Page 240 – Cherwell

Why the human genome still isn’t fully complete

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10th August 2022

Why the human genome still isn’t fully complete

The original Human genome project was started in 1990, and aimed to determine the entire sequence within 15 years. In 2000, a rough draft was published to celebrate the international cooperation that was making this achievement possible. This draft was an impressive feat on its own, covering 83% of the genome.

In 2003, the Human genome was announced to be ‘essentially complete’. 99% of the gene rich DNA had been sequenced. The importance of noncoding DNA was not fully appreciated, so most people didn’t realize that 8% of the DNA letters still hadn’t been determined

Ridiculously, only 1% of the human genome actually codes for proteins. Most of it regulates when and where those protein coding genes are switched on. There are also countless stretches of nonsense letters that go on and on with seemingly no purpose. These regions are called ‘junk DNA’.

An especially interesting example of junk DNA is the repeats. Instead of mutating randomly, some sections get over-replicated. The DNA polymerase enzymes slip whilst reading along the double helix, causing these repeats to grow and grow over generations. This is implicated in several diseases such as huntington’s and cancer.

DNA is ‘read’ like morse code except instead of having 2 letters (dot and dash) it has 4: A T G C. This allows it to code for the amino acid alphabet in a shorter space. Each amino acid corresponds to a unique sequence of 3 DNA bases.

Amino acids are the building blocks of protein. Each of them have slightly different properties such as positive/negative charge and hydrophobicity. The genetic code is important because it specifies which order these building blocks should be linked together in a chain. Each chain folds into a specific 3D shape with an important function, and mutation of a single DNA letter can completely ruin this. For example, Sickle cell anemia is caused by mutation of A->T in hemoglobin, leading to a glutamate amino acid being swapped out for valine.

Despite being just a simple repeating pattern, these regions were practically impossible to sequence with the techniques available during the 1990’s. This is because the techniques involved digesting the DNA into tiny fragments and determining the bases bit by bit. Then they would see where each fragment overlapped and put them all in order. Unfortunately, repeat regions can look like utter nonsense.

“cccccc aaaaa once upon a time there aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb ccccccccccccc was a man called bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb Steven bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb aaaaaaaa”

The sentence is interrupted by 3 repeated stretches of ‘b’. After this sentence is cut up for shotgun sequencing, imagine if the cuts are in the middle of the b repeats. You would have no way of knowing which order they are supposed to fit together in! You could end up with a sentence like this:

“cccccc aaaaa once upon a time there aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb Steven bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb ccccccccccccc was a man called bbbbbbbbbb”

Over the last few decades, more accurate and reliable sequencing techniques have been developed such as oxford nanopore. This has allowed these mysterious regions to be explored. The Telomere-to-Telomere (T2T) Consortium is a team of over 100 scientists that are working to fill in the gaps.

We have 2 copies of the genome in our cells, 1 from each parent. Keeping track of which half of chromosomes are which could be a massive problem and cause alignment errors. Therefore, this new sequencing project used a special type of cell called a Hydatidiform mole. This is an empty egg cell lacking its own copy of the genome, fertilized by a healthy sperm cell. The sperm’s DNA becomes more accessible and easy to sequence.

The downside of this method is that it leaves out one of the sex chromosome because sperm can only be X or Y. They chose an X sperm because it is far bigger and would be difficult to obtain on its own. To solve this, Leonid Peshkin (a biologist at Harvard University) donated a Y chromosome sample from his own genome.

Oxford Nanopore sequencing was used to fill in gaps in the centromere. These are patches of each chromosome that don’t contain any genes; instead they serve as handles for the spindle proteins to grab hold of during mitosis. A different technique called PacBio HiFi was used for many repeating sequences. The key thing that both techniques have In common is that they are ‘long-read’ and able to process huge fragments – hundreds of thousands of letters at a time.

After this brilliant effort, all the gaps in the human genome have been filled except for 5. Only ~10 million letters remain to be sequenced.

Even after these tiny gaps are closed, the goal of the human genome project is not quite fulfilled. There are many genes that have significant variations throughout the population. You will have no doubt observed this for superficial things like eye and hair colour, but more pernicious differences lurk below the surface.

Mutant versions of key signalling proteins are linked with an increased risk for diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s. Understanding how their genes vary in different people could be an important step in treating these devastating conditions. The Human Pangenome Project are working towards sequencing 350 different genomes from diverse populations.

Entire cohort of medics forced to resit exam after alleged cheating

News

Charlie Hancock

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9th August 2022

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Entire cohort of medics forced to resit exam after alleged cheating

Medical students entering their sixth and final year have learned they will all have to resit one of their exams after the Proctor’s Office was alerted to allegations that some students had cheated. All marks from the examination have been wiped, as the integrity of the examination was called into question.

Some members of the cohort allegedly received and circulated materials which could have given them an advantage in their Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCE). The OSCE is used to assess how students respond to patients in a clinical setting.

The Chair of Examiners, Dr Sanja Thompson, said in a letter seen by Cherwell that it was “impossible” to know how many students cheated. As a result, all students in the cohort would have to resit the paper. Oxford University said they would not provide specific details about the allegations because of an ongoing investigation.

The date on which students will resit the exam in Michaelmas has not been finalised. In the meantime, a provisional ranking of students in the cohort will be made using other exams which have not been disrupted. The paper will be weighted the same as if it had been sat normally.

