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?

 [mm-hide-text]%%IMG%%11978%%[/mm-hide-text]

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.