Page 1010 – Cherwell

Weston Library and Blavatnik School shortlisted for RIBA Stirling Prize

News

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18th July 2016

Weston Library and Blavatnik School shortlisted for RIBA Stirling Prize

Two of Oxford’s newest landmarks, the Blavatnik School of Government (BSG) and the Weston Library, appeared amongst six buildings shortlisted this year for the Stirling Prize.

The prestigious prize is awarded annually by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) to the country’s best new building. The winner of the 2016 prize is to be announced on October 6.

Upon announcing the shortlist, the jury noted that it is “unprecedented” in the prize’s 21 years of existence for two buildings from one institution to be shortlisted at the same time.

The BSG and Weston Library were designed by architects Herzog & de Meuron and WilkinsonEyre respectively and have already both been awarded the 2016 RIBA National and South awards. Both buildings were officially opened by HRH Prince William in Trinity of this year.

They now stand against works including DRMM Architects’ London housing project Trafalgar Place and the City of Glasgow’s Riverside Campus college facilities. As is the case this year, buildings commissioned by academic institutions have regularly been represented among the six shortlisted architectural works.

Announcing RIBA’s choices, president Jane Duncan commented on this strong presence: “With the dominance of university and further education buildings on the shortlist, it is clear that quality architecture’s main patrons this year are from the education sector.”

However, the selection has not been received without criticism, with critic Rowan Moore writing in the Guardian that the BSG’s facade is “problematic, hermetic and excluding, a too-honest representation of the them-and-us culture in which the future world leaders – for now students at the Blavatnik – will probably operate.”

The BSG has also been targeted by activists for having been built in large part thanks to a donation by Russian-born American billionaire Leonard Blavatnik.

Alvin Ong, who recently graduated with a BfA from the Ruskin School of Art, told Cherwell he was “really impressed with Herzog & de Meuron’s work with Blavatnik.”

“It’s really evocative of the Radcliffe Camera and the interior spaces are really exciting,” he added. “In relation to the historic spaces in Oxford, Blavatnik superficially supports the idea that this ancient university isn’t a time capsule. Regarding funds, it’s a bit too late to start whining about where the funds came from isn’t it? I mean, say we don’t use Russian money, are these activists capable of securing alternative sponsors themselves?”

Oxford Physics Department named a ‘Champion’ of gender equality

News

Katherine Pye

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15th July 2016

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Oxford Physics Department named a ‘Champion’ of gender equality

Oxford University’s Physics department has joined 15 other British universities in gaining ‘Champion’ status under the Project Juno programme.

Project Juno is a system initiated by the Institute of Physics to recognise and reward actions to address the long-term issue of the under representation of women in physics at universities in the UK and Ireland.

Oxford has achieved the highest level awarded by the project, Champion status, along with 15 other physics departments in the UK. Oxford’s physics department has successfully progressed through the two previous levels; Juno Supporter and Juno practitioner.

Juno Champion status requires that the physics department must demonstrate the implementation of the five principles of Project Juno; appointment and selection, career promotion and progression, departmental culture, work allocation, and flexible working practices. The department must also put in place a framework to deliver equality of opportunity and reward.

Professor John Wheater, Head of the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford, expressed delight at the result. He said in a statement, ‘We are delighted to have been awarded Juno Champion status. We are determined to continue to build on the Juno principles and provide an environment of uniform opportunity for people to succeed as physicists.’

Rachel Dunne, a physics and philosophy student at Brasenose, highlighted that efforts to encourage female physicists are apparent even at first year undergraduate level. She told Cherwell, “I think that the Oxford physics department is good at retaining gender equality. It was encouraging last year that a fair few of my lecturers were women. Also, the ‘Women in Physics’ initiative is effective as it’s quite casual – you just meet up with a female mentor who also did physics here whenever you want to.”

“I think it did help my confidence to talk to another woman who had enjoyed and done well at physics here. The initiative could have come across as quite patronising, but it was pitched to us well in Michaelmas, especially as everyone doing physics was present and addressed during the introduction, not just the women.”

