Friday 15th August 2025
Blog Page 229

Is an essay crisis preventable?

Phoebe Walls
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Is an essay crisis preventable?

Every evening at dinner many students stress over their uncompleted work. The term ‘essay crisis’ encapsulates the impending doom of an essay that is at risk of not being finished before the deadline. With hundreds of deadlines to juggle in a mere eight-week period, it’s only to be expected that we’ll feel the time pressure of churning out essays on time.

My tutor told us to treat our degree like a 9-5 job slotting our work in amongst those hours. I typically get up at 8, have breakfast in hall, the first Pret trip and aim to be at my desk by 9. By the time I’ve tackled the rigorous security of the Oxford-Single-Sign-On login, I start working. This routine does not always happen. If I’ve been out the night before the start time of work tends to be at least slightly postponed. Many people can have a lie in after a night out. I wake up to the sound of MCR students talking at my ground floor window or better still my neighbour’s Italian opera singing. Sometimes I wake up to the sound of bells and wonder if I’m still dreaming. I potter around Oxford contemplating my existential crisis and then return to the books. Speaking of books, as a humanities student the essay reading lists, however fascinating, are bound to leave anyone feeling overwhelmed. It sometimes feels like every single piece of literary criticism ever written has been uploaded onto canvas.

For me, part of the essay writing process is heading to the Taylorian library, a beautiful building but complete maze. Thousands of books are spread across different floors. I hover by a shelf for a long time before realising I’m in the wrong place. I’m out of breath after traipsing up staircases and even climbing a ladder. Then I have to avoid walking under it as the last thing I need is seven years bad luck. Collecting the books needed to understand my degree, invokes a crisis. Once I’m back in my room, with my impressive, back-breaking haul, I begin to chip away at the reading. I like to sit in my room’s maternal red rocking chair. The key to successful reading for an essay is to find those perfect quotes amongst mind boggling waffle.

After gathering sufficient handwritten notes, I begin to try to construct an argument in my mind. Essay questions often appear like riddles, I read them several times, and choose the least hideous one. I enjoy making a plan and seeing an argument come together. I’ve found the best essays are the ones I attempt to write in a single day. My argument is more coherent. Then there’s the task of working out how on earth to reference.

Reading, writing, and planning an essay is difficult to squeeze into one night. Many Oxonians manage this by pulling the infamous all-nighter. This prospect has never appealed to me. By six pm I’m eager to put away the library books and shut down my laptop. I’d rather spend my evening at rehearsal or with friends. I think the so-called essay crisis is preventable with time management and the acceptance that not every essay will be perfect. But you learn more from the Picasso painting analogies and constructive feedback.

Image credit: Glenn Carstens-Peters

Clarendon Centre Development

Cecilia Catmur
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Clarendon Centre Development

Oxford’s Clarendon Centre reveals new construction plans amid a large-scale urban regeneration project in the city centre. 

The shopping mall, built in the 1980s, will get a complete makeover. A large chunk of the building will be knocked down, and replaced with 101 units of Brasenose student accommodation. Another porter’s lodge will be built for the College. Retail stores, restaurants, and offices will take up the rest of the now largely-unoccupied space. 

The owners of the Clarendon Centre, Lothbury Investments Managements, have spent the last few years revamping North Bailey House- another property of theirs on New Inn Hall Street. The building is expected to open at the end of March 2023, and offer 20,000 sq ft of “exceptional new office development in central Oxford.”

Together with the North Bailey House, the Clarendon developments will change the shape of central Oxford. A fourth floor terrace with a café is expected to open, and provide “public access to a landscape designed roof space which will showpiece the stunning Oxford skyline.” A new network of pedestrianised streets will connect New Inn Hall Street, Queen Street, and Cornmarket; and a new public square will be built into the centre of it all. 

The public square is a step in Lothbury’s plan to facilitate the ‘greening’ of central Oxford. It is designed with a focus on sustainability. The new open space will have: 23 trees; an unspecified ‘water feature’; ‘green walls’ and ‘green roofs’ (living surfaces made of plants); and a public drinking fountain.

The plans also reveal an attempt to create new pedestrian access through Frewin Court – one of the oldest streets in Oxford. Frewin Court is referenced as early as 1405, then called Bodin’s Lane. In the 19th century, the court was home to Guy & Gammon, Oxford’s local wine and spirit merchants. 

Now, the lane has devolved into little more than a bike rack and a Plush smoking area. When the new Clarendon Centre is built, the deep end of Frewin Court will turn straight on to cafés, retail, restaurants, and a green public square.

The project is not expected to be completed until 2028 or 2029. Until then, we will have to do without the Clarendon Centre and its rain-proof shortcut from Queen Street to Cornmarket. But on the bright side, the Plush smoking area is safe, for now.  

From Christian Cole to Andi Marsh to Deborah Ogunnoiki

Deborah Ogunnoiki
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From Christian Cole to Andi Marsh to Deborah Ogunnoiki

When you think of Classics at Oxford, the image that may come to you is likely Boris Johnson. Or maybe not Boris Johnson, but someone Boris-esque. They went to Eton, or maybe Winchester, they’ve been studying Latin since they could talk, and they visit their ‘chalet’ in the French Alps every winter. They’re white and upper-class and male. The perfect image of Oxford. And even though you can’t see my face in this article, the Nigerian-ness of my name should be a dead giveaway that I do not fit into that stereotype. I am a Black, state-school-educated woman, and that is why Christian Cole is such an important part of Black British History in Oxford.

Christian Cole was born in Sierra Leone, which at the time was a British colony, in West Africa in 1852. Cole was the grandson of a slave and was educated at Fourah Bay College in Freetown, Sierra Leone. He enrolled in Oxford in 1873 as a non-collegiate student, until he was made a member of University College in 1877. His fellow students included the notable imperialist, and racist, Cecil Rhodes (guess which of the two later received several six foot statues, and which one got a measly plaque? Oxford really needs to fix that.) Cole remained a member of University College until 1880. His presence made him the centre of attention, which included many press cartoons depicting him with racial stereotypes, which was not made any easier going to university with the Cecil Rhodes as well (sorry, I simply can’t get over that). His experience most likely prompted his anti-racist writings:

“Ye white men of England

Oh tell, tell, I pray,

If the curse of your land,

Is not, day after day,

To increase your possessions

With reckless delight,

To subdue many nations,

And show them your might.”

