Monday 14th July 2025
Blog Page 28

Zero social anxiety?

Ben O'Brien
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Zero social anxiety?

If you’re anything like me, you will have often wondered what the world would be like if there was no social anxiety in it. As far as my own life is concerned, I like to imagine things would have turned out very differently. With a bit of luck, I would have been a Marvin Gaye-style R&B singer, with a string of number one hits and an enormous bank balance to show for it. I would have had a worldwide fan base, and it would have been difficult to walk down Holywell Street without my security guards, due to the crowds. The fact that none of these things happened is only due to the fact that I have a horrible fear of singing and dancing in front of other people. In a social anxiety-free world, none of that would have been a problem. There would have been nothing to hold me back.

With all this in mind, it was with great interest that I recently stumbled upon a new TikTok trend which promised to reveal to me exactly what the anxiety-free world would look like beyond my own narrow Marvin Gaye-centred perspective. The premise of “POV: zero social anxiety” is a simple one. A man (and for some reason it is always a man) films his day POV-style as he walks about a random town or city making himself known to the people he comes across. He fist-bumps and high-fives everyone he passes in the street. He goes into shops and tells elderly ladies that he likes their flowery jackets. He walks into pubs and asks a man watching the football alone what the score is. Once told, he does a loud friendly laugh, shakes the man’s hand, and leaves.

The trend’s message is clear: if only we’d all act as the real us wants to, we’d see that other people are less scary than we think – and, in actual fact, everybody would like us. The only problem with the message is that it’s undermined by reality. As the videos show, yes, some people are glad to be high-fived in the street by strangers, and some are happy to be stopped for a chat, even when they are in the middle of filling up their car. But what the videos also show is that just as many people don’t want to be bothered while they’re going about their daily lives. Sometimes the man watching football alone in the pub really does just want to watch football alone in the pub. Sometimes the man staring confusedly at his shopping list really doesn’t want a fist-bump. There’s no two ways about it.

What the trend unwittingly shows, of course, is that there are good reasons why we don’t all act like zero-social-anxiety-man, at least not all the time. The reasons have less to do with social anxiety than with simply being able to read another person’s body language. When we don’t talk to other people, sometimes that’s just because we know they don’t want to be talked to, not because we’re scared about what will happen if we do try and strike up a conversation. Sure, we might get it wrong some of the time, usually by erring too much on the side of caution. But most of us are better judges of social situations than the zero-social-anxiety trend would have us think.

Although perhaps the bigger problem with the trend is the idea that getting rid of social anxiety once and for all is an achievable aspiration in the first place. As psychologist Tracy Denning-Tiwary points out, though being overly anxious is of course a real problem for many, it is also a normal part of life to have some degree of social anxiety. It is our brain’s response to uncertainty about the future. We get climate anxiety because we aren’t sure if the planet’s future is good or bad. We get career anxiety because we aren’t sure the Oxford degree, which was supposed to get us a job when we leave here, will actually do so. Social anxiety is just another example of this: we can never be completely sure how people are going to respond to us, and the idea that we can be is plainly false.

None of this is to say that the zero-social-anxiety trend does not have some good to it, or that the creators themselves don’t have good intentions. If trends like this help people see that others don’t always react badly to a friendly hello from a stranger, for instance, then surely that’s a good thing. Nevertheless, that shouldn’t take away from the fact that the premise of “zero social anxiety” is a problematic one. Even if he is well-meaning, what zero-social-anxiety-man seems to be implying is that if we don’t all behave like him, there must be something wrong with us. In doing so, he turns what’s in actual fact normal human behaviour – not fist-bumping every single person we come across – into something ‘abnormal’. In other words, we are the ones that have the problem, not him.

Ex-Student Spotlight: Catherine Hoskyns, author, academic, and feminist

Billy Jeffs
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Ex-Student Spotlight: Catherine Hoskyns, author, academic, and feminist

Cherwell: What was your experience like as a woman at Oxford in the 1950s? 

Hoskyns: Well, I was there from 1953-56 and they did have women students, so we were quite privileged. I was at St. Hilda’s, and there were I think four women’s colleges, but it was a kind of carved-out space for women in a male dominated world. We went to lectures with male students and I had some tutorial sessions with C.S. Lewis. He was a very strange person. He was very monosyllabic. He wasn’t at all chatty. The women’s colleges were separate and we were locked in about 10 o’clock, but there was a lot of climbing over the walls, in both directions. And a friend of mine actually got a key cut to the side door. That was useful. There was a bit of intermingling, as you might expect. 

Cherwell: You worked at Cherwell at university – what was your experience like with that? 

Hoskyns: I was the film and theatre critic and reviews editor. There was a really funny occasion where I got what I thought was a very good review of a book and I wanted to put it in full, but there wasn’t enough space. So I left out the cinema times – we had what the different cinemas were showing, and I left that out in order to include this review in full. And the editor sent for me and he said, never do that again. He said, don’t you realise people only read the paper to see what’s on at the cinema? They don’t really read it for these intellectual reviews and so on. 

Cherwell: Moving beyond your time at university, you worked for a long time as a journalist. Could you tell us about that? 

Hoskyns: Well, I went to Africa because I got interested in Kenya (a British colony) while I was at Oxford and soon after. Kenya was in a real crisis then because of the Mau Mau rebellion – there was a revolt among the Kikuyu tribe, which was very violent and was repressed with extreme violence by the British. 