Hannah Christensen, a research fellow in Physics at Corpus Christi, also emphasised the role of a “thriving women in physics group in Oxford”. She told Cherwell, “they also invite senior female academics to talk about their careers to the group over tea and cake – it is very interesting to hear these personal accounts of careers in academia, and reassuring to hear how others navigate the somewhat difficult academic career path while, for example, also having a family.”

“I have had a very good experience in the physics department at Oxford. I have always felt there are very approachable senior female academics who I can go to to ask for advice and just as importantly, many approachable senior male academics as well.”

Album review: California – blink-182

Culture

Daniel Curtis

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15th July 2016

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It would be a betrayal to review blink-182’s California in light of Tom DeLonge leaving to be replaced by Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba, and his absence alone. Instead, it is much better to review California for the curious mixture of parts that it is – for its merits alone. If one thing has been settled for certain after DeLonge’s departure, it is that blink are still capable of commanding interest: California went straight to number one upon release last week – and DeLonge has been suspiciously silent in the meantime.

But in contrast to the last time this split happened, when Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker poured their souls into dark introspection and vitriol with short-lived band +44 in 2006, California is surprisingly upbeat, much more in the vein of their earlier releases than of their last two LPs or Dogs Eating Dogs. This is a refreshing change – a re-energised Blink still sound fun and bristling with charisma, as always due in no small part to Barker’s precise freneticism. While the songwriting here does sometimes fail to escape from the shadow of past hits (the chorus melody on ‘She’s Out of Her Mind’ falls far too close to that of ‘Rock Show’), it is at least refreshing to hear blink sounding markedly different to that to which we’re accustomed – even if in doing so they have retreated to the succour of their past.

But that in itself is no bad thing. If there is any overriding issue here, it is the production. Whereas the beloved and departed Jerry Finn left Blink’s breakthrough albums with a happy sheen, there was still enough of a hint of punk scuzz beneath the gleam to satisfy their skate punk roots. Not so here, where every song feels squarely angled for radio through the calculated lens of Josh Feldmann’s production – this doesn’t harm the band or the record, but for many this will be an unwelcome side-effect of blink’s emphasis on making themselves a force once more.

In reality, all they need to make them a force is the hooks they have on show during the 42 minutes of pacey punk where California proudly flexes its muscles and embraces its own racket. ‘Los Angeles’ in particular is massive, perhaps the biggest chorus they’ve released since their self-titled 2003 LP. Indeed, California is at is strongest when it parades its sheer size on tracks such as ‘No Future’, ‘Left Alone’ and ‘Rabbit Hole’. While it would be nice to have some more breaks in the adrenaline like the mournful halfway point of ‘Home is Such a Lonely Place’, the LP’s abundance of energy is endearing, especially after in the wake of the emotional beating that they have taken over the last year.

Unlike +44’s darkness, Hoppus’ songwriting deals with that loss of a friend far more obliquely than one would have thought, instead returning to classic Blink material such as gender relations and broken homes. However, it is unavoidable to pick on such themes still being present: ‘Cynical’ begins the album with the lyric, “There’s a cynical feeling saying I should give up / You said everything you’ll ever say / There’s a moment of panic when I hear the phone ring / Anxiety’s calling in my head / Is it back again? Are you back again?” while San Diego is perhaps the most obvious tear-jerker on the track list, evoking “abandoned houses with the lights on” and lamenting that they “can’t go back to San Diego”, where Hoppus and DeLonge first met. However, to the benefit of this new feel-good zip that the band channel, blink consider the darkness through a multi-coloured lens, and while the result isn’t as satisfying a ‘fuck you’ album as +44’s When Your Heart Stops Beating, it shouldn’t have to be: this is, despite all the odds, a resplendent return for blink-182.

On ‘She’s Out of Her Mind’, Hoppus and Skiba howl “We all need something to live for.” With California and Matt Skiba, blink-182 might just have found it.

Why Oxford University should hold on to Celtic languages

Opinion

Emily M. Dixon

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14th July 2016

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Why Oxford University should hold on to Celtic languages

I have had a beautiful image of Oxford University in my head since I was around seven years old. Being here, after more than a decade of dreaming and hoping and insisting to my parents that I was going to manage it, the town has lived up to the hype in a lot of ways. Being at this institution where you really feel like you can learn about every book, theory and fact that’s ever existed makes the world seem so much bigger.