(From ‘Reflections on the Zulu War, By a Negro’, BA., of University College, Oxford.)

Cole went on to become the first Black African to practice law in the English courts after being accepted by the Inner Temple in 1883. His career was unfortunately short-lived as he died in 1885 at the age of 33 from smallpox. 

Though Cole’s life was short, his legacy is almost infinite. Writing this, 137 years after his death, as another Black classicist at Oxford, I am compelled to look back at what inspired me to do this degree, here, at Oxford of all places. 

My earliest inspiration from a Black classicist is when I met Andi Marsh at UNIQ Summer School. Going to UNIQ I was a nervous wreck; I was violently aware that it was likely that I would be the only Black person in the Classics course. After all, I had never met another Black person studying the Iliad or Latin. But that day on the 29th of July, I met Andi, a rising 3rd-year Classics student at Oxford. My disbelief at meeting a Classics student who looked like me quickly turned into excitement – it became so much easier to picture myself in the exact same position as Christian Cole and Andi Marsh. 

Andi is also the founder of the Christian Cole Society; she tells me she founded the society as “an antidote to Classics as it existed before, Classics as a subject known for its elitism and whiteness”. She goes on to say that “I wanted to really confront that and challenge that and make Classics something that is inclusive of our stories as Black people, and other ethnic minorities…Christian Cole Society is about inclusion in a subject that has a real history of exclusion.” Andi’s words have never rung truer – a couple of months after I met her at UNIQ, Boris Johnson, the Golden Boy of Oxford Classics, was elected Prime Minister. Suddenly, the image of Classics, the legacy of Christian Cole, became less and less relevant to those who represented Classics in mainstream media. On Christian Cole, Andi tells me the reason he was so important to her that she named her society after him. “The mere fact that he is only now getting recognition for the way that he literally paved the way for so many Black classicists after him… I am proud that we were able to name our society after him…We are his legacy as Black classicists.”

As pathetic as it might sound, Andi’s words brought tears to my eyes. She almost single-handedly revived the legacy of Christian Cole, a history that the University didn’t try to protect as much as they protect Rhodes’ statue. Being a Black Classicist is a tough journey, but as much as an inspiration as Christian Cole was to Andi, she was to me, and I can only hope to continue that legacy the same way she did for me. 

Image Credit: Andi Marsh on the left and Deborah Ogunnoiki on the right.

Week 3 editorial

Cherwell Editors
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Week 3 editorial

Pieter Garicano, Cherwell Editor-in-Chief:

Our front page this week deals with the mismarking of finals and their consequences. One student had a 64 marked as a 46. Another missed their graduation — and the family their last-minute flights — as the department failed to repair their mistakes in anything close to a timely manner. It seems, at least, that these failings represent a one-off incident for the Engineering Department. But that may be precisely the problem — in a University as decentralised as Oxford, things can go wrong for a long time in an isolated corner. Of course, the most obvious example of this is the collegiate system. Functionally independent institutions, the University has little recourse when the colleges go awry. The years-long saga where the governing body of Christ Church resorted to increasingly embarrassing options to try and force their own dean to leave is but one example. But the Engineering Department isn’t part of the collegiate University. It reports to the administration in Wellington Square (‘Central’ in Uni parlance), responsible for the University as a whole. But even Central’s powers are limited. Much is done by slow-moving committees. Individual professors carve out fiefdoms, with tenure as their shield. Positive change — when it happens — is limited not just by the good intentions of those involved, but by the sharp boundaries that denote different institutions here. A coherent plan to increase access in one department might as well be martian to another. The scandals affecting some departments — as they did History last year, when an Al-Jazeera investigation showed some professors were “alcoholics and sexual predators” — are a stain on the University as a whole. Of course, the fact that the institutions are independent complicates change of systems as much as it does change within systems. Anachronisms are part of the University’s DNA. But anachronism isn’t an excuse for complete failure. And in mismarking the Engineering finals, and refusing to help the finalists, that’s what the department is guilty of.

Leah Mitchell, Cherwell Editor-in-Chief:

October is Black History Month in the UK, which has inspired some of the articles in this week’s edition of Cherwell spotlighting Black history, culture, and achievements. Doing so feels perhaps particularly vital right now, in our deeply troubled political climate. I am a huge believer in the power of education and compassion to have a transformative effect on how we treat other people and operate as a society. As a result, representing Black stories and voices in Cherwell’s pages is important to me for the same reasons that my first real involvement with Cherwell was through banding together with some friends to establish a column about Jewish culture and identity: I am committed to the belief that when we see the full picture, and the real and rounded human beings within that picture, our capacity for meaningful solidarity and inclusion grows exponentially. Otherwise, of course, we are only seeing a half picture, a half truth; and half-truths, as history has shown us time and time again, are bendable. Manipulable. Dangerous. 

To quote the peerless Black scholar bell hooks, we must “return to love”, since “to love well is the task in all meaningful relationships, not just romantic bonds”. hooks sees love as an intentional, radical act which is inextricably connected to justice and truth telling. Love, above all, requires both knowledge and empathy. This, in my view, is the most important task of Cherwell this week, and indeed perhaps in all weeks: contributing to the project – the project which belongs to all of us – of building knowledge and empathy. I’m sure we don’t always do this perfectly, but it is nonetheless a sincere goal – what else is the point of all this? Why else does it matter? We, at the core level of our shared humanity, are nothing without community – and community is nothing without love.

Engineering department chaos: students miss graduation, offers, amid marking debacle

Suzanne Antelme
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Engineering department chaos: students miss graduation, offers, amid marking debacle

Chaos has erupted among the fourth-year Engineering cohort as a number of candidates were marked incorrectly for their papers – or seemingly not marked at all. The Department of Engineering Science has been slow to respond to requests for mark checks, leaving students in an awkward limbo of uncertainty as to their degree classification.

These exams are important, as to continue to fourth year – in order to earn an integrated master’s rather than a BA – Engineering students must have a combined average above 50% for their second year Part A and third year Part B exams. The marks are also often crucial for students applying to internships and jobs. 

