On Monday night, the most infamous murder trial of the past decade reached a second verdict. Amanda Knox faces not another 22 years as a murderer behind bars, but a life as the poster child of a flawed justice system. A great theatrical tragedy played to the tune of press sensibilities, public opinion would have been divided regardless of the outcome.

Italian daily Il Foglio very concisely set out the two characters superimposed on the defendant for public consumption. ‘Sexy and ambiguous… there isn’t just one Amanda, but two, or perhaps three, or four’. As prosecution lawyer Giulia Bongiorno describes her, a ‘Venus in fur’. The other: a ‘Jessica Rabbit’ (‘I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way’), sultry on the surface but in reality just ‘a young girl in love’.

Eventually decreed Rabbit rather than Venus, the feeding frenzy has perhaps pilfered attention from the fact that Monday was a very important day for the Italian courts, whose verdict would determine not only Knox and Sollecito’s fates, but whether accusations of impropriety in the police force and incompetence in the forensic lab, where defendants claim DNA samples have been contaminated, are groundless or not. The attention focused thus far on Knox should now shift to the justice system.Amelia Jenne

Think back to the first time you ever talked openly about sex. The first time you ever talked about it without resorting to euphemisms about pencil sharpeners and giggling inarticulately. For most of us brought up in the English education system, this talk happened at primary school. The topic of the class was puberty, and its message was clear: “don’t panic! You’ll get out alive.” 

Fast-forward to a few years later, to PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education) classes in secondary school. I remember the cringe-worthy parade of awkward teachers. We had models of everything – model vaginas, model penises, model uteri with wavy fallopian tubes. We talked about pregnancy and STDs – along with vivid and gory full-picture shots of what happens to the unlucky. We talked, always, about heterosexual sex. The message of these classes was rather less clear: “if you have sex, any of these terrifying things might happen. So, well, good luck with it all.” Were they trying to put us off? Encourage us? Scare us? 

With that, the education system washes its hands of the icky business of talking about sex – but the messages we get about sex, and the real questions that we have about sex, are not at all about the bio-mechanics of sex. The real questions are about people, relationships, power, pleasure: sexual welfare, as well as sexual health. Yet the closest we get to talking about sex openly in a group discussion is a stuttering Biology teacher talking about the uterus. Although we congratulate ourselves on being a sexually liberal society, the real frontiers of liberation haven’t been breached. We have sex with other people, in a social community – liberation means being able to address pertinent issues of sexual welfare openly.

This week, thousands of freshers are arriving at Oxford. We arrive from a diverse range of backgrounds. Many of us have been informed, misinformed, and awkwardly educated about sexual health. Some of us will never have had any sexual health education – from parents or from teachers. Some of us will have had sexual experiences. Many of us will not have. We all converge on the same city, with different expectations and understandings of sexual relationships and sex. It’s an incredibly exciting time – and that’s how it should be. 

We have grown up with a mixed bag of norms about sex and sexual relationships, and with considerable social stigma against addressing them openly. In the UK, the NSPCC found that 1 in 5 boys and 1 in 10 girls think that violence against women is justified if within an intimate relationship. In a recent Home Office survey, 1 out of 3 women said they had experienced what is legally classified as sexual assault while in a relationship, although they may not have all recognised it as such. According to Amnesty International, 34% of people in the UK believe that a woman who has previously flirted with her assailant is responsible for being sexually assaulted. There is still the widely believed, and highly dangerous, myth that men cannot be victims of sexual abuse. 

These opinions and myths may well be voiced – often in the company of those who have experienced sexual abuse. Survivors of abuse don’t have their experiences written on their foreheads. Nor will they say, “Hey, I don’t find your rape joke funny, because I’ve been raped.” Nor should it be up to survivors to fight every sex myth that gets thrown out there. It is up to us as a new, and hopefully liberal, generation to address our own understanding of sexual welfare.

What these sex myths have in common is a misunderstanding of how to respect people’s right to sexual privacy. It’s easy to get this wrong. The question I want to ask is: now that we are aware of these myths, and of the lack of shared understanding about what sex and sexual relationships are meant to look like, where do we go from here?

 We can start with an open discussion of sexual consent. Sexual consent is simple: it’s a positive, informed, conscious indication from both people that they’re happy with what’s going to happen sexually between them. That’s all there is to it – yet it is a highly misunderstood concept. It forms the basis of respecting other people, respecting ourselves, and protecting one another from unintentional sexual harm. Sexual consent means being able to know that the other person is having fun and not being hurt.

At Oxford University, our Common Rooms and our Student Union are there to foster inclusive, diverse and welcoming communities to live in. Corpus Christi JCR, Wadham JCR, and Queen’s JCR will be the first Common Rooms to host Sexual Consent Workshops. Varsity Events, the company that runs student club nights in Oxford, have signed onto the Oxford University Student Union’s Zero Tolerance campaign to make sure that sexual assault and sexual harassment are not tolerated in clubs. The change is happening – the real sexual liberation.

Exactly what kinds of legal changes do those in favour of drug policy reform advocate?

