I wish there was a typical day for a college librarian here at Oxford. Obviously all the books have to go back on the shelves, the library has to be tidied up and all the new books that come in have to be catalogued, stamped and tagged. We also do a lot of project work, which a lot of people don’t realise. Then there’s all the email queries from students. Tutors often put classic works on their lists, so if they were published in, for example, 1975, you can’t just turn up to Blackwell’s and buy them. Then you have to make sure that you’re getting the best value for money for what you buy. There are lots of micro-decisions that you have to make.

We also get many external visitors because we’ve got the only copy of a book in Oxford, or because they want to look at our rare books collection. My favourite is the Nuremburg chronicle, it’s an early printed book published in the 1490s. It was one of the earliest books to combine print and woodblock pictures. It’s this amazing book with a fold out map of the world at the back. It’s also got pictures of cities. However, because they had a limited number of woodblocks for the cities, all of them look more or less the same, and they all look like small towns in medieval Germany.

My favourite thing about being a librarian here is the students, definitely, and I’m not just saying that. Being able to answer questions is by far the most satisfying aspect of the job.

The strangest book request I’ve ever received is for a book called The O Mission Repo, and it’s a book of poems that have been created by blacking out words from the report on the mission to find Osama Bin Laden. We had to contact the publisher directly for it, who was really helpful and let us have a PDF copy early, because it wouldn’t have shipped here from New York in time for the student who needed it. The actual book arrived about three weeks later, but when it arrived I didn’t realise what it was. I opened it and flicked through and I thought “ugh! They’ve sent us a duff copy!” It took me about five minutes to realise that it was supposed to look like that! I also once had a historian working on medieval mystics, who asked me how to cite God. We settled on citing the person who had quoted God.

The Skype video crashed again, the picture froze and the voice at the other end crackled. After about 15 minutes of Skype failing to connect, we decided to give up on video and just chat. The bodiless voice came through: “Can you hear me now?” I could, so we finally began to talk.

The voice belonged to Khalid Abdel-Hadi, founder and creative director of My.Kali Magazine, one of the first LGBTQ magazines in the Middle East and the first in Jordan. More than eight years ago a group of LGBTQ people came together and founded a magazine for their community in Amman; over the years it has expanded to become a regional platform for LGBTQ issues.

My.Kali has survived the regional turmoil and continues to give the community a voice. It has seen increasing acceptance of LGBTQ groups in some countries, as well as growing violence in others. Since its foundation in 2007, it has been running features on pop culture, the underground LGBTQ scene, and interviews with some of the biggest young stars of the Middle East.

They’ve interviewed Hamed Sino, the openly gay singer of Mashrou’ Leila, a popular Lebanese band, alongside other celebrities such as Yasmine Hamdan, Alaa Wardi, Hana Malha, Zahed Sultan and many more, all of whom support gay rights and liberation movements across the region. My.Kali recently began to be published in Arabic as well as English, and has gained followers from across the Middle East, North Africa and beyond.

Now the technical issues were resolved, we had a laugh about the slow Jordanian internet, then discussed the role of the magazine in raising awareness of LGBTQ rights in the Middle East.

“There are lots of negative things going on in the Middle East with regards to the LGBTQ community, for example in Saudi Arabia and Egypt,” Khalid tells me. “So when you see the magazine in Jordan you see that there is hope and possibility, it counters the negativity.”

The need for hope is a continuing theme throughout our conversation. It is clear that Khalid dared to found such an unprecedented webzine out of a desire to provide support to all those struggling to be LGBTQ in a society that is generally hostile towards those who express homosexuality.

“During the time when everything started off with the magazine, we were literally one of the first outlets to be discussing homosexuality in Jordan. We were also one of the first platforms to bring a discussion of LGBTQ people into the Jordanian media. This was sort of a shock to us, to all of us, because we were sort of put out there by Islamist papers and then we were forced to deal with that. But the publicity around our initiative helped the visibility of the LGBTQ scene in Jordan and the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region.”

Khalid tells me that My.Kali’s success “is a sort of retaliation” to the homophobia and negativity surrounding the issue of LGBTQ rights in the region. But he also explains that the issue goes beyond the Middle East: “We’re suffering from orientalist imperialism, so we can’t help but be brushed off by the Western LGBTQ movement.”

It is clearly a difficult balance for the LGBTQ community to remain a part of their culture and also express their sexuality and identity. This balance is one that the community, and My.Kali, is slowly starting to find. Khalid explains that the dialogue surrounding LGBTQ issues was always in English and Westwardlooking, but now it’s moving more and more to Arabic and realising that this dialogue can actually fit it into an Arabic and MENA context. The Western perspective is no longer needed.

