Targets are to Labour what alcohol and age are to the Lib Dems: a fatal weakness. From targets to cut NHS waiting times to inflation targets, they seem to have caused the country nothing but trouble. But the higher education sector seems to have been hit even harder than most.
The government aims to get 50% of all young people into higher education by 2010, and although there seems no hope of actually achieving that goal, universities might actually die trying. Admissions offices are swamped, and if public exams really are getting easier, they have no way of sifting the good from the unintelligent.
The government’s solution has been to inflate the importance of public examinations. A new A* grade at A-level for those who attain 90% or above will have been  introduced by 2010. Further to this, Edexcel is now suggesting a results analysis service which offers students, and potentially university admissions officers, full feedback on every exam question they answer.
In the face of accusations of elitism, Oxford is presented with specific difficulties. It cannot reverse Labour’s decision to put more pressure on sixth-form students by focusing on exam results. But it is obvious to everyone that independent school pupils do disproportionately better in exams than those at state school. The University needs to find a way to ignore results at a time when the government is trying to highlight them.
Everyone, from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) to the Times Good University Guide, recognises that Oxford is trying hard to widen access. But as our News Focus demonstrates, these good intentions have not so far been translated into a significant improvement in admissions statistics.
A Guardian article of 20 September reports that one third of Oxbridge students come from only 100 UK schools. Worse still, at Oxbridge’s five top feeder schools, four in ten students are successful in their application. You wont find a don in Oxford who doesn’t wish things were different, but the change has not yet been made.
Can Oxford ignore the money factor by sticking with tactics which have already failed it for twenty years? As the IPPR has only recently confirmed, they aren’t working. It issued a harsh but long overdue assessment this week, commenting that Oxford and Cambridge “will be judged on their attainment and not their effort”. It’s all very well promising to widen access, but targets are unmet and will remain so until at least 2016. By that time, a generation of university students will already be national leaders.
At first, interviews seem like a good way to level the field. By coming face-to-face with a candidate, tutors can try to bypass the unfair extra training paid for by some parents of private school candidates. But the advantage remains: if private school pupils can be trained to write essays in a way that appeals to higher educational styles, can they be trained to talk in the same way?
Many college interviews are designed to make 16- and 17-year-olds cry; if they don’t, the test is passed.
At the moment, positive discrimination is also at interviewers’ discretion, turning some colleges into state school refuges while others gain a reputation as public school havens. Perhaps it’s time to make affirmative action a positive policy at the Admissions Office. It seems to be working, as a temporary measure, to eliminate corporate and institutional racism. When inequalities are evened out, the less urgent issue of discrimination against private school pupils will reassert itself as an injustice.

By Sam PritchardThere is not enough new writing performed in Oxford. Mounting a production of a play written by a student is a demanding challenge in a programme dominated by popular classics and heavyweights. The frantic speed involved getting a play into performance doesn’t leave much time for the development and exploration of a fresh script. However, it is a worthwhile undertaking, as The One That Got Away shows.
The play takes a look at the character of Henry (Satbir Sky Singh), an old man whose comic encounters on a park bench are not all that they seem. What seems to be a farce based on innuendo and misunderstanding turns into something altogether more tragic as we discover more about Henry’s actual circumstances.
There are good things about Cathy Thomas’ script, but this it is a long way away from the finished product. The piece has a winning and engaging quality in its comedy and a desire to invest its central character with a more serious interiority. It takes its lead from the tragi-comic approach of a play like Anthony Neilson’s The Wonderful World of Dissocia. However, it has none of the sharp comedy and genuine pathos achieved in that show.
I felt vaguely as though a dressing up box of tired jokes and impressions had been emptied all over me. Monty Python voices, melodramatic parody and hyperactive children all featured. There is also a puzzling sequence in which a spy mistakes Henry for an informant; I initially took it to be a joke about gay pick-ups, which goes to show how deeply anachronistic much of the comedy is in this piece.
This is a play that has been badly served by the process of its development. It all has the feel of something rushed, squeezed in between a series of other projects. The cast are energetic and engaged, but at the moment all they can do is sketch out a series of possibilities that the writing opens up. The direction is frankly sloppy and inconsistent. It shows none of the care and attention that a play in development should merit.
My hunch is that The One That Got Away could be an ambitious evening of theatre. However for an audience it is a mixture of painful birth pangs and frustrated potential. You should support it, but you’ll also have to puzzle out what kind of play it really is.Dir. Steve Lomon
Burton Taylor, 9.30pm
4th Week

