Sunday 26th April 2026
Blog Page 1067

Georgetown University gives slave descendants admissions help

Tony Diver
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Georgetown University gives slave descendants admissions help

As part of a wider “working group on slavery, memory, and reconciliation”, Georgetown University in the United States has announced that it will give preferential treatment to applicants descended from slaves sold at the institution in 1838.

The university’s restitution programme, which is taking place after sustained pressure from student protesters, also includes the renaming of residence halls from the names of university officials involved in the slave sale to names of the slaves themselves.

A sit-in protest took place in November in the president’s office, in which protesters claimed Georgetown students were “not allowing stuff to just fly anymore”, according to Slate magazine.

The latest proposed part of the university’s scheme is to offer preferential access to the university’s high competitive admissions process to descendants of the 272 slaves sold to pay university debts in the early nineteenth century.

The descendants of slaves applying to the university will be given “the same consideration [the University] gives to members of the Georgetown community”, receiving “an extra look” and having their connection to the university included in the decision to accept or reject their application.

In a press conference on Thursday afternoon, Georgetown President John DeGioia acknowledged that “Georgetown participated in the institution of slavery. There were slaves here on the hilltop until emancipation in 1862”.

“We cannot do our best work if we refuse to take ownership of such a critical part of our history”, he added.

Students protesting against the university’s history of slavery used the hashtag #GU272 and #BuildOn272 to draw attention to the slaves that have become the focal point of their campaign.

Georgetown is just one university in the United States to face criticism over failure to acknowledge historic ties to slavery. Craig Steven Wilder, a history professor at MIT, pointed out that “before the American Revolution, there were nine colleges established in the British Colonies, and all of them have direct ties to slavery and slave trade”.

Action by educational institutions over their oppressive pasts under pressure from students is not unique to the United States, as the RMF campaigns in UCT and Oxford and the removal of Jesus College’s cock statue in Cambridge show.

Woody Allen’s Café Society: a satirical love letter to film

Ellie Siora
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Woody Allen’s Café Society: a satirical love letter to film

I am no Woody Allen fanatic. Of his recent works: I found Midnight in Paris trite, Blue Jasmine utterly unstimulating and Vicky Cristina Barcelona downright offensively sexist. His older works are somewhat more digestible and thought-provoking, although many are often still loaded with the same monotonous artistic tropes and questionable stereotype-lead plots. Allen’s most recent endeavour Café Society cannot be said to have escaped such criticisms. It is a film packed with the same overdone themes and derivative binaries. And it is a film unapologetically accessible as a point of reference to only a very slim and out-dated portion of society. However, for once, Allen’s suffocating conventionality has the scope to read as a satire, not only of itself but of the larger Hollywood ideal that has regurgitated such material for the last 80 years.

Harking back to the golden years of this Hollywood Ideal, Café Society is set in the 1930’s ‘glitz and glamour’ of the West Coast. Name-dropping of contemporary stars constantly flit around the dialogue and Allen’s writing is overt about the driver of this Hollywood machine. Money. The script is simultaneously self-conscious of the cliche that is the disillusionment with Hollywood glamour, yet nevertheless leaves the audience with that genuine impression. The delicious cherry-on-top of this negative presentation of the fiscally-focused film-industry is that it slowly dawns on you that, as an audience member, you have come to be in the cinema this evening to watch a relatively uninteresting and sometimes often performed narrative because of the directors name and, probably also, those he has cast. Allen’s film hammers home the pertinence of how the allure of the ‘big shots’ still has a hold over what we do with our lives – whether that be how the protagonist moves to the other side of the US to find the glamorous life, or whether is be as simple as  what film we choose to see one summer evening.

