If you’ve ever watched The Devil Wears Prada, Ugly Betty, or flicked through a copy of a Condé Nast magazine, you’d be forgiven for assuming that plain and bookish Oxford is a million miles away from Vogue House. Well, having paid a quick visit there myself I’d argue that the two are more closely related then you might think. Like your college, Vogue House is grand and imposing from the outside and has an impressive foyer; but once you get into the offices it is rather more mundane. Like Oxford University, the world of Vogue is one outsiders associate with enormous prestige and glamour but is, in reality, manned by hard-working, ordinary people who are probably a bit fatigued. Vogue House and Oxford University even share some of the same characters. You’d be surprised by how many people you’d recognise: the kindly, elderly gentleman porter who knows everyone’s business, the boho-cum-sloaney young girls with back-brushed bed-hair and, most importantly, the accomplished, formidable and rather stern tutor. Who I am about to meet.
Alexandra Shulman is not impolite, by any standards, but she is brisk. Editor of Vogue for 17 years, working for so long at the head of the most profitable British magazine has taught Shulman that there is little time in the working day for idle chit-chat!
Shulman seems somewhat more skilled in avoiding controversy than her US counterpart Anna ‘Nuclear’ Wintour, but all the same many people see Vogue as promoting an aesthetic which is both impractical and inaccessible. I begin the interview by asking Alexandra what she feels the magazine is really for. ‘Well I have always thought that Vogue has to do with a vision of a world that actually does exist and is attainable. But it is the best end of it, really. It is the bit that deals with beauty, glamour, style: ‘fine living’. But I don’t think it is totally about money and about being rich, it’s about an attitude. And I think people like Vogue because they don’t buy it to look at their own lives, but to look at something that they might aspire to or might admire.’
Surely themes of aspiration and ‘fine living’ have had to be handled differently of late. Shulman recently said that she didn’t want people to find the magazine ‘offensive’, and I ask her to clarify: ‘I think in a recession what you have to be careful of is the fact that a lot of people are losing their jobs, and if you sound too glib about fashion and spending money, then that could be offensive to people who have found themselves suddenly with much less money and with real worries. But there is a limit to how far we can adapt – Vogue is what it is. A few issues ago we did our credit-crunch guide which was ‘40 Tips for Fabulous Frugality’. It was a bit tongue-in-cheek but with some really quite practical, good ideas.’
If anyone is qualified to pass judgement on which designer epitomises and leads the fashion of the noughties, it’s Alexandra, so I ask who the designer of our era is, expecting Miuccia Prada, or perhaps Marc Jacobs. ‘I think Miuccia Prada has been incredibly influential both in terms of her collections, but also in her vision of the growth of Prada brand. They have taken a small, expensive luggage company, and made it into a global fashion phenomenon. Their advertising is always looked at by everybody to see what they are doing, their stores are always incredibly confidently designed. And I have hardly ever seen a bad collection. But in terms of an individual designer, outside of the business and the brand, I think Nicholas Ghesquière from Balenciaga is pretty fantastic.’
It intrigues me that one person can look so fondly on both the work of both Balenciaga and Prada. The former whose collections have been rife with exotic fabrics, painfully sharply-tailored suits, armour-like dresses, gold robot leggings and general desirability and the latter whose looks have featured awkward, top-heavy silhouettes, dirty colours, tweed, strange pixie-hats and a refusal to make women into sex-symbols (or, at least, not in a traditional way). But it seems that variety is paramount to Alexandra’s vision of the magazine: ‘I have personal taste in fashion photography but I really don’t impose that on the magazine. I have deliberately got fashion editors with different styles, and we work with different photographers so that we are a broad canvas unlike, for instance, American Vogue or French Vogue, which are much more consistent in the way they present their fashion. I mean, all of those shoots could have been by the same person because it is so very clear what each magazine’s vision is. I like to think you can look at a Tim Walker shoot in British Vogue or look at a Nick Knight shoot and they’re completely different.’