Broadly there are two changes to the law that reformers advocate. Decriminalisation would remove criminal sanctions for possessing small quantities of illegal drugs for personal consumption. Instead of facing prison or a fine and having a criminal record which might harm their employment prospects, drug users might instead face an administrative sanction which involves going before a panel which assesses the individual’s need for treatment, deliucation and refers them on to other services where necessary. Many drug policy reform advocates want to go further and bring the manufacture, distribution and supply of currently illegal drugs under government control and regulation. Advocates of regulation rightly point out that it is rather nonsensical to regard drug use as primarily a health issue that does not require punishment (as decriminalisation implies), while leaving control of manufacture, distribution, supply and marketing in the hands of organised criminals. They argue that safeguarding public health and security, as well as savings in policing and criminal justice, is far more achievable if the government were to take control of the drug market.

Where have drug laws been liberalised recently?

 I dislike the word liberalisation to describe recent drug policy innovations. ‘Liberalisation’ suggests a culture of permissiveness and a lack of appreciation of the dangers of drug use. I see the reforms that have been successful in other countries as much more ‘tough on drugs’ than current policies in Britain, as they are more effectively restricting the ability of drugs to do harm. Portugal have pioneered the decriminalisation approach that I describe above. Switzerland have pioneered heroin-assisted treatment clinics where addicts receive pharmaceutical heroin under medical supervision. Both of these approaches are being adopted elsewherein Europe, and decriminalisation is becoming fairly widespread in Latin America.

What were the results of more liberal policies in those cases?

In Portugal the surge in drug use that some had predicted did not come to pass. Indeed, numbers in treatment doubled, injecting drug use reduced substantially, transmission of HIV in drug users dropped, and the prison population reduced by one sixth. In Switzerland, and all other countries where heroin-assisted treatment has been trialled, the individuals receiving heroin in clinics have seen great health benefits, massively reduced their use of street heroin, the amount of crime they commit and the funding they provide to organised crime. The reforms in both Portugal and Switzerland have proved very popular with the public and politicians too.

How likely is reform in the UK within the foreseeable future?

The Liberal Democrats have just adopted as policy a commitment to an independent review of current policy and a consideration of the decriminalisation and legal regulation alternatives. I hope that our coalition partners will recognise that we can’t afford to persist with very expensive policies which are not working, and that this review is urgently necessary. Growing numbers of important British and international figures have called for reform in recent years, but seemingly not yet enough to blow away the political cowardice that still holds back those with the power to make things happen.

Each summer Oxford students, after enduring a soporiphic hibernation period amongst our dear dreaming spires (otherwise known as the academic year), burst forth to wreak havoc on the wide and exciting world, and it is the duty of Cherwell to chart, at the beginning of Michaelmas term, the various misguided paths our readers take year after year. In the optimistic days of the20s, free of politically correct inhibitions and fears of appearing overly bourgeois, one writer waxed lyrical of his experiences on ‘the romantic streets of Sevilla, on the borders of enchanted Italian lakes, on the Alps, even in the streets of Lyons at four in the morning, when moments of bliss or preoccupation have been suddenly shattered by the sound of a blatant Anglo-Saxon ‘Cheerio”.

By 1969 the NUS was being lauded by Cherwell for its travel scheme, which made summer vacations of all manners both affordable and easy to organise. We excitedly heralded the option of ‘£55 for 3 weeks in the Soviet Union with everything paid for except your vodka & cigarettes’. Between Ryanair, Malia and Ouzo, precious little seems to have changed in the desires of the travelling student.

A drink and a smoke have always been top priorities for Oxonians, with our purpotedly secret, reputedly hedonistic dining societies often cropping up in the news in less than favourable circumstances. In 1982, we told you how ‘members of an elitist university dining club, the Assassins, caused £560 worth of damage to a Thame restaurant, telling police it was part of a good night’s fun’. A similar incident in 1987 may come to mind.

I must warn you, don’t think you’re free from the clutches of the University Proctors, even when the sun comes out for the summer. After the 1967 summer of love we reported how, ‘in a massive purge on drug-taking, the Proctors swooped during the vacation on seven first year undergraduates. Six students, including two St. Hughs girls, have been rusticated for a year. The seventh has left for good’.

Scandal continued that summer with OUDS accepting the invitation for an all expenses paid VIP performance tour courtesy of the Greek military junta. After student outrage surfaced, one young thesp retorted, ‘We are artists, not politicians. We just wanted to put on a good show’.

Week after week, year after year, Cherwell has brought you the best on ‘theatre, music, Union, sport & all the other features’. We start the new academic year in high spirits. We’re still the same old Cherwell, and this is the same old Oxford.

The rich, famous, interesting and powerful contact Cherwell all the time, desperate to grace our pages with their presence. Well, that’s not strictly true. From time to time our vacation bombardment of various PR firms does pay off, but there are still some weeks where you end up chatting to a retired politician, sitting up self consciously straight whilst inwardly cringing, and rather like a bad first date wishing there was someone sparkly and dynamic in front of you.