I’ve never been a fan of the word “admissions”. Entry to a fairground is an admission. The red-faced explanation you make to the A&E duty nurse, as you recount how that got there, is an admission. That getting there in the first place: that, too, was an admission.

 And in evoking notions of pain, embarrassment and fairground folly, the phrase is also the perfect description of the Oxford interview process.

 It’s my aversion, nay, dread of the word that has caused me to never step foot in the University’s Admissions centre on Little Clarendon Street. I’m willing to overlook the fact that it looks like a run-down Thomas Cook; what I worry about is walking into some Admissions Anonymous session. “Hi, my name’s Bradley and I’ve been addicted to crack [colloquial term for UCAS Track] for three months now…”

 I don’t think many people share my irrational fear of the word. I doubt that it is the main reason for state schools’ underrepresentation in Oxford. The job of James Lamming, the Student Union’s access guru, would be pretty easy if it were.

 No, there are two entirely unetymological reasons why Oxford is overrun with smug columnists with double-barrelled surnames and a penchant for words like “unetymological”.

 Firstly, and to the detriment of everyone in Oxford who has even the slightest tendency to regionalist ridicule, too few people with easily-mocked accents are applying here.

 And then there are the lamentable practices of these tutors, who insist on applying their years of expertise in picking the candidates who show the most promise and who will give them the most pleasure (OK, least pain) to teach.

 Luckily, the change required isn’t as drastic as some fear. All that is required is a standard Oxford response. Namely paperwork.

 To avoid tutors exercising their good judgement, the Oxford Application Form (OAF – you couldn’t make it up) should be updated to reflect the realities of modern funny-accented Britain. Hit fifty points and you’re into Merton. Twenty and they might spare you a room at Harris Manchester.
For example: Which of these groups might you be interested in joining at Oxford?

 – Oxford University Labour Club (+5 points)
– OU Conservative Association (-10)
– OU Polo Club (-100)
– OU Mugging Grannies To Pay Tuition Fees Society (+15)
– Cherwell (-10,000)

 Perhaps the interview format could be adjusted slightly, just to ensure that you really can’t play polo and you really can mug grannies. (The techniques are surprisingly similar.)

 But it’s exactly that human touch in the interview process that you can’t beat. (Well, that tutor touch.) I’d take twenty minutes in front of a tweed-jacketed nutcase over application form nonsense any day. Besides, tutors would sooner take part in a mass Macarena than be replaced by forms that do a worse job than them.

 Of course we can make the ordeal more friendly and approachable for those not used to dreaming spires and the like. You know, T-shirts with “Hi, I’m Dr Smith, no question’s too stupid”. That said, the freshlings will be in for a shock at their first tutorial.

 But that’s it. Once the myth that Oxonians are hard-working no-mates is dispelled and once the world is convinced that academics are fluffier than blow-dried Care Bears, we can do no more.
Yet more is what is being asked of us by ministers, who want every university to financially and managerially support a city academy or trust school. I can’t think of a worse precedent to set (unless they asked us to, say, kill someone).

 First of all, have they seen how this University is governed? Would you trust your children with the Vice-Chancellor?

 Secondly, where do we draw the line? Or are we going to have to fix everything for the government, right back to child poverty and social inequality, where this mess began?

 Much as it hurts, we must firmly refuse to clear it up: we’ve done all we can.
 

