Tuesday, May 6, 2025
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Special Report: Merton tops 2021 Norrington Table but rankings show link between college wealth and academic performance

Meg Lintern
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Special Report: Merton tops 2021 Norrington Table but rankings show link between college wealth and academic performance

Merton College, described by students as “where fun goes to die”, has lived up to its reputation for high academic attainment by topping this year’s Norrington Table, with 45 of 77 students scoring a first in their finals. LMH is the college with the lowest score, with only 36 of 118 students achieving a first-class degree.

Regent’s Park had the lowest score of any PPH or college with more than one exam-sitting student, with a Norrington score of 69.7%. LMH narrowly missed out on the bottom spot with a score of 69.8%.

The overall lowest score on the table was earnt by Ripon Cuddesdon. This widely unheard-of college is situated 7 miles out of the centre of Oxford, nestled in the Cotswold countryside. A Church of England theological college, Ripon Cuddesdon trains men and women for ministry, with alumni including David Hand, Archbishop of Papau New Guinea 1977-83, and Cosmo Gordon Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury 1928-42. It had just one student who sat an exam in 2020-1, and because that student earnt a 2:1, the college scored just 60% on the Norrington table.

With the exception of St Stephen’s House, whose single exam entrant scored a first and earnt the House a score of 80%, most PPH’s scored lower than colleges. Indeed, the mean Norrington score for PPHs was just 70.4% compared to a mean score of 76.1% for colleges.

A Cherwell investigation in 2018 revealed that the wealth of colleges could have a substantial bearing on their performance in the Norrington Table. Looking at the data for this year, this finding seems to have held true.

The five colleges to top the Norrington Table are all among the oldest and wealthiest Oxford colleges. Merton, St John’s, Lincoln, Brasenose, and New College were all founded before 1510. Financial reports published in 2017 show that all of these colleges were in the top half of Oxford colleges and PPHs as ranked by wealth. Lincoln, the college with the lowest net assets of the five, still ranked 15th out of 36 according to wealth.

In contrast, the colleges at the bottom of the table are generally considered to be some of the poorer colleges at Oxford. Hertford, Pembroke, St Hilda’s and LMH are all in the bottom half of colleges as ranked by wealth, placing 24th, 23rd, 20th, and 31st respectively.

However, there does not seem to be a consistent correlation between the wealth of colleges and their performance on the Norrington Table. Christ Church, the second wealthiest college, was ranked 21st out of all colleges on the Table, whilst Harris Manchester, the poorest college, ranked 10th.

The relationship between the wealth of colleges and their academic attainment is not a new phenomenon. In 2002, the Oxford Student Union released a report stating that disparities in college wealth meant that students “are far from guaranteed a common educational experience, with detriment not only to their academic performance but also to their general welfare and financial condition”. The report found that poorer colleges had smaller libraries – with 160,000 volumes at Christ Church compared to 40,000 at Wadham – and generally paid their fellows less, making it harder to attract the best tutors.

Nonetheless, the significance of the Norrington Table as a metric of college’s academic performance has been widely criticised, since the differences between college’s scores are generally small, and a single student being awarded a 1st instead of a 2:1 could improve a college’s rank by four or five positions.

The Norrington score was developed by Sir Arthur Norrington, former President of Trinity college, in the 1960s, as a way of measuring the performance of students in finals. The score is based on the classifications of undergraduate degrees awarded and expressed as a percentage.

The Norrington calculations attach a score of 5 to a 1st class degree, 3 to a 2:1 degree, 2 to a 2:2 degree, 1 to a 3rd and 0 to a pass and Honours Pass. The percentage is then calculated by dividing the total college score by the total possible score the college could attain (ie the number of degrees awarded per college multiplied by a score of 5).

The Norrington Table for 2020-21 can be found here.

Image Credits: Meg Lintern

Hertford College launches John Porter Diplomacy Centre

Humza Jilani
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This year, Hertford College inaugurated its John Porter Diplomacy Centre, a key part of the Hertford 2030 aspiration to prepare students for “life, work, and citizenship, and to be on the frontline for a better society.”

The Centre emerged out of conversations between Hertford College Principal Tom Fletcher, a former British Ambassador to Lebanon and foreign policy advisor at No. 10, and John Porter, an alumnus of Hertford who matriculated in 1971 and was the namesake of the John Porter Charitable Foundation. Porter passed away in 2021.

The John Porter Diplomacy Centre, a unique effort among Oxford’s colleges, will train students in diplomatic skills, connect different parts of the Oxford ecosystem working in diplomacy, encourage people-to-people partnership-building, and support the creation of scholarships for refugee leaders to come to the University of Oxford.

Two particular notes from the conversations between Fletcher and Porter animate the current vision for the John Porter Diplomacy Centre: approaches to the peace processes of the future and supporting the development of young peoples’ diplomatic skills.

