time Olympic gold medallist James Cracknell in the boat. Cracknell qualifies for selection as he is studying for an MPhil in Human Evolutionary Studies at Peterhouse College, floating the idea on Twitter as early as July 2018 alongside the hashtag “#NeverTooOld”.
The OUWBC crew have an
average age of 23.9 years-old, slightly younger than the 24.3 years-old of the
Cambridge Women’s crew.
The Light Blues
comprehensively swept all 4 races last year, including a first victory in eight
years for the Cambridge reserve boat Goldie over Isis, a dominance hitherto
unseen since the move to stage each race on the same tideway in 2015.
Cambridge now lead the
standings in the Men’s race 83-80, whilst they boast a greater advantage in the
Women’s race, notching 43 to Oxford’s 30.
This year’s Boat Races take place on Sunday 7th April, with the Women’s race commencing at 2:15pm, followed by the Men’s race an hour later at 3:15pm.
The bookmaker William Hill has priced up the Men’s Race on their website, rating it a closely-fought affair, going 8/11 about Oxford and evens for Cambridge, with the possibility of a dead heat rated a 50/1 chance.
Corpus Christi College’s JCR Executive Committee has sent an open letter to the Vice-Chancellor objecting to the proposals for a new postgraduate college. The letter argued the University had failed to engage sufficiently with University members regarding the proposals, and suggested that “this college has no goal other than increasing student numbers.”
Parks College, a new postgraduate college proposed by the
University to begin accepting undergraduates in 2020, aims to “draw together
researchers from different disciplines to explore some of the big scientific
questions of our time.”
The new college will use the Radcliffe Science Library site as part of the library’s redevelopment. The college will also aim to provide accommodation elsewhere. The Corpus Christi Executive Committee believe that “The “co-location” of Parks College and the Radcliffe Science Library will undermine both. Every space is temporary: a room will one day be a library, the next, a seminar room, the day after, a public exhibition.
“How can academia flourish without a permanent space? The students and fellows of Parks College will instead remain confined to their respective Departments, defeating the ideal of interdisciplinary studies.”
Students also
raised concerns about their opportunities to engage with the University on the
Parks College proposals. During a JCR meeting about the letter, its author, Ed
Hart, said: “I think it’s important to push against the lack of communication. It
is a huge project and was pushed through within three months.”
In the letter, the committee wrote: “The proposal has been made with little to no attempt to engage with University members. The proposal was first mooted in August, in the provisional 2018–23 strategic plan, and it was presumed the creation of any college would be closer to 2023 than today.
“The plan was confirmed after the end of Michaelmas term 2018, after the publication of the final Gazette of the year, preventing serious discussion of it.
“Now, it is to be rushed through Congregation, with plans to hire fellows in just three months’ time. Meanwhile, student and faculty publications fume incredulously and faculties have been left expressing surprise that an important laboratory may become a dining hall.
“We find it concerning that such a monumental decision has been made without adequate consultation of the students you claim to represent.”
The committee also raised concerns about the purpose of the college, since it does not have an overtly outreach focus.
They said: “The proposed college fails to embrace Oxford’s long history of founding colleges to include those from marginalised backgrounds and to improve the lives of those outside the College system. Consider the foundation of the women’s colleges, the foundation of Mansfield College for non-conformist Christians and the foundation of St Catherine’s and St Cross for those without college affiliation.
“Parks College fails on both counts, its website paying lip service to “[embracing] internationalism and diversity” and the benefits of college life.”
“120 years ago, Ruskin College, Oxford, was founded to expand education access to adults with few or no qualifications. It embodies many of the qualities admired in the University’s own colleges. Parks College has none of them.
“The University offers nothing – a half-hearted college, cynically preying on outsiders’ unfamiliarity with Oxford – in return for self-aggrandisement and tuition fees. This proposal demeans the University and the Colleges. It must be reconsidered.”
Responding to the letter, Professor Lionel Tarassenko, Senior Responsible Owner for the Parks College Project, said: “Parks College addresses one of the key education priorities in the University’s Strategic Plan, which is to increase the intake of graduate students across all four divisions by up to 850 a year by 2023, while maintaining quality.
“It will enable the University to grow the number of graduate students, but without upsetting the balance between undergraduate and postgraduate student numbers in mixed colleges or imposing unrealistic targets for growth in the existing graduate colleges.
“The proposed new graduate college will actively promote interdisciplinary exchanges between researchers from across the four academic divisions. It will offer graduate students a rich and stimulating intellectual and social experience, on a par with that at the other graduate colleges.
“And, as with other graduate colleges at Oxford, it will have an outward-looking and inclusive ethos, which embraces internationalism and diversity. As with St Cross College when it was founded, the Fellows of the college will be University professors and researchers who do not currently have a college affiliation.
“Far from leading to a loss of library facilities, the Parks College project presents an exciting opportunity to redevelop the science library and its services to align more closely with the needs of scientists in the 21st century – students, researchers and other academics.
“The proposals for the new college have been discussed with graduate student representatives, the staff of the Radcliffe Science Library, and at meetings of numerous University committees, including the Curators of the University Libraries, Education Committee, Conference of Colleges Graduate Committee, Conference of Colleges, Finance Committee, Personnel Committee and Council. Throughout this consultation process, the plans have been gradually evolving to take on new ideas and to ensure that concerns raised are understood and addressed.
“The
plans for the new college and the allocation of space were approved by Council
on 11 March, and will now be put before Congregation in early Trinity term. The
OUSU VP for Graduates is a member of the Programme Board which is responsible
for the development of the plans.
“We are actively encouraging students
to participate in the planning for the new college. We have been running
Q&A events for students in partnership with OUSU, and we are inviting
students to help shape the academic blueprint of the college at a series of
focus groups, which will take place in late April and early May.”
In the motion for the JCR Committee to sign the letter, the Corpus JCR President Rhiannon Ogden-Jones was also mandated to discuss the issue with other JCR presidents and the Corpus MCR to seek their support. The motion was passed with 13 votes for and 2 against.
Cherwell can reveal that Nigel Farage is expected to speak at the Oxford Union on Thursday’s eighth week debate on Brexit.
The announcement of Farage’s appearance had not yet been made by the Oxford Union, but instead was pre-empted by Labour peer and People’s Vote supporter Andrew Adonis, who this morning tweeted: “I’m debating Nigel Farage at the Oxford Union on Friday. Can’t wait”. Given that Oxford Union debates are, under normal circumstances, held every Thursday of term, and that the Union’s term card places the Brexit debate on Thursday 7th March, it is not known whether the date announced by Lord Adonis is correct.
The specific motion that will be debated at the upcoming Brexit debate and which speakers would be attending has been kept a secret from the Union’s members throughout the term. The Oxford Union’s website has for weeks read “speakers to be announced”.
Cherwell has contacted representatives of Nigel Farage, Andrew Adonis, and the Oxford Union for comment.
It is not yet known which other speakers from the student body or elsewhere have been confirmed to speak at the event.
Along with the Union debate, Adonis also announced on Twitter he would be speaking at Leeds, Eddisbury, Oxford, Llanelli, Swansea, and Wrexham in the upcoming week.
The Oxford Union organised a now-famous debate on Britain’s membership of a European community in 1975, two days before the referendum which saw Britain’s voters consent to membership of the EEC. Speakers in proposition included Edward Heath and Jeremy Thorpe, while Barbara Castle and Peter Shaw spoke in opposition.
There has been significant disagreement between staff at Queen’s College over the decision of the college to fly an LGBTQ+ rainbow flag in recognition of LGBTQ+ History Month, after the college Provost, Professor Paul Madden, opposed the move.
In a meeting on the 13th February, which was attended by representatives from the JCR and MCR and a number of college fellows, the Governing Body passed the unreserved motion to raise the flag for the remainder of the month with a vote of 18-3.
The vote came after the Provost had excused himself from debate on the matter.
However, Cherwell understands from sources present at the meeting that, following the vote, the Provost ruled against the majority, instructing that the flag not be raised for more than the originally planned one week.
No statement has yet been given to explain this decision.
Upon the Provost’s overruling of the vote, Cherwell understands that a fellow left the session in protest at the decision, not returning for the duration of the meeting.
A few days later, an email was sent to the JCR President and Vice President by the Dean, informing them of a change of college policy, stating that the flag would fly for the month as a whole.
When contacted for comment, the Provost did not offer any explanation of his decision. Both the Senior Tutor and Dean also declined to comment personally.
Speaking to Cherwell, a spokesperson for the college said: “As has been customary for a number of years, instruction was given by the Provost to fly the rainbow Flag in the first week of February.
“After it was taken down, the Provost received representations that, in view of the observation that it had become customary among the colleges for the flag to be flown throughout February, the College’s position seemed anomalous.
“He therefore reviewed the decision and gave the instruction that the flag should fly for the whole month and it was remounted on the morning of Thursday 14th February.”
The decision stands in the context of the fact that all other colleges on the high street have flown the rainbow flag for at least a week in February, with many flying it for the whole month.
The disagreement comes just a couple of weeks after Cherwell’s revelation that more than 100 serving Oxford clergy have signed a petition opposing a call by local bishops for “an attitude of inclusion and respect for LGBTQ+ people,” with staff from two Oxford colleges among the signatories.
Responding to the issue, Queen’s JCR President Ebrubaoghene Abel-Unokan said: “The original decision not to fly the LGBTQ+ flag for the entirety of LGBTQ+ history month was, in my opinion, an oversight by the College. It was an anachronism from the College’s past that does not reflect our varied and inclusive community of students and staff or acknowledge and value the contributions they make to the life of the College.
“It is a de facto tradition for the LGBTQ+ rep of our JCR to request that the College fly the flag for the entire month, and I’m incredibly pleased to see that this year Florence Darwen was successful in lobbying the College to change its policy.
“I’d also to thank the Senior Tutor, Nicholas Owen, and the Dean, Chris O’Callaghan for the roles they played in securing the change.
“The JCR has always championed progressive political beliefs, and I would like to think that this is but one step in the consolidation of those views into the College’s practices.
“I have little doubt that this will continue as Queen’s welcomes Dr Claire Craig CBE later this year, who will be the first woman in the College’s history to hold the position of Provost.”
