Oxford-based refugee charity Asylum Welcome is preparing to help the local groups, organisations, and individuals who are about to host Ukrainian refugees.
More than 20,000 applications have been received under the Homes for Ukraine scheme since it opened on the 18th of March, according to Richard Harrington, the minister for refugees. The scheme was designed to allow Ukrainian refugees with no family links to be hosted by members of the public in Britain, who will be paid £350 per month.
The government has not created a formal process for matching sponsors and Ukrainian guests. This will be carried out by community groups, faith groups, and NGOs. Security checks including Police National Computer checks, criminal records and Warning Index checks are made by the Home Office on every potential sponsor, as well as other adults in their household and the potential guest.
Asylum Welcome said in a press release: “Despite the organisation’s concerns around the scheme’s design, Asylum Welcome is heartened by the extraordinary expression of generosity from the public in response to the scheme, and is determined to help make it work.”
According to its website, Asylum Welcome’s mission is to offer “information, advice and practical support to asylum seekers, refugees and vulnerable migrants living in Oxfordshire”. Founded in 1991, it has since worked with refugees, asylum seekers, and immigration detainees in the area. It is a volunteer-based organisation that is backed by the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner with over 100 active volunteers. In response to the ‘Homes for Ukraine’ programme, they have offered support and guidance for hosts in Oxfordshire.
Asylum Welcome is also working with councils and experts to design a more comprehensive programme of support for refugees. In the past weeks, it has recruited more staff to focus on supporting Ukrainian refugees, as well as organising a meeting attended by councils and local organisations to discuss how the ‘Homes for Ukraine’ scheme will work in Oxfordshire and what support could be valued.
Mark Goldring, the director of Asylum Welcome, said: “I want to say thank you to the thousands of people across the county who have expressed their wish to support people fleeing the war in Ukraine. It shows the generosity of the British public. The government needs to ensure the access routes for Ukrainians and indeed all others fleeing violence are made simpler, to ensure that those driven out by conflict are able to benefit from the generosity and kindness being shown by our communities. Asylum Welcome are determined to play our part in supporting the generous hosts and the new arrivals.”
Asylum Welcome is currently appealing for donations to fund its Ukraine service without restricting its work with refugees from many other less-publicised wars, conflicts, and crises. They welcome offers of support from anyone with relevant language skills. Donations can be made at www.asylum-welcome.org, and people can email [email protected] to offer support.
In 1890s Paris, Swiss-French artist Félix Vallotton’s striking, monochrome woodcut series known as Intimités captured all the illicit affairs and longing glances of his aristocratic belle époque subjects. Put simply, his work explored the ways in which they related to one another, and the nature of intimacy itself. Ever ambitious in its approach to what art and theatre can be, Oxford production company Paper Moon aims with its new exhibition Intimacies, after Vallotton not only to apply Vallotton’s vision to a contemporary Black British setting, but also to combine innovatively Paul Majek’s Vallotton-inspired artworks with a series of piercing duologues by student playwright Sam Spencer.
Spencer’s writing, which one can listen to at the Old Fire Station exhibition either by scanning QR codes or with a traditional audioguide, is remarkable in its ability to cut to the heart of what makes the relationship between two people unique, without ever being unsubtle or overly literal. Against the backdrop of Majek’s enigmatic blue-toned figures, Spencer, with the help of a multi-roling, all-Black voice cast playing a broad spectrum of characters, reveals tantalising glimpses of these figures’ lives. Among them, a woman and her girlfriend both give individual testimonies of a relationship on the brink; in the light of cultural and career tensions, two nannies discuss bemusedly their wealthy charges; a pair of exes veer towards closure.
Both the audio and visual aspects of the exhibition are rich with ambiguity. Spencer’s use of subtle verbal cues and meaningful pauses, combined with the disembodied effect of an audio recording, sometimes conceal from the listener quite what’s going on until halfway through. Similarly, Majek’s paintings, made up of rapid streaks of paint upon a rough wooden canvas such that the figure appears ‘barely there’ and can sometimes only be seen from certain angles, have a similarly fragmentary effect.
The viewer thus feels like an observer and an intruder, invited into personal, private interactions which we don’t fully grasp. These interactions strike a tough balance, feeling simultaneously so specific to an individual that an outside observer cannot understand them in their full context, yet so universal in their view of human relationships that one is left with further questions rather than shame at the intrusion. The connections between the art and the writing are also pleasingly non-literal — rather than simply depicting whoever happens to be speaking in the audio, Majek seems with his ghost-like figures to be creating certain archetypes, a visual aid to the observations Spencer makes about the human condition.
Situated in the grey area between the theatre, the radio, and the art gallery, Intimacies is inherently interactive, and creates a (fittingly) intimate connection between art and viewer, as one can choose which work they listen to, which artwork they observe, and where in the gallery they stand. There is no set order in which the viewer must listen to the duologues as they move around the gallery; this has the effect of a tapestry being gradually revealed, as one hears Spencer returning to imagery familiar from an earlier piece, and wonders if the duologues are at all connected (is the couple on the brink of divorce in one piece the same couple experiencing the first signs of tension in another?). In some ways, however, this effect is undermined if one listens on the audioguide rather than on a smartphone, since this will in fact play the duologues in a set order, making them feel more ‘fixed’ and less ambiguous in their relationship to one another.
Intimacies raises more questions than it answers: about the ways in which we communicate, about how an outside observer can understand them, how theatre and visual art can enhance one another, and how a work can be rooted in historical inspirations like Vallotton while also building upon them. The show demonstrates great promise in Majek and Spencer, and also is a welcome sign of innovative, unconventional approaches to theatre being taken by student companies like Paper Moon.
Not the Way Forward Productions’ original play Casterbridge, a female-led retelling of Thomas Hardy’s classic novel, sees its London debut at The Space this week. We spoke to writer-director Dorothy McDowell, producer Ana Pagu, and actor Leah O’Grady about the process behind Casterbridge ahead of its five-day run.
What made you decide to adapt Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge?
Dorothy McDowell: It’s a book I’ve really liked for a very long time – I first read it when I was a teenager, and it was the first proper ‘grown-up’ book I remember really enjoying. Then, by coincidence, I did it for A-level, many, many years ago now. I remember, when I was meant to be doing my notes on it for revision, I was sitting there thinking, ‘if this were a film, this is what it would look like’. When I was graduating from Oxford, I was looking for a play to put on. If you skim down The Mayor of Casterbridge, it’s really about two people, Henchard and Farfrae, and about their rivalry and their relationship with each other. Once you get something that has that core, that two-person dynamic, it gets much easier to cut it down to an hour, to something four actors can do.
How has it been adapting the novel to a more modern setting?
Dorothy: I’ve enjoyed it. It’s a bit like writing fanfic – you get to play with characters that you really like. It’s a bit terrifying, because the nature of novels is that everyone who reads it has a vision of it in their head. This is how I see The Mayor of Casterbridge. Every single decision you make when adapting it, you know you’re going to horrendously disappoint someone who likes the book. It’s quite fun because you get to do exactly what you want to do and you have to learn not to worry about what anyone else is going to think of it. But this is a 200-year-old classic and I’ve changed bits of the plot, I’ve taken out a character…Thomas Hardy would be turning in his grave, which is a slightly horrifying thing for a good English literature graduate, as I am, to think. Grown-up fanfic, shall we say. Fun.
If you’ve been involved with any Oxford drama, how has your experience putting on a play in London compared to doing so in Oxford?
Ana Pagu: I’ve produced shows in Oxford a fair bit in the past three years, with a two-year hiatus like the rest of us. I think the main difference has been figuring out how to market to a London audience. There are so many people in London and a lot of them go to the theatre, but it’s really hard to tell them that this is a show that is happening among the other 300-odd shows that are happening today, and that it is good and that you must come and see it. We’re going to find out next week [as to the success of the marketing]. But there is not the [Oxford] culture of ‘there’s a show on’, and the whole student community floods the BT. It’s fantastic to see, but it’s not the same in London.