Cherwell spoke to a student who found themselves below the 50% threshold after receiving their Part B results. The student contacted the Department immediately to ask for a mark breakdown, only receiving a reply two weeks later after the Undergraduate Studies Officer returned from annual leave. The student was told to make a data access request to the University’s data compliance team, who took another five weeks to respond. The mark breakdown revealed that a twenty-five mark question had not been included in the mark – significant because the student had missed the 50% threshold by just fourteen marks. 

At this point the student’s family had already booked expensive last-minute flights and accommodation to attend the unexpected graduation. The student, by now “getting stressed”, contacted the Undergraduate Studies Officer only to be told “[w]e do not permit 2nd marking [sic]”. They said they had done “a courtesy check” and claimed “we didn’t miss anything off the marksheets”.

However, when phoned by the student’s senior tutor, the Department agreed to check the marks again. The process was delayed for two weeks, this time because the Chair of Examiners was on leave. Five days after their graduation ceremony – shortly before the beginning of 0th Week – the student was still waiting for a reply and emailed the Department yet again. They received an automated email that their results had been updated on Student Self Service, and discovered they now met the threshold and could continue to fourth year. The Department did not apologise.

Cherwell also spoke to an Engineering student who has been prevented from continuing to fourth year because of their Part B exam results. When two papers returned much lower marks than expected, the student consulted with their tutor. While an initial admin check on the lowest paper returned nothing, the tutor asked for an admin check on the other papers and one mark jumped from 46 to 64. The student hypothesised that the Department must have “literally written the numbers the wrong way around”.

Under the impression that there was no other way to appeal the remaining unchanged mark, the student applied for an ‘exemption of examination criteria’, asking for certain serious mitigating circumstances in their second year to be taken into account when calculating their average for both years. In late August the student heard by word of mouth they could actually appeal their results through a Subject Access Request (SAR). But they were still waiting for the verdict on their exemption appeal, and their tutor advised them to wait.

It took over two months for the Department to return a verdict on the exemption appeal, which they rejected – a decision the student found “hurtful”. They immediately submitted a SAR, but by this point it was already 0th Week. The student expressed frustration that the Department had been “so slow at responding”, as even if the SAR reveals the missing mark they suspect and they pass the 50% threshold, they will only be able to join fourth year in 2023. 

The student commended the efforts of their tutor, but referred to the Department’s “care, effort and organisation” as “appalling”. They are now in a difficult financial situation, unable to access student loans and scrambling to sublet their rental accommodation. Their career prospects have also been “hugely impacted”, as they had to apply to jobs and master’s degrees without clarity over their degree classification. The student already holds a job offer from a prestigious firm but is worried that the uncertainty around their marks and when they will graduate might breach the conditions of the offer and cause them to “lose the opportunity of a lifetime”. 

They told Cherwell: “[I’ve] thoroughly enjoyed the course up until now, but … [t]he [Department] has fundamentally wasted thousands of pounds of my money, huge amounts of my hard work, and a year of my life.”

Annabel Staines, an Engineering student at Wadham, discovered on results day that one of her papers was missing its mark entirely and another was significantly lower than expected. She emailed the Department on 13th July and was also told that the Undergraduate Studies Officer was away on leave. After emailing them again on 9th August she received an automated reply explaining the Department had a “high workload” so “response time may be longer than usual”. The email asked Staines to “please try not to send multiple emails on the same matter”. 

Staines received an update on 23rd August and saw the paper with no mark had been corrected. There was no change to the other paper, however, so she reached out again on 30th August to ask for a mark check. The Undergraduate Studies Officer sent her a short email saying the deadline to appeal had passed on 11th August, to which Staines replied with a screenshot of her email from 9th August. The Undergraduate Studies Officer finally sent a mark breakdown after Staines submitted a Freedom of Information request to the data protection team. 

Throughout this exchange Staines had been advised by Wadham’s Exam Officer, to whom she then sent the mark breakdown showing only one question had been marked alongside a copy of the PDF script from her exam demonstrating she had submitted three questions. This was passed to Wadham’s Academic Officer, who included it in an email to the Department asking for the issue to be resolved as soon as possible. Staines, however, is still waiting for a resolution. She is very frustrated with the Department’s communication, and notes that “the process feels like it could be simpler but is made more complicated as [the Undergraduate Studies Officer] almost never responds to emails”. She criticised the Department for not having someone on hand to guide students, saying that in her experience, it “will only help you if you ask for the right thing”.

Cherwell contacted the Department to ask how many Engineering students had queried their Part B exam results hoping to better understand the scale of the issue, but no figures were received. Staines had reached out on a group chat asking anyone affected by missing or incorrect marks to react. Twenty-seven people reacted to the message, sixteen of whom then messaged Staines privately. She estimates there are about 170 people in her cohort. 

The Department told Cherwell: “[We have] received a number of enquiries from students about their Part B exam results and we are in the process of carrying out a thorough investigation, which is likely to take several weeks. […] Once we are clear about the scope of any issue found, we will take appropriate action.”

The Department added that it would be “taking this opportunity to carry out a thorough review of our processes to minimise any potential risk to a fair assessment for all students in the future”.

Image credit: Oxford University Engineering department

The iron fist of a former Prosecutor General: The future of Korean politics

Kevin Lee
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The iron fist of a former Prosecutor General: The future of Korean politics

It has been more than half a year since the 2022 South Korean presidential elections were held. COVID-19, growing economic inequality, an unfair housing market, and gender issues all fueled the closest presidential race in Korean history, with the conservative People’s Party candidate, Yoon Suk Yeol, narrowly beating out Lee Jae-Myung of the Democratic Party by less than one percent. 

To some, it was a shocking turn of events; the People’s Party suffered a landslide defeat in 2017 following President Park Geun Hye’s impeachment. Then, they conceded an absolute majority to the Democratic Party in the 2020 legislative elections, winning only 103 seats out of a possible 300. The abuse of power and corruption from previous conservative administrations seemingly burnt all bridges with their voter base, and the party’s infighting leadership lacked concrete plans to regain their trust. 