“When it comes to the peace processes of the future, we want to know where we need to invest time and energy now to prepare for moments of tension and friction in the world,” Fletcher told Cherwell.

John Porter’s desire to support a Diplomatic Centre stemmed, in part, from his experience watching a 1988 BBC clip of Nicholas Winston reuniting with dozens of children he had helped rescue from Nazi Germany. In total, Winston assisted in the rescue of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II.

“He was just struck by seeing an example of such an extraordinary effort to transform peoples’ lives and wanted to support something that would continue that legacy,” Fletcher said of Porter.

They are partnering with the Oxford Refugee Centre, headed by Professor Alexander Betts, to support refugee scholarships. They are also studying different points of “intervention” on a refugee’s life journey that can ultimately help them come to Oxford and succeed.

Fletcher also strives to use the Centre as a platform to discuss what “peace” means in a world where that term has become highly contested.

“We are looking at peace with our planet, with climate change. We are looking at peace between the government and Big Tech, and peace with tech itself. We are looking at peace between migrants and host communities. We also look at peace between generations, to heal the wounds of history and ensure that we do not pass on inherited conflict and inequality,” Fletcher told Cherwell.

“We are a Big Tent, but not a big building. We are not trying to duplicate or replace what is already going on at Oxford, but instead we want to connect the dots between different parts of the Oxford ecosystem,” added Fletcher.

With such a wide-range of topics and interests within the Centre’s wheelhouse, Fletcher naturally envisions that they will take an expansive view of what constitutes success.

“I look at 2030, and I think that if we can get together a sort of reunion of everyone involved in this project up to that point, from senior ambassadors to ministers to military people to humanitarians to students, and that we can say that we directly contributed practical ideas and time and energy to some really important peace processes, I would consider that a success,” said Fletcher.

“We cannot write the script of where people will go, but we can give them the tools to apply themselves to amazing things,” he added.  

Image Credit: Hertford College

Once Long Ago

Jennifer Robinson
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Once Long Ago

In Once Long Ago, Jenny Robinson invites us to listen to the “dead tales of old gods long gone” struggling to find their place in a new world, where they are “only folklore”. The resultant effect of her aural images and enjambed lines is one of limping — each line unfolds hesitantly, like the shifting of tired feet.

The dead tales of old gods long gone 

Far off from slumber,

In dreams they shall wake

As their backs break,

Cracking to conform to a new world, 

Their stories, only folklore,

All that’s left of them lives on.

To breathe and to die, to slowly be consumed

Back into the worlds from whence they came,

An always cycle, eternal wail, never finished,

Like a snake eating its own tail,

Wrapped around the world

Patiently waiting to be one

Again.

“I am a proud convert”: My conversion to Judaism

Jessica DeMarco-Jacobson
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“I am a proud convert”: My conversion to Judaism

   I am a proud convert. My interest in Judaism began with my family background, and I cannot explain my conversion without first explaining that.

   My mother’s side of the family, while interesting in its own way, is Friulan (Friuli is a northeastern Italian province) going back to the 16th century. I have no Jewish ancestry through her. Instead, my Jewish ancestry comes from my father’s side, from my paternal great-grandfather, Benjamin Itzhakin.

   Benjamin was born to a Jewish family in Babruysk, modern-day Belarus, on 15th April 1888. As he reached his teen years, antisemitism grew increasingly violent in revolutionary Russia. So, Benjamin left on a ship to Chicago, Illinois, America. Immigration officers changed his last name from Izhakin (meaning son of Isaac) to Jacobson. He married and had several children, one of them being my grandfather Howard.

    In his letters to me, Howard gave me the impression of being a “self-hating Jew,” a loaded phrase, which I’m using here to mean a Jew who internalises their marginalisation, resents their Jewish identity, and wishes to distance themselves from “all things Jewish”. In other words, Howard did not want to be Jewish. So much so that he decided to convert to Christianity and create his own Christian denomination.

   Years later, Howard had a son, who would later become my father. Whenever my dad would ask Howard about his family background, Howard would respond that they were American, without further detail. As a result, my father grew up not knowing about his Jewish heritage and was not raised, according to any definition, Jewishly. It wasn’t until his adulthood that my father learned about his Jewish ancestry.

    I grew up with knowledge of this ancestry, and Judaism always fascinated me. I was born and raised in Columbus, Georgia, a place that actually has a sizeable Jewish population compared to most places in Georgia. Columbus has two synagogues, one Conservative and one Reform. But the Jewish population and two synagogues are outweighed by the existence of over 200 churches in the area. Public education in the Bible Belt taught me very little about Judaism, and what it did teach was mostly incorrect and simplified to the point of being borderline offensive. I was drawn to Judaism because it felt like a lost puzzle piece to my own identity.

“It wasn’t until his adulthood that my father learned about his Jewish ancestry.”