A spokesman said the University recognises the anxiety having to resit the exam will cause, and that it is in touch with affected students for pastoral and assessment support.

On deglobalisation and the narrative of decline: are we really looking at a threat to global trade?

Khusrau Islam

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9th August 2022

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On deglobalisation and the narrative of decline: are we really looking at a threat to global trade?

In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. It heralded the third era of globalisation. In terms of trade, the basic premise was that barriers between countries would go down, and cash could flow freely between states and across borders, and in return, goods would come the other way.

A certain narrative surrounding global trade at the moment is that such globalisation is grinding to a halt. In fact, it’s reversing, and we’re on the cusp of entering a period of “deglobalisation”. And if so, doom awaits. But there are two things wrong with arguing that way. Firstly, what actually is this “deglobalisation”? Secondly, is it a bad thing?

At the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos at the end of last month (May 2022), the notion of “deglobalisation” topped the agenda; the concern was that globalisation had begun to reverse as a result of geopolitical tensions, like the war in Ukraine, and due to disruptions to supply chains. One manifestation of supply chain pressures is volatility in foreign exchange markets. In a fully globalised world, when trading, transportation costs would be offset by the weakness of a foreign currency (making it more attractive for exports). But because of disruptions, these costs have risen to cancel out the advantage of buying in weaker currencies, thus making them less attractive. This has led to foreign exchange volatility making exports less attractive, and thus leading towards deglobalisation.

Kristaina Georgieva, IMF managing director, believes that “geoeconomic fragmentation will make our world poorer and more dangerous”. The sanctions against Russia demarcate the aggressor from the West. Meanwhile, trade blocs are emerging in the East; Biden has entered into the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework which represents 40% of the global economy – he is also supporting trade with Taiwan and Japan to protect against invasion by China. State intervention in China has limited foreign involvement in the Chinese stock market. Despite Xi JinPing’s recent reassurance in favour of international co-operation, there is an “underlying concern about decoupling”. The recent precedent of sanctions on Russia’s foreign exchange could spark a fear of future US sanctions. China, amidst these rising tensions, is looking to incentivise the holding of the renminbi, thereby further drawing up battle lines against the US.

Especially with the creation of trade blocs, limits in global trade might signal protectionist and nationalist attitudes to commerce: countries would only trade with friends, thus limiting their exports and imports. So, domestic companies in a country would have less competition from foreign ones; such lack of competition disincentivises innovation and quality domestically, driving down consumer satisfaction. However, a deglobalized economy is also subject to an inflation risk. A protectionist country would impose a tariff on goods coming in to drive up prices on those products, thus encouraging the consumption of domestic equivalents. However, assuming the demand for the foreign goods still exists, consumers must spend more to afford the same amount of these goods as before – these tariffs pose an inflation risk. Protectionist attitudes in the US had an inflationary threat, while Indonesia’s nationalist palm oil export ban had an impact on global inflation.

Rana Foroohar makes the argument that deglobalisation and decoupling is not a risk but a reality. Particularly in emerging markets like Latin America, Africa, and Asia, countries are developing their own regional and local supply chains. Decentralised technologies are allowing for “local for local” production. Her argument is driven further by the point that “globalisation isn’t inevitable… [an economy] has to serve domestic needs”.

We can see a shift towards local supply chains in the US too. Supply bottlenecks have encouraged a 20% rise in expenditure on maintaining and acquiring properties, suggesting efforts to move away from reliance on external supply chains. The recent shortage of semiconductor chips has been caused by supply chain issues. The chip is essential for computer production and technological advancements. As such, Intel have recently pledged to build a $20bn chip manufacturing site in Ohio to prevent any further supply issues. Like the markets in emerging countries, the US is moving towards a local view rather than a global one.

However, I am hesitant to call this deglobalisation. As of November 2021, there is little evidence to suggest that we are heading towards a deglobalized world. In September, imports in the US were at an all-time high, while China’s trade surplus exceeded pre-pandemic levels. Ports around the world were congested through high trade. In 2020, the year of the pandemic, China overtook the US as top destination for foreign direct investment, and exceeded those levels in 2021. Global trade has not paused.

The deglobalisation we are seeing in the formation of trade blocs and creation of local supply chains as opposed to global ones can be read as protections against risk. If China enters a trade war with the US, and sanctions are imposed on it, then it cannot have all of its reserves in dollars, since they would be blocked from spending in US markets. Countries are facing major supply shortages with disruptions in China as well as from the war in Europe. So, they need to find other ways to acquire their goods since international routes are failing. These establishments of local supply chains are not threats to global trade, but protections against future failures.

Globalisation has also created domestic financial inequality. Dani Rodik demonstrated that for every $1 gained in efficiency from free trade, $50 was moved away from the poor towards the wealthy. It is not hard to see this impact on “unskilled” workers in the UK who have lost jobs due to the outsourcing of labour enabled by globalisation. However, the pandemic has revealed a strong demand for workers, and demonstrated that essential workers are essential. In the cost-of-living crisis, coupled with the trend towards a local mindset, deglobalisation, or more accurately, de-risking, could help solve problems and inequalities created by the global mindset through the restoration of local jobs. The local mindset is also seen in regulatory bodies, who are also looking to firm up supply chain and domestic interests. Nvidia’s acquisition of Arm was stopped partly out of a desire to stop jobs from leaving the UK.