By Elena LynchLiving Together is the story of what happens in the course of one weekend in the living room of the family home of the siblings Reg, Ruth and Annie. Living Together is the second in Ayckbourn’s Norman Conquests trilogy, though in fact all three plays happen concurrently. Each play exposes the emotional tensions and old grievances which are aired in just one room of the siblings’ house, over the same weekend. Through all three plays Ayckbourn builds up a sophisticated comedy of manners and a compelling picture of the family and their myriad partners. However, each play is also intended to stand alone and the result is an occasionally confusing but sharply focused comedy of confusion and manners.
To give Annie some rest from looking after their ill mother, Reg and his wife Sarah have come down for a weekend, disrupting the romantic plans made by Annie with her sister Ruth’s husband, Norman. It gets even more complicated. After an obscene phone call the very convincingly drunk Norman (Joe O’Connor) makes to Ruth (Emily Bazalgette), she turns up too, and combined with the presence of Annie’s other love interest, their slow-witted neighbour Tom, the scene is set for Norman to charm his way into his ‘conquests’.
Ayckbourn’s writing is at his acid best, and the cast and director realise the scenario well with fine comic timing. The action flowed well thanks to a strong cast; a shrieking cat-fight between Annie (Helen Fisher) and Sarah (Thea Warren) was a highlight. The interaction between Reg (Tom Richards) and Tom (Chris Carter) also stood out; both had good stage presence and weren’t afraid to stay static and play off the sheer awkwardness of their relationship. This is pre- The Office stuff but is not without its cringes: Carter especially delivers with a gormless charm, though the play shows its age in Tom’s hapless but vaguely sinister attempts to physically threaten Annie, which certainly wouldn’t make it into a modern comedy.

If the elected leadership of the Oxford Union wish to invite a pair of controversial figures to argue with, then they are entirely within their rights to do so. It cuts to the very essence of a debating society to have polarising figures speaking, to challenge and refute their arguments.
In the past decade, however, the consensus on who is or who isn’t acceptable in polite society has disintegrated. In 1998, a debate involving British National Party founder John Tyndall was cancelled, after both student opposition and a series of racially motivated nail bombings in London. Similarly, a debate invitation sent to David Irving in 2001 was met with bitter protests after OUSU launched an interfering campaign to rescind it.
This is not to say that Irving is an admirable martyr figure: although he has since recanted and changed his views, and is now absolutely without doubt that the Holocaust took place, Mr Justice Gray told him following the loss of his libel suit in November 1996, that he was “an active Holocaust denier…anti-Semitic and racist…he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism”. All men and women of sense, and Irving is one of them, know that far-right causes are, and always will be, the preserve of a misguided minority.
Tryl is not ignorant of what effect his invitation will have on the Oxford and national community, but neither is he a right-wing sympathiser. His intention is to make good Harold Macmillan’s frequently quoted declaration that the Union is “the last bastion of free speech in the Western world”.
In his annual Oration, University Vice Chancellor John Hood made a stand for academic freedom, and he is to be congratulated; it is a braver stand than he was prepared to take in the governance reform debate. He made a number of admirable points, particularly by calling for students to be exposed to powerful ideas as “a fundamental and important part of the educational process.” There is no doubt that extremism on university campuses is a problem, but fear, misunderstanding and McCarthyism will not solve it; rather, they will set uncomfortable precedents in years to come.
Rejecting fear extends to inviting the views of those we disagree strongly with, such as David Irving. That the invitation is so eminently justifiable suggests we have been asking the wrong questions. The necessity of intellectual freedom is already quite obvious to Oxford’s philosophers, and the silencing of opposition quite obviously wrong to its historians. If we really believe in those things that are important to us, we must be prepared to defend them in free and open debate.
Flatly refusing to listen to an argument on principle is a foolish thing to do. Debates can never be won that way, and truth never prospers in an environment in which academics are afraid of being ostracised for expressing controversial opinions. The best way to confront hate and prejudice is to expose the lies that underpin them, not to plead ignorance and hope they go away. That’s been tried before, and it doesn’t work.
We may not like what some people tell us, but if the students of a university as intellectually robust as Oxford can no longer tolerate potentially offensive ideas, then academia itself is in trouble. Abolition of no platform policies is a first step towards engaging with and finally defeating dangerous ideas.

