Alex Sheppard, Wadham

Alex’s Fashion Statement: I don’t really think about fashion deeply, but I don’t want to blend in – I like standing out. It’s often part of who you are. If you spend the money, you should spend it on something you like. It’s all about your interests.

A realm often left to the catwalks and shows of Paris and Milan, men’s fashion has often lacked in the enthusiasm and glamour that womenswear brings. Yet with icons such as Tom Ford – model, designer and a very good-looking man – proves that you can have it all – and always in style. From choosing a well-tailored coat to a scuffed pair of military boots, the stereotypical outfit of hoodie-jeans-trainers can be left for those ‘essay-crisis’ days spent in the library. Instead, branch out – from Topman to Zara Men, a bit of knitwear (particularly striped nu

mbers) can go a long way, whilst well-placed accessories such as watches and scarves can add an eclectic feel to any shirt/skinny jean combo.

The LMH fraudulent fresher’s coaching, state school students closing the gap in admissions and the safety bus… alongside some in-depth analysis of Fit College and Blind Date.

What is this American actress trying to get across?

Performed by Anna Popplewell

Name: Zoe Hallam

Course: PPE, St John’s, Second Year

Spare Time: Campaigner for Muscular Dystrophy

Zoe Hallam and I quickly establish that we have several important things in common: both disorganised second year PPEists, both have already racked up an impressive array of last minute all-night essays this term and both regularly indulge in our guilty love of Glee, the US TV series based on an all-singing all-dancing high school choir.

However, while I wile away my free hours checking spellings in Cherwell‘s charming offices, Hallam spends her time as regional ambassador for ‘Trailblazers’ the youth branch of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, planning campaigns, co-ordinating information gathering and presenting the findings to Parliament, where last December she delivered a speech for the 18 month anniversary of the campaign.

While the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign is heavily geared towards fund-raising, Trailblazers focuses on campaigning for issues relevant to the 14-25s, explains Hallam. Since its establishment in July 2008, the organisation has run three broad information gathering campaigns on Higher Education, transport and leisure activities, and are now in the process of using the information collected to tackle the specific problems raised and propose solutions.

I ask how she balances the workload attached to her role with Oxford-centred activities. ‘It’s busier during the campaigns’, says Hallam, ‘publicity work and dealing with the press takes up time, and it can be up to twenty-five hours a week, but I’m in a bit of a lull at the moment.’ She explains that, for her, the most important part of the campaign is getting organisations to think harder about the practical details of provisions for the disabled: there tends to be a ‘shallow conception’ of accessibility, where people think that installing a ramp is enough. Often, she says, organisations claim to be accessible, but in fact the facilities haven’t been tested or thought through properly.

The transport campaign revealed the cost implications for disabled travellers: in London, for example, the Tube is inaccessible for wheelchair users, and while taxis are expensive, subsidies are only available for those living inside London. Other problems include inadequate training for the correct use of ramps on public transport and the varied quality of staff assistance – Hallam smiles ironically as she points out that while train staff are often there to help with getting on at the start of the journey, ‘they sometimes forget you also need to get off’.

The main concern with Higher Education, says Hallam, is the difficulties associated with entering the clearing procedure for those with additional requirements. Checking the University you are going to has everything you need is a pain for everyone, but approaching the clearing process with a disability means you are ‘severely disadvantaged’, Hallam explains, ‘there is a lot of information to find out in such a short amount of time’. Hallam manned a Trailblazers helpline on A-Level results day to offer advice and guidance to those going through clearing.

Raising awareness and getting people to pay more attention to detail is a key element of the campaign, for many people with disabilities practical considerations mean that extra organisation and planning is required for every outing. In the café, she points out the difference little things can make. ‘The height of the counter when you want to get your change, the space between tables’, things owners often don’t think twice about.

Hallam is due to attend the Annual General Meeting of the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) in February, where she will consider the changes that companies have been making over the last year, and suggest improvements for the future. She emphasises the difference between the transport campaign and the investigation into leisure activities: Trailblazers can influence services by presenting their findings to bodies such as ATOC, but since most businesses are not accountable to a higher body, there is a limit to the direct impact the campaign can have. That the campaign can, however, encourage individuals to approach the organisations is important in itself, argues Hallam. ‘We want to give people the confidence to actually go out and talk to people about their concerns – part of what we do is supposed to be empowering.’

Name: Josh Lospinoso

Course: PRS in Statistics, Magdalen, Graduate

Spare time: Military Intelligence Officer

It’s not every day you get to meet a military intelligence officer who works for the National Security Agency (NSA), a cryptologic intelligence bureau of the US Department of Defense. Needless to say I was rather excited and intrigued to meet Joshua Lospinoso, a visiting American DPhil student from New Jersey who is studying statistics, specifically analysing actor-orientated social networks, in order to enhance his military intelligence work.

