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Special report: How Oxford partnered with Russian bank and Blavatnik

Maurício Alencar
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Special report: How Oxford partnered with Russian bank and Blavatnik

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’s discovery 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. 

This investigation 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.

2007/08 CRD members reviewing Mr Blavatnik's donations: Dr John Hood, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University Dr Jon Dellandrea, Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University Sir Victor Blank Former chairman of Lloyds TSB, who was pressured to resign. Robin Butler House of Lords crossbencher and former PM Private Secretary Andrew Goudie Former Master of St Cross College and Geography academic Julian Savulescu St Cross College fellow and biomedical ethics academic 2009/10 CRD members reviewing Mr Blavatnik's donations: Ivor Roberts Former President of Trinity College and British Ambassador Jessica Rawson Fromer Warden of Merton College and art historian Julian Savulescu St Cross College fellow and biomedical ethics academic Timothy Endicott Vinerian Professor of English Law at Oxford and All Souls Fellow Irene Tracey Head of Department of Clinical Neurosciences Pauline Neville-Jones Baronness and former Counter Terrorism government minister

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.

Controversies surrounding the Blavatnik School of Government: BSG invited Putin minister for "special masterclass" In 2013, Putin’s former financial minister Aleksey Kudrin was invited to the BSG to conduct “a special masterclass on his experiences in the Russian government”. Kudrin was Russia’s Minister of Finance between 2000 and 2011. Vladimir Milov informed Cherwell: “Kudrin was a pretty loyal servant of Putin. He helped him by consolidating a lot of money and petrol revenue in the so-called stabilisation fund. He’s the architect of a system of control over key assets in the economy and a system which accumulated hundreds of billions of dollars, which really helped to strengthen Putin’s political control over Russia.” A University spokesperson stated that a speaker invitiation does not equate to endorsement. Image Credit: Afeda/CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons Dean of BSG sat down for interview with RT The Dean of the BSG, Ngaire Woods, was interviewed by RT, Putin-backed broadcaster, in 2015. The Russian broadcaster recently had their Ofcom licence stripped the regulators took note of “RT’s relationship with the Russian Federation”. In the interview, Ngaire Woods, the Dean of the BSG, praised the institution in her interviw with RT: “In building the School, we are building scholarship programmes from each region of the world funded from each region of the world.” Alex Salmond and other British figures have long faced criticisim for appearing on RT. Professor Ngaire Woods has been contacted for comment. Image Credit; Manuel Lopez/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 via Flickr

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 an FT 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.

Artwork by Ben Beechener.

Dr Miranda Brawn Award launched to empower underrepresented students

Annie Lu
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Dr Miranda Brawn Award launched to empower underrepresented students

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.”

It’s Oxford who celebrate: Men win while women draw in rugby Varsity Matches

Maurício Alencar
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It’s Oxford who celebrate: Men win while women draw in rugby Varsity Matches

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.

Image Credit: Matt Impey

Lady Margaret Hall accused of silencing rape victim

Meg Lintern
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Lady Margaret Hall accused of silencing rape victim

CW: rape, sexual assault

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.”

Image credit: Herbi1922 // CC BY-SA 4.0

If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article and would like to seek support, please reach out to any of the following: 

It Happens Here: https://www.ithappenshere.co.uk/need-support

Oxford Sexual Abuse and Rape Crisis Centre: https://www.osarcc.org.uk/

University of Oxford Sexual Assault Support Service: https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/welfare/supportservice

Cherwell closes after someone on Oxfess called it a “rag”

Cherwell
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Cherwell closes after someone on Oxfess called it a “rag”

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.”  

Oxfess has not been contacted for comment. 

Leader: The High Tide Swimmers

Estelle Atkinson
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Leader: The High Tide Swimmers

The only diary I’ve ever kept for more than a few days was during a two week stay at my grandma’s house in the Essex countryside. It was the summer before my first year at Oxford, and my mom and I were staying in a small cabin out in the garden, which had just about room enough for a bed, narrow desk, and two sealed suitcases. 