I’m not suggesting that we should all close our borders and stop global trade, ignore the benefits of globalised outsourcing, and deny the value of international M&A. And conversely, there are very real and prevalent protectionist attitudes globally (e.g., populist rhetoric about taking back jobs in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, or Trump’s domestic focus) which are threatening global trade.

But the deglobalisation which we are seeing is not just a simple reversal globalisation or a splitting into factions. Instead, it is a raised wariness of reliance on the international market. Sanctions on Russia proved that even global superpowers could become persona non grata. Global supply crises revealed structural weaknesses in distribution channels. We are not seeing a decoupling of international networks. We are seeing countries and companies attempting to mitigate the risks of trading with the world.

Image credit: Dominik Lückmann

Liz Truss promises Oxbridge admissions shakeup

News

Izzie Alexandrou

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7th August 2022

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Liz Truss promises Oxbridge admissions shakeup

Liz Truss, frontrunner in the race for Conservative Party leadership, has suggested she will reform the Oxbridge admissions system to give all top students a chance for a place.

As part of a six-point education plan announced last Friday, the Oxford graduate proposed that any student with three A* grades at A level should automatically be invited to interview at Oxbridge.

The proposal was put forward in a bid to improve social mobility. The current foreign secretary, an alumni of Merton College, believes that this reform will inspire students who are discouraged by teachers who believe that Oxbridge is “full of toffs.”

Truss told The Sunday Times: “There’s a lot of evidence that women are less likely to ask for a promotion and actually one of the best ways of making the system fairer is to identify the people that are talented and ask them if they want that opportunity.”

UCAS has rejected an approach of this nature in the past since it would “significantly disadvantage underrepresented and disabled students, unless secondary and/or university calendars are changed.” The proposal also puts increased weight on exam performance rather than the other factors which are considered in the current system. The measures are said to be counter-productive since students who are private or selective school educated achieve the highest proportion of these grades.

Truss has further been accused of “micromanagement” by a major teaching union, for the curb in admissions autonomy. Should the proposal be implemented, it would involve 13,000 Oxbridge interviews in England alone, solely from the students achieving 3 A*’s, excluding those who apply on their own merit. The move would compel the universities to hold thousands of extra interviews every year, resulting in what has been described as a “procedural nightmare.”

Diana Beech, chief executive of London Higher, an organisation representing over 40 universities, said, “As well as showing no consideration that Oxbridge might not necessarily be the right choice for everyone, Ms Truss’s proposals reveal no regard for logistics or legalities.”

Furthermore, the reform would require the admissions process to be shifted (a system labelled “post-qualification admissions”) until after results day, which would abandon the current predicted grades system. A plan to implement PQA however was abandoned just 6 months ago by the Department of Education, since support for the proposal was “not strong enough.”

Truss’s pledge has been branded “bafflingly obtuse, poorly thought through and impossible to implement,” however she remains hopeful in her bid to become the “education prime minister” that this policy will “ensure our education system gets back on track.”

Is Labour still about labour?

Opinion

Laura Koscielska

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5th August 2022

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More and more people, both supporters of the Labour Party and its members, are growing frustrated with the party’s lack of solidarity with striking workers and trade unions, especially in the face of the rapidly rising cost of living. Apart from that, the stance on the re-nationalisation of key sectors such as rail, water, energy, and mail, is not clear. Both, it is argued, lie in the interest of the working class. But if Labour, a party founded by trade unions, does not stand by workers, what is really left of it?

Some people have noticed that the Labour Party is becoming progressively detached from the needs of the working class. During the rail strike in June, there was no firm support for industrial action voiced by the leader of the party and Starmer even urged his frontbench MPs to stay away from picket lines, which suggests that he does not feel fully confident about the party’s involvement in such disputes. What followed was Sam Tarry being dismissed as shadow transport minister for doing broadcast interviews from an RMT picket line, to which unions reacted with understandable frustration.

The decision angered many members of the Labour Party and the new policy ordering senior MPs not to join picket lines was questioned by mayors Sadiq Khan and Andy Burnham and others. Khan said that he would happily join a picket line and that “the trade unions have been a core force for good to our country over the recent weeks, months and years.” According to Burnham, Labour might come over as a party that undermines workers fighting for better work conditions and the cost of living crisis if they’re not careful.

Actively avoiding controversy stemming from supporting strikes can appear to be wise, as industrial action is often portrayed as selfish, unreasonable, and even dangerous by certain mainstream media. Distancing oneself from such heated debate minimises the potential damage that could be inflicted on the party’s image.

However, detaching oneself from strike action as a party founded by trade unions and aiming to represent the interests of working people is, according to many, a mistake that puts Labour’s integrity and core values at risk. For tens of thousands of working-class people, it means that the party dissociates itself from their cause and neglects their needs.

Apart from that, just recently, the stance on re-nationalisation of key sectors such as rail, water, energy, and mail, was practically thrown in the bin. The pledge of re-nationalisation made by Labour during the Corbyn era was dropped by Starmer, with the exception of the railways. The leader of the Labour Party also said they will not tackle private sector outsourcing of the NHS in case they win.

