A third year Philosophy and Theology student has featured in the BBC Three series “How Sex Works”, broadcast on Monday night.

Jenni Goodchild, from Mansfield College, appeared in the second episode of the series, entitled “Playing the Field”, discussing living as a self-described asexual in modern society.

Asexuality is defined as “not experiencing sexual attraction”. Goodchild told Cherwell, “Whilst I still find people pretty, one of the best comparisons I’ve heard to how that works is that just like a straight girl can appreciate how pretty another girl is, I can appreciate people’s aesthetic qualities without feeling sexual attraction to them.”

The interview consists of Goodchild talking about her experiences of asexuality in Oxford, and her relationship with her boyfriend.

When asked how he had found the interview, Goodchild said, “He’s fine with it (well, secretly really pleased because he’s on TV) – he told his workmates and family about it, so it seems good. He actually agreed to do it when we’d only been dating a month, and I figured that was a good sign.”

Goodchild commented, “There hasn’t been any especially noticeable difference in my life since being on TV. All of my friends and the people I spend time with know I’m asexual, and knew I was doing the documentary – I’ve done other things to raise visibility in the past, and so it wasn’t really a surprise.

‘People have been talking to me about it mostly in the ‘I saw your interview, well done’ sense, because any questions they’d have have probably been answered. Saying that, I wouldn’t mind if anyone I knew did have questions based on it – it’s only the briefest of introductions, and it’s not always the easiest of ideas for people to grasp.

‘For those who’ve commented since the interview (and there’s always some) that they feel sorry for me, or that I’m missing out, it’s not like I’m missing something I used to have – I’ve never experienced sexual attraction, so it doesn’t feel like anything’s missing. It took me until I was 16/17 to notice that other people felt something I did, and a year or two after that to find out the word ‘asexual’ – partially why I did the interview, since it would have been nice to hear of it earlier.”

Goodchild added that she has met other asexual people in Oxford, both by accident and via the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), which conduct semi-regular meet-ups.

There are an estimated 1% of people in the UK who have identified themselves as asexual.

Following the formation of Toby Beers Baker’s breakaway events company, Shuffle Nights, the management of Varsity Events has told Cherwell that they have placed “the matter in the hands of [their] lawyers.”

A spokesperson for Varsity Events stated “Our lawyers have written to Toby Beers Baker regarding his employment at Varsity Events Limited and his subsequent conduct particularly in relation to Shuffle nights.”He added, “At this point in time we do not propose to comment further.”

Toby Beers Baker confirmed that he had been contacted by Varsity’s legal team but declined to comment on the details of the legal dispute, remarking, “It is a private dispute between two parties, and discussing it in the press would be discourteous to Varsity Events.” 

Baker left Varsity Events over the vac stating last week that he “wasn’t happy with the way the company was going.” He has since set up his own company called Shuffle Nights which has taken control of popular student nights at Lava Ignite and Wahoo as well as organising two new weekly events.

Despite the ongoing legal issues, students’ clubbing patterns do not seem to be affected. The first week of club nights since the split saw most students attend the same nights as last term.

Tuesday’s student night at Camera, which is still run by Varsity Events, reportedly saw 900 students through the door and, according to the management, is the maximum they can realistically process in a night.

A spokesperson for Camera stated, “We are not concerned in the slightest for our business.” Commenting on the legal disagreement, they added, “I did not think there was a split in Varsity rather than the departure of a disgruntled employee.

“We value integrity, trust, reputation and consistency and on this basis we would not consider working with the new company at Camera.”

Camera’s new Tuesday night competition, Beta House at Carbon, so far seems not to have posed a significant threat to Camera’s popularity.

Although Toby Beers Baker declared that “the night was cool and had almost 300 through the doors”, students who attended the opening night at Carbon gave Cherwell a less positive picture. Sean Paul, a Univ second year, told Cherwell, “It was pants”, adding,“When I was there it seemed virtually empty.” 

However, Tom Cole, history student and Univ Shuffle Nights rep defended Baker’s events, commenting, “Britain may have been defeated at Normandy, but Fubar @ Lava Ignite will be Shuffle Nights’ D-Day landing.”

Wednesday night at Lava Ignite was indeed a more successful night for Shuffle. Sources reporting that it was “as packed as ever” while Varsity’s new alternative Wednesday night at Lola Lo attracted a maximum of 200 visitors.

For those with an interest in astronomy, the Department of Physics is hosting ‘Stargazing Oxford’, a free public event which will take place on Saturday the 21st (2pm-10pm).