But it’s starting to seem like the University I love is coming dangerously close to trying to shrink the world down again. It’s doing this by starting to trim the less profitable courses, and Celtic languages and literatures are the most recent casualty.

This year I’ve started a paper in Middle Welsh, which is a difficult, fascinating and under-studied language with a unique and brilliant body of literature that few people other than specialists have read. I’m aware that Middle Welsh is never going to be the biggest or most headline-worthy subject in Oxford, but it deserves better than to have the life slowly choked out of it before finally being axed without ceremony. The Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages has probably accepted its last undergraduate student to read Celtic (which has to be taken with another language such as German, French, or English) and the tutors are starting to vanish. The same is true for the Irish language, though I have less experience of that.

I’m a firm believer that people and communities can achieve a kind of afterlife when their stories and poetry are remembered and passed down. One of the most wonderful and beautiful parts of human culture is our capacity to keep stories going for hundreds or thousands of years. There are named writers from more than four thousand years ago whose words we can repeat verbatim today and whose ideas we can still interact with as if they were just published. When we cut off the modern world’s last ties with the language of an entire nation or community we really are ensuring that they die a last, final death; ideas can survive for centuries past the deaths of the people who thought them first, but nothing survives being forgotten.

I’m not trying to argue that the shutting down of this one department at this one university signals the immediate death of Celtic languages, obviously, but it’s part of a worrying trend. Welsh will live on at universities in Wales (and in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic at Cambridge), but the strange, haunting fairytale worlds of the Mabinogion deserve to be read more widely than that. In two years’ time, this course won’t exist anymore, and generations of Oxford students to come will be completely cut off from medieval Welsh and Irish literature, and it is some of the most powerful and beautiful writing I’ve ever seen.

These stories deserve to be internationally renowned works of classic literature, held up alongside Middle English and continental works, not just a curio of one country’s history. Seriously look it up – there’s a guy who will die if his feet aren’t being touched by a virgin and a cauldron that creates armies of zombies. King Arthur kills a giant while on a pig fitted with spears. Seriously.

Departments are being scrapped because they aren’t profitable, and that’s not something I want to believe about the Oxford I spent so long dreaming of. Middle Welsh is the tip of the iceberg – the option I tried to take in Middle Scots no longer exists, and the same goes for Irish, Czech and Slovak.

Conservative Britain and its insistence on turning universities into places of business rather than places of learning, creating an assembly line making identikit engineering graduates (and I have nothing against engineers, but other subjects matter too), is having a serious and dangerous impact on academia. Areas of study are having to justify their own existence in ways they’ve never had to before, and people with no interest in Middle Welsh can agree that an academic system run by accountants and politicians rather than students and academics is terrifying.

In their relentless pursuit of efficiency and profit, the current government and the university system they are creating is making the world smaller and smaller, cutting us off from our heritage, and breaking one of the oldest traditions of language learning in the world.

Leadsom’s Legacy: what could have been…

Opinion

Louis McEvoy

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13th July 2016

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It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Mr Carney peered around the corner of the decrepit office block, a vein throbbing against his receding hairline, his fingers tightly clasping a briefcase containing information that was officially undesirable. The coast was clear. Swallowing hard, knowing he probably only had one chance, he ran. He scurried out from under what had acted as his home for the past few weeks, dashing across the deserted roads, heart beating in time with his frantic footfalls. High up above him was a church-like corporate structure, emblazoned with the three official maxims of the post-Brexit UK government:

POVERTY IS PROSPERITY

EXPERTISE IS IGNORANCE

MUMMY IS MUMMY

He reached cover underneath the front of what remained of a newsagent from across the office block, hands shaking uncontrollably. Creeping through the rubble, he tried to control his breathing, but any hope at success was quickly dashed by the sound of low voices and boots crunching through the broken bits of pavement. Terrified, he tried to leap into the back of the store – but leapt instead right in front of a member of the Mummy Militia.

“Oh Christ.”

The officer raised his standard-issue SA80 up to the governor of the Bank of England’s face.

“You’re Mark Carney, aren’t you?”

“Erm, well…”

“What have you got in that briefcase?”

Carney heard a few more officers surround him from behind.

“P-papers,” he stammered. “Please, look – I…”

He twitched.