This talk about the identity of UK Vogue makes me wonder what Shulman considers her greatest achievements in her time there. She responds modestly, only crediting herself in relation to other, more well-known talents: ‘I think I’ve been successful at working with the team that I work with. I backed Mario Testino relatively early on, in fact, before he was shooting for any other big magazines. I discovered Nigella Lawson as a food writer so I was quite pleased by that – that took off! The thing I would most like people to think about Vogues I have edited is that when you look at them they do have some feeling of the times, that they do reflect the times. And I think in the main they do. When I look back I often think ‘Well actually, yeah, we did have something about whatever it was that was going on’. If you’re going to write about grunge you would want to look at Vogue because you can see the way that art was changing and fashion was changing.’
Sat at Shulman’s desk, the interview isn’t rushed, the phone isn’t ringing off the hook, nobody outside in the bigger office seems all that crazed. I ask how frantic Shulman’s working life really is: ‘Well you can see it looks quite calm and normal in here, really. It depends, sometimes it is intensely busy. There are phases of the year when I know what I am doing every half-hour for the next four weeks and then there are periods when it is much slower and much more normal.’ Although she only uses Facebook for a very healthy ‘five minutes every three days’, it would seem that Shulman has enough time for life’s smaller pleasures. I ask what music she’s listening to: ‘Well I’m currently obsessed with Spotify. It’s some online thing, to download, and you go into it and you can type in…I was going to say Lady Gaga but it is interesting to do somebody older. Type in David Bowie, say, and every single version of everything he has ever done is on there that you can listen to, you can’t buy it but you can listen to it. I like kind of recherché cover versions of old Dylan songs and things like that. So it is perfect to play around on. But I haven’t bought any really new music recently. I kind of like those Indie people like Fleet Foxes. I like soppy Indie music, mainly!’
As I say, working at Condé Nast seems just like working as an Oxford student, but with more money and less Relentless/Red Bull-dependency. So if you’re the sort that doesn’t want to uproot from the Oxford lifestyle, entirely, and you quite like the sound of Vogue House, fear not – I have sought advice on your behalf. ‘You’ve got to be quite persistent now. I don’t think you can just waltz in and be lovely. I think you’ve really got to use your intelligence, find the right person to get in touch with, put together a good CV. Its not just about how much amazing work experience you’ve got, but also you have to sound like you’re on the ball; don’t make spelling mistakes, things like that. Always write something that indicates why you specifically want to do this thing, because as soon as you think you’ve got a round-robin letter, you’re not interested.’
And then? ‘Once you’ve got in to do work experience or something, being really willing and organised goes a very long way, whether you’re working in the fashion room, beauty room or my office. We really notice that – people who just come in and say ‘I’m not doing anything – is there anything I can do to help?’ and in the main most people that have come here and been good at work experience have, I’ve noticed, ended up with jobs.’
In Vogue
Off the Wall and into the theatre
The lights in the theatre went down and the evening’s performance of In a Thousand Pieces drew to a close. The audience, aware that fifty-five minutes of harrowing and powerful theatre on the harshness of the British sex trade and the extent of people’s ignorance had come to an end, clapped their hands in appreciation of a show that combined intense physicality with unnerving humour.
The lights came back on. There they were, our three polish immigrant girls, stood frozen in the same position as before the blackness. The clapping stopped and the silence began. Who would leave first? I asked myself; were we even supposed to leave now? After about fifteen seconds – a mixture of quizzical shuffling and reverential silence – people at the back began to leave. Eventually we followed the now departing crowd, and glancing back I noticed that not one lip had shifted, not a hair had moved. They stood like statues as the audience turned their backs and went.
This gives you an idea of the type of drama that the North Wall Arts Centre brings to Oxford. Lying a couple of miles outside of Oxford centre in Summertown, the theatre opened in 2007, yet only really took off last year. Since then it has taken on a very exciting and significant role in the cultural landscape of Oxford. Putting on shows not large enough to sustain an audience at the Playhouse, yet too small for the Burton Taylor and others, this remarkable centre sits somewhere in the middle, offering visitors a vibrant programme of work alternative to the Oxford mainstream of, on the one hand, popular yet pricy professional shows, and, on the other, hit-and-miss student drama.