The event will feature the chance to handle meteorites, telescopes to view the night sky, an inflatable planetarium, models of tomorrow’s giant telescopes, and even DIY astronomy: visitors will make their own telescopes and spectrographs out of cereal boxes and cardboard.

Astrophysicists from Oxford University will also be on hand to answer questions and to give short talks on the latest research on outer space – and to take on local amateur astronomers in a battle of wits called ‘universe-ity challenge.’

Dr Philip Marshall, who organised the event, is very excited to invite the public into his department and share his love of all things Space-related. He said, “we all pay taxes to fund places like Oxford University, and one of the things we get in return are: discoveries. Pure human achievement, stuff that all of us can celebrate.”

With the death of a prominent Oxford physics professor last week, the event has also taken on a new significance. Marshall says the department is thinking of it “as a tribute, to our colleague and friend Steve Rawlings. He’d have loved to have been there to join in the fun, and perhaps more than any of us he knew how to think big.”

The Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies has proposed a new course in Jewish leadership.

The program would involve a year studying Jewish Studies in Oxford, equivalent to a masters course, followed by a year of leadership studies at the Said Business school.

Part of the proposal includes offering five to ten students from around the world a full scholarship to study the new course.

Centre President David Ariel described this Global Jewish Leadership Scholars Programme as the ‘Rhodes scholarship for the Jewish world.’ Ariel added, ‘There would also be an option for those already working in Jewish communities. They could take the course on a part-time basis, doing modules in leadership from Said and in Jewish studies from us.’

If the proposal is successful it would be the first degree level course of this type in Britain. Ariel hopes to launch the scheme by 2014 and the scholarship is projected to cost around £500,000 annually.

The centre currently offers an MSt in Jewish Studies.

 

A 23 year old man was assaulted in the Cowley area on Monday evening by a white teenager wielding a baseball bat.

The victim was walking along the footpath between Barracks Lane and Marsh Road just before 6pm when he was hit from behind by the perpetrator. The youth, described as about 16 years old, 5ft 7ins, and well built, struck the man in the back of his thigh with a baseball bat before leaving the area with two other young men. All three then walked in the direction of Marsh Road.

The culprit was wearing a white top with a black hoodie over the top and one of his companions was described as black, around 14-years-old, 5ft 3ins, and well built. He was wearing a dark woollen hat, a dark jacket, and a purple school uniform.

The victim did not require hospitalisation for his injuries although according to police he was left with, “a bruise and a lump on his thigh”.

Police have opened an investigation into the assault and have appealed for any witnesses who may have seen “a group of boys carrying a bat in the area on Monday evening”.

Oxford Spires Academy, a secondary school located just off Barracks Lane, confirmed to Cherwell that their pupils wear purple uniforms. Headmistress Susan Croft stated, “We are currently doing some investigating as to who potentially saw anything related to the incident.”

One local resident, James Styring, told Cherwell that although he hadn’t ever been a victim himself, he did know a secondary school student who was mugged recently for his phone and, in a separate incident, threatened by three young men with knives.

He added, “I think these kind of youths are less of a problem for older adults, but for teenagers and younger people, who are more likely to be targeted, they can be very intimidating.”

Students seem not to share this concern however, with one second year who lives near the Regal commenting, “Generally there are no problems with local residents other than the occasional, and probably well founded, noise complaint. I’ve only felt intimidated once when my friends and I were approached by a guy on the way home but there was no real incident.”

An Oxford tutor was nominated this week for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the most coveted British award for poetry.

Bernard O’Donoghue, a tutor of English at Wadham, was nominated for ‘Farmers Cross’, a collection of poems dealing with the themes of exile, loss and mythology in modern-day Britain.

The T. S. Eliot Prize has been awarded annually since 1993 by the UK Poetry Book Society to “the best collection of new verse in English first published in the UK or the Republic of Ireland”.

Vice President of the Oxford University Poetry Society Toby Lloyd, when asked about the poet’s nomination, highlighted the importance of the award, as well as the importance of O’Donoghue to Oxford’s poetry scene:

“In terms of how he’s viewed in the poetic community, he’s a pretty big deal. Outside of Geoffrey Hill I’d say he’s certainly the most prominent poet currently affiliated with Oxford”, he said. “He’s been nominated twice now for the T. S. Eliot prize, which is sort of like the Booker Prize for poetry”.

