This week, the UK government ignored calls from students, MPs and campaigners and deported a student to what will probably be his death. Majid Ali was studying at City of Glasgow College when he was called into a Home Office meeting on Friday. He was then detained, and held at Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre over the weekend. On Tuesday, he was flown out of Heathrow at midnight, on a chartered flight to Pakistan.

Ali had appealed for asylum in the UK, after his brother was ‘disappeared’ by the Pakistani intelligence services in 2010. Last month, his family home was raided and his uncle and cousin were both shot and killed. All three, like Ali, are members of Baloch nationalist groups seeking political independence from Pakistan.

Despite a motion in Parliament signed by almost 60 MPs, and thousands of letters sent to the Home Office, the immigration minister James Brokenshire and Home Secretary Theresa May decided to press ahead with the student’s deportation. Ali is now in Pakistan, unable to be contacted by friends in the UK, and certainly fearing that the government that has killed three members of his family will soon come for him.

No one I knew who was involved in the campaign to prevent Ali’s deportation had heard about Balochistan before this weekend, where nationalists have been fighting a guerrilla war against the Pakistani military. Human Rights Watch has reported widespread disappearances of suspected militants and activists by the military, intelligence agencies, and the paramilitary Frontier Corps. These ‘disappearances’ are where authorities take people into custody and often torture them, including beatings with sticks or leather belts, hanging detainees upside down, and depriving them of food and sleep. The ‘disappeared’ are never seen again, and there are hundreds of such cases, like that of Ali’s brother.

That the British government ignored Ali’s plea for asylum, and ignored the calls of parliamentarians, student unions and friends to ensure his safety is an absolute disgrace. His blood will be on the hands of those in positions of power, like May and Brokenshire, who once again upheld the inherent racism of our immigration system and denigrated human rights.

Under the Detained Fast Track System, many people who claim asylum are detained on arrival in the country and imprisoned in a place like Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre, which holds up to 3,000 people. Those deported are then taken to private airports late at night, bundled onto planes, never to see the UK again. Human rights groups and newspapers constantly report the abuses, indecency and injustice of this system.

One of the most depressing aspects of Ali’s story is that when he took his seat on that chartered flight, handcuffed, possibly subjected to violence, he was one asylum seeker among many, and the only one we knew about.

For some reason, almost every day I receive a Facebook invitation to a march somewhere in London to protest against austerity and to support free education. I must confess I’ve never been a huge believer in mass street demonstrations. I somehow feel politics should be done deliberately and rationally, not with balaclavas and smoke bombs. Ultimately, though, I don’t really care. I think it is a shame that police attention is diverted and public money unnecessarily spent, but if you want to spend your weekend holding a ‘F*ck the Tories’ banner somewhere in London, go on and have fun. What does interest me, however, is this whole narrative of ‘free’ education.

I don’t think the people who support the ‘Free Education’ movement actually believe education should be free. They probably (hopefully?) realise that building and maintaining lecture theatres costs money, that tutors must be paid and that books and test tubes don’t come for free. So I presume that what they mean is that our tertiary education shouldn’t be paid for by us, the students, but rather from general taxation, that is, from everyone’s taxes. That way, we get a free ride, and someone else ends up paying for our education.

I truly do wonder: what is fairer about a working bloke in the opposite corner of the country paying for my shiny Oxford degree? Or alternatively, what is fairer about borrowing more money, so that my grandchildren (if I were planning on having any) have to pay for it? Sure, having a good degree is by no means all about money, but to deny that studying PPE at Christ Church will probably help me earn some dollar later on would be silly. Does it not make sense I should contribute a little and pay for this comparative advantage myself?

It is also a popular narrative to say that higher tuition fees put a huge number of people off applying. It only takes one brief look at the publicly available data to realise this is simply not true. There was a very small drop in the number of applicants in 2012, but the number grew in 2013 and grew further still in 2014 – there were just under 600,000 applicants, compared to about 450,000 in 2007. What’s really interesting is that the number of applicants from the lowest income bands is growing the fastest. This is because universities can now offer more scholarships and grants to those applicants.

Look at what’s happening in Scotland. Scottish students are being squeezed out by huge numbers of EU applicants who – unlike the English – also get ‘free’ education. Thus, rather than levying fees and directing bursaries and scholarships to able kids from deprived backgrounds, the progressive Nationalists double down in a middle-class giveaway.

Unlike in the USA, the generous public loans in this country mean that no applicant who is smart enough will decline her university offer just because she doesn’t have enough cash. To campaign for ‘free’ education has become a totemic mantra, but frankly I just don’t buy it.

For the time being, I’m glad the government pays for my education, and when I start earning money, I’ll happily contribute my fair share for the enormous privilege of studying at a British university. 