   I began a more serious interest in Judaism when I was in high school. My high school was located in a historically Jewish area of Columbus, and so there were several Jewish students and one Jewish teacher (who just so happened to be my homeroom teacher). I can’t explain why, but I felt very compelled to learn about Judaism. I didn’t have many Jewish resources, though, so I started by reading a used, pink pocket edition of the Jewish Publication Society translation of the Torah from cover to cover. I didn’t know what to do after that, and so my interest in Judaism lay mostly dormant for the next couple of years, until the pandemic.

   Like many other Americans, I found my work hours cut. Actually, I was making more money off of Georgia’s unemployment pay-outs than at my less-than-mediocre retail job. School moved to Zoom, and I found myself at home for most hours of the day, and so I had a lot of time for thinking. I began thinking about Judaism again, and I took an online edX course called “Judaism and its Scriptures.” I read a lot of articles, and I found that my existing values tended to align with Jewish values.

   Near Rosh Hashanah of 2020, I got into contact with the Reform temple, thanks to my old homeroom teacher and his very kind wife. I learned about the possibility of converting and then began a conversion process with the rabbi there, who was planning to retire the following summer. Although the temple was conveniently located within walking distance, it was currently closed to the public due to the pandemic, so the rabbi and I held our classes once a month on the phone. We later moved to Zoom.

   It was a very unconventional conversion, but my rabbi would basically assign me different books to read or different tasks to do at home, such as observing Shabbat, baking challah, and practising prayers. I would attend services on Zoom, and I was always the youngest person to attend. Out of all of the services, I loved Torah study the most—I found analysing and discussing the parshahs (weekly Torah portions) to be the most invigorating. I found it a little difficult to find parts of my identity in the holidays at first, but the first holiday I found myself in was Purim. No, it wasn’t because it’s a mitzvah to get absolutely pissed drunk, but because it was very similar to the Italian holiday of Carnevale and because I loved the Book of Esther. At some points during the year, my conversion became quite difficult because I was a full-time university student who was juggling two, sometimes three, part-time jobs.

“I was drawn to Judaism because it felt like a lost puzzle piece to my own identity.”

   As summertime approached, my rabbi told me to start considering a Jewish name. She wanted to be the one to see out the end of my conversion—maybe for her it was a last hurrah before retirement—and she felt that I would be ready to convert by June. I felt slightly unprepared to dive into the mikveh (a ritual bath involved in the conversion process) and officially become a Jew. Most conversions to Judaism take a full year or two, or sometimes even longer. My mikveh ceremony was to take place just nine months after I began my conversion back in Rosh Hashanah.

   I struggled to choose a name; it actually wasn’t until the week before my conversion that I settled on “Naftala,” a name I found in a book my rabbi let me borrow. According to that book, “Naftala” means to “wrestle with God,” but it more commonly means “my struggle.” I felt this name was apt because I had always struggled with religiosity, and my conversion was made more difficult by the situations the Wheel of Fate threw at me.

” Because of the nature of my conversion—or simply because I converted, some people don’t consider me a Jew. “

   My conversion took place in a swimming pool at a temple member’s house. I said a prayer, then immersed myself in the water, and repeated that process two more times. The cynical side of me wondered how my dipping in the pool really changed me from being a non-Jew to a Jew. My rabbi gave me the theological explanation behind the mikveh, but I found the answer in something else.

   As I began to live my life as a fully-fledged Jew, I looked back to my mikveh ceremony and felt that it held more meaning. And perhaps this is a sacrilegious thought, but I felt that the conversion was simply a formality, a ceremony to mark my once-lost Jewish soul finally returning to its proper home. I thought about it as if the Jewish soul which was supposed to travel through my lineage—and stopped at my grandfather Howard—had finally returned to me from its long hibernation. When I bake challah, when I light the Shabbat candles, when I read the Torah, when I eat the “Shabbat dinner” I cooked among my non-Jewish friends, when I observe Tu B’Shevat by drinking prosecco and eating strawberries in Port Meadow with my self-proclaimed Aristotelian philosopher friend, when I make weird “calzone” hamantaschen with my partner—that is when I feel that returned Jewish soul kindling within me.   Because of the nature of my conversion—or simply because I converted, some people don’t consider me a Jew. Some people have even told me I am “un-Jewish” because of my views on Israel and Palestine (as if that is the issue that determines my Jewishness). Some people have thought of me as less-than because I can’t and don’t observe holidays and ceremonies properly. Those words hurt, especially when they come from other Jews. But my Jewishness—although admittedly a result of an odd conversion—is my Jewishness nonetheless, and no one can ever take that away from me. I am a proud convert, and I am proud to be a Jew.

Free speech and genuine questioning: Is the Oxford Union failing us?

Jonathan Tiley
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Free speech and genuine questioning: Is the Oxford Union failing us?

