Thursday, May 1, 2025
Blog Page 285

Day 2 – Swiss Dreams are Made of This

Libby Bull
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Day 2 – Swiss Dreams are Made of This

I feel too awkward pulling out my journal and turning the light on to write so I guess this one’s gonna be written on the eternally-chaotic notes app phone (resting alongside the other 1000 notes which read like Rupi Kaur poems: Mug Tree, The Last Mattress, Angela and Gary, Kotthu chicken, veggie/cheese, vegan x2….Rio Rumble).

Zurich to Ljubljana: The ‘sleep’ in ‘sleeper train’ is the cruelest joke I’ve heard in a while.

Night train. You think glamour, romance, genteel murder (à la Murder on the Orient Express). Reality: Travelodge but on wheels with even less floor space, no bathroom, and you really really don’t want to look at any surface under blue light – or to be honest, daylight. We arrived at our train cabin and immediately realised it barely had space for one of us standing up, never mind four – already warning signs. After moving one seat up we managed to make room to eat – a whole cucumber and a pretzel – and chat – seething group tensions – as the anticipation rose for the entrance of our roommates (aka new best friends) which the empty middle bunks promised.

In Zurich train station, A and I had bought some Kirsch and Swiss tonic in order to complete our Swiss food mission. What can I say, we’re cultural gastronomers (is that a word? Like astronomer? It’s 2 am, ok, it should be). First, I made the mistake of shaking the tonic bottle to mix in the spirit and spilled it all over myself, and then A, as the most loyal and utterly brainless of friends, followed suit only minutes later. Think that slapstick scene where the idiot character looks down the hose pipe in confusion and gets a jet of water to the face. Our cabin was of course smelling of the excessively alcoholic Kirsch – my only thought: what would our new friends think?!

We prepared for bed and eagerly awaited their arrival, yet our hopes were dashed when a middle-aged couple, stern-faced and clearly not keen on us hesitated at the door, grimaced, and came in. No new friends or serendipitous love interests there then. Although C has joked that I finally get to sleep under a man (giving the ‘sleep’ in ‘sleeper train’ joke a run for its money cruelty-wise). I, of course, refrained from replying that ‘thank god the bed under him wasn’t memory foam, cause the rut of her imprint would surely make for an uncomfortable night’s rest’ – I’m classier than that, and also I only just thought of it and also now thinking of it, it doesn’t actually make sense – again 2 am ok!

So now as I write this I’m crammed into the bottom bunk with the sounds of the train, the man above me snoring, and the occasional wandering corridor whistle and chat, forming a sort of ambient soundscape to my attempts at sleep. Although for a moment now I can see through a crack in the window blinds the dark and unrecognisable landscape outside as our train chugs further east, a lonely beacon in the rural darkness of transient flickering hamlets – And I’m pretty sure the man above has just woken himself up with his own snoring. Perhaps Sleeping Beauty would have had only a catnap if she’d had sleep apnoea? I guess there’s still hope for a murder tonight if this keeps up. And it certainly won’t be genteel.

Oxford “committed” to holding in-person graduations for all eligible students

Maurício Alencar
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Oxford “committed” to holding in-person graduations for all eligible students

A University spokesperson has told Cherwell that the University of Oxford is “committed” to holding degree ceremonies for all students who may have missed out on theirs due to the pandemic. Several students who graduated in 2020 and in 2021 have been unable to have in-person graduations thus far due to various national government restrictions and other travel restrictions. 

The spokesperson also told Cherwell that the University “took the difficult decisions to postpone degree ceremonies between May 2020 and August 2021”. As there is now a backlog of students waiting for their graduations, the University will hold 46 graduation ceremonies between September 2021 and June 2022 for Oxford alumni. This number is a 50% increase on a normal academic year. 

University graduation ceremonies normally take place before Michaelmas term of the new academic year. One of the University’s objectives is to be “as flexible as possible” with regard to graduation ceremonies.

 Given the changing international restrictions on travel and other uncertainties regarding the pandemic, the University spokesperson stated that the University has also waived the rule that students who withdraw within 60 days of an event have their degrees conferred in absentia. This gives students more freedom to book and confirm their graduation ceremonies. 

However, the University website states that colleges may ask for permission from the Vice-Chancellor and Proctors to allow students who are required to withdraw from their degree ceremony within the 60-day non-cancellation period to rebook their graduations. The University adds that this will only apply in “exceptional circumstances” which do not include work commitments or the unavailability of guests. 

The University spokesperson informed Cherwell that students who did not wish to wait for a ceremony could have their degrees conferred in absentia at their own request. 

They added that “all eligible graduands were invited to  attend an in-person ceremony between September and November 2021”, and that “this included students finishing the studies in 2021 as well as those who finished in 2020 and whose ceremonies were postponed.” 