So it was a rather pleasant surprise to get an email from Mansfield College asking to set up an interview. Baroness Helena Kennedy, QC, is technically an Oxford newbie – she asks me about “noughth week” and “plodge” – but she’s definitely not out of her depth.

Kennedy is an immensely impressive woman: it’s hard to believe one person can be so active in so many areas of public life. Human rights lawyer. Labour Peer. Chair of the Power Commission and Charter 88. Advisor to the World Bank Institute, chair and patron of dozens of charities (including her own), current affairs broadcaster – it goes on. Just reading her CV makes me feel tired.

Cross examining a QC is a daunting prospect. As is meeting a college Principal. Yet Kennedy is surprisingly easy to talk to – I’m immediately struck by how human she is. Her strong Glasgow accent and warm, direct gaze usher me straight from the office to the Principal’s lodgings for a cup of tea; she rather naturally takes over the conversation with the air of those who are used to their own authority.

‘I don’t think it’s a secret that Mansfield approached me for the position of Principal. It’s not the first time Oxbridge colleges have asked me to come on board but it is the first time it has fitted with the other parts of my life. I think there is a tide which is turning in the right direction and that’s why it is good for me to be here now.”

It’s odd to see someone usually pictured behind podiums or commanding Parliament busying herself around the kitchen in such a normal way. The beautiful house is still pretty bare, with cardboard moving boxes lining the walls. It has an air of expectancy. Why is she here? The freak October sunshine pours into the near empty room; Kennedy’s lime green dress seems suitably vibrant. It’s autumn, but it feels like spring – and at the start of the academic year, maybe it’s a pathetic fallacy. Kennedy certainly thinks so. “There’s a different cohort of people coming to be heads of house at Oxford. People like Will Hutton at Hertford, Hermione Lee, Mark Damazer – it’s a rather interesting spectrum of people.

‘Tim Gardam at St Anne’s was the first. This is a new generation, with very different views and experiences of things than the last generation of Principals, perhaps.”

The higher education sector doesn’t seem to me to be the rosiest place to be at the moment. But the smoothness of her voice, disciplined by years spent at the bar and with the BBC, has a self-assured tone, and I’m inclined to trust her. She says she sees herself as part of the early seventies generation – the original student activists. “Well, we’re not radicals. Maybe every so often there are always new waves, but I do think my appointment is indicative of change already happening.”

Kennedy, rather refreshingly, doesn’t downplay her achievement. She’s articulate and direct. “It’s important to feel OK about the person who looks back at you in the mirror,” she says, matter of factly. “Because of that, I’m a person who has been at the forefront of quite a lot of change and challenges to institutions.”

As a member of the House of Lords and QC you could say she’s definitely part of the system – but she’s not afraid of dissent. Kennedy has voted against her party more than any other Labour Peer; more than once she describes herself as doing ‘battle’ with government.

‘I’m afraid I wear it as a badge of honour. I know I was put into the House of Lords because I’m a human rights lawyer. One of them said to me, ‘we like your brand’, and I wanted to throw up on the carpet.

‘They liked my profile, the fact that I champion the disadvantaged. They wanted to harness that, but I couldn’t not vote against doing away with trial by jury, extending detentions without trial, all the civil liberties Blunkett was so happy to sign away.” She says that Mansfield, traditionally a college of nonconformists and dissenters, appealed for that very reason.

Kennedy does seem happy to be here. This is a woman who has a tendency to achieve what she sets her mind to; does she have an Oxford agenda?

Kennedy smiles wryly. Her chunky bangles clink as she puts her elbows on the table. “I like outcomes. This could be a challenge. I find that there’s something very satisfactory about completion – as a trial lawyer, that’s getting the verdict you fight for. When I chaired the Human Genetics Commission and the British Council I learned that it’s pointless sitting back. I brace myself.

‘The core of my life is about justice. Justice and law. I’ve never had a narrow view of what that means – you can only talk about legal justice if you have a strong sense of social justice too. You can’t deliver one without contemplation of the other. I’ve always done other things to make me a better lawyer.

‘It was education that changed my own life. The Helena Kennedy Foundation tries, I mean really tries, to open up education again for people who have been failed by the education system or their personal circumstances… And I think places like this, who do so much for access and outreach work, deserve advocates too.”

Kennedy has so much energy the space around her is electric; it’s exciting to imagine the effect she could have here, revitalising a student body jaded by cuts and fees and a government which ignores us.

She once said that voting is pointless; she tells me that no government will satisfy people. Yet Kennedy’s confidence in her ability to work within the system’s limits seems inexhaustible. She’s a positive person.

‘Yes, I am actually, that’s true. It’s other people. I see so much good stuff.” Even in court? In rape and unlawful detainment and terrorism cases? “Yes. I’m always amazed by the emotional resources of the people I meet, the people I defend.”

She speaks of a new wave at Oxford, and the metaphor is appropriate. I can’t imagine anyone more capable at the helm of a college; it’s a dark sea, but if anyone can navigate it, she can.