Engaging in discussion, challenging ideas, and hopefully in the end creating a better society is a worthy goal that we should all aspire to. However, it seems to me that a large and important section of our society is being left out of the conversation and conveniently ignored.

On Tuesday I attended a talk at the Oxford Union by the moral philosopher Peter Singer, and left feeling frustrated and angry and asking the question “Surely, we can and must do better?”

In the 1970s Peter Singer wrote that it would be ‘‘right to kill’’ a disabled infant, because their death “will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life’’. He has proclaimed that the effects of Down’s syndrome on his own child would “greatly reduce my joy in raising [them]”. He also argues that someone with a cognitive impairment would be incapable of “withholding informed consent to sexual relations”. Singer has since stood by these degrading views, saying to The New Yorker in 2021 that his opinions regarding disability “haven’t fundamentally changed”.

You may feel repulsed by these views, or you may agree with them; you may feel both at once. In any case, I hope you would agree that they should be challenged. The obligation to challenge these views is even stronger when their representative speaks at the Oxford Union, a self-proclaimed bastion of free speech and rigorous debate. The same principles which protect his expression of such views require the Union to challenge them.

Representatives of the Union woefully failed to meet this duty. On the night, I was given a taste of what was to come when a packed-out chamber enthusiastically welcomed Singer and, to my surprise, I received quizzical looks for not joining in on the applause. These quizzical looks intensified after, being denied the opportunity to ask a question, I heckled Singer with disgust over the ‘soft-ball questions’. Singer was asked a series of important and well-researched questions on other fields he is known for, such as animal rights and effective altruism. However, his views on disability were left entirely untouched.

The Oxford Union failed to uphold its reputation for asking the difficult questions, and in doing so, it failed the disabled community. Like myself, many would have left the talk horrified that an institution such as the Oxford Union allowed this man, who openly holds what are in my opinion abhorrent views, to speak without having his position on the rights of disabled people challenged. It was shameful that Singer’s advocacy for ‘replacing’ disabled children with able-bodied children and its eugenicist connotations was not examined.

When other speakers with controversial views on minorities have attended, they have faced fierce dispute. Tommy Robinson and Jordan Peterson were made to fight for their intellectual lives over past comments on Muslims and women respectively. What is different about the disabled community that makes our voices less important to the Union than other minorities?

So, answering my question “Is the Union failing us?”, on Tuesday night, I left the Oxford Union as a disabled student with the feeling it sadly is. We must strive to make sure that this isn’t a reflection of the wider student body and public debate regarding the status and rights of disabled people.

Image credit: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 (NATO Multimedia Library/NIDS)

A Global League: How the NBA finally conquered the world

Oliver Hall
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A Global League: How the NBA finally conquered the world

For the first time ever this season all three of the contenders for the NBA’s Most Valuable Player (MVP) award were born outside the United States.  Easy to brush aside as coincidence on the surface, it in fact marks a hugely significant moment for the league’s governing body and is the culmination of years of work behind the scenes.  

All of the top three sports leagues in the United States have been trying their best to crack the global market over the last few years.  For a number of reasons though, basketball has very much been leading the way.  For decades now it has been investing in overseas markets, differing from the NFL and MLB by offering not just increased media coverage but also support and routes for aspiring foreign players years ahead of its rivals.  That came to a head with the foundation of the Basketball Without Borders programme in 2001.  In association with FIBA, the sports global governing body, the annual training camp brings the best prospects from around the world together to train and show their talents off to prospective NBA teams.  It was here that one of this year’s final three MVP contenders, Joel Embiid, got his big break.  The Cameroonian attended in 2011 before being drafted in 2014 and his success has seen an extraordinary year-on-year 40% increase in subscriptions to watch the league in Africa.

There are of course other reasons that basketball has been able to break into foreign markets far more easily than the NFL and MLB.  The first team to play overseas was the Washington Bullets way back in 1978, 27 years ahead of the NFL and 18 before the MLB made its first trip to Mexico.  This was arguably only possible thanks to basketball’s global reach as a sport in general.  By the 1930s it was already hugely popular in China and its first foreign-born player was playing in 1946.  Similarly, across Europe and in France and Spain in particular, the EuroBasket Championship tournament is hugely popular in its own right.  Its place in the Olympics has undoubtedly done it favours too and the aura that Michael Jordan’s ‘dream team’ created in Barcelona in 1992 saw international viewership numbers surge.

The result of all this has not just been foreign players flourishing stateside.  Overseas markets now make up 10% of the NBA’s estimated $10bn revenue and after a brief hiatus during the COVID-19 pandemic, the league will return to Japan for a mini-tournament next pre-season.  Giannis Antetokounmpo will also lead his Milwaukee Bucks in the first-ever NBA game to be held in the Gulf against the Atlanta Hawks this October, just one more demonstration of how his popularity has revitalised a franchise that was once trapped by its isolated market.