The end of Trinity Term is near, and with it, the close of my fi rst year at Oxford. When I arrived nearly nine months ago, I was acutely aware of how lucky I was to have a place studying what I love more than all else: literature. I expected long hours, diffi cult work, and exhilarating moments (and got all three). What I didn’t expect was how painful the weight of Oxford’s academic pressure would be, sitting on my shoulders – nor how often conversations surrounding self-care and mental illness would equate the latter with weakness and incapability.

That’s why OUSU’s #5thweekfree social media campaign, headed by the Women’s Campaign, was a gift; suddenly, I found that I wasn’t alone in struggling with Oxford’s intense, unyielding terms. My idea that the toll a mood and anxiety disorder took on my work meant that I didn’t deserve to be here seemed more and more illogical as I retweeted hundreds of similar sentiments from students across the university. It was only a week’s conversation on social media, but it echoed the findings of a recent OUSU survey – nearly three quarters of students affi rmed that they feel very anxious about their workload. The reading week I had halfway through Michaelmas created extra time to read for an essay, follow through on lecturers’ reading recommendations, and take precious moments out for self-care (in the form of bubble baths, lie-ins, and meals with friends). I didn’t realise how invaluable a reading week was until I went without one.

In Hilary, I studied my favorite period of literature. Not wanting it to slip through my fingers, I willingly took on a total of 11 tutorials for the term. My experience as a student is inextricable from my experience as someone suff ering from mental illness, but I thought that to let illness interfere with my education – especially when the stakes were so high, the experience so priceless – was some kind of mortal sin. I planned out each hour of the day: still, on some days, I couldn’t get out of bed; on others, I stayed awake for 22 hours, frantically typing the entirety of a 7,000 word essay.

Convinced that success and being kind to myself were mutually exclusive, I stopped going to meals, formal hall, and bops, telling myself I didn’t deserve a break. My tutor, kind and understanding, would have certainly let me take a reading week had I asked (and many aren’t that lucky), but the fabric of this university – the inflexible structure of which doesn’t lend itself to bouts of illness, let alone more extreme struggles – had penetrated too deep: I was terrified and ashamed of saying I needed one.

Looking back, the period is diffi cult to write about: how did I live like that? At the end of term, one tutor commented that I had seemingly accomplished two and a half terms’ worth of work in one. I hadn’t known; I thought I was doing the minimum. I know that not all students’ experiences match my own; regardless, it’s irrefutable that there is a culture of blame surrounding students struggling with all kinds of disabilities. This is compounded by the issue that unforeseeable events, which can include bereavement, hospital visits, sudden illness, are often incompatible with keeping up with work. A smooth, successful term is possible only if one has a near-perfect life, or is extremely lucky.

Admittedly, there are difficulties with implementing a University-wide reading week in Michaelmas and Hilary, which is why OUSU Council passed a motion last term that all future changes must be cost-neutral to move forward. Regardless of diffi culty, the problem must be dealt with: the 5th Week free campaign advocates discussions of illness and work, de-stigmatisation of self-care, and presents yet more evidence that the University and tutors alike are listening to students’ welfare concerns.

The current state of aff airs is unfair for too many: some, such as first years who are unfairly set collections in 0th Week of Michaelmas, are thrown off balance before even properly finding the ground. Others, like those who have left Oxford on medical leave as a result of squaring a disability with the University’s inflexible academic structure, ultimately lose a hard-fought battle fought on unforgiving terrain.

The conversation centred around mental health at Oxford is a difficult one, but it nevertheless has to be carried to completion. I’ve never met anyone whose mind functions best on two hours sleep or when miserable; even the most academically successful students find their knees buckling under the pressure and pace – so why not lessen it a bit? Why not free 5th Week? The chorus from the hundreds of #5thweekfree tweets and seven bravely written testimonials is resoundingly clear: it’s time for Oxford to focus on cultivating a university environment that safeguards students’ well-being and is willing to listen to their concerns.

Yes

Tom Foxton

Why so serious?

The irony is not lost on me. Writing in Cherwell (‘Oxford’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1920’, didn’t you know), ostensibly presenting myself as an ‘important’ journalistic ‘voice’ with some valid commentary about Oxford life; I myself am no doubt symptomatic of Oxford’s sense-of-jocularity-failure (in my defence, I had considered doing the piece in crayon in mitigation). Hypocrisy aside, we ought to recognise that we have a serious problem (one which is perhaps better characterised as a ‘seriousness’ problem). Oxford University is full of people who take themselves far too seriously. Just look around you. So many of us get caught up in the fiction that is university life: Union hacks, JCR politicians, student journos, over-enthusiastic beer-boat coaches, not to mention budding DJs. We’re cultivating an atmosphere of pretentious self-importance, which serves simultaneously to ramp up the pressures of student life while seriously damaging our collective sense of humour.

