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.
Blog Page 2145
"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.”
Top Five Films To: Make You Not Want To Have Kids
Kids are great right? Cherubic mini-people. Their greatest concern – making the tortuous decision to that eternal question: Hannah Montana or High School Musical? Bless their little hearts, etc. Or not. Thank god we have cinematic evidence to expose the vile demonic truth – kids are fucking scary. Personally, kids scare the shit out of me even without the added bonus of being the spawn of Satan, so Damian in Richard Donner’s The Omen (1976) seriously begs the question: why have a kid if it could end up hanging all your domestic staff? That film is one of the most effective methods of contraception I’ve come across. Try it.
The finest in the that-kid’s-so-scary-I-don’t-even-want-to-see-another-kid-let-alone-have-one brand, however, is surely found in Gore Verbinski’s The Ring (2002). You go through the miserable, longwinded process of adoption and all you get at the end of it is Samara: the most truly horrifying horror-child ever created. You’d have thought a child standing still and not saying anything for a few hours would be a positive thing, but oh no. One controversial, but valuable tip this film will teach you: if you see a child stuck down a well DO NOT HELP IT OUT.
Similarly terrifying is The Sound of Music (1965). The thought of losing several perfectly good curtains just so your kids can have play clothes to cycle around Austria in is enough to force my womb into a perpetual strike, and it should be enough for yours too.
Chan-wook Park’s Oldboy (2003) provides convincing evidence that having kids = emotional pain/self disgust. Do you want even the slightest risk of someone to locking you in a room for 15 years, then hypnotising you into committing incest with your own daughter? Thought not.
Finally, Chris Columbus’ Home Alone (1990): if Macauley Culkin had never been born, sure, his family home would have been subject to some heavy theft while they were on holiday, but you tell me how his parents are going to get shavingfoam/blood/tar/chicken feathers/crushed pieces of toy cars out of the carpet?
Enough said.
Coraline
Coraline is meant for children, but this darkly beautiful twisted fairytale is sure to appeal to audiences of all ages. Henry Selick (director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach) once again triumphs in the world of stop motion animation. Coraline bemoans her boring existence, feeling ignored by her parents in their new home. Upon discovering a tiny secret door she discovers there is more to the house, and steps into a happier reflection of her own world, complete with her apparently charming “other mother”. Attention is lavished on her, and rather than irritations her neighbours become entertainment. All is not as it seems in the other world though, and Coraline has more than herself to save.
The film is Selick’s first venture into the world of 3D, now apparently a prerequisite for children’s films. While the majority simply use this gimmick to disguise woeful plotlines, Coraline really works in 3D. Rather than being poked in the eye, the audience is drawn into the scene: every frame is beautifully illuminated, with a depth that inevitably leaves the audience enchanted. From a magic garden with a thousand flowers slowly unfurling and lighting up, reminiscent of Disney’s Fantasia, to a circus full of jumping mice, the scenery is stunning. As in The Nightmare Before Christmas, Selick carefully employs the use of colour, leaving the real world as plain as possible to make the Other world all the more sumptuous.
The plot manages to wear its traditional “be careful what you wish for” morality well, even if it is a little over-reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland at times – complete with Cheshire Cat. There’s enough action and intrigue to keep everyone involved though. The twists might not be ground-breaking, but done this well they still grab your attention.
Clever characterisation, particularly that of supporting characters Mr Bobinsky, the retired Russian acrobat upstairs, and Misses Spink and Forcible, rotund retired actresses downstairs, will keep even adults entertained. . Spink and Forcible (French and Saunders) are exceptionally well cast, exuding energy and vitality. Much like Shrek the script manages subtle nods to grown-up humour, while not alienating its core audience – no small achievement. Coraline excels as a protagonist too, a fully developed character rather than a moping Disney brat, with a distinct attitude and some impressive brains.
Adults might wonder if the film is too scary for children – it had me gasping at times – but the little ones leave enthralled, not afraid. The film manages to blend the terrifying and the surreal to sublime effect: a children’s classic in the making. A perfect fairytale, Coraline dazzles in every sense.