Major League Baseball has announced that they will resume their London Series for five years more at least.  Jim Snall is the senior vice-president of MLB International and he has defended their comparatively sluggish expansion by highlighting its vastly differing rules, “With soccer or basketball, the concept is fairly simple: there’s a rectangle, and you get the ball in the goal or in the hoop. Baseball is a bit more nuanced”.  That much hasn’t held back the NFL though and they have recently announced that their global games will make trips to Germany and Canada next season in addition to their overwhelmingly successful annual clashes in London and Mexico.

So, only time will tell as to whether or not America’s other major sports can follow suit but for now at least the NBA can revel in its success.  Things are great as they are but the future is even brighter for America’s most marketable, fastest-paced, and most popular sport.

Kenneth Lu, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr

Oxford nuclear fusion revolution: the story of First Light Fusion

Humza Jilani
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Oxford nuclear fusion revolution: the story of First Light Fusion

This is part 2 in Cherwell’s multi-part series of reported pieces on the personalities and stories behind the nuclear fusion revolution happening in Oxford. Part 1 can be read here.

With a snap of its oversized claw, the tiny pistol shrimp, which has an average body length of between 3 and 5 centimetres, fires off a savage shockwave of bubbles at a volume that rivals the clicks of a sperm whale, three-hundred and twenty times its size.  

As Nicholas Hawker – a then-DPhil candidate in Oxford’s Department of Engineering – researched these small but mighty creatures and their perplexing shockwaves, a wild idea sprung up. The pistol shrimp’s ability to create such a powerful shockwave, despite its small size, might mean that it is possible to utilise focused shockwaves to trigger the conditions for nuclear fusion, the process that powers the sun.

As an energy source, nuclear fusion produces no carbon emissions and a very small amount of fuel could theoretically power a house for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. It could be the closest thing to a silver bullet in the global quest to transition away from fossil fuels. Yet, fusion remains prohibitively expensive and currently consumes more energy than it produces, making it commercially unviable for the near-term.

With his creative application of pistol shrimp research, Hawker may have found in the oceans an answer to a vexing problem that nuclear fusion scientists had searched for in outer space stars. Projectile fusion was an unexplored approach that could crack the code to make fusion viable within the next ten to thirty years. 

In April, First Light Fusion successfully combined atomic nuclei through projectile fusion, demonstrating an exciting proof-of-concept in the race for commercially viable fusion. Cherwell interviewed a representative from First Light Fusion to share its decade-long origin story, from the labs of the University of Oxford to the forefront of scientific breakthroughs today.

Before they launched the startup, Hawker and his DPhil supervisor, Professor Yiannis Ventikos (now at University College London), put out an advertisement for a fourth-year project student. At Oxford, engineers in the fourth year of their degree spend half a year working on an independent project as part of their transition from undergraduate to postgraduate studies. Hawker and Ventikos hoped to tap into the raw talent and ambition of these young scholars.

The pair put in a request for a student with a very high knowledge of C++ programming and incredibly niche proficiencies within engineering. The daunting descriptions of expectations and tasks sent shivers down the spines of engineering students anxious to pass their degree. No one applied.

Dr. Matthew Betney, who now runs the target design team at First Light Fusion, answered their call in 2010. But it took some persuading.

“I saw the advertisement, and I said to myself that this looks terrible and that I will not apply for this” Betney told Cherwell.

Sometime later, Betney found himself in a meeting with Dr. Ventikos, who reassured him that he need not worry about what was written on the advert and that he should take the plunge. “It wound up working out really well, and towards the end of that year, I got wind of the fact that Nick and Yiannis were considering spinning this task out into a fusion research startup,” said Betney. That startup is now First Light Fusion. 

“I decided I really wanted to be involved in this project, but I was not planning to join as an employee straight away,” he added, “It was a hyper risky startup with just two people and no one knew if it’d last 6 months, much less over 10 years.”  

Today, the conversation around fusion has certainly shifted from earlier uncertainty to greater optimism. “I am very positive about the future of fusion,” Betney told Cherwell.

“I know that our technology is good. We have a good program to get to where we want to be. Fusion technology all around the world is really progressing. A lot of other research companies and projects are getting really interesting results,” he added.

Instead of superheating reactants within a strong magnetic field, First Light Fusion aims to fire a salvo of small copper projectiles at hypersonic speed into a tiny capsule, thereby transferring energy from each shot into a coolant. They hope to demonstrate energy “gain,” wherein the process will generate more energy than it consumes, within the decade. 

And with so many of the fusion efforts centred in and around the University of Oxford, First Light Fusion is part of a burgeoning community of researchers and startups.  

“It is amazing that so many startups are being started here in Oxfordshire, such as Tokamak Energy right beside us, which also works on fusion,” said Betney.

“With all of this around us, I would say to Oxford students: take up exciting opportunities. If you want to work at the cutting edge of science and research, going into new areas, believe in yourself. These problems are really interesting!” Betney added.