We had spent the earlier part of the summer watching BBC Four’s Detectorists, a television series which follows the Danebury Metal Detecting Club as they trawl the hazily sunny English countryside; it seemed something of a mirage to us. The backlit poppies, recently ploughed fields, and breezy English oak branches sparkled to the tune of the series’ theme song, sung by folk singer-songwriter Johnny Flynn. We found ourselves, in the equally hazy transition from summer into the early, warmer days of Autumn, faced with the opportunity to live as buoyantly as the poppies, with Johnny Flynn playing in the background. 

Where we might have enjoyed an incredibly unstructured couple of weeks, we found ourselves rigidly following the schedule of the ocean’s tide. A short drive away from my grandma’s house is Brightlingsea Beach, which features a pool refreshed by the high tide, a small harbour for paddle boats and the more irritating jet skis, and sandy stretches until the sand turns to mud. In terms of swimming, most locals – and the swimmers are mostly locals – favour Splash Point: a series of concrete steps leading down to a deeper descent into the groynes, aptly named, as the water splashes over the sea wall on choppy days. 

Open water, and specifically cold water swimming, has recently seen a surge in popularity, a trend which has also inspired a number of students here in Oxford to take it up in Port Meadow, and Hinksey Lake. The swims are organised in such a fashion as to bring like-minded people together. This usually occurs through Facebook groups. My mom and I, however, showed up for our first swim at high tide to find a group of swimmers – primarily women, primarily older – frolicking, for lack of a more accurate word. 

Splash Point is unswimmable when the tide is low and the mud flats are left exposed, leaving a comfortable hour of swim time once each day. We quickly realised that despite the lack of formal organisation, this group of swimmers was a community united in their shared tidal-centric schedule. After a few days, we began to talk with some of the women. They revealed that they had been making up stories about me and where I maybe came from. Thereafter, each high tide we would be greeted with the same warm “hi ladies!” And after every swim, my mom and I would stop by the beach cafe for a bacon bap and hot chocolate, which became more and more welcome the faster the water’s temperature dropped. Everyday my diary read: “swimming again with the high tide ladies.” 

As the days went on, fewer swimmers showed up. There were tides where we had the stretch of sea all to ourselves, and comments from chilly passersby – “warmer in there I reckon!” – were frequent. The same person had been serving us our bacon baps and hot chocolate each day, and she began to question our persistence as October neared. On our last day in Brightlingsea, she greeted us: “hello! I knew you crazy ladies would come!” to which we had to bid her a sad goodbye. 

I had returned for solo visits, and swims, throughout the following year, but it was only over a year later that my mom and I returned together. Still with Johnny Flynn playing in the hire car, we made our way to an early morning high tide at Splash Point. This time, the memory of summer did not linger; it was undeniably winter. The water was so cold it was painful, and we only managed to immerse ourselves for a minute or so. While there was no crowd of swimmers, immediately we recognised a couple of our friends from the summer before last. I could tell that they didn’t recognise us. Still, the women introduced themselves, unknowingly, for a second time. They were as cheery and welcoming as when we first joined the high tide swimmers, and we never corrected them. Instead, I silently swelled with an immense gratitude for the tide, for both continuing to come in and for continuing to create joy in its purest form, like clockwork. I am content that if I were to swim tomorrow, at high tide, I would most likely find a friendly face that knew and understood how the sea guided me throughout some of the most peaceful and reviving weeks I’ve lived so far. 

Image credit: Estelle Atkinson

Worcester College warned of “unlawful discrimination” against Christians

Estelle Atkinson
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Worcester College warned of “unlawful discrimination” against Christians

Worcester College has been warned it could be “unlawfully discriminating against Christians” after the College apologised for hosting a controversial conference and reportedly canceled a second conference booking following complaints from students. In a public letter addressed to David Isaac CBE, the Provost of Worcester College, the Free Speech Union calls these complaints “ill-founded” and for the College to apologise to Christian Concern, a group that aims to “make Jesus and his ways known, to protect the freedom to live and speak for him, and to empower Christians to be compassionate and courageous ambassadors.” 

In September 2021, Christian Concern held its annual Wilberforce Academy at Worcester College. The curriculum of the Academy addressed a new theme each day, including “Life & Health” and “The Art of Freedom,” with subtopics including “Beginning and End of Life Issues,” “Homosexuality and Transgenderism,” and “The Nature of Islam.” Students complained that the portion of the curriculum discussing Islam was islamophobic. 