 By Max Seddon Samuel Beckett’s influence on Peter Gill is obvious and acknowledged. Beckett as touchstone, in fact, for the drama sans drama is so common in the last thirty years that it goes beyond cliché somewhere, becoming a quasi-religious absolute truth. And yet, this somber little meditation over the kitchen sink from a Welsh slough of despond is more existential and, as far as I’m concerned, more profound than anything the Irishman ever wrote.
Childhood neighbors Vincent and Gerard are looking back to the miserable banality of their and their embittered mothers’ lives in the miry torpor of working-class 1950s Cardiff. Twenty years later, while so much has changed, nothing has happened. This life is so real, and yet so lifeless, the very essence of the dying process itself. With nothing left but their memories, they flit in and out of them in search of a comforting, familiar pain.
Gerard’s mother (Christa Brodie) is uneasy with the ease in which she can tranquilize herself. “When I was your age I had three or four kids,” she repeats to her son, unable and unwilling to come fully to grips with the gulf between them. Her sadness is not that of pain suffered but that of the onlooker to a tragic act, without the experience or the capacity to feel it herself. “I wish I could cry like that,” she says of Vincent’s mother, who in Ellen Buddle’s care undergoes a slow disintegration.
Mrs. Driscoll’s absent husband and wayward son get the better of her resolve, and Buddle looks as angry as she does upset watching the boys from her chair in purgatory. Buddle has one of those strange, captivating faces that can pull off a little boy and a Russian babushka with equal aplomb, and she puts it to excellent use here.
Archie Davies’ auspicious debut also deserves a mention; doubtless a starry future awaits him. But what really makes the play so great is the dull glow that sneaks out of it and creeps over you without your noticing. Like James Salter’s prose, Gill’s dialogue can break your heart without ever being consciously “lyrical” or going for firework language. Norris’ troupe justly never overbear onto the script and spoil the magic.
Of course, they are men, not Gods. Thanks especially to Brodie’s half-on, half-off Oirish drawl, I had no idea where we were until Norris told me afterwards. The symbolism and the gay touches, especially when Vincent and Gerard are looking at the stars, are a smidge obvious sometimes. As the latter, Alex Worsnip’s statements to the audience are laboredly, unsuccessfully poetic, though they are redeemed by the delicate childish sensitivity he shows playing younger ages. And it did take me a while to work out what was going on; it felt like an AA meeting at first.
Yet having seen half the play, in open rehearsal, a week and a half before first performance, I’ve truly been lost for six hundred words. Small Change has an elusive, ethereal blank beauty, rare and precious as a gem. This from a play that brazenly violates every rule in the book, not least by a near total lack of pace, trite, overworked themes, and one cardinal, cardinal sin, the proletarian blackface minstrel act of Oxford students playing salt-of-the-earth types. No small achievement to overcome. This is not to say, now, that anyone involved is a visionary genius. I can’t tell. By its nature this is beauty whose practitioners may not be aware of exactly what makes it so gorgeous and may be unable to repeat it again; in which case all the more reason to see it now. Go.      Dir. Barney Norris
O’Reilly, 7.30pm Weds-Sat
4th Week