Dorothy: Ana and I were prolific student drama people at Oxford. I think I did around 15 student shows. The thing I found weird was that it was quite like doing an Oxford show, because all my actors are people I had either met in Oxford or had directed when I was a student. But this is a bit more serious, and there’s a lot less support. The only thing stopping this from falling through is me, me and Ana sitting there trying to hold up the sky, trying to make something go ahead whenever there isn’t the infrastructure in place.
Leah O’Grady: The version of Casterbridge which was done over the summer last year was my first show and then I did Songs of the Silenced at the BT in Michaelmas which was great fun, very different to this. I’m directing something of my own at the moment, and [Casterbridge] has made me very grateful for the infrastructure the university provides, because watching you guys do it is quite scary. But like Dorothy said, it’s amazing to work with people trying to do this professionally, and a lot of the rest of the cast are auditioning for drama schools. It’s a privilege to be able to work with such amazing women who are aiming for the stars.
How has the rehearsal process been? Have rehearsals been happening in Oxford or in London?
Dorothy: In London, mostly. That’s actually a big difference – at uni you can get a space to rehearse in for free. We have the shed at the bottom of my garden, which has been getting far more use than I wanted it to be getting. Massive shoutout to New Diorama Theatre Broadgate, which is a theatre in London which has a two-storey building that they let anyone rehearse in for free. It’s really saved my neck a couple times.
Leah: We blocked out all the scenes, and in the last week or so we’ve been running them. It’s been a lot of fun. Me and one of the other actors [sic], Lara [Deering], have seen the show develop from its infancy in June of last year. I’m multi-roling, as is Lara, [which involves] playing around with the characters. One day Dorothy will tell me to ‘do this like you’re so disgusted with her [that] you can’t even look at her’, and‘do this like you’re really pissed off’, or ‘do this like you’re really stressed, like you’re hysterical’. It’s a bit of a mad play, and a lot of quite mad things happen, because that’s what happens when you translate Victorian characters into the modern era. It’s been a lot of fun and a lot of jokes.
Have you had any memorable moments during rehearsals?
Dorothy: We had an actor who was missing for a bit of rehearsals today and we needed to redo a scene, so I filled in for them. When I was in first and second year of uni I did quite a bit of acting, and I haven’t done any since. But I got weirdly into it, and forgot Leah wasn’t just a prop. And I sort of whacked into Leah. I don’t know what came over me!
Leah: I’d say another memorable moment was an actor getting COVID, and then her understudy getting COVID, and us bringing in the legend that is Maya [McQueen].
Ana: And it wasn’t even 24 hours apart, so the understudy didn’t even get a chance to be an understudy.
Dorothy: Maya, who’s our understudy 2.0, learned of our existence at 9am one morning and was in rehearsals by 2 that afternoon.
Leah: [Another memorable moment was] trying to be a sexy man. There’d be lots of character workshops where people, mostly me, have been trying to get into our two or three characters. We’ve been trying to solve these characters for about nine months now, and one of them is a sexy man.
Dorothy: I spent about 20 minutes one time trying to force Leah to do an impression of Joey from Friends, going ‘How you doin’?’.
Do you have a favourite line from the play?
Leah: I like “Where is she? Where’s that witch?” Also, “Mary, you’re drunk, sit down and shut up.” Oh and also – I’m getting carried away here – when [Mary] says “I mean it!” and [the male character] replies, “You look insane, sit down.” They’re just people being angry at Mary.
Dorothy: I really love the book, and there are lots of beautiful lines in [it], and I had to get rid of all of them. My favourite line is “It doesn’t matter why things happen, the most important thing is that they do”.
Ana: I like the line we’ve put on our advertising – “I don’t see why people who have got husbands and wives shouldn’t sell them to those in need of such articles.”
In three words, why should Cherwell readers go and see Casterbridge?
Leah: Am I allowed to say girlboss, gaslight, gatekeep? That’s what everyone says whenever they hear about the show.
Dorothy: Support Oxford students. I remember when I was in third year I was wondering how to put on a show in London, whether it was possible, how people do it. We know the answer to these questions now!
Ana: Come and ask us questions if you would like to do this – we can help!
My answer is a whole paragraph, but I’ll try to distill it into three words. The show is incredibly random. If I told you that we’ve got a show with a set made out of cardboard, reinterpreting a Hardy tragic novel, with noughties pop hits and an all-female cast, you’d just go, what the hell? But all those random things somehow work together really well. I don’t understand how, and I guess it’s credit to Dorothy and her writing, and Hardy, but it works!
Three words? Cardboard…pop…finance? As you can see, the show is next week and we’re all going a little mad!
Casterbridge runs at The Space in London from 5 – 9 April. Tickets are available here. The play will also be livestreamed 7 April and on-demand streaming will be available for two weeks here.
Image Description: A river with trees behind, in Port Meadow.
A few months ago, I somehow ended up in an Improv class whilst on a football training camp. No doubt this is common knowledge to a seasoned thespian, but we were taught that one of the cardinal rules of Improv was never to say ‘No’ in a scene, as it would be unhelpful to the plot and character development. How strange it would be, I thought, to have to agree to everything like that in real life. It was not long afterwards that my wonderful roommate suggested this title for my next article. Despite the panic that flooded my stomach at the thought of this challenge, I agreed, and sent out a message to friends and family asking for the most wild and adventurous requests they could think of, all of which I would have to say ‘Yes’ to. Here is what happened next…
Watching my first ever football match: I was invited to go and watch the England international women’s team play in Wolverhampton with the newly-crowned cuppers champions, the Catz women’s football team. The two-and-a-half hour drive turned out to be more than worth the wait, as we watched England defeat Germany to win the 2022 Arnold Clark Cup! While I have always quite enjoyed watching football matches on television, people have always told me that being in a stadium and feeling the ‘atmosphere’ is a different story altogether – and it really was. I was completely starstruck too and could hardly resist jumping up and down in glee when I saw so many of the England players I had been so in awe of during the World Cup in 2019, playing barely 200 metres away from us. The roar of the crowd after every tackle, free kick and goal was sensational. It reminded me of what I love most about sport – its power to inspire and impress people from such diverse backgrounds.
The verdict: 100/10 – Hands-down one of the coolest experiences of not just my Yes-challenge, but of my life! Thank you to the Catz football team for a truly wonderful day! This will definitely be my first football match of many.
How strange it would be, I thought, to have to agree to everything like that in real life.
Wild water swimming: I was dreading this one the most. Taking a dip in the river in Trinity Term when the Sun is beaming down and you are feeling nice and warm after the glass(es) of Pimm’s you have been drinking all afternoon is one thing. For some reason, the currents of the river Isis just do not seem quite so appealing in late February. After a lucky escape on my first attempt, (I honestly was just about to follow a couple of seasoned wild-swimming-friends into the icy-cold river at Christchurch Meadows when we were stopped by a park ranger – how sad) I finally took the plunge on a breezy afternoon as the Sun was setting over the banks of Port Meadow. There was very little actual swimming involved. At the behest of my friends, I took a perfunctory stroke of something that vaguely resembled a front crawl and then pleaded, my teeth chattering, ‘Could I please get out now?’. Against all expectations, I loved it. It was invigorating, yet relaxing and the perfect way to de-stress during term-time as the water temperature leaves room for absolutely nothing else in your mind.
The verdict: 9/10 – it might have been great, but it was still very cold.
The Weetabix and Parma Violet milkshake: There was always going to be at least one request for me to eat/drink something weird. As someone who is guilty of always ordering the same thing from a lot of restaurants, it was liberating to allow someone else to control my culinary experience for once. I would like to think that I will be at least a little more adventurous going forward. Still, not sure I will ever be having anything containing Weetabix or Parma Violets anytime soon.
The verdict: 0/10 – no, thank you.