The British army was out there, but there was a lot of sympathy for the Kikuyu in other areas because they’d been so severely repressed. They couldn’t grow cash crops. They were very poorly paid. They’d been excluded from their land, so they were often working as labour on territory that they thought was theirs. And they were given no representation, and nobody would listen to them. So they took to violence in order to make a point. And a number of white settlers were killed, farms were destroyed. And then it was repressed by the British.  

So when I came out, that was more or less finished, but the question was what to do. And it was clear that the British had to give some representation to Africans. They couldn’t just go on treating them as slaves and giving them no possibility of political or legal action. And so I came in just that stage when other African politicians were beginning to emerge and when it was agreed that there would be some African representation in the legislative assembly, and there would be elections.  

So it was quite an exciting time to come. I got a job on a paper called The Colonial Times, which sounded very right wing, but it was actually an Asian paper, which was quite radical. It was run by a Gujarati family, and had had a tradition of siding with the Africans against the British. 

Cherwell: You have also worked as an academic on the evaluation of women’s unpaid work. 

Hoskyns: Yes, that’s right. My nephew Nicky was working in the cooperatives in Nicaragua and when I visited, I think in 2010, we got The Body Shop to actually include a component for the women’s unpaid work in the cooperative as one of the costs of producing sesame. I think this issue is a good one to take up as a feminist, the unpaid work that women do, which is not counted or valued. It’s actually a subsidy to capitalism.  

But that was a bit later. I became a feminist because of having a baby and being cut out and being treated as a non-person. My daughter was born in 1968, and the early seventies were a time when feminism was really taking off and a lot of small groups were formed. And I was at a very famous conference in Oxford held first in Ruskin College and then in the Oxford Union – it was the first National Women’s Liberation conference. That was very energizing. When I was at Oxford as a student, women weren’t allowed to be members of the Union. 

Worcester academics drank from a human skull in formals until 2015

Callum Stove
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Worcester academics drank from a human skull in formals until 2015

A drinking vessel made from a human skull was used by academics at Worcester College during formal meals until 2015, a new book by an Oxford professor has shown. The vessel is now stored in the college’s archives, where access to it is denied.

The book, Every Monument Will Fall, by archaeology fellow Professor Dan Hicks, suggests that the skull was used to hold wine and later chocolates when it began to leak. Hicks, also Curator of World Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum, traced the history of the skull – donated to the college in 1947 – as part of his aim to reveal “legacies of militarism, slavery, racism and white supremacy” present in cultural institutions”.

Although there is no record of the individual to whom skull belongs, its size, age, and circumstantial evidence indicate that it may have come from the Caribbean. The professor further suggests that it may have belonged to an enslaved woman living around 225 years ago.

The scientific basis of this point, however, has been contested. Worcester told Cherwell: “DNA testing was unable to identify the geographic or ethnic origin of the skull and, as such, the speculation that the skull is that of an enslaved woman from the Caribbean cannot be substantiated.” The college told Cherwell that whilst such a drinking vessel did exist in the Senior Common Room and was “occasionally used as tableware”, there is “no evidence to confirm whether or not it was used for serving wine.” 

However, the British chain of ownership is undisputed: the cup was  donated to the college in 1946 by the eugenicist George Pitt Rivers. The donation followed his release from internment during the Second World War for his support of the British Union of Fascists leader Sir Oswald Mosely.

The skull cup was a part of the family’s collection after his grandfather, the archaeologist Augustus Pitt Rivers, purchased it the same year he founded the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1884.

It was acquired at a Sotheby’s auction from Bernhard Smith – himself an Oriel College graduate – who Hicks believes received it from his father, a naval officer who served in the Caribbean, according to The Guardian.

In 2019, the Governing Body of the College engaged Professor Dan Hicks and commissioned scientific testing “to investigate the vessel’s history and to determine the most appropriate method of dealing with the item and according it dignity”. It remains in the college’s archives, where it has been stored “respectfully and securely…in accordance with appropriate legal advice”.

In its response, the college stated: “Worcester reiterates its commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion, as well as its financial support of the University’s Black Academic Futures scheme. Racism and other forms of prejudice have no place at Worcester”.

Orange paint, green promises, and Oxford’s climate conundrum

Victoria McKinley-Smith
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Orange paint, green promises, and Oxford’s climate conundrum

When Oxford University made its grand declaration that it would divest from fossil fuels in 2020, it seemed like the academic world had just notched a major win in the fight against climate change. A world-renowned institution, famed for producing groundbreaking research and celebrated as a global intellectual beacon, was taking a bold stand – announcing that it would withdraw investments from the industries largely responsible for the climate crisis. Its massive endowment fund, managed by Oxford University Endowment Management (OUem), would, it seemed, put into practice the University’s high-minded goals of sustainability and environmental stewardship, with claims of ‘robust mechanisms’ in place to ensure responsible investment. Environmental groups praised it as a step toward setting a new precedent for universities, businesses, and institutions worldwide, urging the rest of the academic world to follow suit. 

But as 2022 drew to a close, a startling revelation emerged: despite those lofty promises, Oxford’s fossil fuel investments had actually surged. The 2022 OUem report showed that between 2021 and 2022, the University’s indirect investments in oil and gas companies increased from 0.32% to 0.52%. 

These figures may appear relatively modest, but less so when placed within the context of the University’s endowment, which totalled £5.7 billion in 2022. For some students and climate advocates, there is an apparent contradiction between the University’s vocal commitment to sustainability and its millions of pounds of indirectly invested in fossil fuels. For an institution that prides itself on its intellectual leadership, what explains this apparent gap between moral rhetoric and financial reality?

Progress or greenwashing?