Simply Spock On
With the new Star Trek movie being a Casino Royale-style re-launch of the
series, as die-hard ‘trekkies’, the Oxford Star Trek Society had our
reservations about the upcoming film. With the franchise having stalled in
recent years, many attempts have been made to inject new life into it (with
novels, computer games, and of course the last series), all with limited
degrees of success. The latter, Star Trek:Enterprise, was widely criticised for its
frequent and unnecessary breaking of the established canon, resulting in
its premature termination after four seasons. Star Trek is such a long
running show, that it is only natural for its keenest fans to expect to be
rewarded with a seamless continuity in return for their investment and
viewership. Thus, when JJ Abrams announced his intention to create a ‘new’
Star Trek canon (with changes justified by the alternate timeline generated
by the movie’s sinister villain, Nero), I expected to be disappointed.
Delightfully, however, I was wrong.
The movie was very easy to get into: the back story is built up in a smooth
manner for the new viewer, with a pleasant number of unobtrusive nods to
the previous incarnations of Trek to suit long-time fans: it was nice to see
Uhura’s earpiece, for example, being almost unchanged amidst the gorgeous
new bridge set. Engineering was a mild disappointment, the familiar warp
core being replaced by a vast factory-like set of pipes and machinery, yet
the rest of the sets remained reasonably true to form, the ‘i-enterprise’
(as someone termed it) offering a more believable bridge between the gritty
technology of Star Trek: Enterprise and the later shows than the unique style of the
original series. The new USS Enterprise is a thing of beauty, and the
graphics in the movie really do her credit: long gone are the wooden, planar
ship movements of old, the effects screaming graceful action all the way
through. The music too, reminiscent of the classical pieces of the previous
movies, is excellently composed and sets the mood well.
One main critique would be the underdevelopment of some of the characters.
Scotty, McCoy and Chekov feel redundant, present only to complete the
original bridge crew set, and the villain of the piece is so little fleshed
out that his inevitable defeat feels almost irrelevant, and rather rushed,
at the end of movie. Perhaps, however, this is because of the core essence
of Trek, which has always been essentially about personal issues, rather
than the futuristic setting: Abrams has captured this well in the growing
trust between Kirk and Spock, while the frequent action scenes keep the plot
from getting too slow.
In the end, my only issue with this new show and its continuity was not that
it exists, but that such a wonderful film couldn’t fit exactly with the
canon I know and love: it seems only a shame the movie could not have been
written in such a way to make that possible. I look forward to there being
many sequels. This is a must-see, for old fans and for new.
Highlights – Rugby Cuppers Final 2009
Highlights from the 2009 Rugby Cuppers final. Keble emerged victorious scoring 22 points to Teddy Hall’s 16.
Preview: The Servant’s Ball Blitzkrieg
I don’t understand this play, and I don’t think you will either. For starters it’s actually a ‘quick script splicing job’ of two plays (The Servant’s Ball and Blitzkrieg) by Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera. Marechera, who died in 1987 after an eventful life – which included getting sent down from New College – apparently wrote about colonialism and corruption and all sorts of things self-styled theatre activists climax over.
The promo http://www.marecheracelebration.org/SBBK.html isn’t much help in understanding the production, being filled with more chunky polysyllabic goodness than an essay of a lit student on a verbal enema. It’s amazing that in all those words, there’s barely anything on the plot. This is probably because, as far as I could tell, there isn’t one. The fact that the audience’s attention is constantly ping-ponged from one scene in one play to another scene in another play probably makes things worse.
Having said that, I rather enjoyed it. I say ‘rather’ because the Servant’s Ball bits were playful while the direction for Blitzkrieg frothed with the kind of morbid angst I left behind in my teens, thank-you-very-much. The cast played off one another well and each gave their stock characters remarkably unpretentious performances (maybe they didn’t understand the play either) in cutely naff and quirky costumes. Special credit goes to Priyanka Mantha and Sophie Lewis, although the latter distorted the upbeat group dynamics somewhat with a heavier, more serious stage presence.
The real sparkle, however, lay in the directors’ use of sounds. Mixed with the lines and actors’ voices were live musical accompaniment, singing, choral speech, wallas, rhymes, all making for a lively aural ensemble. In one witty word-game the actors looked like they were really having fun, which made it all the more enjoyable to watch.