In a student announcement seen by Cherwell, Trinity College acknowledged that they “realise it is disappointing not to be able to register to attend a ceremony in person at present”. However, Trinity insisted that the “University is doing everything it can” to make sure students get the opportunity to have a graduation.

The degree ceremony consists of several traditional rites and rituals, including statements read out in Latin, all graduates’ names read out by, and bows from the graduates in the Sheldonian Theatre. Specialised gowns are also worn by graduands during the ceremony. The day is also a pleasant opportunity for friends and families to reconnect in Oxford. 

Students doing BA or BFA courses are eligible to receive an MA 7 years after the date of their matriculation. This gives students the opportunity to have a second in-person graduation, provided that they pay the costs (£40) of taking an MA and the costs of hiring a BA gown and hood and an MA gown and hood for the ceremony. 

Graduands are offered the opportunity to book their graduation ceremony dates on online services such as eVision, depending on each college’s graduation guidelines.  

Image: Clare MacNeill via Geograph/ CC BY-SA 2.0

In Conversation with Rachel Sennott

William Foxton
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In Conversation with Rachel Sennott

Rachel Sennott isn’t afraid of mess. Over the course of her ambitious career, it’s become a staple of her work.

There’s her chaotic stand-up persona, a self-obsessed and self-deluded lens through which Sennott satirises modern, millennial culture. Her sets chart various romantic and sexual failures, offering up a compelling portrayal of a woman on the verge of a nervous break-down, on a mission to laugh away the pain. Sennott talks bad dates, bad boyfriends and very bad sex. No joke is off-limits, no story too graphic to be told. 

Then there are her sketches, short videos uploaded to her YouTube channel, in which Sennott poses the question – what if a seemingly ordinary concept (Instagram Influencers, yummy mummies, Hollister) became the most disturbing thing you could imagine? Each sketch is as glorious as it is deranged, tackling profound themes of maternal anxiety, corporate greed and the intoxicating power of an Instagram filter.

She is perhaps best known for her tweets, a carefully curated stream of consciousness that have proved enormously popular with Sennott’s predominantly millennial audience. They range from the satirical (“Moving to LA to get the lobotomy of my dreams”) to the oddly specific (“I don’t want a baby but I do want my boyfriend wearing a little hoodie and looking sort of tired holding a baby that is biologically mine”).

Her most recent creative venture is her role in Emma Seligman’s hit 2020 film Shiva Baby. Sennott plays Danielle, a soon-to-be graduate moonlighting as a sugar baby, who attends the shiva of a distant relative, where she finds herself at the mercy of a family that might just love her to death. Throw in the arrival of her ex-girlfriend, her sugar daddy and his “girl-boss” wife, and Shiva Baby is an hour of nail-biting, cringe-inducing chaos.

With an eye for cultural commentary and a knack for voicing the relatable (and sometimes the unthinkable), there really isn’t much Sennott won’t say. And now with 170 thousand hungry followers, a spot on Time Out New York’s list of top comedians of the year and a critically lauded performance in a feature film, Sennott is getting the opportunity to say it.

As we begin our call, Sennott has just received her Deliveroo order – a bowl of soup. “Honestly [having] soup in the summer, I feel like you’re really challenging yourself…and the air seems colder because you have something hot” she says wisely.

We begin by discussing Shiva Baby’s break-out success. “I’m so happy that it’s finally out everywhere because it takes so long. It’s just this whole year I was like…will anyone ever see the movie?,” she tells me.

Shiva Baby started life as a short film, written by Seligman while at  NYU. Following huge success at a series of film festivals, Seligman decided to adapt her senior thesis into a feature-length.

It takes inspiration from an uncomfortable time in Seligman and Sennott’s life.“Between the short and the feature we would go on endless walks where we would talk and talk about where we were in our lives and the types of relationships we were in, not feeling satisfied or in control with any aspect of our lives,” she tells me, “I feel like that’s part of why it resonated with a lot of young people, especially young women, because there’s that chunk of life where you’re getting out of school and you can’t find validation in relationships or in your career and your parents are just like…what’s going on?”

This is felt strongly in the piece as Danielle is pushed, pulled, pinched and prodded by various relatives, who take pleasure in dissecting her weight, her lack of career, her sex life. She is equally powerless in her romantic relationships, reverting back to brattish antagonism around ex-girlfriend Maya and teenage angst with sugar daddy Max. Her frustration is palpable as she loses battle after battle.

Sennott recalls how agonising it felt to be that age: “I was crying publicly…all the time. I was always upset. Now, looking back, it probably wasn’t even that bad. But when you’re in that time of your life, you feel no control.”

It was during this period, a time she now affectionately refers to as the “Shiva Baby chunk”, that Sennott was introduced to the world of stand-up comedy. Initially unappreciated at the traditional venues she was performing at, Sennott recalls the disconcerting experience of performing sets about being fingered in Ubers to crowds of middle aged men.

