May Day this year will see Oxford welcoming one of the world’s greatest orchestras.

The Berlin Philharmonic will perform under the baton of frequent guest conductor Daniel Barenboim in a special one off concert at the Sheldonian.

Each year the orchestra selects a venue of cultural importance in a different European city for a televised performance to mark its founding in 1882. The programme for this year’s concert will include a combination of classic Berliner repertoire by Wagner and Brahms, and a nod to Oxford’s musical heritage in the form of the Elgar Cello Concerto, made famous by Oxford-raised cellist, and one-time wife of Barenboim’s, Jaqueline Du Prè.

The announcement has been met with excitement. “I’m so thrilled that an ensemble of this calibre should come to Oxford” said Alice Beckwith, a music student at Lincoln. “The world’s greatest orchestra with a truly great musician at the helm. I can’t wait.”

However, students wishing to see the concert may well be left disappointed, as tickets sold out a matter of hours after going on sale.

An ex-porter is taking St Catherine’s college to an employment tribunal with the accusation of racial and religious discrimination.

Laiq Abbasi, who had been employed as a porter since November 2007, resigned last August claiming to have been constructively dismissed.

Part of his complaint accuses a member of staff of making racist remarks. St Catherine’s denies his claims of discrimination and says the charges have “no merit”.

Speaking exclusively to Cherwell, Abbasi claims the accused member of staff in 2008 got drunk at the College bar, then came to the reception area and made anti-Islamic comments. These included, “All of you Muslims: why do you blow yourselves up?”, “Why do you abuse your women?”, “I don’t believe in your religion” and “You’re stupid for believing in your religion.”

A spokesperson for St Catherine’s said, “We confirm that we have recently received an employment tribunal complaint from Mr. Abbasi, a former Lodge porter who resigned in August last year after a failed application for a more senior post. The College sees no merit in Mr Abbasi’s complaint and will be vigorously defending its position. The matter is now being dealt with by our lawyers who have advised us that no further comments on this matter should be made at this time.”

However, the member of staff involved in the alleged islamophobic incidents later sent a letter of apology for his actions to Abbasi. “I very much regret that you had to experience my recent extremely stupid, unthinking conduct caused by drinking far too much,” he wrote.

“This involved childlish negative abuse of your religion, which I should have not engaged in, and was accompanied by some very immature conduct. All of this was most rude, unacceptable and offensive. “I am extremely sorry that I have acted in such a thoughtless manner. There is absolutely no justification or excuse for behaving so entirely inappropriately. I unreservedly apologise. I can assure you that there will be no repetition of this type of behaviour.

“At the same time as apologising for my behaviour, I would like to apologise for having put you through the trouble of making a complaint.” The College has responded to the comments, and other allegations, through its legal firm Peninsula in documents they are presenting to the Tribunal. In these documents,they argue that only one complaint was ever received about such an incident and this was resolved at the time

to Abbasi’s satisfaction.

Abbasi says does not consider the incident to be isolated, and believes he is not the only one to have been affected by the senior staff member’s behaviour.

The College points out he never used their formal grievance procedures to notify them. Cherwell has found no evidence that the staff member in question has acted this way to another member of the college.

This is not Abbasi’s only claim against St Catz. He also says that when a laptop was stolen from the porter’s lodge, he and a black porter were the first to be questioned, despite not being on shift at the time it went missing. He argues this is further evidence of racism.The date of the hearing has not yet been set.

Wadham barman Kevin Harris was fired from the college at the end of last term, prompting concerns about unfair dismissal from the college.

Harris, once involved in the porn industry, is also known as Dutch, claims he was “harassed” by the Wadham steward and forced to leave the job after just one term.

After receiving the message about being sacked he posted on his Facebook page, “To all my Kids at Wadham…I am no longer your Barman…you know who fired me today.”

He later told Cherwell, “The Steward was very anti-student, anti-drinking. We didn’t see eye-to-eye, especially as I became very popular with students very quickly.”