Wilberforce Academy as an organisation opposes abortion, same-sex marriage, and banning ‘conversion therapy;’ speakers on the course appeared to draw connections between homosexuality and paedophilia. 

Worcester College apologised for hosting the event, and media outlets have reported that the College then cancelled a second booking after students complained that they were “distressed” by the event. Worcester College denies that any conference booking has been cancelled. 

The student complaints included allegations that attendees were conducting “aggressive leafleting” and approaching students to discuss LGBTQ+ ‘conversion therapy.’ Wilf Stephenson, the College’s interim finance and estates bursar, affirmed these complaints, in addition to alleging that attendees had been “unduly demanding” and in breach of COVID protocols. 

An independent review of the incident, conducted by lawyer Michael Stewart, found that there was no evidence to support these allegations, and that college staff were not able to find or provide a copy of the leaflet. The review also said that the College did not have any COVID protocols in place at the time. Worcester College told Cherwell that it does not accept many of the findings in the review. 

Following the inquiry, Toby Young, the General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, wrote a letter to David Isaac, saying that “the College’s uncritical acceptance of claims that the conference harmed students was a serious error.

“In keeping with, as you put it yourself, your own and the College’s commitment to freedom of speech, the College should have investigated and faced down students’ ill-founded complaints. No higher education institution should apologise for free speech.” 

Young suggested that the College “put right its error” by issuing an apology to Christian Concern and taking its booking for the next Wilberforce Academy conference in September 2022. Young concluded: “You do not need reminding that refusing to provide the College’s services because of Christian Concern’s religious beliefs would constitute unlawful discrimination.” 

Worcester College has offered to meet Christian Concern to engage in direct discussion.

Worcester College told Cherwell: “Worcester College wishes to clarify that, contrary to what is being said in the media, no conference booking has been cancelled. The College does not accept many of the findings in Christian Concern’s own report, and we are disappointed that this report has been published without us having the opportunity to discuss it in advance. The College looks forward to a constructive meeting with Christian Concern and the chance to discuss properly the issues raised.  It does not wish to comment further at this stage except to make it very clear that the College supports free speech and to confirm that it remains one of the core values of Worcester.”

In a press release, Andrea Williams, Chief Executive of Christian Concern, said “It is disappointing that such a prestigious university and college should be cancelling Christian beliefs, debate and free speech.

“Oxford University should continue to stand for free speech and free expression and allow its students to have the intellectual ability to decide whether they wish to attend external events, and to make up their own minds on what they hear.”

Image Credit: Andrew Shiva / CC BY-SA 4.0

‘Uninhibitedly comical’ – Review: The Improv Squeeze

Anya Biletsky
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‘Uninhibitedly comical’ – Review: The Improv Squeeze

Ever wondered what it would be like to experience a rock musical about a bear that escapes from a circus and ends up dancing with a pair of teenagers? This was the premise of Cops and Robbers Productions’ The Improv Squeeze on closing night of its five-day run in Week 7. 

The story varied from night to night depending on a prompt given by a member of the audience. On the night I went, the four-piece – actors Lili Herbert, Leo Kitay, and Vicky Stone, and musician Max Blansjaar – had to concoct and perform a musical related somehow to the childhood nightmare of an individual in the front row: the terrors of a Teletubby-like bear lurking in his closet.

Going in, I admit I had my doubts as to how successfully the team would combine the improvised story with the promised ‘rock musical’ aspect. However, The Improv Squeeze entirely surpassed my expectations. The performers responded assuredly to the prompt and delivered a cohesive, entertaining and – dare I say it – heart-warming musical which was received with barrels of laughter. 

To my surprise, the seating area in the Playhouse’s Burton Taylor Studio, which hosted The Improv Squeeze, was so packed that some audience members had to sit on the steps in the aisle for want of chairs. Even they seemed to have forgotten about their slightly uncomfortable seating arrangement by the end of the evening.