This new independence in the movement is coming out of a deeper understanding of religion among the community. “A lot of LGBTQ people are coming out and saying ‘I am Muslim and I am also LGBTQ.’ These individuals, including myself, then search more within religion to form an understanding of our existence and identity within the faiths of the Arab world. This helps people to understand that there is space for an LGBTQ Muslim movement.”

I ask Khalid what the future for LGBTQ people in the Middle East looks like. His response is heartening. “It certainly looks positive. This may sound contradictory in this hectic time of war, but in Iraq last year the first LGBTQ publication opened [IraQueer]. Recently in Tunisia a student was arrested for being gay after incriminating texts were found on a phone but public protest and a petition forced the government to reduce his sentence and release him. More LGBTQ voices are breaking out.

“We’re not challenging religion, on the contrary, we’re challenging the stereotype. We just want an inclusive, non-discriminatory society and we want to be accepted as not rebelling against our religions. The older generation is not very happy and don’t want things to change, they don’t want things to be shaken. We’re shaking things up.”

Everyone hates a hypocrite. It might be Russell Brand attacking the rich from some multimillion pound penthouse, David Cameron calling for an end to tax avoidance whilst holding shares in an offshore fund, or the tutorial partner who claims they’re a utilitarian, while failing to donate any money to charity.

But hypocrisy, in the vast majority of cases, doesn’t deserve its poor reputation. First, hypocrisy is the inevitable outcome of high ideals. Those who aspire to strict morality are just as fallible as those who don’t. All too often they fall short, and become hypocrites for preaching what they cannot practise. It isn’t appropriate to jump on their imperfection, itself so often an reflection of internal doubts. Instead, we should encourage moral hypocrites in their efforts: nurture rather than disparage.

Moreover, charges of hypocrisy are largely irrelevant to genuine political debate. Think of the Daily Mail distracting its readers with outrage at world leaders flying to a climate summit (they should, I presume, be taking sailboats). Or consider the derailing of a debate about immigration by ‘revelations’ that Nigel Farage has a German wife and a French surname. Both divert attention from the message to the messenger, adding nothing relevant to the argument. An idea’s veracity is independent of those who hold it, hypocrites or not.

Finally, hypocrisy is ubiquitous in its misapplication. Nothing is easier than to perceive inconsistency in opponents, especially when you’re searching for it. But all too often such allegations of hypocrisy are the result of mistaken assumptions, misconstruing your opponent’s positions or eschewing research.

Warren Buffet supports higher taxation, so why doesn’t he give more money to the US government? Well, he wants higher taxes so the government can provide public goods to solve collective action problems, something his singular contribution won’t accomplish. The Prime Minister opposes tax avoidance, so why does he have shares in Blairmore? Actually it was the fund that was tax exempt, not the investors. These misapplications are themselves invidious, as well as diminishing the force of genuine hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy can be galling and, when from dishonesty or real vice, rightly so. But in most cases, a charge of hypocrisy is at best distraction, and at worst deception. Next time you consider calling someone a hypocrite, think twice. It’s better to play the ball and not the man.

Yes: Akshay Bilolikar 

For some people, the second week in January feels like the culmination of a lifetime’s thrift; for others, it delivers a nail in the coffin of a dream of academic achievement, success and recognition. Either way, the Oxford acceptance or rejection letter represents a judgement of sorts. Though it may not be a particularly fair judgement, or a judgement with any validity beyond aptitude and interest for a specific degree, it is a judgement which can either inflate someone’s pride or burst it.

Yet ultimately, the unfathomable disappointment which few of us, reading Cherwell, had to feel is overblown. The consequence of an offer letter – a degree from the University of Oxford – is no magic key to the gates of the elite. An Oxford degree will not unlock doors for you, but will rather grease the handles much like any other university degree. Upon graduation there will be opportunities beyond your dreams, but these will be available to graduates from across the world. To just graduate from this university is, rightfully, no free pass to the upper echelons of society.

We all know, however, that an Oxford education is far more than just three years, two sets of exams and one piece of paper. The value of the degree is found not in what you learn from dusty old books but from what you do, what you add to the collective memory of the institution through drama, debating or sport. Few other universities, it’s true, provide opportunities like this one: two student newspapers, the Oxford Union, a vast corpus of budding student politicians. Yet, in spite of this, an Oxford degree specifically will not add value to your person beyond that added by the experience of university in general.

All that you may gain from the social side of university can be gained elsewhere. It is true, undoubtedly, that debating and drama are particularly strong here. But where we are strong in some areas, we are notably lacking in others. Oxford University makes up for its more distinguished societies with a lack of activity in ‘untraditional’ areas. The social dynamics of the University make it hideously unrepresentative; the activities and pastimes of ordinary society are ignored for more intellectual or elite tastes. As much as this may broaden the horizons of some new students, for many more it perpetuates the ultimate harmful stereotype of the Oxford student: the out-of-touch snob.