The Steward was contacted by Cherwell but refused to comment on the issue.
A senior member of college staff said that Harris “did not fulfil his probationary period” and that “he just wasn’t right for the job”. They declined to comment further on the issue, describing it only as a confidential matter.

Dutch admits that there was “a list of things that I was fired for” by the college. These include lack of communication, failure to wear the correct uniform, and sleeping on the premises.

However, he denies these allegations and argues that he was unfairly dismissed by college management.

“I was told that I wouldn’t work until 6pm, and not to come a minute before, because I wouldn’t be paid before then,” the barman said. “Then he [the Steward] would call me at 9.30, 10.30 in the morning. I had eight calls in one day, one time to actually ask where his pen was.” This was cited as a lack of communication, according to Harris.

“I was also told I had to wear a uniform – a shirt and a tie – but there’s no heating in the bar, so I had to wear a jumper. That was given as another reason, a failure to wear correct uniform.”

The barman also says he was accused of having alcohol on his breath, a charge he denies despite “a couple of shots with students in the first week”.
Harris admits to sleeping on college premises one night at the back of the bar, but claims that he was moving between homes at the time, and needed to stay over. He later booked into a college guest room, but claims the Steward still defined this as “sleeping on the premises”.

He alleges that we was not given proper training to perform the job.
A Facebook group named ‘Save Dutch’ was formed in protest against the decision to sack the popular barman, a move Harris described as “wonderful…they’re a great bunch of kids.”

Dutch previously worked in the LA adult entertainment industry, but came back to jobs in bars and breweries in England in the late 90s. Working on such films as ‘Bob’s Big Butts Extravaganza’, he said he preferred his time as an Oxford barman to his experiences in LA.

“I got more of a kick out of working in Wadham bar than I did in porn,” he said.

A student was arrested on suspicion of common assault, and escorted by police off the coach that was returning to Oxford after the Law Society Ball at the end of last term.

The accused, an Oxford student named as Tom, was taken straight to Kensington Police Station, where he spent the night. A number of students from Lincoln, St Benet’s Hall and Mansfield were involved in the incident, which took place outside the Natural History Museum in London, where the Ball was held.

The alleged assault was rumoured to be of a homophobic nature and was aimed at an individual who is not an Oxford student, but was invited to the ball by a Law Society committee member.

One student described how what began as a lighthearted conversation, soon turned hostile and got out of hand.

“After the ball, everyone drunk was socialising on the roadside. I was introduced to someone, who asked to borrow my lighter. We discussed the ball and in particular the dancers – the boy commented that he was not interested in the dancers, or in girls at all,” he said.

“[He] said to a tall blonde guy in the group, ‘You look like Boris Johnson’, and turning to a dark haired boy next to him, ‘Is this your boyfriend David Cameron?’ There was a pause as the boy saw his friend and beckoned to him; at this, someone commented, ‘I see you’ve called your boyfriend over too.’ I knew the boy was gay due to our earlier conversation but the boys in the group did not, so continued with boyfriend jokes. I wasn’t particularly amused by any of this but everyone else was laughing. Tempers were rising, especially [his]’.

“At this point I turned away to have a cigarette, and when I returned to the group, there was an argument going on. I said we should get back on the coach, but some of the group stayed to ask the boy again if he was going to drive, as he was clearly drunk. He commented, ‘You peasants get on a coach and I’ll get in my Mercedes.’ As we were getting on the coach, he was still ranting about Boris Johnson and his Mercedes.”

It was soon after this that the assault is alleged to have taken place within the group. A source close to student providing comment stated that the reason Tom was taken by the police was that the boy remembered his name from the students within the group.