Lospinoso is far from the sinister and elusive government spy official that films and novels would have us believe. Warm, friendly and very open to my numerous questions, he chats with enthusiasm about his chosen career path. He explains that he was driven to join the army by the national crisis that America experienced as a result of the September 11 bombings.’I saw the army as a potential way to serve my country and do my duty.’ After a year’s worth of training with the National Guard, he enlisted in the army at the age of seventeen and since then has never looked back.

I ask him how he managed to choose between physical combat and the more technical military intelligence work. He smiles as he acknowledges that this decision is an ‘internal fissure’ for many army recruits. He explains how military intelligence was an opportunity for him to combine his two passions: academia and the army. He says, ‘I joined as a rifle man and it definitely appealed to me as seventeen-year-old coming out of high school with full energy. However, as I got more engaged with broader academia, engaged in understanding concepts and numbers and worked for the NSA and the military intelligence agencies, I realised that this was probably a better way to apply myself.’

With mention of the NSA, I press him for further details on what exactly his work for the agency involves. Here he pauses for a moment, saying that he needs a bit of thinking time before he answers as he has to be careful about NSA privacy concerns. At this point, I suddenly remember that I am talking to an intelligence officer privy to a wealth of top secret information that the ordinary citizen will never have access to, let alone even be aware of. He explains that his research on social network analysis is ‘very related’ to the work he does for the NSA. ‘If you think about the most pertinent issues a soldier is facing in Afghanistan or Iraq right now, what’s causing casualties, what’s causing major destruction and instability in the region – those problems are the ones we’re tackling.’ He highlights the importance of analysing social network data in order to help the army improve strategies. He explains that it is crucial for army leaders to know with whom to communicate when they enter a new region, especially in a country like Afghanistan where there is a huge amount of tribalism and thus enormous cultural differences from region to region. He says, ‘We’d like to be able to know when we go into an area how to quickly assess social relationships and ideologies so that we can understand who the powerbrokers are.’

However, Lospinoso, who won the prestigious Rhodes scholarship enabling him to study at Oxford, is using his time here to experience a very different lifestyle to that of a military intelligence officer. He is full of enthusiasm for the University, describing it as ‘a wonderful contrast to being in the army’ and ‘a bit of a culture shock’. Indeed, he explains that while one of the best things about the army is the structure, which ‘cuts a lot of clutter out of your life’, it does also ‘make it difficult to be creative and innovative.’

As he tells me about his plans to take his first trip to Afghanistan to train division analysts, it becomes clear that passion for military intelligence and loyalty to the army are the key forces driving the life of this far from ordinary twenty-three-year-old student.

Name: Jennifer Pike

Course: Music, LMH, First Year

Spare time: Professional solo violinist

I was apprehensive about our meeting. A precocious talent who, at twelve, became the youngest winner of BBC Young Musician of the Year, whose meteoric rise has seen concerts with the major British orchestras, as well as a Times Breakthrough Award, Jennifer Pike has a CV more like that of a well-heeled industry veteran than the youthful twenty-year old I was about to meet.

She seemed full of energy, having spent the weekend at home ‘just relaxing’ and, without time to dump her suitcase, had come straight to the café after a brief stop at the library for books. After tea, however, she settled down and we talked music. She talks music rather well.

The impression Jennifer gives is of someone genuinely in love with the art, but whose success was never moulded by pressure. She describes quite honestly how music ‘was always just a hobby…getting the violin out as sort of chill-out at the end of the day’. Would she say that she always wanted to be a musician? ‘I never channelled all my efforts into being a

soloist, although I always loved the idea of it for sure, and it was so natural. I always knew I wanted to become a musician, and that it would never leave me. Going in for BBC Young Musician… wasn’t like being plunged into deep water which, I think, can be the danger of those sorts of competitions.’

Pike divides her time between studying and playing in various concerts: a balancing act she describes as ‘a bit tricky’. ‘I have to be really good about writing up notes on a missed lecture. I’m really serious about Oxford.’ Yet one can’t help wondering why a person who played a solo Bach concert in the middle of the Albert Hall at fifteen has decided to come and study, rather than pursue a career that in many ways is achieving lift off.

‘I know it’s a path that not many concert musicians take. But I love university life and the learning environment…to have a grounding, a place to develop my musical boundaries whilst kind of taking more historically-informed interpretations onto the concert platform. That’s what Oxford, for me, is about: discovering all sorts of areas of music which I can’t do.’ It seems that the opportunity for exploration is paying off, having confirmed a concert in London of work by female composers, something she was inspired to do by studying such composers here.

I ask her about performing and to what extent personal interpretation comes into it. She smiles and answers intelligently. ‘The most important thing is to be a vessel for the composer’s intentions. It’s not the performer who everyone should come to see, it’s the composer’s music.’ There is a seriousness about Pike which shines through. Celebrity comes second to music. ‘The thing that’s a bit sad – or rather challenging – for women is that often people are coming just to see a brand, a performer, a dress, the whole package. It’s very difficult because, for me, the very important thing about performing should be remaining versatile, making sure that you change your style and way of playing to suit the composer.’