Going vegan for a week: I tried. I really did. As someone who struggles to even make it through Meat-Free Mondays, this was always going to be a challenge. I lasted two full days and two half days (the lack of vegan options at the England match and the Weetabix milkshake proved to be unconquerable obstacles). On the fifth day, my stint as a vegan ended once and for all when, after an exhausting day of rowing and dance training sessions, I finally caved and ordered a large meat pizza from Domino’s. If that was not bad enough, I added stuffed crust too.
The verdict: 3/10 – I might have failed, but I have come to realise that being able to sustain such a diet requires impressive forethought and organisation. I had not comprehended just how difficult it is to find vegan-friendly food while out and about. While it is very doubtful that I will be doing this one again, in a surprising turn of events, oat milk has become a staple in my diet!
A date with myself: Not your traditional dinner or drinks, I took myself out on my idea of a perfect date. I donned a summer dress and spent the afternoon wandering up and down the Thames, stopping to gaze poignantly out from Tower Bridge and sip an awfully indulgent milkshake upon a bench outside the Globe Theatre. Although I have lived in London my whole life and have walked up Southbank and across London Bridge more times than I can remember, I have never done so by myself.
The verdict: 10/10 – the company was excellent.
Playing as a shooter in a netball match: I had to repeatedly check with the rest of Wadham netball that they were 100% sure they wanted to effectively forfeit our matches this week, especially after this one was requested by multiple people. When I went on as GA, the only goal I had in mind was staying out of the way of our seasoned GS. Somehow, the game turned out to be a resounding success: all I can say is that our other shooter is really good, and I managed to make a couple of fortuitous lobs that somehow tumbled through the net. At the risk of sounding terribly pretentious, maybe netball is a lot like life: sometimes, we have to put ourselves in positions we do not want to be in; sometimes, even when the odds seem completely out of our favour, the best thing we can do is to just shoot our shot. You never know what goals you might achieve.
The verdict: 8/10 – thoroughly enjoyable, not sure we will be making this a regular position though.
Spending one-on-one time with someone new: I went for lunch with a course mate whom I have somehow never spent one-on-one time with, despite having shared numerous classes and group pub trips! It cemented a friendship that should have been built so much sooner, and has inspired me to ‘go for coffee’ with so many more of the people in my life. As a finalist, it is easy to think that meeting new people in Oxford this year will be both impossible, due to the term time workload, and a little redundant, given the limited time we have left at university. Yet I have found the opposite. Building new connections has been the highlight of this term, much-needed after a year limited by lockdowns.
The verdict: 10/10 – We never know how long friendships are going to last when we make them. No matter what year or stage of life we are in, new connections are always worth exploring!
Trying a Salsa class: I was fatally complacent about this one. Having danced from a very young age, I assumed I would cruise through the class, being able to show off a wonderful repertoire of fancy footwork and pick up the choreography at first glance. Oh, how wrong I was. Dancing by yourself is one thing – what I had not considered was the completely unnerving experience of dancing with complete strangers for the first time. The constant rotation of partners was even more jarring – I found myself transported back to freshers’ week as I introduced myself dozens of times and found that the names and faces of my dance partners began to blur in my mind, already reeling from the salsa choreography!
The verdict: 7/10 – a refreshing experience, but evidently I am not ready for Strictly Come Dancing just yet.
…sometimes, even when the odds seem completely out of our favour, the best thing we can do is to just shoot our shot. You never know what goals you might achieve.
Mending a broken friendship: I went for a walk with an old friend and realised it is never too late to reconnect with people you were once close with. When I was young, I used to think that every friendship I made would last forever. Growing up, I have come to realise that friendships change and grow throughout our lives just as much as we do. Misunderstandings happen; sometimes you lose touch; sometimes life takes you in different directions. But sometimes, all it takes is a coffee and a walk to remind you that even the oldest friendships can have new beginnings.
The verdict: 10/10 – being able to reflect upon past mistakes and recognise your own growth is surprisingly rewarding.
A new Oxford library: I settled upon the Weston library, which I have never been to despite the fact that it is not even a 2-minute walk away from the room where I live in Wadham. The Weston is unique for its stipulation that you are not allowed to take bags, coats or pens into the library. Leaving my belongings in the lockers at the entrance was a strange experience in itself; the library seemed more precious somehow. I worked on the topmost floor on a desk by the window, surrounded by what looked like extremely ancient books and some startlingly loud electric pencil sharpeners.
The verdict: 9/10 – working in a completely new place turned out to be brilliantly productive and I ended up writing most of my dissertation here!
I went into this challenge thinking that my time saying ‘Yes’ would be the perfect demonstration as to why it is so important to say ‘No’ to certain things. The pressure not to disappoint people’s expectations and the urge to take on more than we can handle can feel overwhelming, particularly in a university scene where the possibilities for involvement and immersion are endless. I thought saying ‘Yes’ would just prove exhausting: instead, it has been distinctly exhilarating. When my roommate asked me a few days ago what my reflections were upon my ‘Yes-challenge’, I told her honestly that saying ‘Yes’ had led to one of the happiest and most enjoyable periods of time during my years in Oxford so far. I am not suggesting that we go around blindly saying ‘Yes’ to every single thing that is asked of us – it is important to recognise the difference between those things that are beyond our limits for good reason and those things that will productively challenge us. It turns out, the things people wanted me to say ‘Yes’ to have ended up enriching my life in unforeseeable ways. All the things I was asked to do had one thing in common: they forced me outside of my comfort zone in one way or another. Just as in Improv, good plot development and character-building in our everyday lives requires us to say ‘Yes’, to open ourselves up to the possibility of experiencing something entirely new. If you are reading this, I challenge you to say ‘Yes’ to something you might otherwise never have agreed to. Maybe it will end up being awful. But maybe, just maybe, it will end up being the best decision you ever made. Take that risk. Go where you have never been before. Dare to know. After all, in the words of Lewis Carroll, a man who once walked the streets of Oxford himself: ‘In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take!’
A 12-foot (3.5 meter) tall sculpture on Broad Street was unveiled at midday on March 30 and will be displayed there for the next four weeks. Designed by Witney-based artist Dan Barton, the installation shows a Ukrainian soldier holding a gun and a baby and helping a woman and child reach safety.
Barton characterized the intent behind the monument as to show support for Ukraine amidst Russia’s ongoing invasion of the country. “Its purpose is to honour those who fight for freedom and to show our unwavering solidarity to people suffering in Ukraine,” he said in an interview with BBC News.
The Broad Street sculpture was produced in collaboration with artist Peter Naylor and laser cut out of 15 mm sheet steel, weighing in at seven tonnes. From the idea’s first conception to the reveal of the final product, the process took 12 days. The project was spearheaded by Standing with Giants, a voluntary community group and not-for-profit organisation dedicated to honouring those who have lost their lives during conflict by creating large-scale art installations.
“Historically, monuments, tributes and sculptures come after the event,” Barton said. “However, for Ukraine, we wanted to act now.”
Barton said that the sculpture had already prompted messages from people in Ukraine “thanking us that we haven’t forgotten them.” He also noted that the design of the Broad Street sculpture was meant to be shared, and that he hoped other cities might follow suit.
Previous displays created by Standing with Giants include life-size cut-outs of 300 NHS workers in South Park, Oxford dedicated to their contributions during the COVID-19 pandemic, and hundreds of soldier silhouettes and poppy cut-outs placed at a number of locations as a remembrance tribute. Standing with Giants also raises money on behalf of other charities.
The Broad Street installation was made possible by funding from private supporters, volunteers, and sponsors, according to the Standing with Giants website. Oxford City and County councils also worked closely with the organization in order to provide the space in which to display it. Oxfordshire County Council Chairman John Howson attended the unveiling of the sculpture on March 30.
Since Russia first commenced military operations in Ukraine on Feb. 24, hundreds of people from across Oxford have turned out to protest against the invasion, and the Oxford City Council has temporarily cut ties with the Russian city of Perm, with which Oxford had previously been twinned since 1995.