However, their comeback came sooner than anyone had anticipated. The Democratic Party lost support from their younger voting bloc, mostly from men in their 20s dissatisfied with the party’s feminist policies. Despite the country’s recent “feminist renaissance”, many have resisted the cultural shift, instead radicalizing into anti-feminist groups through online forums and men’s rights movements. As a result, nearly 60% of men under the age of 30 voted for President Yoon’s explicitly anti-feminist platform, which included abolishing South Korea’s Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. 

Other factors, including an over-heating real estate bubble and the growing weariness of COVID-19-related government restrictions, contributed to the conservative party’s resurgence. Following an unusually competitive primary race, the polls indicated a near 50-50 race, with Yoon just slightly ahead by the end of February. A third-party conservative candidate, Ahn Chul Soo, dropped out and finally tipped the scales in favour of the current regime. 

The results of the 2022 elections have profound implications: cultural conservatism, a greater gender divide, and anti-labor politics following an extreme capitalist agenda. But most importantly, there is palpable fear surrounding the government’s push to expand the power of the prosecution service, and what that means for the average Korean citizen. 

Who is President Yoon? 

The recently elected President Yoon Suk Yeol is sometimes described as a political maverick: unlike most presidents, he lacks a political background. Indeed, he is the first South Korean president since President Chun Doo Hwan–a military president who seized power through a coup d’etat in the 1980s–who has never been elected as a member of the Korean national assembly. 

A career prosecutor, Yoon has spent 25 years in the prosecutor’s office. He rose to prominence after leading investigations into scandals of former conservative presidents Park Geun Hye and Lee Myung Bak, as well as Lee Jae Yong, the vice president of Samsung Electronics. He was thus appointed as the prosecutor-general for the Democratic Party administration after Park’s impeachment. 

However, the relationship between him and the Democratic Party quickly soured. His ambivalence to prosecution-related reforms by the government, as well as his decision to prosecute the then-Minister of Justice, Cho Guk, was condemned by the party. He was criticized for his overzealous prosecutorial tactics and for using his office for personal gain, interfering in investigations into his family members and close associates. Eventually, he resigned from office on March 4th, 2021, while gaining significant support from the conservative voter base. 

His story is reminiscent of many other “political mavericks” in recent years: Donald Trump is a notable example of another president from a non-traditional background, branded as anti-establishment to appeal to a more precariat, neoconservative demographic. Similarly, Yoon’s unorthodox naivete has often been optimistically interpreted as a “fresh change of pace”, despite evidence suggesting otherwise. 

Prosecution Services in South Korea

President Yoon’s history as a prosecutor-general is just as important as his lack of history as a public servant. 

Like in many other countries, Korean prosecutors are generally in charge of deciding the appropriate punishment for criminals. However, unlike other countries, they have a complete monopoly over both the investigatory and indictment processes. In particular, Korean prosecutors both command police-led investigations (a check-and-balance system against the police), and also have the power to lead investigations themselves with effectively no restraint. Additionally, they are solely in charge of directing and supervising arrest, seizure, and search warrants–while such responsibilities are usually shared between the police force and the prosecutor’s office in other OECD countries. 

In this sense, the current Korean prosecution service resembles its English counterpart before the creation of the Crown Prosecution Service in 1986; instead of having the same officers investigate and prosecute a case, the British government found it sensible to have the police investigate, while the CPS decides whether or not to prosecute in court. 

The most frightening aspect of this antiquated, all-powerful, and untouchable organisation is its military-esque mindset: under the “uniformity of prosecutor principle”, all prosecutors have to strictly obey a leadership pyramid centred around the prosecutor general. This could be the breeding ground for corruption and abuse. 

The prosecution service is the main target of lobbying efforts by business conglomerates: by targeting the right people, such businesses can easily worm their way out of corporate crime charges–from environmental pollution and tax fraud, to trade violations and price-fixing. More importantly, these bribery attempts are almost always never investigated, as the only organisation in charge of the investigatory processes is the prosecutor’s office itself. Despite receiving nearly 12,000 reports of prosecutor-related crimes in the past 5 years, only 14 prosecutors were ever indicted. 

Government of prosecutors, by the prosecutors, and for the prosecutors

So what does it mean to a former prosecutor-general turned president when faced with the challenges of criminal justice reform? 

President Yoon was adamant in his election promises that he will fully support the prosecutor’s service, even giving it further independence and power if elected. 

He first promised to sever the ties between prosecutors and the Minister of Justice; the Minister of Justice is the only non-prosecutor who has power over the prosecution service. Despite the existing technicality that the Minister of Justice can only monitor the prosecutor general–and therefore is usually limited in his influence over specific cases–Yoon’s promises attempt to further liberate and empower prosecutors. 

He then promised prosecutors independent budget and HR deliberations, as well as the power to investigate highly ranked public officials. His campaign drew the ire of civic groups, who compared his plans to an “empire for his prosecutor army”, but Yoon stood firm by his policies. 

In his current 6 month presidency, Yoon’s cabinet is comprised of 15 past prosecutors–many of whom also lack political experience–including the new Minister of Justice. His campaign promises have yet to come to fruition; the national assembly is still divided and stalling the legislative process, but it seems an inevitable end result. 

Conclusion: 

Despite recent movements centred around the systematic corruption of police forces around the world, Korea’s own issues of a rotting criminal justice system have gone largely unnoticed. Unlike police brutality, there isn’t black-and-white video evidence of wrongdoing or thousands of testimonies pointing toward systematic injustice. 

And so the problem festers on, hidden under layers of intentional obfuscation of responsibility. With the new regime only adding fuel to the fire, the general public cannot stand idly by: we must draw increased attention to political power abuse, mobilize against corruption, and most importantly, exercise our democratic rights to the fullest. 