Oxford’s Environmental Sustainability Strategy, targeting net-zero carbon emissions and a biodiversity net gain by 2035, sounds ambitious on paper. The University’s roadmap involves reducing carbon emissions in its academic buildings, investing in sustainable food sources for its vast college kitchens, and enhancing biodiversity across its grounds. But members of Oxford Climate Justice Campaign (OCJC) have claimed that these good intentions seem hollow when weighed against the backdrop of Oxford’s continuing investments in fossil fuels.

The head of sustainability for OUem told Cherwell: “The University has no direct holdings in fossil fuels ie it owns no fossil fuel companies; and indirect exposure (ie through funds) to fossil fuels is about 0.5% (when last reported).” This might seem like a minor concern on the surface, but still leads to ongoing scrutiny as institutions try to align their financial practices with evolving environmental commitments.

OUem also told Cherwell: “OUem has fully implemented the University’s 2020 divestment commitments. The Oxford Endowment Fund has no direct exposure to fossil fuels and indirect exposure is a fraction of a percentage. This will fluctuate for a variety of reasons on a year-by-year basis.” Indeed, from 2021 to 2022, investments in tobacco companies declined more than investments in fossil fuels increased.

Still, the financial decisions of Oxford’s endowment fund often seem out of step with its public climate commitments. This is precisely where the accusations of greenwashing stem from. 

Environment and Ethics rep and climate activist Oliver Ray told Cherwell: “The University’s actions clearly show a blatant disrespect for its own researchers and students as well as contempt for global ecosystems.”

There’s also the fact that when institutions like Oxford make public promises to divest, they send a signal that reverberates beyond their own financial portfolios. Divestment campaigns have long been one of the most effective ways of pressuring institutions to act more responsibly. When Oxford promised to divest, it not only committed to curbing its own impact but also positioned itself as a model of responsible investment for other major educational and financial institutions. Now, its reluctance to fully divest undermines the very cause it once championed.

This leaves Oxford in a precarious position. It is caught between competing pressures: on the one hand, it wants to maintain its reputation, on the other, it is bound to the financial realities of managing an enormous endowment. These realities include the need to generate stable, long-term returns to fund scholarships, research, staff salaries, and infrastructure. It would present genuine difficulties to divest from all of the University’s shares in every fund that has any exposure to fossil fuels. It’s a tightrope walk that many universities and other financial entities face. How much sacrifice is too much when it comes to realigning investment strategies with the pressing need for climate action?

Now with around £6 billion in assets, Oxford’s wealth is staggering – and so is its responsibility. While divesting from fossil fuels is undoubtedly a noble goal, it becomes far more complex when that money is tied up in industries that generate vast sums of revenue. The question is not just one of principle; it’s also one of practicality. Can an institution like Oxford divest fully without risking the financial stability it has built over centuries? 

The end of Just Stop Oil

Meanwhile, a significant moment in the climate justice movement has come and gone: the announcement that Just Stop Oil (JSO), the UK-based climate protest group known for its disruptive direct-action tactics, will disband at the end of April. Founded in 2022, the group became synonymous with high-profile stunts – from throwing soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery to gluing themselves to roads and disrupting major sporting events. While many criticised their methods as overly aggressive and damaging, but JSO’s goal was clear: stop fossil fuel extraction and halt new oil and gas licenses.

Indeed, Oxford felt the full force of this activism on a very public stage when, in the autumn of 2023, Just Stop Oil activists made headlines for spraying the Rad Cam with orange paint. The move was blatantly disruptive and impossible to ignore. Two men have been charged and are due to stand trial in August.

After a little over two years of often controversial actions, Just Stop Oil has declared a victory of sorts. The UK government’s recent pledge to cease issuing new oil and gas licenses – a demand that the organisation had vocally championed – has been hailed by the group as a hard-won success.

So, has JSO’s campaign ended in triumph? Well, sort of. While the group can certainly claim a victory in forcing the UK government’s hand on oil and gas licenses, much of the climate movement has been left pondering the next steps. And as JSO disbands, one (non-fossil fuel) burning question emerges: what’s next for activism? What happens when the loudest voices in climate protest go quiet? And perhaps more importantly, will institutions like Oxford, which have felt the heat of such movements, finally feel compelled to act with urgency?

A growing call for change

Though it may be the end of Just Stop Oil, other student climate protests will surely go on. In February 2023, members of the Oxford Climate Justice Campaign organised a rally outside the Rad Cam demanding that the University follow through on its 2020 divestment promise. 

The University’s failure to fully divest from indirect fossil fuel investments has become a rallying cry for students, with many now seeing their activism as a necessary counterpoint to institutional inertia. By holding protests, writing letters, and joining environmental campaigns, students are showing that they will not accept the hypocrisy of having a university invest in fossil fuels while promoting sustainability.

The internal conflict is becoming more pronounced as the student body grows increasingly aware of the power it has to pressure the administration. The Oxford Climate Justice Campaign is not alone in pushing for stronger action. The very prominence of the movement for fossil fuel divestment, and tactics such as divisive actions at the Rad Cam, likely contributed to similar demands and tactics since the outbreak of the war in Gaza.

A chance to lead?

The pressure on Oxford’s endowment managers could increase further. In June, the University is partnering with UN Human Rights to host the Right Here, Right Now summit on climate change. The summit, organised by the International Universities Climate Alliance and spearheaded by Vice Chancellor Irene Tracey, will convene global leaders, activists, and academics to collaborate on real solutions to the climate crisis. For Oxford, this will be a defining moment.