The lists of BNOCs gracing the pages of the student press last week were indicative of this problem. I don’t doubt that the lists themselves were produced in the spirit of good hearted fun, but there is something about the culture of ‘Big Name on Campus’ which reeks of egotism and pomposity; a little self-deprecation would not go amiss. A large problem is the way in which we view extracurricular activities at Oxford. They are often the prisms through which we view ourselves, and as such they tend to magnify our perceived self-importance.

Of course, there are many great activities to get involved with while at university, and I am by no means intending to belittle the enjoyment that many people derive from them (I am writing for a student newspaper after all!). However, there is a risk that we take these things too seriously. It can be tempting to see them as the proving grounds in which our later lives will be determined. As such, we begin to treat them with stony-faced solemnity, unable to laugh occasionally at the absurdity of it all. And then of course, we fail to laugh at ourselves. We are no longer ‘Fred Bloggs, jovial student and hobbyist’. We’re the self-styled ‘Fred Bloggs, JCR Chair, accomplished playwright and important Union official’.

University is supposed to be about fun. The inconvenient truth is that many in student societies probably spend far more time concerned with the impact that their participation will have on their CVs, rather than on the enjoyment of the thing itself. In any event, most of what we pride as being of paramount importance will be fairly irrelevant outside the dreaming spires. All we achieve in the pursuit of seriousness is ramping up the pressure on ourselves, which is particularly unhelpful given the other thing we tend to be guilty of treating far too seriously: our academic work. Being studious is a good attribute, and I’m definitely not promoting idleness where work is concerned, but it’s not the end of the world if that essay gets a 2:2.

I was recently shocked at a sense-of-humour failure when it comes to having a laugh at our own expense. I greatly enjoyed an article in this very paper a last week. It was titled ‘Degrees of Stupidity’. A piece of satire, I showed it to a friend of mine. It was met with a look of extreme contempt, as if it were outrageous even to make good-humoured jokes at the expense of a certain subject. In this case, the subject was English, with the piece having been written by a self-deprecating English student. But the critic would not relent. Some things, it seems, should never be joked about. And this includes our degrees.

In seriousness, as with all things, there is a balance to be struck. The only thing worse than an over-serious student, is one to whom everything is joke – the ‘post-something’ hipster, who inhabits a world where everything is an ironic comedy sketch. But of course, this merely gives way to seriousness of another kind. After all, it’s difficult to imagine someone who frequently invokes the word ‘meta’ as being prone to self-deprecation.

And the solution to our culture of overseriousness? I’d urge you to think on the evergenial Louis Trup. I’m not saying that we’d all do well to emulate him in every respect, but it can’t be denied – he never takes himself too seriously. Louis has shown that it’s possible to spend a year at the apex of one of our most ‘serious’ institutions without developing a God complex. What we need is a renaissance of irreverence. For everyone to step back for a minute and reassess the way in which we view things, and have a laugh at our own expenses while doing so. Even VERSA, with its scathing mockery of our institutions, can tell us a thing or two about the triviality of much of what goes on at this place. As Thomas Szasz astutely noted, “When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.” Time to lighten up Oxford. Why so serious?

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No

Tom Robinson

We live and work in a very peculiar environment. Ignoring Cambridge (as we so often do), the structure of our terms, our workload and the ways in which we spend our spare time can often be quite different to most people in the modern world.

In particular, one can point to the seriousness which we attach to our work and the activities we pursue: the Union, the political societies, the Guild, the newspapers, the sports clubs and so on. What is certainly true is that it is so easy to become wrapped up in this notion that the tiny, peculiar microcosm we live in is in some ways like the real world.

The proponent of the argument that we take ourselves too seriously, however, has plenty of examples to reel off why this isn’t the case. They’ll say we’re deluded to think of ourselves as revolutionaries in our protests, naïve to think that as student journalists we are breaking important news, or vacuous in our attempts at securing positions within the Union. Indeed, in each they’ll point to the vast differences between these student roles and their ‘real world’ counterparts to argue that we are fools to think that what we do matters.

I can’t deny, even as one of those so-called ‘student journalists’, that we sometimes feel as if we are something larger and more important than we actually are. We can be so consumed by our own goals that we forget the bigger picture. This, I take it, is what the critic is saying when we are labelled ‘too serious’.

But even if this is the case, there are plenty of reasons to support the position of the ‘serious student’.

Firstly, we actually can be more than just ‘mere’ students. Like it or not, the Union and its membership has seen almost unmatched success in producing successful public figures. Past presidents include the likes of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Tony Benn, Michael Foot and Benazir Bhutto. For those of the Union persuasion, of which I do not count myself, the prospects are very tangible and very real.