“Everyone was like…who’s this little whore?,” she tells me, “I was so miserable.”

It was the intervention of comedians Catherine Cohen, Patti Harrison and Mitra Jouhari, who booked Sennott on their show, It’s a Guy Thing, and advised her which clubs to perform at, that granted Sennott access to an audience who could fully appreciate her work.

“Being in a scene like that where you’re performing for people who are your age, who are experiencing similar things to you, it allows you to grow. I feel like it allowed me to expand my voice,” she tells me.

At the same time her Twitter took off. Sennott would tweet numerous jokes a day, hoping one of them might land. And many of them did. Her intensely personal and highly relatable brand of humour resonated with her growing audience. For Sennott, the effect was cathartic.

“It felt really good because I was in a place where I felt not in control of my life at all. So if I was really miserable but I could make a joke about it then I felt okay…at least there’s a reason that I’m suffering. It also felt good that a lot of women related to me. I would write [about feeling] very degraded or unhappy and then 100 girls would be like…that happened to me too!”

The sensation of instant validation, she tells me, was addictive. “When I was first tweeting, being on Twitter all day got me through the day. I would be like… time to have another humiliating experience so that I can write a joke about it!”

And yet, as her follower count grew and the online landscape evolved, blurring the line between the personal and the public became less satisfying. Viral tweets invited unwelcome comments from Internet trolls. The effect was grating: “I don’t want to share something really personal if people are gonna be like… you should die, bitch!” To return to that relationship with the Internet would only bring her back to that place, she tells me. It’s something she wishes to avoid.

But can she ever leave it behind altogether? Can an “online comedian”, known for sharing her deepest, darkest secrets on the Internet ever truly go offline?

“I think I’ll always have a little bit of the personal in it, but I hope that I can make the transition where maybe I don’t have to be 35 and telling everybody everything that happened to me. I always want to keep a little bit of that personal self but I’m like….what’s the day that I delete my account and it doesn’t even matter? I don’t know. I think it’ll be a gradual transition. But hopefully people can get that and see me in a variety of different ways.”

Our conversation turns to her comedy stylings. Sennott is known for her relatable and insightful observations (“sexting is just calling different body parts big or small”, “I need a boyfriend because I miss smoking weed”, “every guy who works at Vice looks like a police sketch drawing of another guy who works at Vice.”) She has found her comedic voice – one part neurosis, two parts self-obsession – but where did this come from?

 “I don’t want to be like…it comes from being self-obsessed,” she jokes, “I think it’s something that’s grown as I have. I want to say the Internet has also been a part of that because you say your joke, you say whatever you’re feeling, and you instantly see the way that people respond to it, especially when I was first tweeting very deeply personal things. I feel like I could see in real time the way people responded to what I was saying and that gave me this heightened self-awareness.”

There are echoes of her contemporaries in her comedic voice, but there’s also something uniquely hers. Sennott pushes through the familiar territory of millennial self-obsession to something altogether more extreme in her sketches. 

There’s Baby Cult, a five minute fever dream about three women who work at a baby clothes shop and will do anything to get pregnant. The video’s climax shows the trio engaging in raunchy sex acts with extras from Sesame Street while Rhianna’s S&M plays in the background. It’s a testament to Sennott’s innovative and disturbing storytelling. She always keeps her audience second-guessing, never quite sure where or how far she’ll take the joke.  

Her other sketch Three Instagram Models Have a Picnic is just as deranged. It shows Sennott, alongside friends Annabel and Sabina Meschke, dressed in low-cut vintage tops, picnicking on a glorious summer day. As the girls communicate in squeals and barks, highlight copies of Little Women and prance around to Enya’s Orinoco Flow, I feel as though I’ve joined a cult. And it’s one I have no desire to leave. Though, in typical Sennott style, it takes a horrific turn as the trio end up devouring a hiker who strays too far from the path, before posing for a photo with his corpse. Sennott is attracted to the disturbing because it “pushes the boundaries a little.” Her sketches, just like Shiva Baby, showcase “how being a woman is a horror movie.”

I’m struck by the overtly sexualised and, at times, disconcerting way Sennott captures herself in her sketches. One shot in particular interests me. We see Sennott’s leg smeared with jam. She looks directly into the camera, proclaiming, “I’m a little biscuit…” It’s both arousing and repulsive. It’s an intentional effect, she tells me. “People want women to be sexual, but not by their choosing. They want to look at an image of you and make it sexual. But in Three Instagram Models Have a Picnic, we’re making out with,” she pauses, “I just realised that in two of my sketches we make out with stuffed animals… that’s something I will talk to my therapist about. In both pieces, I’m choosing to be like…this is horny. And then it’s almost like the creator is in control as opposed to the viewer.”