This investigation was made possible by all those who provided information to Cherwell. Special mentions must be attributed to our excellent news editors Charlie Hancock and Pieter Garicano, as well as our marvellous legal adviser Petra Stojnic.
Oxford University opened the Blavatnik School of Government (BSG) in 2010, a new landmark institution named after a benefactor whose fortune was largely built in Russia. In the same year, the Oxford Saïd Business School was entering another year of a partnership with the recently sanction-hit Russian bank Alfa Bank owned by oligarch Mikhail Fridman, a partnership which ended in 2011.
Speaking to Cherwell, Vladimir Milov, Alexei Navalny’s chief economic adviser and a former Russian deputy energy minister, named the three individuals, responsible for the BSG’s opening and the Saïd Business School’s partnership with Alfa Bank.
He told Cherwell: “I can tell you that I think by any reasonable standards, Oxford did not do a proper due diligence on Fridman, Aven, or Blavatnik.”
Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven are the founders of Alfa Bank, the largest private bank in Russia. Both oligarchs have been sanctioned by the U.K. Oxford’s Saïd Business School partnered with Alfa Bank to create an annual “Award for Excellence in Foreign Investment in Russia”.
Leonard Blavatnik is a Ukrainian-born billionaire who has shared close business links to sanctioned Russian oligarchs. A citizen of the UK and USA, he owns major Western companies, such as Warner Music Group and DAZN.
Following Cherwell’sdiscovery of Russian oligarch Vladimir Potanin’s £3 million donation to Teddy Hall and $150,000 to the Saïd Business School, Cherwell has traced the origins of Oxford University’s ties to Mikhail Fridman, Pyotr Aven, and Leonard Blavatnik.
Thisinvestigation into the foundation of the Blavatnik School of Government and the Saïd Business School’s partnership with Alfa Bank reveals:
The full story of how Blavatnik’s multi-million pound donations were accepted
A former BSG professor, who resigned in 2017, criticises Blavatnik
The BSG invited a controversial former minister in Putin’s government for a “special masterclass”
How a critic of the BSG was silenced on multiple occasions
Fresh condemnation by ex-Oxford academics and key opponents to Putin’s government
Oxford representatives attending ceremonies at a Russian government palace
Sir Leonard Blavatnik: the ‘non-oligarch’ who made billions in deals with Russian oligarchs
“He made his money [in Russia].”
Viktor Vekselberg
Leonard Blavatnik grew up in the Ukrainian city of Odesa, then a part of the USSR. Blavatnik briefly studied at the Moscow State University of Railway Engineering, before emigrating to the US in 1978 with his family. There, he studied at Columbia and Harvard Business School.
Blavatnik’s fortunes multiplied after his holding company, Access Industries, teamed up with Viktor Vekselberg’s holding company, Renova Group. Viktor Vekselberg was recently sanctioned by the UK government.
Blavatnik and Vekselberg’s company Sual Partners, which Blavatnik still “jointly controlled” up until at least 2019, held a 26.5% stake in Rusal, the world’s second largest aluminium company, based in Russia. Blavatnik was also on the Rusal board up until 2016. Rusal’s founder is Oleg Deripaska, who has also been sanctioned by the UK.
Today, Blavatnik holds an indirect stake of approximately 8% in Rusal. Blavatnik’s spokesperson told Cherwell that he has been “actively engaged” in trying to dispose of this stake, but he has been prevented by other stakeholders. He left the aluminium company’s board in 2016. Blavatnik’s spokesperson informed Cherwell that he has had “no active, managerial, or operational decision-making role in the company since 2007”, and that he has “proactively stepped back from his role within the company”.
In 1997, Blavatnik and Vekselberg added a member to their partnership, teaming up with Mikhail Fridman to buy a joint 40% stake in TNK, an oil company which had been owned by the Russian state. Fridman, who is another UK-sanctioned oligarch, completed the trio consortium, the AAR (Alfa Group, Access Industries, Renova Group), who would go on to accumulate billions together.
The AAR partnered with BP in 2003 to create TNK-BP. However, after harassment forced CEO Robert Dudley out of Russia in 2008, TNK-BP was sold to Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft in 2012. BP were partly paid through shares, which they are to “offload” due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
AAR was paid in cash. Blavatnik, Vekselberg, and Fridman received over $27 billion. Reuters reported that Putin “blessed the deal”. Milov told Cherwell that this value was “an extreme excess of 40-60% above the market price”. He said he has never been able to understand the reason why Igor Sechin, the sanctioned CEO of Rosneft, paid this “premium” price.
Despite the web of business connections between sanctioned oligarchs and Blavatnik, Blavatnik’s PR team insist that Blavatnik is not an oligarch. His representatives emphasise he has no personal, political or commercial ties whatsoever to Putin, or Putin’s government. Blavatnik is not a Russian citizen, but is a US and UK citizen. His spokesperson emphasised that “less than 1%” of his holding company’s investments are “Russian-related”.
In reaction to Vladimir Milov’s comments, the spokesperson pointed to Alexei Navalny’s own comments provided to the FT: “As far as Russia and I are concerned, he’s [Blavatnik] not a political oligarch. He isn’t buying newspapers here, he isn’t intimidating journalists, he basically isn’t involved with Putin.”
Over the last decade, Len Blavatnik has integrated himself into the West, presenting himself as a modern investor and dedicated philanthropist. The Blavatnik Family Foundation has made sizable investments into Harvard University, the New York Academy of Sciences, Oxford University, and other institutions, totalling around $900 million.
In 2010, the Blavatnik School of Government formally opened. Len Blavatnik was knighted in 2017 by the Queen for his philanthropy.
The Blavatnik School of Government, located just round the corner from Somerville College. Image Credit: Martin Cooper/CC BY 2.0 via WikiMedia Commons
Some controversies surround Sir Leonard Blavatnik today. He is listed as one of the producers of a Russian war film, T-34, which the Ukrainian embassy in the US urged cinemas not to screen. Panama Papers also show a possible indirect link between former Russian minister Alexander Makhonov, who was forced to resign in 2017, and Blavatnik’s giant Russian streaming platform Amediateka.
In 2017, it surfaced that Blavatnik made a $1 million donation to Donald Trump’s inauguration committee after Trump had been elected.
Professor Bo Rothstein resigned from the Blavatnik School of Government after finding this out, saying at the time that “Donald Trump’s policies are antithetical to the goal of the Blavatnik School of Government, which aims to improve the quality of government and public policy-making”. Ngaire Woods, the Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government, responded in an official statement: “Mr Blavatnik is entitled to make donations and give support to whichever politician he chooses”.
Blavatnik’s spokesperson told Cherwell: “Sir Leonard Blavatnik has made donations to both Democrats and Republicans. The Trump campaign never received any financial support from this donation.”
In light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Rothstein told Cherwell: “Since Mr Blavatnik is from Ukraine, I find it a bit strange that I have not been able to find any support for Ukraine or any statement against the invasion from him. If I would still have been at the Blavatnik School, I would have worried that this is because Mr Blavatnik has some connections to the Putin regime that he does not want to put at risk.”
Rothstein added: “Given his enormous wealth, one would have expected a large donation to help the Ukrainian people in this very horrible situation.”
Sir Leonard Blavatnik’s spokesperson emphatically stated that Rothstein’s claim linking Putin to Blavatnik was “false and unfounded”. The spokesperson also said that the Blavatnik Family Foundation has donated “millions of dollars” to charitable organisations working to “assist Ukrainian refugees”, such as Save the Children, the International Red Cross Committee, and Doctors without Borders.
“Sir Leonard believes that what is happening in Ukraine is absolutely unimaginable and, along with all fellow Americans and British nationals, hopes and prays that the conflict ends quickly and that all Ukrainian citizens are once again able to live their lives in peace and freedom.