Given the horrendous prices of train tickets and energy, it is not difficult to argue that the privatisation of these sectors did more harm than good. Especially in the face of how countries such as France, Germany, and Spain deal with these industries, there is a feeling gaining momentum that we ought to change something and bring them back into the hands of the public. The NHS, too, many argue, ought to be protected from privatisation, as private sector outsourcing means less accessibility. Aside from healthcare, private water companies continue to dump increasingly more toxic pollutants into UK’s waters and environmental groups call for their nationalisation in order to protect water supplies. Overall, the case for re-nationalisation is very strong and deserves consideration.

It is visible that there isn’t a strong unison between Labour members and their leader as to whether actively supporting strikes and re-nationalisation is the correct way forward or not, highlighting the ideological tensions and polarisation within the party. Labour is not all about labour and the interest of the working class, which is why Starmer might face even harsher criticism and his formerly celebrated leadership could be questioned further. In the face of the threat of a general strike, Labour has to unequivocally choose its side and decide its ideological position. It may be the challenge that will determine the future of the party.

Image: Mtaylor848, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Economics of Pride

Culture
Film

Madi Hopper

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3rd August 2022

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“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” The first line from the most famous of straight stories marks the start of Fire Island, the latest Pride Month release on Disney+. The film, a loose adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, unapologetically reveals the law of desire that seems to rule throughout space and time: that ‘possession’ puts you in a better position to ‘want’.

Andrew Ahn’s film confirms that queer relationships stand no chance of escaping Jane Austen’s seemingly universal truth. As the group of friends led by two gay Asian men embark on their annual trip to Fire Island, with great plans for parties, orgies, and vacation flings, they discover that paradise has many gates. They are scorned by white gay men who are financially more successful, who find their behaviour – from things as small as loud yelling and the flailing of arms, to the ‘stealing’ of cheese and wine at private parties – eccentric at best and despicable at worst. Rather than a bacchanal where all participants are equal, Fire Island is divided into social circles with clear boundaries, which repeatedly attempt to bar our protagonists even from parties they are invited to.

These social strata drawn up by the difference in financial circumstances are unmissable on Fire Island as a setting. The island, just a short boat ride away from New York City, is speckled with three-storey mansions, which dwarf the small vacation house that the protagonists are about to lose – a house that supposedly cost all of their lesbian friend’s lawsuit windfall. The mansions belong to lawyers, doctors and the like, middle to upper class white men who refer to Noah and Howie – the Jane and Lizzie of the story – as ‘the Asian guys’. And just like the Bennet girls facing the Bingley siblings at Netherfield, the group of protagonists, who from very early on are introduced as never being able to afford to buy properties, seem completely out of place on an island supposedly reserved for the queer community that they also belong to.

Surprising as it is, the well-to-do queer vacationers on Fire Island as portrayed in the film can easily find their parallels in our reality. We have seen Ellen DeGeneres call up celebrity friends in her massive living room during the pandemic on TV, read about Anderson Cooper’s decision not to pass on his $200 million net worth as his children’s inheritance, and followed the political career of Pete Buttigieg, a Harvard and Oxford graduate. Although LGBTQ+ equality in the world still has far to go, more and more queer people have managed to secure their places among the rich and successful. Their achievement is a sign of progress in itself, but at the same time it is also an indication that not all participants are financially and socially equal in the queer community’s shared fight for equality. Just as portrayed in Fire Island, where white gay men’s micro aggressions and latent racism towards their Asian peers are commonplace, ethnicity acts as an undeniable divisive factor among queer individuals. Although the claim of ‘white gay privilege’ in an article published on metro.co.uk may appear limited and premature, it is hard to ignore the size and depth of ethnic inequality reflected in the article’s statistics borrowed from FS Magazine, which sees ‘80% of Black men, 79% of Asian men and 75% of south Asian men hav[ing] faced racism on the gay scene’. Accompanying the racial discrimination in the LGBTQ+ community is the financial gap between privileged and underprivileged ethnic groups in the wider society where, according to a report by Office for National Statistics on Household wealth by ethnicity in Britain from April 2016 to March 2018, ‘households in the Black African (20%) and Arab (17%) ethnic groups have the lowest rates of home ownership, compared with 68% of White British and 74% of Indian households’.

Admittedly, the LGBTQ+ cinema and TV releases in recent years have grown better at addressing the discrepancy between the white and non-white queer experience. Moving away from the all-white cast prevalent in the earlier wave of queer TV productions such as Queer As Folk (both the original and the first American version) and Looking, the latest queer series have done relatively well on the diversity front: from HBO’s We Are Who We Are (2020), to Hulu’s Love, Victor, to the more recent shows such as Netflix’s First Kill (2022), non-white characters are finally given the central spotlight.

Yet alongside the progress in diversity on the screen, there seems to be an equally noticeable regression in class representation, especially in productions that feature queer young adults. It is hard not to notice the sheer number of middle and upper class families featured in First Kill’s Savannah neighbourhood, which seems to consist exclusively of mansions and Teslas. There is also the set for the fictional parties, which seem only to be able to take place in big suburban houses, from Stacey’s presidential campaign party in Disney+’s Crush (2022), to the mansion that contains actual murals on top of chandeliers in First Kill and, most ironically, the mansion fitted with a grand piano and a swimming pool that the protagonists in We Are Who We Are so desperately need for their rave and have to break into.

