Oxford University Officer Training Corps (OUOTC) have been accused of insensitivity, following their ‘Officers and Zulus’ themed fancy dress party last week.

The themed party concluded a series of training sessions focusing on the military tactics utilised by the British in the 1879 Zulu Wars and was an extension of the ‘military history’ syllabus due to run throughout Hilary term.

The invitation announcing the event stated that “the evening’s aim is to celebrate the martial prowess of both sides in the campaign”.

Yet the event has sparked much controversy within the Oxford University community.

In an email before the party, OUOTC advised attendees, “In order to avoid sullying our good name, please refrain from using body paints (you know what this means in practice).”

One member of Lincoln College was shocked by the party. She stated, “It strikes me that there may be something a teensy bit offensive about a group of future British Army officers (who all happen to be white, by the way) dressing up as a group of colonial invaders and the ‘savages’ they defeated.

“This sort of thing horribly trivialises not only another nation’s culture, but also the oppression and subjugation of that nation as a result of British colonialism.”

Others labelled the theme as ‘lacking in taste’, comparing it to Prince Harry’s infamously ill-chosen Nazi costume. A second-year English student argued, “For cadets to dress up as colonial soldiers, in order to attend a party- it’s just really disrespectful. Of course that’s going to cause offence.”

Attendees defended the party, arguing that it was thematically related to the day’s educational activities.

Patrick Page, a member of OUOTC and student at St Benet’s Hall commented: “I don’t think there is any question that the OTC were celebrating some sort of colonial victory. If it were, I certainly would not have gone.”

Captain Christian San Jose of OUOTC added that the group were interested in examining the Zulu wars from an “Entirely military viewpoint as opposed to political or moral, we were looking at the military tactics used by the British infantry.”

He conceded, “We’re not so naive that we are not aware that there is potential for offence and we made note to cadets that they should exercise restraint and that fancy dress should not emphasise any political undertones.”

“People get offended about all sorts of things”, he added. “There wouldn’t be any point in not holding the evening in case we offended people. I certainly didn’t hear any complaints about it from within the OTC.”

He suggested the possibility that those criticising the party may simply be trying “to get at the OTC” but stated that complaints probably came from people who “weren’t at the evening and had no understanding of what our aims were.” 

A motion has been passed by St John’s College JCR and MCR in favour of adopting a tortoise as a College pet.

Undergraduates are now awaiting final approval from college authorities before purchasing the animal which will inhabit the College gardens and ‘boost the collegiate spirit’.

Commenting on the new addition to St John’s, JCR President Martha MacKenzie commented, “Everyone was very enthusiastic about getting a pet… The MCR went on to pass a motion in favour of a tortoise so it was brought back this week and there was much excitement. The motion passed without any objections and with lots of enthusiasm!”
 
St John’s student Rachel Dedmen stated “We chose a tortoise because they are relatively low maintenance, and could live quite happily in our gardens, with dedicated Tortoise Reps to guard their welfare.”

She added, “The tortoise will only enrich the St John’s experience, and quickly be a source of College pride – taking part in the annual Corpus Tortoise Race – and becoming a figure in St John’s history, (it will outlive all of us).”

Jeremy Evans, also a student at St John’s College stated “I’m fairly neutral to the tortoise”, but commented “The extent to which it would alter my St John’s experience would probably be going to see it once or twice.”

Though funds are yet to be finalised it has been agreed that the start-up expenses, as well as an annual running cost, will be shared between the JCR and the MCR.

It is hoped that the tortoise will help to create closer ties between the JCR and the MCR. 

Funding cuts announced on Monday will slash university budgets by £518m.

The first university budget cuts since Labour came to power in 1997 will see £215m cut from teaching budgets, a real terms cut 1.6%. Capital spending will be reduced by 15% for the academic year 2010/11.

These cuts come at a time when applications for Universities were ‘surging’, stoking fears of vast cuts in student numbers and a hiking of fees in order to balance their budgets.

Already universities are experiencing an unprecedented rise in applications, with some reporting increases of up to 40%. Steve Smith, president of the Vice-Chancellor’s group Universities UK, estimates that some 200,000 people could lose out on place.