Oxford University LGBTQ+ Society told Cherwell: “While we haven’t been contacted directly by Queen’s students regarding this issue, and are therefore uncertain about the nuances of this particular situation, we as a Society strongly encourage colleges to fly the LGBTQ+ Flag for the duration of pride month.
“It is an important symbol of tolerance and acceptance, which promotes the wellbeing of LGBTQ+ students.
“It is extremely disappointing when college officials do not understand the value of celebrating their LGBTQ+ students and sending a welcoming message to potential applicants.
“We run a campaign service to help students enact change in their colleges, and would strongly encourage Queen’s students to get in touch with us, with the aim of improving provisions for LGBTQ+ students by rectifying this issue.”
Brendan McGrath will be Union President next Michaelmas after receiving 84 more first preferences than rival James Lamming.
Candidates on McGrath’s ‘Together’ slate also secured the positions of Librarian-Elect (Mahi Joshi), Treasurer-Elect (Shining Zhao), and Secretary (Amelia Harvey).
Three out of the four Standing Committee candidates nominated by the ‘Together’ slate also won election, compared to two of Lamming’s six candidates for the ‘Engage’ slate.
Two independents, Mo Iman and ex-Logistics Officer Nikhil Shah, complete the seven-member standing committee.
However, ‘Engage’ had some success in the election, as the most popular candidates in both the Standing Committee election (Spencer Cohen) and Secretary’s Committee election (Chengkai Xie) were from the slate.
Speaking to Cherwell about the result, James Lamming said: “Whilst this obviously was not the result the Engage team had hoped for, I can without any doubt say that Brendan will put together a fantastic term card, as one of the most diligent and dedicated members of Union committee I have ever worked with during my time at Oxford.
“I am immensely proud of the team myself and my officers put together.”
The election of Brendan McGrath as president of the Oxford Union comes after a turbulent term for the current Librarian, after members saw a motion for impeachment being filed against him, and his first candidate for Treasurer, Lee Chin Wee, being disqualified from running for the position.
McGrath declined to comment to Cherwellon the election result.
Those members elected will be expected to follow through with the pledges made in their manifestos. The ‘Together’ slate claimed that it would introduce member-speaker roundtable events, make the Union’s financial accounts transparent by publishing a fully audited account online, and implement a strict ‘zero tolerance’ policy on bullying. The ‘Engage’ slate’s pledges included a bar happy hour with pints costing £1, livestreaming events on the Oxford Union app, and holding more female-led debate events.
McGrath, Joshi and Zhao will serve their terms as officers in Michaelmas Term 2019, while Secretary-elect Amelia Harvey will assume her post next term in Trinity.
New data shows that 8.7% of female postgraduates suspended their studies in 2016/17, one-third higher than the rate for men (6.5%). The gender discrepancy was mirrored in withdrawal rates, which were 1.37% for men compared to 1.64% for women.
The data, obtained from the University by Cherwell, reveals a consistent gender disparity in suspension and withdrawal rates over the previous 8 years.
Suspensions are when a single student pauses their study during a given year, with one student potentially accruing multiple suspension ‘counts’, in the rare event that they do so more than once.
Withdrawals are when a student completely withdraws from their programme of study. This does not include those that have been transferred to a different programme of study.
A spokesperson for the University told Cherwell: “These numbers are relatively low so we should be careful about drawing conclusions from them without understanding the context. We offer high levels of academic and pastoral support to our graduate students through their departments, colleges and central University services.
“There are many reasons why a student’s status might be suspended, including health, maternity or paternity, personal circumstances, academic difficulties and disciplinary matters. Suspension is often a voluntary decision by a student, and in most cases students return from periods of suspension to successfully complete their course.”
A History Masters student at St Catherine’s, Hannah Grange-Sales, told Cherwell: “Women are conditioned to believe they are less intelligent than men, therefore there is both a real and imagined need to work harder to be considered men’s intellectual equals.
“Girls and women are also taught from an early age to internalise ‘unbecoming’ emotions, such as anger, frustration and hopelessness.
“Considering the historic argument against women’s right to education that they do not hold the mental rigour to undertake study, there is a double pressure to overcome this stigma and maintain a facade of capability when, for a variety of personal reasons not linked to their intellect, this may not be the case.
“The increased pressure for women to prove themselves intellectually coupled with the internalisation of emotion can surely be considered a factor in the higher rate of mental health issues amongst female students.”
The overall suspension rate for all postgraduate students has also increased year on year from 2013/14 to 2016/17 from 5.98% to 7.93%, although there was a slight decrease last year to 7.5%.
The withdrawal rate has remained consistent at about 1.5%, peaking in 2013/14 at 1.82%.
There was also a marked contrast between those on research and taught postgraduate degrees, with the former having consistently higher levels of suspension and withdrawal. In 2016/17 just under 10% of research graduates suspended their studies compared to 6% of taught graduates. This figure decreased slightly to 9% last year.
Cherwell understands that the disparity in the figures could be due to the length of postgraduate research degree, which are typically three years. Taught degrees can be as short as 9 months, meaning that there is less opportunity for students to suspend or withdraw from their studies. Just under 52% of enrolments in 2017/18 were in taught degrees.
Oxford SU VP for Graduates, Alison D’Ambrosia told Cherwell: “It is a ticking time bomb the issue of graduate student welfare. With a huge increase in graduate numbers over the past several years, we have seen minimal investment in their welfare provision and support.
“From a counselling service that is only open during term time to students been pushed from college to department to seek help, more needs to be done to properly support the graduate student body. It seems that the first call of action is for students to suspend rather than tackle the causes of suspension and offer proper support for students.”
According to the SU’s recently published counselling report, postgraduate students were proportionally less likely to seek help than undergraduates, with 10.8% of postgraduate researchers and 9.2% of taught students receiving counselling to 12.3% of undergraduates.
The report added that the lower take up of provision could be due to cultural differences. In 2016/17, 64% of graduates were non-UK students.
The University has released advice for EU staff and students
in preparation for a no deal Brexit.
The new website explains that the University is now “making
preparations” for the possibility that Britain leaves the EU without a deal,
which will go ahead if no withdrawal agreement is in place by March 29th.
A no deal Brexit would be likely to include EU citizens
entering the UK being treated as third country nationals, no longer subject to
EEA immigration rules and requirements. This would mean EU students would pay
higher tuition fees than they do now and may need new visas to conform with new
immigration laws.
Research staff may lose the opportuning to access EU
research funding, which totalled £78 million in the academic year 2017/18. The University
may also lose the opportunity to participate in pan-European collaborations.
Given the growing uncertainty, the University is now advising
EU students to ensure they have all relevant paperwork up to date.
The University stresses that EU citizens will still be able
to apply to study at Oxford, and that “all Oxford University staff from the EU
will have the same right to work in the UK whether a withdrawal deal is agreed
or not.”
A spokesperson for the University said to Cherwell: “Given the ongoing uncertainty
about the implications of the UK leaving the EU, the University is working hard
to understand and manage the impact on our staff and students.
“Dedicated web pages with the latest information about the
implications of Brexit have been set up for staff and students and these will
be updated regularly. The pages consider all possible outcomes of the current
negotiations, including the possibility of the UK leaving without a deal.
‘Whatever the outcome of current negotiations, the
University of Oxford is, and intends to remain, a thriving, cosmopolitan
community of scholars and students united in our commitment to education and
research.
“The departure from the EU will not change this; our staff
and students from all across the world are as warmly welcome as ever.”
The Students’ Union reaffirmed the need for advice, stating:
“Students need guidance as soon as possible. If a no deal Brexit does happen,
students want the University to quickly provide information about the impact
it’s going to have on them.
“Graduate students from the EU could face serious
disruption, particularly those studying for 1-year masters programmes. There
are major issues outstanding, especially around the future of the Erasmus
programme and future prospects for research students. The only way to avoid
this mess is a People’s Vote with the option to remain.”
With just over six weeks left until the Brexit deadline, the
University will continue to update their page with more information as it is
available, and individual colleges may be providing specific information
directly to students before the end of Hilary Term.
For more information, or to keep up to date on the
University’s advice, visit the University’s Brexit advice page for students
and for staff.
Brendan McGrath, against whom a motion for impeachment was filed on Thursday 7th, has won his vote not to be impeached by 400 votes to 189.
A notice has been pinned on the Oxford Union noticeboard that reads “The Librarian remains in office. The Motion of Impeachment is unsuccessful”.
The 68% vote in favour of McGrath comes after the 12 hours of deliberation that an impeachment motion in the Oxford Union entails. On the day of the vote supporters and allies of McGrath mobilised a “Vote No” campaign on Facebook, posting social statuses that presented McGrath’s potential impeachment as symptomatic of ‘toxic politics’.
A greater proportion of women and those from BME backgrounds hold fixed-term contracts at the University.
In 2018, the proportion of women in fixed-term contracts was consistently higher across the academic divisions, with the sharpest disparities in the Social Sciences where 56% of women were in fixed-term contracts compared with just 45% of men.
In the Medical Sciences Division, 85% of those from BME backgrounds were found to hold fixed-term contracts in 2018 in comparison to just 68% of those who identify as white.
For Social Sciences the respective figures were 66% to 45%, and in the Maths, Physical, and Life Sciences, the figures were 74% to 43%.
Overall, the proportion of all those of fixed-term contracts has increased significantly from 2008 across all divisions apart from Medical, with the Humanities Division seeing the biggest increase in the use of fixed-term contracts, from 23% to 32%.
In 2018, just under 50% of staff from the Maths, Physical, and Life Sciences, Social Sciences, Medical, and Humanities divisions, were on fixed-term contracts.
The University’s policy on ending fixed-term contracts requires dismissal to be “fair and transparent.”
Employees are informed three months before the end of their contract is “at risk”. When it is not possible to extend or renew the contract, an employee will be informed of the fact a month before its termination.
A University spokesman told Cherwell: “Oxford is the UK’s most successful University in attracting external funding to support our world-leading research. The funding packages support jobs for researchers at every career stage, including fixed-term posts. The larger number of fixed-term contracts results from this increased funding success, opening more opportunities for the next generations of world-class researchers. We have had particular success in attracting talented women to progress their careers with us, including those areas of the sciences where they have been traditionally under-represented.
