Tabassum Rasheed, PPE, St John’s

‘The JCR has more resources at its disposal’

Yes. Obvious as this may seem, and hard as it may be to take from a St John’s student, there’s no denying that, all other things equal, having a rich JCR makes a huge difference to my life. There’s a difference here of course, between college and JCR. Whether it’s the annual book grant available for all students, or the £3.50 formal halls, having a rich college definitely makes a big impact upon my life. I don’t have to deal with the real world for that little bit longer – the security net provided by the college’s coffers is in general a weight off my shoulders. Having a rich JCR, though, makes every day that little bit brighter, because it’s spent on the members who make it up.

The annual budget covers subsidies for punting, finances a 200+ DVD collections for JCR members, and even provides for a college tv station, complete with broadcasting camera and studio lights. Every term in fifth week, the JCR get together to have cake and desserts to get over those blues; we’re in the process of buying a college tortoise; there was a subsidised trip to Amsterdam last summer and plans for Prague in the coming year. Of course the freebies are welcomed gifts, but, more importantly, it brings the members of the JCR together. The JCR budget isn’t spent on one or two people, it’s there to ensure we have fun as a college, have access to a strong welfare team, and, provide us with opportunities to try new and exciting things, from film-editing to tortoise-keeping. There’s also a lifesize cardboard cutout of Sarah Michelle Gellar, which I’m sure will add value to any student’s life.

What makes a real difference though, is having that money when it comes to financial motions regarding charities. Each year, the JCR donate thousands of pounds to charity, all motions put forward and debated by the members of the JCR, who set it aside from the budget. We may not have as big an Entz budget as other colleges, but we can make sizeable donations to worthwhile causes, and, yes, have fun whilst doing so.

It may be true that there are JCRs who manage to be happy and self-sufficient without these goodies. And it may be true that money isn’t necessary to having a JCR that’s close-knit. But if you’re really sitting there thinking it makes no difference, then I’m sorry you go to such an impoverished college. Money doesn’t define a JCR, by any means, but it certainly makes it a damn sight better.

James Pickering, ex-JCR treasurer, Oriel

‘It’s not how much the JCR budget is but how you spend it which counts’

Reading the Cherwell’s article on JCR wealth last week, one might be forgiven for being shocked to see the huge discrepancies that exist across colleges. Certainly at Oriel, where we have often considered ourselves rather well-off as a JCR, many students expressed vocal surprise that our JCR budget was so small in comparison to others’ that Hertford’s entz budget alone dwarfed it. But with that shock came a recurring comment: “What on earth do they spend it all on?!” And this is quite understandable, given that it seems many JCRs are operating in accordance with a policy which just isn’t true, namely that ‘money buys happiness’.

Every college will have certain crucial needs which need to be tackled by college and JCR budgets before anything else – welfare being a key one. So once these have been tackled, we are left to assess what is done with any surplus left over from the essentials. The great problem faced by a JCR with any amount of money going spare is that interest groups within their open meetings will want to glean off substantial portions of this wealth for what are often very specific pursuits which affect only a small number of the student body. Such pork-barrelling essentially detracts from the remit of a JCR – that it is meant to represent and support all of its students – and tends to indentify the JCR as capable of fulfilling this remit only in so far as it has the money to do so.

However, a JCR is not just some pseudo-governmental gravy train. Considering that JCRs comprise some of the most dedicated, passionate, and downright friendly students in a college, if you take away the distraction of money then you have a team of individuals who, bending to the democratic will of a college’s students, can be put to surprisingly creative use. Given the variety of tastes and interests of students (not everyone recognises the delights of a night at Park End), the financial muscle of a college or JCR will almost certainly have no correlation to how much fun individuals actually have in college. Bearing this in mind, huge budgets that throw thousands of pounds at club tickets, shop discounts, charities and subscriptions will often fail to have a lasting effect on students’ enjoyment. Think about what we, as students, really remember about our time at Oxford: be it punting, formal dinners, garden parties, crew dates, inter-college exchanges, sporting endeavours, or even setting up a club to celebrate your favourite all-singing American television programme. In the end, the willingness of individuals to participate and use the intelligence we are supposedly blessed with is what makes the Oxford experience truly worth having. This doesn’t need huge financial resources to achieve, just a little college spirit.

News of these new brain boosting substances first hit Oxford about a year ago, but all has remained mysteriously quiet since. However, in the aftermath of the recent Nature debate which brought to light that 16% of American college students were regularly using cognitive enhancers, universities across the UK will soon have to get serious on the smart-pills debate.

‘The substances facilitate a pinched, unromantic, grindingly efficient form of productivity’

Students are turning to these substances in preference to the traditional stimulants of coffee and cigarettes to help them work harder, meet deadlines, and concentrate in exams. They don’t inspire new, original ideas. Rather, they facilitate a pinched, unromantic, grindingly efficient form of productivity. But what are the offending articles?

Most notorious is Ritalin, a stimulant drug introduced in 1956 for the treatment of attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Ritalin’s less infamous accomplices are Modafinil (a drug used to treat the sleep disorder narcolepsy), Donepezil (used to treat dementia) and Amphetamines. The most attractive aspect of drugs like Ritalin and Modafinil is that they seem to have no addictive potential.

