Sunday, January 19, 2025

Headlines

‘Look away’: Animal experiments at Oxford

Home Office rejected the University’s licence to use live animals in classes that had left students ‘‘visibly disturbed and distraught”.

Comment

Features

What Gisèle Pelicot can teach us about student consent workshops 

"Consent is not just a rule dictated in an isolated workshop."

Smoke and mirrors: Oxford’s changing smoking culture

Behind a constant veil of thick tobacco smoke, students relax and chat in a night of music and dancing far from Oxford’s usually formal settings. This might sound like a club smoking area, but...

Intoxtigation 2024: Merton drinks least, Christ Church most, and two thirds tipsy around tutors

In an Oxford first, the Cherwell Features team gathered data from 1,250 students on all things drinking.

From classrooms to code: Education in Britain’s misinformation fight

Media literacy has its champions, including Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, who has indicated that the ongoing school curriculum review will emphasise critical thinking skills relevant to media consumption.

UK unis’ global reputations are at risk

"Oxford University retains a near-unparalleled prestige for students around the world - so why have international applications nearly halved?"

A whistle-stop tour of Oxford’s women’s societies

What can all these women’s societies be fighting for? To find out, I spoke to eight of their presidents. 

Profiles

Mark Goldring, Asylum Welcome and ex-Oxfam CEO: ‘In Oxford, our solidarity was stronger than the extreme right’

Mark Goldring is the outgoing CEO of Asylum Welcome, a local organisation in Oxford that assists asylum seekers, refugees and vulnerable migrants. He had been the CEO of Oxfam GB until 2018.  I turned Mark’s mind back to the unsettling civil unrest of the summer, when, fuelled by misinformation and...

Tom Egerton: “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...

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...

Culture

Gladiator II: A lack-lustre return to Rome

With Gladiator II, Ridley Scott returns to the streets of imperial Rome not in triumph, but to decidedly muted applause.

Review: Moth – ‘An unabashed, piercing piece of theatre’  

An acute attention to detail marks Moth as a standout in the world of student theatre.

Life

Oxford cured my perfectionism

So the Oxford workload, rather than triggering a stress response, has instead desensitised me to the fear of academic failure. Exposure therapy, I suppose. It’s very freeing.

Home, and how to find it

It seems like life after university is a journey to find our way home, whatever that means.