Blog Page 1588
Wadham sexual harassment motion reflects clash of values
Sexual harassment is something which I take very seriously. I do not doubt the shockingly high figures on how many Oxford students have been victims of harassment. The number of people I know personally who have been victims of this sort of behaviour is substantial, and those are only the occurrences which I know about.
I cannot understand the furore that a motion aimed at preventing people from abusing the bodies of others has caused. Anyone who argues that such motions aren’t necessary because we live in a society which is fairly gender
equal does not understand the social nuances that still leave women at far greater risk of assault than men.
The difficulties that women face solely because they are women are all too real. Rape culture exists. Witness the Steubenville rapists, where CNN gave more consideration to the ruined lives of the perpetrators in a manner that appeared, quite frankly, sympathetic to rapists. This is the society we live in.
Given that incidences of harassment that go unreported completely dwarf the number of false claims, the false accusation criticism is practically unjustified. The chances of someone making a false claim are minute, and too often this is used to blur the issue.
Furthermore, that the college is mandated to take strict action against would-be harassers is likely to ensure that victims no longer suffer in silence. Indeed, it may even make those who, whilst perhaps not intent on intrusive behaviour, are tempted by actions which could be construed as genuinely threatening, pause for thought.
Although the motion is laudable, it has to be said that not all concerns should be considered as being rooted in misogyny. There are valid questions about whether a zero tolerance policy of the sort that Wadham has passed contravenes principles of justice that we consider to be important.
Criticising a feminist policy is often unfairly taken to be the equivalent of rejecting feminism as a whole. Sarah Pine, who proposed the motion, rebuked the Wadham SU president for personally opposing it on the grounds that “rejecting any way for coping with assault and harassment protects a system in which abuse and assault are common experiences.” It is tacitly admitted, however, that not all ways of minimising the risk of assault will be accepted.
Most perpetrators of sexual crimes are male. Were we to ban male students from Oxford altogether, I have no doubt that the University would be far safer for women. I also have no doubt that this is not what Pine, or any other feminist, wants. Like the SU president, those behind the motion know that they have to draw lines somewhere. The difference is one of degree.
We live in a deeply unequal world. The sexual harassment motion is vital because there is an uneven power dynamic between abused and abuser that requires drastic actions for victims to feel safe.
Yet this inevitably needs to be balanced with other concerns about justice. It is true that sometimes unequal treatment is necessary to ensure everyone ultimately has equal rights. However, there are always going to be some red lines; policies that, whilst guaranteed to reduce the risk of sexual harassment, will never be instituted because they violate some right that we consider important. This is the fear that the Wadham SU president had on a personal level about the way this policy demolishes the presumption of innocence before proof of guilt.
Rather, we have to be mindful that there may be values that we consider intrinsically important that cannot be sacrificed for the sake of any movement.
I do not advocate not making important social changes because the transition may be painful for privileged groups. What I have in mind is the values that are crucial for everyone to live in society securely.
As much as I sympathise with the motion, I could not have supported it in good conscience if we were not allowed to question whether it violates other values that are equally important.
Investigation: Scholarships
Cherwell investigations has found that the amount awarded to students who have done well academically in their first year varies substantially from college to college.
Jesus College is the most generous, with students who have achieved a first in Prelims receiving a scholarship worth £330 per year, as well as two free formal halls a week and a scholar’s gown. Scholarships are renewed annually and subject to the student continuing to succeed academically.
At the other end of the spectrum, St Peter’s College gives the least, with high-scoring students only receiving £100 and priority on the housing ballot.
Colleges choose to reward success differently, with some focusing on non-monetary prizes such as free meals, book tokens, scholars gowns, free vacation residence and priority on the room ballot in addition to lump sums.
There is no strict correlation between a college’s endowment and the amount it gives in scholarships. However, the two outlying in terms of rewards appear to go against this: St Peter’s, with the smallest scholarships, also has the smallest endowment; and St John’s, the richest of the colleges, is in the higher bracket for academic rewards, giving £300 to scholars annually.