Hannah Webb, a student at St Catherine’s college, explained what happened next. “We had been on the coach about twenty five minutes, when Oscar Robinson (the Law Soc committee member on our coach) got a call from the police saying that the coach needed to pull over immediately. We were told that everyone whose name was Tom had to get off. One of the Toms did not get back on the bus, he was taken away by the police.” Pippa Smythe, who was also on the coach added, “The police had been following us from London. Everyone was a bit shocked, we all knew it was to do with an assault.”

Sarah Burton, Michaelmas Term Treasurer of the LawSoc Committee commented, “I was concerned to hear an assault was reported after the ball. The coach company we used told me they are going to continue to provide us with coach travel for our next ball. Equally the staff at the Natural History Museum had absolutely no issues with how the event went.”

Tom was subsequently released without charge, and has recently learnt that the police have dropped the investigation, following an examination of CCTV footage. The student confirmed, “No charges were ever brought. The investigation has been dropped. I’ve persistently denied all the charges.”

Inspector Cousings from the Metropolitan police confirmed that Tom was arrested and investigated. Cousins said, “The matter was fully investigated. The file was passed to Crown Persecution Service who reviewed the case and decided there was insufficient evidence to pursue the matter. No further action has been taken.”

Alexei Franks, President of Law Soc said, “We gave our full cooperation to the authorities who did not feel it was necessary to pursue the matter. We thought we’d take their lead on this and so feel the matter is closed.”

Ex-Oxford Professor Les Iversen has been appointed Chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to the government.

The post has been empty since David Nutts, the previous Senior Drugs Advisor, was controversially sacked by Home Secretary Alan Johnson over his criticism of tougher cannabis laws.

However, as Cherwell reported in January 2008, Iversen was also a critic of the government’s plans to upgrade cannabis to a Class B drug.

Cannabis was upgraded from a Class C to a Class B drug later in 2008, after the government rejected the recommendations of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.

Iversen had stated in Cherwell that if the government was to reject the Council’s findings and proceed with the reclassification, it would “call into question the whole function and future of this group.”

His position towards the role of the council appears to have changed in the intervening two years. In an interview on BBC Radio 5, Iversen stated, “The way I look at this is that the Government should have respect for the experts on the advisory group and the advisers should have respect for the Government’s prerogative to govern.”

Further controversy has also arisen over the content of a 2003 lecture Iversen gave where he called for the legalisation of cannabis. However, he has commented in the past few days that due to the newer and more potent forms of cannabis that are now available, he has changed his position.

Iversen worked at the University from 1995 as Professor of Pharmacology, and has served as the director of the board of ACADIA Pharmaceuticals since 2000.

His publications include The Science of Marijuana, Drugs: A Very Short Introduction and Speed, Ecstasy, Ritalin: The Science of Amphetamines.

Oxford Raise and Give charity is lagging behind its equivalents at other universities.

The total raised by Oxford RAG in 2008/09 of £24,314 is dwarfed by the likes of Loughborough, who raised £974,048.

Cambridge RAG have already raised £38,038 for the year 2009/10. This is more than double Oxford RAG’s current total of £16,000 for 2009/10.

Oxford RAG, whose name stands for Raise and Give, appears not to have the profile it has in other universities, despite such events as the RAG Ball, and the controversy which surrounded the censored Christ Church naked calendar.

Charles Bailey, who organised the RAG Ball, claimed that RAG “lacks publicity… people might not know who we are and what we stand for.”

Bailey went on to state that the college system at Oxford presents problems which other universities, such as Loughborough, don’t have. “People often prefer to go to college arranged events with people they know, for the charities they vote for.”

He added that “Magdalen in particular are very anti-giving money to RAG, preferring to give to their own charities.”

Anastasya Molodykh, the OUSU Charities and Community Part-Time Officer, agreed that the college system “is probably the reason for Oxford RAG not making as much as RAG at other universities.”

However, she insisted that “we are not trying to compete with colleges… it would be easier were the college system not there, but we have to work around the existing system to be as effective as possible.”

Meanwhile, Rachel Dedman, President of Oxford RAG, argued that actually “the college system is very useful, as we have reps for different colleges to help to organise and drum up interest for our events.”