One source of our snobbery is undoubtedly the tutorial system. It just might make us more capable of running the local council, lending out subprime mortgages or receiving fat pay-cheques than other university graduates, who only ever had to write two or three essays a term. However, the tutorial system is, for all its benefits, no marked creator of a ‘special’ breed of graduate. The graduate of Oxford’s tutorial system may be able to hold it on their own with a world-class academic on a subject, the reading list for which was skimmed at 3 am after returning from Hassan’s, but can be just as unprepared and unsuited for the 9-5, 48 weeks a year slog as the rest of the UK’s university graduates.

Tight deadlines teach you not to hone your skills and engineer a dangerous complacency. The incentives of the tight essay deadline are such: if you do not do it, you will get an angry email; if you put in a full shift and do it really well, you will get a high 2:1; finally, if you put in a half-hearted effort and skim a third of the reading list, you will get a low 2:1. These aren’t the incentives which create productive and valuable graduates; they push you away from conscientiousness towards a cynical mode of work that ultimately stops you developing as an individual, let alone as an employee.

True, deadlines in the real world are tight and unforgiving. Even your grumpy old don is likely to be kinder and more understanding of a missed deadline than the corporate yuppie line manager at Goldman Sachs. Unlike the don, however, the line manager expects high quality, consistent work for which a significant level of preparation has been done. The don knows that undergraduates are chronically under-prepared, and has adjusted for it. Learning to prepare properly is a skill that Oxford, through its tight but ultimately forgiving deadlines, will not teach you.

An Oxford education will not leave you the same as you were before – far from it – but neither will it shape and mould you in such a way as to prepare you for the world of work, or to develop you for whatever else you wish to achieve in life. Just like any other university degree, the roll of paper you will gain upon leaving is certainly worth its weight in gold, just not any more so than any of the other of the world’s universities.

No: Alec Fullerton 

For many, receiving that long awaited letter in the post telling you that you’ve been offered a place to attend Oxford University is a dream come true. However, cynics are questioning whether or not a degree at this prestigious sanctuary of academia is actually all it’s cracked up to be.

I am a firm believer that getting into Oxford and studying for a degree here is one of best opportunities you could ever be given and it provides an unparalleled platform for future success. However, what it is not, at least not anymore, is a guaranteed free pass to the high life.

Before diving in, it is first vital to work out what we’re talking about here. There is a significant difference between the actual value of an Oxford degree and our perception of it.

After getting into Oxford (or, as I reluctantly feel forced to admit, Cambridge), it is all too easy to slip into a state of complacency and think that all the hard work is over. You’re set for life. This may well have been true 50 years ago in the glorious (sic) days of nepotism and snobbish discrimination against anyone who wasn’t ‘an Oxford or Cambridge man.’ However, increasingly nowadays this is no longer the case, and nor should it be.

So, although there may exist an unwarranted sense of entitlement amongst some students, not exactly their fault given the overwhelming glorification of Oxford, this shouldn’t detract from the actual benefits that can be reaped from a degree here.

The world class quality of the teaching staff is complemented perfectly by the tutorial system, which, quite simply, is the stand out feature of an Oxford education. It is rare that I’ll come out of a tute without having had my mind blown, left speechless by some subtle point only revealed to me through the intellectual direction of a tutor.

I realised just how lucky I was to benefit from this teaching system near the end of first year, where it only clicked upon walking into the first tute with a new tutor that it was them who had written the seminal text on modern literary theory that I had been dipping into all year.

More importantly though, the daunting experience of tutes is a lesson in coping when you have absolutely no clue what’s going on. They teach you how to respond on the spot under pressure and deal with being underprepared.

The other major defining feature of an Oxford degree is the sheer mountain of work placed in front of you. I’ve often been left in complete dismay after speaking to friends at other universities that whilst I might be struggling through, desperately clinging onto my sanity with two or three essay deadlines in a week, they’d have the same number, if not less, in an entire term. The time management skills these intense eight week work-orgies teach you will prove invaluable in the workplace.

That’s a load of bullshit though isn’t it?

If you manage to balance the Oxford workload correctly, then you’ve definitely got the balance all wrong on your metaphorical work-play scales.

Realistically, since the first essay deadline in week 1 Michaelmas term of your first year, this intense workload teaches you, via a baptism of fire, how to cope with intensely stressful and depressingly recurrent essay crises. This prepares you for the real world where deadlines are tight and unforgiving. Oxford numbs you to the pressure of deadlines and the anxieties of perfectionism, as you become used to the weekly battle, working right up to (and almost always past) the deadline to get a piece of work in.