Image credit: First Light Fusion

The unbearable lightness of grieving

Leah Mitchell
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The unbearable lightness of grieving

CW: gun violence, murder, terrorism

This morning, I woke up to the news headlines about the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas: 14 children, one teacher dead. Soon upped to 19 children, two teachers dead. This comes only ten days after ten people were shot to death at a supermarket in a primarily Black neighbourhood in Buffalo, New York, and only nine days after one person was killed and five injured in a shooting at a Taiwanese church in Orange County, California. On seeing the news, I said aloud, “That’s terrible.” And it is. But at the same time the depressing regularity of this violence has made me – like, I suspect, many others – unable to process the horror anymore. Every time it happens, nothing changes, and the news cycle – and with it our emotional response – moves on a little faster. 

Clicking through the Instagram stories of Americans I follow, I felt increasingly that I was trapped in some kind of disturbing, rhythmic poem, the same lines recurring in a loop with no conclusion. Twenty one dead. Unbelievable. Too believable. Gun control now. This has to stop. Twenty one dead. When will it end? This is America. Unimaginable horror. Too imaginable. They were only children. We need gun laws. This is America. My heart breaks. We have to act. Twenty one dead. When will it end?

The problem is that it will not end until politicians start placing people before profit and power. As things stand, a small group of senators is holding the rest of the United States in its terrifying grip by preventing votes on legislation which would tighten background checks for gun owners – even legislation which has already passed in the House of Representatives with bipartisan support. They have chosen a perverse Faustian pact, signing away their moral compasses in return for a fat pay cheque from the NRA – an incredibly wealthy and powerful gun lobby which, ludicrously enough, is officially registered as a charitable organisation. The only way I can begin to comprehend this behaviour is to suppose that it is a product of some kind of emotional and cognitive dissonance: they refuse to see the connection between their actions and the inevitable results, and between those results and the absolute devastation and trauma wrought on families and communities all over the country. A generation is growing up in America who, if they are lucky, spend their time in school rehearsing how to hide from an armed murderer, and, if they are unlucky, actually have to do so – and may not get to grow up at all. What kind of damage does this do to a child? To anyone? We need to feel this in our conscience. Perhaps the most important thing we can do, whatever our situation, is refuse to fall into the same trap as those who are actively choosing to allow this brutality, this terrorism, to continue. We need to stop reading the news and then simply moving on with our day, but to sit with our feelings and channel them into positive change.

The issue which then arises is how we can bear to live our lives under the weight of so much constant grief. The only answer which I can find is that we must also feel joy and hope. Without a balance of grief, joy, anger, and hope, we become numb cogs in an inhuman (and inhumane) machine. Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley, the American educator and activist and mother of Emmett Till, said “Somewhere between the fact we know and the anxiety we feel is the reality we live.” This is the tightrope we must tread, since choosing either to abandon emotion in favour of bald facts or to allow ourselves to become so consumed with our emotional response that we are inhibited from truly living (or acting) is dangerous.

During a news conference, Steve Kerr, the head coach of the NBA Warriors, refused to talk about basketball and instead delivered an impassioned call for action on gun violence. “I’m tired of the moments of silence,” he said. I too am tired of silence. I’m tired of silence instead of children’s voices, and I’m tired of silence instead of action.

My heart breaks. We have to act. Twenty one dead. When will it end?

Image credit: Fibonacci Blue / CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

First students facing £150 trashing fines

Charlotte Keys
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First students facing £150 trashing fines

As the finalists start finishing and prelims approach, Cherwell can report that University staff working for the Proctor’s Office are actively attempting to catch students trashing in University parks, and issuing them fines. In a comment to Cherwell, the University confirmed that three students had received such fines. A student who spoke to Cherwell was fined £150 from University Proctors in the parks of infringing regulation 3.3(1), despite the student claiming that they did not partake in any trashing. 

The incident took place on the 6th May, when the Medicine students were celebrating the end of their examinations by trashing. Employees of the University tasked with maintaining discipline were spotted roaming the parks, looking for students to catch red-handed. Students engaged in a game of cat-and-mouse, attempting to follow a University tradition whilst avoiding the hefty fines now attached.  

The student who spoke to Cherwell claimed that they were merely caught up in the chase, and were not even participating in trashing. Speaking to the publication, they said that they ‘poured roughly a tablespoon of lubricant on a friend’s head as we were leaving the park. I then put the packet of lubricant back in my pocket, before I was confronted by five proctor officers. One officer asked me to show him the packer, so retrieving it from my pocket, I handed it to him. He then proceeded to throw it on the ground behind him, and issue me the £150 fine’. 