Image credit: Daniel Bernard

Everything I know about (uni) love

Sahar Malaika
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Everything I know about (uni) love

During summer vacation, as part of my mission to read as little of my reading list as possible, I picked up Dolly Alderton’s first and only novel so far, “Everything I Know About Love.” It is a fabulously written book, not only an autobiography, but also littered with stories in whichever order she felt was right – recipes of delicious comfort food, and my favourite, her lists. Specifically, lists of everything that she’d learned about love in the 30 years she had been alive, prior to drafting this book. One thing that I felt was missing from this was her experience of love at university, as Alderton chooses to focus on the years after her graduation. Being an editor of a university magazine and a part of a play that explores the experiences of sex and relationships of Oxford University students, I thought I might – briefly – try to fill this gap. Every university student is exposed to a world of drinking and sex –one that is likely much more intense compared to secondary school–especially in an insular city like Oxford. In an attempt to add to Alderton’s witty observations on love, I will provide you with my own list, which, for some, will verbalise the internal whirlwind of thoughts that have been fighting each other in their minds. For others, it will be an insight into some of the mysteries that you might be faced with in the scary world that is “sex and relationships at university”.  

  1. Casual hook-ups and dating apps

Recommended song: “Let’s Fall in Love for the Night” – FINNEAS

My first act as a mature university student and proper adult was to download Bumble and Hinge. It’s the first step to embracing your freedom to go and see whoever you want, whenever you want, without a parent poking their head in to see who you’re talking to. It also comes as part of having those friends who will have made-out with or slept with 5 people within the first week of university while you’ve just started to think about kissing someone in a club.  

This is one of the most beautiful transitions, especially for those who are queer, to be able to open the door to a sex-positive and shameless world. Once we open that door some of us will desperately want to start being part of it.  

However, the world of dating apps is also a difficult one. Creating your profile provides the first revelation. You get in your head about how these fun photos that you took in matriculation make you look too posed, too pretentious – could they like you based on how you look in subfusc? You realise that these other faces will judge you based on the pictures that you choose to show them and you’ll begin to deeply analyse the impressions that they have made over text message conversations. It’s less about the smooth, in-person courtship of someone you’ve found attractive at the college bar. It’s all about what they look like on your phone screen. It can reduce our evaluation of someone to a purely aesthetic oneThis is perfect if what you’re looking for is a casual hook-up or a first date and no more. You can draw yourself into the fantasy of someone who looks great in the sea in Thailand. As long as you forget that they are mostly attracted to you by the surface that you’ve presented to them. 

This surface may not even be the real you – the self that you want to connect with someone.  Being at Oxford, you are a people pleaser, and you are placing the expectations of others onto yourself. It can be harder than “organically” meeting someone because you’re only showing them things about you that you think look good. Then comes the emotional attachment. You’re sitting in a coffee shop, and you are worried that you don’t really know them at all, and you cannot anticipate their reaction to you. There is also a disadvantage to the context of the dating app; there is no need to take the risk of telling someone, verbally, that you think they’re cute and that you should go out on a date. You’re not going in with vulnerability, whether you’re looking for a casual-hook-up –where being vulnerable is incidentally out of the question – or not. Because of this lack of the first risk, you may also find that it’s harder to communicate further on. 

These apps are not entirely evil and should not be villainized – in Dolly Alderton’s view, they are essential. And in my experience, Bumble facilitated one of my first relationships. They take away the fear of the “crush” and anxiety over whether they like you back. You’ve both swiped right on each other and so you both already know that you like each other, otherwise you wouldn’t be out for a drink.  

So, despite the disadvantages, the way I liked to see it was as practice – an introductory session for how to date, how to tell what kind of person you like, how to figure out what you’re looking for in a relationship, how to flirt and how to ask someone for a drink, or – if you’re lucky – a second date. I think the experience of dating encompasses the fact that “no experience is a bad experience”. You can learn so much from the bad dates, the whirlwind romances and the heartbreaks that come from things that may have sprung from a brief encounter on a dating app and a first Bumble date that you didn’t think was going anywhere. It might not be as romantic as the Instagram adverts make you think it is, but it gives you the chance to discover that romance for yourself. 

  1. Going from 0 to 100

Recommended song: “Share Your Address” by Ben Platt 

This will be especially significant for those of you that have never had a casual relationship yet. It is also something that I would say is quite commonly seen in Oxford. When you first move into your accommodation as a fresher, you will be hit with the realisation that you live IN your university. There’s no commute, no travel, and you’ll be living with people all the time. Your friends will become like your family, living with them all the time – although, luckily, you can be a lot more selective. The constant connection is essential, when you’ve just moved into a new place with centuries-old customs with everything and anything going wrong in Freshers Week and new experiences hitting you at every corner. What’s better? You’ll find out that these friends have endless mutual friends with you and you’ll be able to walk down Cornmarket Street or Broad Street knowing at least one other person you’re walking past. Focus on maintaining this high, because you’ll only get to feel it once. You should, however, be wary of how this makes you behave in your relationships. I have seen, from other people as well as myself, a tendency to want to immediately integrate your newfound relationship with your social life.  

Before I carry on: this is not me telling you to keep all and any relationships a secret. That’s probably not good for any party involved. However, there is a benefit to maintaining the fact that your partner/s are having a relationship with you and not all your friends yet. There will be moments when all that you want is to have a conversation with them or watch a film with them or cuddle them but you’ll either feel like your missing out on something super exciting or perhaps you’re avoiding a difficult conversation that could turn awkward. It can become overwhelming for your friends and people you’re living with to be able to know a lot about your relationship and to have your partner integrated into a life with people who you’ve probably been more emotionally vulnerable with. It creates a dissonance, it can become uncomfortable because you’re rushing yourself into combining those who’ve seen you at your most vulnerable and a partner who – whilst you may have been physically intimate with them – may not have seen you crying into a bottle of Tesco rose just yet.  

You can face these challenges with partners who go to a different university and people who are at the university with you; the former because they won’t understand how your life is so integrated with the people that you live with when they live in flats with people they’ve not met before and won’t see very often, and the latter because it’s so easy for them to come over and spend time with you and your friends that going to level 100 happens in a heartbeat.

There are videos littered throughout TikTok about the stages of dating and how to know where you’re at – be it “dating” “talking” or “situationship”. This sudden jump can make things harder especially when you might really like someone but you’re not sure about how serious things are yet, even though you’ve introduced them to your chosen family within a matter of weeks. The lesson here is to maintain some autonomy and separation in the early stages of your relationship so that you’re allowed the space to process how you feel about your relationship and at what stage you want to integrate them into your more personal life, especially if you’re wanting someone more serious.  