The Paper Birds, for example, are a theatre company plucked out of University obscurity and propelled onto the national stage. Endorsement from Willy Russell, sell-out Edinburgh fringe stints and Amnesty awards have followed. Dan Dason, director of programming, says ‘we aim to deliver an ambitious programme that will attract a wide audience, but with young people at its heart. For me the key to achieving this is by offering a diversity of the highest quality work – full of skill, daring, innovation and depth; work that takes risks and pushes boundaries, that thrills, challenges, moves, enlightens and entertains. Fundementally though, I want work that excites me. If it doesn’t do that why should an audience like it?’
And it is not simply audiences that are excited by what North Wall has to offer. Artistic director of the company, Jemma Mcdonnel told me, ‘When we were planning this tour and told people we’d be at the North Wall, they were impressed. Its reputation in the industry is very good’.
North Wall has also made an impact for its innovative design. The centre has won a number of accolades, including a national award from the Royal Association of British Architects. I must confess that when I heard that the building housing the main drama studio was once a Victorian swimming baths, worried images filled my head of a long and thin room, gutted out and clinical. I realised walking into the main auditorium that my fears were unfounded, and probably unfairly based on a preconceived idea of what my local ramshackle pool would look like as a theatre. It is, in the words of one performer, ‘absolutely stunning’. What hits you instantly is the shape of the room which is narrow and rectangular, yet feels very intimate due to the proximity of the upper balconies and slightly raised seating at the sides. The use of wood is also interesting, especially the great emphasis on beams in the ceiling. It feels warm, natural and inviting, yet the palate of light browns, greys and terracotta simultaneously creates a slightly sombre feel. For a play with both playful and serious elements to it like In a Thousand pieces the space worked well.
‘Theatres should feel special’ says Danson, ‘not for architectural reasons or the decor, but because they are spaces of possibility, spaces where unique experiences can take place. It is after all one of the few if not the only remaining places where we come together with strangers to stare at other strangers often doing things that we wouldn’t otherwise be allowed to watch, laugh or cry at.’ It is for this reason that he picks shows that engage the audience in different ways. Over the next few weeks, a visit to North Wall a must for Oxford’s drama lovers to see work ranging from Flhip-Flhop, which combines elements of hip-hop with witty dialogue, to Edinburgh Fringe First Award winning Paperweight, an (almost) silent comedy of surprising tenderness about two men trapped in a mindless office. For the musically minded, jazz and classical happily cohabit the schedule with performances by the Brodsky Quartet and BBC Jazz award winning saxophonist Julian Siegel.
Whenever I told fellow students I was planning to write this article, the responses largely fell into two categories: either they had heard about the great work that goes on but had never gone, or simply did not know about it. Having visited the centre, I must say Oxford, you are missing out! A £5 concession for students and a fifteen minute bike ride are small price to pay for alternative drama of the highest calibre in a setting which can be described in one word: special.
Want to find out more? Visit www.thenorthwall.com for detailed listings and information about the theatre.
Why rights campaigners have got it all wrong
I do not want to have my conversations picked up by street-based microphones. I do not want anyone to have access to my phone calls and emails without a judicial permit, and I certainly do not want to be breaking the law if I walk down the street without an ID card. All of these are government proposals which truly threaten my liberties and privacy. Storing my DNA on a national database poses no such threat, which is why I am saddened and frankly surprised at the public outrage that surrounds talk of DNA storage.
The European Court of Human Rights recently ordered the British government to destroy 857 000 DNA samples of innocent people, claiming that holding such information was an unacceptable breach of civil liberties.
Yet in what tangible way is my life affected if the government holds a small sample of my saliva on a database? Will anyone who attacks me be more likely to feel cold fury of British justice? Probably. Will I be more swiftly caught if I am overcome by a sudden urge to rape? Almost certainly. Will I become the helpless victim of an unstoppable, all-powerful police state? Most definitely not.