“We do recognise that fixed-term work can create uncertainties and practical difficulties. We make extensive efforts to support staff on these contracts, including through personal and career development opportunities.
“All staff at Oxford, whether on permanent, open-ended or fixed-term contracts, benefit from our generous employment packages and support for future development. We are also working hard on moving staff onto open-ended and permanent contracts wherever possible. A growing proportion of these contracts are held by women, while the proportion of all staff on open-ended contracts in the sciences is now growing faster than those in fixed-term posts.”
The University’s policy is to ensure departments are “keeping contracts under active review and transferring staff to permanent or open-ended contracts wherever funding permits.”
The proportion of staff working on open-ended contracts in the sciences is now growing faster than those on fixed-term contracts. For example, in 2008, 75% of staff in Medical Sciences were on fixed-term contracts and 4% on open-ended contracts; By 2018, fixed-term contracts had fallen to 72% and open-ended contracts risen to 8%.
The proportions of women in permanent and open-ended positions has increased in some sectors. In Medical Sciences in 2008, 45% of permanent contracts and 53% of open-ended contracts were held by women. By 2018, women held 52% of permanent and 57% of open-ended contracts.
However, in a 2016 report the UCU also included open-ended contracts within their definition of insecure contracts, because their “employment is dependent on short-term funding.”
Their report read: “Employers like to emphasise the degree of choice and agency available to workers on casual or as they like to call them ‘flexible’ contracts, but it is obvious that your enjoyment of choice and flexibility will be shaped by which category you are in.
“It’s simply impossible to imagine that a workforce of this magnitude is comprised entirely, or even largely of the people who conform to the employers’ caricature of the jobbing professional who relishes the flexibility.”
Oxford UCU representative Patricia Thornton told Cherwell: ”Regardless of whether the University wishes to accept the UCU’s calculation of the HESA data on precarious contracts or not, it’s clear that in many divisions, the numbers of staff on casualised contracts have been rising.
“It’s important to note here that “open-ended externally funded contract” staff, whilst sometimes not counted as casualised, effectively face the same level insecurity: their employment is terminated if and when the external source of the funding is withdrawn. The key difference here is that, whereas a fixed-term contract employee is given an end date at the point of hire, the staff member on an open-ended externally funded contract is not; which is arguably even less secure for the member of staff, whose employment can come to an end suddenly and without sufficient warning if the funding is withdrawn.”
Just under 5% of staff in the Medical, Maths, Physical and Life Sciences, Social Sciences, and Humanities cumulatively are in open-ended or externally funded contracts in 2018. The figure was just 2.3% in 2008.
Thornton continued: “Casualised contracts not only create a two-tier workforce within the university, with casualised members of staff effectively carrying out many, if not all, of the same duties as their permanent counterparts on a day-to-day basis, paid lower salaries and afforded a greatly reduced level of protection (and fewer benefits), but they also magnify pre-existing inequalities within the workforce, like the gender pay gap and the persistent underpayment of minority ethnic staff.
“There is a significantly higher proportions of women than men in fixed-term contracts across the divisions, and, disappointingly, that proportion has actually increased marginally since 2008 in the Social Science and MPLS Divisions, and increased significantly in the Humanities Division.
“Equally disturbing is that, despite Oxford UCU’s persistently raising this issue with the administration, and despite various commitments that have been verbalised across the university, the percentages of staff on fixed term term contracts have instead risen since 2008.”
One representative of the ‘Academic Precariat’ group, pointed out that these figures fail to account for those that have already left the sector due to casualisation.
They told Cherwell: “There are plenty of us around, but very little data or interest in us. I left the sector for a range of reasons, but most of them related directly to insecure employment and its consequences: a two-tier system in which casual teaching and research staff undertake work that mainly just enables senior academics to bring in big money projects, lack of respect for intellectual ownership of teaching/research materials produced on these contracts, feeling and being utterly disposable, lack of investment and interest in supporting career progression (why should they, when to offer us more secure employment would be to remove the props fora system which values REF and big grant money above all else?).
“Another big factor in my decision to leave after my short-term postdoc was the minimal prospect of ever being able to secure a contract long enough to actually qualify for maternity pay in the near future.”
With Gladiator II, Ridley Scott returns to the streets of imperial Rome not in triumph, but to decidedly muted applause. Despite earning the director a record breaking box-office opening, the film is of such varying quality as to fall well short of the anticipatory hype. Most viewers will happily concede the creative licence to garble the historical intricacies of the story being told; audiences are less likely to suspend their judgement in the case of contrived narratives, lazy inconsistencies, or the tackiness visually glossing the project.
After a flurry of frenetic brushstrokes offering a refresher of the first film’s events, the audience is introduced to their main protagonist, Hanno (Paul Mescal). In what might have been played for an engaging twist had the game not been explicitly given away from the very first trailer, this Hanno is none other than the Lucius Verus of the earlier film, son of Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) and, it is revealed, Maximus Decimus Meridius (Russell Crowe). Lucius lives in peaceful exile beyond the Roman frontier until his home is sacked by a relentlessly expansionist Roman army and he is thrown into his new life as a gladiator. Proving himself in various arenas with increasingly challenging odds, Lucius reaches the heights of the Colosseum as a favourite of the masses, before finally having the opportunity to direct his vengeance at the imperial government he blames for his woes.
If those plot beats seem familiar, it is for good reason. Whole swathes of this second film feel like a regurgitation of the first. An inability to decide whether it is a direct remake or a continuation of the characters’ stories renders the whole thing somewhat listless. Contrived coincidences drive the narrative, and Mescal’s one-dimensional performance is appropriate for a character reduced to mere plot device. The thoughtful writing of the earlier film is nowhere to be found, with characters inexplicably quoting Latin before promptly translating it into English. The audience is left wondering what these Romans had been speaking prior to that point.
These attempts to imitate a successful predecessor (this time, with more swords and beasts) gives the film the uncanny air of a Marvel movie. Another shared feature is the surprisingly hit-and-miss CGI, cringeworthy at times and certain to date the film. It says much that the score, while effective, is at its emotive best only when sampling Hans Zimmer’s original soundtrack. Compounding this, Scott’s choice to move away from the gritty texture of physical film to digital cinematography renders the world in a colourful but artificial veneer. Surely recognising the inevitable comparisons with its precursor, Scott has done nothing to enable his latest project to stand confidently in its own right.
With all this said, the film has an impressive command of scale, and the costume and set design are a feast for the eyes. Though playing fast and loose with the reigns of the emperors involved, there is a very real flavour of ancient Rome here; a sympathetic reckoning with imperial conquest’s aftermath outside the walls of a captured city is a standout moment of grounding. Even the most bitter critic will struggle not to enjoy the many well choreographed fight-scenes or the rich depth added by the performances of Joseph Quinn, Connie Nielsen, and Denzel Washington. It is largely through the latter’s deliciously charming Macrinus that political themes pertinent for today are explored. The answers to the questions raised are less satisfying, with an uncomfortably eugenicist logic countering ‘might makes right’ with the bizarre ‘proper breeding makes right’. Meanwhile, the depravity of Geta and Caracalla can be physically identified by the mere dint of their grotesque makeup and sallow, pockmarked skin.
The film, comfortably revelling in its own visual splendour, is without doubt a romp. Fun so long as it lasts, pull too hard at the narrative threads on reflection and it may start to unravel. Like its timeless precursor, Gladiator II presents and challenges a ‘Dream that was Rome’; unfortunately for Scott, the film’s most dreamlike quality is probably how easily it will be forgotten.
Cocooned in the quiet darkness of the Michael Pilch Studio, Moth brings us into the bedroom. With its quaint teddy bears and planet-patterned pillowcases, this set is perfect for two boys who don’t want to grow up. The stage is thrust into the audience, some sit only a step from the scene. We are close, uncomfortably so, befitting a play that centres on a family tangled too tight by their trauma.
Alec Tiffou, writer and co-director, has mastered the art of pace, weaving the sub-text into complex portraits of repressed rage, shame, and desire. While the first half is more assuredly written than the second, Tiffou consistently treats the disconcerting subject matter with great tenderness and intelligence, never veering into the sensational.
You are welcomed by stark content warnings on the studio doors, which, though necessary, would give an observant audience member enough to piece together plot twists before they play out onstage. Yet, this works to its benefit; each moment is made more heart-wrenching by the resulting sense that tragedy is inevitable; the moth must fly closer and closer to the flame.
An acute attention to detail marks Moth as a standout in the world of student theatre. Building on a stellar script, the set (Angharad Thorp and Euan Elliot), with its picturesque assortment of lamps and old-fashioned chairs, crafts an illusion of harmony in contrast with the play’s psychological conflict. It all feels unnervingly real, from the commanding performances of the entire cast to the Coco-Pops, orange juice, and cucumbers consumed throughout.
This immediacy relies on the impressively uncontrived portrayal of Luca by Rob Wolfreys. He far surpasses his already successful debut as Proteus in Two Gentleman of Verona, expertly balancing volatility and vulnerability. With arresting nervous energy, Wolfreys resists any potential stasis from the confined set, springing from bed to bed, and in a moment of desperation, hurling himself across the dining table with knife-edge intensity.
Esme Somerside is likewise perfectly cast as the eponymous ‘Moth’, wraithlike and compelling. Though her line delivery is, at times, too unvaried, Somerside is unceasingly alert to her character’s physicality; often curling her limbs around herself like fragile moth wings. Rose Martin is similarly strong in a bold and memorable debut, though certain moments are somewhat overacted. She is undoubtedly one to watch next term.
Most striking is Vita Hamilton as the mordant Jo. She is at her best on a small stage like this, where we can appreciate her mesmerising micro-expressions which signal a talent that is truly few and far between. Hamilton deftly elicits our every emotion; the Pilch resounds with laughter at Jo’s attempts to act out despair, moaning “I’m so depressed”, and listens in captivated silence to her haunting rendition of ‘Singin’ in the Rain’.
It is no surprise then, that I heard more than one audience member stifling a sob, or that many were lost for words during the interval. Matchbox Productions has once again delivered an unabashed, piercing piece of theatre. I’ll be proudly lighting my cigarettes with their complimentary matches for weeks to come.