Less enjoyable was the dancing. I’m not sure how many of the cast had diplomas in interpretative dance, but here’s a tip: if you can’t do it, don’t. The average audience member (i.e. me) is unlikely to decipher Postcolonial Subversion of the Hegemonic Neo-colonial Socioeconomic Matrix from what looks very much like A Plain Old Mess. The blocking in general was very disordered, with characters showing little reason for their movements and occasionally walking through imaginary walls.
Ultimately, there’s a lot of promise here which could go either way. Here’s hoping that they up the energy, up the lights, sounds and fun, because ultimately fun, for the sake of nothing but itself, is the most subversive thing of all.
three stars
The Servant’s Ball Blitzkrieg will be playing at the Wadham Moser Theatre, Monday-Friday 3rd Week, 19.30. Tickets cost £7(£5)
Oxford’s first case of swine flu
A six year old Oxfordshire schoolgirl has been diagnosed with swine flu.
The girl, a pupil at Sandhills primary school, East Oxford, allegedly caught the disease while holidaying in Mexico. She is reported to have attended school for only one day before falling ill. The school was closed for several days as a precautionary measure. However, health officials have urged the public not to panic.
Dr Noel McCarthy, of Thames Valley Health Protection Unit, told the BBC the case had been “contained”, and it is reported that the girl has made a full recovery.
McCarthy praised her family’s “quick and sensible response”, and reassured the public that the girl’s family and everyone else who had been in contact with her had been approached and offered treatment to prevent possible infection.
“The child was in no way ill when she was at school or around that time so there is no risk to anybody at the school,” he added.
“Having said this, the county council and the head of the school are, and will be continuing to contact those in the school to give clear information but mainly to reassure people rather than to say that they need to do anything special.”
Some students, however, have voiced concern. “I know the best thing to do is to keep a stiff upper lip, but its hard not to be worried when a disease which spreads so fast and can kill so quickly comes so close to Oxford,” said one Oriel first-year.
Others disagreed. One New College postgraduate said “the overreaction to swine flu is actually dangerous. It’ll be like the boy who cried wolf – people won’t be as worried as they should be when a really deadly pandemic comes along”.
Andrew Smith, MP for Oxford East, said: “The most important thing here is that the little girl concerned is recovering well, which is great news. We must also thank the health professionals for what by all accounts is good handling of the situation.” He also praised the local media for what he called a “balanced and responsible” response to the situation.
No further cases of the infection have been reported in Oxfordshire.
Elsewhere, pupils at South Hampstead High School, North London, and Alleyn’s School, Dulwich, saw school cancelled for several days after pupils at both schools, both of whom who had also been on holiday in Mexico, contracted the illness. There have been thirty-two confirmed cases of Swine Flu in the UK, but no deaths have been reported. Cases have been reported in nineteen countries, and some British tourists remain in quarantine abroad, most notably in Hong Kong.
Oxford University is currently in the ‘Amber 2 Pandemic Phase’, which, according to the university website, is proportionate to large clusters of human-to-human spread and a substantial pandemic risk. The World Health Organisation pandemic phase is phase 5, one stage before an actual pandemic. The university formed a committee at the end of last week in response to Swine Flu.
Dr Ian Brown, Director of Occupational Health at the University, issued a statement to members of the University on May 1st .
“All staff or students who have returned from Mexico within the last seven days should inform the Occupational Health Department of the University on their return even if they are well,” it read.
“The University of Oxford has comprehensive and detailed plans in place for this contingency: the University’s pandemic flu planning document is available on this website and further guidance has been issued to Colleges and departments.”
On Wednesday, Roger Harrabin, Environmental analyst at the BBC, urged the ‘need for perspective’ on Swine Flu. He compared it to the huge scares during the BSE, SARS and Avian Flu crises, when in each case it was reported that hundreds of thousands could die. In fact, total deaths worldwide from the three ‘pandemics’ combined came to just over one thousand.
Simon Jenkins was another journalist who urged the need for a proportionate response, and slammed virologist John Oxford for referring to a Swine Flu ‘Armageddon’.
Recent reports suggest the virus is past its peak, but England’s chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, warned against complacency because flu viruses could change character “very rapidly”.