“Being at Oxford does make it harder in certain ways, with our having shorter terms and a great deal more work”, admitted Dedman. However, she also pointed out, “We have great strength at Oxford with the amount of driven and creative people, who are genuinely excited about trying to raise money for charity.”

There are signs of improvement for RAG as the success of the RAG Ball highlights. The Ball made a profit of just over £5,000, given a £9,000 budget. It reached a full capacity attendance of around 350 people in its first year. Molodykh commented that it was a “very successful first Ball”, adding, “It will only get better as we gain experience in organising and publicising such events.”

Bailey claimed that RAG is also “getting better” at self-publicising. She highlighted the gain of Accenture as a sponsor. Their sponsorship is worth £2,300 per year, paying for publicity through t-shirts and posters.

The running total for 2009/10 is already well over half last year’s total. The money will not only go to RAG’s nominated charities ‘Emerge Global’, ‘Helen and Douglas House’, ‘Pathway Workshop’ and ‘Shelter’, but also to other individual charities chosen by RAG reps for individual events.

After last term’s room ballot around thirty students at Brasenose College still have no idea where they will be staying next year due to building works on college accommodation.

The students, who are all either second or fourth year students, have been assured that they will be housed in college accommodation, but have not been told where they will be living or how much it will cost.

One affected Brasenose student, Emily Sadgrove, pointed out that price is an important factor when choosing a room. She commented, “We have no choice about price. I could end up paying anything.”

The situation has been caused by the modernisation of the kitchen facilities in the college, called Project Q. This has made two staircases in the college unusable over the next year.

As a result, the college has had to offer third year rooms to first years in order to keep its promise that they are guaranteed a room in college. The disruption caused by the building project has led to more third year students being housed in the Frewin Annexe, near to the Oxford Union.

Despite the college’s assurances that the students will get accommodation, undergraduates are frustrated that they have not been told the location, size or price of their rooms next year.

It is unclear when the students will find out when this crucial information that they will require for next year. They have been told they will be notified before the start of the next academic year, but some frustrated students are already looking elsewhere.

Johnny Isaac, a current first year who has been affected by the decision stated that “due to the uncertainty over next year’s accommodation I am seriously considering the much more costly option of going private.”

There is particular concern amongst the finalists. One fourth year, who did not want to be named said, “At the start of the final year of my degree I thought I would be more worried about the impending exams in the summer and not where I will be living. I could end up anywhere.”

Paul Gladwell, Brasenose JCR President, stated that the “college has guaranteed to provide accommodation for all students over each year of their courses and both the college and the appropriate members of the JCR committee are doing all we can to find out which rooms these will be as soon as possible.”

The accommodation manager at Brasenose gave no comment. 

Oxford’s most recently published accounts have shown a loss for the University for the first time in over twenty years.

The appointment of tutors, college funds and provision of lectures are now under close scrutiny, as the University decides how best to adapt for the financial loss coupled with a cut in government funding.

Before the donation of heritage assets, minority interest and transfer from accumulated endowment return are considered, the University recorded a deficit of £4.3 million for the financial year 2008/09.

No deficit has been seen at this stage in the University accounts since the financial year 1987/8.

Giles Kerr, University Finance Director, revealed how the University has suffered as a result of the global economic situation. “2008/9 was a year of unprecedented turmoil in financial markets, a very difficult period for investments and endowments generally. In that period, the endowment fund declined by 5.8 per cent and the capital fund by 3.9 per cent.”

He continued, “While those absolute returns are disappointing, when you put them in the context of global equity markets over the same period, they were much smaller declines than experienced by the markets generally.”

The University lost £14.7 million deposited in Icelandic banks last year. Last week Iceland’s parliament voted to hold a referendum on whether to repay depositors from Britain and the Netherlands who lost out when the Icesave bank collapsed in 2008. This came after the country’s president, Olaf Ragnar Grimsson, vetoed a bill authorising the repayment.