A University spokesperson told Cherwell: “The unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by Russia is causing a humanitarian catastrophe to unfold in Europe. The University will support and comply with all sanctions introduced in the current crisis. We have not received any donations from sanctioned individuals or organisations.
“Sir Leonard Blavatnik is the founding donor of the Blavatnik School of Government and without his generosity, the creation of the School would not have been possible. He has always respected the academic independence of the School and never attempted to direct its activities. The School will continue to be named after him.”
Sir Leonard Blavatnik declined Cherwell’s request for an interview.
Who carried out due diligence on Mr Blavatnik?
“There is no point in disclosing the names of the CRD since they did not conduct the due diligence.”
Internal Oxford email
For Oxford University to accept a donation, the Development Office, with advice from the Legal Services Office, must create a due diligence report for the Committee to Review Donations (CRD) to either approve or reject.
The University’s freedom of information responses state that the jobs of “relatively junior staff” in the Development Office are of a “lower level of responsibility”, meaning that they are not able to publicly release details of individuals who conduct due diligence reports.
However, the guidelines for the Committee to Review Donations are publicly available. Yet it seems that the University dramatically changed the CRD guidelines in 2015, following an earlier change in late 2008 or early 2009.
The previous CRD guidelines, from 2009-2015, explicitly state that “donations will not be accepted… not because there is a concern about the source of the funds, but because this could create a conflict of interest”.
The committee is made up of external appointed persons and “members of the Congregation who shall represent the divisions”.
Two CRD meetings were held to review proposed donations by Len Blavatnik.
Retired academic and Oxford alumnus Martin Dewhirst submitted various FOI requests between August 2015 and September 2016 for full information regarding due diligence into Mr Blavatnik’s donations.
The names of the individuals within the Development Office who initially submitted a report of due diligence to CRD could not be revealed under section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act. An internal email reasons that relevant individuals are “relatively junior staff”. However, Cherwell can reveal the names of those who sat on CRD in 2008 and 2010, the two years where Blavatnik’s donations were reviewed by the committee.
In a response to Dewhirst’s first FOI request in August 2015, it was stated that Professor Irene Tracey and Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones “sent their apologies for the 2010 meeting”. Cherwell was informed that at least two members did not attend meetings discussing Blavatnik’s donations to the University.
The response to Dewhirst’s FOI request also revealed that there had been internal discussions via email about whether CRD member names should have been revealed or not.
One email outlines that, of the nine CRD members, excluding Dr John Hood and Dr Jon Dellandrea, “who considered the donation”, six did not object to the inclusion of their name, one did not respond, and two objected “strongly”.
One of those who objected said they were “not happy at all” as it would be “misleading” to say that the CRD carried out due diligence on Blavatnik’s donations.
The other individual who objected stated that they “don’t consent” to their name being released as they “did not evaluate the due diligence into the legality of the source of Mr Blavatnik’s funds”. They added that the responsibility of due diligence belonged to the Legal Services Office.
Ilya Zaslavskiy, an anti-corruption campaigner and Oxford alumnus, noted that there were no Russian speakers on the committee. The University also confirmed in an FOI response that CEO Robert Dudley or any former TNK-BP employees were not “asked for views” on Blavatnik’s donations, and no “experts on the recent and contemporary history of Russia” sat on any committee.
Peter Oppenheimer, formerly a fellow at Christ Church College, echoed Vladimir Milov’s criticism of Oxford University’s due diligence on Len Blavatnik’s donations.
He told Cherwell: “Oxford’s purported mechanism for verifying the ethical acceptability of money that it receives is clearly deficient, if it indeed works at all. There is clearly a case [for renaming the BSG], and therefore this is a case which should be answered.”
Oppenheimer also questioned the academic advantages of the School: “The main thing to be condemned is that if you will be taking money from someone like Blavatnik, it should be taken for something which is an academic priority, not for objects which serve as some kind of prestige booster for the self-interested executive of the University. The fact that the DPIR said ‘we don’t want this’ was simply ignored.”
Cherwell has sent an FOI request to the University to further understand the Department of Politics and International Relations’ (DPIR) position on the Blavatnik School of Government in 2008-09.
A University of Oxford spokesperson stated: “The University of Oxford’s core objectives of teaching and research are supported to a significant extent by donations and research funding. The funds we raise help discover cures for debilitating disease, offer solutions to the world’s most pressing problems and assist worthy students, from diverse backgrounds, to obtain an Oxford education. Our donors have no say in setting the research and teaching programmes of the posts or infrastructure they fund, nor do they have any access to the results of research, other than publicly available material.”
They added: “Decisions about significant donations are made by the University’s Committee to Review Donations and Research Funding, which includes independent, external representatives, who consider the reputational risks based on the source of the funding and its intended use in the University. We have robust and rigorous guidelines regarding the acceptance of donations and research funding.”
Cherwell has contacted all CRD members for comment.
Silencing the critics: Blavatnik and Oxford’s PR battalions
“These people have now proven that they will go to lengths to censor me.”
Ilya Zaslavskiy
In anFT profile on Blavatnik, Fox and Seddon wrote that Blavatnik’s “head of press relations asks reporters to confirm that Blavatnik will not be referred to as an oligarch in any article before agreeing to arrange potential interviews”. Connie Bruck of The New Yorker too was unable to secure an interview with Blavatnik, and afterwards referred to Blavatnik as an “oligarch” in her article.
When Prince William opened the Magdalen Longwall Library at the BSG, former Oxford student Martin Dewhirst told The Oxford Student:“A photographer from Cherwell was told in no uncertain terms not to photograph me and my placard in front of the BSG, even from the opposite side of the street.” Martin Dewhirst and Cherwell’s photographer were told that if pictures were taken, the photographer’s name would have been “taken by an employee”.
Beyond Blavatnik, reporters and other researchers have encountered various stumbling blocks when confronting Oxford University administrators.
In November 2010, Ilya Zaslavskiy met with Ngaire Woods. He told Cherwell that he was dismissed, and was told by Woods that “Blavatnik is not an angel but at least he is not as bad as his partner oligarchs”. Zaslavskiy commented: “That is her standard of global governance.”
A spokesperson for Blavatnik stressed: “Sir Leonard’s personal and commercial activities are not involved with Putin, the Kremlin, Russian politics or the Russian government.”
In April 2012, Zaslavskiy set up a meeting with Chancellor Chris Patten and Michael Cunningham, Executive Director of Oxford’s North American Office. The meeting took place in a luxury hotel, where Zaslavskiy handed Patten and Cunningham a copy of a leaflet on Blavatnik and Alfa Bank.
Zaslavskiy recalls: “They patronised me. Both of them essentially recommended that I keep quiet. Both promised to come back with follow up on my facts and due diligence, and never did.”
Zaslavskiy said he was also censored from commenting on the Oxford North American Office’s Facebook account. This occurred after he commented on a question “about due diligence and Blavatnik” under a photo of Blavatnik and Patten posted by the Oxford North American Office on Facebook. Zaslavskiy sent an email complaining about this “case of censorship”.
In 2016, Ilya was thrown out of an Oxford alumni fundraiser in Washington DC. He recalls how Cunningham rushed to him and grabbed him by the elbow and dragged him out. Both Chancellor Patten and Vice Chancellor Louise Richardson were present, as well as hundreds of other attendants.
Speakers, including VC Louise Richardson, gather for Oxford North America alumni event. Image Credit: Ilya Zaslavskiy
Prior to the meeting, Zaslavskiy submitted a public letter to VC Louise Richardson. In it, he says: “Vested interests within Oxford’s administration evidently believe they can easily sell University’s reputation in exchange for money and higher public and academic status.”
University officials were evidently worried about Zaslavskiy’s presence at the event. A journalist, John Keenan, sent an FOI request regarding discussions about Ilya Zaslavskiy’s open letter to VC Louise Richardson.
One unnamed individual stated: “We do not want the Washington DC programme to be soured by the campaigners’ intervention.”