In student journalism too, the effects of the coverage on the Oxford community and beyond are quite impressive. In recent events, the #NotGuilty campaign initiated by this newspaper has captured the interest of people not just nationally but internationally too. The Oxford-related, and particularly University-related, stories that student journalists bring do attract significant interest.

So on this front, when people claim that we take ourselves seriously, especially in terms of those things we do outside our degree work, they may have a point. But we are serious because what we do does matter. We curate debates, protests, art and narratives that are disseminated far wider than just the confines of our friendship groups.

And quite often, this interest actually originates from outside of our bubble. Whether we like it or not, and whether we can control it or not, there is an external interest in the activities of Oxford students. We’re constantly ranked against others in a way that perhaps other universities and institutions are not – it is expected of us. Vying for top spot on degree league rankings against Cambridge is a veritable pastime for people both within and outside of ‘the bubble’.

What we say and what we do just does attract the attention of the wider community. We are not the only students in this country, nor are we the only students with new ideas and radical proposals. Yet, because of the unique history and place of Oxford in the wider narrative of the UK, we cannot help but attract this focus. That we, therefore, take ourselves seriously is no surprise. We do so for fear of catching the ire of others, but moreover because that is what others expect us to do.

More importantly, though, the ‘serious student’ should be defended because taking ourselves seriously is just a matter of showing commitment to those things, as individuals, that we care about. To say that we’re taking ourselves too seriously is to say that we are misguided in this.

We are, simply by existing within the Oxford system, serious. We have to be: it is a work hard, play hard environment. To say that those who play the university version of quidditch (again, not me) are too serious about their sport only makes sense if we see quidditch as somehow removed from what makes someone’s life go well for them. But for the quidditch player it does matter, and therefore to them being serious about it is, to a greater or lesser extent, important.

If you enjoy writing news articles, then to take seriously student journalism just makes sense. The same applies to the Union, art groups, sports teams and all the other weird and wonderful societies that exist at this institution. More than in any other area, perhaps, it applies to those who take their degree work seriously.

When people complain that Oxford students take themselves too seriously, they imply that what we are doing is somehow misguided or worse. But such arguments fundamentally obscure what is so true of most of us: that what we take seriously is what we enjoy.

So what if others rue the Union or think that student journalism has no real impact? Similarly, so what if someone derides the student who revels in their philosophy work? What matters is that what the individual gets out of these activities is worthwhile to them.

Accusations of being too serious place too much weight on some kind of objective notion of what is the right way to do things for the individuals that do them. We should eschew the notion of being too serious. Even if we are serious, who cares? We’re having a great time being so. 

Perhaps the single most familiar symbol of European colonialism in history is the Oxford graduate, Cecil John Rhodes. Half a century before the formalisation of South African apartheid, Rhodes used legislation like the Glen Grey Act to have Blacks forcibly removed to reserves. He introduced policies to segregate non-whites in schools, hospitals, theatres, and public transport, imposed draconian labour laws, forced Blacks to carry passes, and removed thousands from the Cape Colony’s electoral rolls. He explained to the Cape Town Parliament in 1887, “We must adopt a system of despotism, such as works so well in India, in our relations with the barbarians of South Africa.” One biographer called Rhodes an “aggressive imperial expansionist, a crude racist, a ruthless capitalist and a supreme exploiter and manipulator”.

Yet, Oxford is full of homages to this notorious figure. There is the Rhodes House and Rhodes Trust, a statue of Rhodes at Oriel College on the High Street, a plaque honouring Rhodes in Examination Schools, and a bust of Rhodes on King Edward Street. The Rhodes Scholarship was endowed with wealth extracted from the terrorised labour of Black African miners, yet the money has gone overwhelmingly to privileged white people from the West. Rather than place a murderous colonialist like Rhodes upon a pedestal, I believe that Rhodes must fall.

At the same time, Rhodes is more than just a noxious colonialist from a distant historical epoch. Rhodes symbolises the oppressive ethos that pervades this university today.

The institution is choked with various Rhodes-like products of colonial plunder, from the Codrington Library at All Souls College, which was endowed with money from Christopher Codrington’s colonial slave plantations in Barbados, to the Pitt Rivers Museum which houses thousands of artefacts stolen from colonised peoples throughout the world.

The Rhodesian ethos also appears in the undergraduate curriculum. In subjects like Philosophy, History, Literature, Classics and Political Theory, the reading lists are dominated by the voices and perspectives of privileged white men. There are almost no non-Western or non-male voices on the syllabi in the so-called ‘humanities’. Meanwhile, Oxford has less than a handful of black professors, much like the UK as a whole, wherein only 0.4 per cent of professors are black. What kind of mindset accounts for such a white male-dominated educational framework? As Cecil Rhodes said in his Last Will and Testament, “I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race.”