Fears about place cuts have led the President of the National Union of Student (NUS) to condemn the announcement.

Wes Streeting argues that the cuts will cause “irreversible damage” to higher education. He stated, “Singling out universities for cuts of this kind seems to me to be an extraordinary act of self harm by the government”.

The vast cuts have also led to fears amongst students about the quality of teaching and fees.

Oxford students have widely condemned the government’s decision to cut the Universities budget with such ferocity.

“The scale of these cuts is bound to have an effect on teaching. Larger tutorials, larger classes and less of them will surely be the result”, Kate Travers commented. “The plans will only serve to blunt nation’s competitive edge in the labour market.”

Camilla Jones, a finalist, commented “access is surely going to be hit by this decision. All the work that Oxford and other universities have done to improve social mobility will be undone. Fees will have to rise considerably to meet this shortfall and will put the poorest off applying.”

With universities receiving their individual budgets in the coming weeks, Oxford will have to brace itself for a huge swathe of cuts. The University already has to provide around 50% of the teaching costs for its students.

The announcement of cuts can only add to fears that there will be a rise in student fees. With student debt already at record highs in the UK, a rise in fees could worsen the situation.

It seems now, almost inevitable that fees will have to rise, and by a large extent. This is especially true if the government want half of the population to meet to attend university, whilst considerably cutting the HE Budget.

This will not only hit price of the education available, it is also bound to negatively impact on subsidies, with many Oxford Colleges heavily subsidising food, rent and accommodation amongst other things.

There are worries that wealthier colleges will be better able to subsidise their students in while students at poorer colleges will be hit harder by the government’s decision.

Last month Cherwell reported on the University’s decision to ban the popular music-sharing website Spotify across college networks.

The company behind Spotify have since said that they will be making efforts to have the ban on the music sharing website lifted.

Spotify commented on the ban, saying, “It’s sad to think of our student friends at Oxford University unable to listen to Spotify whilst on campus.”

“We’ve spoken with the university and are currently discussing how we might reconnect the students with their music. We’re keeping everything crossed!”

The website was initially blocked because of concerns about the amount of bandwidth it took up. Spotify reacted quickly to the news, contacting Dr. Stuart Lee, Director of OUCS, to request a meeting last Monday.

Dr. Lee said that he hoped the situation could be resolved. “If we could do something as we did with Skype then that would be in everyone’s best interest, it would be win-win.”

He maintained that, “…the reason we try to restrict peer-to-peer is that it really does swallow up bandwidth.”

The issue has sparked debate at other universities. A Cambridge College has moved quickly to reassure students that the service will not be banned.

A spokesperson for Newham College said, “Why would anyone ban it? Our policy is to provide an internet service that is closest to students have at home. Of course we monitor for abuse, but we have no plans to ban programs like Spotify which are harmless.”

Oxford University’s ban of Spotify has attracted international interest, with the news being published on SkyNews and The Washington Post.

Oxford City Council has still not reviewed the junction outside the Kings Arms, despite the death of a student there in 2007.

As a result, a motion for road safety outside the Kings Arms has been passed without opposition at this week’s OUSU council. It proposed an urgent review into the safety of the junction, and suggested a pedestrian crossing be installed, as well as road markings for cyclists.

There is currently an online petition for the improvement of road user safety outside the Kings Arms, which has been signed by more than 680 people.
The petition states that “Hundreds of road users every day have to double-guess each others actions and this can be fatal once again if someone is in a rush. The council must drop its excuses and act now.”

The petition proposes an immediate installation of cyclist and pedestrian lights on the junction, as well as a new configuration of traffic lights sequence, which will ensure safety and peace of mind for all road users.

The OUSU motion suggested that the petition should be promoted through local media in order to elicit action from the Council.

It is also stated in the petition that the council spent time discussing with the university representatives ways of improving safety at the junction and decided on creating a space similar to the one in front of the Clarendon Centre, which would be incorporated into a major re-design of Broad Street.

