by Jonathan Bailey A petition has been started to save Oxford’s last remaining women-only college. Worried by debate on the governing body of St Hilda’s about whether to allow men to enter the college, the Oxford University Student Union (OUSU) has rallied to the defence of single-sex education. Those organising the petition claim that single-sex colleges provide the sort of atmosphere in which some women thrive. Rosalind Dampier, Women’s officer at the OUSU, suggests that “many women prefer working in a single-sex environment, which is often more supportive and less dominated by old-fashioned patriarchal ideas about women’s abilities.” She also points out that for cultural or religious reasons some women “would not even be able to take up their place at Oxford if St. Hilda’s didn’t exist.” It is this equality of opportunity which the proponents of women-only colleges claim, is so essential in a world where “there is still much to be done before we can claim full equality of the sexes especially given that in Oxford women make up less than 50% of undergraduates and 30% of graduate students and 20% of tutors”. Some members of St Hilda’s are unconvinced by the OUSU’s claims; Rachel Todd, a fresher, said “all you have to do is look at the branding of us as ‘Hildabeasts’ to realise that the all-female environment doesn’t create real equality”. Others students point out that once they leave Oxford they will not have the option of applying to a women-only workplace and that by creating one at university, St Hilda’s is not helping them in the long term. With a thousand signatures in less than a week of campaigning, the OUSU clearly have some support. They have even taken the unprecedented step of allying themselves with the Cambridge University Student Union, who are trying to keep men out of their women-only colleges.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

by Joanna Lee Morrison New research has revealed that over 50% of first year university students have no clear plans for future employment. The survey, published on UnisUnited.com also revealed that graduates are becoming more and more likely to find themselves in low-paid or casual employment. The University Careers Service advises that whilst ’it’s perfectly normal’ to not have a career plan, it’s also important to find out why. They suggest a 10 minute chat with one of their Duty Careers Advisers. However, Natalie Gilliam, a first year Law student at Christ Church, has other priorities ’at the moment just getting my essays done on time and going out drinking is more important than thinking about a career. ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003

by Timothy RileyUnion members were thrilled last Thursday at the chance to see one of Hollywood’s “living legends,” when Clint Eastwood appeared in front of a full house at the Oxford Union. Ticket-holders were also provided with a free viewing of Eastwood’s latest directing endeavour: ‘Mystic River.’ Marcus Walker, President of the Union, described the event as a “great success,” telling Cherwell he thought it was the biggest name the Union had attracted since Michael Jackson. He described Eastwood as one of the few speakers who was “genuinely nice”, adding how useful it was to have film critic Barry Norman, a ‘real expert’, directing the questions. The event caught the attention of the national media, with ticket-holders being interviewed by the BBC. Walker was delighted by the interest (despite an “awful” photograph of him in The Oxford Mail), not only as it is an excellent boost to this years’ membership drive, but also because it will potentially attract more big-name speakers to appear at the Union. The reaction in the chamber was overwhelmingly positive, with rapturous applause when Clint uttered the immortal line ‘Are you feeling lucky?’ along with hoots of laughter as he assured one student that he could ‘take care of the press gallery’ if presented with a .44 Magnum. ”I was so excited to see my childhood hero in the flesh” said one satisfied second year “although I hadn’t expected him to look so old!”ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

by Mark Bedford In a new Oxford mini- dictionary released this week one of the most controversial expressions of 2003 has made its first appearance. The idiom “sex up” has been published in The Language Report (Oxford University Press). Author Susie Dent can regularly be found residing in Dictionary Corner on Channel 4 show Countdown, but she also works for the Oxford English Dictionary. Publishing manager of the OUP Judy Pearall said that “it is a snapshot of language now…it is not our business to make judgements”. The phrase “sex up” rose to public prominence in May this year when the BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan accused the government of “sexing up” its intelligence on Iraqi weapons.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