Then comes the lack of racial awareness among Oxford students. After receiving a ‘world-class’ education, too many graduates remain oblivious to Britain’s racism. They never learn how or why black British and Pakistani babies are twice as likely to die in their first year than white British babies; how or why British whites are nearly twice as likely to get a job as blacks when applying with the same qualifications; how or why even in ‘multicultural’ London, black people are six times more likely to be stopped and searched than whites. Could this be the relevant context to explain why 59 per cent of BME students at Oxford reporting having ‘felt uncomfortable/unwelcome’ because of our race or ethnicity?

Many Oxford students also remain ignorant of Britain’s imperial legacy. They are never taught that Britain’s industrial development was premised on a centuries-long process of genocide against indigenous populations, the enslavement of millions of Africans, and the looting and pillage of India.

Perhaps Oxford, as the intellectual heart of the British empire, could not escape manifesting a colonial ethos in a ‘Great’ Britain which has invaded nine out of every ten countries in the world. But the painful truth is that British imperialism continues in a new form today, oppressing darker-skinned peoples the world over in order to dominate their natural resources and their labour. For example, Britain has spent £30 billion killing over a million Iraqis in order to safeguard the fossil fuel interests of companies like Shell and BP.

The UK also wastes enormous sums perpetuating oppressive and murderous regimes for similar purposes in places like the Congo, Israel/ Palestine, Nigeria, and Pakistan. As Rhodes said, “The natives are like children. They are just emerging from barbarism [and] one should kill as many niggers as possible.”

Oxford has trained 27 of the last 55 prime ministers, virtually all of whom are complicit in international crimes such as these.

What connects all of these issues is the way in which Rhodesian systems of oppression – like Eurocentrism, white superiority, and male domination – have colonised the education system.

Therefore, we must decolonise Oxford. In other words, Rhodes Must Fall!

The Oxford Union is to announce plans to replace its termly elections with a Big Brother-style contest broadcast available exclusively for members, The OxStew under-stands. The decision was taken by the Society’s governing Standing Committee following recognition of how fucking annoying Union elections are going to be every term now that slates and online campaigning are allowed under the Society’s rules. The proposal involves the conversion of part of the Society’s Frewin Court premises, which dates back to 1823, into an all new state-of-the-art Big Brother house. Candidates – or ‘housemates’ – wishing to stand for positions in the Union from Michaelmas term 2015 onwards will be required to live in Frewin Court and subject to eviction on a weekly basis until the last candidate remaining is declared president of the Society.

Luke Mints, an executive producer at Channel 5, commented, “We immediately saw the potential to turn Oxford Union elections into a Big Brother-style competition. After all, what we look for in Big Brother housemates just happens to be exactly what you find in all candidates in Oxford Union elections. In particular, Big Brother contestants and Union candidates both share an insatiable appetite for fame and attention.

“Union candidates also spend an inordinate amount of time pretending to like people they fucking hate and bad-mouthing each other behind their backs. Given the presence of all these traits in Union candidates, turning what is already a farce into popular entertainment was an irresistible corporate opportunity for us. Our plan is to create a new kind of Union membership that entitles members of the public to stream all three seasons of Oxford Union Big Brother that will now be produced every academic year on Netflix.”

Student activists from across Oxford have liked statuses on Facebook praising the “unprecedented transparency” that the proposed changes will bring to Union elections, as Oxford Union members will now be able to watch Union officers at work 24/7 using a live stream.

One enthusiastic Wadham fresher commented, “With full behind the scenes access, the accessibility of the Union will be greater than ever. The Union will also no longer have to rely upon inviting second rate celebrities to speak now that it will be able to manufacture its own.”

The OxStew understands that PornHub and the Tab are also potentially interested in making a joint bid to buy the rights to broadcast an evening ‘highlights’ show. One snakey Union hack told The OxStew that the new rules would formalise how the Union currently works, “Working vac days at the Union is already a remarkably similar experience to being in the Big Brother house, as I already eat, shit, and sleep at the Union.

“Is it tragic I spend my degree like that? Maybe – but at least I’ll be able to put this not-at-all-scandal-ridden debating society on my CV for all employers to see at the end of it. Who wouldn’t want to employ me then?”

Last week, when David Cameron was on a tour of Europe, it was no coincidence that his first stop was The Hague. The Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, is a fellow conservative who not only supports his reform project, but also speaks in glowing terms of their personal friendship.

Unfortunately for British diplomacy, Mark Rutte may not be around for much longer. The coalition government he has led since 2012, consisting of his own VVD and the Labour Party, was trounced in the general election for the Senate in March of this year. When the results became official on 26th May, it had only 21 deputies left in the 75 member Senate – down from 30. To pass any legislation, the government will now have to strike deals on an ad hoc basis with an array of opposition parties.