Leah Jesnick, a first-year at St Hugh’s student commented: “My friend almost got run over on that junction. It is very irresponsible of the Council to not have done anything about it.”

Another student said “I always jump the lights in that junction. I know that it is dangerous but otherwise you have to wait for ages to be able to cross.”
Oxford City Council released a statement which read, “Work to look at possible alterations for this junction is ongoing and the council is planning to go to a stakeholder consultation soon on an outline scheme, which includes removing traffic signals.”

“The council has had to take into account Oxford University’s plans for major alterations to the Bodleian New Library on the north side of Broad Street to see how their plans will interact with ours.”

There are also no provisions at the junction to assist people with disabilities.

On Saturday, Oxford played host to one of the 10:23 “mass overdose” protests which took place across the country.

Around 35 people attended the protest in Oxford which was organised to put pressure on Boots pharmacy to withdraw homeopathic products from their shelves. Nationwide, more than 400 people took part in various protests.

At 10:23 exactly, participants “overdosed” by consuming entire bottles of homeopathic medicines. They stated beforehand that they would come to no harm because homeopathic tinctures are simply water, while the pills are just sugar.

A spokesman from the campaign, Martin Robbins, confirmed on February 1st that nobody had been harmed.

He stated that the only damage had been “to their wallets – using homeopathy is a very expensive way of buying sugar.”

Rosie Olliver, a pupil at Oxford High School, organised the Oxford campaign. She commented, “We all hope that Boots will withdraw homeopathy from their shelves, or put up signs saying this is a placebo treatment.”

She continued, “They know it doesn’t work, we know it doesn’t work, they need to stop lying to their customers.”

Boots have been targeted due to the fact that they have admitted that they sell homeopathic remedies because they sell, rather than because they believe they work.

Paul Bennett, professional standards director for Boots, stated to a committee of MPs last Novemeber, “I have no evidence to suggest they are efficacious. It is about consumer choice for us and a large number of our customers believe they are efficacious.”

In an open letter to Boots, the 10:23 campaign asks the store to “do the right thing, and remove this bogus therapy from your shelves.”

As the campaign was aimed at Boots, all the protestors took Boots own-brand homeopathic remedies.

Paula Ross, chief executive of the Society of Homeopaths, took a very negative view of the protest, commenting, “This is an ill-advised publicity stunt in very poor taste, which does nothing to advance the scientific debate about how homeopathy actually works.”

Students have reported delays of up to an hour for the OUSU safety bus.
The bus is run as a joint scheme between Oxford University and Oxford Brookes, with both paying £10,000 a year to subsidise the cost of running the bus.

However, only 30% of the bus’s passengers are University students, the remainder coming from Brookes.

The programme costs around £30-35,000 a years to run. The portion of this not covered by University subsidies is made up from the £1 donations those who travel on the bus are asked to pay, as well as sponsorship from Domino’s pizza and the Oxford University Press. Both companies have advertising on the vehicle. This covers the costs of hiring the buses, insurance and petrol.

Some students phoning the bus helpline have revealed that they been told they will have to wait for between 40 and 60 minutes before the bus can reach them. Reasons for the long waits include the service being short-staffed or in another place at the time of calling.

One Oxford student, who asked not to be named, phoned the safety bus on a Saturday night and was told she would have to wait 40 minutes for the bus.
Her journey from The Regal on Cowley Road to St John’s college would normally take less time to walk than to wait for the bus. “Needless to say,” she told Cherwell, “I went in my skimpy skirt and high heels alone back to St John’s.”

Cherwell phoned the service at 2am on a Monday night. After trying 4 times over the course of a 15 minute period we were told we would have to wait about 40 minutes for the bus to reach us in Cowley.

Katherine Wall, OUSU Vice-President (Women), said that the long waiting times were in part due to a shortage of volunteers, which means that some nights they cannot run both buses which operate as part of the scheme.
There are currently around 90 student volunteers who run the service as drivers and coordinators. Only 3 of these students come from Oxford University. OUSU is currently running a campaign both to increase usage of the bus and to get more University students to volunteer.