Candice Breitz: Re-animations Candice Breitz’s installation, ‘Double Karen’ consists of two televisions facing each other in a stairway, one in front of you, the other behind as you rise. The former TV loops those moments in the Carpenters’ ‘Close to You’ in which Karen Carpenter sings “me”; the latter loops Karen singing “you” from the same song. Similarly, ‘Double Olivia’ is two TVs facing each other, in which loops of Olivia Newton–John singing “I”, “my”, “mine” and “you” from ‘Hopelessly Devoted to You’ are played. Such use of personal pronouns lends the installations a stange potency. While the viewer stands within hearing of both “I” and “you”, it is impossible to view both screens simultaneously, and yet both screens continue to call to the viewer in the middle, unsure which way to turn. The rest of Breitz’s five installations do not work as well. ‘Diorama’ is a reconstruction of a sitting room with nine screens arranged about the room, with each screen looping one of nine characters from the TV series Dallas saying a phrase, for example, “But what about love…?”. It is undoubtedly sensational; the arrangement of the sets again leaves the viewer disorientated while the volume is also disorientatingly loud, but the intimacy and the involvement of the ‘Double Karen’ and ‘Double Olivia’ installations is lacking. In an essay on Breitz’s work, Jennifer Allen compares her work to the “experiments” of Arnulf Rainer. Breitz’s work is indeed experimental as a scientific study might be experimental. Though visually striking, the impression as a whole left me questioning what exactly we can classify as art.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

In a recently published essay, Theroux states that he eschews cameras and travel snaps. A bold claim, but his descriptive prose in Dark Star Safari is effective, creating countless pen portraits of conmen, friends, and landscapes as he makes his way from Cairo to Cape Town. Observations combine with a well researched (and personally felt) sense of history in unsentimental and provoking pictures of countries despoiled by corruption, widespread poverty, and mismanaged donations: the Malawi government that spent millions of dollars of aid on twelve new Mercedes; the impractical dogmatism of an old teaching colleague, now the president of Uganda. Theroux writes as a man who spent his early twenties in Southern Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer; it was in Southern Africa that he settled on the writer’s life. While there he saw several countries on the cusp of independence, the first step from African servitude to African prowess – exciting and hopeful times for a young man. Yet it has never quite happened, and in Dark Star Safari he sets out to discover why. Theroux’s argument against NGOs and aid agencies is both reasoned and uncomfortable reading: African countries will not improve while responsibility and motivation for growth and investment remain in Western hands. But his repetitiveness soon wears, as well does his own dogma. His “real Africa” is his own ideal; he sneers at tourists and revels in his belief in his virtue as a traveller (hence, the ultimate ‘Gappy’); his hints of platitudes (“the best of [Africans] are bare-assed”) and clunky literary references seem rather artificial, if not the products of afterthought. It’s a shame. While Dark Star Safari would benefit from some trimming to make it more cohesive, his humour, curiosity and liveliness make this a very readable book, and the background he provides fits in nicely to give a reader some grasp of the history of the continent. If you’re interested in the atmosphere of modern Africa, in all its gaudy colours, or want to relive fond memories, read this book.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