The VVD-Labour team had not previously suffered from a lack of effectiveness. Against a backdrop of economic adversity, it has managed to halve the budget deficit. At the same time, it has initiated long-delayed reform to the housing market, which had been distorted by state subsidies to homeowners. The Dutch economy now looks healthier than at any time since the financial crash of 2008. So why isn’t making tough decisions being rewarded at the polls?

To answer this question, look at the country’s institutions. The Netherlands famously uses proportional representation to elect both houses of parliament, endowing each with complete veto power. This consensual arrangement is a legacy from the time when there were stark divisions along religious and class lines. Today, it serves mainly to reward political irresponsibility.

This is not only because it benefits extremists. It is true that Geert Wilders, who wants “fewer Moroccans”, has been able to build steadily on a five per cent vote share since 2006. In the context of the recent Senate elections, even more important is the way in which both VVD and Labour have been undercut by similar parties making bolder claims. VVD, for instance, has been shedding votes to the slightly-moreconservative Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA). That party’s main attraction seems to be that it refuses to cooperate with the government in the Senate, accusing VVD of treason for forming a coalition with Labour. Never mind that CDA did exactly the same thing during its most recent spell in power, and lacks any plan to rally a right-wing majority to its cause. Meanwhile, slightly-more-liberal Democrats 66, which is part of the so-called ‘constructive opposition’, has seen the rise of its popularity come to a shuddering halt.

Trust in politics is a public good. Politicians want it to be there, but they lack the incentive to contribute to it. Indeed, the current government has done its own bit to tarnish it. Back in 2012, VVD and Labour ran a vicious campaign against each other, despite the fact that it was already evident that both would have to join the government if any majority was to be found. When the two parties duly exchanged rhetoric for realism after the election, voters saw their cynicism confirmed.

Thus, Mark Rutte’s government risks being swept away on a tide of anti-incumbency. That must be a depressing sight to David Cameron, who needs friends in Europe more than ever if he is to avoid the same fate.

Reading the initial chapters of Robert Douglas-Fairhurst’s Story of Alice, one may rightly shudder at the quaint, mawkish-sweet encasement of the former Alice Liddell. An apparent ‘inspiration’ for Lewis Carroll’s celebrated protagonist, Douglas-Fairhurst presents the ageless ‘Dream-Child’ as a person of particular tragedy. “Crumpled and confused” by persistent associations with Wonderland, this genuine Alice emerges as a prisoner – a figure fettered to a fictional fame. Her literary correlate, resisting the assertion that she is “a sort of thing” in The Red King’s dream, touches on a similar anxiety. A probable cipher for authorial agency, this slumbering monarch addresses the dread of imagined existence, exploring the fear of a lost control. Concerned with the invasion of reality by fiction, I shared some of these impressions with Douglas-Fairhurst himself.

“Another reason for her looking ‘crumpled and confused’ may simply have been that she was fairly old (she celebrated her 80^th birthday in New York)” he replies “but it’s certainly true that in her later years she was a reluctant celebrity. It’s not hard to understand why. Although she’d experienced much since the famous river trip in 1862, including the loss of two of her three sons in the muddy trenches of WWI, all anyone wanted to ask her about was an event that had happened when she was ten years old. So although she sometimes shyly signed herself ‘Alice in Wonderland’, she might have had mixed feelings about a fictional creation that in some ways had overshadowed her real life. In some ways she was doomed to fame.”

On the weight of this reputation, he continues: “If you’re asking whether someone might regret creating – or being turned into – a different version of themselves, made out of paper and ink rather than flesh and blood, then I think the answer is probably yes. Carroll sometimes returned letters addressed to ‘Lewis Carroll’ with ‘NOT KNOWN’ written across the envelope, and told one correspondent that ‘My constant aim is to remain personally unknown to the world’. It’s as if he wanted to keep his literary avatar safely hidden away from the mess and fuss of the real world. That’s one of the reasons I had doubts about whether or not I should subject him to another biography, as it would undoubtedly have made him squirm with embarrassment and annoyance”.

Biographies of Carroll can certainly prove contentious. He has appeared as a daydreaming mathematician, Victorian Humbert Humbert and even Jack the Ripper. One of these guises remains something of an ‘elephant’, haunting perceptions of the writer to the present day. With Wonderland’s 150^th anniversary occurring this year, BBC Two’s The Secret World of Lewis Carroll (dir; Clare Beavan) was broadcast in late January. Earlier this month, Edward Wakeling’s acidic reservations about the documentary became the subject of a Times article by David Sanderson. Sanderson writes: “The BBC spiced up a documentary on Lewis Carroll and ‘lied’ by including a nude photograph he had purportedly taken of a young girl, it was claimed yesterday by an expert on the author”. As the programme’s historical consultant, it was inevitable that Douglas-Fairhurst would have some opinion on the matter.