Adapted from Amy Liptrot’s 2016 memoir of the same name, Nora Fingscheidt’s The Outrun (2024) is a story of addiction, wilderness and fraught ties to home. Saoirse Ronan plays Rona, a 29-year-old graduate reeling from the end of a relationship catalysed by her alcohol addiction. The Outrun unfolds between London and Orkney, places that represent the two poles of Rona’s person. (The film repeatedly cuts back to her past life in the city – a thrilling, dysfunctional period of love, parties and spiralling alcoholism.)
We meet Rona as she visits her childhood home in Orkney. She’s returning after a period of rehab with Alcoholics Anonymous in London. The film’s early sequences follow the protagonist as she wanders along beaches and cliffs, helps on her father’s sheep farm (Ronan delivered seven lambs during filming), and listens to electronic music. Fingscheidt maps the geography of her scenes (Orkney’s rocky outcrops, the village café, and dark London streets) onto Rona’s inner landscape. Rona’s travels between her parents’ houses, who live separately and estranged, double as explorations of her troubled interior. This is the subtext throughout the film: emotional and actual distances are inextricable, to travel one is to travel the other.
But Orkney is not an easy place to return to. Rona finds warmth in her maternal home but is frustrated by her mother’s religiousness: “I’ll pray for you” her mother says. Pressure accumulates. Rona begins caring for her eccentric father as he wavers between bipolar episodes. When it’s time to leave, to escape the sticky web of family and harsh landscapes, Rona seems ready. But when the southbound ferry arrives, something jams. She panics and runs away from the port. Orkney is where she must be for now.
A violent relapse follows, then a summer job on a remote nature reserve with the RSPB. The flashbacks to her London life intensify. Damien – played sensitively by Paapa Essiedu – the man she loved (and lost) in the city, repeatedly lurches into the narrative. Here the film finds its central arc as Rona reassembles herself in the remotest corners of her home islands. On the surface her purpose is clear: to stay sober. What’s less overt is the way this journey demands a confrontation with childhood trauma, spoiled love and future hopes.
Saoirse Ronan’s performance holds The Outrun together. She sensitively inhabits a character at once debilitated by alcohol and full of the joys in the wildlife around her. Rona’s struggle with drink is a messy path of grey zones and cutting temptations, of tall highs and deep lows. The maturity of Ronan’s performance allows these peaks and troughs a great visibility. There is genuine tenderness achieved in scenes between parents and child – moments in which family histories, care, and the rugged landscape coalesce vividly in the speakers’ faces.
Fingscheidt works hard to embed the film with local myths from Orkney through the use of voiceovers and cutaways. Sometimes these layers gave the film an engaging texture, but too often they created a feeling of ‘jumping around’ at the expense of narrative clarity. The voiceover told the folklore in an almost laboured manner, as if the director was forcing Rona’s story into a lineage of local mythology.
More attention could have been paid to the ‘folklore’ of the film’s supporting characters. Rona’s mother (played by Saskia Reeves) had little time to recount her experiences as an isolated mother with an unpredictable, sometimes violent husband. There was surely more to be heard from Rona’s father (Stephen Dillane) too – a brilliant peripheral persona whose history and wisdom went mostly unexplored. Perhaps if it cut back on drone shots and slow-motion waves, the film would’ve had time to dwell on these characters.
Yet The Outrun is a considerable achievement. It’s a study of emotional and physical geography in the same breath, an intimate portrayal of the minutiae of alcohol addiction. Ronan, like the Orkney cliffs, cuts through the cold air with charisma and poise.
Timothy Radcliffe, a Fellow of Blackfriars Hall, was created a Cardinal by Pope Francis at a ceremony at the Vatican on 7th December, making him one of four current English Cardinals. The position of Cardinal is the second highest in the Catholic Church and the College of Cardinals plays an important role in advising the Pope and Church administration.
Radcliffe lived, taught, and lectured at Blackfriars Hall, a Permanent Private Hall for graduate students at the University of Oxford that specialises in theology and philosophy and is operated by the Dominican Order. He is also an Honorary Fellow and alumnus of St John’s College.
Cardinal Radcliffe told Cherwell: “The Catholic Church is in a moment of profound transition” and that he hopes to help “make the Church more welcoming to everyone and (…) share the gospel with a world which is increasingly torn apart by war and violence.”
On his time at Oxford, Radcliffe said that he was “blessed with wonderful tutors” who helped him learn “how to engage with people with whom [he] disagreed”. Radcliffe added he hoped to continue to be based in Blackfriars as he found Oxford “a marvellously stimulating place to live” and that he will be able to “continue to visit the difficult places of suffering and poverty”.
Radcliffe was also the head of the Dominican Order from 1992-2001. It is a Catholic organisation that focuses on education and theological intellectual inquiry. He was awarded an honorary Doctor in Divinity in 2003, given in recognition of his contribution to theology and religious leadership.
Radcliffe will turn 80 years old next August, meaning that it is unlikely he will be eligible to vote for the next Pope: The rules dictate that only those under 80 are allowed to form the conclave. Because of this, some commentators see his appointment as an honorific reward for his service to the Catholic Church.
Traditionally, most cardinals have been bishops or archbishops, though this has occasionally been waived, as in the case of Cardinal Radcliffe. This most recent intake of 21 new cardinals has also seen Pope Francis appoint many cardinals from Catholic minority countries, such as Ukraine, India, and Iran.
Janet Alder at the 2008 UFFC Rally.
Image Credit: Peter Marshall, 4WardEverUK / CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr
At Oxford’s Wesley Memorial Church, Janet Alder offered a harrowing and unflinching account of resilience in the face of systemic injustice. Launched 26 years after the killing of Janet’s brother, Christopher Alder, in Humberside Police custody, her book – co-authored with Dan Glazebrook – sheds light on a case that drew national outrage but remains shrouded in unanswered questions. With Dan’s steadfast support, Janet recounts the tragic events surrounding Christopher’s death and her decades-long battle against police mistreatment.
Janet and Dan’s collaboration began in 2000 when Dan, then a university student, organised a screening of Injustice, a documentary surrounding police brutality, even after cinemas refused to screen it due to persistent police pressure. Janet attended the event, and their shared commitment to justice forged a friendship that has endured for decades. Now, their combined efforts bring Janet’s story to light.
Christopher Alder, a former British paratrooper, died in 1998 while handcuffed and lying face down on the floor of a Hull police station, his trousers and boxer shorts pulled down to his knees. Nearby, a group of officers stood chatting and laughing, indifferent to the blood pooling around Christopher’s mouth as he choked on his last breaths. CCTV footage shows a white girl coming into the very same custody suite, upon seeing the cut on her finger, the policemen rally around her, enthusiastically saying ‘we have to get you some medical attention’.
Beyond the police’s negligent double standards that led to Christopher Alder’s unlawful killing, Janet Alder faced a further violation: police surveillance. Janet began suspecting she was being followed by plainclothes officers just two weeks after her brother’s death. “I knew I was asking the right questions to the wrong people,” she recalls.
Despite her suspicions, Janet’s attempts to report the surveillance- including to her local MP- yielded no results. Repeatedly, she was told by authorities that there was “no evidence” to support her claims.
It wasn’t until 2013 – fifteen years after Christopher’s death- that her suspicions were vindicated. Revelations about police surveillance of Stephen Lawrence’s mother, Doreen Lawrence, exposed a pattern of illegal spying on grieving families seeking justice. Janet learned that she too had been a target of unlawful police surveillance throughout her fight for accountability.
In 2000, Christopher was laid to rest- or so his family believed. In a shocking revelation years later, it emerged that his body had remained in a mortuary and was swapped with that of Grace Kamara, a 77-year-old black woman. Police trainees had even been shown Christopher’s body during mortuary visits under the pretence that it was Kamara’s. Janet calls it “a sick joke,” highlighting the glaring discrepancies: Kamara was 6’1″, while Christopher was 5’6″; their ages (77 and 37 respectively) and appearances were starkly different.
Janet Alder’s family has long borne the brunt of state brutality. Her parents, part of the Windrush generation, migrated to the UK from Nigeria, lured by promises of a better life. Yet, when Janet’s mother experienced a psychiatric crisis and her relationship with Janet’s father broke down, the UK government offered no support. Instead of helping her separate from her husband and care for her children, they deported her. Janet has never met her mother.
Janet, Christopher, and their siblings were placed in state care, enduring mental and physical abuse in a harshly regimented state care home. For Janet, the negligence and injustices of the British state have been a constant, shaping her life in deeply painful ways.
For Janet, the book is both a form of catharsis and an act of resistance. “I had to keep my sanity,” she shared at the launch. ‘To walk away from this, I think it would have left me totally demented so I had to go with what I believed, I had to go with what I was seeing, and I had to go with my intuition (…) because anything less would have destroyed me, and it would have buried this disgusting, inhumane way that Christopher was treated and the way my family was treated.’
Sharing her story during the book’s launch in Oxford, last Thursday, Janet shone as a symbol of strength and resilience in the face of institutional oppression. Despite over 25 years of legal battles, no convictions, and no justice, her story is one of unwavering defiance and determination to expose the truth.
The book’s release was marked by Dan’s insightful interjections and a poignant discussion with former Labour councillor Jabu Nala-Hartley, who drew parallels between Janet’s struggle and broader systemic failures. She reflected: “The ICJ has ruled that Israel is commiting Genocide, but what has Israel done? They continue to do what they like. So what is the legal system there for? Jabu asks “Who has put them there? Who gives them the power to tell us that people are wrong when they are challenging systems that are destroying us and destroying our planet?”
In 1937 Winston Churchill wrote Great Contemporaries, a set of biographical essays on various statesmen, in the course of which he remarked that the “one mark of a great man… is to have handled matters during his life that the course of after events is continuously affected by what he did.” The seed of this observation would germinate some eighty years later, in a lecture series by Sir Vernon Bogdanor on politicians who shaped modern Britain, from which this book is adapted.
Bogdanor is a lucid and intelligent writer whose work benefits from his having met most of the politicians under discussion. Here he is chatting to Harold Wilson about Nye Bevan, here dining with Enoch Powell at the Oxford Union, here debating Roy Jenkins about the Maastricht Treaty. His book stands tall for its good-humoured erudition, its lively interest in personalities, and its deep understanding of the business of politics. Six essays are included here, one for each Carlylean “great man”, covering biographical and ideological context as well as political analysis.