This branch of her comedy feels distinct from her stand-up. Though Sennott assures me they’re closer than they seem.  “I guess the connecting cord between all of my things is messy female characters,” she tells me, “I think so often in comedy, women are supposed to be really good. I think you can only get so much humour out of someone who’s good. I think humour comes from flaws too.”

The world is looking closely at what Sennott will create next. Both fans and critics have seen what she can do and now they want more. But what does she want?

“Oh my god, how dare you! I’m kidding. I don’t know. I think I want…it’s actually hard to tell because I always think that I know what it is, but when I achieve it I’m like…that’s not the thing. I guess I just want to be able to make things that I think are funny and good with my friends. And then like… have a little dog. But it never feels like enough. My astrology app told me that I would never be happy and so did a psychic recently. So…” she trails off, considering her next words carefully, “but I stick by what I said. I want to make movies with my friends.”

“In general, in my work, I want to explore being a woman who is flawed and messy. In general, I want to make comedies for women that are as funny and as fucked up as it is to be a woman,” she tells me.

As our conversation draws to a close, Sennott tucks into her soup, not the usual stand-up comedian’s liquid lunch. 

“Sometimes you have to go for something else,” she says wisely. She’s right, of course. Rachel Sennott has made a career out of going for “something else.”

Image Credit: Sela Shiloni

Updated trans athlete guidance: Unnuanced and exclusionary

Kylie MacFarquharson
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Updated trans athlete guidance: Unnuanced and exclusionary

CW: Mention of transphobia

Unlike most of the members of my team, I didn’t start sailing seriously until my second year of university, and it was a slow start. But I quickly fell in love with the simple principle of sport: you put the work in, you get better. So I put the work in, and I got better. It was in my 4th year as an undergraduate that, invited by my incredible captain, I first sailed in the women’s team. I discovered there that much more important than winning is the camaraderie and solidarity among the team. Six women working together for a common goal, achievable only through hard work and training. Sailing is how I made friends, how I got out of the city, how I stayed sane throughout four years of Oxford. It gave me something to strive for, to work at, to value.

If the new SCEG guidance was implemented, I could have been prevented from sailing on this team.

This week the Sports Councils’ Equality Group released a short document of guidance on how and where trans people (particularly trans women) can be included in sport. As a trans woman and Blues sailor, this caught my eye. The topic is much discussed in the media, often taking it as given that it would be unfair for trans women to compete in women’s sport, and arguing from there. I had hoped for a more thorough look past these assumptions, into the nuance of the topic. That’s not what I found.

The new SCEG guidance draws a distinction between sports which are “gender-affected” and others. It defines this as including any sport dependent on strength, physique, or stamina. This language, taken straight from the sport exception in the 2010 Equality Act, draws a line between sports where discrimination against trans women would be lawful and unlawful. The guidance proposes two policies: “female and open category” for gender-affected sport, and “prioritise transgender inclusion” for others. It also suggests a third policy of removing all gendered categories for sports where that may work.

The more lenient of these policies, prioritising trans inclusion, suggests regular blood tests for trans women, to prove that testosterone has been suppressed. This is already much more stringent than the current British University and Collegiate Sport (BUCS) policy, which simply requires that testosterone-suppressing treatment has been undertaken for at least a year (REG 4.3.3.2). It seems likely that in already underfunded women’s sports, these blood tests would be unworkable. Remember that the vast majority of sport played in the UK is at a casual level. How many sailing clubs do you think have staff that could interpret a blood test result? And how many more people will I be expected to out myself to, just to compete? The benefit of these blood tests too is unclear, if the sport has been decided not to be “gender-affected”.

The second, more stringent policy, is simply not to allow trans women to compete in women’s sport. This is independent of if the woman in question has been on testosterone suppression for one year, for five years, or for ten years. This is recommended for any sport where any advantage is gained from strength, stamina, or physique, and so would include sailing. To me, this seems bizarre. You’d be hard-pressed to convince me, the fourth-best sailor on my team of six, that I have some incredible physical advantage over the other competitors.

My views here may be shaded by the fact that sailing events are generally mixed-gender, and women regularly out-compete men, especially at the university level. The SCEG suggests that trans women should be excluded from any sport they legally can be, by assuming that they hold some unfair physical advantage. The policy is overbroad and lacks nuance. The guidance does make one point I do agree with, that a “one-size-fits-all” approach is folly, and the only people that can really make this judgment are specific sporting bodies themselves. It would be a mistake, in my view, to rob trans women of the incredible adventure of competitive sport because of an assumption of advantage. Women’s sports are not overrun with trans women; in fact, trans athletes are underrepresented in sport at all levels.

We, in sport, should focus on getting more people invested in the sports we care about, not put barriers in their way. We should continue to use extant BUCS policies on trans inclusion in sport, except where a particular sport may need additional rules. Where this does occur we should try and focus on making the sport as accessible as possible, for instance using weight classes in place of excluding trans women. Any athlete will tell you how much they love their sport, and as sportspeople, we should understand how much we would be taking away if we implemented these policies.