And on top of the queer protagonists’ social life, the display of wealth seems to become anonymous even with the expression of their sexuality. While its outcome used to be decided by a spin of the bottle, the game ‘Seven Minutes in Heaven’ in Crush allocates partners by using the teenagers’ latest model smartphones as lots, so that the players can make out in a bathroom that looks just a tad too big and luxurious-looking for an average school trip. There is also the half-ruined Valentino dress that Juliette wears as she kisses Calliope in the dark in First Kill. The funniest example remains the props on Paige’s bedroom shelf in Crush: among the small collection of sex toys supplied by her mom, there is a vibrator from LELO priced at £139, a limited edition ‘Unicorn Wand’ from Le Wand that costs $225, and another vibrator from Lora DiCarlo retailed for $170. The underlying message is quite clear: if you don’t live in a big house with generous parents, your lesbianism is not worth being on TV.

Compared to the latest batch of queer teenagers on TV, the protagonists of Fire Island, dressed in their thrifted outfits and crying over their non-waterproof iPhone 6S, seem like time travellers in comparison – from a time a mere decade ago, when queer characters still lived in shared apartments and worked non-standard jobs they didn’t know how to describe. It is time to realise that class representation in LGBTQ+ screen productions is as important a step towards equality as diversity and inclusion – that glamour should be affordable for all, and that love should not be bought.

Vessel : A Review

Cia Mangat

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3rd August 2022

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CW : mention of disordered eating, fat phobia, body dysmorphia

Have you ever wept in a toilet stall—maybe during a particularly rough school day, maybe during a night out that went wrong—thinking that you were completely insulated from the world outside, only to realise that there’s a giant gap in the door – so whoever is walking past can definitely see you, all puffy-faced? Grace Olusola’s Vessel spoke directly to my teenage self and my current self alike, as I found myself in that exact situation after the show: watching the play felt like having my private, internal feelings about my body and food externalised and projected onto the stage at the Old Fire Station this Trinity. I felt seen.

Last summer I vented my frustrations at feeling like the only fat person at Oxford on Twitter, and my notifications pinged more than normal for a little while. Initially, I worried that a play seeking to address themes of bodies and food in the Oxford community would centre the experiences of people who are afraid of looking like me. While I do not seek to invalidate the experience of people who are insecure and conventionally attractive, there’s a difference between being insecure about having rolls when you slouch and, as the Comedienne comments, “the world decid[ing] whether you’re ugly or not for you”.

Yet Olusola and her team of six other directors have taken the wide-ranging diversity of such relationships with body image into close consideration. Vessel is made up of twelve discrete episodes, each drawing inspiration from student survey responses on questions around bodies and food. The episodes differed significantly in tone, managing to tackle these issues with sensitivity and humour, and reminded me of scrolling through TikTok: we see a spoof of 2000s fatphobic TV shows, titled ‘Formerly Grotesque Fat People Bake On Blind Dates While We Watch’, and a monologue on different kinds of Reese’s peanut butter cups, among others. In ‘Not Like other Girls’ we even see a girl sniffling in the school toilets, not unlike me after the show.

The episodic structure and use of several directors is certainly a strength of the show, reflecting how our relationships with food and our bodies has as much to do with class, race, gender and sexuality as with what we see when we look in the mirror. I particularly enjoyed how the show played around with form and structure to reflect this: in ‘Femi’, Tariro Tinwaro sings of a best friend with an eating disorder “outrunning bodies like mine”, while in ‘The Comedienne’ we see Chloe Ralph hilariously enact the awkwardness of mediocre standup about her friend group and conclude “with friends this fucked up, this may be one of the few situations in life where being the fat one is actually the best status in the group.”

Olusola cites her experience as a welfare officer at St. Catherine’s College, as well as her own body image struggles, as a catalyst for Vessel: this certainly shows throughout the production, albeit not in a way that feels patronising, didactic or reductive. At the beginning we hear a voiceover announce the show’s trigger warnings, and that if at any point an audience member needs to leave and take a break, they are welcome to do so. Likewise, at the end the crew offered pens and index cards to audience members as a chance to reflect on what they had just seen.

While I did sometimes find myself wishing for more cohesion between the writing of the episodes, I enjoyed the way that each episode was announced by the pinning of a poster or a graphic with its title to a board at the back of the stage, creating a sense of collaginess and accumulation. This imagery of food wrappers and containers was neatly alluded to in ‘Motherhood’, an episode where a woman tidying the house for a date discovers her daughter’s binge-eating stash concealed between stage blocks. During the interval, a friend remarked that the episodic nature reminded her of opening a door at a house party and accidentally walking in on a conversation between strangers that you were not meant to overhear, as alluded to perfectly in a scene where we watch the awkward reconnecting between old friends gradually tip over into a painful conservation about responsibility when one is mentally ill. Olusola’s skilful writing shines through in lines like “I had a brain that betrayed me–you were the collateral”, and “sorry, force of habit, when you’re at death’s door [so often] you start leaving a key under the doormat.”

The presence of fat actors and explicitly working-class characters, albeit only a handful, on a student stage was particularly refreshing to see, although I did find myself wishing for more than a few of the twelve episodes in a show about bodies to centre their experiences.

