In 1995, just here, on Broad street, is when I first started – we’re talking almost 21 years. Before that I was working in a French bakery, making cakes, bread, and stuff like that – for three years, in Oxfordshire. I live outside the city, about 20 miles away from Oxford.

The students, well you know, when they are drunk they are sensible; you know what it’s like, when someone is drunk. Sure, funny things happen, but nothing too crazy. Sometimes kids forget themselves, they pay me for their food and they go, without taking any change, no food, and I have to run after them! Nothing special to be honest, not like something bad, just student life!

My favourite item on the menu? Well, I love my chicken wrap, with cheese and chips, chilli sauce and garlic mayonnaise. That’s my favourite – just a little bit of chicken and just a little bit of chips and I’m done for the whole night. Sometimes, depends how hungry I am, I go for a double burger with cheese and chips, sometimes mixed kebab with some onions, tomatoes, grilled, with some hot sauce and mayonnaise.

The most ordered item has got to be chips and cheese, and then chips and cheese and meat – chicken or lamb. Nowadays we do chicken strips and those are good as well, because the chicken strips I’m doing now are really tasty. Everybody loves it; sometimes, when I don’t have any chicken kebab left, people ask me for chicken and I off er to put chicken strips instead, and once they start the chicken strips they’ll keep coming back for it. Once they try the chicken strips in the wrap, they always want more! I also love the charcoal chicken, fresh, marinated, and the spices that I add to the chicken are mine. I brought them from home; you can see them over there [in the corner]. They’re Mediterranean spices; I’m from Morocco, up north there. I still have family there, my mum, brothers, and friends.

Because I work such long hours during the day I’m like a plant – I have to wake up at one o’clock, no matter what, otherwise I won’t be here in time. I need to do the shopping and preparing and so on, grate the cheese, prepare the onions. So I need to wake up at one, and if I spend an extra half hour in bed I’d lose half an hour of work here!

I bring the van back home at the end of the night, and park it there. I work mostly when the students are here, from 0th week to 9th week. Around Christmas time Broad Street here is almost completely deserted, so I spend that time with family and relax. But in the summer we have visiting students on summer courses, so I still work then. Easter time, some students stay here to prepare for exams – you know, they have finals in third term and they keep us a bit busy. But I’m very busy; I don’t have time to read or anything and when I get home, I’ll have a shower and maybe just have some fruit to eat, watch a bit of TV and then, boom, I go to sleep.

Yes: Dr Michael Weeks

On 23^rd October 2014 the NHS England Chief Executive, Simon Stevens, launched the NHS’s ‘Five Year Forward View’, a plan which consisted of a forecast of future pressures and the proposed solutions set out to alleviate them. I am arguing that these steps are the correct priorities to save the NHS.

First of all I shall discuss the aim: ‘to save the NHS’. For me this is ensuring a system where both quality and performance in constantly improving, be it access to new equipment and drugs or shortening NHS and GP waiting lines. Behind the scenes, however, there are other standards; such as keeping the country’s bacterial resistance to antibiotics low and keeping the next generation of doctors fully prepared for the challenges they may face when fully trained.

The lefties out there don’t seem to understand the rocky economic situation the world has found itself in recently, and wish to break austerity by throwing money at every problem before thinking of an optimal solution. This was Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband’s entire health policy – one of their great failures, of course, being Labour’s failed IT system, which ramped up  unnecessary costs of £9.8 billion. That’s thirty times the price of building a new hospital, in specification and detail, as the blueprints laid down for the new Royal Liverpool Hospital.   

The NHS ‘forward view’ represents the well thought out Conservative, and Lib Dem, organised analysis of current and future problems. It identified the most important stressors on the delicate NHS and set out nationwide tactics to challenge them.