NATALIE TOMS visits the lefty student haven of cigars, Che and communist charm The silence is getting quite embarrassing. I don’t realise at first – I’ve been distracted by the man at work on the No. 1 Bolivars, who seems to be able to roll together the four types of leaves in under half a minute – so I only hear the question when Miguel, the guide, repeats it, accusingly.“Do any of you actually smoke cigars?” His eyes travel around everyone in the group, one by one, until we eventually look down, ashamed. In the end a Canadian kid tries to help him out, “Er, yeah, I smoked one once.” He then catches the eye of his mother and starts to splutter, “In Paris. It was when I was in Paris. You know, in France.”The protruding eyeballs of the baseball-becapped woman are able to retract again and the whole group heaves a sigh of relief. That clearly explains it all. But then we are left with the silence again. Someone else tries to break the deadlock by saying that their best friend is a big fan of Romeo y Julietas and they’re going to take some home. I consider joining in, explaining that I also know some people who smoke cigars. But on second thoughts I decide that our Miguel’s life is probably strange enough, what with having to listen to the Cuban state newspaper being read out all day while avoiding earnest Canadian questions about politics, without also having to listen to an explanation of the weirder side of Oxford hackery. So, the silence seems conclusive. It is clear that no-one on this tour of the Habanos Cigar Company factory, in Havana, Cuba, actually likes cigars at all. While Miguel seems to consider this quite shocking, I’m not really sure why. I mean, surely the kind of people who go to Cuba aren’t that likely to be going home to gentleman’s clubs in the Strand. We clearly all consider ourselves to be superior left-wing adventurers, after all. Not that this stops anyone from piling into the souvenir shop at the end of the tour. It’s as if there’s been an implicit unspoken agreement – we can muse about the up-side of Castro’s policies when we return home, but here, we’re just going to search for souvenirs and top up our tans.This is the problem with travelling to Cuba. You go assuming that because the country is such a politically exotic one-off, Havana will be gloriously difficult, a place in which only the most hardcore of hardened backpackers will excel. A big step up from those oh-so-passe trips to Delhi, Cuzco and Ko Samui. It ought to be a lefty student haven – Che Guevara’s face isn’t just seen here on t-shirts for god’s sake, but on billboards and statues (though also on a great deal of t-shirts, which for some reason I find weirder). But Cuba is anything but a typical backpacker destination, perversely for the same reason that gives it the student allure: the peculiar nature of Castro’s revolution. Havana may be dirt-poor, but it isn’t dirty. There’s less litter than in London. There are no street-children, no touts and no drugs. For some strange reason, this provides more of a culture shock than the reverse would have done. The most annoying thing is a general lack of touts (well, apart from the prostitutes – the one unrestricted capitalist market in Havana). For anyone who wants to do some superior political analysis whilst on holiday, there are very few people to ask patronising questions about whether everyone really likes Castro… But the real nail in the coffin of Che obsessives is that Havana is really very expensive. The reason is simple – one of Castro’s methods of escaping the economic “special period” following the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe was to initiate a parallel dollar economy for tourists. Cuba maintains the peso as a currency for its own citizens, but all foreign visitors exchange only US dollars in the course of their trip. And everything costs only marginally less than it does in dollars. While Castro and contemporary history dominate the air in Havana, Cuba still holds on to its more ancient past. Faces on the streets bear the stamp of cultural intermixture and migration, and next to the dark spires of imposing cathedrals, wafting incense and camelias, are shrines to Ogun and Chango, gods brought to the new world by African slaves. The striking cross-fertilisation of faiths is apparent in whatever religious establishment you step into in Cuba. In certain neighborhoods of Havana and the villages skirting the city, cherubic black Marys and Christs are worshipped. While Cubans Catholics are in the majority, Voo Doo and Indian rites are never very far from their day to day lives. In the face of such cultural fusion, it might be easy to forget the violence with which it was achieved. Three main native groups inhabited Cuba when Columbus reached it in 1492 – the Ciboney, the Guanahatabey and the Taino. When slavery and the establishment of large plantations began with the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors the indigenous population was quickly decimated by disease, fighting and maltreatment. But despite its turbulent past, the result today is that the vibrancy and variety of Cuban culture is notorious and not, as I found throughout the trip, without good reason. As Castro’s hair grows whiter, there is more and more speculation about his likely successor and whether the Communism that has characterized the country for decades will develop and ultimately endure. So all in all, Cuba isn’t simply a backpacker haven or place where hairy leftys (even the hairiest may get pissed off at the lack of shops after a while) can hang out and chill. But the beaches are bloody nice.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