The proctors issued the fine in accordance to regulation 3.3(1), that states that ‘no student member shall, in any place or thoroughfare to which members of the general public have access within six miles of Carfax, throw, pour, spray, apply or use any thing or substance in a way which is intended, or is likely, (a) to cause injury to any person, or (b) to cause damage to, or defacement or destruction of, any property, or to cause litter’. 

The student paid the fine on the 19 May along with a request to appeal the fine stating, ‘I did not however, as I explained to him, cause injury to anyone, damage any property (as the water-based lube was on his hair and washes out instantly), or litter’. The student claims that their actions did ‘not satisfy’ any of the criteria listed above. Therefore, the student believes that they should ‘not face a punishment’ and that the ‘fine should be reimbursed’ to them. 

The student fined for trashing was in University Parks where many other students were being trashed as it was the day on which many medical students finished their exams. The student notes that many of these students avoided fines by ‘sprinting past’ officers who ‘seemed aggravated’ at their actions. 

Whilst the student requested an appeal as they claimed that they were not intending to do any actions listed in the clause, the appeal was refused. The student claimed that ‘the officer had littered in front of me’. However, in the rejection of the appeal the University told the student that the behaviour was ‘likely to cause litter’.  

Exam season brings the return of the tradition dating back to the 1980s. Senior Proctor Professor Jane Mellor previously said to Cherwell that ‘throwing food and other materials in exam celebrations is wasteful and disrespectful. We know that our students are committed to sustainability and urge them to extend this to their exam celebrations this year’.

Whilst the practice has been officially banned for a few years already, it was reported by Cherwell earlier this year of the University’s now planned to enforce fines for students engaged in ‘trashing’, considering the action ‘antisocial behaviour’. This message has been reinforced on the university website with a page dedicated to ‘Exams: Celebrate Sustainably’. 

The website states that fines will be ‘strictly enforced this year, as a breach of the University’s Code of Discipline’. Failure to pay the fine will result in ‘further disciplinary action’.

The University has instead compiled suggestions for students looking to commemorate the end of their exams. One suggestion is that students should ‘have a night out’ and ‘make the most of this opportunity to celebrate with your friends’. Another that students should ‘enjoy Oxford’s outdoor spaces’ but make sure to take any ‘rubbish home with you’. 

Many JCRs still provide students with biodegradable ‘trashing’ equipment, despite University policy now meaning students run financial risk when ‘trashing’.  All money collected from the ‘trashing’ fines goes to the student hardship fund, which aims to assist students at the University who are struggling with financial difficulties during their course. 

Image credit: Richard Nias via Creative Commons

Special report: Students in disarray as St Benet’s set to close

Suzanne Antelme
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Special report: Students in disarray as St Benet’s set to close

St Benet’s Hall announced on the 16th of May via its official mailing list that the University Council has decided not to renew the Hall’s license as a Permanent Private Hall (PPH), raising the possibility of permanent closure for the Hall.

The email expressed hope that the Hall might continue to operate but said that “as and when this is no longer the case” the Hall would work to place current students at other PPHs or colleges to complete their studies. St Benet’s Hall was originally founded in 1897 as a place for the monks of Ampleforth Abbey and elsewhere to study at Oxford, having since welcomed students from all backgrounds.

Cherwell spoke to the Hall’s JCR President, Julian Danker, who said the Hall’s students had been “hit hard” – for the younger years by uncertainty and for finalists by “the news that their home for the past three or four years might cease to exist soon”. 

The JCR has been taking an active role, running additional welfare events and staying “constantly in touch” with Hall and University officials. Julian said he expected “certainty about students’ futures by the end of this academic year”. 

In the meantime, the Hall’s students had the opportunity to speak with the University’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education, and steps are being taken to ensure students can claim mitigating circumstances for their exams. Julian felt confident that the “community spirit that has always existed at Benet’s is as strong as ever” but expressed sadness at the possibility that the Hall’s unique traditions, such as “the lack of a high table and the personal introduction of each guest at formals”, might be lost. He added that there “is also great concern about the future [of the Hall’s tutors and non-academic staff]”.

Cherwell also spoke to Mikyle Ossman, a first-year student who was quick to say he had enjoyed his time at the Hall and mentioned the active work of the Hall’s JCR. Ossman said his year group only found out about the financial issues over the Christmas break, triggering “panic on group chats”. 

He also expressed confusion with the Hall’s decision to accept students in 2021 if financial problems were already evident and criticised a lack of communication, saying “we were more or less in the dark over whether they would rectify the problems outlined in the Christmas email. […] Therefore when the [most recent] news came it hit us quite hard.” Ossman is anxious not to face a ‘phasing out scheme’ which would see his cohort remaining in the Hall as the final year group in a shrinking community. He indicated he thought most of St Benet’s first-years shared his preference to be moved to alternative colleges, if this becomes necessary, in time for Michaelmas 2022, giving them the best chance to integrate.