Similarly, there is no connection between the extent to which colleges incentivise academic success and their actual results as measured by the Norrington Table. Magdalen College, which came top of the Norrington Table in the 2011/2012 academic year, awards the mean scholarship amount of £200. Pembroke, which came bottom of the table, awards scholars the second highest amount – £300 per year.
David Messling, OUSU Vice-President for Access and Academic Affairs, criticised the non-monetary benefits available to students at certain colleges. “It’s great to acknowledge student achievement, not just academically, but also in extracurricular fields,” he said. “At the same time, there’s a big difference between celebrating student success with a special dinner, and denying a student the basic chance to live in college.”
Messling continued, “Accommodation and daily food are provided to students as students, not on the basis of academic achievement during their studies. If colleges want to improve their students’ academic performance at Prelims, there are lots of good options (including better welfare support or exam study skills sessions) without too much additional carrot and stick treatment. It’s good to reward academic performance, but exams are stressful enough without your accommodation riding on them too.”
One second year student, Alexis Dale, maintained that, “The incentive for Oxford students does not need to be financial. We know that life is cut-throat and that those who are successful are rewarded, but this does
nothing but emphasise the contrasting attitudes and inequalities of the colleges. Who’s to say a first from a less wealthy college in a subject that’s relatively hard to get a first in is worth less than a first in a subject which is comparatively easier to get one in from a wealthier college? First year’s a challenge as it is without reinforcing the elitism that Oxford is notorious for.”
A University spokesperson commented, “It’s important to note that colleges take many different approaches to supporting and recognising student achievement – looking at scholarships and prizes in isolation does not give a useful picture of the ways in which students are encouraged and incentivised across the collegiate university. Some colleges may offer prizes, while others offer things like book grants or travel scholarships – these are all useful ways of motivating and supporting student achievements.”
Mission: to eat
On Sunday 5 May, Oriel College dining hall hosted a charity Mission Burrito eating competition. 40 people took part in the event, consisting of eight teams of five hungry students. The event was structured as a relay race, with only one member of each team being able to eat their burrito at one time.
The winning team, “Los Burritos Hermanos”, came from Lincoln College and finished their five burritos in a frighteningly speedy time of seven minutes and five seconds. One member of their team managed to devour their burrito in less than a minute. Eventually University College’s team, “Do You Even Burrito?”, pipped Christ Church’s “Nacho Burrito” to the runner up spot, finishing with respective times of 11:08 and 11:15.
The competition was dominated by all-male teams, but the only all-female team, St Hugh’s “Bin Raiders”, managed to sneak into 7th place ahead of the “Merton Matadors”, finishing with times of 15:31 and 22:55, respectively.
The event was a huge success and raised £205 for the four RAG charities, which were chosen by Oxford students last term. These charities are “Giving What We Can”, “Students Supporting Street Kids”, “The Oxford Food Bank” and “Education Partnerships Africa”.
Ben Rosenbaum, Oxford RAG Vice-President “At times it was pretty disgusting watching people shovel burritos down their throats as fast as they could but it was very entertaining and everyone who took part seemed to really enjoy it.”
“Los Burritos Hermanos absolutely gobbled up the competition but the race for second place was much closer. A huge thanks go to everyone who took part, Oriel for providing such a great venue, and of course to Mission Burrito who provided all the food for free in a feat of incredible generosity.”
Review: The Audience
The Audience is a new play on in London based on intelligent speculation surrounding Queen Elizabeth II’s weekly meetings with the Prime Ministers (stretching from Churchill to Cameron). Since there is no documentation, there is no evidence that anything in The Audience actually happened but this does not prevent it from being a political and artistic masterpiece.