Image Credit: Kylie MacFarquharson

Oxford professor says government development plans for Ox-Cam arc will “destroy Cambridge”

Ben Wormald
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Oxford professor says government development plans for Ox-Cam arc will “destroy Cambridge”

The government-proposed development of the ‘Ox-Cam arc’ has been met with criticism from activists. An Oxford University professor of ecology, David Rogers, said that the plans have the potential “to destroy Cambridge”. 

The Ox-Cam arc, which covers Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, and Cambridgeshire, has been earmarked as a potential “world-leading and globally renowned centre for business, innovation and investment”, with 1 million homes to be built along with a new rail network that improves interconnectivity between the counties. Cambridge has been identified as a key area of industry within the arc, as a thriving hub of technological and scientific development. 

The rapid economic expansion in this area is of concern to the ‘Stop the Arc’ campaign, headed by Oxford professor of ecology David Rogers.

Professor Rogers claims the construction of over 1 million houses would “destroy the reason people like to live in Cambridge”, which is renowned for its greenbelt land as well as its historic buildings. 

A recent boom in Cambridge’s biomedical and technological industries has attracted new inhabitants at a rapid rate, with the local population increasing by around 30% between 1961 and 2011. The city is also a popular settlement for people working in London. 

However, of the proposed 1 million homes, Professor Rogers argues: “A quarter is earmarked for London commuters. So the arc is going to partly be a dormitory for London because London isn’t building enough houses.”

Professor Rogers is also concerned about how the project is to be managed: “If you invest in the arc and you build a million houses, where will the people come from to live in them?” 

Due to the area’s low unemployment rates, workers from the north would need to be brought in to carry out development of not only housing but also sewage facilities, for example. This in turn raises questions about the neglect of northern communities, which the government said it would “level up”. 

Cambridge’s growth has resulted in soaring house prices “many times beyond median incomes”, according to Cambridge Commons in their report ‘Supersize Cambridge’. The increased density of the area has also led to an “overloaded transport network” which the government has identified as “failing”, leaving “local roads [that] cannot bear the weight of traffic”, having as much as 97,000 vehicles travelling within the city each day in 2018 . 

While skilled researchers and development workers are attracted to companies like AstraZeneca, long-term residents and key workers “increasingly turn to surrounding villages and further afield, swelling traffic congestion as they commute in lengthy queues into the city for work”.

In addition to the infrastructural problems caused by Cambridge’s growth, the local environment is also at risk. Increased congestion has driven up levels of pollution, and more pressingly the area’s ecosystem is struggling with the increased demand on water-supplies created by these new housing developments. 

It was recently alleged that Cambridge Water, which oversees the city’s water facilities, has not enforced a hose-pipe ban since 1991, despite the strain on local chalk streams. Local councillors have called on the company to address the issues. However, the streams could become “exhausted” if the ‘Ox-Cam’ project goes ahead, Cambridge Commons claims.

The proposal views Cambridge as “the goose which lays a golden egg” in the ‘Ox-Cam arc’. 

A consultation on the government’s proposal closes on 12th October.

Image credits: Alex Brown/ CC BY 2.0 via Flickr

French connection: My first two months in Paris

Lily Kershaw
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French connection: My first two months in Paris

Culture shock is real. 

I honestly couldn’t imagine it being a thing before I came here, let alone imagine being shocked on any level by Paris. Surely, one shouldn’t be blamed for imagining Paris to be just like London but with French people? They have Pret and tea and baked beans and all the creature comforts of Oxford living and, being a firm believer that people are the same no matter where you go, the stereotypes of cold Parisians seemed unrealistic and outdated (I would actually argue that London is worse for rudeness). 

Nevertheless, I have experienced culture shock… though perhaps that is the wrong word; I have been shocked by how different I feel to those around me due to aspects of my appearance that I would have previously considered relatively “normal”. Wearing skirts above the knee in 30° weather, wearing bright colours, even just being a mixed-race woman in a major city are just some examples of qualities that have been highlighted as sticking out here by friends and strangers alike. 

I laugh in an English way, I write like an English person, I dress like an English person. None of this is positive or negative, it’s just different, yet these are all things which I assumed to be somewhat universal, or at least European. You can’t send emails here during weekends without attracting the ire of some administrator, some of the metro doors require manual opening, you need to say bonjour whenever you enter a shop, and bonne journée whenever you leave. The term “culture shock” implies some sort of extreme reaction, but I wasn’t taken aback by these mundane aspects of Paris living, I was just surprised to find that things I’d considered universal just weren’t. It’s not the differences which you expect that shock you, it’s the little things which you assume to be the same until shown otherwise. 