“I know you’re a good, decent man, just…trying to do his job,” he implored in a thin voice. “But – these papers have just got the facts, you understand? The truth about what is happening to our credit rating.”

The officer sniggered. The others grinned evilly around Carney.

“Heh. The facts? Who do you think you are – an expert?”

“Well…” mumbled Carney.

“This country has had enough of experts, Mr Carney.”

“Sir, please,” pleaded Carney. “Don’t you see what’s happening to Britain? Our economy is in tatters and…”

“Mummy banished pessimists!” barked the officer. “Pessimists aren’t allowed in our bright new British future. Mummy said they would be disciplined. That they would be fixed. And I think you’re a pessimist, Mr Carney.”

“No!” cried Carney helplessly. “No I’m not, I’m just, I’m just trying to help -”

“Enough,” said the officer flatly. His ugly thuggish face turned serious. “We’re going to take you to – the Glove of Compassion!”

“No. No. Please – no!”

While the Mummy Militia’s tank-like vehicle rumbled through the city streets, Carney heard the officers turn up the radio volume. The Mummy Song was beginning, and all the officers joined in enthusiastically. It was a sinister little ditty, sung to the tune of The Red Flag.

“Leadsom’s flag is a nice cool blue

She can be your Mummy – and your neighbour’s too.

Those journalists who lie and smear

about our leader – disappear!

So let’s rewire babies’ brains

While pessimists rot in chains

Family is the groundwork here…

(But you’ll be gone if you’re a queer).”

The nauseated Carney gazed up out of the window as they passed through the twenty feet tall metal gates of the Glove of Compassion. The speakers blared encouraging slogans through the air: “Build high for happiness!” “Don’t forget your two tablespoonsful of military respect for authority!” The building itself was literally shaped like a giant gloved hand; albeit, the clenched fist did not look particularly compassionate.

Once inside, Carney was quickly ordered to strip and wear the pyjama-like uniform expected of all the pupils at the Glove of Compassion. Fortunately – relatively speaking – Carney had arrived just before dinner was being served in the lunch hall. These were aspiration meals – even less on one’s tray than the outside world’s aspiration rations – each served with an unidentifiable viscous blue fluid in a paper cup, which was, according to the overhead speakers, “…a scrumptious cup of Anglo Saxon determination, to help the medicine of rehabilitation go down! Drink up, patriots!” It tasted like vomit.

Whilst munching away on “all-British nachos” that looked and tasted strangely like pencil sharpenings, Carney thought he saw none other than the loathed Europhile criminal George Osborne being escorted towards the Discipline Chamber. He would soon learn that you often heard tortured screams from the Discipline Chamber – and no one who ever went in there came to the lunch hall ever again.

After dinner, the pupils were marched by the armed officers to a relaxation room, where they had the pleasure of watching the beloved herself make television pronouncements. Leadsom had taken to doing this in a sort of vague emulation of Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats. Of course, these days Andrea Leadsom was rarely referred to as Andrea Leadsom. Instead, she was the country’s Mummy.

Everyone stood as the Prime Minister came on. She smiled kindly, her eyes glinting.

“Our report for today, patriots,” she duly trilled, “is another triumph for optimism. Britain today is indeed building high for happiness! First, one hundred wind farms were bulldozed today…”

Almost instantly, the congregation of pupils began excitedly whooping and cheering and applauding. A bemused Carney was rather more demure, until he caught the glare of a nearby officer. He obediently joined in the cries of delight.

“…The Spokesman – and that is indeed Spokesman, not Spokesperson, you know – of British Industry has today declared us to be the greatest economy on the planet!” she continued ardently. The cheers grew louder and louder. “Truly, Brexit has begun a beautiful new golden age of prosperity for England and Wales!”

“But before I go tonight, patriots, let me offer my Leadsom Lesson of the Day: I want to live in a Britain whose residents are determined to speak English. I want to live in a Britain where there is a shared belief in freedom and democracy, and equal rights for men and women. I want to live in a Britain with a sense of humour – where there are no groups whose life choices are ‘above’ criticism. This country has had enough of political correctness. Do you understand?”

“Yes Mummy!” roared the pupils, and Carney, mildly mortified, realised he had joined in.