Oxford 2 -2 Warwick MARTIN Keown is becoming more patient with age.
The newly appointed Blues coach stood calmly on the touchline, despite witnessing a frustrating draw on a cold day at Iffley Road. Although one point was enough to put Oxford at the top of their BUSA league, the home team will no doubt regret defensive errors that prevented them from winning for the second week in a row.
Oxford ran out eventual 4-3 winners at Northampton and made one change from that game, Tom Howell replacing Niko de Walden in the starting line-up.
Against the run of play, Oxford were the team to break the goalless deadlock when Farr’s pinpoint cross found the head of Cameron Knight in the fifteenth minute. The Oriel midfielder made no mistake, timing his jump to precision before placing the ball into the back of the away net, and propelling the Blues into the lead.
Until this point, Warwick were the dominant side, regularly exposing weaknesses in the Oxford defence. Despite a great deal of shouting at both the opposition and themselves, the home side’s back four failed to communicate effectively, allowing the Warwick strikers too much time on the ball in dangerous positions.
As a result, former Fulham youth goalkeeper Nik Baker was unable to prevent two successive goals from Warwick, either side of half time. This double blow appeared to knock the wind out of the home side’s sails, despite rallying cries from 3rd year captain, Paul Rainford.
Fortunately for Oxford, their depression was short lived, courtesy of a fantastic free kick from Homer Sullivan. The midfielder’s 25-yard strike was reminiscent of David Beckham, and it is debateable as to who is playing for the better club at present. From here onwards, Oxford attacked with style and energy, demonstrating that they have the ability to cause havoc, despite lacking great aerial presence. Moments of fast one-touch football delighted a large crowd of shivering spectators, who had come to watch on a day when there were no college matches being played.
Alex Toogood’s pace provided a constant threat for the Blues, enabling him to beat his man on a number of occasions. Despite a small frame, the blonde Worcester college striker was able to compete against Warwick’s tall centre backs as well as running down the left hand flank with gusto. Unfortunately, one of his best opportunities was deemed offside by the Warwick line judge, prompting accusations of bias from the home crowd.
Toogood was later involved in the main talking point of the game, when his penalty claim was turned down in the dying seconds. From fifty yards away, the referee judged the striker to be outside the box when he was tripped, choosing not to consult his linesman for a second opinion.
Although Ruud van Nistelrooy will tell you that Martin Keown is happy to fight over penalty claims, the Blues coach was calm on this occasion, preferring to keep his hands in the pockets of his coat. This was the final point of excitement in the game, with both managers appearing content with a point. It is unlikely that Keown will stay managing in his home town for more than a season, particularly as his playing rivals are battling in the glamorous world of the Premiership. Nonetheless, Oxford continue their title campaign against Worcester University next week, in the knowledge that they have the ultimate hard man to eliminate their defensive problems.

Considered by some to be affectionate horseplay and by others a fairly sinister form of sexual harassment, tickling has long fascinated great thinkers as serious as Plato to Darwin. Gargalesis, as tickling is scientifically known, is actually a highly evolved social behaviour since it evokes giggling only in humans and some primates.
Our squeamish reaction to tickling is most likely a defence mechanism, enabling us to protect vital parts of the body. Why the armpit is so particularly sensitive to tickling is anybody’s guess. However, as a social mechanism, tickling is a vital component of parent-child bonding, and, in a slightly more bizarre way, early sibling relationships.

But if you thought tickling was all good childish fun, think again. Acarophiliacs, tickle fetishists, are hiding only a couple of mouse clicks away. The Tickle Media Foundation, the largest online tickling forum, has over 50,000 members. There you can chat to like-minded ticklaholics and even share tickling porn.

It is the strange pleasure/pain component of tickling which makes it so irresistible to vicious five-year olds and dominatrices alike, since both ‘touch’ and ‘pain’ nerve fibres carry the sensation to the cortex. An element of surprise is required, which accounts for the fact that you cannot tickle yourself. Moreover, it’s thought that a perceived lack of any threat is also necessary for the effect, which is why small children will respond with fright rather than laughter if tickled by someone whom they don’t know.