But beyond all that, the biggest difference has nothing to do with Paris, it’s not even about France, it’s about me. I have never had this level of independence before, and it is both exhilarating and terrifying. I feel like an adult in ways that I wasn’t quite prepared for: signing contracts in a language I barely understand, trying to explain my needs in French in an unnecessarily complex bureaucracy, discussing rent with my landlord… a lot of it has been a little overwhelming. But I enjoy the freedom more than I’d initially expected. Exploring Paris on my own is exciting, it’s fun to feel totally in control of my own time, to wake up at 6am some days to study and go to galleries and go to sleep at 7am other days after partying all night. I feel like I’m responsible for only me, and I love it. This is likely going to be the last point in my life where I am this free and I want to make the most of it, use it to discover what I truly want and who I truly want to be. 

I catch myself trying to acclimate in as many ways as possible. Parisians are more conservative? I put away my crop tops and trade them for shirts. I trade hugging for kissing people on the cheek as greeting. I often question whether my actions will appear “too English”. I carry a lighter around in my bag since, while I don’t, everyone here smokes, and I hate to say non when asked t’as un briquet? But if I’m so prepared to give up so many little cultural habits and swap them for new ones, were they really my habits at all? How much of our own personal expression is just culture? How much is truly us?

I feel so foreign here, partly because no one prepared me for the racism or the sexism. I spent most of my life in London and I thought things would be the same here, but they’re just not. I didn’t expect strangers to stop me on the street so often, just to say “you’re mixed race, right? Where are you from?”, or even the egregious “Calypso, Calypso” because “you’re from the Caribbean right?”. I didn’t expect to be followed so often when walking at night, or have men block my exits when alone on the metro when it’s dark. For the most part this is all fine and I go home, safe, and laugh it off. I laugh when my friends are concerned about me walking back home alone, catching the metro in the early hours, or taking an Uber. I’m independent, aren’t I? These are basic things that I’ve done a million times before, but the danger is there. And when I’m made to constantly feel so different when living here, the acclimation almost feels like a necessity. I can’t change my identity (not that I would want to) but I can change my outfits and my habits. When I don’t look so English and more French, the racism isn’t so bad, and the street harassment isn’t nearly on the same level. When you’re seen as foreign, these behaviours are considered more acceptable, but when you’re seen as French, less so.

Coming to another country, however, really strips you down. Without English and without the ability to properly express who I believe myself to be, who am I? Struggling to convey the complexities of my identity and understand the subtleties of those around me, I find myself repeating the same script in an attempt to have some kind of universal appeal, covering the same inoffensive topics of languages, school, and the differences between England and France. I adopt an overly friendly air, avoid jokes (in a world where timing is everything, stilted French is unhelpful), smile a lot and act enthusiastically at the least provocation. I sometimes feel myself to be a caricature of who I truly am yet, in many ways, I feel I have no other option. 

In many ways, it’s like being a fresher again. I feel unknown for the first time in a while, and it’s given me time to re-evaluate who I really am – without all the people I know, without having my support network in immediate reach, without any words, who am I? One of my closest friends told me to stop aiming to be my English self when I’m speaking French, that it puts too much pressure on me and I should just relax into whoever I become in this new language, and she was right. I am a different person in French. The only way to possibly reconcile this dual existence, my French and English selves existing simultaneously, is to admit that there is no singular self – everything on the surface, my hair, my clothes, even my actions, they’re all fickle and subject to a great degree of change very quickly. Everything deep down, who I truly I am (whatever that means), can never fully be expressed to anyone, let alone in French. I am a different person to everyone I meet but having another language just exaggerates those pre-existing differences. 

I really can’t overemphasise how much I love it here though. Paris, despite all the ups and downs, really feels like somewhere I can see myself living in the future. The people I’ve met here are lovely and the experiences I’ve had in the past two months have been incredible and are so special to me. I feel a genuine sense of pride in how my language ability has improved and have grown to appreciate the smaller triumphs, like no longer feeling like I’m going to have a heart attack before I speak to a French person, along with the larger ones. I feel like I know myself better, I’ve grown more confident and comfortable with who I am. To be honest, I can’t wait to see whatever the future here brings.

Tinder Troubles: A cautionary tale of a match gone awry

Daisy Clague
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Tinder Troubles: A cautionary tale of a match gone awry

Ronan* was sitting cross-legged on the pavement outside the pub, engrossed by his Kindle. As a first-time Tinder user standing anxiously at what I imagined to be the vanguard of online dating, I had been naively endeared by his suggestion that we skip the virtual small talk and just get to know each other in person. He stood up to greet me. “Ah, that was a lovely hug.” It dawned on me that this may have been a mistake. 