John Keenan told Cherwell: “Oxford University has to recognise that decisions on donations sends a message about its value. Is it happy that values are reflected in donations from oligarchs, and what that says now about the situation in Ukraine? They have to answer that themselves.”
Cherwell approached Lord Chris Patten, Michael Cunningham, and Professor Ngaire Woods for an interview. Patten, Woods, and Cunningham declined the offer.
Oxford in Moscow: Partnering with oligarchs
“It is not out of the ordinary to build links with corporate organisations in countries that are of research interest to the School.”
Oxford University in 2015.
Perhaps the murkiest partnership Oxford University has held is with Alfa Bank, belonging principally to Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven. Oxford’s Saïd Business School and Alfa Bank jointly awarded a prize to a “foreign investor in Russia” who has a “significant positive impact on the community, demonstrated by the size of the investment”.
The award was first recorded in 2003, and the winner that year was Procter & Gamble. Other winners included Nestle, Intel, and McDonalds. Unilever was its last winner in 2011. A University spokesperson states that the Saïd Business School was not involved in a partnership in 2003. As recorded on the Alfa Bank website, the earliest year of the Oxford Saïd Business School’s involvement is 2007.
There is no information about the prize on the Saïd Business School website. A FOI response from the University to Ilya Zaslavskiy from October 2015 stated: “It would not be sufficiently relevant to mention on the School’s website. We have no website content about the award, and there is nothing that has been erased.”
Links to the award continue to exist on Alfa Bank’s website.
The 2011 awards ceremony took place at a Russian government palace, the Reception House of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Ceremonies in other years also took place at this Russian palace.
Cherwell has seen one image which shows an Oxford University official, Dr Dana Brown, alongside oligarchs Pyotr Aven and Mikhail Fridman, standing in front of a billboard showing the Oxford University crest alongside the logo for Alfa Bank. Cherwell is unable to confirm what year this image dates from.
Speakers to have attended the prize event include former PM John Major (2005) and controversial attorney to Donald Trump, Rudolph Giuliani (2008).
In the FOI response to Zaslavskiy, the University claimed they have “no available record of who carried out due diligence on Alfa Bank” or any “record of the reason” for the award to have ended in 2011.
The exact terms of this deal between the Saïd Business School and Alfa Bank are inextricably unclear. The University told Zaslavskiy: “This award did not involve relationships with individuals or a legal partnership with Alfa Bank, but was about participation in an award scheme to recognise Excellence in Foreign Investment in Russia.”
Zaslavskiy told Cherwell: “Not only [Oxford] provides reputation laundering to kleptocrats and Putin’s cash handlers, but it gives them access and ability to penetrate the political establishment, co-opt high level administrators, officials and former politicians.”
A University spokesperson told Cherwell: “Alfa Bank is not a donor to Oxford University. The connection Saïd Business School had with Alfa Bank was over a decade ago, when a former Associate Fellow sat on Alfa Bank’s award selection committee for 3 years. This involvement ended in 2011. The School did not commit nor receive any money as part of that involvement. The only exception was payment for travel expenses to the Moscow awards ceremonies.”
Alfa Bank was contacted for comment.
This article was updated at 15:00 on Tuesday 5 April to correct that Ngaire Woods declined an interview and to correct that Oxford’s partnership with Alfa Bank did not last 9 years.
The article was updated at 19:25 on Wednesday 6 April to add in extend Navalny’s comments and edit 3 phrases relating to Len Blavatnik.
The newly created Dr. Miranda Brawn Award, launching in Trinity term, will fund recipients’ career development projects during summer vacation, the University announced on March 31. The award is open to students who are Crankstart Scholars or Oxford Bursary recipients and is designed to “help talented Black, Bangladeshi, Pakistani and mixed heritage students enhance their Oxford experience,” according to the University’s news release.
The award will enable students to undertake experiences that are otherwise not covered by college or University financial support programmes, such as beginning a social enterprise or producing a short film. Student awardees will also have access to one-on-one mentoring sessions with Dr. Miranda Brawn — businesswoman, diversity advocate, and founder of the Miranda Brawn Diversity Leadership Foundation.
The Miranda Brawn Diversity Leadership Foundation is a UK-registered charity in England and Wales, first founded in 2016 and dedicated to eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion gaps in the workplace through a focus on education. The new award serves to further that mission.
“The Dr. Miranda Brawn Award aims to inspire, educate and empower our next generation of diverse leaders from the Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Black African, Caribbean and mixed heritage communities by supporting them to study at the number one university in the world,” Brawn said. “The end goal is to support their educational and career dreams in order to have more c-suite leaders, CEOs, board directors and business owners from these specific communities.”
Prior to founding the Leadership Foundation in 2016, Brawn had a career as a lawyer, investment banker and hedge fund sales trader and was one of the first women of colour on London’s trading floor.
Brawn spoke to the personal significance of the award, as it reflects her own mixed heritage. “The Dr. Miranda Brawn Award is in loving memory of the great women in my family: my late great-granny Philomena and late granny Victoria, both born in Dominica, and my late grandmother Maryam, born in India, who all stressed the importance of a great education, which was re-emphasised by my parents while growing up,” she said.
Oxford University Careers Service will manage and administer the award annually over a period of five years, prioritising funds for students from low-income households.
Head of the Internship Office at the Careers Service Dr. Fiona Whitehouse expressed her delight at Brawn’s choice to establish this award at Oxford. “Taking part in extra-curricular activities can be so valuable to students during their time at university, helping them to grow in confidence and develop new skills alongside their studies,” she said. “I can’t wait to see what those selected for the award decide to use it for and the positive impact it will no doubt have on their Oxford experience.”
The Varsity Matches returned to Twickenham. There’s a first in the rugby Varsity matches, being on the same weekend of the Boat Race, which will finish just a few minutes away on the River Thames in Richmond 24 hours later.
What a glorious weekend it is in West London for British amateur sport. It all begins with a kick of a ball in the women’s rugby Varsity Match and it will all end with a splash of a cox being thrown into the River Thames on Sunday afternoon, live on BBC Sport. Regrettably for rugby, Claire Balding’s illustrious TV presenting was spared for The Boat Races, but the rugby Varsity matches were live on FreeSports HD.
Fresh from bottomless brunches and morning drinks, Oxford and Cambridge students and alumni stormed to Twickenham, crowding only fragments of the lower tiers of the 80,000 seater stadium. Perfumes of ale in the stadium, folks bizarrely dressing up in dashing fashion, intermittent yelps of Oxford and Cambridge, this is what Varsity is all about.
12:30, and the women’s matches were underway. Cambridge no doubt dominated the early parts of the match. Trapped in their own half, Oxford’s phases of play were unable to unpick the connected Cambridge defence. The white-and-light-blue striped forwards frequently earned penalties from tidy ruck work.
A blow to Oxford, a try for Cambridge, right in the corner, Hetta Friend, coming from a penalty located just by the 5 metre line. The women in the dark blue shirts had no choice but to reset. And oh, Oxford came back grooving through their set plays, thumping down the Cambridge defence.
An energetically pacey try for Oxford, but pulled back for an earlier forward pass by Alexandra Travers. For a moment, the Oxford defence were left a tad baffled, with Cambridge number 12 Tabbie Brough pulling through with a strong run putting Oxford on the backfoot. But another extravagantly delicious play from Oxford off a scrum led gameplay from within their own 22 to Cambridge’s own 22.
Oxford number 15 Clodagh Holmes’s God-given gift of remarkable speed saw her level the scoreboard, only for the referee to again pull the try back for an earlier forward pass. As the match was nearing half-time, Oxford’s various illusionary lines deceived the Cambridge defence, opening an overlap round the egdes of the Cambridge defence.
The ball seamlessly slipped out of Oxford’s smooth hands, with the quickness of the play accelerating at every pass. Eventually, Oxford’s Megan Isaac finally put the ball over the Cambridge try line, chopping through the line of white and blue before the half came to a close. Oxford level with Cambridge.