From the moment Helen Mirren walks on stage, the audience are not focusing on the famous actress standing in front of them, they are focusing on the Queen. In this play Helen Mirren does not appear to be acting the role of the Monarch; she is the Monarch. On stage are two chairs and a table where the Queen and the different Prime Ministers converse on a wide range of subjects throughout the play. The thematic rather than chronological organisation of the play is a surprising yet piercing technique. It allows the audience to make connections between the various meetings and it is the collection, rather than the individual vignettes, which makes the play so powerful.
The acting is exquisite. The Young Elizabeth played by Maya Gerber in the production I saw was pitch perfect. Her soft tone and precise diction created the feeling that we were listening to a clip of the Queen, in her early days, not a young fourteen year old from a school in North London. Her role provides a haunting backdrop to the central plot, giving us a greater understanding of how the early years shaped and moulded our present Monarch. There is a focus on how her life is not one she has chosen but one that was determined by God. Underneath the Queen’s witty remarks, surrounding her desire for invisibility, there is a sense of pathos as we remember the little girl in the earlier scenes wondering why she has to carry out this role, ‘what if I don’t want to?’ she says. The Audience thus enables us to see the side of the Queen which we cannot observe in public; for the most part there are only two characters on the stage, making this production unique in its entirely personal nature. The Queen is not just presented as a monarch; she is a human being, named Elizabeth Windsor who has thoughts, feelings and views just like the rest of us. The presentation of her relationship with Harold Wilson was for me, the most memorable aspect of the play. Of course, the Queen is to remain completely objective but when Wilson decides to resign due to his recent diagnosis of alzheimers, she silently wells up and suggests he invites her and Prince Philip to dinner; an honour only once before bestowed, in her 61 year reign, to Churchill.
The most delightful aspect of the play though, has to be the humour. The Queen herself is presented as quick and witty; she does not suffer fools. Helen Mirren’s timing means her lines are delivered at just the right moment to send the audience into fits of laughter; her head slowly drops and her eyelids begin to close, as she listens to David Cameron blandly describe his new policy. You do not need an in depth understanding of the twelve Prime Ministers during her reign but in order to appreciate the political remarks within the play, a brief knowledge is certainly beneficial. Thatcher’s extreme self-interest is cleverly articulated when actress, Haydn Gwynne, makes the decision that their twenty minute meeting must come to an end. Nevertheless, the sensitive amendment to the production, following Thatcher’s death, is dealt with in a respectful manner.
In The Audience Mirren is not playing the role of the Queen as we see her, an ambassador for our Kingdom, instead, she acts as counsellor, companion and confessor for twenty minutes every Tuesday (until Blair that is, who changed their meeting to a Wednesday). The only person missing from this five star production was, Tony Blair, Britain’s longest serving Labour Prime Minister. It seemed odd that his name only featured in fleeting remark made by the Queen. There need not have been a direct meeting with Blair but it would have contributed to the historical nature of the play if he had, just like Edward Heath, featured as a ghost of the past. All in all, though this play is magnificent and Helen Mirren, at 67 years old, is most certainly the Queen of the West End.
The Fresher, the Free and the Finalist
FRESHER
OMG you’re so stressed. Terror, thy name is prelim. You’ve never known panic like this; the end is nigh, the walls are closing in – is this what waterboarding feels like?
Freshers, get over yourselves. This is the academic equivalent of moaning to the homeless about how your bedroom in Cowley next year is a bit smaller than your one at home. Even if half the time you claim to be revising wasn’t spent trawling through the petty arguments on Oxford Overheard, your problems are still few and far between. Calm down, take a deep breath, and get memorising your ‘Introduction to’ whatever.
Morning:
You set your alarm for earlier than you have done throughout the rest of the year as a symbolic display of your newfound nose to the grindstone mentality. You then spend a couple of hours faffing because you got up so early. You have never made any attempt to reach out an arm of friendly human contact to your scout for two and a half terms, but suddenly you’re striking up conversations with the express incentive to make them last as long as possible and she has quickly become half-confidante, half-saviour.