When the bold warriors of civil liberties such as Shami Chakrabarti (who I agree with on most occasions) decry the loss of our rights to the evil database, I wonder exactly which rights she is talking about. She may mean the right to keep my genetic sequence (which I don’t even know) a secret. Well thank the Lord for her efforts. I’ve spent too many nights tossing and turning for fear that someone may discover the series of Gs, Cs, As and Ts that indicate to the expert eye what I look like. More likely, she may mean the right not to have my genetic information shared with outside interests like insurance companies. In defending this right she is entirely justified, but her argument should be one for stringent safeguards, not for throwing out DNA information along with all its immense potential for good. With the appropriate security measures in place we can enjoy the innumerable benefits of a DNA database without worrying that our information is being shared.
The extraordinary possibilities of a DNA database for fighting crime are undeniable. We should not let the governments spurious claims about the potential of ID cards for combating terrorism lead us to believe that everything they say is nonsense. Between 2001 and 2005, DNA evidence led to 8500 previously unconvicted people being linked to 14000 offences, including 114 murders and 116 rapes. This technology helps to maintain the Bri
tish murder conviction rate as one of the best in the world.
Aside from a vast archive of personal details including age, occupation and address, we all willingly hand over our dental records, eye prescription and vaccination history to the clawing hands of the state. The government already possesses extensive information on us, none of which is so invaluable to crime prevention, so why the uproar when it comes to DNA?
A common cry of protest is that innocent people’s data is being held, which apparently criminalises them before they’ve done anything wrong. But storing an innocent’s information is not some outrageous presumption that they will commit a crime, just a realistic acceptance that they might.
Furthermore, no reasonable person can question the strength of DNA evidence. Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys, a pioneering scientist of DNA fingerprinting, informs us that the chances of a match between two unrelated people is one in ten trillion. Second rounds of testing can limit the possibility of human error, and all the evidence must be examined by the defence, the prosecution and the judge. Thanks to DNA technology, Sean Hodgson has just been realised after serving twenty-seven years for a murder he didn’t commit. While most agree that DNA evidence should only form part of a case, it is immeasurably more reliable in determining who has been where than eyewitness reports so often distorted by the imperfections of memory.
If the government ever tries to force an ID card in my pocket, or listen to my phone calls without just cause, I’ll be the first marching through London with a banner of protest. But when it comes to DNA the British public consensus needs to stop, think, and realise that it is wrong. There are many genuine enemies to be fought in defence of civil liberties – the DNA database is not one of them.
Inequality and Sexism are taken for granted
One can only imagine what it must feel like to be a certain censorious Exonian this week. Having spent the last few weeks engaged in a clandestine campaign to tear asunder Exeter MCR’s copy of the Sun, he or she would have awoken last Friday to some new information. Women are, according to a shiny new report from OUSU, largely absent from senior roles within almost every aspect of University life.
Despite our supposed meritocratic ideals, men vastly outweigh women as JCR Presidents, heads of academic departments, and leaders of virtually all of Oxford’s political societies, including OULC, OULD and OUCA. The latter seems to be a particular offender – a piffling 3.5% of Conservative Association presidents have been women. Hardly surprising when the current president Anthony Boutall’s only response to the figures was to point out that he respected lots of women: “I do not just mean the perhaps obvious cases of our ex-President and Patron Margaret Thatcher, and of course the Queen, I refer also to my Mum and late Granny”. Fantastic.
Explanations of the glass ceilings in our ivory towers are as diverse as they are speculative. Some suggest that women are alienated by the male nature of our politics; that hustings, port and policy and a lack of existing role models combine to deter applicants. As the university keenly points out, success rates between male and female applications for academic positions are virtually equal. Perhaps we are undergoing what might be labelled the Hilary Clinton effect: Having elected a black OUSU President, we’re in such a self congratulatory mood that we’re happy to ignore our ongoing lack of female leadership.
Regardless of the explanation, one can be fairly certain of the nature of the response: lackadaisical. In a University of decisive positions, our collective attitude towards gender can at best be described as vague. There is, of course, the obligatory egalitarian gloss over anything said directly about the issue – but in a practical context, there is little consensus as to what we are supposed to think or do. Virtually every other week, OUSU’s poor women’s officer has to drag herself out to be “shocked and appalled” by yet another KY-jellied-topless snake charmer or similar – usually met by a near universal shrug of shoulders.