Once the second half got underway, Oxford’s confidence soared as Lauren Webb, Oxford flanker, poked herself through the Cambridge defence to put Oxford 5 points ahead. Oxford 10-5 Cambridge, but much of the half was still to go.
The Twickenham warzone was stuck in stalemate for much of the second half, with neither side keeping their hands on the ball for too long. Various stoppages to play through injuries to both sides similarly slowed gameplay down. With every minute, the Cambridge women’s strength grew. Jessica Abele, the Oxford captain playing her fourth and last Varsity Match, having won for the other side in 2018, was perhaps lucky to stay on the pitch after her attempt at an interception saw the ball being slapped down onto the beautifully woven grass pitch.
With Mahnon Jones out on Six Nations duty with Wales, Colombian Olympian Estefanía Ramírez Castillo played at 9 for Oxford. One moment in the second half saw her chase down her own kick, catching it in her stride to hoist Oxford up the field. However, Cambridge retaliated, pushing Oxford to their own 22 with the full time whistel in sight. Lauren Webb of Oxford managed to hold up one ball on the line to avert a Cambridge try, but Cambridge’s restless run of phases resulted with a try by Vianney Gomezgil Yaspik right underneath the posts. An opportunity to put the Tabs ahead was missed as the conversion veered away from the right side of the post.
No opportunity was left for more points on the board, so neither Oxford or Cambridge teams would go home crying as the first Varsity match of the day ended in a 10-10 draw. The celebrations may not have been all too jovial, though, with both captains lifting the trophy together, but neither club could be disappointed. The match was a fiercely balanced contest, with many purple bruises likely to be showing by the time the post-match drinks get underway.
The fragments of crowds had grown in population by the time the men’s teams were warming up- that is, just over 10,000. Leicester, where the matches were played last year, was celebrated as a geographically-sound location for a Varsity fixture, due to its equidistance from Cambridge and Oxford. In a time where broadcasting rights for fixtures But Twickenham, the home of rugby, was made for the Varsity Matches- as well as England Rugby, and a couple of concerts each year.
All eyes were surely on the Cambridge number 10, Toby Flood, the former England international with 60 caps. International experience had proven key to them just three years ago, when internationals James Horwill and Flip van der Merwe, of Australia and South Africa respectively, played as monstrous locks terrorising the Oxford team in a 15-0 victory. Oxford too boasted some internationals in their lineup today, including American players Eric Fry, Nick Civetta, and Andrew Durutalo, who was man of the match last year. Dan Carter, who joined the Oxford Foundry this year, was lamentably not involved in the OURFC setup at all.
As the warm-ups concluded with Oxford walking into the tunnel gripping onto each other’s shirts, anticipation for the standout university men’s rugby fixture of the year was about to be relieved.
Oxford kicked off into a corner, with Piers von Dadelszen swiping Cambridge’s winger off the ptich with a strong hit. Oxford’s momentum was set at a high standard from this point, forcing through penalties from Cambridge’s squad.
Oxford’s youngest captain in 31 years, Louis Jackson, handing off Cambridge. Image Credit: Matt Impey
Keeping Cambridge well at bay from their own half with some flying kicks from fresher Sam Reynolds, who was playing as a full back, Oxford’s Callum Grant popped a ball to Luke Wyllie, sprinting underneath the posts to put Oxford ahead.
While David Wilkinson of St Edmund Hall was busy with his conversion, all three referees were seen on the stadium screen, but looking up at their own reflection, apparently waiting for a replay of an earlier incident. The incident showed Charles Friend, playing at 4 for Cambridge, stamping on an Oxford player. A repeat of last year when Bertie Watson of Oxford was sent off for a similar deed, Friend was sent off with over 60 minutes of the match still to be played. His namesake, Euan Friend, was now the only Friend on the pitch, playing for Oxford, with his brother Arthur Friend likely to come on in the second half.
Cambridge’s fortunes worsened, when Oxford doubled their lead after Nick Civetta scrambled to place the ball over the line after various pick-and-gos. The call by the referee was initially that the ball was held up, but the beauty of playing at Twickenham might be the opportunity of TMO decisions. Wilkinson neatly converted the try from a tight corner, with his oppositie number, Toby Flood, yet to get a chance at kicking at the posts.
A third try came by Andrew Durutalo, after a spine-crunching scrum pushed Cambridge back. Reliable David Wilkinson once again converted to put Oxford 21 points ahead.
Cambridge’s prospects of a Varsity win were looking thin, even at this point in the first half. One opportunity to protect survival, or at least avoid complete embarassment, and put points on the board was fluffed, after a ball was dropped following a lineout right by Cambridge’s try line. For the rest of the half, matchplay stuck mostly to the middle third, with Oxford expertly dictating possession. As classic sporting clichés go, a miracle was needed for Cambridge to reverse the scoreline and avoid a humiliating shoe-ing.
Despite being a man down, Cambridge brought out various improvements to their game in the second half, but not quite the cat out of the bag. Oxford continued to maintain their ground, with powerful hits by the likes of Civetta taking Cambridge’s men down.
Cambridge’s velocity quadrupled, with players taking the ball at considerbale speed. A neat play by Cambridge saw Tim Andrew slice through a hole in the middle of the park, before Sam Reynolds brought him down. Subsquent phases of play saw Cambridge throw the ball away out of touch.
The Tabs persisted, and their determination led to more strong breaks and possession in Oxford’s half. After some pressure near their try line, a kick put out to Cambridge Douglas Russell bounced inside the try area. Just as the ball was bobbing out of play, Russell managed to catch it and dive onto the ground with the ball. Another tight TMO decision ruled in favour of Oxford, and the referee brought the call back to an earlier scrumdown. Exasperation for Cambridge, some fresh reassurance for Oxford, and the minutes ticked on. 21 points still separated the two classical universities.
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot was not the tune of Twickenham today. The slow melody was replaced by slow repeated chants of “Oxford”, while Cambridge supporters were heard busy hissing every time the referee raised his hand pointing to the Oxford end. A balanced match then saw a sudden upsurge of energy from Cambridge, with the ball then again falling astray in the try zone. Sam Reynolds dived on the ball and got a hand on it, before Russell caught the bouncing ball and put it down for what looked like Cambridge’s first try of the match. However, TMO stunningly ruled in Oxford’s favour once again, showing that Reynolds managed to put the ball down inside the try area. More boos could be heard from the Cambridge crowd, unsurprisingly.
A try came minutes later, however, when Luke Parry capped off a maul, initiated at a lineout. Jamie Benson’s conversion, however, hit the post, with Flood not on the pitch.
Yet Cambridge came firing again, with Demi Obembe running the length of the pitch and averting diving tackles to score. Again, Benson’s kick his the post. Oxford suddenly faced some pressure in the game, nonetheless, as Cambridge had significantly reduced the deficit in the scoreline.
Demi Obembe’s try in a Cambridge recovery. Image credit: Matt Impey
Oxford’s organisation tamed Cambridge’s short-lived momentum. An impressive display from the one-man-short Tabs in the second half saw them continue to challenge Oxford’s lead. In the match’s last play, Alex King found space to score, bringing the final result to 21-17. But, alas, Louis Jackson can celebrate being the youngest Oxford captain to ever win a Varsity match in its 140-match history.
After the women’s match ended in a draw earlier in the day, it is safe to say Oxford win Day 1 of the Varsity Weekend. On to the Boat Races.
Lady Margaret Hall silenced and mistreated a victim of rape, according to a recent article by The Times.
The article states that the alleged sexual assault case of Olivia (an alias used to protect her identity) was repeatedly dismissed and covered up by the college under former principal Alan Rusbridger.
Allegedly, Olivia was asleep in her college accommodation when a fellow student barged into her bedroom. The male student “pinned her arms down and raped her”. Olivia recalls the events as being “violent and frightening”.