The University of Oxford’s governing body opted not to renew St Benet’s license at a meeting on the 9th of May in light of the Hall’s continuing financial insecurity, confirming that the Hall will not take on any new students in October 2022. The decision to suspend St Benet’s undergraduate intake was initially announced in mid-December 2021 in a joint statement issued by the University and St Benet’s that said the Hall’s “financial prospects are so uncertain that the University cannot be confident that the Hall can support a new undergraduate cohort”.

The Hall’s financial troubles seem to stem from its efforts to legally separate from Ampleforth Abbey Trust (AAT), the owner of the Hall’s premises. It is unclear how much progress was made on this initiative, as according to the Hall’s website its governing body, St Benet’s Trust, is still a wholly-owned subsidiary of AAT. The planned separation was apparently meant to help the Hall become a fully-fledged college, but it also meant the Hall needed to prove it was financially viable on its own. Acquiring ownership of its premises was a key part of this mission, and failure to convince the University that it would be able to do so was important in influencing the December decision to suspend admissions.

Late in December 2021, Cherwell reported on the Hall’s apparent success in securing financial support in the form of an “agreement in progress” with Westminster College Trust to acquire the Hall’s premises from AAT and lease them to the Hall for £1 per year (with a view to later acquisition by the Hall). Westminster College Trust also “pledged” to underwrite the Hall’s losses up to £300,000 per year for at least three years. This agreement, however, was apparently not finalised before the University decided to pause the Hall’s undergraduate admissions. Westminster College Trust has not responded to Cherwell’s request for comment.

The email from 16th May also informed students that AAT has now placed the Hall’s premises on the market. A spokesperson from the Trust told the Tablet that the University’s decision not to renew the Hall’s license placed the AAT at “an unacceptable level of risk”, and that while they had always hoped the Hall would be able to purchase the buildings, the Hall had not “produced the desired [funding] results within the necessary timescale”.

It seems the Trust has been aiming to sell the properties at least since December 2021, when the Hall’s Senior Tutor, Dr Gower, told the Oxford Student that AAT had taken an “independent” decision to sell the properties, unrelated to the planned legal separation and rather motivated by “not having sufficient resources”. 

The Hall’s August 2019 financial report stated that while it needed to increase its own fundraising income, it had “received a guarantee of support from … [AAT]”. The Trust’s financial report from August 2019, however, said their “overall level of free reserves”, excluding fixed assets, was a “£3.4 [million] deficit”. The report noted that “if it became necessary the Trust could potentially seek to realise some of the land and buildings not essential to the ongoing core activities and hence raise some funds through their sale”. 

A spokesperson for Ampleforth Abbey’s Trust told Cherwell: “In order for St Benet’s Trust to remain a going concern Ampleforth Abbey Trust has in the past provided sufficient funds to allow the Trust to continue its charitable objects. Financial support was provided with a view to St Benet’s reaching a position where it would be capable of generating its own reserves.

”In recent years St Benet’s Trust has been moving towards independence from the Abbey Trust initially as part of a plan to gain collegiate status within the University of Oxford. In order to do so the Hall would need to own its own buildings and be financially sustainable. The Abbey Trust took out a loan in 2018 to enable St Benet’s Hall to expand into a second building in Norham Gardens with clear timescales for that loan to be re-paid by St Benet’s Trust. It was always the preference of the Abbey Trust to sell both the property in Norham Gardens and that in St Giles to St Benet’s Trust if it could afford to buy them, but St Benet’s fundraising campaigns and funding options have not produced the desired results within the necessary timescales.”

The spokesperson insisted that “The University and the Hall are committed to ensuring that current students can complete their degrees at Oxford University with the same quality of education.”

The recent developments at St Benet’s Hall coincide with those at another institution linked to AAT. Ampleforth College, the boarding school founded by and built next to Ampleforth Abbey (which AAT represents), might also be facing a ban on taking in new students after it was rated “inadequate” by Ofsted following an independent investigation in 2018 that said it was “difficult to describe the appalling sexual abuse inflicted over decades [on the pupils]”. While Ampleforth College is now run by the St Laurence Education Trust, at least 5 out the 10 current trustees of AAT (as named on their website) have previously held roles in Ampleforth College. Between developments at Ampleforth College and St Benet’s Hall, the Sunday Times has speculated that the “network of leading Catholic institutions” established by the Ampleforth monks is “breaking up”. The AAT told Cherwell: “The situation of St Benet’s is unrelated to Ampleforth College.”

St Benet’s Hall was the last single-sex college in the University of Oxford, only admitting women in 2016. Until 2012, the master of the hall was always a Benedictine monk.  In 2013, the student barometer survey showed that St Benet’s had the highest overall student satisfaction out of all 44 constituent colleges and permanent private halls of the university. However, without renewing their license as a PPH, it is likely that the college will be unable to host students after the end of this academic year.

Image Credit: Janet McKnight/CC BY 2.0

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