“It’s a book about how to bring the Buddha’s practices into your daily life,” he explained, ordering a glass of tap water. Ronan, a white man from North London, proceeded to describe what spirituality meant to him and how long he could sit in meditation (fifty minutes on the floor, longer if he had a cushion), much of which I struggled to hear over the deafening irony of his sheep-wool gilet, pseudo-Aztec-print headband, and private school education. He told me he planned to study and travel in Europe for a few years, immersing himself in his meditation practice. He didn’t ask me a single question about myself, apart from whether I had heard of Sapiens or read Rousseau’s Social Contract. Ronan spoke with a posh drawl, self-consciously clipping the occasional ‘t’ off the end of his words. The silences he left for me to contribute to the conversation over the next one and a half hours were honestly so few that I started to wonder if he remembered my name.

I think our respective expectations of how the night might go first diverged when my foot accidentally grazed his under the table. “Ooh, I like that,” he giggled. By this point I had adopted a kind of flirty-teen ‘I hate you’ persona to obscure the fact that I did, in fact, hate Ronan, but was at a total loss for how to tell him I wasn’t interested. I wanted to go home but felt that it would be too mean to say so. At 18 years old I hadn’t yet learned how to say no to people without feeling guilty, especially if those people were men. This was how I found myself agreeing to a post-pub walk in the park that February evening, mounting an impassioned defence of my brand-new hatred for PDA as Ronan tried to hold my hand.

In the park, he did a cartwheel and urged me to do the same. I said I was getting tired, and declined. He climbed a tree and urged me to join him. I said I was getting tired, and declined. We sat down on the grass at the top of Primrose Hill. “You know, this is the softest part of someone’s body to rest your head on.” Ronan rubbed his upper chest like an elderly relative inviting you to sit beside them on the sofa. “You can rest yours here, if you like.” I declined.

We walked on, his arm around my shoulder now as my faux jokey, don’t-touch-me attitude wore thin. Ronan was quiet for a moment as we descended the hill. Without my glasses, the London skyline was a sparkly blur of white lights beneath a dimmer cityscape of stars.

“Guess what?” he asked, with a coy smile.

What now? What else could you possibly have to say to me, Ronan? That you wear a hair shirt under your gilet to feel closer to God? That the reason you want to move to Amsterdam isn’t to smoke reems of hash? 

“You’ll never guess,” he giggled, and he was right. “I have a semi. Do you want to touch it?”

I know now that I should have been more upfront: excused myself for a family emergency after our first glass of tap water or closed the evening with a platonic hug at the door to the pub. But six years ago, with the relative anonymity of a dating app to hide behind and a teenage life’s-worth of practice at having confrontations with my friends via Facebook and text rather than ‘offline’, I simply wasn’t confident, direct, or considerate enough to brave the momentary awkwardness of saying – to a stranger’s face – no, I’m sorry, you’re just not for me.

I declined to touch his semi-erect penis. We reached the gates of the dark, emptying park. I told him I was going that way. No, you don’t have to walk me home, thanks. 

“I’d love to see you again.” His arms enveloped me. For the hundredth time that evening I didn’t know what else to do. We kissed. 

Computer Science at Oxford ranked top in the world

Thomas Coyle
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Computer Science at Oxford ranked top in the world

The University of Oxford’s Computer Science department has been ranked top in the world for the fourth year running. The department is one of the oldest dedicated to Computer Science in the world, having originally begun research as Oxford University Computing Laboratory in 1957. 

Professor Leslie Ann Goldberg, the head of Computer Science at the University, has described the ranking in a statement as “continuing recognition” of the department’s “outstanding teaching and research”.

Goldberg is the first woman to lead the department, taking over from Professor Michael Wooldridge on the 1st October. Gender imbalance within the department remains high: just 18% of academic and research staff were women, whilst 16.7% of students were women in the most recent data shared by the Oxford Women in Computer Science Society (data published in 2017).  

Speaking in a statement by the department, Wooldridge remarked that “Oxford is the most exciting place to be a computer scientist in Europe.”

The list, which is compiled by the Times Higher Education magazine, was published last Wednesday. Oxford’s overall score was 93.1, narrowly beating Stanford University’s 92.8 and Massachusetts Institute of Technology‘s 92.1.

The University typically accepts 41 applicants onto its undergraduate Computer Science courses: just 6% of applicants are successful. The average salary for those completing the course is the highest for any course from any university in the country, with graduates earning a median £45,000 only six months after graduation.

In producing their rankings, Times Higher Education consider thirteen different performance indicators, which are grouped into the five areas they believe should be the core missions of any University. They take into consideration the overall teaching environment, the volume and income of research, the influence of any completed research, the proportion of international students and staff, and the overall transfer of knowledge and research from the institution into the industry.

When judging Computer Science, Times Higher Education rank the teaching environment and the department’s research equally. The Department’s current research projects include a method of sensing floods from space, using artificial intelligence to visualise the parts of the moon that never see sunlight, and using machine learning to estimate lion populations from the sound of a collective roar.