Timed to coincide with UN World Environment Day, the summit will serve as the perfect stage for Oxford to announce the kind of forward-thinking policies that match its public environmental commitments. However, if the University doesn’t act now – if it continues to drag its feet its credibility as a climate leader could be irreparably damaged. The University has the power to push the needle in the right direction. But it’s up to the institution to decide: exactly what example will its leadership set?

But how do we ensure with the current political climate and volatile global conditions that climate action remains a priority, not a casualty of distraction? In times of crisis, it’s all too easy for environmental concerns to slip down the agenda – but the climate emergency isn’t on hold.  If Oxford wants to retain its position as a global intellectual leader – and not just another relic of ivory tower idealism – it’s time to stop talking about change and start making it. Only then can it prove that, as one of the world’s most esteemed universities, it still has the vision and willpower to shape a sustainable future, not just teach about it. The world is watching, and Oxford’s next move will define its legacy.

The infantilisation of young people in politics must end

Anish Kumar
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The infantilisation of young people in politics must end

Westminster, ever-consumed in the buzz of its own bubble, has settled on a new topic to centre its weekly debate on: the new Netflix show Adolescence. On both left and right, politicians and journalists have sought to find the answer to the questions the show poses, and while, unsurprisingly, the answer is often a mere repackaging of party dogma, the most worrying trend is the nature of the discussion itself. British political coverage now functions as a dialogue between TV dramas and the faux-concern of the tabloid press, with very little input from the young people they make the subject of their coverage. No one seems to have thought to ask the group that has grown up using social media and can now reflect on the consequences – those in their twenties and thirties.

The Prime Minister has coupled his support for playing Adolescence in schools with a pledge to reform planning laws and reform the university funding model – evidence that British politics might escape the vice grip of gerontocracy. This is, unfortunately, yet another example in a long line of patronising experiments on an age cohort which once contained statesmen. This decline in political significance for those in their twenties from leadership to a pitiful election-day turnout statistic will only be resolved by a rethinking of how we view age and experience in politics.

A lesson must first be drawn from the United States, where the disconnect between government and young people has reached a particularly alarming extent, and the consequences have manifested themselves in the rollback of the liberties that most Americans of working age have no memory of fighting for. By the end of his term, Donald Trump will be the oldest president in the country’s history, beating his predecessor, and has, in his short time in office, enacted the biggest rollback in economic and social progress for decades. He has introduced the highest tariff level on goods since the 19th century, causing a stock market crash which will disproportionately affect lower-income workers, who are more likely to be under the age of 30.

The Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, and according to the George H.W. Bush-appointed judge Clarence Thomas, “should reconsider” the rulings that protect the rights to contraception and same-sex marriage. All of these were monumental victories of civil rights advocacy groups that have been reversed at the whims of an entrenched conservative majority, and this is a clear warning to us in the UK. Turnout among 18-29 year olds dropped from over 50% in 2020 to just 42% in 2024, and this has contributed to a politics dominated by the elderly and their interests. This is not only an issue at a national level – issues like redistricting, local funding allocation, and now abortion, are matters for the states, where under-30 turnout is even lower, and it is therefore no surprise that policies continue to benefit wealthier, older voters.

The political climate in the UK has not reached the same level of polarisation and disillusionment, but with both major parties polling in the mid-20s and the populist Reform party up double-digits on their 2024 performance, it may not be far off. While Westminster politics continues to fracture, matters that affect people trying to start their careers and get on the housing ladder remain sidelined in favour of discussions affecting pensioners, who are the wealthiest age cohort in Britain.

This is the result of a potent combination of infantilising attitudes towards those under 30 held by the media, and a lack of agency from young people who refuse to participate. The former can be seen clearly in how forward-thinking economic policies are presented in comparison to wealth transfers to pensioners: the WASPI campaign, which is centred on the claim that its members remained unaware of widely publicised changes to the state pension age for women to bring it in line with that for men for 16 years, and therefore compensation of £36 billion is owed. This naked entitlement is accompanied by the furore which accompanied the means-testing of the Winter Fuel Payment (WFP), despite the state pension increasing by a greater figure than the WFP.

These two policies attracted a far greater share of media outrage than the cancellation of HS2 beyond phase 1, for which costs have spiralled as a result of endless regulatory barriers and legal challenges. It is these planning and building regulations that most impact people in their twenties and thirties today: house prices have soared when compared to real wages, and the wealth of the country is now increasingly concentrated in the hands of the elderly. Refusal to build houses and infrastructure, and to tackle energy costs on which the former is dependent, will mean that achieving home ownership and career advancement will become more dependent on inheritance, or “the bank of Mum and Dad” – a sad reflection on a society now trending towards gerontocracy.

A further warning is the attitudes that young people in the UK now hold towards democracy. According to a poll carried out by the University of Glasgow, only 57% of people 16-29 said they preferred democracy to a dictatorship – this is the worrying outcome of disengagement and a lack of political education.

This requires change: the first is a re-evaluation of how issues facing young people are discussed. One of the country’s great Prime Ministers, Pitt the Younger, was just 24 years old upon taking office; the recently elected Baby of the House, Sam Carling – 22 when elected – was described in a Telegraph article as “displaying nerves”, described as having a “lack of life experience”, and exuding a “particular kind of frenetic energy that is most commonly found in A-Level exam halls”. This is infantilising rhetoric for a major broadsheet publication, and reflects a sad imbalance in the priorities that exist in Westminster.