Although this is all metaesquly clever, what truly made the film even more extraordinary for me is the way this message is committed to in the cinematography and generally visual execution of the film. The angles and shots of the film are brilliantly resemblant to the visual trends of films from the ’40s. The use of two-shots as well as shots that generously play with the z-axis of the screen can be put side by side with stills taken from Citizen Kane, and would achieve stylistic coherence.  Equally, in jarring contrast to modern cinematographic tropes, centred close-up reaction shots (particularly during conversation having to do with love and romance) are beautiful visual re-creations from films such as a A Brief Encounter or Rebecca. Allen even imitates the mistakes of this period, peppering his film with blatant continuity glitches and awkward or cheesy cuts and transitions between shots. His attention to such visual detail is inspirational.

What makes the film most commendable though, and what truly gives it its substance is that Allen does not only imitate such films to reveal the decadence of Hollywood culture, he also gives this culture a humanity that common perception lacks. Although visually and narratively alluding to the dog-eat-dog world of Hollywood (both in its direct  representation of it and in its self-conscious representation of it as a representation of it).  The performance of the main characters on screen do something uncommon to films of this era and of film generally looking at the presentation of glamorous allure. We see the characters switch between the person they are as performers (at social gatherings, with business associates or even simply playing the character of the dutiful wife) and the person they are when no one is watching. Steve Carrell is both the big-shot Hollywood agent and an insecure, New York born fella. Jesse Eisenberg turns out to be the charming lover but also has an awkward gait as he walks away alone, balling his hands into fists. Kristen Stewart is dolled up as the fur-clad big-shots wife who tells charming stories about yacht parties, but underneath the big coat she is androgynous and wickedly smart. Allen’s direction shatters the allegorical nature of 40s films and, thus, crumbles the perception that the dark-side of fame is something detached from us, something that we can learn from. These modern actors giving authentic performances in this nostalgic setting proves once again that it is not a setting left in the past to be nostalgic about.

Café Society is out now in the UK.

Cambridge plans to reduce access targets rejected by Office for Fair Access

Katherine Pye
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Cambridge plans to reduce access targets rejected by Office for Fair Access

Cambridge student newspaper Varsity has reported that Cambridge University’s proposed reduction in access targets has been rejected by the Office for Fair Access (OFFA), citing internal documents.

Every year, to justify charging tuition fees, each university must make an individual ‘access agreement’ with OFFA, an independent regulator. The admissions objectives usually target areas with a lower POLAR, or ‘Participation Of Local Areas’ scores. POLAR maps and scores are attributed to areas using data based on the proportion of young people who enter higher education, which varies by geographical and socioeconomic area.

Cambridge University hoped to include in their 2016 agreement a reduction in targets for intake from areas with the lowest POLAR scores after data from the Cambridge Admissions Office suggested the previous target was unachievable. The draft proposal lowered the target from 13 per cent to 12.5 per cent.

However, Professor Graham Virgo, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education, told the University Council that “one comment indicated that the Director of OFFA had rejected the University’s POLAR target.” The director of OFFA, Professor Les Ebdon refused to comment on the state of the 2016 Cambridge agreement but did state, “I was clear that I wanted to see [universities] being ambitious with their targets, and I did not expect to see the ambition of their targets plateau.”

Cambridge student Ed Penn disagreed that the target reduction would necessarily have a damaging impact on students from poorer backgrounds. He commented online on Varsity’s article that “the reason the Cambridge Admissions Office wants to cut the POLAR target is because there simply aren’t enough students from such backgrounds achieving the right grades, not because they don’t want poor kids.”

Penn highlighted the need to focus “on the wider context of secondary education in the last 5 years – of teacher cuts, non-core subject provision slashed, and an increasing workload which leaves little time for Oxbridge support for those at the poorest-performing schools, rather than the standard ‘Cambridge is elitist’ clickbait.”

Oxford University has made progress towards targets that is agreed with OFFA in 2012-13, especially in terms of students from ACORN (socio-economically disadvantaged areas) and POLAR areas, but it has yet to meet them before the 2016 deadline. Students in Oxford from ACORN regions has risen 1.8 per cent 2013-2015, but is yet to reach its 2016 target of 9 per cent.

Similarly, Oxford set a target to raise the proportion of students from neighbourhoods with low POLAR scores to 13 per cent by 2016-17.  In 2015 entry these students made up 11.5 per cent of overall accepted UK students, up nearly 2 per cent from 2013.