“Now don’t forget to read your beautiful Bibles, burn those pesky burkas, and remember – Poverty is Prosperity, Expertise is Ignorance, Mummy is Mummy.”

While most of the other pupils stayed up to watch the BBC’s political editor Kay Burley offer a report on the on-going war with Russia, Carney went to his new room.

But just as one pessimist entered, another reborn optimist was leaving. As the Mummy Militia tank pulled out of the gates to the Glove of Compassion, George Osborne looked back up at that giant fist penetrating the polluted and dying sky above. He looked up – and smiled. Just like all the pupils at the Glove of Compassion eventually would. In the end, all of us will have to learn – learn to banish pessimism, learn to not listen to the experts, and build high for happiness.

George Osborne closed his eyes for a well-earned nap, and he began to murmur the Mummy Song.

He really did love his Mummy.

Cowley car washer faces prison after hoover hostility

News

Marianna Spring

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13th July 2016

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Cowley car washer faces prison after hoover hostility

An employee of a car wash in Cowley has been sentenced to 15 months in prison for fracturing a colleague’s jaw during an argument about a vacuum cleaner.

Hemin Poor, from Kurdistan, was unanimously convicted of a single count of inflicting grievous bodily harm on Alexander Abraham at UK Direct valeting, otherwise known as The Swan car wash.

During the trial, Oxford Crown Court heard how Poor punched Eritrea-native Abraham twice in the face and then pinned him to the floor after Abraham refused to hand over a vacuum cleaner.

Afterwards, Poor left the victim and continued about his work at the car wash on Towns Road.

Abraham, who eventually lost consciousness and endured “severe pain”, had to undergo surgery to have a metal plate and screws fixed to mend his broken jaw.

He told the court that the attack left him feeling “shocked” and unable to defend himself. The victim also alleged that when he tried to dial 999, Poor gestured to him and threatened to harm him further if he informed anyone of the ordeal.

The incident occurred on April 18 last year, after a customer had instructed Poor not to clean the interior of their car.

Poor, of Cottesmore Road in Oxford, claimed he acted in self-defence as Abraham was holding him in a headlock.

According to the Oxford Mail, he said, “No I didn’t hit him, I only used the palm of my hand to push his lip. I don’t know what happened after because I left quickly because he had the sharp head of the hoover in his hand.”

Books and Lit: What to read this summer

Culture

Katherine Mennis

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11th July 2016

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With that familiar conviction that life is beginning over again, the summer brings freedom to read whatever you please. If you’re struggling to choose or looking to branch out, Cherwell has you covered with five books for a summer never to be forgotten.

1. Falling Awake, Alice Oswald

Read Oswald’s latest collection in one breath, pick it up at dawn and dusk over the next few months, then visit the Royal Festival Hall on September 20 to see her win the Forward Prize for Best Collection (fingers crossed). Try waking on a summer morning by reading ‘Tithonus – 46 minutes in the life of the dawn’ from 4:17 till sunrise, and round off your day with ‘Evening Poem’ – for a contemplative and outdoorsy vac.

2. The Greengage Summer, Rumer Godden

“On and off, all that hot French August, we made ourselves ill from eating the greengages…” A coming-of-age novel for anyone dreaming of a lazy summer in the Champagne country, with a hint of discovery and Pink Panther intrigue. Best read over croissants dipped in black coffee. This ‘true, or partly true’ story will lend a gold-green atmosphere to your summer.

3. For Esmé – with Love and Squalor, J. D. Salinger

A collection of nine short stories containing such treasures as ‘A Perfect Day for Bananafish’ and ‘De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period’ – the stories are even more kooky and moreish than the titles. If you’re a brilliant but troubled young person, no one gets you quite like Salinger. The final story, ‘Teddy,’ will provide your necessary dose of Zen enlightenment, but its controversial ending will haunt you till October comes.

4. In Gratitude, Jenny Diski

I first met the teenage Diski through memories entitled ‘What was wrong with everything was people’ and ‘Why didn’t you just do what you’re told?’ in the London Review. A readerly relationship with Diski involves a lot of jealousy – of her way of keeping it real and seeing differently. And it involves wonder – at how she came through all this to the completion of this memoir soon before she died in April.

