St Catherine’s College has proposed a 11.8% increase in rent and hall prices for the next academic year (2022-3). College accommodation rent would increase from around £1480 to around £1654 per term. 

Each year the college reviews its domestic spending to estimate living costs for the following year. The 11.8% inflation in college living prices is an estimated figure for next year’s domestic costs which does not include any profit for the college.  

This proposal is in line with the current high inflation rates. The UK annual inflation rate increased to 7% in March 2022, the highest since March 1992. Currently, prices are rising by 9% a year in the UK.  

Other factors are also contributing to this figure. The Covid-19 pandemic meant the normal cost model for accommodation could not be used to predict this year’s costs. In Hilary Term 2021, the college received no rent.  

The college has found that the amount they increased rent by was lower than the costs increased by. The fees this year received from students were not substantial enough to cover all accommodation and domestic costs.  

Another aspect which has led to this increase in student living costs is St Catz’s recent commitment to paying all of their staff the Oxford living wage. This increase in staff wages will result in a greater cost to the college, which is expected to be covered by an increased price for student rent and hall.   

Rebecca Powell, a current JCR access rep at St Catz, found the news “disappointing”. She said: “While I appreciate that the college has financial needs and restrictions, I have serious concerns with regards to how this will impact the student body. The cost of living in Oxford is notoriously high and, in combination with restriction to work during term time, I feel that this will be another blow to students from lower-income backgrounds.”  

On being asked whether she was aware of the possibility of college accommodation prices increasing prior to accepting her offer, Rebecca commented: “I knew that it was possible for rent rates to fluctuate slightly but an increase of 11% was certainly not expected… [I am] completely sympathetic to the reasons that college have outlined [but] these factors should not be at the expense of those already in financially precarious situations.” 

Discussions between the college student body, and its staff and finance administrators, have begun. The JCR is running a survey to assess the financial standing of its student body. It hopes to use this information to inform the college about the likely impacts of this rent increase upon its students. This will inform further decision making. 

Rebecca does find it “reassuring” to know that negotiations between the college and JCR representatives are taking place, and she hopes the collection of data about students’ finances will provide “significant evidence that these rent increases are unacceptable”. Nonetheless, she does still have “considerable reservations about whether these negotiations will have a significant impact”. 

An 11.8% increase is, at this stage, a suggested figure. The college has not yet committed to increasing rent and hall prices by this amount. However, with colleges across the University facing financial pressures, St Catz is likely to be one of many to increase prices for its students. 

When asked to comment, St Catherine’s college told Cherwell: “St Catherine’s is committed to ensuring that the experience of students living in College is the best it can be. 

“The College is still working in collaboration with the JCR and the MCR on proposals for accommodation rates for the 2022-23 academic year.

“The current rates for undergraduate accommodation at St Catherine’s are the fifth lowest when compared to all other Oxford colleges. The College will continue to do everything it can to ensure that accommodation rates reflect only the actual cost to the College of the room and utilities, and will work with student representatives when doing so. When calculating these rates, St Catherine’s uses the actual predicted costs for specific services used, rather than an averaged estimate, which tends to be higher. 

“Our students are our first priority and we appreciate that the current financial climate may be challenging for them and their families. We will continue to support each of our students in any way that we can, including through initiatives such as the Student Support Fund.” 

Image credit: Munkfishmonger via Wikimedia

The Lincoln College chapel was vandalised in what the college chaplain has called an act of “abuse and damage”. 

A group of individuals, whose identities have not yet been released, entered the chapel sometime between 1pm and 9pm on Friday 13th May. The chaplain revealed in an email sent to students and staff following the incident that various acts of vandalism were committed.

The damage included the rearranging of furniture and furnishings, burning of Easter candles, writing of strange symbols on hymnals and service books with black makeup pens, defacement of the embroidered cross on linen used in Holy Communion, grinding of charcoal into the cloth covering the altar’s side table, and crumbling of charcoal (intended for use in burning incense) across the linen altar cloth. Many of the objects which were defaced were blessed for use in Christian worship.

Disturbingly, these actions took place during an unplanned power cut. Internal emails reassuring students that maintenance and IT staff were hurrying to solve the problem also reveal that their own battery backups went down for a time as well. 

Everything destroyed can be replaced, but Lincoln chaplain, Revd Dr Andrew Shamel, says it constitutes a “direct attack on God or at the least Christian faith itself” for some believers. Desecration of aspects of the Christian altar are offensive and hurtful to Christians. For example, the Paschal candle symbolizes a special form of Christ’s presence in the Church after the Resurrection at Easter and the destruction of this holy object is highly disrespectful. Destruction of any sacred object is akin to “a precious heirloom, a work of art, or a memento resonant of a loved one”, Revd Dr Shamel explained.

The college chapel was originally built in the early seventeenth century in a late Gothic, perpendicular style and consecrated in 1631. Statues on the front pews and ornate ceilings were added in the 1680s. Apart from restoration work that took place in the 1990s, the Chapel has remained mostly unchanged since the late seventeenth century. Notable features include enamelled windows by the master painter Abraham van Linge which depict various Biblical figures and scenes and a large organ in a pine ante-chapel.

Revd Dr Shamel raised particular concerns over the treatment of the objects on the altar table: the Paschal candle, linen corporal cloth, and the table itself. These objects are used in the rite of the Eucharist, which symbolises the last supper Jesus ate with his disciples, and a “mysterious recapitulation of the sacrifice of the Crucifixion”. Each object on the table is loaded with symbolism. The white tablecloth symbolises the special role of the altar table in the ceremony, while the smaller corporal cloth is used to delineate the focus of the blessing of the bread and wine and collect crumbs from the consecrated bread. “Many Christians regard each crumb of the bread of the Eucharist as precious and so it much not be lost or trod upon,” he said, adding “I hope it is clear how the scattered charcoal and deep marking marring these fabrics and surfaces set aside for the Eucharist would be so problematic”.