The target to increase the proportion of UK students coming from schools with historically limited progression to Oxford to 25 per cent by 2016-17, has also risen in 2015 entry to 20.3 per cent of overall accepted UK students, falling short of the target proportion.

However, Bethany Currie, a member of OUSU’s 2016 sabbatical team strongly disagreed that lowering access targets should be a solution to failure to meet objectives. She told Cherwell, “We’re pleased to see the university making significant moves towards its 2016-17 targets, particularly in their targeted ACORN and POLAR quintiles. But these are not overly ambitious targets and we still have some way to go to meeting them. The central University is obliged to work towards and meet OFFA targets, but the colleges are not. There is a lot of great access work done in the colleges but it would be great to have more colleges on board working towards these targets.”

“It is important to remember that the 4 OFFA targets themselves don’t actually capture all the access targets the University should be working towards, and the SU is working with the University to introduce an access target for BME students.”

“Obviously if universities do fall short on targets, simply lowering the target is not in any way a viable solution. The way to fix a problem is not to pretend that it isn’t there. I understand fears that more ‘Oxbridge miss access targets’ headlines might put off prospective students from these backgrounds, but we have to be honest about the issues in our admissions systems before we can hope to fix them. Our targets should be aspirational and challenging. The biases in our admissions system are serious, and our response should be serious too. We are among the leading educational institutions in the world, we should be leading on issues like this as well.”

Oxford to have most state school students for decades

Daniel Sutton
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Oxford to have most state school students for decades

Oxford’s intake of freshers this October will have the biggest proportion of state-school students of any Oxford year group since comparable records began in 1990, and most likely in the last forty years.

The university has offered 59.2% of its places to pupils from state schools, up from 55.6% of places taken last year. The Independent Schools Councils estimates that about 93% of all pupils are educated in state schools.

Oxford has said that directly comparable admissions figures go back to 1990, and that the 2016 level of state school entries will be higher than any year since then. The figures will also exceed any figure from the 1980s, while House of Commons figures from before then consistently show the proportion of state school students below 50%.

This announcement comes in a year when both David Cameron and Theresa May have called for leading universities to promote greater social mobility.

Dr Samina Khan, head of undergraduate admissions at Oxford, commented that they took responsibilities of diversity “incredibly seriously”. Last year, Oxford colleges worked with 3,400 schools on around 3,000 “outreach” projects, and Dr Khan said the upturn in state school entries showed its efforts to increase applications from under-represented groups were “bearing fruit”.

Emma Woodcock, a second-year student at St Catherine’s, commented, “When I saw the news this morning, I have to say it raised a smile – it’s reassuring to see that progress is being made; that the image of Oxford as being exclusively for privately educated people is slowly being eroded and the issues surrounding admission are being tackled. This shouldn’t be the end point, but a sign that things are moving in the right direction and the message that people from all backgrounds are welcome at Oxford is spreading!”

Louis McEvoy, a second-year student at Christ Church, added, “This is rather wonderful news – a demonstration of the quality of the university’s outreach and access work, helping open up the opportunities Oxford provides to everyone. Considering the entrenched inequality in our society, there’s still a long way to go and other players in education & in government have to step up, but today there’s no doubt that Oxford is commendably striving for better in this manner, and getting results.”

 

OUWBC announce Ali Williams as new Chief Coach

Adam Hilsenrath
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OUWBC announce Ali Williams as new Chief Coach

The Oxford University Women’s Boat Club (OUWBC) have announced the departure of Chief Coach Christine Wilson and the subsequent appointment of Ali Williams, following a “competitive application process”.

Wilson joined the Oxford coaching staff in the summer of 2012, following defeat for the dark blues for the first time in five years, going on to lead Oxford to four consecutive victories. The last of these triumphs was by a margin of 24 lengths on the Thames.

Remarkably, Wilson coached Oxford’s women through the historic process of joining the men’s course for the first time in 2015, with this year’s event the first to host all four races (men’s and women’s blues and reserves) on the same course on the same day.