The bus can cater for between 300 to 450 students in a week. Its busiest evenings are Monday and Wednesday, as these are clubbing nights for Brookes students.

The long waiting times reported are a concern in a city where crime rates are well above the national average. In 2008/9 rates of violent crimes in Oxford were twice the average in England as a whole (29.9 in Oxford versus a 15.0 average countrywide). 1.3 out of every 1000 Oxford inhabitants are the victims of crimes of a sexual nature compared with only 0.9 in the rest of the country.
The bus has no timetable and will pick people up from anywhere and drop them anywhere within the Oxford ring road.

Lucie Acraman, who now co-ordinates the volunteers for the bus, has been volunteering herself since 2006. She first used the service in her 1st year at Oxford Brookes University.

She said, “I liked the atmosphere on the bus. It was much nicer than taking taxis. I decided to volunteer in my second year to get to know people and give something back.

“My worst experiences on the bus are definitely being mobbed by over 50 drunk students when we pulled up outside a club to pick up a caller. It’s not easy fending off lots of people trying to get on one bus but we obviously couldn’t take everyone in one go,” she said.

“The busiest times of the night are always between 2am and 3am when the clubs close. After 3am we take no more calls but the night doesn’t really finish until 4am when we drop off the last people.

“Most people behave well on the bus but we occasionally have to throw people off if they’re acting unsafely. People aren’t generally sick on the bus itself particularly since we have a policy where we fine people who throw up. Mostly people will stop the bus or use the bag provided.

“We always try to make sure we see people get into their houses. When people are in a bad way we’ve even sometimes had to put them into bed and find a house mate to look after them. We’ve had to take people to hospital a few times before as well – particularly the nights when the clubs run roller discos!”

First year Brasenose lawyer Eilidh Brown said, “I can understand why people at our university don’t want to volunteer. I just don’t think I would have the time.
“The service isn’t as integral to Oxford University students as it is for Brookes’ students. We just don’t live as far away.”

The Safety bus scheme has been running since 2002 and was originally started by Oxford Brookes University. At that time it was the first scheme of its kind in the country but it has now been adopted by several other universities including Southampton, Bradford and Keele. The bus is now run as a joint scheme between the two universities in Oxford.

The Safety bus works every night from 9pm – 3am apart from Sundays when the service stops running at 1am.

Plans for the large-scale redevelopment of Iffley Road Sports Centre have been unveiled by Oxford University this week.
The plans include a new integrated main centre, with a grandstand to house an indoor cricket school, spectator seating, changing rooms and meeting rooms.
The plans, designed by Faulkner Brown Architects, feature extensive re-structuring of the centre, except the swimming pool which will remain unaltered.
An official price tag for the redevelopment has yet to be announced, but it seems likely to exceed £19m, which will not come from central university funds.

Jon Roycroft, Director of Sport at Oxford, announced that the plans would provide “the highest quality indoor sports facilities for the 21st century and accommodate growth for the next fifty years.”

The University will apply for planning permission for the redevelopment in spring 2010.

The City Council has already approved plans for a new tennis centre adjacent to the Iffley Road site.

Plans to redevelop the existing sports centre aim to provide state of the art facilities for over 82 different indoor sports.

Rails will also be installed around the perimeter of the site, replacing the solid timber fence. This would make the historic running track, where Roger Bannister first broke the 4-minute mile barrier, visible to pedestrians on Iffley Road.

Further plans include a renovation of the central building to feature an extended cafe, meeting rooms and offices, fronting onto the running track. A double- and a single-sized hall and a two-storey gym will also be incorporated.
On 28th January, the second and final public consultation was held at the University Rugby Club Pavilion where finalised plans for the Sports Complex were revealed.

This follows the first public consultation held on 19th November of last year.
Most of the Iffley Road facilities date from between 1950 and 1972, and are becoming outdated and too small.

The Sports Centre is currently working at capacity and lacks sufficient access for disabled users.

An estimated 75% of Oxford students participate in sports and the plans intend to provide students with top class facilities.