O’Donoghue, a former undergraduate at Lincoln College, emigrated from Ireland to England at the age of 16. His career in poetry began in 1987 with the publication of his first collection, ‘Poaching Rights’. The nomination for the T. S. Eliot prize is the latest accolade in a distinguished career, which has already seen O’Donoghue win the Whitbread (now Costa) Book Award, for ‘Gunpowder’, in 1995.

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, issued a global day of darkness on Wednesday, shutting down the digital encyclopaedia for twenty four hours.

The blackout was a protest at Internet anti-piracy laws which have been proposed by the US Congress. Visitors to the website were unable to access articles and were instead presented with a letter urging them to protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA).

The blackout is cited on the Wikipedia website as having two purposes: to raise public awareness of SOPA and PIPA, and to encourage people to share their views with their representatives. Wales claims that if these bills are passed they will “endanger free speech and set a frightening precedent of internet censorship for the world.”

Oxford students were confronted with the daunting prospect of surviving the day without access to 3.8 million freely available articles. Some teetered on the brink of despair. Isra Hale, a first year medic at St Anne’s, stated, “I really needed them today, I feel disowned and disheartened. It’s such an essential component of my academic life.”

Michael Connolly, a first year chemist, commented, ‘I suppose the cause is good and this is an effective way to make the US government listen. But I really need to know what a peroxodisulphate anion is for my prelabs tomorrow.” Another first year, Xin Fan, expressed agreement. “I think Jimmy Wales gravely underestimates how difficult it is to throw together an unrealistically and suspiciously cogent essay using only YouTube clips of children’s history documentaries and the snippet view on Googlebooks.”

Other students adopted a more make-do spirit. “I get that it’s annoying; we all use Wikipedia,” commented Jasmine Krishnamurthy-Spencer, “but at the end of the day we should probably have a wider resort of websites.”

The prospect of both bills becoming law has caused widespread anxiety. Oscar Boyd, first year geographer, said, “Once the bills are passed they can shut down websites – completely black them out – meaning that they will never appear on search results.” Claire Gianotti, an American visiting student, voiced similar concerns. “I’d be worried if the American Congress enacted legislation that restricted our use of Wikipedia.”

Come Thursday, students were relieved to find the website up and running again. Jasmine remarked, !It really makes you appreciate how much we use and depend on it.! Her friend, Toby Huelin, added, “I might donate now it’s come back.”

The Oxford Women’s Open, a debating competition for women only, is set to be held this weekend for the third year running.

The conveners of the Open feel that ‘the top levels of debating simply do not bear out the kind of gender parity that IONA should be seeing after decades of female involvement’.

Ania Dulnik, President of Oxford Women in Politics, explained that they give money to the Oxford Women’s Open because “it runs consistent with our values in that it empowers young women to challenge themselves in a particularly demanding field.”

However the event is not without controversy, with some male members of the university labeling it “divisive.”

Some male students expressed the opinion that “gender specific events exacerbate a divide more than they close the gap” and that “integration, not exclusion, ought to be the priority.”

One student stated, “The unavoidable suspicion is that one only avoids competition when one can’t compete.”

Alex Body, a third year classicist, disagreed. He said that “if women are under-represented or under-achieve in debating, positive measures should be taken to help them,” and added, “if an event like this will have a positive effect on female participation in debating, then it has my vote!”

Susie Deedigan, a second year historian, said that she thought that the competition “could have the potential to seem divisive to some people in the same way as, for example, female-only careers events; however because there is a smaller representation of women in debating, it is important to hold women’s only events.”

The competition also has strong support from Ben Woolgar, a third year PPEist from Balliol, who was recently crowned ‘Best Speaker’ at the World University Debating Championships in Manila. He stated that the Women’s Open “is certainly a brilliant idea.”

Woolgar expressed that the problem of female representation ‘is less bad now than it was three years ago when I started debating at the university” thanks, in part, to the Women’s Open. He also pointed to Australia as a leading example of integrated debating, having had affirmative action requirements and Women’s Officers in all its major debating societies “for generations.” They consequently produce “a much larger number of successful female debaters.”

Josephine Anselin, a fourth year Engineering student at St Hilda’s, is preparing to compete in Morocco’s “Marathon des Sables,” the self-proclaimed “toughest footrace on Earth,” in which participants will run six marathons in six days.

The annual event, which welcomes participants to its webpage with the line, “Welcome to the world of lunatics and masochists,” began in 1986, and has since witnessed the deaths of two competitors.