Overall, Vessel’s careful balancing of sensitivity and humour in its treatment of the subject matter of body image and food made it an important and worthwhile watch; I can only hope that we see more stories and actors with these experiences on the Oxford student stage in the future.

OURFC condemns Rugby Football Union’s ‘trans ban’

News

Izzie Alexandrou

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2nd August 2022

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OURFC condemns Rugby Football Union’s ‘trans ban’

The Oxford University Rugby Football club has released a statement condemning the decision of the Rugby Football Union Council to imposed a on ban transgender women participating in women’s rugby. The RFU – the governing body for the sport in England – voted in favour of amending its participation policy last Friday.

The “Gender Participation Policy” means that transgender women will not be permitted to participate in female contact rugby competitions in England. The RFU claimed to be taking a “precautionary approach” to “ensure fair competition and safety” of competitors but recognized “it is not possible to equally balance fairness, safety and inclusion.” The new policy specifies that players in the female category will only be permitted if “the sex originally recorded at birth is female”.

OURFC’s statement said: “in the community game, we feel that it is of paramount importance to foster a welcoming community that values participation”. It suggested that the application of a blanket ban lacked “sufficient nuance” and did not adequately accommodate the distinctions between different levels of rugby.

OURFC stated that the circumstances did not command such a mandate, and “with fewer than ten transgender women playing community rugby under the current requirements, we feel that there was little justification to prioritise haste over a more representative canvassing of key stakeholders’ voices.”

Furthermore, they stated the decision felt “rushed” – OURFC were not consulted before the vote, despite being one of a very small number of clubs in the country that the decision immediately impacted, and therefore said that the consultation “failed to take into account the views of the very players this decision directly affects.”

The decision of the RFU has sparked considerable outrage nationwide. A tweet by the York RI Ladies Rugby Union team stated that the RFU were “on the wrong side of history,” and Mermaids, a charity supporting transgender children, tweeted that it was a “dark day for rugby.”

A very Italian scandal: the story of Draghi’s fall

Opinion

Antonio Pattori

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30th July 2022

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A very Italian scandal: the story of Draghi’s fall

We live in an age of political instability. From Boris Johnson’s resignation to Emmanuel Macron losing his parliamentary majority, European governments in the past few months have been in the midst of turmoil. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Italy felt the need to reassert its primacy as the centre of political chaos: Mario Draghi, Italy’s national unity government Prime Minister has resigned after three parties refused to express parliamentary confidence in his government. Reactions in Italy have ranged from disbelief to relief, and, while this crisis has only anticipated Draghi’s resignation by six months (elections were due to be held in March 2023) it nonetheless highlights the massive challenges ahead, for both Italian and European stability.

The uniqueness of Italian politics is its surreal and absurd dimensions. Most in Italy and Europe are left baffled by the decision to pull out from Draghi’s government which had united Italian parties in a new spirit of cooperation. The unfortunate reality is that many Italians do not realise what has been lost. A vast amount of Italians is against Draghi’s support for Ukraine, and many stood against his de facto mandatory vaccination scheme, the so-called ‘green pass’. Draghi was a great resource for Italy, yet one which, I fear, we will learn to appreciate more as time moves on. Certainly, it must be said, many are feeling simply utterly confused and lost about the recent events, as party politics trumps the common good.

The crisis was ignited by former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and his Five Star Movement. However, the refusal to continue in the government of the right-of-centre parties, namely Matteo Salvini’s League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, further ended any chances of having Mario Draghi stay in power. The reasons for this are wholly political. For the League and Forza Italia, the decision was related to machinations within the right-wing coalition: the third right wing party, Brothers of Italy, led by Italy’s Marine Le Pen, Giorgia Meloni, had refused to join the Draghi government and was draining support away from the other traditional conservative parties. For the Conte’s Five Star Movement, a party which has lost most of its support, the decision marked a return to its radical roots in order to seek electoral resuscitation. Essentially, it was the last spasm of a dying beast. In the process, Mario Draghi was sacrificed. Many have described Draghi as ‘Super Mario’, an epithet he perhaps does not fully deserve. Draghi was not a panacea to all problems, and most of Italy’s structural issues have persisted. Indeed, Draghi’s speech to parliament was confrontational and, one might argue, further escalated the crisis. However, no one in Italy has Draghi’s international standing and ability, one reinforced by his past tenure as European Central Bank President, and by his English fluency (a rare feat in Italian politics). From leading one of Europe’s most successful vaccination programs, securing 191 billion euros for Italy through the European Recovery Plan, to leading Europe’s stance on Ukraine, Draghi has undoubtedly been a leader in a Europe where France and Germany have also seen political instability.

