These pets are the cats’ meow: Cherwell Pet Show 2023
The pets of Oxford colleges do so much for their stressed students. A friendly tail wag, a lively game of fetch between tutes or even an unexpected rodent present at your accommodation door can bring joy or at least a distraction to our days. It’s time the best and the brightest among these loyal animals get the recognition they deserve. So, in the great Oxford tradition of awards and rankings, Cherwell has created this college pet show to decide once and for all which furry friends and scaly supporters are the most distinguished.
The Oldest
First up is the oldest. As with colleges, a few pets can claim ancient status. The controversy does not stop there though! Toby from Trinity college, officially the oldest at about 100 years old, comes from a college accused of tortoise fraud and theft. In 2004, Balliol’s tortoise, Rosa Luxemburg, disappeared one day, and rumour has it Trinity is to blame! Not only is Toby the Oldest Pet, he and his partner in crime Plum (a spritely 90 year old tortoise) also claim the title of No.1 Reptile Rascals- beware!
Most Vengeful
The Trinity-Balliol controversy is not the sole pet-related college feud. As those who were at Oxford last year will remember, Walter from Exeter and Simpkin IV from Hertford began invading eachothers’ colleges. Prompting Oxfess outrage and a library ban, this event , dubbed ‘the Battle for Radcliffe Square’ has put these two archenemies in the (military) history books. So as not to upset either ferocious feline, Cherwell has jointly awarded them.
Most Inspiring
Fortunately, some Oxonian animals inspire emotions other than anger and over zealous college pride. Some are inspiring, full stop. None more so than St Hilda’s cat, Teabag. She turned up at Hilda’s one cold, rainy night, so small and bedraggled that she looked like a used teabag. After the diligent care of several porters, she began to thrive and has grown into a fine college cat. Her presence and name reminds students and staff that in a loving community they can overcome any difficulty.
Biggest Influencer
Other college pets influence the humans surrounding them in different, perhaps more superficial ways. This is the case of our Biggest Influencer, Tortilla. Star of the University insta and boasting 715 followers on his own insta, the Lincoln College tortoise is truly the Kim Kardashian of college pets. Follow him @tortilla_la_tortuga!
Worst Name
The key to celebrity is a catchy name. Unfortunately the next pet’s name is neither catchy, mnor even accurate to its species. Foxe/Fox from Corpus is not a quick, red mammal, but instead a slow, green reptile. Although the name is likely an allusion to the famous theological author John Foxe or college founder Robert Fox, the name still leads to some confusion.
The Hungriest
Professor Biscuit is rather aptly named, as this rotund cat from St Hughs has been named the Hungriest Pet. Known for eating rats, tuna, Dreamies and a whole host of other treats, Biscuit’s ravenous appetite even prompted the college disciplinary team to send out a warning email to students last Michaelmas.
Oxford Uni Mascot
Like his owner, Vice Chancellor Professor Irene Tracey, Geoffrey Biscuit, received a promotion this year. Rising from Merton college pet to the University office, this 3 year-old golden retriever is a young and lively representative of the ancient university. It should be noted that this category was nearly won by an LMH cat named Benny D after “benedictus benedicat”. Not only does his name allude to the Oxford tradition of formal hall graces, but he is also always sporting subfusc!
The Cutest
Now, we come to one of our most contentious categories. The cutest pet was voted online by hundreds of Oxford students. Although an honrouble mention goes to Mansfield cat Ziggy and his adorable missing teeth, in the end the Johns triplet cats won out. At under a year old, Laud, Baylie and Case are true kittens, with the floof and flair to match.
Best in Show
Finally, the premier award of the show. Although many pets are cute, talented, charismatic and popular, only one can truly be the Best in Show. The only pet to submit a CV (and what a stacked one!) and the winner of a vast majority on our online poll, Aristurtle from Peters stands head and shoulders above the rest, even though she is just a small tortoise. She can jump “really high” for an animal of such short limbs, placed second in the college tortoise race last year as a relative rookie of only thirteen years and as a voracious appetite for lettuce. Other purported accomplishments include an upcoming summer analyst internship at Goldman Sachs, an intimate rendez-vous with Timothée Chalamet and winning the BBC’s ‘500 words’ short story competition.