Lunchtime:
You spend at least a good hour discussing with friends and colleagues about how stressful everything is. So-and-so’s made mind-maps on each key concept. This makes you feel highly inadequate, but what you don’t realise is that the majority of time that will have taken was spent in the queue at W.H.Smith’s buying pretty highlighters. You head to the library, competitive instincts at the peak of stimulation.
Evening:
You suddenly realise that you haven’t done anything remotely work-related all day thanks to internet distractions and the decision to go for a run in the afternoon (the tenuous justification of ‘healthy in body, healthy in mind’ conveniently ignoring the fact that you have never exercised until you had no other revision get-outs left). A few hours are spent trawling through textbooks wishing more of your first year was spent taking in relevant examples and bringing new ideas to the table, not taking in Jagerbombs and bringing new people home for a fumble.
Do not worry, fresher. All is not lost.
FREE
The envy of the rest of the University, you have managed to find a course that doesn’t examine every year. Well done you. Scientists want to be you, finalists want to kill you. Crack open the Pimm’s and the croquet set and prepare your best condescending ‘oh poor you’ face for when anyone else drags their way out of the library to try and feed off your mood of comparative calm. Don’t try any ‘yeh well I still have two essays a week’ garbage – trust me it will not go down well. Most of your time is spent coming up with ways of doing as little of your extra-curricular duties as possible; there is an opportunity for free time and you will make the most of it. That’s if watching The Apprentice and trawling through Buzzfeed is making the most of it.
Morning:
What is this? Breakfast usually consists of something quickly grabbed and cobbled together before lectures (or instead of lectures for those who take their lack of exams very seriously). The first few hours of the day are spent leisurely deciding how much nothing can be fitted into so many open hours.
Lunchtime:
This is your first real social contact after crawling out of bed at some double-figured hour. Hoorah for a chance to catch up with others who are similarly resented by those in surrounding years. Maybe if you all grinned and frolicked very visibly just outside the library, those with exams will like you more? What about talking really loudly about what fun you had last night or your plans for the weekend? Hatred for you has well-and-truly reached its saturation point, so why not?
Evening:
Beer gardens are your new habitat, Kopparberg your fuel. If you’re not pleasantly tipsy by half 9 each night then you’re doing something wrong. Going out is less preferable, as by this time even Park End is beginning to resemble a desolate wasteland, but hey – more drink makes up for lack of people. It is known, khaleesi. Just enjoy your fleeting freedom while you have it.
FINALIST
Life is tough. The light at the end of the tunnel is worryingly flickery and you swear the tunnel is longer than last time you looked. Enjoyment is a thing of the past and you reminisce about better days, days of freedom and laughter and punting, as you observe the Trinity sun from the clinical confines of a library. You’re reasonably certain Candle in the Wind was actually about you. One more article on a really obscure area of one of your subsidiary papers and you may just put plans into action and fake your own death. Oh why did you only read the abstracts when writing essay notes? It really doesn’t help that recent revision classes have opened up huge parts of the course that your tutor impressively failed to mention the first time around.
Morning:
You get up at a time that even rowers might deem a tad early. Breakfast consists of muesli – the cereal equivalent of a hair shirt. Subsequent migration to the library, where no matter how numerous the pissy e-mails from the librarian banning seat-hogging, you sit in YOUR seat, which is marked by a pile of textbooks, a startlingly aggressive territorial note to pesky prelims revisers and the stale aroma of dread.
Lunchtime:
This is the hour in which you can justify it to yourself that it’s alright to go walkabout. Depending on your mood, sitting in a communal space to eat with people who still have smiles on their faces and life behind their eyes could be a welcome break from oblivion, but is often just an unwelcome reminder of others’ existence. Cue eating alone and glancing over at those who can still experience joy making constant “snackemfrackem” noises a la Mutley.
