Egremont is a town in West Cumbria around 300 miles away from Oxford, made up of a population around 8,000. It is here in a remote location, that I submitted my application. I was from a school with little record of Oxford applications, which found itself in ‘special measures’. These factors made it very difficult for me to decide whether Oxford was for me. I had also heard of the stereotypes. But I managed to put these things to one side, focusing on the importance of a world-class education for my future. Staff at my school tried their very best to support me with my application, but a lack of experience and knowledge of the process left me in a one man boat, trying to sail my course to Oxford.

This story is not unique. I know of several hundreds of other sixth form students trying to make this journey today. I know of their stories because of Target Schools.

First, a quick statistics break-down: according to The Guardian, only 11.5 per cent of Oxford students come from ‘working class’ backgrounds, and in 2012 the BBC reported that teenagers from the richest 20 per cent of households were seven times more likely to go to university than those of the poorest 40 per cent.

Having had this experience and then hearing of Target Schools, I applied for a committee position as soon as I could. I hoped I could help support some people like me. Proudly, I can say that Target Schools achieves this on a weekly basis. So when I was asked to write an article about the organisation, I took the opportunity. I write to tell you wonderful Cherwell readers about who we are, what we do, and how you can get involved.
Target Schools is OUSU’s flagship Access & Outreach programme, designed to help such students by busting myths about the university and providing practical support for applications. We support those from backgrounds who are less likely to gain an Oxford education according to statistical analysis. This maximises the impact we can have on young people’s lives, ensuring that our time is best spent. It is all about where you are going, rather than where you are from.

Our bread and butter is the Shadowing Scheme. The scheme invites sixth formers from across the South of England to Oxford to shadow an undergraduate in tutorials and lectures for a morning. Then sixth formers receive workshop-based advice for their applications. Shadowing days are only possible because of the help our fantastic undergraduates provide, many of whom regularly give up their time. The days are integral due to providing a firsthand experience that showcases Oxford. This is a perfect thing to get involved in at Oxford, supporting access & outreach work whilst improving your CV.

Target Schools also run an annual Roadshow. Our tours are created with the purpose of reaching students in areas of the UK who would struggle to visit Oxford. It was sensationally complicated to get to here from Cumbria for instance. This year, we’re off to Medway and Cumbria, to talk to students about aspirations, and how the university can help students facilitate their dreams. We want to challenge the grassroots stigma that is sometimes attached to Oxford, which will hopefully result in higher numbers of applications to the university. We well know that the ability is there in so many of the students we will see. We need them at Oxford. If you live in Medway or Cumbria and want to lend a hand, get in touch!

If you are excited by what you have heard, there is the opportunity to get involved with the running of Target Schools. Currently we have a 21 student strong committee who run all operations. There will be interviews for these positions in Trinity and Michaelmas.

For LGBTQ people interested in British politics, Lord Smith is something of an icon. Given the state of contemporary British politics, it’s often hard to find a role model, but for me, Chris Smith is worthy of the label.

One of the standout moments of his career was his decision, in 1984, to come out as gay. “I’d already decided that at some stage I ought to say something publicly about being gay, partly because I thought it was the right thing to do, and partly because I didn’t want to be hounded by the press, and the obvious way of removing that sort of danger was to remove the story by being completely open. So I decided I was going to do it, and the moment came in 1984 when I went to speak at a rally in Rugby, protesting about changes in employment policy towards LGBT people from the city council. I thought, here’s the moment, because what I’m trying to demonstrate is that it’s possible to do every bit as effective a job as an MP being openly gay as it would be being an employee of Rugby council. So I did. I stood up in front of a room of 1,000 people and I said ,“My name’s Chris Smith, I’m the Labour MP for Islington South and Finsbury, and I’m gay.”’

It is perhaps all too easy to perceive such an act through the lens of liberal Oxford, but such a groundbreaking accomplishment truly changed the face of British politics at a time when general public sentiment was firmly homophobic. Such attitudes only got worse in the 1980s. I asked Lord Smith about his response to the Thatcher government’s introduction of the homophobic Section 28 in 1987. “I was marching, making speeches, going to rallies and of course, speaking about it in the House of Commons. I’m pleased to say the Labour opposition opposed it officially, along with those of us who were on the back benches. It then took a Labour government to subsequently get rid of it.”

However, it has to be noted even by Labour party members such as myself, that the Conservative party of Section 28 is not the same party as the Conservative party of today. “I don’t want to be ungenerous – the Tory party has changed, enormously. Back in the 1980s, and early 1990s, the Conservatives were using lesbian and gay issues as a stick to beat the Labour party with. One of their famous posters was a photograph of the book Jenny lives with Eric and Martin which featured a child living with a gay couple, and beside it, “Labour’s Education Policy’. You don’t do that in a national election campaign unless you see this as ‘wedge issue’, as they call it in America, to try and motivate a particular portion of the electorate.” Such political discourse now seems alien to us millennials, and constantly throughout my interview with Lord Smith I was considering just how privileged I am, as a gay man now, interested in British politics now, when as recently as 25, 30 years ago, my very existence would have been the subject of national vilification.