UCU suspends strike action for 2 weeks following breakthrough in talks
The University and College Union (UCU) has announced that strike action will be paused for two weeks following ‘breakthroughs’ in its negotiations with the Universities and Colleges Employers’ Association (UCEA).
The breakthroughs are said to encompass disputes over pay and pensions. The UCU says it will use the two week pause on strikes to hold “intensive negotiations” and hopefully deliver a final agreement. The decision to suspend the strikes in favour of a “period of calm” is supposed to enable “the most positive environment possible” for the negotiations.
This comes as the UCEA is apparently recommending to its own members that they give it a mandate to end the use of involuntary zero hour contracts. The UCU heralded this as potential progress on “one of the worst forms of insecurity” and a “down payment on real change”.
The UCU acknowledged that members might be wondering if they can trust these developments, but set out to reassure members that “[n]obody at UCU will be fooled” and “[t]his progress is for real and the threat to our employers remains”. The announcement stressed that the aim of the strike action had always been to reach a resolution, and that the UCU did not want members on the picket lines “for a minute longer” than needed.
The UCU stressed that they would resume strike action and be prepared to escalate further if the UCEA did not follow through in the negotiations. On Wednesday, members will be asked to ballot on whether to give the UCU a mandate for another six months in case further action is needed.
VP Women, Ellie Greaves, resigns from Oxford SU
The Oxford University Student Union’s VP Women, Ellie Greaves, has resigned from her role this afternoon. She states that she has done so “to prioritise my health and wellbeing” and will officially leave the post on 17th March.
Following the SU’s reshuffle of sabbatical officer roles last year, the position of VP Women will be replaced with VP Liberation and Equalities next academic year. In Michaelmas 2022, Greaves told Cherwell “I think there’s a risk that the removal of VP Women will send the message that “sexism is solved”, when it really isn’t”.
However, she subsequently issued an apology that her comments in the article contributed to a “bio-essentialist, narrow-minded narrative of what being a woman is”.
In her resignation today, Greaves said: “My time as VP Women has been challenging and I have learnt an incredible amount along the way.” She added, “I hope that we continue to see a culture of respect and kindness grow throughout the Oxford student body … I wish nothing but the best for the entire SU team and for the newly elected officers in their upcoming year.”
Last week, Kennedy Aliu was elected to the new role of VP Liberation and Equalities.
This article will be updated as more information about the resignation of VP Women becomes available.
Review: Play House and Definitely the Bahamas
For the second time in a fortnight, I find myself in the Pilch, sat in the round, looking at a stage littered with random, domestic-feeling clutter. This style of play seems to be in vogue at the moment; and it is not without its merits. The effect of this is to very competently reflect the chaotic and troubled relationship between the two characters in Martin Crimp’s Play House, adapted in this production to be centred around two women.
Play House is divided into several scenes, vignettes of the relationship between the two characters, but it was difficult to see what relation they bore to each other, temporally or emotionally. By the end of the play, the actors were producing something like the requisite emotional pitch, but there was little sense of emotional continuity between the scenes. Indeed, one of the final scenes sees Simona speaking about another relationship, and using it as a vehicle to discuss the problems with her own. This is conveyed skilfully and with a startling intensity by Imogen Boxall, although the key flaw remains that none of these problems have been visible to the audience. Very little reason is given in the performance for the characters behaving the way they do: their motives, if they exist at all, are obscure. Nevertheless, the individual scenes themselves were entertaining and intriguing. Good use was made of the set, and the music helped, on the whole, to create atmosphere and delineate scene changes.