Evening:
Many would covet the opportunity to watch the sun set over the dreaming spires every day, however when shielded by the thick glass of the library (there’s probably something symbolic there but you’re too mentally exhausted to come up with it) it doesn’t really enjoy the same panache. As you turn on your desk-lamp and face another good few hours of book-hitting, the clicking of keyboards from fellow captives around you spell out the Morse code for “Dignitas”.
CNB Comment: Page 3 – Voice on the Street
Brasenose JCR shunned The Sun last week, mandating their women’s welfare representative to sign and circulate the ‘No More Page 3’ online petition. Exeter and St Edmund Hall have also passed similar motions.
Cherwell’s Comment Editor Harriet Smith Hughes samples attitudes towards the long-standing and controversial feature before giving her own verdict on the issue.
Interview: Dan Snow
I grab Dan Snow on his way out of an after-dinner speech he’s given at Oxford – or more precisely, on his way out of the King’s Arms, where he bought drinks for all the dinner guests (no better way to make a good impression on a bunch of students). Will he let me interview him sometime? Yes – “I’d love to be interviewed!”
We meet at his private members’ club in Soho to, as Snow suggests, “have a drink and knock out the interview.” As you do. At the door he gives his name as “Snow, Dan Snow” which is pretty James Bond. Unfortunately the downside of being in the club is that my poor little voice recorder can’t cope with all the noise. But Snow has a solution: hold it like a microphone and narrate the recording – “we’re just getting some Coke delivered to the table. And we’re back.” Broadcasting habits clearly extend beyond the day job.
Snow has had an enviable life: he got a first from Oxford, was a three-time competitor in the Boat Race, and then jumped straight into making history programmes about everything from battlefields to filthy cities. He also has an illustrious background – he’s the son of TV presenter Peter Snow, the second cousin of journalist Jon Snow, and incidentally the great-great-grandson of Prime Minister David Lloyd George.
About his family and his childhood, he is unrelentingly positive, except for the complaint that “it’s almost problematic how little angst there was in my childhood. It’s made me a very uninteresting person.” His father is credited for his success – “I don’t think anything’s innate, I think it’s all nurture. It’s because he read to me every night, he talked about history and he developed my mind and he gave me the most amazing education anyone could ever have.”
They passed on to him a love of history, taking him to battlefields, museums, castles – “extremely boring as a child, but then you get Stockholm Syndrome and you start to love it.”
Now Snow is a doting father himself, which he says has completely altered his perspective and made him keen to emulate his own experience of parenting: being a father has, he says, “changed my perception of the importance of work, changed my enjoyment of being away from home and being drunk in foreign climes.”
I ask Snow if he’s tired of being known by his father and family. Actually, he says, “I think you can’t run from who you are.” He imitates his detractors (“oh that guy’s a loser and he’s just there ‘cos his dad’s famous”) and puts up a solid defence of his career in its own right: “If people watched my output and read my books I don’t think they’d come away with that opinion. If they don’t that’s okay. But I feel very confident that I’ve made my own name and I’m very proud of my dad.”
His path into television was certainly helped by the Snow family name. “I would not be anywhere near where I am now without my dad. But that’s not because he rang up the BBC and got me a series, because that’s not how it works.”
It was actually rowing that gave Snow his television break. While competing in the Boat Race, the coverage featured what Snow calls “a day in the life of me,” where he showed a camera crew his daily routine. It caught the eye of someone in development at the BBC, who proposed a programme featuring Peter Snow and his son.
“My dad said no, that’s a stupid idea, it’s a bit of a gimmick. So then luckily a year later, as I was weighing up my options, the offer came back, and at that stage I slightly encouraged my dad and he accepted and we decided to go for it!” The father-son duo co-presented a programme the Battles of El Alamein in 2002, and continued to work together, although in recent years Dan Snow has increasingly presented programmes by himself.
Snow seems to have been relentlessly busy for his entire life – visiting battlegrounds and museums, sailing, rowing, studying, university, making documentaries, writing books.