‘Oxford students are already devouring instant-coffee granules off tea spoons in order to bypass the time-wasting water boiling stage’

If this study aid was endorsed by universities, it would probably spread like wildfire, particularly in an environment like Oxford where students are already devouring instant-coffee granules off tea spoons in order to bypass the time-wasting water boiling stage.

So why not just stock up on these pills? Well, coercion might be one argument against; if a significant number of Oxford students start ‘using’, then the rest might be simply coerced into popping pills in order to stay on top. There’s also the linked question of disparity in society and the fact that only wealthy people would be able to regularly afford the drugs. Also, what’s the difference between this and sport, where the use of performance enhancing drugs is considered grossly unfair in such a competitive environment? Mental activities are clearly competitive too.

Ethical considerations aside, I would prefer to wait and see how the long-term effects really pan out for the student guinea pigs. I also quite like the taste of Kenco medium roast, and feel that water certainly improves it.

Why is an inquiry happening now?

The Chilcot inquiry is the fifth inquiry into the Iraq war. There were two inquiries by parliamentary Select Committees in 2003 – the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee and the joint Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee. There was also a judicial inquiry by a law lord, Lord Hutton, in January 2004, into the circumstances surrounding the apparent suicide of a scientific official and expert on weapons of mass destruction, Dr. David Kelly. It concluded that the Blair government could not be blamed for Dr. Kelly’s death, and that, contrary to allegations on the BBC, it had not knowingly exaggerated published assessments of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

Then there was a five-member inquiry in July 2004, chaired by Lord Butler, a former Cabinet Secretary, and former Master of University College, Oxford, into the role of intelligence concerning Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, an issue which played a key part in the British government’s decision to join the American-led invasion. It concluded that, although British intelligence officials believed that Saddam possessed chemical and biological weapon capacity and was working towards a nuclear weapon, nevertheless, more weight was placed on the intelligence than it was able to bear’.

The Chilcot inquiry was set up by Gordon Brown in June 2009 following pressure from critics of the war. There was a similar inquiry after the Falklands war in 1982, chaired by Lord Franks, a former Ambassador to the United States and Provost of Worcester College, Oxford.

What is the inquiry’s remit?

Its remit is to establish as accurately as possible, what happened and to identify the lessons that can be learned. By contrast with previous inquiries into the Iraq war, Chilcot is intended to be comprehensive, and Sir John was allowed to write its broad terms of reference.

When will the report be published?

The inquiry will come to a temporary halt at the end of March to avoid interfering with the general election. It proposes to report at the end of the year though some have suggested that the report may be delayed until 2011.

What did Tony Blair’s testimony reveal ?

Tony Blair had to deal with the following charges:

First, that he deceived Parliament and his colleagues, by agreeing with President Bush at Crawford, Texas, in April 2002, to deal with Saddam one way or another. Blair replied that there was no commitment to war, and that Saddam could have avoided war by disarming.

Second, an issue considered by the Butler inquiry, Blair was accused of having have made the evidence as to weapons of mass destruction appear firmer than it actually was. He appeared to accept that the evidence was not as firm as he had suggested.

Third, he is accused of having ignored the widely held view held that the war was illegal in international law, unless a second UN resolution was achieved. He replied that the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, had given it as his opinion that the war was legal even without a second UN resolution.

Fourth – and this too was an issue examined by the Butler inquiry – he is accused of having subverted the principles and practice of Cabinet government, in order to secure support for the war. Blair denied this and said that the Cabinet had discussed the issues involved with a full and free exchange of views on a number of occasions.

Finally, Blair is accused of having failed fully to equip the troops and to have done insufficient planning for the post war situation in Iraq. This, some argue, is why post-war reconstruction has proved so difficult. Blair insisted that the difficulties of the occupation were due to terrorists from Iran and al-Qaeda, but he also implied that the Americans were in part responsible for the failure of post-war planning.

Could the inquiry result in any prosecutions?

No. The inquiry is in no sense a tribunal nor a court. Indeed, Sir John Chilcot was careful to insist before Tony Blair appeared for questioning on 29th January that the former prime minister was not on trial. None of the inquiry team are legally qualified, nor are witnesses provided with legal representation, nor are they under oath. Nevertheless, there is an undoubted public perception that the Blair government, and Blair, in particular, are in the dock.

Vernon Bogdanor is a Professor of Politics and Government at Brasenose.

Sitting in the Trinity SCR overlooking a snowy Oxford, speaking to a man who edited The Times for a decade and now edits the Times Literary Supplement (TLS), I wasn’t expecting to hear the phrase ‘Wham bam, thank you ma’am’. But hear it I did – it was one of the many animated phrases Peter Stothard used to describe his experience of online journalism. This delightful term (and I speak entirely without sarcasm) came up relating to Stothard’s worries that in recent years, websites have ‘taken a hammer to writing which could have been done more carefully than it was’, a trend about which he was ‘quite concerned’.
However, his perspective is changing; ‘old-line papers are getting to grips with this pretty well these days’, he argues, looking to improvements in technology as well as a familiarity with the medium as possible reasons.