Wyclef Jean talks to WILLEM MARX about the music, the money and the messages behind his new album Wyclef was on stage, running through some tracks at an industry showcase for his new album, The Preacher’s Son. Mixing in some seamless free-styling in 6 different languages (including Japanese) and playing his guitar riffs with his teeth, as if kissing the strings, the idea of interviewing the man was slightly daunting. Despite his astounding virtuosity, he remains in many ways an enigma. Catching up with him after the show, it was difficult to reconcile the man sporting an enormous platinum and diamond dollar-sign chain round his neck and mobbed by an incessant stream of adoring female fans, with the god-fearing, family-loving son a Haitian preacher, who moved to Brooklyn’s projects before his son had reached his teens. The title of his new album is far from irrelevant; many of the songs carry a message. ‘Industry’ is about the violent perception of the hip-hop world; Wyclef hopes to change the “higher authority’s thinking” on the subject. ‘Next Generation’ contains a powerfully simple message in lyrics such as “We are the next generation, not afraid to die / All we fear is what’s waiting in the Afterlife / Coz I don’t know what is there on the other side.” Explaining the thinking behind the lines, Wyclef talks of trying to “document” a “generation who are merely a reflection of their own environment,” when I quiz him on the references to guns and crack throughout his songs. Another example of Wyclef’s “preaching” comes in a track entitled ‘Party to Damascus’, an awesome fusion of oriental melody and hip-hop rhythm. The song suggests that the best solution to the many current problems in the Middle East is, as Wyclef succinctly puts it, “rather than fighting they should be having one big party.” He “understands the streets” and believes that artists such as himself are “poets expressing what they are.” I ask about his incredibly diverse range of influences which spans Latin to gangsta rap as well as his collaborations with and sampling of stars from Pink Floyd and U2’s The Edge to Missy Elliot and Mick Jagger. His response is typically straightforward, “I’m just taking these sounds from all around the world and taking the music to another level – going back to the culture and the idea of song-writing.” His desire to return to basics, using the Compra rhythm of his birthplace Haiti as part of the hip-hop framework which he grew up alongside in New York has led, he claims, “to a greater focus on melody”. He no longer “just concentrates on the rhyming, but the music.” Wyclef is very proud of his roots, and believes that a tolerant attitude to diversity, a sense of multiculturalism, is typically dependent upon your own upbringing. “Coming from Brooklyn, everybody to me had to look like this certain group of people, but as I grew and learnt, I realised that wasn’t the case.” Looking relaxed in his baggy jeans and red sweatshirt, he advises that we all “learn to appreciate human beings, actually all types of people from around the world.” But it’s difficult to connect such statements with his current existence: the suite at the Metropolitan Hotel on Park Lane, the fancy cars (he claims he has “over 50 very fine motor vehicles”), and the constant references to vast sums of money which hint at a slightly less balanced perspective. Such observations, however, fade into insignificance when he performs. His presence is electric, and he obviously enjoys himself immensely when up on stage. Not rated as an MC in the same class as say, 50 Cent, whom he places in his top ten “most respected artists,” it is nevertheless mesmerising to see him crafting words out of nothing, improvising on a theme, indeed reacting to what is going on around him as he lyricises. Wyclef’s linguistic diversity is equally fascinating; he was brought up speaking Haitian creole, which despite persisting popular opinion, is not a form of pidgin English, but a totally separate language. Bearing this in mind when experiencing the fluency of his English rhyming, and also witnessing the ease with which he switches to Spanish, and the enjoyment he takes from changing again into French or German, while still keeping time, making sense, and fully rhyming, his “ear,” both musical and linguistic, is highly impressive. Santana also makes it into his top ten, in fact in the top spot, and ‘Clef’s skills on the guitar, while perhaps not quite good enough to rival his hero, (who he claims demonstrates that “if you stick to your own act, you are bound to break through”), are definitely a large part of his self-defined position as a “musician and now a song -writer”. As he states in an earlier album, Masqueradeˆ, protesting against critics who had claimed he had forgotten his hip-hop roots, his “mistress is a guitar, classical like Mozart”. One of the most significant aspects of this album is its producer, Clive Davis. After the move from Sony to BMG, he was a pillar of support following the death of Wyclef’s father two years ago, and a strong influence on the vocal aspect of his music. Davis says that the album is a “watershed.” To see such a fine artist, “raising his game” as Wyclef would have it, intending to improve the world’s lot, while considerably enriching himself in the process, should be applauded, even if the message is preached. Wyclef would like to extend his sincerest apologise to Oxford students for postponing his visit to the Oxford Union. However he will be addressing students in November. He will also be playing a live acoustic set, so keep an eye out for the event by checking the website (www.oxford-union.org).ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003