The University’s attitude seems nearly as ill defined as our own. Regarding pornography, college IT departments are apparently relatively indifferent to our surfing habits. Cherwell doesn’t suggest that the University should engage in censorship: intrusions into what we are allowed to see, hear and read are dangerous and an insult to our autonomy as students. However it is arguable that the widespread vacuum of silence on gender issues is damaging. If we or the University are going to tolerate activities which must ultimately be recognised as demeaning to women on the grounds of free speech, it should be made clear that we have prioritised freedom of expression over a boundary of respectful conduct regarding women. As it is, prospective female leaders are confronted with a series of arguably sexist incidences that seem to discredit their gender in any serious context. These events persist on a sort of “who cares?” basis – there is no clear reason given as to why we tolerate them. At best, this indicates apathy to sexism; at worst, it seems like an endorsement. Certainly, in some quarters, it probably is.
Clearly, women are being objectified for an audience; an audience that is then arguably less likely to vote for them, and even if that is not the case, they are generally perceived as being less likely to. Cherwell would hope that this group doesn’t represent us as a student body – but it isn’t clear that this is the case, because as a student body we are overwhelmingly indifferent. Some students will go to a club to see topless dancers; some will go because they were going anyway. Both groups are at the club – it isn’t very easy to pick them apart. Until we clarify our standpoint, until we are more forthcoming with our views, female candidates for senior roles within our community will feel that they may not be taken seriously. This isn’t the only obstacle to equality at the top of the ladder – once a good female candidate comes along, we also have to vote for them. However, some clarity and honesty on the issue would be a good start.
Review: The Little Mermaid
The first thing I must say about Eva Tausig’s The Little Mermaid is that it owes much more to the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale than the sugar-coated Disney musical. This is an exploration of desire, temptation and jealousy. Our heroine doesn’t swan her way towards a classic happy ending, but hobbles painfully towards making the ultimate decision: her own death or the death of the one she loves.
The intimate Burton Taylor studio is divided into two, and the audience is directed to their seats (by which I mean less than comfortable upturned black buckets), the location of which is dependant on whether their ticket-stub shows a picture of a foot or of a fin. There are two worlds at work here, delineated by a giant net. It is used effectively as a barrier between the world of the prince and the world of the mermaid and her family, and is a constant visual reminder of the failure to connect and their impossible and unattainable love.
Flashing lights shoot through the darkness with variable effect. The Blue-Peter-esque tin foil moon which the male characters wave emphatically from time to time is unconvincing and a little tacky. However, the genuinely unnerving moments when our mermaid visits the sea-witch (played with delightful cruelty by Leo-Marcus Wan) are certainly aided by the eerie blue lights and the rippling shadows of waving material. The music – a collaboration of electronic sounds, classical snippets, folk song and, at one point, a live cello performance – is a tad intrusive at the beginning but improves as the play develops, often adding poignancy to scenes, especially those between the mermaid and the prince.
This play demands audience participation. From time to time unwitting observers are made to carry oars, wear sailors’ hats or stand up pretending to be statues. I did feel that this played no real role in the progress of the story, and for a play that otherwise took itself so seriously as to abolish any humour from the action and script, these absurd interjections didn’t quite fit.
Sometimes The Little Mermaid felt as if it were dragging on, which largely stems from a script which is gratuitous with description, repetitive, and filled with redundant ‘he said/she saids’. If you want a truly well-written piece of drama, this is not for you. However the physical movement and aesthetic gracefulness of the piece makes up for the weakness. Lottie Norris gives a superb performance as the mermaid, as she hypnotises with her twirling and pirouetting. She is as sombre and heart-wrenching in the scenes of sadness as she is tempestuous and desperate in those of drama. Though the play is far from perfect, The Little Mermaid is an engaging and moving piece of drama which left few dry eyes by the end of the show.
Three stars out of five
Review: Twelfth Night
Third week is shaping up to be Shakespeare week, or more specifically, Shakespeare comedy week. An experimental take on Much Ado incorporating shopping trolleys and hat stands has already attracted rave reviews from this paper, and we have high hopes for All’s Well that Ends Well, the first of Trinity term’s garden plays, to be acted out on a Magdalen lawn in the summery evening air. So what of Mary Franklin’s production of Twelfth Night which, by the sounds of its director’s spiel, will occupy ground somewhere between the graceful traditionalism of Rafaella Marcus’s All’s Well and the chaos of Much Ado?