The number of people over the age of 80 is set to double to 6.2 million over the next 25 years. The elderly are more likely to have multiple organ disease, requiring longer stays in hospital, more medication, more rehabilitation and more social care in the community. Under-delivery at any stage of this process leads to a backing up of patients where the hospitals beds are all full, A&E becomes backlogged and elective admissions become cancelled, all resulting in an overall failure of the system. A constipated NHS is a useless NHS.

Now to relieve this horrid constipation, treatment is often an enema at the back end, such as: high capacity home care packages; hospital at home; district nurses as well as dedicated discharge lounges where if a patient is not acutely unwell they are not in the hospital taking up a bed and catching pneumonias. We need a healthy gut in the form of high quality hospital wards with specialist physicians dedicated to managing the diseases of the elderly. We need a picky mouth where GP’s and A&E services only accept patients who are indeed sick. We need rapid diagnostics to exclude the sick from the worried well. Proposed arrangements for such improvements are the bread and butter of the ‘forward view.’

The second great wave of patients, previously rarities – exceptions to the rule – are the obese and overweight. It is an epidemic that is sweeping our country partially due to the availability of cheap high calorie meals well beyond what is necessary and the increased sedation provided by our electronic lifestyles. A mind-boggling 61% of adults in the UK are overweight or obese. Diabetes, heart disease, liver failure, depression, arthritis and pressure sores are a few of the many diseases this overindulgence has added to the burden of the NHS. We must pay for supersize hospital beds, toilets, operating tables and even mini cranes (we nicely call hoists in the industry). Again, these patients take longer to recover: putting more pressure on bed availability and increasing the need for carers at home. Obesity, along with other avoidable burdens such as tobacco and alcohol abuse, have been targeted as a priority in the NHS ‘forward view.’ One measure is to develop workplace incentives for employers to promote better employee health; another is the introduction of a nationwide sugar tax to reduce the affordability of a highly refined sugar diet and to raise money to be ring-fenced for bariatric services.

This plan represents an age of change, no longer can money be spent on all fronts simultaneously, and there just isn’t the cash. Instead, careful identification of the choke points in the system and optimising them maximally to keep the patient throughput high. A little money can go far if well-spent. The second great change is increased responsibility; the NHS cannot afford to pay for everything for everyone with the self-infliction of avoidable diseases. So, if users need to contribute, it seems fairest that avoidable disease bearers are the first to be raided for cash. We can keep our liberties and eat doughnuts till we burst, but those doughnut-buyers have to pay, like cigarette users, into our NHS kitty to contribute to the expensive treatment they will require 10-15 years down the line. Every right we are so lucky to have in the West should come with responsibility to prevent abuse. If this line of thinking can catch on and become implemented by the government then, and only then, will we have a fighting chance to save the NHS.

No: Marco Fullon Narajos

It sounds logical, doesn’t it? Increasing the public health focus on primary care and social care, the ‘Five Year Forward View’ (5YFV) promotes prevention over cure, moves funding from acute to community services, and closes down smaller district general hospitals that are not equipped to handle complex acute cases. The rationale is this: everyone is getting older, but not necessarily living a better quality of life and many (if not most) of today’s health issues are so-called ‘of our own making’. In its foreword, 5YFV guilt trips us, ‘One in five adults still smoke. A third of us drink too much alcohol. Just under two thirds of us are overweight or obese.’ But it’s fine because the 5YFV will offer more preventative services.

It would be easy if people and health behaved like that. The social model of health proposes the simple and hardly revolutionary idea that people’s health is determined primarily by societal factors. It asks why people smoke, misuse drugs, drink alcohol excessively, eat unhealthily, undertake risky sexual behaviour, and do not get enough exercise. Is it because people are lazy, impulsive, and hedonistic, or is it that higher unemployment, poor education, poverty, crime, and lack of evidence-based, good parenting practices promote unhealthy behaviour? I would love to say that I came up with this myself, but I didn’t. It’s not contrived; it’s evidence-based. 