Bogdanor’s first essay is on Aneurin Bevan, perhaps the greatest statesman the Labour Party has produced, who is celebrated here for his contribution to democratic socialism. He was born in a Welsh mining village in 1897 and entered Parliament in 1929. His great achievement as health minister between 1945-51 was the establishment of the NHS, for which he fought tirelessly against medical staff who opposed nationalisation and Conservatives who opposed “state charity.”
Bevan was a warm, eloquent, unflaggingly hard-working man, but his character contained defects which grew dominant after he left office in 1951. He was a hypocrite: despite his principles of free healthcare for all, his personal health was attended to by a royal physician; and, while he advocated social housing to encourage the mixing of classes, he himself lived between a house in Belgravia and a farm in Buckinghamshire. After leaving office, he also made an especially vitriolic attack on his Labour rival Hugh Gaitskell: a newly elected MP recorded that Bevan “shook with rage and screamed… The megalomania and neurosis and hatred and jealousy he displayed astounded us all.” His rivalry with Gaitskell continued to divide the Labour Party in the 1950s and, though they were eventually reconciled, neither of them lived to see the party elected to office in 1964.
The essay on Enoch Powell is the best in the book. Powell – with his metallic eyes, strip-like moustache, hypnotic voice, and ruthless logic, wearing what Kingsley Amis described as his “familiar look of slightly resentful slight bafflement” – was a fascinating man. He is examined here for his theory of the sovereignty of Parliament, though he will always be remembered for his views on immigration.
In his youth Powell excelled at Cambridge; in Australia aged twenty-five he became the youngest professor in the British Empire; he entered the Second World War as a private and emerged as a brigadier, and was elected to Parliament in 1950. He established himself as “the finest mind in the House of Commons”, a brilliant orator who spoke most powerfully against the Hola Camp massacre in 1959. As a prolific writer he produced poetry, political theory, classical translations, book reviews, history, biography, and some excellent prefaces to the novels of Surtees and Trollope.
Then, in 1968, he made his indefensible “Rivers of Blood” speech against Commonwealth immigration. Having served in India just before Partition and visited America during the civil rights struggle, he was convinced that no two racial groups could live together peacefully, and in saying so he was merely being intellectually honest – that is the defence given by his supporters. It does not hold water. There is no excusing the vileness of his speech or the atmosphere of hatred he created, in which “racialism”, as it was then called, could flourish. His ruthless belief in the power of his own logic prevented him from seeing that, in Mrs Gaitskell’s phrase of a few years earlier, “all the wrong people are cheering.” Despite that brilliant mind and poetic eloquence, he had arrived at the same conclusion as any BNP skinhead – that mass immigration was a disaster, that migrants would “never integrate”, and that “voluntary repatriation” was the only solution.
Of Powell’s personal decency, and his freedom from prejudice, there can be no doubt. It is a matter of record that in Poona he had refused on principle to patronise a whites-only club which barred his Indian friend from entry; and that, as MP for Wolverhampton, he provided much “humanitarian help” to his Indian and Pakistani constituents by helping them bring their dependents to the UK. He was fluent in Urdu and chatted to his constituents in that language. There is no conclusive answer to the question of how this tolerant, intelligent man resorted in 1968 to such filthy rhetoric.
Roy Jenkins, subject of essay the third, was a much more agreeable figure, an intellectual and a gentleman in the old style – “the last of the civilised politicians,” as Bogdanor puts it. He did more than any other politician to shape modern British society; his slate of reforms as Labour Home Secretary in the 1960s ended theatre censorship, outlawed racial discrimination, and decriminalised abortion and homosexuality. The Guardian at the time called him the best home secretary since Robert Peel.
In the 1970s he continued in the Shadow Cabinet, served a second term as Home Secretary, and became President of the European Commission. A social democrat, a moderniser on the left in the tradition of Gaitskell, he formed the breakaway Social Democratic Party in 1981, which seven years later merged with the Liberals to become the party currently led by Sir Ed Davey. In later life he became a mentor to Tony Blair as well as to Peter Mandelson (recently foiled in his dream of becoming Jenkins’s successor-but-one to the Oxford Chancellorship).
However, Jenkins’s vision of social democracy was inherently paradoxical. It required a small, centralised state if it were to function, but at the same time its ideals encouraged the dilution of central power through devolution or membership of the EU. This is a contradiction from which his followers have never quite recovered.
The most obscure of the six politicians who made the weather – undeservedly so – was Keith Joseph. He was a great intellect, having won a prize fellowship at All Souls, and he exerted more influence as a political thinker than any of the others in this book. Though he entered politics for the right reasons, “with passionate concern about poverty”, he was a terrible politician and suffered from what can only be termed an inferiority complex, an obsession with apology and self-correction and a tendency to refer to himself as “a convenient madman.”
He was like Powell in advocating a proto-Thatcherite market economy, which he saw as a remedy to the social decay caused by thirty years of postwar “statism.” Again like Powell, his diagnosis was wrongheaded and his proposed solution only inflamed the original problem. He even had his own “Rivers of Blood” moment in 1975, when he made his disastrous “Stop Babies” speech in Edgbaston, lamenting the threat to “our human stock” posed by teenage unmarried mothers. The nasty eugenic undertones demolished any chance Sir Keith might have had at a significant political career. All the same, he remained active in politics as the brains behind Thatcherism, and as “New Labour’s Secret Godfather.” Political economy today would be unrecognisable if he had not brought neoliberal economics to the fore.
The subject of the fifth essay, Tony Benn, was a born politician. “In my family, politics is like a hereditary disease, rather like the monarchy,” he once said – to the Queen. His father and grandfather had been in politics (his son still is) and he enjoyed the remarkable distinction of having known almost every prime minister from David Lloyd George to David Cameron. He was a great parliamentarian, whose recorded legacy spans millions of words of diaries and countless pieces of brilliant oratory. (The speech on Iraq in 1998 is perhaps his most powerful).
On the hard left of the Labour Party, his three great achievements were constitutional: securing the right of hereditary peers to renounce their peerages; the right of party members to elect party leaders; and advocating for the first time in British politics the device of a referendum.
The two years after his death in 2014 saw two vindications of his thought: firstly, the election of a hard left MP, Jeremy Corbyn, to the Labour leadership; secondly, the decision to leave the European Union, of which he, like Powell, had been a critic since the 1970s. A good academic article by Daphne Halikiopoulou, on “The paradox of nationalism: The common denominator of radical right and radical left euroscepticism”, explains more broadly why right and left populists are united in their Euroscepticism; and by implication why Powell and Benn, on opposite ends of the political spectrum, were in this case as closely aligned as opposite ends of a horseshoe. One was motivated by “ethnic nationalism” and the other by “civic nationalism”, but the conclusion, a desire to leave the EU, was in each case the same.
Bogdanor credits Nigel Farage as a great communicator and a man dedicated to his cause. A fair account is provided of his youthful racism (a source is quoted as saying “He was racist in a Churchillian sense” – as if that makes it any better), his exploits as an MEP and UKIP leader, and the final kicking aside of Richard “We’re So Attractive” Tice in 2024 to become leader of Reform Ltd.
Farage is in many ways an outlier among the six. Quite apart from being merely a vulgar hatemonger, he is the only one to have exerted his influence from outside Westminster and to remain unaffiliated with a major party. He is also the only one who was in no sense an intellectual: Bevan edited Tribune in its George Orwell heyday, Powell was a professor, Jenkins a biographer, Benn a political diarist, and Joseph an economic theorist. There is probably some inference to be drawn here about the decline in the mental competence of our political class – but I won’t draw it, because it is possible that my objections to what Farage represents are like those of Keith Joseph to the political system of his own day, “apt to contrast the best of the past with the worst of the present.”
Making The Weather: Six Politicians Who Changed Modern Britain by Vernon Bogdanor is available now in hardback.
Image Credit: Toby Ord, CC-BY-SA-2.5 via Wikimedia Commons
Style at Oxford is an ecstatically productive study in collective nouns. A stable of Ralph Lauren logos, a locus of nylon Longchamps, an orchard of Apple products. It is wholly socially acceptable to sport a cricket jumper in the club, voi in full Scottish ceremonial dress, and pair a Fendi Baguette with your Halloween costume. (I think we should stop being so accepting).
How do you spot an Oxford student? Look for AirPods and library glasses, eyes branded with dark circles and lips glossed with Rhode. The merch is always college (apart from Blues kit, uni-wide is for tourists), or alumni stash (note the boarding school baseball caps). After all, are you even wearing a coat if it doesn’t allow strangers to guess your full name, current living location and (most importantly) university? A college puffer is a walking economy of personal information and academic prestige, and a double-barrelled name fits quite happily into the five character allowance for initials.
The original fear that you must wear business formal to your Oxford interview – “Mum, is my shirt collar clearly visible on the Teams call?” – is not necessarily so misguided. Everyone is always in some variant of smart casual. In Michaelmas, long wool coats creep out and pavements swarm with the yellow stitching of lace-up Docs. People accessorise here, with a plague of that one particular stripy scarf. Canvas totes from The Covered Market or Blackwell’s advertise the personality traits of eating food and being able to read, whilst the London massive support local businesses with The Notting Hill shopping bag.
Ball attire is standard black tie, whilst formals are accessorised with the sartorial translation of your Prelims grade: either a scholars gown or a (tactfully named) commoners gown. Crew dates, on the other hand, normally entail dressing as a thotty elf/thotty deer/respectable professional from Magic Mike and wandering the streets of Oxford whilst passers-by remark in loud voices: “It’s not Halloween anymore, is it?”
Sub fusc, like many things at Oxford, has a Latin etymology and is not as rigidly enforced as the website’s gleeful use of bold font would have you believe. The LinkedIn profile photo of choice shows a prim velvet ribbon bow, teeny-tiny miniskirt, and gigantesque Docs (removed under wobbly Exam Schools’ tables during Prelims papers). And the endurance of a student prepared to sit a three-hour exam in 6 inch platform stilettos is admirable.