On the topic of LGBTQ rights in general, Lord Smith commented that he thinks there is “still some progress to be made on transgender rights. I think most of the legislative change on LGB rights has been achieved. There’s still some bits of tidying up of old legislation that’s needed and there’s still quite a lot of administrative change that’s needed, but I think where the big issues are that there’s a huge job to be done in terms of overseas work, particularly in Commonwealth countries. Here in the UK, I think the big LGBT movement now has to be in relation to public attitudes, the way in which society views all of this rather than in specific legislative change”.

Another defining moment in Lord Smith’s career came towards the end of his time in Parliament, when he became the first MP in Britain to announce his status as HIV positive. “Announcing it was in many ways, more terrifying than coming out as gay,” says Lord Smith, “Largely because there’s still a lot of prejudice around, and because something relating to individual health is a very personal thing, it’s actually quite difficult to talk about in public.

“The thing that prompted me to do it was Nelson Mandela. When his son died of AIDs, he made this speech, saying one of the problems we have with HIV and AIDs is that we keep it a secret. We need to be much more open about it. And I just thought, perhaps I can do a bit of good, so I decided to talk about it. I had messages after that from huge numbers of people from around the country, saying this had given them hope, because one of the things I was saying was that it is perfectly possible to be HIV positive and lead a very full, very worthwhile, very active life as a contributing citizen. You don’t need to see this as the end of the world.”
Lord Smith then disclosed that shortly after announcing his HIV positive status, he received a message from Nelson Mandela asking him to telephone him, where Mandela then personally thanked Smith for being honest.

I asked Lord Smith, what his proudest achievement was during his impressive career, and he replied, “Undoubtedly, it would be the introduction of free admission to all the national museums and galleries when I was Culture Secretary. It has been incredibly popular, and you only have to go to the Natural History Museum on a Bank Holiday Monday to see parents and kids queuing up around the block to go in to enjoy what’s inside. The benefit that comes from all of that, is enormous.”
As our interview drew to a close, I reflected on my respect for a man who has been truly groundbreaking in smashing the ‘gay glass ceiling’ and helping to change the attitudes of this country. Progress that I now take for granted every day.

Here’s a depressing thought that sometimes occurs to me: someone I teach may, one day, end up in a position of elected power. It’s not an unreasonable fear. The Houses of Parliament are stacked with former Oxford PPE students, shiny-faced and slick of hair, trumpeted by the University as proof of our continuing excellence. Many of our students seem halfway there already, constitutionally incapable of taking any stand on a position that matters. How long before one of them makes the journey from my tutorials to elected office?

The thought should be alluring. It offers philosophy, that most insecure of disciplines, the promise of political relevance. (‘Oxford Philosophy: shaping tomorrow’s leaders today.’) Plato tells us that politics needs philosophy, for “until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophise, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide… cities will have no rest from evils”. The thought is that philosophy teaches wisdom, or at least the love of it, and the philosopher – wise and careful as she is – governs with an enhanced understanding of that which matters.

What a consoling thought! Perhaps the Russian philosopher Jan Sten thought as much when Stalin appointed him as his tutor. But three years of tutorials on Kant, Hegel, Fichte and Schelling seems not to have improved Stalin’s governance, even if one can’t help but sympathise with his frustrated query, familiar to any first-year philosophy student, “Who uses all this rubbish in practice?” Nor was the appointment a good one for Sten. Stalin derided him as a desperate sluggard, and he was eventually pronounced a lickspittle of Trotsky and shot.

This wouldn’t matter if philosophy were simply neutral. I once argued for the election of a philosopher rather than an economist to a Research Fellowship on the grounds that the philosopher at least would do no harm. (I was ignored.) But things may be worse. Prime amongst the ‘transferable skills’ so lauded by philosophy’s proselytisers are those of drawing careful distinctions, of paying attention to small but subtle differences between cases.

The development of these skills is thought to be central to a philosophical education. (‘Oxford Philosophy: training tomorrow’s thinkers today.’) And when used effectively, they allow a clarity of thought shocking in its brilliance and precision.

But they sometimes lapse into institutionally sanctioned pedantry. And when they do, they have analogues in a particular kind of self-deception, that involved in rationalising our bad behaviour. It is easy for a philosopher, trained in the making of distinctions, to distinguish lying from reticence, as Kant did, when writing to a suicidal correspondent. Lying is contrary to the moral law, he claimed; reticence on the other hand…

Here is one use for philosophical thinking: to draw distinctions that make one’s immoral conduct seem permissible, even praiseworthy. It is the kind of thinking which justifies claiming light bulbs on expenses or pressuring one’s spouse into taking one’s speeding points.

It is as if philosophy provides the tools which enable us to do all that we do whilst looking in the mirror and saying: yes, you’ve done good.