‘Mental health’ may have been the buzzword of 2015, but the tenets of public mental health strategy remain true in 2016 and will remain so at least for the next five years. The idea is that if we placed a focus on good mental health, then the underlying causes of risk behaviours (smoking, excessive alcohol, lack of exercise and a poor diet) will resolve over time. The problem is that people are impatient and want solutions that give rise to finished products now. But cardiovascular disease wasn’t built in a day.

So how do we shift the focus to improving public mental health? There are some evidence-based strategies that the Royal College of Psychiatrists have published, but these are not discussed in 5YFV, as these strategies aren’t seen as having a health agenda, rather, a social one. Besides, the current government would be quick to reject many of these ‘social strategies’ – faster than you can say ‘false dichotomy’. 

Let’s take alcohol, for instance. 5YFV states that the NHS will actively support ‘comprehensive, hard-hitting and broad-based national action’. But what does this mean? The Royal College of Psychiatrists have spoken out about minimum unit pricing as an evidence-based method to reduce alcohol consumption back in 2012. The rationale behind this is that it would be cheaper to buy booze with lower alcohol content, so it doesn’t disadvantage those who are already poor. The government initially agreed but then took a U-turn and instead pushed to have a ban on alcohol sold below a certain price (below-cost selling); this would have the complete opposite effect, instead pushing alcoholics to fork out more for the cheapest drinks, which often has higher alcohol levels.

And let’s not forget why some people drink alcohol in the first place. Women are nearly twice as likely to be diagnosed with major depression than men are; yet men are far more likely to be dependent on alcohol and substances of abuse. Is that because women are more likely to get depressed or are men more likely to turn to alcohol and drugs to self-medicate emotional struggles? This is why there needs to be greater mental health awareness in the public alongside increasing funding of psychological therapies like CBT. More men and women aged 20 to 34 die of suicide than of cancer, and yet the NHS promises all patients two weeks to see a cancer specialist in a hospital if the GP suspects cancer, but the NHS only promises that three-quarters of patients will receive psychological therapy in six weeks if you get referred to the new Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme. I heard that English people love queuing, but I doubt they’d want to queue for that long!

Don’t get me wrong, 5YFV is not a bad thing; it is wonderful that this document exists to formalise a strategy that will sustain the NHS. But it’s neither revolutionary nor brand new, and it won’t save the NHS. The principles underlying 5YFV have been around for decades and instead of repeating the same old chat, the NHS needs to make demands for more money, and rebalance the funding towards mental health services. It needs to advocate for change in public sectors that do not immediately seem related to health like better education in schools (did you know that the higher your educational attainment is, the lower your risk of dementia?), funding for parenting programmes, and research and development. Try that one on your GP the next time they ask you to come back in two weeks if you’re not feeling any better.

Picture a meeting in the office of the Vice-Chancellor and you might expect oak panels, an array of decanters, colonial memorabilia and a smattering of armchairs. If you do, you’ll be disappointed – I’m greeted by Louise Richardson in a spacious but stringently utilitarian office in the distinctly pedestrian confines of Wellington Square. Richardson jokes that the biggest surprise in coming to Oxford was how ugly this building is. “How did anybody ever knock down a square and put up this monstrosity? It really surprises me that anyone could have put up this building and chosen to have their offices in it,” she tells me.

Richardson clearly has opinions, and is unafraid to state them boldly. An expert on international terrorism, she does not mince words in explaining her opposition to the Prevent strategy, with which the University will have to be compliant in August. “I understand the intentions of the government but I think this legislation is unwise,” she says. “I’m worried that a particular group of students – Muslim students – might feel like they’re suspect and I really worry about the threat to free speech.”

She doesn’t hesitate to criticise OUSU’s response to Prevent. “I’ll be honest, I think it’s a shame that the students have decided not to engage on this. OUSU has a policy of not engaging with this…Personally, I would prefer to see us work together to express our shared reservations about the legislation.”