Her attempts to fight back left scratch marks on his face and neck. When quizzed by another student about the injuries, the attacker explained them as the result of “rough sex”.
Olivia said she thought the night she was attacked “would be the worst thing I ever went through. I was wrong – dealing with Lady Margaret Hall’s mistreatment of what I went through was far, far worse.”
She alleges that she was attacked at the beginning of the academic year, but it took six months for her to feel able to report the incident to the college, university and police.
Her alleged attacker was briefly suspended from the college towards the end of Trinity Term. He was allowed to return in Michaelmas. Helen Barr, vice-principal of LMH, wrote to Rusbridger saying “despite all his heritage” it could be “very damaging not to exclude [the alleged attacker] from [LMH] accommodation”, expressing that his conduct had left “a number of people at risk”.
An internal college inquiry began the following January and took 7 months to conclude that it could not be certain whether the rape had occurred. The LMH Procedure on Harassment states that in the event of a complaint against college staff, “every effort will be made to achieve a prompt resolution to the complaint – the aim being to conclude the investigation within a period of no more than six weeks”. In the event of a complaint against another student, the Procedure fails to recommend a timeline for investigations.
Olivia alleges that she was told by a member of the welfare team not to tell her family or friends about the incident. Rusbridger insists this is “untrue”.
Furthermore, Olivia alleges that she was warned to “pick her battles” and to avoid any investigation becoming a “kangaroo court”. Rusbridger and members of the welfare team also deny this.
The college was asked by Olivia to establish rules to minimise the chance of encounters with her attacker, whilst acknowledging that total avoidance would be impossible. An “emergency welfare meeting” was arranged, where Olivia was advised to avoid visiting the college dining hall and bar, and not to leave her room alone.
LMH drew up a written “no contact agreement” between Olivia and her alleged attacker. It outlined that Olivia “must not make any information about the allegations, the police investigation, or LMH safeguarding arrangements available to any form of public media”. A breach of this clause would “result in expulsion from LMH”.
According to Rusbridger, this was not a gagging order, but instead a request for “both parties to refrain from public comment while the case was active”. However, according to Georgine Calvert-Lee, Olivia’s solicitor, the college inserted an NDA into the document that was supposed to be about student safety. She told The Times: “imposing silence on complainants of sexual violence harms them since they are unable to seek comfort and support, harms other students and staff who go unwarned about a potential risk and harms the investigation because it is less likely to find corroborative evidence”.
Olivia has since made a personal injury claim against LMH alleging negligence, harassment, discrimination and victimisation. She alleges that Rusbridger, then-principal of LMH and former editor of the Guardian, “sought to dissuade her from complaining” because of the “negative impact” it would have on her attacker’s studies and because an investigation would be “a time-consuming and costly exercise for the college”.
Her legal complaint refers to a meeting between Olivia, Barr, and Rusbridger to discuss the internal college investigation, where “[Rusbridger] said this was a severe allegation that could ruin [the alleged attacker’s] life.”
“Rusbridger’s insistent querying as to why Olivia felt it appropriate to complain felt harassing and she broke down in tears, but still he continued. He tried desperately to convince her not to complain.”
Olivia told The Times: “there are no words to describe what LMH has done to me, nor will it ever be something that I ‘get over’ as I have been told to do by multiple members of staff. I’ve lost count of the members of staff who tried to silence me, scare me, threaten me and undermine me.”
The claim was settled this week. LMH agreed to pay Olivia’s damages and legal costs but has made no admission of liability.
Olivia is not the only LMH alumna to speak out against the college. She encountered another student, Emma (another alias assigned by The Times), who had also experienced a threatening encounter with the same male undergrad.
Emma told The Times: “I cried when I realised we were talking about the same person. All the time I was told by college he wasn’t dangerous now I felt it was all my fault.”
A year prior to Olivia’s rape, the male student allegedly entered Emma’s room. She said of the incident: “he was very drunk, I was alone and it was really intimidating – he is much taller and he came very close and kept saying he ‘really liked’ me. I felt threatened and scared.
“He threw himself down on the bed and wouldn’t leave. Somehow I managed to push him out of the room and lock my door.”
A few nights later, he tried to enter the room again, but Emma blocked his entrance. Although she reported the incidents to the welfare team, she says that none of her complaints were properly recorded, and the information was neither passed to the police nor the dean who later investigated Olivia’s allegations. When the attacker was questioned, he claimed the events had been a “romantic misunderstanding”.
The Times has spoken to eight different women who studied at LMH between 2015-21. It reports that they shared similar experiences of “unwanted touching, groping, and intimidatory sexual advances by fellow students whom they were often expected to continue to live alongside in the college’s residential blocks. Requests to prevent male students living next to women who had had frightening experiences of their conduct were played down. Female students said the approach from the college welfare team was to dismiss the concerns as ‘rumours’ and to say ‘boys will be boys’.”
In light of the article, Michelle Donelan MP, the minister for universities and an avid campaigner against the use of NDAs in places of higher education, took to Twitter to condemn LMH and the wider university. She wrote: “Disgusted to read this today. The use of NDAs to silence victims is morally bankrupt, [Oxford University and Lady Margaret Hall] should be ashamed. I will personally talk with the Vice-Chancellor and Principal about the seriousness of this and expect immediate action.”
In a statement about The Times’ article, Alan Rusbridger said: “Numerous staff and tutors went to great efforts to support and protect a student who alleged she had been attacked by her partner. Both the police and the college mounted thorough investigations into the alleged attack but were unable to determine what had happened to the required burdens of proof. The student’s subsequent legal case was met with a response which firmly disputed, denied or rebutted the great majority of claims about the handling of the issue.
“It is not true to say there was a “blanket gagging order” against the female student… LMH asked both parties to refrain from public comment while the case was active as part of a No Contact Agreement. Both parties signed without comment or protest. The female student thanked the college for placing the agreements in place. There were no “repeated attempts” to silence either of them.
“The student’s descriptions of some of her interactions with college staff or tutors were denied by those involved. It is not true that I “desperately” tried to convince the student not to complain. In one meeting the head of welfare and I tried to understand what the student hoped to gain from another lengthy investigation after the police decided to take no action. Even with a different burden of proof it seemed at least questionable whether another inquiry would produce the result she sought. She herself was anxious about the impact the saga was having on her friends.
“Some of the College procedures, statutes and by-laws were in definite need of modernisation, and I am pleased that this has now happened.”
It’s a miserable day in Oxford as the greatest newspaper in town has been forced to close down for good. An Oxfess post calling it a “rag” has shamed the integrity of the renowned publication, and so it thus has no other choice than to shut down.
Cherwell has been Oxford’s independent newspaper since 1920, boasting the likes of W.H Auden, Michael Crick, Charlie Hancock, and David Tritsch as its most esteemed alumni. Cherwell can reveal that the fine calibre of writers it has produced will be devastated by the news when they find out.
This comes as a post on Oxfess, an account where students and perverts can anonymously write outlandishly bold messages, called Cherwell a “rag”. This was in reaction to the scandalous results from the Sextigation Sex Survey, which clearly ruffled some feathers. Cherwell has been told that the writer of the post is 99% likely to be a Keble student.
Another Oxfess post at least said “sorry as a masters student” before going on to say “how bad” writing is in Oxford student journalism. However, the apology was not accepted.
Cherwell has also seen documents suggesting that students will keep sending in very incorrect answers to the popular puzzles found on the back page, despite the closure of the publication.
“It’s a travesty!” said someone in the downstairs High Street Café Nero lounge. “What’s Cherwell?” was also heard in the smoking area at the last Bridge Thursday of Hilary Term. “Stop talking about Cherwell,” said any friend of any Cherwell editor ever.
In an exclusive interview, Maurício Alencar and Estelle Atkinson, the current editors at Cherwell, told Cherwell: “The real reason we are doing this is because no one has bothered to nominate us in the BNOCs survey so far. It’s really peak.”
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