5. A Life (Une Vie), Guy de Maupassant

Maupassant’s first novel unfolds the passage of a woman’s life of dispossession and powerlessness with the passage of the seasons. It’s a poolside slow burner that made Henry James question what constitutes a ‘story’. A Life renews itself at its end, counteracting the banality of the closing remark, “You see, life’s never as good or as bad as we think.”

Film and TV: A summer preview

Culture

Ellie Siora

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10th July 2016

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The post-vac feeling is never quite describable. You spend eight weeks relishing in the anticipation for the moment you won’t have anything to do. With every essay you submit, lecture you run to or tute you blag with nearly no knowledge of the subject, you wait for the day you’ll have nothing to do at all. The day you’ll be half-hanging out the bed, refreshing the same Instagram feed that’s failed to provide anything of interest for the last five hours, with your mouth hanging half-open in indolence.

However, when that day comes it’s not quite what you expected. You’re suddenly itching because you have nothing to do, nowhere to be and no goal to run towards. You thought you’d escaped conforming to Oxford’s culture of productivity, but it got you right where you weren’t expecting it – in your own family home. What has happened to the languorous pleasure of bingeing through on the same two seasons of ‘The Office’ for the seventh time? Have you simply stopped enjoying wasting time for the sake of it?

First up, why not take a sloth-like scroll across the channels of Vimeo? Vimeo attracts more than 100 million unique visitors per month and more than 22 million registered users. It is a treasure trove of shorts, made with passionate and thought-provoking direction. Not to mention that it’s free. A good channel to start with that has a diverse range of worthy films is Independent Filmmakers by the Novelist Studio ( https://vimeo.com/channels/31259 ). Promoting short documentaries to thrillers of indie directors who deserve the recognition. A must-browse-through for the seasonally bored.

Or if you’re looking for a more committed way to waste your time, hunting through the internet’s web-series collection turns up some perceptive and funny series ready to provide hours of clicking ‘Watch Next Episode’. The best source for these would be www.webserieschannel.com . A personal favourite from this being Rugged Rock (http://www.webserieschannel.com/rugged-rock/ ) , particularly if you’re missing the days when you missed the Office. Rugged Rock is a Mockumentary UK web series about a group of actors working for a touring Theatre Company. It’s sweet, comical and tasteful – and a testament in itself of how the un-extraordinary and what is seemingly time-wasting has its own important impact in its sphere of influence.

If you’re looking to actually leave the hovel of your room for some reason – there are glorious ways to waste time in the world outside as well. Cinema screenings may remind you of your thirteen year old days when summer boredom led you to finding your thrills in deciding which colour Tango Ice Blast you would buy. However, the culture of cinema screening is changing – and an idle amble to the cinema is actually pretty thrilling. For you southerners The Nomad Cinema is one to keep an eye on ( http://www.whereisthenomad.com/ ). Fitting its venues to the theme of its films the location is just as much of an event as the screening itself. What would be more apt than to screen Hitchcock’s chilling The Birds at Brompton Cemetery? Running screenings till the 24^th September, catching one of these films is definitely a must.

On considering what there actually is to see this summer, I’d say Chazelle’s La-La-Land, starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling and due to come out this summer is one to look out for. For me, it’s the perfect balance between easy-watching and quality. Following a cliché story of a jazz pianist falling in love with an aspiring actress in Los Angeles in the showy parcel of a movie musical – you could liken it to Mamma Mia, and didn’t that put you in the summer mood back in 2008? However, the film is potentially cinematically worthwhile as well. Following semantically in the footsteps of Chazelle’s previous film Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, which was widely acclaimed as successful, there is great possibility in its successor.

Finally, if time-wasting has really been beaten out of you and you can’t accept you do it – there’s a loophole. You can get involved in that medium that ate up so many of your hours over the years. Oxford Student based project WMAF (We’re Making A Film) are voyaging on a six-film summer project that you can be productive towards. This project was set up to make a space for people to play with film and learn things from slightly older and more experienced peers from across the country. People can get involved in many ways; signing up to audition involves submitting a bio and headshot to be added to the actor pool (this is a document of actors who are keen on WMAF and is less intimidating for new directors to approach when casting than the wide world). Alternately, you can email [email protected] to get involved in any capacity you fancy. Finally you can submit blog posts or screenplays, where the former would be published and the latter hopefully made. And if you’re looking to be less active but equally passionate – a small donation to the crowd funding page of the project would be your done-something-today box ticked.