  1. Communication 

Recommended song: “Pancakes for Dinner” by Lizzie McAlpine. 

A simple truth: One needs to be able to communicate in order to have a relationship in the first place. To express interest, attraction, and love. It is – by far – the most important thing for a relationship to work. In a recent project for a play, I interviewed Oxford students, asking them about their stories and their experiences with love and relationships to reveal how diverse these experiences were. However, even with those who had felt that they had had fewer experiences, unsuccessful experiences, abnormal experiences, especially not heteronormative experiences, the comfort that they had found in this subject associated with fear and trauma, was through that of communication. One of them even said that, for them, this was an attractive quality in a person, the ability to not set boundaries or expectations for themselves, but to ask that you share them as well. What, then, does it mean for those of us who see self-expression as some sort of a brick wall? When the desire to tell someone that you love them, or to tell them of something that you are unhappy with or want to change, represents an overwhelming pressure and anxiety .  

Just because it’s a healthy thing to do, doesn’t mean it’s easy. The way that we have learned to communicate has changed in the world of dating apps and DMs. It’s also a hard thing to do in the way that it makes us realise that we’re vulnerable and that your partner may not like what you have to say. We do the same thing to ourselves in the way that we need constant distraction from our own thoughts. Every student here has or shares a subscription to a streaming service such as Netflix or Amazon Prime or will not have time to use them because they are swamped with work or spending time with friends. Whilst Oxford has a beautifully unique environment that fosters friendships and co-existing with other students, your space is often filled with the sounds and voices of other people, their lives and thus, your experiences wind together. We are conditioned, never to be alone. Our attention is always being focussed on a project or event or answering a DM that we have forgotten how to be alone with ourselves. There are poets and writers who embrace that, but we find nothing so terrifying. If there is no space to learn about us and know what it is exactly that we want, then how is it that we can express these desires to others? 

  1. When things are hard 

Recommended song: “Street by Street” by Laufey. 

I would say that most of us are familiar with the Oxford checklist: 

  • A first 
  • A spouse 
  • A blue 

It would be a lovely thing to come away from Oxford with at least one of these things. The fact is: we are all over-achievers. It’s how we got here. And things like this list mean that we’ve also been made to believe that part of a complete Oxford experience is to be either with a partner, many partners or many casual relationships. It creates a lot of insecurity for us to admit when things don’t feel normal, right or even worse – when things feel bad and it’s time for a break-up. It doesn’t matter how many people I’ve spoken to – friends or interviewees, at one point or another this year, one of us has been in tears over the lost achievement of not being able to find a spouse let alone a short-term partner within the 24 weeks of us being here. It’s so easy for us to forget that we worked hard to get here. That we’re going through a huge emotional ordeal moving out of our family homes. The fact that we are at one of the most academically intense universities in the world. That we are human – and yet– barely adults. That we only just figured out what we want to study, let alone what we like in a partner. I can go on about the pressures that society puts on us to be sexually desirable and sexually active. We’re too easily allowed to forget that there is another side to ourselves besides the spouse.  

I love to romanticise Oxford as much as the next person. But you will also worry about going into a coffee shop that your heart got broken in. Remembering that you won’t be able to kiss them at the kissing gate in Christchurch Meadow. In this world of Oxford “where dreams are made on”, we either resent our lack of love or we hold so tightly to our romances we lose ourselves in them. I won’t tell you to try and find the romance yourself. In an interview about her recent novel, Beautiful World Where Are You?, Sally Rooney made an excellent point that we suffer when we’re not together. We need other people. We thrive from experiences that we’ve been able to share. 

So, take what you will from this attempt to consolidate my knowledge of love in this strange place. Whilst I have tried to gather those universal truths about “uni love”, sometimes the best way to figure it out is to learn through practice. Everyone’s experiences are so different, there’s no “right way” to do things. Let yourself fall in love, let yourself get your heart broken. Let yourself hook-up with people you can’t stand when you wake up the next morning. Appreciate the whole experience, even the awful, heart-wrenching bits. It makes the rose-tinted parts even sweeter. 

As a small add-on: if you’d like to learn a bit more about how different the experiences of the Oxford Dating scene are, I would recommend going to see the play “Chemicals and Attraction” that’s on in Week 6 of this term. Doing research for the play inspired me to write this article and hopefully will be equally as eye-opening for you.

Concluding songs: 

“Denim Jacket” by Sammy Rae and the Friends

“I Drink Wine” by Adele

“Sing” by Hozier

Image credit: Good Faces Agency

Wags in the Rag

Ciara Rushton
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Wags in the Rag

I have always had a soft spot for cats, having three of my own at home. It might not, therefore, come as much of a surprise that this week, I want to once again introduce one of Oxford’s college cats. This week, it is only right to follow on from looking at Simpkin, Hertford’s college cat, to his nemesis, Walter of Exeter College, though I will return to their feud later. Amy Gregg, former DPhil student and Junior Dean at Exeter, as well as Walter’s ‘human’, was kind enough to answer some questions for me on this piece from her own perspective.

Walter, named for the college’s founder, Walter de Stapledon, came to Exeter in 2020, during the first COVID-19 lockdown, when the college was largely deserted. Missing her pets at home, and after a failed attempt to pet Simpkin, Amy approached college to ask if she could get a cat to keep her company. By coincidence, the college had been considering getting a cat for some time, and so Walter, as a kitten, came to live in Exeter. Though he’s now well at home in the college, even having his own pidge slot in the mail room, he spent his first evening hiding behind kitchen cupboards and had to be lured out with YouTube videos of cats. 

Pets have been around the college for some time unofficially, with the Head Porter’s cat often seen wandering around the Porters’ Lodge. It’s no doubt, though, that Walter is one of Oxford’s most iconic pets, even having his own Instagram account and, alongside Simpkin, being one of Cherwell’s Top 40 BNOCs. Though he can sometimes be very affectionate, he is described aptly in three words as ‘On his terms’, as he alone decides who can pet him and when, in typical cat fashion. I remember, back in Trinity of my first year, coming across him late in the evening and attempting to pet him, only to be completely blanked. Thankfully, he has been much more receptive to others.