There is concern that the recession, coupled with impending cuts to university funding, is going to result in reduced funding in certain areas.

In December, Lord Mandelson announced that higher education funding was to be cut by £398m for 2010-11 compared with this year. As Cherwell reported last month, £10 million is due to be withdrawn from government funding to Oxford and Cambridge Universities.

Although the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has not yet finalised its 2011-12 funding for Oxford, the University is braced for a tightening of its budget.

Lynn Hutton, Divisional Financial Controller of the Humanities division, told Cherwell that “any funding cuts are of great concern to the University.” She continued, “There is an £80m shortfall in public and fee funding for teaching each year, and a similar shortfall in the funding received for research compared to the full economic costs. Oxford makes up for this by transferring funding from other sources, and any further cuts to public funding are a cause of serious concern.

“Oxford will continue to exercise financial prudence maintain the strong financial position of the University during the global economic downturn, and will look to maximise efficiency and savings wherever possible. Any proposed new posts will be subject to careful scrutiny, and the University’s capital spending will tighten its focus.”

It is not yet clear how colleges themselves have performed financially over the past year, with their accounts not due to be published until later this term. It is expected, however, that they will have suffered along with the University.

David Palfreyman, the bursar of New College, and the director of the Oxford Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies, said that in the long run the tutorial system could be affected by funding cuts. Based on an estimate of a 10 per cent drop in funding in the short-term, students “won’t suddenly find [themselves] in tutorials of four.”

However, there would be need a need to balance the books, even if increased costs would be absorbed by colleges in the short-tem.

Currently nobody within the University is certain where the cuts are going to be felt the most. One History tutor believes that humanities subjects will be hit hardest, with the science departments much better insulated from the cutbacks, but not everyone is so sure.

Palfreyman said that although the situation was currently “delightfully vague”, with no confirmation of whether a reduction in funding would affect teaching, research or capital projects, there would probably be a seven-to-eight per cent cut in the funds a college has to teach its students.

He also expressed concern at the prospect of staff not being replaced. If a tutor were to leave a college, for whatever reason, then the financial situation could prevent a replacement being hired. In this regard, some colleges could simply be “unlucky”.

There is also some anxiety within the student body that funding cuts and reduced endowment income could impact on both the education Oxford can offer as well as other areas like grants and bursaries. There have been reports of some colleges already cutting back on expenditure, and there is a worry that students could be adversely affected.

St John’s have already started making cutbacks. The college may have the largest endowment of them all, as well as the second-highest income during 2007-08, but they are reducing the amount they spend in certain areas. Vacation grants, for example, are now limited to 21 days per year, where previously no limit existed.

At other colleges there have been reports of vacation residence being harder to acquire, as conference guests (who will pay higher accommodation fees) are given priority.

Olly Richards, a second-year History student, described his concern. “The fact that the jigsaw puzzle of university finance is coming apart piece by piece is the issue which concerns me the most today. Increasingly, the steady flow of money which used to ooze from central government is drying up and I am immensely concerned about how this could affect my education.

“Currently I have no lectures this term and I am puzzled as to where further cuts could come from. Moreover, cuts to the university funding as a whole could detract from the quality of tutor employed and result in students being taught by less experienced individuals.”

Alistair Strathern, a second-year PPE student, is concerned that decreasing revenue might affect the poorest the most. “Naturally I’m very concerned about cutbacks, particularly if they fall on the outreach and bursary schemes that are so vital in widening access to studying at Oxford.” 

Figures published by Oxford University have shown that black and ethnic minority students are underachieving in Finals.

In addition to demonstrating a continuation of Oxford’s age old gender gap, the 2008 breakdown reveals new and worrying patterns of underachievement related to both race and disability. According to the data, fewer black and minority ethnic (BME) students are reaching top grades. In 2008 only 84% of BME students achieved a first or upper second, compared to 93% of white candidates. Likewise, 29% of white students achieved a first, whilst only 9% of black students attained the highest classification.