In Twelfth Night, we are told, there are two lives that not only are devoted to love but suitably ‘stultified’ by it. Here we have, Illyria: ‘a land paralyzed, set in slow motion, transfixed by dust’. Going by very select scenes I was shown at the preview, this intriguing premise is not followed up. I saw no evidence of dust nor of paralysis – unless you count the paralysed look on the actors’ faces when yet another line was forgotten or entry was mistimed. Facebook excites me with the promise of a radical production combining sexual languor and underlying homoeroticism, excessive drunkenness and madness. But as for the ‘radical production’ bit: if Franklin thinks that putting Orsino, Sir Toby et. al in expensive suits and chopping the script up bit is radical then she is sadly mistaken.
Tom Woodward is suitably melodramatic in the role of Orsino – at times enjoyable, he is the show’s most decent performer. Agnes Meath-Baker, on the other hand, whom this reviewer enjoyed so much in Black Comedy, is disappointing as our transvestite heroine. She clearly possesses talent, though not for impersonating men. She also seems visibly affected by the presence of Woodward, constantly trying to overdo his well-honed preening peacock act with ever more gratuitous displays of emotion.
Among the other characters whom I saw, Jacob Follini-Press is competent and entertaining, yet captured nothing of Sir Andrew’s oblivious stupidity, preferring rather to endow his character with a certain hedonistic foppishness more appropriate, in fact, for the character of Sir Toby.
Do not get me wrong. There is nothing that is awfully bad about this production; but there isn’t much good either, and my main concern upon leaving the preview was the lack of organisation. For unexplained reasons I was not treated to Malvolio or Maria or Olivia, and only caught a glimpse of the actress playing Feste. A preview that consisted of scenes chopped up inexplicably, stumbled lines and one character reading directly from his script certainly did not allay my fears that this is a disorganised troupe of undoubtedly able actors who will have to put in a lot of hard work in order to make this play worth paying seven pounds for.
two stars out of five
Twelfth Night is on at the OFS studio, Tuesday-Saturday of 3rd Week, 19.30
Etcetera: Brasenose Arts Festival – Poetry
Etcetera talk to Richard O’Brien and some of the poets who are featuring in Brasenose’s arts festival during third week, providing samples of their poetry and discussing the inspiration behind them.
"Shocking" disparities in college costs
Life at Oxford’s most expensive college costs over £1,100 more per year than at the university’s cheapest, documents released by Queen’s College have revealed.
St Edmund’s Hall topped the list, costing students £4790.56 a year for food and accommodation. A student at Mansfield pays just £3,684.75 for the same services, saving £3,317 over a three year degree.
Martin Slater, the finance bursar of St. Edmund Hall commented, “It’s not surprising. St. Edmund Hall’s rents have always been at the top of the spectrum, essentially because w’re a poor college.”
Many of the wealthier colleges are able to subsidise the rents that students pay. Slater added that there had been “attempts to redistribute wealth between colleges” but that they had “come up against resistance from the wealthier colleges to do anything in that respect.”
James Bennett, the Bursar at St Catherine’s defended higher colleges’ prices saying, “There is a correlation between the quality and price.”
He added, “Are you aware that these prices are just covering the food cost, and they do not cover the costs of electricity, staffing, etc? They are already subsidised.”
Shocking disparities also emerged when looking at accommodation charges alone. Brasenose students pay £3,357 a year, more than £600 above the Oxford average of £2,748.
Brasenose’s JCR President, Arvind Singhal, plans to negotiate lower rent prices with authorities. Jack Ross, a second year at the college, agreed that rent is high. He commented, “We do pay quite a lot of rent. Our JCR president is trying to keep it as low as possible. Most people feel it is quite high but then we get quite a good quality of rooms too.”
Improper spending by colleges may to be blame for the discrepancy, OUSU’s rent and accommodation officer Jamie Susskind suggested. Colleges sometimes use student living charges to subsidise their builiding works, or even attempt to profit from accommodation and food prices.