Plans for the redevelopment had been discussed in 2006, where local residents raised concerns about Iffley’s light pollution and the threat of higher traffic levels if redevelopment occurred.

The University decided against the possibility of moving the Sports Complex away from Iffley. But it intends to engage in community-integrating schemes to benefit local residents.

The University plans to offer membership of the gym and membership of some large sports clubs, such as fencing and judo, to the local community, extending the Complex’s outreach.

Jon Roycroft, Director of Sport at Oxford, announced that the plans would provide “the highest quality indoor sports facilities for the 21st century and accommodate growth for the next fifty years.”

Student response to the plans has been positive. Izzy Westbury, England U21 Cricketer and Blues hockey player praised the plans, commenting that current Iffley facilities are currently “outdated and a little bit ramshackle” and not up to the standard of other universities’ sporting facilities.

Adam Halewood, Exeter College’s football captain summed up student reaction to the plans saying that, if everything goes to plan, “it’ll be a truly outstanding complex providing some world class facilities which is precisely what the University needs.”

The gap in higher education participation between students from the most privileged and the most deprived areas of England is closing, a new study shows.

The study comes as the popular Sunday newspaper News of the World announces a new scheme to help state-educated students win places at Oxford.

The national survey shows that thirty percent more students from disadvantaged backgrounds are going on to higher education than five years ago, in comparison to a five percent increase amongst students from the most privileged areas. The investigation was carried out by the Higher Education Funding Council for England.

There was a 17% increase in state-school applications to Oxford this year, suggesting that the narrowing class gap may be also be reflected here, although the statistics have not yet been released showing how many succeeded in gaining a place.

But the News of the World still complained of a “gaping class divined that blights our education system” when they launched their project on Sunday.
The tabloid paper’s scheme will put 500 “hard-working state school students” through an intensive week-long course in the summer to help them prepare for Oxford and get an idea of the University admissions process.

The course itself is offered by the University, while the paper covers other costs and encourages its readers or their children to apply.

The programme is being funded by an anonymous “wealthy benefactor”.
Schools secretary Ed Balls praised the newspaper’s plans. “I believe no barrier should get in the way of young people making the most of their potential,” he said.

£2.8 million was spent last year on ‘outreach activities’ across the university and colleges.

On News of the World’s plans to help more state school students into Oxford, a University spokesperson said: “Oxford University is delighted to be working with the News of the World…We want to attract the most academically talented students to the university. The summer school will enable 500 students from state schools to get a really good idea of what life is like at Oxford.”

News of the World offered applicants “the education you deserve”. Daniel Webb, President of ‘Target Schools’, an organisation that recruits Oxford students to visit schools and advertise Oxford as a realistic choice, welcomed the news of a closing gap between private and state students, but said that there was still much to do.

“I think that the increased likelihood of a disadvantaged pupil entering higher education is very encouraging; however, it does not mean that the best candidates from such a background are always thinking about applying to Oxford,” he said.

“Oxford’s access schemes are showing signs of success: there was a significantly increased proportion of maintained sector applications to the university for the last admissions round” he claimed, but added, “this does not equate to places gained and does not mean that stereotypes about Oxford do not persist.”

A spokesperson for Oxford University said: “Oxford very much welcomes the results of the HEFCE study. The University has been undertaking outreach activities for a number of years – both encouraging students from all backgrounds to apply to Oxford, as well as helping many to enter higher education and raise their educational aspirations more generally.”

Asked whether the result of HEFCE’s study is mirrored at Oxford, she claimed, “Oxford does not classify students by economic or social demographics such as ‘deprived’ or ‘privileged’ in gathering information.”

However, there still appears to be a sense amongst those from disadvantaged areas that access to the best universities is beyond their reach, and a fear of being looked down upon by a middle-class majority.

Becky Edwards, a Magdalen student who works for ‘Target Schools’, speaking at schools with low numbers of higher education applicants, often in deprived areas, claimed “It’s mainly about debunking the stories and myths,” adding, “They all ask, ‘are they all posh?’ and ‘are they all rich?'”