The outgoing coach has had a formidable career, extending long before her arrival in Oxford four years ago. Wilson’s extensive coaching experience includes her posts as assistant coach to the U.S. Women’s Olympic Team and head coach of the women’s rowing team at Yale and Cornell universities, which saw her impressively becoming the first woman to coach men at a major American university rowing programme.

Wilson leaves behind in her place Ali Williams, who had assisted Wilson in the ultimately triumphant 2016 Cancer Research UK Boat Races campaign. The Australian Williams’ own career is similarly impressive, having been Head Coach for Edmonton Rowing Club, the University of Alberta, and the Canadian Junior National Development Team. Prior to her coaching experience, Williams enjoyed a successful coxing career with the University of Sydney and a variety of teams in New South Wales. Perhaps her greatest achievement is competing in the Youth Olympics where she won a medal as the cox for the Australian women’s eight team.

“I am very excited and hugely honoured to be given the opportunity to lead this fantastic club for the 2017 Boat Race season” said Williams on her appointment, “I hope to build upon the great success that we’ve seen recently that has allowed a number of our athletes to go on and represent their country at under-23 World Championship level and the Olympic Games this summer alone.

“I’ve learned so much about the intricacies of this special race and, whilst I have a lot to learn, I’m looking forward to putting this into practice for the coming season.”

Williams’ credentials will be put to the test over the following season, culminating in the 72nd Women’s Boat Race in the afternoon of Sunday 2nd April 2017, alongside the 163rd Men’s Boat Race.

Keep off the Grass: Let’s have a ball

Ioana Burtea
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Keep off the Grass: Let’s have a ball

This is a preview article from 2016’s Keep off the Grass. The print magazine will be distributed for free to all freshers during Freshers’ Week this year.

One of the most exciting things about studying at Oxford is having the opportunity to attend the balls. The long gowns, the marquee tents in the centuries old university quads and the copious quantities of champagne create an air of romantic nostalgia. To help you navigate the world of dodgems, swing boats and silent discos, here is a guide to all things ball-related.

College Balls

When people talk about “Oxford Balls” they’re usually talking about College Balls. Most colleges hold one every year (although some smaller colleges team up for balls, such as the Somerville-Jesus Ball) and prices range from £60 to £200. The range in prices is accounted for by the different types of balls there are: the cheaper ones are black tie while the more expensive ones are white tie. The pricier end of the spectrum also includes Commemoration Balls. Held once every three years at a few of the older colleges, they’re the Oxford equivalent of Cambridge May balls. The larger budgets usually mean a bigger headline act (the Fratellis and the Wombats have both played Commemoration Balls), more food and a higher quality bar. DJs, live bands, circus acts, fireworks and even archery (or failed attempts at archery) provide entertainment into the early hours of the morning.

Although balls always have plenty of food stalls, you can opt for a gourmet three-course dinner before the ball by purchasing a dining ticket (around £50 more than a regular ball ticket). In my opinion, the extra cost is worth it: the food is always amazing and it makes the night one you’ll never forget. All balls have an open bar (and if you’re lucky, a vodka luge) so don’t worry about having to pay for any extra cocktails!

Balls take place all year round, starting this year with the white tie Merton Winter Ball in November until other Commemoration Balls in week 9 of Trinity. Tickets for balls sell out quickly. Make sure you and your friends buy them early so you can enjoy a night full of fireworks, photo booths and hopefully, not too many regrets.

Union Balls

The Oxford Union may be one of the foremost speech and debate societies in the world, but they still know how to throw a heck of a party. The Union throws a black tie ball in Hilary term for around £50. The cheaper price means an earlier closing time but an amazing night nevertheless. The (in)famous debate chamber is transformed into a stunning ballroom floor and oysters and macarons make frequent appearances. The Oxford Guild Society continues the trend of hosting both amazing speakers and great balls so look out for their annual masquerade ball.

Subject Society Balls (and a few others!)