A similar instance of chapel vandalism in Central Oxford was reported on by Cherwell in 1984. Two Brasenose College students ransacked that college’s chapel and left behind a number of offensive images, included pentagrams and inverted crosses. The two students, who also had a history of disciplinary infractions, confessed the same morning to their “drunken prank”. They were each fined £50, plus an additional £15 for a separate incident in which they danced on the roof of the Principal’s lodgings. The JCR President at the time denied that the College was a “place for Devil worshippers”, and said “the incident has left Christians in the college very perturbed, very upset. The fact that these people infringed on spiritual beliefs is appalling.” 

Image credit: Remi Mathis

DJ Cuppy is a busy woman. “I flew back in from Monaco yesterday” she tells me as we prepare for a photoshoot in her lush North Oxford house. Later that evening, she’s DJing at an Oxford Ball. “And tomorrow, I’m back in London for my show on 1Xtra”. It seems surprising that she finds time for anything else, but along with music she runs the Cuppy Foundation, a charity which last year fed 70,000 Nigerian children a day. On her days off, she rubs shoulders with celebrities like Anthony Joshua, flying across the world on lavish holidays. She says that Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s founder, called her the most influential black woman on the platform.  She also happens to be a graduate student, here in Oxford.

Florence “Cuppy” Otedola, 29, is the daughter of Nigerian oil tycoon Femi Otedola. Born in Lagos, she moved to London at age 13 and is currently undertaking her third degree, following a BA in Economics at King’s College, London, and a Masters in Music at New York University with a MSc in African Studies at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

When I meet her, she’s impossibly charming and – decked out in her trademark all-pink – impossible to miss. At any given question, she launches into a beginning/middle/end monologue so effortless it seems rehearsed, and she pretty much directs her own photoshoot, pointing out the spots with the best lighting and moving at two-poses-a-second (much to our relief, as inexperienced students).

While education has clearly been a big part of Cuppy’s life, it may seem initially at odds with her lavish celebrity lifestyle. However, she makes no effort to hide her student status – recent Instagram posts have seen study sessions interspersed with videos of club appearances and interviews (with, of course, the caveat that the studying was done in her family’s home in Monaco). She told me that sometimes she felt she was living “between two lives”; Cuppy the student and Cuppy the DJ, even doing research and working on essays backstage at shows.

Here, in Oxford, it is Cuppy the student that clearly shines through. She tells me about her thesis, on mobilisation strategies for women in Nigerian politics, and her other academic interests. In fact, she explains that one of the reasons she came to this degree in Oxford was because it involved field research – something she hadn’t done before. 

In every way, Oxford life seems like an escape for her. Her home in Oxford – while undoubtedly an upgrade on standard student digs –  is a far cry from her life in London, a home filled with pink and award cabinets, not to mention an entire recording studio. “Oxford allows me to be a little bit more present. And, you know, yeah, I think it’s really nice that sometimes, what is expected of me as an Oxford student is to just learn, rather than what’s expected of Cuppy which is to perform and deliver.”

That being said, with nine million Instagram followers – whom she calls her “Cupcakes” – alongside a host of high-profile roles such as Pepsi’s “DJ Ambassador”, her fame is hard to escape. On Radio 1Xtra, she finds herself “every weekend talking to millions of people, then I’m on stage of festivals, DJing with thousands of people.” With the weight of such an enormous following, does she find it hard to reconcile her public persona with her private one? “What I really struggle with is informal settings” she says. “That mental state of pressure and performance sometimes isn’t needed. And I find it hard to turn it off”.

However, her biggest impact is not in Oxford; in 2017, she founded the Cuppy Foundation. The charity started with her personally sponsoring seven young fans. Then, she excitedly recounts that “we started getting hundreds of applicants…I couldn’t just keep sending people money from my account”. Eventually, the Foundation became more structured and began fundraising from outside, joining with Save the Children to take advantage of their infrastructure.

One major event was the Cuppy Gold Gala, a fundraising event held at the Hilton in Abuja and attended by many of Nigeria’s upper crust, including her billionaire father Femi, vice-president Yemi Osinbajo, and Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest person. “I kid you not, by chance,” she says, “I happened to raise 14 million pounds.”

Eventually, she partnered with Save the Children, as well as the United Nations, to deliver programs such as malnutrition awareness, breastfeeding sensitivity training for religious leaders, and COVID PPE to disadvantaged communities in Nigeria. The Foundation’s website describes her as “a beacon, a light for those in darkness, a home for those without shelter, a shield for the defenseless.” 

So what’s next for Cuppy? She hasn’t released any music since 2021. While she took a break from DJing over Hillary, she’s still found the balance difficult: ”even just coming in this afternoon, I’ve got to rush back for a gig, then I’ve got to come back tomorrow, then I’ve got to rush back to the BBC…I’m 30 this year, right. So I maybe don’t have that zest that I used to.”

While she has a massive interest in education, she’s not sure that she’ll immediately carry on as a student. She’s been offered a fellowship at a prestigious US university, and Cambridge are using her foundation as a case study for their philanthropic centre. She says she’ll find it very hard to step out of academia, but “you know, Isaac, I need a break. This is my third degree, my second master’s, and I need a break. I’m empowered but exhausted.

Image credit: Daniel Stick