Susskind added that some colleges are “casual on inflation rates. They would use a different index for rent and a different one to for the payment for their staff.” He also mentioned that at one college, the lack of students applying for financial support encouraged the college to raise rent charges further. Some JCRs which don’t carry out rent negotiations with college authorities may also result in higher prices.
OUSU President Lewis Iwu warned that some colleges risk putting pressure on students to take paid work by charging too much. “Every student is entitled to a minimum standard of living to maximise the student experience and some colleges are in danger of forcing students to take up extra paid work which impacts their academic performance,” he said, “Whilst I appreciate that different colleges have different costs, colleges need to think about the ramifications for current students and access.”
Even students at the cheapest colleges found college life expensive. Rae Bowles, Mansfield student commented, “I think it is still cheaper to buy your own food and cook. You can end up for as much as a fiver for lunch. It all adds up as you are charged for everything you put on your plate extra. We have different meals and you can mix and match.”
A spokesperson from Oxford University stated that 38 colleges are all independent bodies, hence the University does not monitor the rents and food charges. The Conference of Colleges deals with matters of interest to the colleges, societies and permanent private halls.
Union disappoints with more cancellations
Oxford Union members have been disappointed this week by the news that the location of the ‘Garden of Eden’ Ball has been changed from Ardington House to Oxford Union and the cancellation of the long-awaited speaker Anna Kournikova.
Oxford Union’s Trinity term ball is traditionally hosted in an out of Frenwin court location. However, this year’s event will be held in the Union premises.
The reason for the cancellation of the Ardington House hire is the sudden price increase.
Laura Winwood, Oxford Union’s secretary, has verbally agreed the price of the location. However, the manager of the House has been out of contact for several weeks. He then proceeded to demand an additional £12 per head for corkage, £5000 in total, to the costs which had already been agreed.
The Union’s press spokesperson commented that “this made it no longer cost-effective to host the ball there”.
In light of the change of venue, the price of Ball tickets has been lowered by £10, so members will now pay £39.
Corey Dixon, Union President, remains positive about the event, congratulating the Secretary on her hard work, and commenting that the changes should not reflect badly on “her or the union as a whole”. He added that the ball would be “the best value on the market”, and should particularly appeal to those unable to afford the more expensive college balls.
One Union member commented, “This is an utter disgrace. I was looking forward to spending a lovely evening in an Oxfordshire country home.”
However, in general the reaction to the news has been sympathetic, with a St John’s first year adding that while the Union seemed to be doing a good job, “It is clear they should have signed a contract before advertising the Ball.”
The manager of Ardington House was unavailable for comment.
It was also revealed this week that Anna Kournikova will no longer be speaking due to budgetary restrictions.
Although it was understood that all costs had been settled, it was not known that Kournikova’s expenses would include two assistants, who would also require international flights, accommodation in a five star hotel and car transportation.
Dixon commented, “The latest estimate of the costs of her visit to the Union,
including flights and accommodation, was in excess of £2,500, and we felt
that it would be fiscally irresponsible to spend this amount on a single
event.”
The total trinity term budget for individual speakers is £3,800. Excluding Kournikova, there are 22 individual speakers listed in the term card. According to Sonia Krylova, Union’s press officer the average expenditure per speaker is £600. With £1400 spent on Martin Sheen’s flights from the US alone, Union’s budget is already more than stretched.
Most students have agreed that in the end the Union made the right decision.
One Univ student commented, “Kournikova’s requests were pretty unreasonable, I think the Union were justified in cancelling the event.”
However, there are worries whether Union’s financial woes will not lead to further cancellation of events.
The Union has also been criticised this week for its links with a controversial company specialising in “fiscal engineering”. The Oakfield Group, who have sponsored pre-debate drinks, is registered in the Isle of Man and offers a “boutique service” to clients to “reduce tax liability”.
The Union defended its decision to accept the sponsorship, commenting, “The Union does not accept membership from any of the companies blacklisted by OUSU, such as BAE systems.”
Report shows Oxford is still a man’s world
The enormous scale of the gender divide at Oxford University has been exposed by an OUSU Report released this week.