A few subject societies host amazing balls at relatively affordable prices. MedSoc (the medicine students’ society) hosts an annual ball and there are rumours of a new Science Ball coming this year. The Law Society hosts some of the best balls in Oxford, with one ball every term. Tickets are less than £100 and include a three course dinner, transportation for the night and all of the trimmings of a ball. Venues have included the Gherkin and Blenheim Palace. You don’t need to be reading that subject to get tickets, but you do have to be a member and ballot for a spot in groups of up to 6 people. RAG also hosts a Charity Ball in Michaelmas while the LGBT Society hosts an annual Glitterball. Last year also featured Oxford’s first ever Diwali ball.

Organising a Ball

This year, I had the chance to work as Head of Design for my college Ball and I loved it. Organising balls is hard work, but the free tickets make up for it. Don’t worry about being a fresher – it’s a great chance to build up experience and although you have to sit through a lot of conversations about portaloos, it’s quite fun!

Working at a Ball

You can also work at balls in a variety of roles: everyone from bartenders to ushers or rubbish-collectors are needed. Jobs are usually advertised on the ball’s website or Facebook page so keep an eye out. You usually work one shift and can spend the rest of the night enjoying the ball. It’s a cheap way to have a fun night out and a great way to get into a sold-out ball.

Breaking in

I’ve heard enough urban myths about people trying to break into balls to make me write a section on it (one of the more creative attempts allegedly involving stealing a punt). Don’t do it. Don’t ever try to break in. As someone who worked to make the tickets and the wristbands for a ball, I can tell you that counterfeit tickets are not going to work and scrambling over walls in black tie is harder than it sounds. So unless your idea of a fun night is being chased by a security team, do everyone a favour and just buy the ticket instead.

On partiality in journalism

Alex Oscroft
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On partiality in journalism

The ‘mainstream media’ has come under a lot of fire in the last couple of years. From the Daily Mail to the Guardian to humble Cherwell you’re reading now, this fuzzy grouping has simultaneously been accused of leftist, rightist, unionist and generally untruthful leanings by dozens of different groups. “Journalists are meant to be independent!” cry those who believe “independent” means in complete agreement with them. Not only is this – amazingly – not the definition of independence, but it also fails to understand what it is a journalist does and why they do it.

Partiality is a central trait of journalism. Only those willing to upset people across the entire spectrum of politics are fulfilling their role. Holding those in power, and near to power, to account is what journalism is for and it remains a central part of democracy. It would be a betrayal to submit to those who would have it silenced.

Submit is exactly what the Scottish broadcaster STV did earlier this summer. In July its Digital Comment Editor Stephen Daisley stopped getting his articles published on their website, allegedly due to pressure from SNP ministers. John Nicolson, one of the accused MPs, then confirmed he had met STV executives and (“fleetingly”) discussed Daisley’s conduct on Twitter. STV deny this entirely, saying that his role has “evolved”, a bad euphemism for what is little more than censorship. But fundamentally, many believe that this can be boiled down to one fact: that Daisley was very anti-SNP.

Partisanship is not a particularly desirable trait in any journalist, nor is it a new one. Even if you ignore the fact that Daisley has spoken favourably of Nicola Sturgeon in the past, there are clearly better ways to deal with negative coverage than exercising the authority of the state. Every public figure in a non-totalitarian society has had to deal with a hostile press at some point. The line between interaction with the press and censorship is a hazy one at times, but in this instance it appears to have been stepped over with enthusiasm.

This isn’t the first time the SNP have levelled charges at the press, either. Alex Salmond was increasingly fond of accusing the BBC of bias and seemed to actively enjoy leading marches against them during the campaign for Scottish independence in 2014.

Anti-media practices aren’t limited to those in power. Those as far away from it as is humanly possible are still trying to clamp down on any opinion that strays from the party line. This has been seen in Donald Trump denying accreditation to the Washington Post for “inaccurate reporting” (i.e. printing what he said word for word) and in Len McCluskey appearing on the Andrew Marr Show to present an invented theory with no basis in fact, from a website – The Canary – whose funding model actively rewards clickbait, as a serious argument. Clearly, there has been a growing trend of attempting to delegitimise the press as an institution.

