It’s a shocking thing to wake up to: A New York Times mobile alert that a presidential contender, in fact the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, “has called for the United States to bar all Muslims from entering the country for the time being.”

At least Donald Trump, billionaire and racist-extraordinaire, did not refer to Muslims seeking entry to the United States, as either refugees or tourists, as those Muslims. No, that was the president of Liberty University, who on December 4th said, “I always thought that if more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walk in and kill.”

Do you hear that? We could end them. With our semi-automatic rifles and Glock pistols. Or if that doesn’t work, maybe we should tag them all and create a database for monitoring the nation’s Muslims, as Trump has yet to rule out. Don’t worry though; if this sounds dangerously racist to you and seems to raise parallels to the actions of a certain fascist regime that rose to power in 1930’s Germany, it shouldn’t. Trump was really just demonstrating his grasp of Islamic theology, according to which everyone is a Muslim at birth. I mean, I assume so, at least.

Worst of all, Trump’s comments only seem to increase his poll numbers: between a quarter and a third of self-identified Republicans profess to support him. He has been ahead in the polls for all but a few days since the middle of July, and data since Trump’s comment about banning Muslim entry on December 7 shows no drop for the real estate mogul. Rather, one in eight Americans more or less agree with him, or at the very least do not consider his views on immigration, on Muslims, etc. to be a deal breaker when it comes to their endorsement.

Of course, it is not necessarily the case that Trump, or Ben Carson (polling at 13%), who has said that America could never have a Muslim president, or Ted Cruz (polling at 17%), who seems to have found success on the back of a campaign strategy that involves being as extreme but not quite as nasty as Trump, will win the Republican nomination. After all, past precedents suggest that candidates who have as little support from the establishment as Trump, Carson and Cruz do will end up fading long before the nominating convention in July.

Rather, the problem is that, as Jon Stewart once said, Donald Trump represents America’s id. He brings out the nation’s instinctive impulses: to xenophobia, to isolationism, to hate. He draws to the surface that, under any normal circumstances, would remain repressed. Take just his slogan, “Make America great again!”, or some of his other catchphrases: “I am the best!”, “I am very rich”, “I win”. These claims to greatness are inherent to the American identity – think manifest destiny and American exceptionalism – but when unrestrained, are disastrous. Manifest destiny, after all, led to the genocide of the country’s Native Americans.

There is very little that can be said in the way of rational discourse that can persuade Trump supporters to cease being Trump supporters. That is the nature of the id: it can be restrained by reason, but never defeated by it. Hence, in a way, all the vitriolic think pieces and worried newspaper screeds about how Mr. Trump’s rise must be stopped are column space good and wasted.

The message that should be expressed instead is that even as Mr. Trump’s commentary becomes more Islamophobic and vituperative, so too must the political will of those supporting other candidates increase. That could mean action, like volunteering to work for Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders or Jeb Bush or Chris Christie. It could mean donation, to allow them to run a better, stronger campaign. None of the candidates is perfect, certainly – but handwringing about the sad state of affairs only allows Trump and Cruz, and their ready, enthusiastic supporters, to dominate for longer.

We cannot wave away Trump’s supporters or pretend that op-eds in the New York Times about how egregious Trump’s beliefs are do more than garner page hits for the Times and fuel self-righteousness. What we can do, however, is turn that self-righteousness, now the fire has been stoked, to productive end. America’s id is rearing its ugly head; it’s time to fight back.

92 years since Britain’s first socialist government, social class continues to divide our society. Even as the old distinctions of the working, middle and upper classes have faded away, new conceptions of class remain as critical to the British sense of self as in 1924. The Great British Class Survey, undertaken recently by the BBC and the LSE, split society into seven classes: the precariat, emerging service workers, the traditional working class, new affluent workers, the technical middle class, the established middle class and the elite.

Predictably and lamentably, Oxford University remains a hotbed of the elite. It can be seen openly in the abundance of Old Etonians and Received Pronunciation accents. Though seven per cent of the UK population attends independent or public schools, 43.7 per cent of places at Oxford last year went to such applicants. Where one in twenty Year 13 students from private schools go on to Oxford and Cambridge, just one in a hundred do so from state schools. The difference is even starker when you consider the public schools: just seven of them, those mentioned in the Public Schools Act 1868, constitute almost five per cent of Oxford’s admissions, often sending half of their students to Oxbridge.

To many Oxford students, this ubiquitous percentage of Etonians, Harrovians and Carthusians may seem like the real elite. After all, though many of our parents paid for our school, relatively few boarded or wore tails. Sadly, this is a delusion. The survey showed clearly that paid education almost certainly places you in the elite. Bursaries and scholarships are still worrying close to being exceptions.