However, if participation does not improve, then there is no reason that outcomes will either. It must be remembered that the right to vote is one that was hard-fought for over more than a hundred years, and should not be seen as an optional activity with little impact over one’s own life. The current rollback of rights in the United States, and the ongoing conflict between the Trump administration and universities, may be replicated in the UK if current political trends continue – an end to patronisation from the media and the agency of young people is the only way in which this might be averted.

Mind the attainment gap: Finals disparities based on ethnicity, gender, and school background have increased since 2017

Euan Elliott
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Mind the attainment gap: Finals disparities based on ethnicity, gender, and school background have increased since 2017

Cherwell has broken down the number of firsts (and distinctions, where appropriate) awarded by the University of Oxford in Preliminary Exams (prelims) and Final Honour School Exams (finals) over the past eight years  into subject-division, ethnicity, gender, and school background. The first-class attainment gap refers to the percentage point difference between the proportion of students from different groups who are awarded a first-class degree. The attainment gap between men and women and between private school and state school students at finals has gradually opened over the past eight years, with the latter increasing by almost ten percentage points. Additionally, looking at the average across the last eight years, BME students marginally outperform white students in prelims. However, in finals, a considerable attainment gap opens between the number of firsts awarded to white and BME students. 

Between the 2016/17 and 2023/24 exam cycles, the proportion of firsts awarded has inflated by 18.8% in prelims and 14.5% in finals. Notably, the COVID-19 pandemic had polarising effects on the 2019/20 exam cycle results, with the first rate crashing to 22.5% for prelims and climbing up to 47% for finals. Averaging across all eight years, the proportion of candidates awarded firsts at finals (38.0%) increases from prelims (27.5%). This regular increase is visible when comparing the first rate at prelims and finals for nearly all demographics, but it affects certain groups disproportionately.

Ethnicity

Contrasting students identifying as white with students grouped by the University as ‘BME’ (encompassing students identifying as Black, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi, ‘Other Asian’, and Mixed Heritage), at prelims, a higher proportion of BME students (29.0%) are awarded firsts than white students (26.8%), on average – a  2.2 percentage point attainment gap. This was the case for all exam cycles except 2020/21. The trend flips, however, in finals where a higher proportion of white students receive firsts (40.0%) than their BME peers (33.1%), with a much wider attainment gap of 6.9 percentage points. This was the case for all eight exam cycles, with the most recent 2023/24 cycle seeing the largest attainment gap (8.1 percentage points). In fact, whilst the attainment gap was steadily closing until the 2020/21 cycle, it has been gradually opening again since, as both the proportion of BME students receiving firsts has decreased and the proportion of white students receiving firsts has increased over the past two years. On average, white students experienced a much higher rate of growth in the distribution of firsts between prelims and finals (48.6%) than BME students (12.3%).

An article published by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) suggests a relation between the widening attainment gap to the success of access and participation schemes at the admissions level. “When a much larger proportion of any group enters university, that group may naturally include a broader range of academic ability,” the article notes. “If mainly the top third of White students attend university, but nearly half of ethnic minority students do, we would expect to see differences in degree outcomes – even with completely fair teaching and assessment.” In Oxford’s case, we would expect to see these effects manifest as an attainment gap in prelims results. On the contrary, since the attainment gap only opens in finals, the issue seems to lie beyond the admissions cycle, and in Oxford’s teaching and environment itself. Last December, Oxford Student Union’s (SU) Welfare Survey found that 20% of respondents identifying as BAME had faced discrimination in the last academic year, compared to 12% of white students. 

Breaking ‘BME’ up into its constituent groups, Black students experienced the highest increase in firsts between prelims and finals (87.4%), yet still proportionally were awarded the fewest firsts in both prelims (8.9%) and finals (16.6%). Inversely, Chinese students were awarded the greatest number of firsts in prelims proportionally (42.7%), but were the only group to experience deflation in finals, experiencing a 7.2% decrease in the proportion of students awarded a first (39.6%).

Gender

A higher proportion of students identifying as male are awarded firsts in prelims (33.0%) than female students (22.2%). The same is true in finals, with 42% of male students receiving firsts compared to 34.4% of female students. Averaging over all eight years, this means female students have experienced a higher increase in firsts between prelims and finals (55.4%) than male students (24.3%) and the attainment gap has closed by 3.2 percentage points during the course of study.

More troublingly, whilst the attainment gap has fluctuated for both prelims and finals, it has increased between 2016/17 and 2023/24 for both prelims (by 3.1 percentage points) and finals (3.2 percentage points), reaching a total gap of 12.6 and 10.1 percentage points respectively. Further, over the past three years both sets of exams have seen a steady increase in the attainment gap year-to-year. As a result, Oxford is not on track to meet the goal set out in their 2022/23 Equality, Diversity, and Inclusivity Report to reduce the first class degree gender attainment to 4.4 percentage points by 2025.

The disparity is visible across subject divisions, and a 2024 report by HEPI found that nearly all Oxford courses have a first awarding gap favouring male students (bar geography and medical sciences), including courses where women represent the majority of the student body, such as English,  as well as those where they are underrepresented. By contrast, the report noted that female students generally outperform their male peers across the rest of the UK education system.

The SU’s welfare report found female students were significantly more likely to have experienced unwanted sexual behaviour, worsening mental health, low self-esteem, anxiety, and loneliness than male students. Additionally, the HEPI report points to several Oxbridge-specific factors which may impact female students’ assessment results. The tutorial system is brought into question for potentially “favouring ‘combative, rather than co-operative [behaviours]’” as female students at the University of Cambridge reported that “discussions were ‘frequently thwarted by the domineering practices of male students’”. Further, Oxford’s examination methods themselves could be further opening the gap. It is suggested that short exam periods with high grade-weighting disadvantage female students who are less predisposed to take the risks needed for a first-class grade, instead working consistently over three years. The report continued that female students may be additionally impacted by Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS) during the highly concentrated course of their exams.