When the house lights went  down, the performers bounded onto the stage and explained to the audience how the show was going to work, encouraging us to tell them about a recurring nightmare they had had as a child. When they received their stimulus, the performers took a moment to get ready, tacitly agreeing on when to begin. A deep breath, and they sprung, and I mean sprung, into action. From the get-go, the show’s momentum did not waver.

Herbert, Kitay, and Stone are impressive improvisers with great comic timing and an infectious truckload of energy. Wearing funky blazers and a whole lot of personality, they bounced off each other, communicating in silent glances and with seemingly telepathic energy. The cast had the BT Studio reverberating with liveliness – not a member of the audience could deny their explosive charm. Blansjaar assessed the mood of each scene and complemented it on his keyboard and bass. He treated the audience to a varied set, from an upbeat piece reflecting the joy of Samuel and Marie as they danced with Cassie (the bear) to a slower, Pink Panther-esque melody when a melodramatic letter was being read aloud. Aided by no props or set, save the instruments played by Blansjaar at the back, and no costume changes, it would have been easy for the small cast to feel vulnerable and exposed on the stage. But if they were nervous, they certainly didn’t show it.

Each actor took on two characters, switching roles from scene to scene. Kitay and Herbert kicked off the show as Samuel and Marie, two almost-adults navigating the trials and tribulations of growing up. Marie is finding it particularly challenging: even at the ripe old age of 19, she is used to having bedtime stories read to her – a nod to the audience member’s dream – but she is determined to make the transition into adulthood. “Do you think we could do something adult? Like go to the post office?” she asks Samuel innocently, to roars of laughter from the audience.

In the next scene, we meet Marie’s mother and grandmother, played by Stone and Kitay. They are discussing the way Marie seems to have changed since she started hanging out with Samuel. Kitay was hilarious as Marie’s grandmother. Only in improvised theatre would we ever see a scene centered around a hunched-over old lady eating (slurping? drinking?) a casserole through a straw, but I loved every second of it. I have to give it to the actors for the witty lines and absurdly creative scenarios they came up with on the spot. For something which could easily have waded into the tedious, superficial, or unoriginal, The Improv Squeeze did a fantastic job of keeping the dialogue from lulling and the story from becoming banal.

Stone and Herbert made a particularly entertaining duo in their roles as the leaders of Grimbleby’s Circus for Adults, a circus specialising in ludicrous animal hybrids and questionable animal welfare. After a vibrant song-and-dance number establishes them as a comedy-classic villain and sidekick pair (think Home Alone’s Harry and Marv), they realise, to their horror, that one of their hybrid bears, one with seven udders no less, has escaped from the circus. So, naturally, they set off on a wild goose chase to bring it back. It is Samuel and Marie who find the bear, dress it in a tutu, and call it Cassie. 

Kitay and Herbert manage to make even their interactions with a 6-foot bear, invisible to the audience, endearing. For Marie, the whole affair is pivotal in her trajectory as a growing woman. She confesses to Samuel how she feels that they have become like Cassie’s parents; the experience has brought them closer together as friends. At this point I wondered how a musical about a rampaging hybrid bear had turned into a moving coming-of-age story about friendship and growing up.

At points I almost forgot that it was being improvised, entranced as I was by the actors’ skill at switching effortlessly from character to character and keeping the storyline flowing throughout. Occasionally the cast would surrender to barely-suppressed giggles, but this only heightened the comedy of the situation. When Kitay entered a scene bearing a letter, Stone and Herbert, as the circus leaders, smoothly deflected having to improvise reading it aloud by stating that they were missing their shared pair of reading glasses. Somehow, given the 94 — yes, 94 — years of ‘close partnership’ that bound the two together, even this explanation was convincing enough.

The overall mood of the evening was one of exuberance. I’m curious to know what the performances on the other nights entailed, but I have no doubts that whatever they served up was as uninhibitedly comical and light-hearted as what we were lucky enough to witness.

Image credit: Lizzy Nightingale

Oli Hall’s Oxford United Updates – W10

Oliver Hall
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Oli Hall’s Oxford United Updates – W10

Weekly Round-Up

It was all slightly calmer for Oxford United this week with the women’s team and the under-21s taking a week off from competitive games.  There was no lack of drama though as the senior men’s fixture ended in typically chaotic fashion at the Kassam.