Yet clothes also serve as a class marker. Here the most likely balaclava is a cashmere shroud, tweed is horrifyingly unironic and your Rad Cam seat neighbour is using her Goyard tote (a silent epidemic of one grand printed canvas) as a makeshift pillow. Hoodies are normally Carhartt drip and trackies are Blueblood. Getting dressed becomes an exercise in keeping up appearances. The whimsy of going to the library like an aestheticized Dickensian orphan – oh, my satchel and hand-knitted mittens! – is exhausting. Perhaps style at Oxford is ultimately about learning how not to let the mask slip.
Oxford’s state-school admissions fall short despite outreach attempts
The University of Oxford undoubtedly has a reputation of elitism and yet more recently a focus has been placed on improving access and inclusion. This outreach feels more necessary than ever, especially when considering the University’s 67.6% proportion of students from state schools, which falls starkly short of the 93% of the UK population educated within this sector.
This investigation into representation of state-school students at Oxford University delves into the numbers and figures, exposing the reality of declining numbers and ineffective outreach schemes.
Graph one, Graph two
The University’s official admissions reports from the last five years paint a picture of progress and positivity, emphasising how the gap between private schools and state schools is narrowing. And to some extent it’s true. As graph one shows, in 2023 1,236 more state-school students applied than in 2019, increasing the proportion of state-school applicants by 5.3% over the last four years. On the other hand, private-school students have declined by a similar proportion with just over 600 less applications in 2023 than in 2019.
This trend can also be seen in admissions and from 2019 to 2023, the proportion of private-school students admitted fell by 5.3%, while the proportion of state-school students admitted into Oxford rose by 4.8% (graph two).
The University emphasises how their attempts to improve access have been successful throughout the report, drawing conclusions such as “the proportion of UK students admitted from the independent sector has decreased between 2019 and 2023.” Similarly, the report also says that state-school students represent “between 46.5% and 79.6% …for Oxford’s 25 largest courses,” a more generous statistic than the University’s overall intake of state-school students, which has not yet risen above 70%.
The issue of 2019-2020
Graph three
Yet this progress is not as impressive as the statistics initially imply. The five-year time range used to track state school and private school access to Oxford University is a pretty standard one. And yet it is slightly problematic due to the outlier admissions year of 2019 to 2020.
The 2019 to 2020 application cycle marked a record year for state school admissions into Oxford with 21% of 9,411 applicants receiving offers (graph two). This contrasted the year before, wherein 500 less state school students applied, and 113 less offers were made to state school students. The unprecedented numbers of state-school admissions reached in 2020 have not been consistently matched in the following years. Indeed, since 2020 the gap between private school and state school access to Oxford has only grown bigger.
The data from the years post-2019 indicate stagnation far more than progress and the representation of state-school students at the University has been on the decline for the last four years. By 2022, the amount of offers given to state-school students had already fallen by 8.5% since 2020 and in 2023, 275 less state-school students were admitted to Oxford than in 2020.
The hidden facts
While the University’s admissions reports provide all the data on students from state schools and private schools, it is not made clear that the proportion of state-school students applying to Oxford University is consistently higher than the proportion of state-school students who are admitted, as shown in graph three. Furthermore, the proportional difference between the numbers of state-school students at both stages has risen by 4.2% since 2020, suggesting that this trend is only worsening.
Despite the numbers of students applying to Oxford from state schools only increasing, climbing to a record of 10,150 applications in 2023 (graph one), there has been no meaningful increase in the numbers admitted. While state-school students are increasingly encouraged to apply, the University’s admissions have in no real way yet matched this change.
In contrast, graph three also shows over the last five years there has always been a higher proportion of private-school students being admitted than the proportion of private-school students at the applications stage. The amount of this increase has also only grown since 2019.
It seems as if in recent years, Oxford’s progress in accessibility has stumbled into a period of increasing inertia. Improvements made in 2020 have been followed not by a meaningful change in the University’s demographics, but by a backslide into underrepresentation of state-educated students.
The schools
But it is not just the University’s own statistics that can provide insight into the representation of state-school students at Oxford University. The Spectator recently published a list of the top 80 schools that receive the most offers from Oxford University and Cambridge University. The data gathered from the 2023 UCAS application cycle shows how the proportion of high-performing schools is fairly evenly split between the private and state sector. Out of the 80 schools, 29 are independent schools and the remaining 51 are state-funded schools.
This would suggest that, if anything, state-school students have better chances of getting into Oxford University. However, within the 51 state schools on this list, there is still much stratification, with 29 being grammar schools and 17 sixth-form colleges. While all state schools are characterised by their lack of tuition fees, some are also fully or partially academically selective and others simply educate students post-16. Grammar schools and sixth form colleges tend to outperform comprehensive state-schools, achieving better A-level grades. Additionally, sixth-form colleges tend to be able to provide more extensive resources than comprehensive schools and grammar schools are noted to often disproportionately represent middle-class students. For example, in 2021 to 2022, 5.7% of pupils at grammar schools were eligible for free school meals compared to 22% in an average comprehensive school.
While comprehensive schools are still funded by the state, they are not selective and so accept all students regardless of academic performance and regardless of age. On this list of the top schools for Oxbridge admissions, only five, or 6.3% are comprehensive state schools.
The reasons
Another trend that Oxford University’s admissions reports reveal is that every year for the last five years, state-school students have been less likely to be admitted after receiving an offer than private-school students. In the 2023 admissions cycle, for example, 85.9% of offer-holders from state-school students were admitted contrasted by the 92.8% success rate of students from private schools. Furthermore, in 2020 the success rate of state-school students was 95.8% meaning it has fallen by nearly 10% in the last four years.
While it is impossible to say for all cases, one can assume that the vast majority of offer-holders who were not then admitted failed to achieve their required grades. Oxford University cannot, of course, be solely blamed for this. After all, it is true that private schools tend to perform better on examinations than state schools and in 2024 this performance gap reached its largest since 2018 with almost half of private-school students achieving As or above contrasted with only 22.3% of students at comprehensive schools.
However, the reasons why more private school students end up in top-performing universities, such as Oxford University, run a lot deeper than exam results. The resource disparities between the private and state sectors cannot be understated. In the last decade alone, the gap between private school fees and state school spending per pupil has more than doubled.
Private schools also tend to be able to better support their students with university applications. At Westminster School, who received the most Oxbridge admissions in 2023 jointly with Hills Road Sixth Form College, for example, students receive mentoring and preparation classes. A former student at the school told Cherwell how this was “absolutely invaluable for giving me confidence.” Similarly, St Paul’s School, which placed fourth on The Spectator’s list, employs eleven specialist UK university advisers to help students make decisions about their A level and university choices.
The Campaign for State Education told Cherwell some reasons private schools are better equipped to send pupils to Oxford University is because “they have many, many decades of experience in preparing students to apply to these universities… (and) many of them are likely to have personal connections to Oxbridge colleges.”
Therefore the gap between private schools and state schools is a highly complex issue and while one institution, such as Oxford University, cannot be expected to solely resolve it, they certainly should take all the steps they can to increase the University’s accessibility. And this has not yet been achieved. Oxford University still lags behind the national average number of state-school students by over 20% and in 2021 was the seventh lowest proportion out of the 24 Russell Group universities.
Outreach
But what is Oxford University doing to level the playing field? Outreach is a relatively new but important tool that Oxford among many other universities employs to encourage and support students from underrepresented backgrounds.
It was only in the 2010s that Oxford introduced structured outreach programmes. The UNIQ programme, a summer residential and one of the University’s flagship access programmes, was introduced at the beginning of the decade. It is now one of many initiatives run by the University. Oxford colleges also carry out their own outreach.
Cherwell received FOI responses from seven colleges – the Queen’s College, St Hilda’s College, St Edmund Hall, New College, Exeter College, Keble College, and St John’s College. This data shows that, as expected, state schools are the main target of their outreach programmes.
Outreach is definitely becoming more and more prominent and widespread and there is no argument that this is not a positive change. Yet in the last five years, there has only been a minor increase in applications from state-school students (graph one) and virtually no difference in the number of students from state schools who are admitted (graph two).
It might just be too early to tell. Most outreach programmes were first initiated between 2010 and 2020 and while perhaps this is not enough time to truly know, there is no evidence of positive change yet. It may not be fair to say that outreach has no effect but its success is yet to be mirrored in the University’s applications and admissions.
College disparities
Oxford University’s college system also adds greater complexity and the proportion of state-school students differs greatly from college to college. Mansfield College holds the highest number of state-school students with a proportion of 93.7%, which is in line with the number of students in state schools throughout the UK. However, this amount is 37 percentage points higher than the proportion of state-school students at Pembroke College.
The Campaign for State Education identified the college system specifically as a problem. They told Cherwell: “In the short term, the best thing to do would be to stop allowing colleges to control their own admissions. In both universities (Oxford and Cambridge) the proportion of state/privately educated students varies enormously from college to college and this clearly reflects the exercise of quite different admissions.”
Location, Location, Location
However, the picture painted by admissions statistics to Oxford University is not that simple. It is not just school type alone that affects access to Oxford but so does school location and in all areas, the same few locations are consistently overrepresented while the rest are nearly always at a disadvantage.
Oxford University’s admissions reports from the last three years show that London and the South East are favoured. Making up around 14% of the total UK population, the proportion of students from the South East who apply and are admitted to Oxford is nearly double that.
Contrastingly, the 11% of the UK population in the North West is not equally represented in the 8% of Oxford applicants and admittees. Students from Yorkshire and the Humber are also underrepresented and they make up only 5% of applications and admissions, despite this region accounting for 8% of the population.
Furthermore, when looking at The Spectator’s top schools for students who go onto Oxford and Cambridge University, this bias is also present. London and the South East are again the most popular with 38 out of the top 50 schools falling in these regions and all but two of the top 20. Only one school from the North East, Greenhead College, has made the top 50.
Therefore, this clear regional preference to London and the South East must surely have an impact on Oxford’s outreach attempts. The University’s regional outreach programme, Oxford for UK, describes how they aim “to help more local students from backgrounds which are currently underrepresented to make successful applications to Oxford.” This programme assigns different Oxford colleges a region for them to specifically target with their outreach programmes.
The statistics undeniably highlight the North East as an underrepresented area with the lowest number of applicants to the University coming from this region. Oxford for UK has assigned it links to three colleges: Christ Church College, St Anne’s College, and Trinity College. This is roughly the same number of colleges linked to Yorkshire and the Humber, the East Midlands, the West Midlands, the North West, Wales, the South West, and the East of England.