She continues, “Within the confines of the law I think universities are the best place to hear objectionable speech – radical speech if you like – because it can be countered openly. I think that’s what a university’s about. I think it’s an unfortunate piece of legislation; we will of course have to comply with it, and we’ll do so, but I’d much prefer we didn’t have to.”

The Vice-Chancellor has a clear and uncompromising level of faith in that most hotly contested of topics, free speech. In her installation speech earlier this month, she raised eyebrows when she stressed that “an Oxford education is not meant to be a comfortable experience.” In an interview with The Telegraph shortly afterwards, she described her preferred approach to free speech as “quite the opposite of the tendency towards safe spaces.” I ask her how she understands the term ‘safe space’. “My understanding of the term as it has evolved in American campuses is as a space where people do not have to confront ideas they find disturbing or upsetting and that’s what I think is inconsistent with university life.”

I press her further: should there be no safe spaces anywhere in a university? “My approach to life is not to issue blanket prohibitions. I would say that I do not think that safe spaces are compatible with university life,” she replies. 

What would she say to students who feel they occasionally need an escape from “ideas they find disturbing” so that they can confront difficult opinions when they need to? Richardson responds quickly, “Isn’t that what your private life is about, that you have your friends, that you create a social group around you of people with whom you feel comfortable? Why would that need to be an institutional space?”

I am struck by how forthcoming she is with her views, and turn to the more sensitive issue of her salary. In her former position as Vice-Chancellor of St. Andrew’s, her total remuneration package exceeded £250,000 in the academic year 2014-15. Her predecessor at Oxford, Andrew Hamilton, drew criticism for his £442,000 salary, £100,000 higher than that of the Cambridge Vice-Chancellor. Is the Oxford Vice-Chancellor paid too highly? “I didn’t take a pay rise for five years and the money [a £30,000 bonus] went straight back to student support and libraries. 

“We operate in a global marketplace, and the salaries of British Vice-Chancellors are lower than in many competitor countries. If we want to attract people we will have to pay salaries that will not be completely out of sync with those in the marketplace that we’re trying to attract. But I would say that I’ve met a lot of Vice-Chancellors in my day and there’s not one who is motivated in their job because of their salary.”

She adds, “In these questions it all depends what you compare them to. If you compare a Vice-Chancellor to a cleaner, it seems like an extraordinary discrepancy; if you compare a Vice-Chancellor to a football player or a banker it seems much less. Salaries should reflect societal values, and I believe there’s nothing more valuable than education.”

We move on to discuss the cost of a degree. Andrew Hamilton made headlines a few years ago in suggesting that there be more of a debate about tuition fees, given an Oxford education costs £16,000 to deliver, a figure far in excess of the £9,000 most students pay in tuition fees. The Vice-Chancellor is non-committal. “The money for education has to come from somewhere; the question is where it comes from, because universities are unsustainable if we can’t cover the cost of education. 

“I have said and continue to believe that the benefits of education are shared both by society and by the individual. This is true financially, because people often earn higher salaries with a university education and the Exchequer gets higher taxes as a consequence, but also in all the intangible ways. 

“With a university education, you can enjoy many intangible aspects of life that you wouldn’t otherwise, and I think the civic life of a country benefits from having a highly educated population. It seems to me that the benefits are shared by both the individual and the state so it’s reasonable that the cost should be shared. 

“As a society, we can have debates about what the proportion should be, whether there should be a link between somebody’s income and how much they pay, this is how we as a society should decide about fairness.”

‘The money has to come from somewhere’ becomes something of a recurring theme. When asked whether she thinks the University should divest from fossil fuels, taking a lead from other universities including Stanford and Glasgow, she says, “It’s a very difficult issue and it sounds as if there was a very serious discussion about it last year – I followed it from afar. 