Interestingly, you don’t have to be touched to feel the sensation of being tickled. Watch how an especially ticklish pal will continue to writhe even after the tickling has stopped, in expectation of another attack.
No one knows why some people are more ticklish than others, but one thing is certain: everybody is ticklish. Some may be prepared to take their secret weakness to the grave but, sooner or later, if you’re persistent, you’ll find the magic spot. Armed with this invaluable knowledge you should be able to get whatever you like: lecture notes, library books, drinks, sexual favours. Just be on your guard against a return attack.
By Hannah Carlin

By Jeremy Cliffe Is there anything anyone doesn’t get off on, whether we admit it or not?” In this pithy question the protagonist of Edward Albee’s The Goat expresses the play’s central dilemma: what do we tolerate, and what is taboo? Martin, the superstar architect at the pinnacle of his trade, sits in the living room, his life in tatters; a suitable ending to a drama Albee subtitles “Notes towards a definition of tragedy”.
The opening scene introduces us to Martin (Will Robertson) and his wife Stevie (Sarah Nerger). The pair launches into a convincing, provocative performance, and we are quickly drawn into the world of the ever-so-slightly bohemian denizens of the East Coast bourgeoisie. Those familiar with the patina of the surreal on Albee’s 1962 masterpiece, Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? will recognise the style. Yet here the very premise is an absurdity, or at least we would be forgiven for thinking so: Martin is having an affair with a goat named Sylvia. As the play unfolds the animalistic amore is revealed to the audience, his friend Ross (Max Seddon), his wife and his gay son Billy (Tom Coates). Add to the concoction simmering discord and dysfunctional communication, and the result is a Kafkaesque collapse of the superficially harmonious world which we are presented at the outset.
A little way into the play, Ross is distracted by the churning, rushing sounds of the dishwasher. “It’s probably the Eumenides” Martin replies wryly. Indeed, where these mythical deities enforced the prevailing moral order upon the heroes of yore, in Albee’s modern tragedy it is this paradigm of modern domesticity that looms over Martin’s nemesis. But Papa Aristotle would be mighty content with the plot structure. Dramatic unity, a fall from glory, circumstances beyond control, and a suitably cathartic dénouement – the play has it all. Albee creates what the Director Guy Levin describes as “a truly modern tragedy”, suited to our atomised, atheist society through its exploration of where we place the boundaries on love; and bestiality, paedophilia, incest and rape are under the spolight.
Launching on Broadway in 2002, the play reached British audiences in 2004 at Islington’s Almeida Theatre (starring Jonathan Pryce), and in its Oxford première Levin does the work full justice. In the first act Robertson’s dry tone is an excellent counter to the vitality of Nerger’s polished, authoritative but affectionate wife and Seddon’s superbly charismatic television presenter. Robertson maintains a quizzical air, clearly troubled, even alienated. As Ross, camera rolling, introduces his friend on interview, there is a brilliant discord between Martin’s expression of undisguised tedium, lip curled, and Ross’s self-important ramblings (“Some people, I guess, are, well…more extraordinary than others” he contemplates, gazing into middle-distance).
With the revelation of Martin’s capriphiliac dalliances, Nerger comes into her own, lurching manically from incandescent ranting to superior, sarcastic barbs. Meanwhile Coates does well as the slightly affected Billy; between uncomprehending outbursts at his parents he speechlessly grasps at his hair. Robertson tends to be more deadpan than frenetic, more wry than fraught, to the point of occasionally underplaying his role. It’s a point of debate whether this trace of the understated wryness of Robertson’s excellent Berthold Brecht in last Hilary’s Tales from Hollywood restricts his portrayal, but in any case he puts in a fine portrayal of neuroticism and inner sadness.
In all, this is a first-rate set of performances, credible but with subtle hints of caricature that well suit the supercharged reality of the world of the play. It has great success in balancing the absurdity and comic word play with Martin’s tragic inability to reconcile genuine love with absolute social orthodoxy, and as such leaves us wary of taking the validity of such a convention for granted. Dir:  Guy Levin
    OFS: 7.30 Tues-Sat, 2.30 Sat
    Week 4