Data points for individuals identifying under the University’s classification of ‘other’ did not exceed five individuals, and hence were redacted to avoid these individuals being identified.

School background

Privately educated students are more likely to receive firsts in prelims (29.9%) compared to 21.7% of their state school peers. This disparity continues in finals, where 39.9% of independent school students are awarded firsts, while the figure for state school students stands at 35.7%. Generally, the attainment gap almost halves between prelims and finals, reducing to 4.2 percentage points as state school students experience a prelims-to-finals increase rate (64.7%) nearly double that of private school students (33.5%).

The attainment gap for finals has steadily increased by nearly ten percentage points between 2016/17 (1.7%) and 2023/24 (11.5%) to an overall disparity of 9.8 percentage points. This was the widest attainment gap of the three analysed for the last exam cycle. Crucially, until 2019/20, the attainment gap remained below 2 percentage points, with a higher proportion of state school students receiving firsts in 2017/18, with a marginal gap of 0.4 percentage points. Over the past four years, however, the gap has been steadily opening as the proportion of state school students receiving firsts consistently decreases. Though less uniform, a similar trend occurs in prelims, with the attainment gap increasing by 3.8 percentage points since 2016/17. During this period, Oxford has also been admitting a decreasing number of state school students. 

Looking forward 

A University spokesperson told Cherwell: “The University is committed to addressing gaps in exam and degree outcomes where they exist. Progress has been made in some subject areas, but the reasons for these gaps are varied and highly complex. We are working hard to understand this issue through extensive engagement with students as well as data provision to enable us to better target support, and we are introducing a programme of measures including flexible teaching, mixed assessment methods, and study skills support, to deliver a more inclusive learning environment in which all students can perform to their full potential.”

The University recently announced a new Access and Participation Plan for 2025-29 in order to combat attainment gaps. The plan aims to “expand the range of summative assessment available to departments” beyond traditional exam formats. The HEPI report urged Oxford and Cambridge to ensure that while such reforms should seek to eliminate “systematic disadvantages”, they should “refrain from scaling back the ‘academic rigour’” of employed assessment methods. The report further insisted that the “awarding gap is symptomatic of a broader institutional problem” which requires “bold reforms” catered to the specific needs of each disadvantaged group,  in place of “catch-all solutions”. The University has additionally allocated £12.9m to funding transitional programmes for undergraduate students, in addition to £3.3m specifically for BME students

With Oxford graduates going on to fill many top roles in government and industry, attainment gaps do not only suggest that certain demographics are being snubbed in their education and assessments, but will also have rippling social effects. The coveted Oxford first class degree offers a seal of approval, which the data suggests more often than not finds its way to those who fit the historic Oxford image. Most startlingly, it seems that these trends are not merely the result of the University failing to keep up with changing times or undo wider societal inequalities; rather, they are unique to Oxbridge, and currently getting worse by the year.

Stuck in a loop: Are you balancing your studies with your cycle? 

Maddie Gillett
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Stuck in a loop: Are you balancing your studies with your cycle? 

As Oxford University students, we often feel a pressure to “lock in” and constantly achieve – it is our reputation, after all. Off days are only human, but we cannot have many of them, or afford to notably stray from schedule. However, what if for one week at a time, you do not feel your most productive? While seemingly minor, many students might not have considered the effects that their menstrual cycle has on productivity. “Study guilt’ is something that most Oxford students will relate to, but this is only exacerbated by the working day being tailored to the male biological clock, where hormones fluctuate on a day-to-day basis. This is not necessarily a disadvantage, though. This article will provide a number of tips for recognising each stage of the cycle and navigating its impacts. 

The typical menstrual cycle lasts 28 days, but can normally range from 21 to 35. It comprises four stages: the follicular, ovulation, luteal, and menstrual. 

The follicular stage occurs just after a period. This is generally thought to be a time of increased energy, confidence, and motivation, since levels of estrogen and luteinizing hormone (LH) rise. This leads to ovulation, lasting roughly a day. After this, LH levels decline, and progesterone increases, leading to the luteal phase. This is often described as premenstrual syndrome – PMS – and it can be associated with changes in mood and energy. Finally, the menstrual phase occurs, where estrogen and progesterone are at their lowest. 

Generally, women tend to feel their most energetic, social, and productive in the follicular and ovulation phases. During this time, the brain might respond better to sociable study activities, such as group discussions. While the Oxford workload is not really something that can be negotiated, it might prove beneficial to schedule more intense tasks and distribute higher workloads around these stages, leaving more time to relax (if only slightly) later in the cycle. This might also be the time to consolidate bigger, more challenging ideas. If exams are on the horizon, it might be tactical to build a good study routine at this stage, when motivation and confidence are generally higher. 

By contrast, the luteal and menstrual stages can often be associated with lethargy and mood swings. If possible, this would be the time to lighten the workload. Of course, this is difficult at Oxford. However tasks with lengthier deadlines, such as extended essays, could be distributed to make certain weeks slightly less intense than others. Turning inward and prioritising your needs can be a helpful way to support yourself during this period; individual study time, using methods such as flashcards and self-tests, can be a much more effective use of your time, while helping to preserve waning energy. Comforts such as study snacks, or a more comfortable study setup, at first seem unproductive and distracting, however for those who experience discomfort when menstruating, allowing yourself small pleasures might be just what you need in more sluggish moments – within moderation, of course. 