“The point of the investments is to generate revenue for scholarships and so on, and it’s a matter of to what extent you want to constrain the hands of the investors. As an undergraduate, I was heavily involved in the anti-apartheid movement and the move to divest from South African produce. These are all balances you have to draw, fine lines you have to draw. I don’t think fossil fuels are quite the same as apartheid South Africa. 

“It seems to me that the University came to a very reasonable conclusion last year. That said, there’s so much we can do for green energy. I worry that future generations will look back on us as morally culpable for the way we wasted resources when the information about climate change was readily available, so I think there’s a whole lot more we can do and I think will be doing to promote green energy.”

One thing Richardson is clearly not prepared to compromise on is teaching. In the Chancellor’s controversial address at her installation, he warned that the prized but expensive tutorial system might “come under more fierce scrutiny in the future”. The Vice-Chancellor appears unperturbed. “We have centuries of graduates who will attest to the values of the tutorial system and I’ve been very struck by recent literature in the US on education and the best types of education. 

“They’re discovering that in fact the secret to good education is personalised teaching, so they’re trying to introduce a much more focused and personalised method of teaching in a number of charter schools and innovative schools across the US.

“That’s precisely what the tutorial system is, and it’s part of the Oxford experience. It’s something that across the University you’ll find real commitment to. 

“Of course, when it comes to teaching certain science courses where you have to spend time in the lab we’ll have to adapt, but the locus of tutorial teaching in the colleges is something I think is really cherished across the University.”

One element of Oxford Richardson is a little more concerned about is its fragmented administrative structure. Moving from a university of 8,000 students to one with over 20,000 and a huge amount of devolved power across 44 colleges and Permanent Private Halls presents a unique set of challenges. Richardson worries about a potential lack of unity. “I met a very famous alumnus of Oxford a couple of days ago. I introduced myself and said, ‘I see you’re an alumnus; I’m the new Vice-Chancellor’. And he said, ‘Oh gosh, I see myself as a graduate of (and he named the college) – I’ve never thought of myself as an alumnus of Oxford’. 

“I thought ‘how strange’ – that’s really different from other universities. So I think we would all benefit just by being drawn together”. 

20 years ago today, President Jacques Chirac announced a definitive end to France’s nuclear weapons testing in French Polynesia, arguably bowing to immense pressure at home and internationally. Up to that point there had been in total 175 or more explosions carried out over a twenty-year period.

The year before, France had seen major protests against its actions, with criticism coming not least from the Government of New Zealand, which sought a nuclear-free South Pacific, but also in the form of widespread boycotts of French wine and other produce.

At a time today when Sweden is taking increasingly bold opposition to human rights abuses of Saudi Arabia all on its own, perhaps with greater ambition and resolve than major countries such as the UK, US and indeed France, changes can be brought about there too, even if not straight away.

The tests also naturally raised major issues for the environment, and questions about the treatment of colonies. To use a colony for nuclear weapons testing precisely because any damage and risks are far removed from the colonising country itself appears to be the exact sort of abuse and disregard for colonised populations that the Rhodes Must Fall campaign speaks of now. While the islands used were uninhabited, the atoll is now at risk of collapse and unusual weather patterns did affect New Zealand, eastern Australia and the Polynesian islands in the years following tests.

How best to protect ourselves in a turbulent world is certainly not an easy question, especially when we arrange for the costs to fall on others rather than ourselves.

A theme persisted across various magazine covers in the Paris news stands as the year began: ‘Has France changed?’. Christophe Barbier wrote in L’Express that “There is, today, a profound malaise in the Republic.” This January, I was lured back to Paris to catch up with friends made on my year abroad and feast on galettes des rois pas- tries piled high in bakery windows, my visit coinciding with the anniversary of the attack on the Charie Hebdo offi ces last January.

I spoke to colleagues and business owners in areas near where attacks took place about “Old couples stood arm in arm, hands raised in defiance” whether they felt Paris had changed since the attacks last year. Responses varied considerably.