What all of these instances have in common is a reluctance to confront criticism head on, or to mount any serious defence of their own positions. It’s easy to say that those who expose uncomfortable truths have ulterior motives or political bias, but that doesn’t make their reporting any less valid. Rather, it reinforces the value of good journalism, as a market flooded with bad sycophants quickly shows up real quality and, indeed, ‘independence’.

Bluntly, journalists have no requirement to be independent, if independent is defined as remaining politically neutral. If anything, it’s better that they aren’t – obsessives are much more likely to persevere and dig out the stories that really need to be aired. It is when they take everything from their affiliated party as gospel that trust starts to break down and independence is undermined.

The media isn’t a monolithic bloc of singular opinion, and never has been. There are always voices calling both for and against anything and everything that happens in politics. So while some journalists clearly have their own leanings and opinions, there will be another dozen arguing the exact opposite. Engaging with this discourse is what keeps public discussion healthy and constructive. When someone tries to make it into a monolith – whether by leaning on broadcasters, or dismissing any criticism as a ‘smear’ and wilfully ignoring its content – is when the independence of the media needs to be protected.

The ability to hold our elected representatives to account is undermined by supporting those outlets that clearly aren’t interested in that. Whether it’s politicians or sycophantic media, attacking the ‘mainstream media’ shuts down any debate about actual policy and instead turns political discourse into an endless and pointless shouting match with no discernible outcome. When a group used to using such language comes to power, as Stephen Daisley learnt, the consequences can be sinister. The independence of journalists needs to be protected at all costs, and with that comes their right to be biased in any way they see fit.

Greater than Destitution

Christopher Smart
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Greater than Destitution

For those of you finding the monotony of the long vac too much, and those driven mad by the return to drab hometown life, there is a solution. Leave.

Just a short hop over the Channel will take you to an experience where you can almost forget the oppression of the rolling news in Brexit-crazed Britain. In Calais and throughout the entirety of the last 2 years displaced families, men, women and the unaccompanied have been living on a former asbestos dump, in a makeshift camp of donated tents and lean-to shelters. The Jungle is perhaps not the obvious silver lining to the clouded world of 2016. Yet my experience as a volunteer there was positive and inspiring. In the face of what had seemed an indifferent world, here were people who both cared and were doing something about it.

I had begun drafts of this article in early July just after I returned home from the camp and at that time the numbers I was quoting were between six and seven thousand. It is now mid-August and between eight and nine thousand people are estimated to be living in the camp. The scale of the problem is vast, and the squalor, the isolation and the humiliating dehumanisation of these people could never fully be understood through an article alone.

Neither the Red Cross, UNHCR, nor any major NGO has any interest or influence in Calais. Instead, several charities run by volunteers administer the camp with food aid, fuel and clothing as well as providing hygiene and other significant services to vulnerable groups. The volunteers at the charity I worked with were a huge mix of students, teachers, drop outs, pensioners, career breakers and weekenders taking time from their ordinary lives in Scunthorpe or Plymouth or Aberystwyth to do what they could. From across Europe every volunteer I met shared a basic commitment to helping ease the suffering of people who had already suffered enough.

The police presence and general public attitude toward our volunteer groups were far from welcoming. The Calais police force, which was in huge presence all around the town, was probably best described by its incredible inconsistencies. The shelters people set up were periodically bulldozed by the police, often with only 30 minutes notice. For aid workers, strict limitations on what could enter the camp might be imposed one day and then forgotten the next. In the same way a requirement for full ID checks in and out of the Jungle might be imposed very forcibly or not at all within the space of hours. The lack of coherent police strategy only served to heighten the sense of disorganisation and make-do which was already strongly in evidence. What’s more, the police seemed to have little interest in actually protecting the refugee camp from the far right groups which roamed the outskirts of Calais, often violently targeting refugees.