Friday saw a positive start to the weekend with midfielder Mark Sykes earning his first call-up to the Republic of Ireland squad.  He will be a part of the team that is set to face Belgium and Lithuania next week.  The midfielder becomes the third Oxford player to earn a call-up this international break and as a result, the Yellows have had their game against Morecambe on the 26th March rearranged.

Saturday started with Merit League action for the Under-18s.  They played host to Gillingham in a closely fought affair that ended 0-0.  Both sides played a number of trialists and the defences dominated in a game of few clear-cut opportunities.

The senior men rescued a point late on at the Kassam against Ipswich later in the day in a 1-1 draw.  Bersant Celina had given the visitors the lead with 20 minutes to go but Luke McNally headed home in the fifth minute of added time for a well-deserved draw.

The men now sit fifth in League One, two points behind Plymouth Argyle above them.  With their match against Morecambe postponed, their next game will see them travel to Plymouth on 2nd April.

Match Report: Oxford United 1-1 Ipswich Town

Oxford United dramatically salvaged a late draw at the Kassam on Saturday as Luke McNally headed home in the 95th minute against promotion rivals Ipswich.

The game saw the biggest home attendance of the season so far for the Us with 11 029 fans in fine voice before kick-off and during the game.  

Ipswich were unbeaten in nine going into the game and showed their defensive steel throughout a tight first-half.  Gavin Whyte looked the most likely to break the deadlock early on, forcing two saves from Walton in the Ipswich net inside the first ten minutes.  

Wes Burns peppered the Oxford box with crosses and appeared Town’s best hope of goal in that first period but the Yellow’s defence stood strong and the sides went into the break level at 0-0.

The game opened up around the hour mark and it was the visitors who began to dominate, forcing saves from Eastwood in the 65th minute and keeping up that pressure until they got the breakthrough.

With twenty minutes left to play Burns used his skill to work some space and play the ball into Kosovan international Bersant Celina.  He never looked like missing from inside ten yards and the away fans were delighted with his tidy finish.

United then began to pile forward and their abundance of attacking quality finally bore fruit deep into added time.  In the 95th minute, the home side earnt a corner and piled everyone, including goalkeeper Eastwood, into the Ipswich box.  Herbie Kane’s delivery was sumptuous and McNally met it emphatically to head home and rescue a point for the home team on a day when they weren’t at their best.

Image: Steve Daniels

“Not your best Judy”: The gay man’s misogyny

Fionn McFadden
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“Not your best Judy”: The gay man’s misogyny

CW: homophobia, misogyny, racism, sexual violence

Gay men are not immune from contributing to the misogyny women face. In fact, they are often the worst offenders. This must change.

George and Jules. Stanford and Carrie. Damian and Janis.

The “gay best friend”.

A double–edged sword: both a timeless Western film trope, and a stereotype entrenched in the near-universal experiences of gay men. Whilst the former is, at best, a cheesy plot driver, the latter can extend a lifeline for young gay men in heteronormative environments like high schools and workplaces, many of whom still tremble behind airtight closet doors. A chance to play a role that will finally be met with acceptance, albeit contingent on an accepted notion of how a gay man should behave – one often laced with homophobic stereotypes. Nonetheless, the trope as both a cultural phenomenon and a lived experience has produced the same result: the widespread societal conception that a sense of solidarity exists between gay men and (mainly cisgender, straight/bisexual) women. Through the fact that we both face oppression of varying degrees and types from straight men, we are thought to share parts of the same struggle. Consequently, by banding together, we can alleviate each other of the damaging consequences of homophobia and misogyny.

This solidarity is evident through so many of our cultural practices: diva-worship, for example, which Daniel Harris[1] attributes to the “almost universal experience of homosexual ostracism and insecurity”. Gay men see ‘divas’ like Judy Garland, Diana Ross, and Lady Gaga as wielding the power to overcome the oppression of straight men, and attempt to attain some measure of this same power through idolisation. On the flip side, we can return to the aforementioned cinematic representation of the “gay best friend”, who, as Christine Linnell writes, is often stereotyped as a “wise oracle” of “love and romance”, supporting the female protagonist in overcoming her issues with men, only to fade into the background with little more personal or emotional development.