The situation is not tragic and only anticipates elections by six months. It nevertheless remains absurd. Italy’s plans to spend the 191 billion euros need to be accompanied by structural reforms asked by the EU, and the absence of a stable government will risk the whole survival of the recovery plan. A missed opportunity of majestic proportions. The same applies to the national budget, which needs ratification before the September elections. In the meantime all parties have been left tainted: the right-wing coalition parties, primarily the League and Brothers of Italy, with their often anti-European stance, could scarcely manage the European Recovery Fund; the centre-left Democratic Party has been hurt by its association with the Five Star Movement; and many parties have opposed Draghi’s policies on Ukraine, often trying to block the sending of arms against Russia. The international ramifications are thus incredibly important, and, whilst fresh elections are to be welcomed, a success for the League or the Five Star Movement would signify a success for some who in the past strongly supported Putin. The leader of the League, Matteo Salvini, for example, once called Putin ‘a great European statesman’. Exactly as advocated by Alexander Dugin, one of the philosophers of Putin’s Russian expansionism, Russia could seek to break NATO through Germany and Italy. The unpopularity of Draghi’s support for Ukraine suggests that in this task Putin has made significant progress.
It is an old adage that Italian politics follows the maxim expressed in Lampedusa’s Gattopardo (‘The Leopard’), namely that all must change for all to remain the same. Indeed, Italy remains unstable and divided, and Italian politics continue as a bizarre, comedic, tragic, and oxymoronic exercise in political incompetence. Yet, this last of many crises suggests a failure to grasp an opportunity, perhaps the last, to attempt to fix Italy’s problems. Draghi could scarcely fix a nation with such a varied coalition, yet he had set the circumstances for a new period of competence and good government. Perhaps it was only an illusion of change cut short by the electoral posturing. The only thing we know for certain is that Italy’s political future remains thoroughly uncertain.

Image: CC2:0, Flickr via European Central Parliament

The Guardian of the Constitution: an institutional look at the jubilee

Features

Carl Haller

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29th July 2022

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The Guardian of the Constitution: an institutional look at the jubilee

Imagine you were asked by a visitor from another country, or perhaps even another planet, to explain the unusual activity in the UK this year. What of the red, white and blue flags, the bunting, the songs and celebration? Why did Paddington Bear chugg an entire pot of tea and why did Rod Stewart sing “Sweet Caroline” outside Buckingham Palace? I suppose that last question is destined to remain unanswered forever, but to the previous ones, most people would probably reply that we are celebrating the Platinum Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and thus honouring her incredible personal achievements. Her achievements are indeed impressive and deserving of high praise: she has devoted her life to the service of her people and her country, to such an extent that she has almost come to be seen as synonymous with the institution of the Crown. This close identification comes with obvious dangers, however: it risks overlooking the crucial role that the Monarch plays in the British constitution, it’s role as the Guardian of the Constitution.

To set out what I mean by this, we must take a short detour through 19th and 20th-century constitutional theory. The fundamental challenge faced by would-be constitution framers is to reconcile two contradictory needs: on the one hand, the constitution must empower the state and the elected government to act for the common good and the general welfare, by providing institutions that can adequately meet and are responsive to the needs of its citizens. This aspect of governance is by its very nature dynamic, as the state must be able to evolve to meet the changing needs of its citizens and respond to unforeseen crises, assuming new responsibilities in the process.

The other side of this balance may be found in a remark of St. Augustine: “Take away the law and what is left of the state but a gang of robbers?“ The scope of the governing authority must be constrained by “the rule of law”, by a set of norms, procedures and precedents contained in the constitutional order. Any functioning constitution must have a set of stabilising institutions, a living voice preventing any group or individual from seizing control of the institutions of the state by making such significant changes to the constitutional order that it is reframed to advance and protect the interests of the governing class or individual, excluding the rest of society from economic and political participation. Iterations of such a set of institutions are as varied as the kinds of states that have existed over the centuries; Rome had its senate, the American constitution famously features a set of institutional checks and balances and the French Bonapartist constitution of 1852 included a Sénat Conservateur, which was to annul acts of the government it deemed to be violating the constitution.

This set of constraining institutions provides us with an initial working definition of the Guardian of the Constitution, though my use of this term here will no doubt draw raised eyebrows from any lawyers reading this, as they will be familiar with it from the famous dispute between legal theorists in Weimar Germany, most notably the jurists Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt. At the centre of their dispute was the question of how far a constitutional court could be said to fulfil such a role, with Kelsen arguing this role should fall to the constitutional court (Reichsgericht), and Schmitt looking to place it with the head of state (Reichspräsident). It is not my intention to split jurisprudential hairs here. I will simply agree with both parties: not constitutional court or head of state, but both constitutional court and head of state are valuable safeguards of the constitutional order. Kelsen is right in saying that a constitutional court has an important role to play in policing the boundaries of constitutional government. But any constitutional court will be vulnerable to political influence from other branches of government, who may and in practice often do seek to influence it by appointing to it members loyal to one party’s particular vision of government; moreover, a constitutional court sometimes must make decisions that are highly politically charged, such that it cannot be said to be a truly apolitical arbiter. This makes it politically imprudent to look to a constitutional court alone to act as Guardian of the Constitution.

How, then, can it be said that the Monarchy may be called the Guardian of the Constitution? Descriptions of the head of state usually emphasise the ceremonial aspects of the role, but there is more to this position than being a symbol of national unity and entertaining foreign ambassadors at white tie dinners. It is pointed out during the Kelsen-Schmitt debates that the constitutions of most parliamentary democracies distinguish between the head of government, who sets the policy agenda and governs and the head of state. This position, be it a president or a monarch, is usually invested with the power to sign bills passed by parliament into law, is granted immunity from prosecution, formally appoints ministers and may dissolve the elected parliament at the request of the head of government. How are we to understand the purpose of this institution?