It is unsurprising that, after experiencing the pace of an eight-week term, your method of time wasting may have simply changed. Oxford is a city that’s unabashedly unusual, due to its unique aesthetic, varied history and us weirdos that inhabit it. But I assure you that your desire to be unproductive need not. The long, hazy days of your 2016 summer lie ahead ready for you to relive the glory of teenage time-wasting – and so there are a few suggestions to fill these days as such whilst still tickling your expanding unconventional tastes.

Commemoration Balls

Lifestyle

Richard Birch

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10th July 2016

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White tie balls are one of Oxbridge’s great anachronisms. Upon a cursory search as to what the dress code entails, I realised it was ‘The Western World’s most formal form of dress’ and that it was apparently only used in Royal events, and in Oxbridge commemoration balls. Which explains then, why it seems so utterly bizarre to see men in tails, with top hats and silk scarves, zooming down helter skelters like the aristocracy attempting to regress into a state of infantile delayed adulthood.

This state is further exemplified by the food and drink typically on offer – taking the American all-you-can-eat mentality to food, drink and so on. It is an opportunity for all guests to glut themselves until at 5:40 a.m., exhausted and wondering whether the evening’s festivities were worth their current state of tiredness and feeling slightly queasy, where they stand in the main quad and wait for a photographer to take a photo from on high (‘oh but I do look dreadful, must have the worst bags under my eyes’, they all think inwardly).

All things on which one gluts, of course, are of the absolute highest quality – genuine, not imitation, champagne greeted my own arrival at one such ball. Canapes, prawn skewers still sizzling hot in the early summer evening; paraded through in endless trains of excess back and forth from the kitchens; gin bars, cocktail mixers, and my personal favourite, an old Oxford punt filled with iced water and a veritable ocean of bottled Peronis.

The entertainment was likewise of a uniformly high quality, featuring the pop-rock of Circa Waves (who seemed slightly bemused at the whole proceedings, saying, ‘Oxford… (waiting for a cheer) Cambridge… (waiting for a sneer) now I’m out… out of banter.’) familiar Oxford acts and even the college’s own band. A light show came on at midnight, projecting on to the walls of the college’s main quad; a quite remarkable show, all in all.

As the night wore on, people became progressively sweatier, the suits and elaborate extravagant elegant dresses frayed at the hems, muddied round the ankles, graying with ash marks from the endless train of cigarettes that sent plumes of smoke upward providing a contrast against the darkening sky; which in turn could be seen to rise sink downward upon the gaudily lit battlements of the college. Indeed, it must be admitted that there can be no more beautiful setting for such an event as an Oxford college – steeped in history and in the lineage of people who’ve trod the same steps you tread through those illustrious halls, these parties feel both distinctly modern in their entertainment; but also their anachronisms allow you, for one night, to tap into something older than yourself.

‘Oxford Eye’ proposed addition to Oxford skyline

News

Daniel Kodsi

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9th July 2016

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‘Oxford Eye’ proposed addition to Oxford skyline

The ‘city of dreaming spires’ might soon become the ‘city of dreaming spires and giant ferris wheels’, if proposals for an ‘Oxford Eye’ come to fruition.

The wheel was proposed by the Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), who have put forth a £44.5 million plan to increase tourism to Oxford, the full details of which will be revealed on Monday at Blenheim Palace.

LEP chief Nigel Tipple told the Oxford Mail, “The programme we are pulling together looks at how a range of investments across culture and tourism can add value to the economy and also create a sense of place for people who live and work here.”

The wheel, which would be “similar” to the London Eye, is intended to boost tourism and offer “a different view of the city and its surroundings”. More than half of respondents to a vote conducted by the Oxford Mail yesterday said they believed the Oxford Eye to be a good idea, which one Balliol second year told Cherwell “was yet another indication that the public is not to be trusted.”

There is still some hope, however, for Oxford residents. “I am not sure it would be feasible or what it would add to the city,” city council leader Bob Price said.

UrbanObserver

Oxford's oldest independent student newspaper, est. 1920