When he’s not sleeping in the college library, to the joy of students in essay crises, he’s prowling around the grounds, and even warding off invaders. The famous Simpkin v. Walter saga of February 2022 saw Simpkin frequently invade the college library and even fight with Walter. Stealing Walter’s food and water, it is no wonder why Simpkin was banned from Exeter’s college library, though this was defied many times. Walter, however, came out as the people’s cat, winning an Instagram poll and with many even on Mumsnet declaring themselves #TeamWalter. Justice was, therefore, eventually served for Walter.

Walter is another example of how truly beneficial it can be to have a pet around college. From keeping students company during the lockdown, to being a library study buddy, or even just being around for students who miss their pets back at home, he is certainly a core part of the Exeter community. With an Instagram now maintained by current students and being cared for by the Porters’ Lodge, Walter will be at the college for years to come, playing an important welfare role in such a stressful academic environment like Oxford. Like his counterparts at other colleges, therefore, Walter once again shows the clear benefits of having furry friends around at Oxford’s colleges.

Image credit: Amy Gregg, Instagram: walter_the_exeter_cat

One of the flock

Josie Thornton
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One of the flock

Time passes differently here in Oxford. It is something that I am not sure I will ever get my head around. As I rushed back from a lecture this morning in the rain, hurried into the kitchen, gulped down my soup and then quickly began to pack my rucksack for an afternoon study session with a friend, I suddenly found myself thinking, when did things become so much of a blur? 

Stopping what I was doing for a moment, I sat down in my chair, and forced myself to do absolutely nothing for a few minutes. Nothing but sit, looking out of the window and listening to distant doors slamming shut on my staircase, echoes of voices from the kitchen and the mumble of a bike crunching along the gravel below. It was an odd moment, but a much needed pause in an otherwise hectic day. 

I have experienced a heightened awareness of the busy rush of Oxford life this week, since last Thursday a flock of sheep were unleashed onto the fields that my accommodation looks out across, and so every morning I open my blinds to find a scene of pastoral idyl, which never loses its surprising and remarkable effect. The flock, made up of perhaps twenty or thirty sheep, is there morning, noon and night. As I write essays, there they are chewing on the grass; I returned from entz at three am on Saturday morning, decorated in neon glow sticks for the theme of ‘school disco’, and their white bodies shone supernaturally in the moonlight. Their pace of life is gentle, unhurried. They follow their natural instincts, seeming to do little else apart from eat and go to the toilet where and whenever is most convenient. 

Often this week I have found myself comparing my life here in Oxford with theirs. All of the demands that drive my day: dodging the half term crowds on Broad Street, writing a JCR motion, scribbling down notes during a lecture and always getting left behind. All week I have been meaning to catch up with a friend who is in France on his year abroad: why haven’t I got around to it yet? What has been so very pressing that I’ve pushed aside small tasks like picking up the phone and hitting FaceTime? 

And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it ended. As the microwave pinged and I took out my bowl of mushroom soup, a flatmate pointed to the window, and we watched as a sheepdog rounded up the bundles of white, and they disappeared in a van. Now, as I look out onto the meadow, it is hard to believe that they were there at all. Sheep, in the middle of Oxford? I suppose there are cows in Christchurch Meadow. But still – sheep, outside my window? I can already see myself reminiscing in years to come, comparing nostalgic university memories with future friends, and them not quite believing that my bedroom looked out onto a field of sheep, like something from The Railway Children. 

Nevertheless, I think that the sheep have taught me a lesson that a tutorial never could. They have reminded me that it is okay to stop once in a while, to chew the grass and to stare into space, and to not do much else. Sometimes, it is okay to be just another one of the flock. 

And here is a reassuring thought if you are longing for the simple existence of a sheep, as given to me by a family member: that sheep have mint sauce to contend with ultimately. (Perhaps reassuring was the wrong word…)

However, it seems that we all – each and every one of us – have our challenges to face. Perhaps that makes those overwhelming days that little bit less monstrous, and reminds us not to take our niggling thoughts as seriously as we might otherwise be inclined to do.

 (Sorry sheep.)

Image credit: Alfred Backhouse

“Freedom will be achieved by women”: Oxford Iranian students on protests of Islamic Republic

Sonya Ribner
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“Freedom will be achieved by women”: Oxford Iranian students on protests of Islamic Republic

Students in Iran are in an existential fight for freedom. At academic institutions such as Sharif University of Technology and Khajeh-Nasir Toosi University of Technology, Engineering and Science majors take to the streets calling for the end of the Islamic Republic and confront the Iranian military’s bullets and batons. While the campus and street protests may have been sparked by the Morality Police’s murder of Mahsa Jhina Amini for defying hijab law, they have expanded to a demand for the end of a system that perpetuates political and social oppression. Arian Amini declares, “Freedom in Iran begins with women and will be achieved by women.”

Iran has a history of political protest – the most recent of which in 2019 was instigated by economic mismanagement, tax cuts for elites, and rising gas prices – but all three Iranian Oxford undergraduates who spoke to Cherwell emphasize that this time is different. “Sanctions did not beat Mahsa (Jhina) Amini to death for ‘improper’ hijab,” says Arian, “The United States did not kill Sarina Esmailzadeh for enacting her right to protest. It was not the foreign powers of the West that slaughtered the protestors of Zahedan. This is the beginning of the end of the Islamic Republic.” 

Anger over the death of Mahsa Jhina Amini has broadened to reflect ordinary Iranians’ outrage over declines in living conditions after Western economic sanctions, widespread political corruption, and economic mismanagement. The Oxford female undergraduate states, “I was not shocked by her death in the slightest.” Even the woman’s name represents the suppression of diversity perpetuated by the Islamic Republic: the Iranian state denies Kurdish people the right to use Kurdish names; Jhina went by Mahsa officially. The identification Iranian women feel with Jhina drives their activism: “When you hear Iranian female students shouting, ‘Death to the dictator,’ it’s because to them they might as well already be dead…. They are on a second life, if you will. The morality police didn’t kill me then, let them kill me now – but before they kill me, let me have my voice heard.” 