Definitely the Bahamas was, on the other hand, a consistently funny and coherent piece of theatre. Strong character choices were made and committed to by both actors – Susie Weidmann’s Frank in particular was an exemplary exercise in physical acting. Undoubtedly it is a stronger script, and the characters are perhaps more caricatures, but nevertheless both the performances and direction were much stronger in this section of the double-billing. One oddity: it was clear that the in-the-round configuration suited Play House (in which the whole stage was used) much better than Definitely the Bahamas. In order to serve the configuration, the actors repeatedly swapped where they were sitting, but there was no internal logic to these movements. However, against the strength of the performances in this half, this was a minor flaw. Unlike in Play House, where the dynamics and narrative of the relationship were obscure and unexplored, Boxall and Weidmann presented them here clearly and compellingly; and not only that, but also the flaws in their own characters. Particularly lifelike was Boxall’s Milly, whose self-importance and narrow-mindedness visibly drove everything she said, underpinning skilfully the dramatic irony in the text.
The problem of changing from one play to the other, without an interval or blackout, was one Lawrence dealt with very competently, by having her actors alter their costumes and behaviour in muted, coloured lighting, on stage. There is some skill in correctly choosing the moments at which to reveal the mechanics of theatre to an audience, and Lawrence has chosen them well. Watching the actors become the second pair of characters contributed to the force and strength those characters had; there was a sense in which the terms of the performance had been defined. The combination of plays together was interesting too, as was the choice to change the male character in Play House to a female one but maintain the original gender of Frank in Definitely the Bahamas: Lawrence’s intentions here were not entirely clear, as far as they relate to the themes of the texts, though no particular harm was done by this choice. Overall, the plays made an entertaining pair; but my lasting impression is that Definitely the Bahamas was definitely the better of the two.
Students brand SU “completely pointless” after election turnout of just 10%, as £150,000 paid to sabbs
Student voter turnout in the Oxford University Student Union elections last week was just 10%, despite numerous pledges by past and present sabbatical officers to “improve SU engagement”. Similar to previous years, this figure amounts to just 2762 students out of a total student body of 26,000 at Oxford University. So what does the SU actually do for the average Oxford student, and why is there such a significant failure to engage with it?
In a series of polls set up by Cherwell to gauge SU engagement, 69% of the 122 students who responded felt that the SU’s engagement with the student body was either poor or non-existent. A mere 3% voted that it was good, and 28% that it was passable.
With six sabbatical officers, each paid £25,000 a year, pay costs the SU about £150,000.
At present, SU’s primary methods of communication with the student body as a whole are through weekly emails, social media, and four council meetings held each term. However, of the students who engaged with Chewell’s polls, 52% said they immediately delete SU emails. While 45% said they read SU emails occasionally, only 3% of voters said that they read SU news in detail. In addition to this, of 157 voters, 138 claim never to have been to a student council meeting.
One student who participated in the survey told Cherwell that they find the SU “completely pointless, as JCRs fulfil all the functions an SU would in a unitary university.” They raise the question: Is a student union necessary in a collegiate university?
When asked whether people found the SU important in a collegiate University almost 10% of those polled claimed to not know what the Student Union was, and were therefore unable to answer the question. 51% voted that they didn’t, and just 15% agreed that the SU was important in a collegiate university.
Cherwell also polled college JCR presidents, receiving responses from the presidents of Balliol, Brasenose, Exeter, Jesus, Keble, Merton, Oriel, St Catz, St John’s and St Peter’s. 60% of the JCR Presidents who responded to the survey felt they could “definitely” do their duties without SU input. The other 40% voted it was ‘likely’ they could.
One JCR president said, “systemically the SU is pretty useless when it comes to fighting colleges, or pushing the central university to control the colleges more (which in my own opinion is why we have so many of the systemic issues that we have in Oxford).”
Meanwhile, another JCR President told Cherwell: “I’d love for there to be more SU engagement, there’s potential for it to be a really strong student voice, but right now it’s so detached from JCRs that I don’t think it’s representative or useful for most students.”
80% of the JCR President respondents said that the SU engagement with their JCR is ‘poor’.
One JCR president told Cherwell, “The Oxford SU clearly has a massive engagement issue… If all the SU can provide is occasional workshops for JCR Committee members, it’s hard to see how this benefits the whole of the Oxford student body, and justifies paying the sabbs wages.”