Of course, menstruation is highly individual – some might find that their cycle is incredibly disruptive, while others might struggle significantly less. This makes self-knowledge all the more vital. It is important for any Oxford student to give themselves grace for varying levels of attainment  – especially those who experience monthly fluctuations. Understanding this is vital in overcoming those especially tiring weeks, and maximising the more productive ones. The menstrual cycle is not a disadvantage – understanding and accommodating it can bring huge advantages. 

Review: Allegro Pastel by Leif Randt

Hassan Akram
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Review: Allegro Pastel by Leif Randt

Tanja Arnheim and Jerome Aimler are Millennials in a long-distance relationship. Tanja is a Berlin-based novelist and Jerome a Frankfurt-based web designer. They text regularly and occasionally visit one another. There are lots of drugs, lots of parties, and lots of sex. One day Tanja, for no particular reason, breaks up with Jerome. They revert to other, short-term relationships: Tanja with the tattooed Janis and Jerome with his schoolfriend Marlene. At a friend’s wedding they decide to get back together, but it is not, alas, “official”, and despite a series of emails (faithfully reproduced here) the relationship once again peters out. Tanja’s eventual decision to rekindle the flame comes too late, because Jerome, having impregnated Marlene, is no longer available. That is the end of the affair. 

Leif Randt’s Allegro Pastel (2020), newly translated from the German, is intended as a “serious” novel – it was longlisted for the German Book Prize and shortlisted for the EU Prize for Literature – but it amounts to very little. For one thing we never really care about the relationship between Tanja and Jerome. They split up for no definable reason, and there are so many alternatives on whom each of them can fall back that there is never any sense of crisis. Nothing is at stake. Nothing will change whether they are together or apart. Everything is dependent on their whims. Chunks of the book consist of their texts and emails – very difficult to read – but even the moments of physical intimacy are unmoving and repetitious. If there were an index of terms at the end of this book, it would consist largely of instances of the phrase “good sex”, which crops up again and again in endless scenarios. Here is a typical passage: “The sex they had in the incredibly humid room was not particularly good, but there was a sense that it might become good. It was promising, Jerome felt, so maybe it was good sex after all.”  

Characters’ obsessions with scribing the experience of each moment onto social media, and catalogic details of Samsung Galaxy S7s, iPhone 8s, N64s, PlayStations, are probably intended by Randt to show the encroachment of technology into every facet of modern life – but it is overdone, and serves only to emphasise the shallowness of the rest of the book. Sex parties, night-clubs, and drugs in toilets account for the bulk of the characters’ enthusiasms; otherwise, their thoughts centre on Airbnbs in the Cayman Islands or burger places in Los Angeles. They are shallow, capricious, and self-obsessed. Occasionally their micro-analysing, hyper-selfconscious thought processes give insight: the mention of “pre-emptive wistfulness” as “a general sadness regarding the passage of time, mixed with a warm euphoria, spread[ing] from his stomach to his chest” expresses a familiar sensation in pithy terms. But nothing can change the fact that these characters are empty. They are not human beings. They are like the screen-driven ghosts in D.H. Lawrence’s poem “When I went to the film”, inhabiting 

a white atmosphere 
Upon which shadows of people, pure personalities 
Are cast in black and white, and move 
In flat ecstasy, supremely unfelt…  

The overall feeling is of pastel-coloured shallowness. Small, ubiquitous scenes stick in the mind like photographs – a U-Bahn ride followed by Szechuan chicken, a Christmas party in a Frankfurt apartment, a friend’s wedding in the German countryside, a flight to a literary festival in Vienna – but there is no emotion behind them. Politics or religion occasionally intrude, but only for cameos. Randt’s narration is too detached and unfeeling; it is never clear what he wants to say, whether he is criticising the lifestyle he depicts or commenting on it at all. His terse style might be called Hemingwayan; only, it is too awkward and lacks Hemingway’s bursts of life or his power of visual description. At its best it is crisp and evocative but never outstanding: 

They held hands on their way to the U4. It was a rare thing for Jerome to navigate a crowd of people while holding a girlfriend’s hand. But with Tanja he didn’t even think about what they looked like. There was a line in front of a stand selling freshly pressed fruit juice, and a few people were still buying glossy magazines from the giant newsagent’s next to the Burger King. 

As a record of nightlife and cosmopolitanism in contemporary Germany, Allegro Pastel is entertaining. As a record of blandness it also succeeds – whether consciously or not.  

Allegro Pastel by Leif Randt, translated by Peter Kuras, is published on 8 May. Granta Magazine Editions ISBN: 9781738536221 

Why the rise of digital cameras?

Lara Machado
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Why the rise of digital cameras?

I doubt I’m the only person who has recently found their Instagram feed flooded by pictures taken on digital cameras. Low resolution, blurry shots of red-eyed smiling faces, more often than not at night time. 

It seems, at first glance, a strange phenomenon. Nowadays, even the most basic of mobile phones has pretty good camera quality. In fact, technology has improved to the extent that award-winning filmmakers, from Sean Baker to Steven Soderbergh, have shot feature films on phones. When looking through old photo albums, parents and grandparents often lament that the quality of pictures was not what it is now. Why, then, has the digital camera market been steadily increasing, particularly among younger generations? It would seem that high photographic resolution has lost some of its charm.

Some readers will already be rolling their eyes. Many would argue that, the same way retro has become more appealing in sectors such as fashion, filmmaking and gaming, the return of the digital camera reflects nothing more than a romantic attraction to things past – which is not even unique to our own era. In part I agree with this assessment, but I also think it’s more complex and interesting than that. 