Even if you didn’t pay for school, you may well be part of the elite. Of the remaining 55.4 per cent of Oxonians from state school backgrounds, a remarkable quantity attended selective schools. Of the 884 successful applicants in 2013 from domestic maintained schools, 137 attended grammar schools, representing 15 per cent of Oxford’s state intake. According to the House of Commons Library, under five per cent of state school students attended grammar schools. This would not in itself be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that just 2.6 per cent of grammar students received free school meals, compared with 14.9 per cent in comprehensives. The class-skewed nature of grammar school admissions can be seen further in their intake: on average, between 10 per cent and 15 per cent of successful applicants attended independent primary schools.

This leaves a core of about 35 per cent of students who came from a comprehensive, state-funded background. It’s difficult to determine how many of these students are from the ‘elite’ class; given the disproportionately great ability of the wealthy to choose a ‘good’ comprehensive over a ‘bad’ one, it is unlikely to be a negligible amount. Even assuming no member of this 35 per cent is from the ‘elite’, the picture of class representation that emerges is appalling. Just six per cent of the British population surveyed belonged to the ‘elite,’ and yet at least 65 per cent of Oxonians fit within this socioeconomic class.

It should be noted though that the university has been trying to make Oxford more representative of society in socioeconomic terms. In agreement with the Office for Fair Access, it spent over £5.2 million on access and outreach last year, including programmes such as the UNIQ summer schools. These target the socioeconomically disadvantaged, aim to provide them with the tools needed to make a successful application.

Akshay Bilolikar:

Oxford prides itself on producing the next generation of world leaders, and so it is particularly shocking that admissions remain so far skewed in favour of the middle and upper classes. This country has paid lip service to the idea that class and background should not determine one’s future for decades, yet Oxford’s record on equality of opportunity today is not much better than in the 1970s.

In addition to the essential moral case against inequality, there is much evidence that fair access would be to Oxford’s benefit as well. A more diverse and competitive admissions system will simply lead to better students and the creation of a richer place of study. Our lopsided origins cloud our judgements and research interests, and our teaching struggles to show the whole picture. A more inclusive Oxford University could shape the world positively for decades to come.

Alexander Curtis:

The relative lack of Oxford students from non-elite socioeconomic classes is definitely a significant issue in Oxford and the country more widely. If there is such poor social mobility that young people from the poorest backgrounds are unable to access the best universities, is there really sufficient opportunity in our society for all? This dilemma may be caused by wider attitudes within the state education system, however, rather than solely the nature of the Oxford admissions process itself. In 2014, 37.2 per cent of Oxford undergraduate applicants came from independent schools. Is it any surprise, then, that a similar percentage of accepted students come from the same educational backgrounds?

To allow the most disadvantaged in our society access to an Oxford education, we must focus on encouraging students from the poorest backgrounds to apply. To achieve this, we must first and foremost develop a culture of ambition and realisation of opportunity within British state schools. Through the use of education to enhance social mobility in Britain, we can work towards creating greater opportunity for all; allowing all people to fulfil their potential through hard work, irrespective of the circumstances in which they started their lives.

On Thursday 3^rd December, I joined around one hundred others on Cornmarket Street in a candlelit vigil of solidarity with the Syrian and Iraqi peoples. Groups across the university and city had called it together in reaction to the previous night’s Parliamentary decision to launch air strikes on the Syrian region.

A few hours before, I told a friend about the vigil. She asked why it was happening, considering that the vote was over. Well-meaning though this was, it made me think about how poorly equipped we are to express resistance and solidarity outside of parliamentary votes and debates.

Solidarity with the Syrian people does not stop now that some of the bombs come with our Parliament’s stamp of approval. Rather instead, it is now more than ever that these horrors ought to remain at the forefront of our minds. That evening Barnaby Raine, on behalf of the Oxford Students’ Palestine Society, spoke of the perversion of telling the Syrian people that our bombs are better than their bombs.

Still those against the strikes are told that the interventionists see a complexity in these bombs, a complexity lost on us. The groups present in force that evening gave an entirely different story. The Arab Cultural Society named those otherwise nameless towns and cities which will be visited with British bombs. The OUSU Campaign for Racial Awareness and Equality reminded us how much easier it is to see bodies as collateral damage when those bodies are black and brown. Rhodes Must Fall Oxford addressed the colonialism to which the Middle East has long been subject, and how this follows through to this very moment. All emphasised the imperative to open our borders.

Interventionists have failed to show how airstrikes would defeat ISIS, instead exploiting the kneejerk urgency to do ‘something’ – but note that this ‘something’ is never a radical rethink of how Britain welcomes refugees. It is because of this mindless urgency that Hilary Benn can receive rapturous applause when he makes a statesmanlike yet spurious case for bombing. It all speaks of how this debate has centred on British feelings of faraway impotence in a brutal situation.

Yet those feelings are nothing compared to living in that brutal situation. That was why we must stand with this vigil and cause: to centre the voiceless, the homeless, and the stateless. Bombs will fall on their homes long after their victims have fallen off our front pages. Any hope for change rests – as far as we outside their world are concerned – on continuing our efforts to remember them.