Walking along the canal, which in warm weather is packed with young Parisians eating, drinking and smoking, it was hard to attribute the eerie silence merely to the cold. The canal is particularly unprepossessing at the moment, having just been emptied of water for the next four months while it is cleaned, something they do every 10 to 15 years. Ghostly bicycles and other assorted objects could be seen half-submerged in the greenish sludge.

Typically, the ever-gentrifying 10th and 11th arrondissements through which the canal runs are a favourite haunt for hipsters with its bistrots, brunch spots and bars, as well as attracting tourists eager to see where Amélie skimmed her stones in the 2001 film. I asked Bruno, a waiter at canal-side bar Chez Prune, a stone’s throw from Le Petit Cambodge, where 15 people were killed in November, if their business had suff ered since the attacks.

“No, we didn’t really suffer. We are lucky here, in between the canal and Place de la République, we always pick up tourists so we weren’t much aff ected, we didn’t need to close. I know a lot of restaurants in this area haven’t been as lucky”.

When asked if he felt the nightlife around the canal had changed, he replied, “For around two weeks, it was quiet. People were scared, they stayed indoors. Then suddenly it was as if everyone agreed they had had enough. Everyone descended on the bars, restaurants, and shops. At the beginning of December you’d have thought it was Christmas Eve, you couldn’t move it was so busy.”

While we were talking, a regular customer walked in to Chez Prune, greeted Bruno warmly and told us that someone had just been shot by police in the 18th arrondissement, after running towards the police station holding a butcher knife and wearing what looked like a suicide belt.

The pair joked about it, the situation having been neutralised. Nobody panicked. I saw from my phone that a few friends had also heard about the shooting on the news and wanted to check it wasn’t near where I was. “All fine,” I replied – and it was. But a slight tension lingered, perhaps because the event seemed almost inauspicious. Given the current terrorist threat level, I suppose this is to be expected. Other friends I spoke to told me nothing had really changed, that everything was back to normal now – others said they avoided crowds now. While Paris’s rhythm may remain largely unchanged, last year’s events seem never to be far from people’s minds.

On Sunday 10th January, a ceremony took place at Place de la République to commemorate the tragic attacks that took place during 2015. The atmosphere was very diff erent to that of the previous January. The day the Charlie Hebdo offices were attacked, I joined thousands of others in République square – I had never seen so many people in my life, singing, chanting, climbing on telephone boxes and statues. It wasn’t just the young, either; old couples stood arm in arm with their free hands raised in the air in anger and defiance.

Three days later, on 11th January, around two million people gathered to march for solidarity. The atmosphere during the commemorative ceremony was quieter, more reflective. Hollande addressed a far smaller crowd than the one seen on that famous day, partly due to high security measures restricting entrance to the square. The families of victims of the attacks were present within an enclosed area in the centre of the square around which screens had been erected.

Also read out was the speech given by Victor Hugo in September 1870 on his return to France after 19 years of exile – a speech which might have been written today: “To save Paris is to save not just France, but the world…Those who attack Paris attack the whole of humanity”. The speech ends, “We will prevail. It is through fraternity that we will save liberty.”

After a minute’s silence, the French Army choir sang ‘La Marseillaise’. As the ceremony ended, Hollande and the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, shook hands with the families of the victims. I returned at the end of the day when it was getting dark and the barriers surrounding the statue had been removed. People were busy lighting and re-lighting candles around the central statue. At around half past five, an oak tree planted in remembrance was illuminated, as was the statue and a mural with the words of the city’s motto, ‘Fluctuat Nec Mergitur’ – tossed but not sunk. Dating back to 1358, these words beautifully encapsulate much of what we have seen in France since the atrocities committed last year.

That the people of Paris feel uneasy is understandable given all that they have suffered. I feel sure that Paris will always be Paris, with defiance and resilience in its heritage and history. A friend joked to me that hardly any young French people knew the Parisian motto, and yet French people remain true to their history in the traditions they honour, bringing epiphany pastries, galettes des rois, into the office and playing boules by the canal. I’d bet any money that the same number of wine bottles will be found at the bottom of the canal when the time to drain it comes around again.