Some buildings were able to survive through these ordeals and provide some sense of community, such as the Eritrean Church. Once standing in the centre, its cluster now stands alone in an empty field of weeds and garbage with a rudimentary football pitch in the far corner. A few months prior, the French police all but demolished this southern section. Among these buildings were schoolrooms, a library and other means by which those in the camp could learn French or English with the help of volunteer tuition. Many refugees came to practice their English by chatting with the volunteers.

It is easy to reduce the thousands of humans in Calais to figures, policy, or ideology.  When speaking with people staying in Calais however, the scope of the problem became more apparent. From Syria to Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea, many were political refugees, and yet still more followed the pattern of war displacement. Photos on their smartphones charted their epic course across the world: family photos in a peaceful Iraq, a selfie at the border to Turkey, a panoramic shot of scores of people walking north through the Macedonian plains toward Serbia and Hungary, a group round a campfire in northern Italy, and finally the arrival in France. At this point their journeys were halted.

I was initially reluctant to write about Calais, not wishing to provoke discussion over the definition of a refugee and delve into the debate of deserving aid. It would not be true to say that every single person living in this camp is in absolute poverty. As many righteous Facebook warriors will probably point out, many refugees own camera phones, and in order to get to the UK could pay thousands of pounds to cross the Channel. This is, of course, on top of what was already paid to travel across the Mediterranean in overladen and too often fatal boats, leaving everything behind from their previous lives.

This by no means is a call for open borders; it is a call to help. Nine thousand people camping out on a patch of stinking sand just across our border is our problem too. Right now there is no obvious solution, and these humans aren’t going away.

Something to take away from Rio

Xavier Greenwood
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Something to take away from Rio

Sporting prowess aside, Rio 2016 was not a vintage Olympics. Cameras panned over myriads of empty seats; medallists were reduced to tears by the baying, partisan assemblage in the stands; white American swimmers entrenched their unimpeachable privilege. Ultimately, the biggest crime was awarding the Olympics in the first place to a country whose kleptocratic hegemony has dishoused and further disempowered those in abject poverty.

Brazil is a country ripe with disenfranchisement. Police officers are responsible for around one in five deaths in Rio de Janeiro, whilst police violence against favelas and marginalised areas (and notably young black men) peaked during the preparations for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. This is not even to touch upon the ongoing ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples – in particular the Guarani-Kaiowa tribe – in southern Brazil by exploiters of the Amazon rainforests.

Whilst in many ways Rio has set no example for humanitarian care, we can draw one major positive from the games: the first refugee team ever to compete at the Olympics. For these athletes, their chosen sport was also a mode of escape from what they left behind. It would be difficult to find a more consummate paradigm of sport as a source of refuge. Even before the games, South Sudanese 800m runner Biel recognised the sustenance which running had provided.

“There are two times in my life that I’ve cried,” Biel said. “When my mother left me and when I was chosen to go to be on the team (…) Some people, when you say the word ‘refugee,’ they think, ‘they are violent.’ We will show the world that as refugees, we can do anything that a human being can do.”

It is remarkable that Biel even needs to state the fact that refugees are humans. But as the world focussed on the Aquatics Stadium and the searing sidewalks of the Guanabara Bay, it would be easy to believe wrongly that sporting dedication is afforded to just a handful of refugees.

“Some people, when you say the word ‘refugee,’ they think, ‘they are violent.’ We will show the world that as refugees, we can do anything that a human being can do.”

Yiech Pur Biel

Take for instance Zaatari, a refugee camp in Jordan which contains over 80 000 Syrians, more than half of which are children. To mark World Refugee Day in 2015, UNHCR, UEFA and the Asian Football Development Project organised a football tournament which involved 40 girls’ and boys’ teams from the camp, and concluded in a match with the tournament winners and Jordan’s U15 national team.

On a day-to-day basis, coaches such as Abeer Rantisi, a star of the Jordanian women’s national team, organise training sessions within the camp. Abeer coaches Syrian girls and young women, many of whom have never played football before. Overall, more than 1000 children and young adults are in the Zaatari sports project, with about 100 being trained to coach at any one time. As Bassam Omar al Taleb, a Syrian refugee and football coach in the camp, tells CNN, sport is a step towards rehabilitating the displaced. “They have seen their family members killed before their eyes and the journey to Jordan is a difficult one,” he says. “Through football we at least try to remove the sense of fear and regain some sense of normalcy.”