‘In terms of speed, online will always win’

This enthusiasm is peppered by an apparent dubiousness. While conceding that, ‘in terms of speed, online will always win’, he stresses that the most important aspect of journalism remains, ‘crafting a story about how and why something happens’. Perhaps unsurprisingly for the editor of the TLS, this seems to be intensely important to him. A good journalist is someone ‘able to sift information – to work out who is telling the truth’ and to make a story out of it.

This view of journalism is part of why he believes that online journalism will not be the death of the kind of work that they do at the TLS. The internet only means that ‘the raw material of journalism is available to more people than just journalists’. However, that doesn’t mean that ‘understanding it, crafting the story, putting it in any kind of context or making it in any way explicable is any less of a duty and a task and trade’.

What about paying for online content? As Stothard loyally notes, the company he works for ‘has put a lot of effort into it happening for The Times and The Sunday Times’. Although he seems to recognise the controversy of the issue, he is fairly sure that it should be regarded as a ‘positive thought’ – and should be pursued.

And given that his boss is Rupert Murdoch, it’s perhaps surprising that this doesn’t seem to emerge out of company loyalty – his allegiance to this side of the debate seems to come more from his own experience than anything else. Despite his argument that, ‘journalist training is fantastic for considering the audience’, he looks at the whole argument from a journalist’s mind, and it’s a refreshing perspective.

‘People are prepared to pay for cups of coffee, and cocktails, and almost everything – except information’

He sees what he refers to as a ‘terrible disease’ in society at the moment; ‘people are prepared to pay for cups of coffee, and cocktails, and almost everything – except information’. This, he argues, is the central issue surrounding the future of journalism, and the impact of the internet; as he phrases it, ‘payment is the point’. ‘The work’ he points out, ‘will only be put in if there is some kind of reward for it’, and this trend will continue unless they establish a method of workable financial incentives.

Rather than seeing the internet as the death of professional journalism, he argues the opposite; ‘the more nonsense that is crashing around on the blogosphere, the greater the need for someone to give you some sort of order and tell you what’s true and what isn’t.’

However, a distinction must be made between the work of professional journalists and that of those less established, and thus less qualified to guarantee what he views as the cornerstones of the industry, ‘the ability to shape stories, to tell the difference between truth and lies, and to find things out that people don’t want to, or can’t, tell us’.

Stothard fears that if the situation continues as it is, ‘you’ll only get cheap journalism, which will change the calibre immeasurably’. The whole trend is dangerous, he argues, and it’s a particular shame ‘because it’s not that the nature of journalism is fundamentally changing, it’s just that these things do cost money’.

‘This is not a good time for people who say “we’re going to do it exactly as we’ve always done it”. That is really doomed.’

And it is not just the recession he’s worried about, the issue seems to go deeper than just the ever-cited credit crunch. It is ‘when the advertising comes back’, that Stothard is concerned about. The worry is that, ‘instead of being concentrated on a few institutions, it will be shared between lots of little sites’.
This is when his assessment of the current state of journalism gets a bit scary. This, he says – and I sense a little sympathy in his eyes – ‘could mean the little ones don’t want to hire you, and the big ones don’t have as much money as they used to’. However, he isn’t self satisfied or smug with his lot, he rather recognises the need for media to change its stripes. ‘This is not a good time for people who say “we’re going to do it exactly as we’ve always done it”. That is really doomed.’

He is enthusiastic about the future of the industry in which he has remains very prominent, but also seems to have fond memories of his impressive career, and especially what kicked it all off, Oxford. In fact, it seems to be university which lingers most prominently in his mind. ‘I can remember the years at Oxford – things I read here, people I met here – much more vividly than I could remember my first year as The Times editor.’

And there is an apparent circularity in his career; he has just published his latest work, in which he travels the route of the Spartacus Slave war. In doing so, he writes a book which seems to be an intertwining of history with memoir, and – he tells me excitedly – is full of ‘a whole bunch of characters who turned up along the road; real characters that are living now, and then people like Statius’. I’m not sure who Statius is, but it all sounds fascinating. He tells me that the book is full of ‘stuff that I learnt here in Oxford, often stuff that I hadn’t thought about for many years’ and the enthusiasm which writing the book seems to have ignited in him is similar to that which we have – or at least which we are supposed to have – as students.

‘Beware, what you’re doing now will affect you for the rest of your life’

He is so passionate about Oxford that it even starts to filter through my own cynicism. He later gives me a tour of his old college and it is wonder which seems to infect his tone. He seems keen that we make memories good enough to last. Oxford ‘is going to be driven more heavily into your head than a lot of things that will happen to you’.

Given the pessimism which seems to shroud the real world outside the dreaming spires, it is quite reassuring that he is encouraging us to make the most of our time here.‘Beware’ he says – with a definite seriousness couched in his jokey tone – ‘what you’re doing now will affect you for the rest of your life’.

Peter Stothard’s new novel ‘On the Spartacus Road’ is available now.