This is the first time that the University has published a breakdown of the results for Final Honour Schools (Finals) which analyses not only the correlation between gender and achievement, but also examines the attainment of black, ethnic minority and disabled students.

The University maintains that this disparity in achievement is under annual review and emphasises that the gap is not as pronounced as that found nationally. Such comparisons with national statistics are hindered by the very small number of BME students studying at Oxford. Black and minority ethnic students constituted only 15.3% of the total Finals population for 2008, a figure which has prompted criticism of Oxford’s admissions process.

Commenting on the data, Matthew Tye, OUSU Officer for BME Students, stated: “Statistics never reveal a complete picture”, adding “the number of students from black and ethnic minority backgrounds is proportionally small at Oxford, but there are numerous campaigns and college schemes which have been and are doing important outreach work”.

Speaking specifically about the divergence in degree attainment, Tye stated “levels of academic support are exceptionally high at Oxford.” The National Student Survey (NSS) however, indicates that whilst 93% of Oxford’s white students agreed to being satisfied with their course, this was true for only 75% of black students and 88% of Asian undergraduates.

The University breakdown suggests that disabled students also fare badly. Less likely to achieve top grades than those with no known disability, 19% of disabled candidates graduated with a first, compared to 28% of non-disabled students.

However, Danielle Solomon, OUSU’s Officer for Students with Disabilities, highlighted the data’s simplified categorisation of candidates as ‘disabled’ or ‘no known disability’ and pointed out the small number of disabled students taking Finals. “Students with disabilities do not all fall under one umbrella, therefore expecting to find a single reason for the academic performances of students with SPL

Ds and students with hearing difficulties combined (for example) would be somewhat naive.”

The breakdown’s most in-depth analysis, reserved for gender, reveals the divide between the achievements of the sexes remains entrenched. In 2008, only 23% of women graduated with a first, compared to 31% of men. This pattern of relative female underachievement is an inexplicable reversal of national trends, where women are equal to or outperform men at all levels. Other than Cambridge, only three members of the Russell Group have shown significant female underperformance in the past five years.

Unsurprisingly, the statistics for the male-dominated division of MPLS (Maths, Physics and Life Sciences) demonstrates this divergence in attainment, with male candidates more successful in reaching top grades. Yet, even when well-represented, women continue to underperform. Of the total first class degrees awarded by Humanities subjects, only 44% went to women, despite female students making up over 50% of those studying within the division.

While elsewhere in the UK, research is now targeted at male underperformance, Oxbridge is struggling to understand why female undergraduates consistently buck the national trend.

OUSU has identified the often confrontational nature of the Oxbridge tutorial system, organising workshops designed to help students get the most out of this allegedly masculine teaching medium. Sally Mapstone, Chair of the English Faculty, commented: “In conjunction with the Education Committee and OUSU, English, along with other Faculties, also actively encourages initiatives such as study skills and finals forums.”

Some identify differences in exam and revision techniques as factors: an English student at Somerville said, “Perhaps males are merely better at withstanding exam pressure. Finals results are determined very heavily by exam performance.” Another finalist noted, “Girls I’ve known at Uni have been more focused on rote learning and being exact about their facts and figures, which fewer guys seem to work on as much.”

Academics are keen, however, to stress that the gender gap is by no means universal and that even within problem subjects such as PPE, English and History, variations are complex. There is a fear that the attention paid to gender equality issues could be counter-productive, causing clichéd and outdated arguments which may only reinforce incorrect suggestions that women cannot cope with intensive Oxford study.

Sally Mapstone, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Personnel and Equality commented, “work is ongoing and not completed, so it’s not possible, or indeed sensible at present to offer comment as to what might be the reasons for possible underperformance by female candidates.”

It is hoped that disparities in achievement will be illuminated by future research, which will be conducted on a departmental level.