Has he even heard of procrastination? “I don’treally relax very much, but I find constant motion very relaxing, I find conversation very relaxing, I go to pubs and I drink lots of alcohol and I sit round with friends and argue and talk and shout at each other – and that I find quite relaxing. But I never sit around and watch DVDs or play computer games. I don’t watch TV for example, which is possibly a problem for someone who works in TV. But there you go.”
His most recent programme was on the history of Syria, which took him to the front line (where American news crews were astonished to find the BBC making a history documentary, of all things). Was he affected by the death and destruction around him? “Yes massively of course. It’s awful. You know the thing about all the military history programmes is that you merrily talk about hundreds of thousands of people being killed, and then you see one person being killed in front of you, and you see one person’s child who has been terribly badly injured, and you almost have a nervous breakdown, it’s totally awful.”
The Syria documentary attracted some serious criticism from the Telegraph: “The first clue that something was amiss were the locations through which Snow purposefully strode. He had little problem filming in the old city of Damascus at a time when journalists covering the war from the Syrian capital are forced to use pseudonyms. How did he get such good access, we wonder?”
Is there any truth in these allegations? Apparently not. “It was absolute tripe. It was the most nonsensically stupid thing to say about a programme. I have a lot of people who’ve written a lot of rude things about my programmes and they’re often right, but that was complete and utter crap. The idea that we made a deal with the Assad government, that we sat them down and said ‘if you let us in we’ll be nice about you’ – if we did that, we should be hanged, drawn and quartered. We should not be allowed to work at the BBC if we’d done that.” He adds with a little more humour, “I’ve written a reply which they’ve yet to publish, the little monkeys.”
Snow’s big thing at the moment is history-based apps, and he has all the zeal of a convert; when I ask him whether they could change the teaching of history in schools, his enthusiasm goes through the roof – “100%! God yes absolutely!” Snow’s app, Timeline WW2, demonstrates the potential he sees for apps as a sort of enhanced book. “I mean there’s no question, people can’t say they’re taking away from books – it is the book! All the work that goes into the book. You’ve got more pictures, more material – and you’re able to search it.”
In Snow’s eyes, apps have the potential to revolutionise the study of history – “a bit like the internet, when it began everyone was like ‘well I can see why it’s really good for things like sports and porn and teenage gossip but I really don’t see what the point is for history.’ Of course, ten years down the line, the internet’s absolutely extraordinary for history.” But are apps even better than books? “I love books. I love the feel of them, I love the smell of them, I have many in my house. But I think for many jobs, apps are better.”
For someone who frequently talks in schools and tries to make history accessible, one would think that Snow would have strong opinions on the teaching of history. Actually, as with any good historian, he can see all sides of the argument: “That’s why I’m not writing the syllabus! Because I agree with everything.”
Understanding of British history is important: “History should give the young people context to understand the society in which they live.” But “clearly, history shouldn’t be about encouraging patriotism,” and it wouldn’t do to ignore history beyond our borders, such as Martin Luther King and the struggle for black emancipation in the United States “because I think we’re outward looking and that’s an incredibly powerful and inspiring story. And one that’s hugely relevant in the modern British state and around the world.”
Politics and history never seem to be very far apart. Do politicians manipulate history? “It goes without saying. Politicians are absolutely disgraceful in their use and abuse of history. And they justify things all the time; they appeal to a distant past that sometimes didn’t exist. I go on Twitter all the time correcting politicians on stupid things and they ignore me.” His Twitter feed is full of historical titbits, political comments, a narration of his very busy life, and amusing put-downs directed at politicians and punters alike when they get their facts wrong.
After the interview is over, we sit and chat; about Oxford, about journalism, about his life and mine – which is more than I was expecting. Snow recalls his own confusions about what path to take after university: “When you’re facing a decision, remember that sometimes both options are good. Just because it’s a good decision doesn’t mean it’s binary, doesn’t mean one’s wrong.” His decisions certainly seem to have worked well for him, and I leave with a sense that Dan Snow is absolutely where he wants to be.