The bias towards London and the South East is also shown by the latter region being designated seven colleges to expand access in this already overrepresented area. Eleven colleges have links to specific boroughs within London, a subdivision made for no other area in the UK.
Madeleine Holt, founder of the Meet the Parents project, which encourages all families to support their local comprehensives, and a trustee of the think tank Private Education Policy Forum (PEPF), described the reasons for this regional bias as “affluence and selection”, explaining how these regions “have some highly selective sixth forms that have greater contact time than the average, and focus very heavily on getting top grades.”
The amount specific regions are interacted with by colleges does not correlate with their applications to Oxford University. The FOI responses from the seven colleges shows that the South West is targeted by outreach programmes two times as much as their students apply to Oxford (graph four).
Holt also stressed this problem, telling Cherwell: “I am concerned that colleges may be getting the numbers up by taking a disproportionate number of state school students from grammar schools or from highly selective sixth forms where they have built up a strong relationship over the years.”
Graph four represents the number of schools targeted by the seven colleges in each region and it shows that regional bias is stronger than a college’s designated outreach area. The schools involved in outreach are predominantly from London and the South East, while the North East as well as Scotland and Northern Ireland are far less affected. Indeed, regardless of designated links to the region, almost every college interacts with schools from London as a large proportion.
While this is not true for all colleges, outreach from St Edmund Hall, whose link region is the East Midlands, reached schools from that area over 80% of the time. However, this is not always the case and New College, whose link region is Wales, only interacted with Welsh schools less than 30% of the time.
What now?
It is clear that private-school bias is undeniably still a great issue at Oxford University. State school students continue to be underrepresented in one of the UK’s top academic institutions. The work of outreach programmes and initiatives are yet to have definite consequences on progress.
The Campaign for State Education told Cherwell: “the English private school system concentrates massive resources on the education of already privileged children and effectively undermines the education of 93.5% of our children…The best thing to do with it would be to abolish it.”
The University of Oxford said in response: “Oxford remains committed to ensuring that our undergraduate student body reflects the diversity of the UK and that we continue to attract students with the highest academic potential, from all backgrounds. The past few years have been challenging, with students, particularly those from socioeconomically disadvantaged groups, continuing to feel the impact of Covid-19 and the cost-of-living crisis. We continue to build on and expand our access and outreach activities and our new Access and Participation Plan will provide a renewed focus in attracting and supporting students who are currently under-represented at Oxford.”
Image Credit: Cyrus Mower/CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Oxford University’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Irene Tracey, has spent a total of £47,564.97 on expenses since her appointment in January 2023, Cherwell can reveal. The majority of these expense claims cover flights in an apparent contradiction of Oxford University’s own sustainability policies.
A Freedom of Information request showed that most of these expenses pertained to travel, with claims for over £25,000 spent on flights, £12,000 on rail and car transportation, as well as over £5,000 on hotel stays. Additionally, £1,350 was spent on the purchase of “gifts”. These costs are considered part of the Vice-Chancellor’s responsibilities and in addition to her baseline salary of £423,407.
Some of the Vice-Chancellor’s air travel appears in tension with the University’s travel policy, which was implemented in August 2022 as part of its wider Environmental Sustainability Strategy to achieve net zero carbon by 2035. The travel policy requires an “additional approval process” for premium economy or business class air travel.
Tracey’s largest expense claims were made for a series of business class flights to the USA. These began in April 2023, when Tracey claimed £5,456 for flights there, and again in July of that year, when £7,210 was claimed for the same journey. The largest claim was made in June 2024 for flights between London and New York, which cost £8,817.
With specific reference to these flights, the University press office elaborated: “Long haul flights are taken in business class – not in first class. The Vice-Chancellor has declined other expenses to which she is entitled.” Yet this would still appear to contradict the case-specific “approval process” stipulated in the University’s travel policy.
Domestic flights from London to Glasgow and Edinburgh, made in May 2023 and May 2024 respectively, are also in tension with another stipulation of the University’s travel policy, which refers to the use of domestic flights within the UK for business travel as “not permitted”.
The policy specifies that “rail should be used for all domestic journeys under seven hours”, and does not include Scotland on its list of domestic exceptions. The headline data provided by the University in response to Cherwell’s FOI only referred to “ground transportation”, failing to distinguish train and private car journeys.
The Vice-Chancellor has also claimed thousands of pounds on hotel accommodation around the world, including a hotel stay in August 2023 worth over £1,600 in the USA, and accommodation in Mumbai totalling to £1,700 in December 2023.
An investigation by the i newspaper into expenses incurred by university vice-chancellors nationally reported that the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) clocked up the highest expense bill, with its Vice-Chancellors claiming over £80,000 over the past two years.
By comparison, Tracey’s expense claims are markedly lower than LSE’s and also those of her predecessor, former Vice-Chancellor Prof Louise Richardson. In 2023, the University paid out record compensation of over £1 million to Vice-Chancellors Tracey and Richardson, notably including a payout for Richardson equivalent to a year’s salary “in lieu of sabbatical”.
The University of Oxford said in response: “Oxford University is ranked as the world’s strongest university for its teaching, research and impact. Additionally, it generates billions annually for the UK economy.
“To support this achievement, the Vice-Chancellor builds global research and education partnerships, secures donations funds from supporters around the world and helps recruit the outstanding academics and students who are vital to Oxford’s success.
“The Vice-Chancellor’s work in keeping the University as a world leader is continual, involving large-scale engagement with current and potential academic partners, funders and donors, and extensive worldwide travel. As such, these expenses have all been incurred legitimately in the cause of keeping Oxford at the forefront of the worldwide advancement of learning and research.”
Tom Egerton has worked with Sir Anthony Seldon on The Conservative Effect 2010-24: 14 Wasted Years?, The Impossible Office? The History of the British Prime Minister and Johnson at 10: The Inside Story. He is also the founder and editor of ‘The Political Inquiry’, a Substack providing independent political analysis and promoting new voices in politics.
Cherwell: Tell us a bit about your early life; what memories stand out to you, especially in relation to how your later career developed?
Egerton: When did I know what I wanted to go into? At the GCSE level, there’s nothing really on politics. There’s very little. Your whole interaction with the study of politics, with the practice of politics is tangential to other subjects, or what’s actually happening in the real world, or maybe family or friend connections, right? The big thing for me was, through history, I discovered politics, and I think that’s quite regular for a lot of lot of people; but also that shapes how you look at politics, if you discover it through a passion for history, through looking at the past, that really shapes how you see the world, how you see politics, what type of politics you want to go into and your views fundamentally.
Cherwell:And then you took those two together, and went on to study History and Politics at Warwick. How did your experience there shape you?
Egerton: Warwick’s an interesting place, right? Because it’s a very respected uni, but it’s quite a new uni. I think it’s aged very well, and they’re innovating there quite a lot. I think you need to do that if you don’t have the rich history and tradition of other unis, you have to forge it. I think that’s what they’re doing well. The History department has got a very radical history, but it’s still a very fascinating history. I think a lot of the professors there are top of their game for a lot of research. Their economics department is obviously very famous, especially because of their business school. Their politics and philosophy is pioneering in places as well. There’s a good humanities and social sciences bracket there at Warwick. E.P. Thompson was professor there and set up the History department. So it has this lineage there, but it’s kind of in conflict with itself. I don’t want to say too much on it, but because they utilise a lot of money from the Big Five investment firms and lots of insurance companies through their business school. I mean, it’s happening at all unis, but this one specifically, the conflict of a progressive, maybe anti-capitalist humanities side versus a whole department’s spending based on it.
Cherwell: Was it while you were at Warwick that you first met Sir Anthony Seldon?
Egerton: I think I met him before, but I properly met him at Warwick when I was Academic Officer for the Politics Society. I wanted him down for a talk because he wrote a book called The Impossible Office, and I thought it was a very good book. He comes down, and I host an event with him over a few hours, and it goes down really well, hundreds of people attend. I got him doing uni media and local media there as well, which was so gracious with his time, and then from then on, we kind of hit it off over the next six, eight months, texting, calling each other; he shows me bits of work, I give comments. Our relationship kind of built from there, working wise.
Cherwell:And then from there, you moved on to work with him on Johnson at 10.
Egerton: So that was the first time I worked for him. He basically just needed a researcher that he could trust and that he thought was good enough. I was very lucky to be given that opportunity by him. I came on as chief researcher for that project, under Anthony and his co-author, Raymond Newell, who is also extremely impressive guy; he’s in his mid-20s, and has already done two masters and a degree. Very impressive. He’s now at Hanbury Strategy. Definitely one to look out for. He’d also co authored May at 10 before, so he retained that team, and us three work together on that, and it went really, really well. Ended up, I think, being one of his most successful books, numerically, as well as quality and reviews. That was a fascinating process which took about a year, both on the ground in Westminster and working from home and meeting up as a team. Great, great experience.
Cherwell:And that’s how you laid the groundwork for The Conservative Effect, which is the one that came out most recently.
Egerton: Before that, I co-authored the second edition of The Impossible Office, because that needed a lot of updating. They already had three authors, and I came on as a fourth to update most of the recent Prime Ministers, and also do a lot of editing and corrections. That came out a bit after Johnson at 10, and then off the back of that, we had The Conservative Effect sketched out for a while, because it was more ‘can we get the people, can we get the timing right’? Because you have to plan these things at least a year and a half in advance. You just have to see what the government’s doing, because there was a big question mark over Sunak for six months, not whether he could actually win an election, but at least be more successful. Then you can’t really be sure on conclusions you’re starting to write about the book.
Cherwell:If it ended up being a Conservative win, the book would look a bit incomplete.
Egerton: Exactly. Well, it helped that it was probably the easiest election to predict a long time. Even a year before, when we were really kick starting the project, I don’t think it was a given. In mid-2023, I think, everyone thought the Conservatives would probably lose. But by how much? Will it be a hung parliament? And looking at how Labour’s vote share actually was in the end, you know that actually, weirdly could have happened.