We talk for a while about the invasion of pop into classical music, which she calls ‘quite scary’. It turns out she was recently offered a lucrative recording contract which she rejected. I press her for details. ‘It was exciting, but it was crossover, a lot of film music – which I like – but I think they wanted Strictly Come Dancing music too; immediately the alarm bells started ringing…I’d need to go to confession afterward. That’s not what I want to be.’

Looking ahead to the future, the tour dates are already piling up, with a special BBC concert replaying her competition-winning Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, and a stint in Japan doing the same piece. (‘I do know other pieces’, she laughs.) I am struck at times by how young she still seems. For all the concerts, for all the ball gowns and garlands and recording contracts, she is still a fresher, cramming in the essays, trying to fit in.

Name: Emily Middleton

Course: PPE, Wadham, Second Year

Spare Time: Adviser to UNICEF UK

My meeting with Emily Middleton, double winner of Foyle Young Poet of the Year Award and Youth Advisor to the board of UNICEF, started on a light note, when she enlightened me as to the benefits of reading CosmoGirl. This publication is what inspired the 14-year-old Emily to become involved with charity work. ‘I just saw a little bit about the National Children’s Bureau in CosmoGirl. It was the summer holidays and I just googled it. They have the YNCB, which is their Youth-led wing and they were looking for advisory group members so I applied and that’s where it all started, really.’

Since then, Middleton has tirelessly championed a multitude of causes through her work with National Children’s Bureau, Amnesty International UK and UNICEF. But it would be a grave mistake to treat Middleton as another enthusiastic yet ultimately naive charity worker. She does campaign and fundraise as part of student groups, but she also occupies an important position on the board of one of Britain’s leading aid organisations, fulfilling tasks as diverse as devising national strategy and scrutinising UNICEF’s accounts alongside Lord Ashdown and Sue MacGregor.

Very articulately, she draws parallels between her engagement in student charity offshoots and the work she does on a national level. ‘I suppose it’s the scale that is the major difference. I’ve been involved in the Amnesty branches in Oxford and it’s the same organisation fighting for the same broad aims, but the main difference is that whereas you’re involved in the main student charity at Oxford, doing mainly campaigning and fundraising…At a national level, you’re looking at a much bigger picture. You’re looking at how to involve students and other groups and societies. It’s a lot more strategic, you’re looking at finances overall. It’s a totally different set of skills. But it doesn’t mean that student charities are any less important, because they’re vital.’

I’m in no way surprised to find Middleton highly eloquent in conversation, considering the impressive list of accolades her other big area of interest -poetry – has won her. She gathered media attention when, in 2006, she was awarded her second Foyle prize for writing a poem from the perspective of a suicide bomber. The poem beginning, ‘Other people live in fear of gun massacres, heart attacks, car smashes, plane crashes, horrific back street slaughters. / But me? I can tell you my future: All two hours and twenty-six minutes of it.’, earned her a slot on Radio 4 alongside Gordon Ramsay and Ronnie Corbett. She admits she is not writing ‘as much as I’d like it to be’ nowadays, but she is ‘definitely going to apply to various courses and hopefully I’ll get back into it’. Middleton also wrote a short film script based on the poem which was adapted for a Wadham cuppers entry last Michaelmas.

What is most striking about Middleton, however, is her incredible humility. Speaking about her role in UNICEF, her words are heartfelt, her sentiment genuinely selfless. ‘I’m really, really honoured to be chosen for this role, it is the first time that UNICEF UK has had young people at a higher level, so I feel under a lot of pressure to make it work,’ she says. Judging by her record so far, the young could have no better representative.

Marc Kidson shows you how to make the perfect aphrodisiac dessert for your Valentine.

Recipe re-cap:

Chilli Chocolate Mousse, makes 4 servings

200g dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa solids)
150ml double cream
Half a red chilli
5 eggs
4tsp caster sugar
A few squares of white chocolate

1. In a bain-marie (heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water, or equivalent) melt broken dark chocolate gently, without stirring.
2. Put the double cream in a pan and add the roughly chopped chilli to infuse, bring to the boil slowly before removing.
3. Meanwhile, separate the egg whites from the egg yolks, setting aside the yolks and adding the whites to a large mixing bowl.
4. Beat the egg whites until they are beginning to turn fluffly, then add the caster sugar and continue beating until stiff peaks form.
5. Strain the cream into a bowl to remove pieces of chilli, then add the melted chocolate and stir until combined.
6. Add a spoonful of the egg whites to the chocolate-cream mixture to lighten it, stir in well.
7. Add the chocolate-cream to the egg whites in batches, folding (not stirring) it in with a metal spoon, continue until it is all combined.
8. Dish up into ramekins, coffee cups or a single bowl (depending on preference) and chill for an hour minimum.
9. Before serving garnish with grated white chocolate.