But it is not just female students who clamor for the fall of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The current protests racking the Islamic Republic span generations, social classes, and geographies of Iran. Oxford student Ali Khosravi relates the recognition by all Iranians of the precarious state of women’s rights in Iran to the wave of activism after the death of Sarah Everard in the United Kingdom. “Many women and men realized it could be them or their loved one. The usual trip in the van to the Morality Police office could be the end of us.” One of Ali’s female relatives of an older generation at home in Iran, who considers herself a devout Muslim, looks at the Ayatollahs (holy men) and is convinced that they are corrupt. He laughs recalling, “she says may God get rid of them in her religious way.” 

The sentiment of Ali’s relative is shared by citizens who live in deeply religious cities such as Qom and Mashhad where women rip off their head scarves and burn them in street bonfires. Men and women across the nation shout, “Women, life, freedom,” as a rallying cry.

While all three Iranian Oxford undergraduates whole-heartedly endorse the nation-wide protests, they express the new fear with which they must contend every day that a loved one might inadvertently be caught in the crosshairs of state authority. As of October 21, the Guardian reports that military organizations have killed 250 people and arrested almost 12,500 since the street protests began. The female undergraduate cites a list of names on social media of people the military has murdered in the protests: “As much as you feel sadness about seeing that list grow, you also hope to God that you don’t recognize any of those names.”

The fight at universities across Iran is ongoing. This past Monday, October 24, students at Khaje-Nasir Toosi University of Technology booed Iranian government spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi and prevented him from delivering his speech. They chanted, “We don’t want a corrupt system, we don’t want a murderous guest.” At Hamadan University, students held a gathering in honor of their classmate Negin Abdolmaleki, 21, who was beaten to death by security forces on October 12. 

The most violent of the university raids by the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) occurred at Tehran’s prestigious Sharif University of Technology. On October 2, the Basij, a student-based paramilitary volunteer militia overseen by the IRGC, opened fire on protesters with rubber bullets and paintballs, critically wounding students. Ali explains the Basij “are hard-minded religious students with a branch at every university. They live in the dorms and function as an ideological arm of the state. Imagine, just for the sake of analogy, that Britain was a Catholic theocracy and the Catholic society at Oxford was the Basij.” At Sharif, there was blood on the ground, tear gas in the air, bullets flying, and shrieking cries for help, according to The New York Times. Professors approached the Basij to attempt a negotiation of a secure exit for students, and the paramilitary group brutally beat them. Sharif protesters continue to call for the release of Mohammad Nejad, a student of aerospace engineering currently held at a prison outside Tehran.

Watching the unrest her family and friends grapple with at home, the female undergraduate says, “I often feel as though I have done nothing to deserve my fate, nothing to deserve the privilege of sitting within my college walls or in cute coffee shops and complaining about how much work I have. My Iranian brothers and sisters are refusing to go to university and refusing to go to school. They are joining protests and screaming in the faces of revolutionary guards. What bravery. What astounding bravery.”

Protest also takes the form of male and female students lunching together at the university’s canteen counters, in open defiance of gender segregation rules. Two of Ali’s friends were invited to an “open conversation” with the cleric who is the representative of the Supreme Leader at academic institutions. The students were courageous enough to express their classmates’ grievances as well as criticize the Islamic republic’s suppression of human rights. The next day, Ali’s friends received threatening messages from the Ministry of Intelligence. “Clerics lure students into implicating themselves into a seditious act by expressing their desire for change… The Supreme Leader’s totalitarian regime won’t make any concessions of power. He won’t relax any restrictions because they feel that any concession will be the downfall of the regime.”

Yet, the Iranians’ fight for freedom transcends borders. The Oxford female undergraduate affirms that the Iranian students shout “because they want you to hear them. And they want to hear you.” She explains that an act as simple as posting an infographic can have damning consequences for Iranian students living abroad. “I stand to lose absolutely everything – to lose my ability to ever see my family again in Iran – by posting a single infographic on my story.”

The stark reality of this was made clear by a photo (featured below) taken by Donya Rad that Ali cites as being simultaneously a powerful symbol of the new normal and a shocking instance of the Islamic Republic’s repression of freedom. Rad’s image saw wide circulation on social media for the chord it strikes with Iranians of a casual instance of exceptional bravery; however, Rad has since been imprisoned for posting the image of her and a female friend eating breakfast in a café without hijabs. 

But non-Iranian Oxford students can post infographics. They can display photos and videos on their social media of Iranian protesters’ ongoing struggle. They can write the list of names of the courageous Iranian students who have lost their lives in the fight for freedom.

Oxford students can also send motions to their Junior Common Rooms (JCR) and Middle Common Rooms (MCR) demanding that the governing bodies of their colleges release statements condemning the IRGC and Basji for attacking university administrators and students. Furthermore, if the JCRs and MCRs have a charity fund, they can donate to organizations such as Iranian & Kurdish Women’s Rights (IKWRO) and the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center that bring public attention to human rights abuses in Iran. 

There are also material political actions that British students can take to support the Iranian students’ cause. Arian advocates that voters write letters to their local MPs asking them to take a stand against the Iranian regime. The female undergraduate laments: “It is utterly disgraceful that the UK government, Liz Truss, the foreign secretary James Cleverly, have said nothing about the Iranian protesters. They have not even tried to demonstrate an illusion that they care. How dare the British government say nothing. Truly hurtful. This is not a partisan issue. This is human rights. Ask the leaders of your party why are you saying nothing? I’ll beg them on my knees for their fake thoughts and prayers rather than silence.” In London, there is an Islamic center funded by the Islamic Republic of Iran run by a cleric appointed by the Supreme Leader. Ali argues, “We must close that down. There is no need for a brutal dictator to have a representative in this country.” 

All three Iranian Oxford undergraduates maintain that their family and friends in Iran fight for the heart of their nation. An act as simple as a male student having lunch with a female student is a subversion of the political and social system in place for almost a quarter of a century. The privilege to learn in a free and inclusive environment that Oxford students take for granted is at the heart of the urgent struggle in Iran. On the frontlines of a battle for human rights, this army of Iranian citizens is young and old, rich and poor, liberal and conservative. Arian makes it clear: “This is an Iran where women and men are willing to die to give their brothers and sisters freedom.” 

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