“I know that a number of people were annoyed by the decision to include the photograph, as there’s no definite proof that it shows Lorina Liddell or that it was taken by Carroll. But (and admittedly I was the programme’s historical consultant), it’s interesting that someone had already attributed it to him. And that probably says more about us as it does about him – it shows how far he has become a lightning conductor for all our fears about childhood and sexuality, and it is worth asking ourselves why. Of course, there are fans of Carroll’s who see such questions as irrelevant muckraking. Perhaps that’s because when we talk about the Alice books we are also talking about ourselves, as these are some of the books we remember most fondly from childhood, and that makes it hard for some readers to hear anything potentially awkward about Carroll without it being experienced as a personal assault.”

Yet, is there not something inherently “awkward” about Carroll’s writings? His ‘Easter Greeting to Every Child who Loves Alice’ (1876) speaks of an inclination for “mixing together things grave and gay”, aspects of joy being balanced by the acknowledgement that “Echoes fade and memories die”. His association of children with seasonal brevity is wedded to a discourse on death.

“The saddest part of the Alice books is probably the underlying reason Carroll had for writing them. This seems to have been something more or other than simply the desire to entertain small children. Ultimately I think he wrote stories for children for the same reason that he took photographs of them: it was a way of creating little bubbles of fantasy in which they could be protected from growing up. In one of his letters, Carroll wrote that ‘There are few things so evanescent as a child’s love’, but turning them into stories or fixing them into images meant that he would never suffer the otherwise inevitable betrayal of them growing up and leaving him.

This is one of the interesting differences between photographs and stories. When Carroll took a photograph of Alice Liddell, it was like pinning a butterfly to a board – she would never change unless the image faded over time.  Put her in a story, on the other hand, and he could keep her the same age while also bringing her to life in speech and movement. She could be ‘still’ like Tenniel’s illustrations, but also ‘still’ in the same way that a river is still – always on the move, still going.”

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Evidently, Carroll proves a complicated character to interpret. Douglas-Fairhurst’s reference to letters raises a question about this interpretation itself: about the borders between biography and invention – Is it folly to judge Dodgson’s mind through the prism of his fictional work?

“That’s a good question. I think there’s always a danger in treating fictional works as disguised confessions, but I also think that the Alice books – perhaps because they are supposed to be a journey through Alice’s unconscious mind – allowed Carroll to explore parts of himself that he would never have felt able to without the alibi of fiction.”

Combined with Carroll’s own desire for privacy, The Story of Alice necessarily treads on the threshold of risk. With the fragile nature of the subject matter, the personal inspirations are worthy of note.

“I thought long and hard about whether to talk explicitly about the person it’s dedicated to – Conor Robinson, a dazzlingly talented English student at Magdalen who died after an accidental fall in Michaelmas 2013. There were a couple of paragraphs I put in and took out several times. In the end I decided to include them, because The Story of Alice would have been very different without what was a very sad time in many people’s lives. It’s probably why so much of the book is about how we grow up and what happens if we can’t. It was only after I finished it that I realised that in some ways the whole book was an act of mourning.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a story I knew long before I knew how to read, and the more I talked to other people about this the more I realised that this wasn’t just a personal quirk. Over the past 150 years the story has become a modern myth – one that is forever being reinvented, and one that slips out of our grasp whenever we try to pin it down. I suppose I wanted to find out why “

The reference to a “modern myth” is interesting. Indeed, it is true that Alice is often first known or experienced through adaptation and retelling. My preferred film version, directed by Jonathan Miller in 1966, sheds away the cloth of fantasy to render every character human. In contrast, Douglas Fairhurst sees the ‘cartoonish’ as intrinsically vital.

“I love the Miller for its druggy haze and the Svankmajer for its sheer weirdness, but my favourite adaptations, though, are probably the 56 very early films made by Walt Disney in the 1920s, when he started by dropping a real Alice into Cartoonland, but soon realised that the jokes were better when human beings weren’t getting in the way. And overall I suppose my feeling is that it’s cartoons that come closest to the mad inventiveness of Carroll’s Wonderland, a place where nothing is but thinking makes it so.

There are endless cultural sequels and echoes and offshoots, which you can see in everything from John Lennon’s lyrics for some the greatest hits of The Beatles (‘I am the Walrus’ or ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’) to fashion items like the ‘Alice band’, but the most significant work is probably Disney’s 1951 cartoon. It’s not as sugary-sweet as some people think – I think Dali had a hand in it somewhere – but it probably fixed an image of Alice in the popular mind just as much as John Tenniel’s original illustrations. Along with Tim Burton’s recent film, it’s one of the main reasons that far more people know the story of Alice than have ever read the books.”