JCR presidents, when asked what support they received from the SU, mentioned rent negotiation training, college comparisons, and the option to access more general policy and procedure advice. Yet some JCR presidents told Cherwell that even the rent negotiation workshops were poorly organized. One claimed they were given only 2 hours notice before the workshop took place, characterising this as “negligent organisation”. Some colleges missed the workshop. Another JCR President told Cherwell the rent negotiation training came “a little late” for them as they had already negotiated with college and come to an agreement just as the help had been advertised.
60% of JCR presidents who responded voted that they did not find SU services and communications efficient. The SU writes on its website that they “work closely with JCRs and MCRs across the colleges with lobbying support, training, wellbeing products, and more,” with eight student-led campaigns “fighting to improve [the] student experience and build communities along the way.”
However, when asked how supported they felt by the SU, 98% of the students surveyed by Cherwell said they felt unsupported. The reaining 2% felt somewhat supported.
Despite student dissatisfaction with current SU-JCR relations, 70% of the JCR Presidents who responded voted that they would still prefer to ‘support initiatives for greater SU engagement’ as opposed to the options of disaffiliating the JCR from the SU, or keeping the relationship as is.
Responses among the JCR Presidents about what the SU could do to improve engagement included ideas about improving convenience of the student council; in its current form, it is “too long and feels too ineffective to motivate people to attend.”
Further thoughts focused on “making their presence better known with students,” with one President saying there needs to be “more outreach and visibility on what the SU actually is.” They suggested hosting an introduction to the SU in freshers’ week. However, they added “the JCR communications channel selectively, by picking projects for which engagement is essential. This gives the SU a means of getting to students more efficiently, but only works if it is not overloaded.”
One JCR president feels the SU would benefit from having “a more unified goal each year” as, whilst they recognize that the sabbs and SU are working hard, they feel they may be doing “too many things,” so “it feels like none of them are truly meaningful.” This “creates an environment where students are unsure of what they even do, which drives engagement down.” Another mentions the idea of “more involvement towards common goals that are set out as a whole” to improve SU engagement, and “for them to be more proactive in fighting colleges than the central university.”
When asked for comment on how they could improve engagement, the Sabbatical Officers told Cherwell they would “encourage any student to come along and see first-hand the work that we as a team are doing.” During these student council meetings “student members can come along and ask questions, pass motions and hold sabbatical officers to account.”
Florence and The Machine: Dance Fever Tour Review
Performing in Birmingham on the resumed Dance Fever tour, Florence Welch stopped to address her audience: “I will bet that in here there are probably some chaperones, unwilling partners dragged along to some random concert – and you’re probably thinking, what the hell am I doing here?”. A few people reluctantly cheered, which was met with a wave of laughter around the arena that included Welch herself. “I get it. You’re probably thinking, have a joined a cult? Am I safe? My advice to you is… just let it happen. And remember to do everything I say.”
If being a fan of Florence and the Machine is equivocal to being in a cult, I have probably been indoctrinated for an unhealthy amount of time—despite all signs from the universe which have tried to dissuade me. In 2019, my post GCSE celebrations, which revolved around seeing the band perform at Boardmasters, were compromised by the festival’s cancellation. In November 2022 (my second attempt to see them live) Welch broke her foot whilst performing, an event which is easy to understand once you have had the privilege of witnessing her stage presence. Reluctantly, the tour was postponed until 2023 to give the lead singer time to recover—and I pondered the fact that perhaps it was my fate to never see her perform live.