At this point, it is important to admit that I would be lying if I sat here and wrote that I do not engage in, nor benefit from, this phenomenon of solidarity, as a gay, masculine-presenting person. For example, as I am typing away, iced oat-milk mocha in hand, Ariana Grande’s “Into You” is blasting through my earphones: a well-known queer anthem from a woman worshiped amongst gay men for the reasons outlined above. The majority of my close friends are women, from whom I find a sense of comfort, safety, and to an extent solidarity, and with whom I am able to indulge in conversations about sex, romance, and fashion, free from the judgement I fear I would get from a straight man.

And of course, there is nothing wrong with ‘stanning’ Madonna or proudly proclaiming to your close female friend that ‘all men are trash’. In fact, I would encourage both. However, where the problem begins is that this perceived solidarity is taken beyond just that. Homophobia and misogyny are equally as appalling forms of hatred, both which entail ostracisation, violence, and entrenched discrimination. Nonetheless, they are distinct forms of hatred which operate and affect their intended targets in completely different ways. Whilst the sense of solidarity between gay men and women does provide comfort, it does not mean in any way that gay men can relate to the unique struggles women face under misogyny (and, evidently, vice versa).

Having had this conversation recently with close friends, it got me thinking not only about my own behaviour as someone who is both gay and masculine-presenting, but also about a frequently overlooked fact. This is that, unfortunately, the limits of this solidarity are something which many (mainly white, cisgender) gay men fail to recognise, and which has partially contributed towards misogyny becoming entrenched deep within the cisgender, gay male community. Cisgender gay men are in no way immune, merely on the basis of their sexuality, from perpetuating the misogynistic power structures and behaviours that oppress women. Cisgender gay men, clearly, still benefit from patriarchy, and do not have to contend with discrimination based on both women’s biological sex, and gender identity, as Tim Murphy notes:

 “Gay men, you don’t make 77 cents to a man’s dollar. You don’t have to worry, based on the state where you live, about losing access to birth control or abortion. You (generally) don’t worry about your biological clock ticking, or have to make complicated choices about how to balance childbearing and work, as many women do.”

Nonetheless, the myth that “the oppressed cannot oppress” still stands strong in many gay male circles, and in fact somewhat turbocharges misogyny amongst gay men, as they believe that their lack of sexual attraction to women, alongside the notion that they share the same struggles, means that they are exempt from misogynistic behaviour and rhetoric, as noted by Sadie Hale and Tomás Ojeda[2]. What is even more unfortunate is that this perceived immunity means that the examples of engrained misogynistic behaviour from gay men are countless. 

Let’s start with the basics, taking as our starting point the term “fag hag”- an epithet used frequently by gay men towards (largely cisgender, straight/bisexual) women who are perceived to spend much of their time with gay men, with the connotation that such an alliance is demonstrative or strategic. The woman is accused of making these friendships purely on the basis that the man is gay, and in doing so, she reinforces many negative stereotypes about gay men, such as that they exist purely as a woman’s sidekick.

Whilst (largely cisgender, straight/bisexual) women of course can and sometimes do partake in homophobic behaviour through the reduction of gay men to a mere effeminate accessory, this term is in fact a prime example of gay male misogyny. Instead of being met with constructive criticism, forcing the woman in question to hold herself accountable for her engagement in homophobic behaviour,  she is instead brandished as a “hag” – a long-standing misogynistic trope which mocks her purely on the basis of her existence as a woman, implying that through this behaviour she is physically unattractive and undesirable. Here, the gay man actively engages in the well-established misogynistic action of reducing a woman’s value merely to her desirability through a male lens. 

Insulting or demonising women’s appearances is evident in another form of distinctly gay male misogyny entrenched in the origins of British drag. The art form has changed a lot, represented nowadays by performers like Bimini Bon Boulash who emphasise the gender fluidity and celebration of femininity inherent to drag, but it cannot be denied that, beyond the end-of-pier and bit-of-rouge pantomime influences, the extremes of the “panto-dame” stereotype, which in some scenes continues to underpin the practice of drag in Britain, are laced with misogynistic tropes that insult and exaggerate distinctly female characteristics. Drag, whilst rightly a joyous and celebrated art form, is nonetheless riddled with problems of misogyny, most notably and alarmingly represented through the criticism of (and until very recently,  discrimination preventing) the inclusion of AFAB (assigned female at birth) and transgender women queens in drag shows such as RuPaul’s Drag Race, which originated largely from cisgender gay men, including RuPaul himself. 