Alice is something of a protean beast – larger now than Carroll’s work itself. So far, the year’s anniversary has been a varied affair, crafting a Wonderland in perpetual shift.

“I agree it’s been hugely diverse already – sometimes cosy, sometimes surprising – in a way that’s perfectly in tune with Carroll’s own writing and personality. And there’s still a lot more to come, including the new Damon Albarn musical wonder.land in Manchester and then at the National Theatre. I sat in on a rehearsal today and interviewed the creative team for a piece in the programme, and I think it could be very exciting. Wonderful, even”.

When questioned on what he was “working on” currently, Douglas-Fairhurst offered this reply: “My abs.”

Carroll, a known athlete and strongman, would certainly approve.

The campaign for a reading week in 5th week points to a much deeper problem with the working climate at Oxford. Of course we’ve all heard it before: the well-touted big fish/small pond, little minnow/big ocean dogma that encompasses us all. Most of us had their egos hyper-inflated to get us this far, whether you were primed for Oxbridge application in a class of 12 or whether your acceptance made local headlines.

As a second year I have reached a certain degree of cynicism about my position as an undergrad at this university. As such I am already the smallest and peskiest of my tutors’ duties – they are here to do research, sometimes lecture, look after grads, and then teach us. More often than not we insult them and their time by handing in work that we dashed off forty minutes before the deadline for no particular reason (but also, mate, because I was so hungover). We are young, intellectually immature, and our degrees are sweeping taster courses at the end of which – infancy of all infancies – we sit exams.

And yet – most of us are here for eight weeks a term, three terms a year, for three/four years. In three years I am expected to come to grips with 1500 years of English literature. How could I possibly? Then again, with its compulsory Old English paper, it is the most rigorous English course in the world. When I leave this place at 21, myself and my peers will have the most wide-ranging knowledge of English literature out of anyone else our age.

Oxford is a dichotomous place: the demands made of you are nigh impossible to fulfill, and yet we must recognize quite how much we do achieve in the little time we have. The powers that be can try as they might to take Oxbridge of its pedestal, but the fact  remains that its graduates will always have a premium on the job market because of what the climate here trains them to do: I will leave this place with a fairly superficial knowledge of the afore-mentioned 1500 years, but more important is the ability that Oxford has given me, of producing under pressure; the ability, we might say, of bullshit. All those essays you dashed off hungover and forced your poor tutor to wade through, your poor tutor who has waded through generation after generation of people talking about Milton’s satanic sympathies; every single one of those essays will have prepared you for the ‘real world’, where you will be asked to come up with something, anything, as quickly as possible.

My time at Oxford has gone in peaks and troughs. My fresher year was a blur of alcohol-induced magnanimity and skimming through Prelims because I felt justified in not caring – I’d busted my gut to get myself here and I was determined to enjoy it. Second year came and the change in pace was remarkable: my workload, although still heavier than at any of my friends’ universities, was far more humane. Gone were the days of biweekly 3,000 word essays plus commentary and presentation – a baptism of fire, the cruelty of which I am only starting to register. The rhythm was now one of a single essay, and of working myself into a crescendo of stress over the course of a five day period to get it in on time with my integrity intact. I fell into a rhythm of giving myself three days for reading and two for writing. Consequently I submitted work that had promise but was lacking in depth – my tutors accused me of making sweeping generalizations and of not knowing having contextualized.

My fifth term at Oxford hit, and with it a much worse case of the blues. I have heard the testimonies of relapses into eating disorders, struggles with depression, bipolar disorder, suicidal tendencies, and alcoholism. In my case it was a much simpler case of feeling that I wasn’t erudite enough, that I didn’t spend enough time working to justify how little I did outside of my degree, and that I didn’t socialize enough. Days would dribble away and I would hate myself for it. Essay after essay that I had tried so very hard at were handed back with not even a cursory ‘well done’.

I think it telling that Oxford, historically, is founded for the privileged, male population coming out of boarding school, where the dominant mentality is one of all hardship being ‘character-building’. Even the name of the problem – the ‘blues’ – trivializes it. Here lies the issue: mental health at Oxford is treated too lightly. It is expected that everyone get ‘the blues’ regardless of whether they have been medically diagnosed with a mental condition. It is something you are expected to ‘get through’.

But it’s not just a 5th week issue. It builds over the course of term where there is no try, there is only do, and what you do is never good enough. A reading week in fifth week would not  be enough to help those who struggle with serious conditions to consolidate for the next half of term, nor would it shake the feeling of inadequacy that most of us feel. As superegos, we were conditioned with praise. It is the language we respond to and flourish under. It would do us all some good if we started to get some.