Walking into the packed venue, the sense of the unreal was definitely about me, heightened by the unearthly chandeliers, draped in cobwebs, which were suspended from the stage’s ceiling. Once the band finished setting up and the harp (an iconic instrument in their discography) was added to the stage, the show truly looked as if it was taking place in a dilapidated mansion. When Welch materialised to greet the screaming crowd, dressed in gorgeous white chiffon with a beaded cape to match, she instantly commanded her stage—the fascinating wraith everyone ventures to the haunted house to catch a glimpse of. The set started off with King, the first single to be released off Dance Fever, and the powerful leading line “I am no mother/ I am no bride/ I am king” reverberated around the arena. The selection of songs included most of Dance Fever—Daffodil and Dream Girl Evil gave Welch the chance to bring to the stage the essence of her latest album, which ruminates on witchy, powerful femininities, self-destruction, and what it means to be addicted to performing. Her movements whilst singing were hypnotic, sometimes using hand and arm movements to command her voice with an air of regal authority, sometimes running around the stage or slithering on the floor. Classic tracks from earlier albums were also graciously performed, such as Dog Days are Over, Kiss with a Fist and Cosmic Love. Throughout Welch’s voice was pristine, spiralling from her with the apparent ease of breathing- singing along at times felt like an offence because all I wanted to do was listen to her.
Attending the concert felt like finding a family, an ethos which Welch stressed throughout as she asked people to hold onto one another for June, dance together for Dog Days and, if you could manage it, pop someone on your shoulders for the closing number Rabbit Heart. This tension between the hyper-social and utter isolation is a key theme across the band’s projects. In High as Hope Welch confesses to “hiding from some vast unnameable fear” through performance; Dance Fever details “crying in the cereal at midnight”, locking yourself in rooms you don’t think you will ever leave, making solitary visits to the hospital. The satisfaction that comes with gathering these moments of despair and turning them into something you can share with others is palpable to anyone that listens to the band’s music, and as the lyrics “if I make it to the stage/ I’ll show you what it means to be spared” rang across the venue I became convinced that this show, this tour, is really about healing, especially in the post-COVID era.
It takes a powerful vulnerability to shoulder the burdens and joys of helping others, through art or any other means. Welch does it beautifully, confessing in her first song “I was never as good as I thought it was/ But I knew how to dress it up”. She stayed true to her words throughout; my highlight of the evening was an understated rendition of Never Let Me Go, an incredibly vocally challenging song from Ceremonials. Welch admitted to avoiding the song for over a decade- because it is so hard to sing, because she was “so young and sad and drunk” when she first wrote it. Releasing it to an adoring crowd was positively therapeutic, I imagine. What I know for sure is that it was a privilege to witness, and the band’s return to touring has been triumphant.
Students raise £9000 for Turkish and Syrian Earthquake relief fund
In response to the ongoing environmental disasters caused by recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, Oxford’s student societies have sought to raise funds for aid and greater general awareness.
The ‘Turkey-Syria Earthquake Bake Sale’, spearheaded by the Oxford University Turkish Society and Oxford Syria Society, was an initiative with mass student participation that raised huge donations in order to help assist the relief efforts. Between the 10th and 13th of February (9 am to 5 pm), in the Radcliffe Square, over £9000 was raised. Further funds have been raised through QR codes displayed on posters, allowing people to directly donate to the AHBAP and White Helmets charities.
Individual colleges, too, have taken independent action to support Turkey and Syria. Initiatives such as pantry fundraising by the Balliol JCR hope to be able to make a meaningful impact for those on the ground.
For those at Oxford, issues concerning the wellbeing of affected students has been recognised by the administrative body of the university. The university’s official email of support illustrated external points of contact for help and guidance, as well as offering internal welfare and counselling services.
Mina Yücelen, an active member of the Oxford University Turkish Society, told Cherwell that she appreciated the email from the university and the support she was getting from tutors. Nonetheless, she wishes that more diverse, proactive and instant access to mental health professionals would be made available to all those who are adversely affected by the earthquakes.
The devastation of the earthquakes in large parts of Turkey and Syria has continued to be felt in the week following their occurrence.
The first, striking with a magnitude of at least 7.8 on the seismic magnitude scale, followed hours later by another of 7.5, are already being considered as some of the most destructive earthquakes of the modern period. The reported death toll has already far exceeded 35,000 and is expected to continue rising amid international rescue efforts.
Recent UNICEF analysis indicates that in Syria alone, the earthquake has affected more than 10.9 million people with as many as 5.3 million people displaced and totalling an estimated 23 million people directly affected.
In an official message sent out by the University of Oxford, the university offered their ‘deepest sympathy’ and the provision of support to any students affected by recent events.