However, a degree at Oxford isn’t just about the work. I’d argue that the opportunities of living as a student in Oxford are just as important. The sheer array of possibilities on off er is astounding; countless engaging talks and debates, multiple student plays a week, future employers desperately fighting to get you on internship schemes, getting involved in college life and countless initiatives to teach and travel abroad.

Finally, there’s something that’s easily overlooked but, I’d argue, is one of the most beneficial and formative elements of being at Oxford: the people around you- a huge variety of different people, all with one thing in common, a passion for their subject and a desire for knowledge. This creates a truly once in a lifetime atmosphere of intellectual curiosity and it is this very atmosphere that makes Oxford what it is. I urge you all to make the most of it, because if you don’t, one day you’ll be kicking yourself.

I don’t know what I am supposed to do,” Allam, a 37 year old Iraqi tells me, after narrating a story involving death threats from the so-called Islamic State and a subsequent forced escape from his home town, “I’m just going to wait.” The truth is, I do not know either. It is 2 pm in a squalid stone warehouse in Piraeus port, Athens, and we both lack any information about the procedure by which Allam can exercise his rights. In my week in Piraeus, I have seen no officials from the Greek Asylum Office, nor any UNHCR officers. I am told that they are present in the port, a few teams for over 5,000 migrants: finding them is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Sure, I can give him a new set of clothing from our makeshift distribution center, but you know what he needs so much more? Rights. To be able to claim asylum, to live in a safe environment. Yet I can’t do anything about that. I can’t even direct him to someone who can.

As Greece carries out deportations under the EU-Turkey deal, Allam is one of 52,000 who remain literally trapped on mainland Greece. Europe’s attention has turned to the post-March 20th migrants, but those who remain mustn’t be forgotten. Their stories – those I collected during my two-weeks volunteering in Lesvos and Athens – haunt me as I watch the latest developments in this ‘refugee crisis’.

Their backgrounds make up a great diversity which citizens of Europe often fail to recognise: rich and poor, educated and not, large families and single men. They had jobs, all kinds of jobs. From our warm beds at home, our desks and daily lives, it is easy to look down on these men and women as less human somehow – so unlike us. Not entitled to the same privileges we enjoy.

Yet, those I meet are coming to Europe not in search of a handout, but because they have little choice: they are fleeing war, violence and death. These people all long for the freedom our generation seems to take for granted. Staying back and fighting for it is not an option, as regimes and extremists overwhelmingly have monopoly over violence, making any attempts to fight back a death warrant. So they flee.

I heard innumerable accounts of lives being reduced to nothing by extremists. Whether it was that of Allam, who was deemed not to be religious enough, or of Rahib, a Yazidi from Northern Iraq whose family had to escape after IS launched a barbaric attack on his minority in August 2014. In broken English, he painfully recounted how he was stranded on Mount Sinjar for one week, facing starvation and dehydration. The horror he felt as 5,000 Yazidis were slaughtered that month. The sleepless nights fearing for the lives of his wife and children as over 4,000 women and children were abducted by IS.

Coming to Europe is no safe journey either, and even once they arrive, their hopes and dreams of a better life are often shattered as they discover that they are deeply unwelcome in so many parts of Europe.

As Greece continues to implement this new deal, it is time to examine the roots of the current European mind-set. Is it the fear of an inflow of people impeding upon our living standards? Those living in poverty enable the West to live in relative opulence; reports have shown that seven planets would be needed to satisfy demands if Western living standards were enjoyed worldwide. Or is it that of losing our European ‘identity’, with its shared values and institutions? The EU was built based on this construction, on a perception of a common culture which these migrants are not thought to fit into. I have yet to find the answer, and I don’t think many of our politicians have found one either.

But this doesn’t mean that we can’t treat migrants with dignity, even if they are economic migrants who will most likely be sent back. These people are human beings, not some kind of plague that can be reduced to mere numbers. They deserve adequate asylum-processing structures, not the mere three hours per week Greek Regional Asylum offices allocate per language for all asylum-seekers’ mandatory Skype interview. They deserve more than ‘limbo’: nothing to do but wait for something to happen, for the police to come and send them off to the next camp, as I witnessed in Piraeus. Powerlessness and hopelessness, as I felt for the majority of my trip, should not be the prevailing sentiment among refugees and volunteers alike.

Refugees don’t have a choice. But we do. We, citizens of Europe, have the choice of doing something positive in this crisis by demanding dignity and respect for migrants’ fundamental rights, and questioning the roots of our fear. Only then will we be able to say we are on the right side of history.