When yesterday I read The Telegraph article, which said that the Cecil Rhodes statue at Oriel was to stay whatever the results of the College’s listening exercise, I was disappointed. A great opportunity to discuss Oxford’s wider colonial legacy and what Oxford students think about it had been lost.

Whatever your opinions on what the future of the statue should be, the conclusion of the Rhodes Must Fall in Oxford (RMFO) debate in this way represents a defeat for all of us undergraduates. As The Telegraph has reported it, the fact that the priorities of the College’s potential donors have been deemed more important than the voices of current members of the College represents a massive blow to student voices at this University.

As far as The Telegraph has presented, it was a report prepared for the governors of the College that forced the decision; when the College faced as much as 1.5 million pounds in withdrawn donations this year already, it was suggested that they were left with little choice. Oriel is presented as having chosen to keep the Rhodes statue because, in the end, it has put its financial priorities first.

Whereas last December, we were promised an open consultative process, the College has effectively gone back on its word. Listening exercises may well sound good on paper, but in the cold light of day the College appears to have listened first of all to the wealthiest of its patrons.

Personally, I had never fully supported calls to remove Rhodes’ statue. I was unsure whether an act of iconoclasm would go very far to changing Oxford’s imperialist legacy. I strongly felt that the best way to confront Oxford’s past, as well as the best way to address its continued legacy in the present, was to hold a free and open debate on the topic. I may not always have agreed with RMFO figures like Yussef Robinson and Qwabe, or even Cherwell’s co-Editor, Henry Shalders, but that doesn’t mean that I disagreed with the debate.

In a University where less than four per cent of professors are from BME backgrounds, we needed the Rhodes Must Fall debate to force us into action. In the chambers of the Union, the JCRs of our colleges, and the pages of this very newspaper, discussion of the RMFO campaign meant so much more than just one statue. At times, the RMFO debate may have been trivialised, but significantly it made us students think about our place in history. Oriel’s abrupt decision to end this discussion will, unfortunately, present a major blow to the progress of debates about our colonial legacy here in Oxford.

The significance of Oriel’s decision is that it demonstrates who really holds power in the University. According to The Telegraph, the threat of the withdrawal of a proposed one hundred million pound gift in a donor’s will has influenced the College’s decision making process. It seems like the balance of power is now firmly in the hands of an elite. In an ongoing student debate that seems not to have been anywhere near concluded, Oriel is being made to sound as if they are prepared to cut things short. If Oriel seems to be yielding to the financial might of its sponsors, we students need to ask what influence we are left with at all. Looking beyond what seems like an end to this phase of debate about the Rhodes statue at Oriel, we need to ask where student debate about the University’s imperialist legacy should go next. Stated as one of the key aims of the RMFO movement was a drive to ‘decolonise’ the University.

Rhodes’ statue may well have been an obvious manifestation of our dubious historical record, but crucially it is not the most important. As much as Oriel’s decision may serve to change the focus of the RMFO debate, we should not allow it to undermine the debate’s positive contribution to Oxford students’ historical consciousness. We may never see Rhodes’ statue fall, but significantly we can learn from RMFO.

Perhaps overall, RMFO has demonstrated that we students can change the way we think about our past. Importantly, this change means that we must continue to push for representative syllabuses, contextualized discussion of our past, and greater awareness of the need for racial, social, and gender equality in the University. Many of us will be disappointed by the way in which Oriel is supposed to have wrapped up the RMFO debate, but we should not let ourselves be silenced. We have gained so much from constructive discussion of Rhodes’ legacy in the University that we would be foolish to go on as if nothing had ever happened.

Rhodes’ statue may not be falling anytime soon, but we must continue to confront his and other imperialists’ legacies.