Even if they’d won, I think the conclusions in that book would have stood up. What wouldn’t have stood up is our framing around that. But I think that’s why me and Anthony took our time with it and made sure we had some firm footing on it, because also, you’ve got to make sure that you’ve got space for everyone in the book. If you’ve got top academics, you can’t be going around making silly conclusions or ones that won’t hold up.
Cherwell:You wrote a chapter in the book on external shocks; what was that experience like?
Egerton: It was an interesting chapter to write, because it was a summary chapter, rather than breaking new ground in a specific area. I was having to coalesce six shocks, which were all a bit disparate and to be honest, complex to explain in itself. It was challenging to do as a historical project. But I think it was important because not many historical books, especially contemporary history, realise the idea of shocks and how they categorise and explain the historical record, and how future revisionism relies on those shocks. For every governing period since World War Two, but even before then, external crises absolutely shape the governing record, because it’s all about the agency that a government has. There’s no point judging a prime minister or a government fairly if you’re not going to look at what wicket they’re playing on.
The chapter wasn’t designed to kind of explain away the failures of the last 14 years, but to give an insight into the external shocks. It’s important to emphasise, because I can see already that some people were taking the wrong conclusions from what I was saying, because obviously they didn’t read it properly. But the point is, is you can still be fair on what happened, but only by showing what happened can you give a more authoritative account on the failures.
Cherwell:You also founded and edit ‘The Political Inquiry’. Can you tell me a bit about that?
Egerton: ‘The Political Inquiry’ was an area to showcase some of my repertoire of early political writing and strategic thought, but it’s also a place that I’m now utilising to promote up and coming politicos, writers, strategists and historians who don’t break through into the legacy media easily, or can’t do because of connections or whatever. And it actually is a place to foster new, exciting potential, and different thoughts that don’t get the light of day, from a range of political ideologies.
Cherwell: How did you come up with the idea of it?
Egerton: I wanted a place to write. If you go to any legacy media and their commissioning editors, what you’re given can be quite constricting. If you’re early in your career, you can’t always have the space to write about what you want to write about, where your skill set is. I think giving the space for that is an absolutely vital thing if you want to develop political talent and also break through.
It’s not like I publish everything. I’m not restrictive, but I’m not going to publish any old stuff. I think some digital media that focuses on younger writers does. Not uni stuff, by the way; this is more like professional ones that don’t realise that you’ve got to have an editorial line. But if the editorial line is open enough, it can still work. But it can’t be completely open.
I think now that I’ve edited The Conservative Effect on a professional, academic level, you realise you cannot force a top-down opinion on someone unless you you’ve got a editorial line to begin with. If your very premise is that you haven’t got one, you can’t do it. So I understand where all the big legacy media newspapers come from, because they do have lines and they are mostly clear about it. But if you’re going to commit to not having one, you’ve got to be clear about it.
Cherwell:It’s probably a good sign of your editorial and academic objectivity that I haven’t been able to gauge what are your politics are.
Egerton: I’d say centre-left is probably a good wishy-washy way of describing it.
Cherwell:A Starmerite?
Egerton: No, not really Starmer. As you’ll see on ‘The Political Inquiry’ and in this chapter I just wrote, I’ve got question marks over Starmer. Less from an ideological point of view, because I think the perennial issue with the left is they focus on ideology as the be-all and end-all. Actually, sometimes if people focused on delivery and strategy a bit more, much more ideological left-wing goals would get achieved in government. But because there’s less focus on that and more focus on ideological battles from both wings of the party under the ideological spectrum, not much gets done.
Cherwell: In all the work you’ve done, who would you say is the modern writer who has influenced you the most?
Egerton: I think this is weird because I lean left, but definitely Dominic Sandbrook, of The Rest is History podcast. He wrote a five-part series on British political history ranging from the 50s to the mid 80s. They are really interesting attempts to bring political and social cultural history together, and then display it in a more accessible modern context. I say accessible; the books are 800 pages, but by accessible, I mean summarizing the academic groups and thoughts of these historical periods and presenting them in an interesting way. I don’t agree with a lot of his conclusions, but I think it is a fantastic introduction to political history, and also the history of this country. It comes from a standpoint that many people disagree with, but I think it’s good to read something you disagree with, to find ways to better it. That’s the fundamental point of history, really.
If I did a project in the future, he wouldn’t like it because there’s not enough anecdotes in it, or social history. But hopefully in the future, my writing will be more broad based in terms of history, rather than just the analytical, high politics, economic side of things, which can dominate analysis too much.
Cherwell: Speaking of next projects, what are your aspirations for the future?
Egerton: From now, just simply more writing, more reading, more research, realising that your career is never made in the first 10 years. It’s about what you do as a young person to develop and finding something you love. If you just keep developing and putting yourself out there for opportunities, you’ll get something, especially if you really like the thing you’re going for. That means you’ll have something over anyone else who’s more experienced, if you have more passion for it. People in politics see that. I think a lot of people in the industry of politics or history, they see things as daunting. They shouldn’t. Most people don’t know half as much as you probably know, and they use their positions to kind of protect what they have. It’s all about young people breaking through at the end of the day, that’s what generates new ideas and makes the industry so interesting and creative at times. And without that, it would be dead. So for anyone reading, go and do that, just go and put yourself out there for whatever, and put the effort in.
I’ve got a book in the works on Labour’s governing political strategy, loosely titled ‘Victory to Delivery’, which I might turn into a doctoral thesis. I think the biggest issue for left wing governments in this country is how you transfer what are sometimes questionable manifestos or indecipherable mandates into governing policy and governing strategy that actually works and stands the test of time. I think people like Miliband etc. have thought about that a lot, and you’ll see him trying to build policies that last a long time and build consensus. I think it’s an area of thought on that needs a lot more research, because there’s barely anything. I mean, Michael Barber is the only person I can think that has a really impactful study on it; he set up the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit under Blair, and wrote about delivering in government. I’d like to work on something like that from a historical perspective, with a bit more of a political edge.
The Conservative Effect 2010-24: 14 Wasted Years? is published by Cambridge University Press, and is available now. Cherwell reviewed the book in July 2024.
.jpg){kind=link}
What are Conservative Party Members thinking?
Friday 2nd September is creeping ever closer and with a government that seems to be set on inaction until then in the midst of the biggest cost of living crisis in decades, for millions it can’t come soon enough. Before then though, 0.3% of the population will decide who the next Prime Minister is and all signs now seem to suggest that that person will be Liz Truss.
Personally, I see it as a tragedy on several levels but, above all, I cannot cease to be totally baffled by the polls that show Truss will win by such a landslide. Not only is it now with seeming daily regularity that a new independent report, financial expert, or ‘Tory grandee’ points out her economic plans are both unfundable and inadequate. More than anything, the Conservative Party Members seem set to condemn themselves to losing the next election by electing a leader and resulting cabinet that is beyond impalpable for the general population.
I suppose the first step in trying to get inside the mind of Tory members is understanding who they really are, something that is notoriously difficult and explains why opinion polls in leadership contests vary so much in comparison with those of general elections. Although the information is not officially published, Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University, concluded nearly ten years of study on this and told the FT last month that “There hasn’t been much change in the demographics of the Tory grassroots since we began our research on party members back in 2013.” The research found that, rather unsurprisingly, that members are disproportionately older men. 63% were male (compared to roughly half of the UK population), their median age is 57 (the national average is 40), and 80% fall in the so-called ABC1 category of the most highly-paid demographic group (this makes up 53% of the country). They also match the classic stereotype of being white and right-leaning on issues, with 76% voting for Brexit and 95% identifying as White British in a country where that makes up just 83% of the population. Now, that is a lot of numbers, but the fact that those voting on our next leader come from such a small and narrow segment of society is not only plainly a crazy and scarcely believable part of our democratic system but goes some way to explaining how and why they have leaned so heavily on Truss over Sunak. They have rewarded her ludicrous attempts to evoke Thatcherite policies which don’t fit the current economic climate and, much like the Foreign Secretary’s desperate efforts to emulate Thatcher’s personality and dress sense, are outdated.
Despite this, in fact for this very reason, one would think that the constant comments from some of the Tory party’s oldest, most successful, and most well-respected names, about just how baseless much of Truss’ economic policies are, would have swayed more of the base towards Sunak. Kenneth Clark has described her approach as “nonsense and simplistic” and related it to techniques that might be used by a Venezuelan government. Former leaders Michael Howard and William Hague, as well as well-respected current MPs such as Dominic Raab, Jeremy Hunt, and Michael Gove, have all taken to the airwaves and newspapers in the past few days to speak against the idea that tax cuts can resolve the crisis. Even Lord Lamont, Treasurer in the Thatcher government remembered so fondly by much of the conservative party base, has publicly backed Sunak over the holes in Truss’ plans. It isn’t only individuals who think that her plans are misguided either: the IFS joined countless other economists last week in pointing out that her current ideas are simply unfundable unless they are accompanied by spending cuts.
What makes all of this even more crazy and difficult for me to get my head around is that the members seem blissfully unaware of just how unelectable Truss is for the electorate as a whole. With a general election looming in 2024 you would think that there would be an appetite for a relatively inoffensive leader who appeals to as broad a base as possible. Whereas Sunak has at least shown his ability to appeal to a large spectrum in the past, earning himself the nickname ‘Dishy Rishi’ during his Eat Out to Help Out glory days, Truss has never shied away from bulldozing ahead with unpopular policies and divisive comments. Whether that is upsetting Scots by saying that the best way to deal with their democratically elected leader is “to ignore her” or regular workers by telling them to put in some more “graft”, Truss trails Keir Starmer and rival Sunak in every poll of the general population. And if recent leaks of her planned cabinet are to be believed, placing Jacob Rees-Mogg as Levelling-up Secretary, she hardly appears to be planning a change of course on this front.
So – why? What is it that appeals? It might well be a case of Johnson continuity – indeed in surveys, many have said that they feel Sunak betrayed their leader by resigning and becoming one of the major catalysts for the Prime Minister’s downfall. In reality though, I think it is more of a case of the members being genuinely detached from the real world themselves. For whatever reason they don’t seem able to see their impending decision risks disaster for millions of people across the country by worsening current financial pressures as well as putting them in a catastrophic position ahead of the next general election. Two years is a long time in politics, but right now I struggle to see why on earth the turkeys are voting for Christmas.
Image: CC 2.0 – UK Government via Flickr.