Misogyny from gay men runs even deeper and in even more overtly damaging forms. As already stated, a key source of misogyny from gay men stems from their lack of sexual attraction to women, creating a feeling of immunity from one of the key tenets of patriarchal oppression: sexual violence. A pervasive issue, and an almost universal experience for women, sexual violence takes many forms: sexualisation, verbal abuse, physical abuse, and others besides. And gay men, as well as straight men, perpetrate them all.

Many of the examples of this behaviour I can think of take place right here at the University of Oxford, the political and social queer circles of which are notoriously dominated by racism, transphobia, and misogyny, and catered towards the elitist comforts of the rich, white, cisgender gay man. I have witnessed gay men non-consensually ripping into their female friends’ appearances and sex lives, seemingly for their own entertainment, and then getting aggravated when their friends don’t understand that it is “just a joke”. I have heard gay men make sexually-charged jibes at their female friends, insulting or degrading their features in a manner which when done by a straight man is called out with the fire of a thousand suns as misogynistic sexual harassment. I have heard too many stories from female friends of gay men (some of whom occupy high-up positions in political societies) who have subjected them to inappropriate and non-consensual touching. Upon confrontation, the gay man has laughed off the incident in a way which implies that it does not matter, since they are “just one of the girls”, blatantly ignoring the fundamental fact that sexual violence centres on power dynamics, not sexual attraction. Instances such as this are well documented, but the overall phenomenon remains unrecognised as gay men are afforded a conceptual immunity against partaking in sexual violence against women. This must end, and those who continue to believe such behaviour is acceptable must be held accountable.

The LGBTQIA+ community is and has always been riddled with myriads of forms of discrimination and oppression: notably, as aforementioned, racism, transphobia, and misogyny. Two of these intersect in misogynoir, a term coined by Moira Bailey in her seminal 2010 essay ‘They ain’t talking about me…,’ which describes “where racism and sexism meet, an understanding of anti-black misogyny.” It follows that within the LGBTQIA+ community, misogynoir inevitably stems from the dominance of white, gay, cisgender men. Examples of racism from white gay men are well known, including through racist dating preferences on Grindr. However, the more specific form of oppression represented by misogynoir originates from the intersection of the racism, and sexism, so present amongst white gay men.

This can currently be seen through the ongoing debate on social media platform TikTok regarding the behaviour of Ashton Baez (username @baezashton), a cisgender, white, gay male ‘influencer’ who has been accused of appropriating the vernacular, mannerisms, and distinct style most often attributed to Black women, posting videos in which he puts on a “blaccent” and dances nonchalantly to “I Get Out”, a 2002 song by American singer Lauryn Hill explicitly detailing her struggles as a Black woman. As Mark Williams (username @milliamss) put it, Baez’s behaviour is an example of how white, cisgender gay men appropriate Black femininity “as a means of rebellion and liberation”, and in doing so, as noted by Maxtyn Kamryn (username @alienstbh000), build platforms “off of mimicking people of colour”, in particular Black women.

Gay male misogynoir is also evident in the drag community. Anyone who has seen Drag Race, in particular the American seasons, will know that white queens and fans (who are often cisgender gay men) frequently use derogatory terms historically aimed at Black women to brand a queen’s drag as cheap, tacky, and undesirable. Season 8’s Derrick Barry’s repeated branding of winner Bob the Drag Queen’s style as ‘ratchet’ serves as the archetype of this gay male misogynoir. This ingrained misogynoir is also something I have witnessed here at Oxford: last term, I was conversing with a fellow white gay male student about my upcoming trip to London, and my uncertainty about attending the nightclub Heaven given the venue’s reputation for turning away queer women of colour.

“I mean, there’s a reason they do that” he responded, without hesitation.