Upon first encountering this phenomenon, I was immediately reminded of Susan Sontag’s brilliant essay ‘Regarding the Pain of Others’. The text focuses on war photography as an art form – an entirely different topic to the one at hand – and yet one point that Sontag makes struck me as particularly relevant. She argues that we have come to associate war photography with a certain candidness: uncontrived, spontaneous shots that do not look like they have been pre-arranged or posed for (unlike what we expect from, say, a portrait). If a spontaneous shot looks too clean, we are quick to reject it as posed and dismiss it having been taken ‘in the moment’. Obviously, in the case of war photography, and as Sontag argues, this is related to the ethics of photographing and viewing the pain of others. However, I still think it’s a useful idea to consider alongside the phenomenon of digital cameras. 

We have increasingly become disillusioned with social media and with the overly curated aspect of the images we find on it. We are now suspicious of images that look too good, and moments that seem too perfect. Perhaps it is then, that in its low resolution, we associate digital camera pictures with something more authentic. They give an air of cool unstudiedness, of pictures in which the lack of detail makes it hard for anyone to seem like they are trying to look good. There is an effortless quality to the pictures that seems to send out the message: I am not here to impress. That makes it seem like the goal is to capture a sense of an existing moment of carefree fun rather than to stage it.

Perhaps there is also something to be said about the spontaneity of it all. With film cameras we are overly conscious of the cost of repeating shots to capture the same image multiple times, but with our phones we can confidently do hundreds of takes of any object without looking back – maybe it is that the digital camera lies somewhere in between. Equipped with quite limited storage space, we are unlikely to take too many shots on it in one go. 

I am not trying to say that camera quality has lost all its appeal or that digital camera photos are less staged than any other picture, simply that whatever the reason behind this trend is, it is interesting that there is a tendency towards the unstudied – or at least the appearance of it. 

Split the G: the performative cult of Guinness drinking 

Beatrix Arnold
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Split the G: the performative cult of Guinness drinking 

The golden harp. The ritualistic three-part pour. The bravado of splitting the G. It always baffled me how a drink that is essentially liquid brown bread accumulated such lasting popularity. But in the modern world, branding is everything. 

Guinness manufacturers have ingeniously built up what is almost a cult following around the stout. Not only a staple of pub culture, it has also long occupied an unquestioned position in popular consciousness. My grandmother was advised to drink Guinness while breastfeeding, and even nowadays I’ve heard gym bros extolling it as a source of iron (it’s not really).  

Guinness has enjoyed acclaim as a cultural symbol of Ireland since the 18th century, but has only recently made it big in Britain. Formerly typecast as an old man’s drink, Guinness used to be a left-field choice. Now, swept up in the aesthetic renaissance of the classic British pub, it offers a chance for posh boys to cosplay at being salt of the earth (despite often being the most expensive drink on draught). The drink creates the illusion of an ‘in-club’, cultivating an ‘if-you-know-you-know’ mentality, especially concerning the sacrosanctity of the three-stage pour. It is this very performative aspect of Guinness that leads drinkers to consider themselves qualified to loudly pronounce judgement on a particular pint to an unlucky onlooker. The new cult of Guinness drinking, founded in the name of individuality, has completely obscured the traditional cultural significance of the pint for Irish people, and has subsumed it into an index of ‘laddishness’ for young English men.  

The drink is undeniably gendered. With the online culture around Guinness being inescapably masculine, exemplified in content like the Schooner Scorer, drinking it becomes almost a performance of virility, such that I’ve been told that I “wouldn’t get it”, that I should “stick to my vodka coke”. Obviously, I could never reach the level of masculine vigour required to drink a 4.2% beer.  

If there’s any vitriol in my perspective, it’s probably because of the hours of my life spent nodding noncommittally while men explain the correct ratio of head in their pint, or demonstrate their ability (or failure) to split the G. It’s safe to say that I haven’t had the best experience with Guinness drinkers.  

For the cult followers of the stout, the iconography of the pint becomes almost a status symbol. Their vaunted ability to discriminate between different draughts of the exact same drink is worn like a badge of honour. What strikes me most about the Guinness drinker is their utter loyalty. No matter the range of options on offer, no matter how inappropriate the setting, the Guinness drinker will remain unswervingly devoted, the drink occupying a space somewhere in between their routine and their personality. Some refuse to go to pubs, or force their friends to leave, if the bar is out of their favoured pint. They revel in the theatre of splitting the G, so that the drinking experience becomes almost entirely gamified (you can even get an app that lets you practise the technique in the comfort of your own home). Such people seem to actively cultivate the label ‘Guinness drinker’ as part of their personal brand, a deliberately manufactured personality trait that makes one wonder what exactly they’re compensating for.  

Following a national shortage earlier this year, numerous pubs across the UK began to replace Guinness with Murphy’s, an objectively better tasting stout, but with little success. If it’s not Guinness, Guinness drinkers won’t have it. It seems that the drink itself is of little importance: it’s an aesthetic more than anything else. How can they possibly display their masculinity, their individuality, if not by this competitive beer-chugging ritual? (And no, your date is not impressed.) 

But if the appeal of Guinness for this demographic rests entirely upon external perception, will it maintain its popularity among them once it dominates the market in the US, for example? Now that even Kim Kardashian is posing with the pint, I wonder how long it will take the English lads to find a new, ‘edgy’ drink to rally around. 

But for now, bottom’s up, Guinness drinkers. Maybe you’ll find those missing dregs of personality at the end of the next pint. 

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