The gruelling ultra-marathon will see Anselin run 151 miles, completing an average of one marathon per day. In addition, she will carry all food supplies and a sleeping bag on her back, in temperatures of up to 50°C.

When asked why she wished to participate in such a race, Anselin explained that she has “always been a fan of cross country,” and has been “running seriously since the age of eighteen.” She described the completion of her first marathon, when she was sixteen years old, as aged 16, as “just for fun.”

Anselin claims to have drawn her inspiration to take part in the “Marathon des Sables” from “a close friend who completed it on ten occasions, and won it three times.” She added that the stories she heard about the event “played a large part” in her motivation.

She explained that taking on the ultra-marathon was “mainly as a personal challenge,” but added that she felt it “would be wrong to complete the event without taking the opportunity to contribute to charity too.” She has chosen to run for Médecins San Frontières, a medical charity based in her native France, which she described as an “international, independent, humanitarian organisation that delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, healthcare exclusion and natural or man-made disasters.”

Due to the necessity of carrying all supplies, her diet will largely be composed of “different flavoured powders and gels.” The Blues runner commented, “It’s great – you can have porridge flavoured powder for breakfast, which actually tastes like porridge, and you can have a different flavour for every meal.”

She claims she is most scared of “the blisters you can develop whilst out there,” adding, “Your feet don’t get any time to recover so they just get worse.” Nevertheless, she puts this down as another mental challenge to deal with which is “part of the fun.”

Anselin is currently training by running “between 90 and 110 kilometres every week,” and she admits that this has “had an effect” on her social life, adding, “I can’t go out as much anymore!” She explained that she frequently “comes back from a 30K run” at the same time that her friends are “coming back in from a night out.”

Sam Hussain, a fellow fourth year student, commented, “Josephine is ridiculously driven and probably insane; she normally gets back into college from her casual weekly marathon before I’m even out of my pyjamas. This race is for people who find marathons too easy.”

Another friend of Anselin’s, third year student Alice Kent, expressed admiration, describing “the mental strength and independence [required] to sign up for something as daunting as this, without knowing anyone else.”

After Morocco, Anselin plans to “focus on finals exams” and has the aptly named “Diagonale des Fous” (“The madmen’s diagonal”) in her sights; another ultra-marathon, though this time with a gradient as the course leads competitors up and down a mountain side.

A recent posting on a talent agency website indicates that Cambridge will be the subject of a new reality TV show. ‘Best in Cambridge’ will be shot in a similar style to ‘Made in Chelsea’ and ‘The Only Way Is Essex.’

According to the post, the “twenty-somethings of Cambridge” will bring “a unique angle on popular reality shows,’ as the love lives and partying of eight to ten characters will be captured on camera. The characters include an aspiring actor, a nightclub manager, a beauty salon owner and an ‘investment professional.’

Early reports, which had suggested that the characters of the show will be Cambridge students, were not accurate. Josh K Fay, who wrote the original post on the talent agency website, made this clear, saying, ‘There has been an amazing response, but people thought it was about Cambridge University students. It is not.’ Fay explained that the people responsible for the post are simply a group of his Cambridge friends, who think a Cambridge-based reality show is “a great idea,” and they “want someone to back it.’

During the last academic year, a top production company allegedly made initial enquiries to make Oxford the subject of a new reality show. This show was to be based on the lives of Oxford students, and was also to be similar in style to ‘Made in Chelsea’ and TOWIE. According to Victor Greenstreet, former JCR President of St Hughs College, the initial enquiries were made to OUSU but the project was shelved after alleged intervention by university authorities.

Kieran Corcoran, editor of ‘The Tab’ in Cambridge, has spoken out against the concept of a show based in Cambridge, however. He expressed the view that if ‘Best in Cambridge’ is made into a television programme it ‘will establish a caricature we’ll all come to hate – even the people who fit it quite well’.

Corcoron argued that Cambridge already has problems with image misrepresentation, saying that ‘Best in Cambridge’ will only worsen ‘the awful gap between reality and Reality.’

Oxford student Danielle Bunting commented on the proposed reality show, saying that there is no point making another reality show like TOWIE, unless they take advantage of the one thing Cambridge is known for – its university. Vikram Nagarajan agreed, remarking, ‘there seems precious little else there really.’

Jess Gaunt noted that the proposed ‘characters’ such as actor and nightclub manage don’t fit the Cambridge stereotype. She observed, ‘I don’t think even people who watch The Only Way Is Essex would be interested in this.”