He struggled to tell me exactly what this reason was, but I can guess with strong confidence that it was rooted in misogynoir. This type of behaviour further serves as an example of the power dynamics cisgender white gay men uphold, and the way they are actively abused at this intersection of misogyny and racism, often at the expense of fellow members of the LGBTQIA+ community. Traditionally queer spaces, in particular queer bars and clubs, have a huge historical problem with domination by white gay men, resulting in the exclusion of, notably, transgender women of colour, who have so often been at the forefront of the fight for queer liberation, and consequently bore the brunt of the worst consequences. The television series Pose heartbreakingly demonstrates this, in a scene from Season 1 in which the trans women of colour Blanca and Angel are kicked out of a bar run by white gay men, purely because they are trans women of colour. The oft-tweeted mantra that white cisgender ‘twinks’ are the “weak link” of the community indeed holds substantial truth in this regard.

So, is gay male misogyny an extension of the misogyny we so often attribute uniquely to straight men, or is it its own distinct and insidious form? The answer is, it is both. Gay men retain their male privilege under the incumbent patriarchal structures, whilst, as argued by Tim Bergling[3], no-femmes attitudes have dominated and continue to dominate the gay male psyche, ranging from exclusionary dating ads in newspapers during the 1980s, now through to “straight-acting” preferences on hookup apps. Hale and Ojeda draw on Judith Butler’s concept of “melancholy gender”[4] to explain this aversion to the feminine in the gay male community as “a violent response towards queer subjectivities that threaten heterosexualised gender identities”. When combined, these strands of gay male misogyny thus become a powerful, destructive force, masked by an abuse of a tenuous solidarity.

My purpose in writing this article is not some ‘holier-than-thou’ rant. All gay men, myself included, are guilty of upholding these misogynistic power structures, and of engaging in this rhetoric and these behaviours, damaging the lives of the women around us, and feeding into other forms of discrimination like racism and transphobia. Nor is it to say that women are guilt-free of homophobia – I myself have many experiences of being strung along as the gay best friend, or being branded as “ditsy” and unintelligent by women purely on the basis of my sexuality.

My purpose is to highlight the systemic rot at the centre of the (mostly white and cisgender) gay male community, whereby instead of standing strong as allies to women, recognising our male privilege and using it to actively dismantle the patriarchy, we repeatedly fail women through engaging in both established and unique forms of misogynistic behaviour and rhetoric. It is not enough that gay men stand by passively when these forms of misogyny are clearly on display: they must be called out and the men behind them held accountable. Otherwise, we will play into the patriarchal system of oppression that we claim to be so removed from. Just like, as feminists, we must turn away from the white TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) feminism of the likes of J.K. Rowling, we must turn away from male-dominated, Perez Hilton-esque notions of queer liberation that actively seek to exclude or even oppress women.

In Charles Donovan’s suffocatingly reactionary 2017 piece ‘The Dangerous ‘Gay Men are Misogynists’ Movement’, he concludes that “there’s a good article to be written about misogyny among gay men”, dismissing the “ill-researched, flimsy, anecdotal hate pieces” which have laid out the various ways gay men contribute to systemic misogyny. Donovan argues that these “hate pieces” are highly dangerous, as they hark back to the days of classing gay men as ill, riddled with the sickness of misogyny, attributed to them on the basis of their sexuality and the heteronormative oppression they face. Well, in rising to Donovan’s challenge to be the first “good article” on male misogyny, I will conclude with an attack on his central thesis (if one can call it that). It is not an oppressive, heteronormative expectation to hold a gay man to the same standards as a straight man concerning their behaviour towards women. By seeking to dismantle the patriarchy and treat women with respect and equality, you’re not a “pick-me gay” kneeling to the demands of heterosexuality. You’re simply not a misogynist. I know which one I’d rather be.

Image Credit: May H. Pham/CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

[1] D. Harris, The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture (1997)

[2] S. E. Hale and T. Ojeda, ‘Acceptable Femininity? Gay Male Misogyny and the Policing of Queer Femininities’ (2018)

[3] T. Bergling , Sissyphobia: Gay Men and Effeminate Behaviour (2001)

[4] J. Butler, ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ (1997) 

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