This is a notion which UNHCR itself strongly advocates, under the belief that sports programmes can help alleviate psychosocial problems as well as health issues. For children in particular, sport provides a forum for development, most notably for refugee girls whose avenues for growth are in many ways limited by cultural restrictions. As highlighted by Dr. Jacques Rogge, former president of the IOC, “sport cannot cure all the world’s ills, but can contribute to meaningful solutions.” Sport plays a significant role in social integration, in the promotion of ideals of tolerance and non-violence, and in the normalisation of post-disaster life.

As further evidence for the gateways that sport can offer to refugees, we need only look as far as Chicago Bulls player Luol Deng, a former refugee from South Sudan who had to make a new life in England at the age of 9 without speaking a word of English. Deng says, “It was hard for me to communicate with people and it was hard for me to reach out – a different culture, a different language – it was just really hard to make friends. But one thing I noticed was that whenever we played football, people wanted to pick me to be on their team. And I noticed that I was closer to the guys when we were playing. It didn’t matter if I spoke the language or not, they wanted to win and so they would pick me. And when we won, we would celebrate together.”

The presence of the Refugee Olympics Team in Rio will have far-reaching consequences beyond its transforming effects on the athletes themselves. Role models are essential to the sporting motivation of children whose feelings of isolation and dislocation can only be counteracted – during a time of unthinkable stasis – by some kind of purpose. The hope is that the Refugee Olympic Team have set a target to which young refugees the world over can begin to aspire.

Review: Treasure Neverland – Real and Imaginary Pirates

Ben Ray
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Review: Treasure Neverland – Real and Imaginary Pirates

There are certain moments, when you’re buried deep in the Bodleian ploughing through an obscure tract of your reading list, when you come across stories or interesting snippets of knowledge that are much stranger than fiction. That odd sense of disbelief and fascination is what Neil Rennie seems to feed off – and ‘Treasure Neverland’ contains page after page of these astonishing jewels and revelations. Whilst the slightly garish strapline promising to track the ‘long dissolve from Captain Kidd to Johnny Depp’ suggests a sensationalist journey through popular piratical figures, Rennie’s text instead reveals extensive research and careful writing. The book balances delicately between the gulfs of dry academia and popular fiction, but always manages to maintain its objectivity.

Perhaps it’s the subject of pirates that fascinates and draws the reader on – even if not all of us have ever read Treasure Island, none of us can pretend not to have seen Pirates of the Caribbean or worn a pirate costume to school on some distant World Book Day. This means the book seems to resonate with our childhood and pulls the past into the present: vague, long-distant names like Blackbeard and Captain Avery are resurrected, drawn up from the dredges of half-remembered books, and expertly placed in historical and literary context. And you don’t need to turn to the extensive notes and index to realise the amount of research that has gone into this book – each chapter, though taking on the air of a story as each piratical anecdote unfolds, is crammed with footnotes and archival references. This is clearly one pirate adventure to be taken seriously.

The dull, sandy cover of this book belies the colour of its contents: at times it seems like Rennie is simply playing around with his subject matter, twisting and meshing various threads to reveal interesting viewpoints and comparisons. The chapter addressing women in literary piracy is entitled ‘Something for the Broad’; another chapter carries the enigmatic ‘Yo Ho Ho and a Cup of Bumbo’. This sense of lightness, verging on humour at points, means that the subject matter never becomes bogged down in the extensive archival research. This subtle touch also means that the twin subject matter of fictional piracy and its comparison to the brutal reality is cleverly woven together – each chapter draws out the similarities and differences between these two worlds in a style my weekly essays can only ever aspire to.

Intelligent, erudite and yet intensely readable and absorbing: Rennie’s work is indeed worth the quest to the OUP bookshop, in search for buried treasure.

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