Schmitt argues that it is best understood through the lens of the 19th-century political theorist Benjamin Constant. In Constant’s theory of the state, in addition to the classic tripartite distinction between legislative, executive and judiciary we find a pouvoir neutre, a branch of government that is to act as a neutral arbiter and mediator between the other branches in case of disputes or constitutional crises and may act to restrain the other branches if the fundamental fabric of the constitutional order is threatened. Thus, in German constitutional theory, the president is sometimes described as Oberster Bundesnotar or supreme federal notary, who may prevent a bill from becoming law if he deems it to violate the constitution. This is the role fulfilled by a head of state, of whom it may be said that il règne et ne gouverne pas – he reigns but does not govern. This is the Guardian of the Constitution.

Given the fact that elected presidencies exist in many European countries, what then makes Her Majesty better suited to this role than, say, President Tony Blair or Lord Protector David Cameron? It is certainly true that a president may, and often does, play this role. However, as I shall attempt to set out, it is a role that is arguably better filled by a constitutional monarch, especially in a polity in which it is established precedent. Consider the demands that this role makes of the person who occupies it: a neutral, apolitical arbiter requires a neutral, politically unambitious personality who is concerned not with realising a political agenda but solely with the preservation of the constitutional order. The German constitution, for example, requires the president to resign his party membership upon being elected. Such neutrality in a career politician is illusory of course if we are not to suppose that he will also resign his political convictions and personal party connections. This fact is not lost on those party to the process of selecting a president – an elected head of state is inherently politicised because he is elevated to his position through a political process. Thus, the recent Italian presidential election was preceded by a squabble between the major political parties over whose candidate to elevate to the office. In the end, no candidate could secure cross-party approval, meaning that 80-year-old incumbent Sergio Mattarella was pressured into accepting another 7-year term despite wishing to retire.

This event demonstrates another undesirable feature of an elected presidency compared to a constitutional monarchy – its inherent instability. Apart from the long and potentially inconclusive balancing act of selecting a new president, an elected presidency is vulnerable to being neutralised as a constitutional safeguard if it ends up being contested at an unfortunate moment, either because the term of an incumbent president is ending or because the occupant of the office dies at an inopportune moment. Consider here the Weimar Republic’s 1932 presidential election: 1932 was a time of economic crisis and massive political instability, with the country already on the brink of dictatorship and the political arena being dominated by two radical forces, Hitler’s National Socialists and Thälmann’s Communists, both of whom made no secret of their disdain for democracy and their wish sweep aside the constitutional order. Thus, when a stabilising force was needed most the two most destabilising elements, Hitler and Thälmann, were able to make a bid for the presidency. Though this bid was ultimately unsuccessful, it shows how an elected presidency may be vulnerable to a populist seeking to upend the constitutional order. Far from being an advantage, the fact that it is more democratic is a supreme disadvantage in an institution meant to safeguard the constitutional order against the elected government.

From an a priori theoretical perspective, it seems that constitutional monarchy has the edge. It is, however, worth bearing in mind that the question here is not one of abstract theory, but a choice between continuity and rupture. Tinkering with the fundamentals of the constitutional order always comes with a massive risk – it is nothing less than open-heart surgery at the ventricles of democracy and is thus only to be undertaken if warranted by an overwhelming threat to public safety. This is because all constitutions, but especially the unwritten British constitution, are built on precedent. Again, I must emphasise that the distinction between a Rechtsstaat (legal state, a state adhering to the rule of law) and a state of arbitrary despotism is that in the former case government and officers of the state are bound by a set of transparent norms, through which a citizen may know how the state and its officers will act in given situations. The citizen knows that any new law the executive government wishes to enforce must first be approved by parliament and that he is entitled to a trial by jury if he is charged with a crime on the basis of such a law.

These norms are as much social as they are legal, they are “not set down in any written statute or ordinance, but depend merely upon immemorial usage, that is, upon common law, for their support,” as Blackstone writes in his commentaries. Setting a precedent for the complete overhaul of the constitutional order is thus highly dangerous. If, with one sweeping act, centuries of constitutional precedent may simply be set aside, why not Habeas Corpus? Why not the 1689 Bill of Rights or Magna Charta? Such a radical break with constitutional precedent would also place any future elected president in a highly precarious position since it would create a precedent for removing a head of state should he become an obstacle to an ambitious populist seeking to overturn the constitutional order. Thus, at least for the foreseeable future, the ability of any elected president to act as Guardian of the Constitution and reign in a government seeking to override its constitutional bounds would be severely limited.

Is such a dangerous venture warranted when the British constitution has for centuries provided its commonwealth with democratically accountable governments which have largely respected the rights and liberties of their citizens, maintained the constitutional order and peacefully ceded power upon losing their public mandate? Given this enormous risk, is it justified to call into question the legitimacy of the monarchy when this institution, far from being a threat to the rights and liberties of the citizen guarantees their continued existence? Does anyone really think that a future Charles III might take after his namesake and, say, reconstitute the Court of the Star Chamber?

Or is the prudent thing to do here to pop open the champagne bottles and celebrate? To celebrate the phenomenal achievements of a particular monarch as well as the continuing existence of an institution that acts as the final and ultimate guarantor of the democratic constitutional order? All things, including the champagne, considered, I think the answer is clear.

Image credit: Jonny Gios

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