The in-depth study into academic and student life at the University disclosed that fewer than 10% of professors, only a sixth of JCR Presidents and less than a third of presidents of student political societies are women.
The investigation was carried out by OUSU VP for Women, Rachel Cummings, who confirmed that she was extremely concerned by the findings.
They demonstrate that women are alarmingly underrepresented at an academic level: only five out of 24 members of the University council and just 17 out of 116 heads of academic departments are women. The University has never had a female Chancellor or Vice-Chancellor.
The dichotomy was not only limited to academia however, with merely five female JCR Presidents currently serving across Oxford in comparison to 31 male counterparts. MCR’s by contrast seem to be more balanced, although their female presidents are still outnumbered by 14 to 25.
Speaking in reaction to the survey, Rachel Cummings said that the OUSU Executive were working with officials from the University in order to try and bridge the gap.
“I think the lack of female academics at the University is a serious problem, partly because of all the talent we must be currently wasting.”
The report was commission to help combat a plague of female underrepresentation throughout University, as shown in the long existing Finals Gap, which consistently sees more men than women achieving First Class degrees.
A spokesman for Oxford University said that the disparity had been consistently investigated by the University’s Education Committee over the last decade, but that they were not necessarily any closer to finding a solution.
“Research has been carried out for over 10 years and has failed to reveal any significant factor that influences examination results,” he said.
“For example, neither the type of examination nor a difference in stress levels have shown to have any significant effect on a difference in performance between genders.”
Meanwhile on the subject of the tiny number of female professors, the spokesman pointed out that this was in part due to a lower number of applications for academic positions from women, despite success rates for both genders being similar.
“It is true generally in academia that fewer women move through each stage of the academic career path. It’s a bit like a leaky pipeline.”
He added that a number of programmes had been put in place in order to try and confront this, including the the Career Development Fellowship (CDF) and Academic Leadership Development Programme.
The report also pointed out that of Oxford’s 39 constituent colleges, 30 have higher male populations than female. Keble and Somerville were some of the few colleges boasting a female majority, whilst approximately two-thirds of students studying at Balliol are men – the highest proportion.
Female student leaders from across Oxford gave their reaction to the findings, highlighting a variety of factors as to why so few women seem to benefit from the Oxford system as well as men.
Katy Theobald, President of Oxford Women in Politics said she believed the lack of women to look up to around the University was a key factor.
“The problem is that the current situation doesn’t provide enough female role models,” she said.
“If you’re never given a tute by a woman or never sit in a lecture by a woman then you don’t have examples to aspire to.”
Meanwhile Katherine Terrell, JCR President at St Hilda’s, thought that the problem is a self-perpetuating one.
She said, “Some have suggested that hustings are off-putting for female candidates because often they include challenges such as drinking a dirty pint, assuming women are less willing to do this, but even at colleges where these kind of hustings do not take place, female candidates are just as unlikely, and it seems like a simple answer to a complex problem. I feel that the lack of JCR presidents is a self-perpetuating problem, and a worrying one.”
The gender gap appeared to be less visible in student societies however. The Law Society had a female to male ratio of 10:11 and the report notes the high female population of Amnesty International committees. The difference is still acute though in Oxford’s political societies.
Since 2000, women have made up 28% of Labour club (OULC) co-chairs, 18% of Oxford University Liberal Democrats (OULD) presidents and only 3.5% of Conservative Association (OUCA) presidents.
OUCA have been particularly singled out in the past for their low active female membership. They have no Women’s Officer and Port and Policy is often used as a prime example of a male dominated event.
One female attendee, who wished to remain anonymous, remarked, “”It seems that the men are there to do the debating and the women to pour the port.”
She added, “It’s sad that an Association of the party that produced the first female prime minister could have failed so miserably to move beyond gender stereotypes.”
Asked to comment OUCA President, Anthony Boutall, said that role of women was very important to the organization and stressed that the society had moved on from previous stereotypes.
“Women have been exceptionally valuable to the progress in OUCA has made,” he said.
“I recommend OUCA events to any women in Oxford who may have been put off previously by unfavourable stories. I know that you would not experience anything other than respect.”