Image: luis gomes/ CC BY-SA 4.0 fia flickr

Reuben Foundation increases donations to new Reuben College

Eva Bailey
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Reuben Foundation increases donations to new Reuben College

The Reuben Foundation has increased both the number of undergraduate scholars it funds at Oxford University, and its donations for buildings at Reuben College.

The new graduate college, located on Parks Road, Oxford, has welcomed its inaugural students this year, with 136 graduates taking almost 70 different subjects. It is the first new college across both Oxford and Cambridge since 1990, which saw the establishment of the graduate Kellogg College. Provisionally names Parks College in December 2018, Oxford University named Reuben College in recognition of the £80 million gift given by the Reuben Foundation towards an endowment and Scholarships.

The Reuben Scholarship Programme forms part of the Reuben Foundation, formed in 2002 by brothers Simon and David Reuben for the betterment of health and education across the glove. The programme aims to support high-achieving students from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds in their life at University.

Since the establishment of the programme in 2012, it has provided financial support to hundreds of undergraduate students each year, with a further 132 scholars joining Oxbridge in Autumn 2021. The growth of this programme means that 400 Reuben scholars will be studying at Oxford by 2023-24; approximately 70 new scholars will be welcomed onto the programme each academic year.

Second place on the Sunday Times Rich List 2021 (with an estimated net worth of £21.465bn) and rumoured to make use of offshore tax havens, the Reuben brothers are controversial figures. They have been known to make donations of up to £2.5 million to the Conservative Party. Further, Reuben Brothers are property developers with links to dangerous aluminium-composite cladding – the type used on Grenfell Tower. The Reuben Brothers co-own European Land and Property, which developed the Paddington Walk block of flats in West London using this cladding.

The Reuben Brothers have a history of supporting the University, including significant donations of healthcare equipment to Oxford University Hospitals during the pandemic. The Foundation has pledged to donate a further £8 million in order to refurbish and maintain the Worthington and Jackson buildings. Additionally, the site on Winchester Road, comprising three Victorian villas and a newly constructed “Reuben Graduate Centre” at the back of the gardens, will be funded by the donation.

Reuben College initially identified three key areas on which its research would be based: artificial intelligence and machine learning, environmental change and cellular life. In November 2020, ethics and values became the college’s fourth academic theme, adding to the rich culture of enterprise, innovation and public engagement with research that the college champions.

When the £8 million donation was pledged, Vice Chancellor of Oxford University, Professor Louise Richardson, said: “The Reuben Foundation has been extraordinarily generous in supporting disadvantaged students and, more recently, in funding the creation of Oxford’s newest college … students and scholars across Oxford are in their debt.”

President of Reuben College, Professor Lionel Tarassenko, commented: “This latest gift demonstrates the extraordinary commitment of the Reuben Foundation to our college. It makes a significant contribution to the refurbishment of our heritage buildings, and enables us to expand the accommodation available to our students, including the provision of a social hub in the Reuben Graduate Centre.”

A spokesman from the Reuben Foundation said that the Graduate Centre “will be the social hub for students outside study hours, offering a Graduate Common Room, gym and cinema.”

Donations from the Reuben Foundation have enabled the first cohort of Reuben Graduate Scholars to begin postgraduate qualifications this academic year, with the scholars split evenly between research students and students undergoing taught degrees.

The aim of the Reuben Graduate Scholarship Programme is to attract a diverse range of talented students, with the expectation that many of them will become leading Oxford University academics in the future. The first Reuben Graduate Scholars are both UK and international students from disadvantaged and minority backgrounds; the scholarship will allow them to commence interdisciplinary studies at Oxford without financial concerns.

The Reuben Brothers, Reuben Foundation, and Reuben College have been approached for comment.

Image: Allyox/CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Magdalen could become richest college after selling £160 million stake in Oxford Science Park

Thomas Britton
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Magdalen could become richest college after selling £160 million stake in Oxford Science Park

Magdalen College announced last week that it has sold a 40% stake in The Oxford Science Park (TOSP) to the Singaporean investment fund GIC, for an estimated £160 million.

The valuation obtained by the Financial Times is a staggering ten times more than what it was worth only five years ago in 2016, a testament to the extraordinary growth of Britain’s medical and life science research sector in recent years. The huge jump in demand for laboratory and office space since the easing of lockdown restrictions has also fueled the remarkable valuation.

Magdalen could now lay claim to be Oxford’s richest college. St. John’s and Christ Church have traditionally competed for the top spot, but with this new influx of cash Magdalen’s endowment fund, set to reach £606 million, could overtake both.

Magdalen has called the sale “a strategic partnership”, and Dinah Rose QC , President of Magdalen, told Cherwell: “it will give the college the opportunity both to enhance the provision it makes for its own students, and to benefit the wider university.”

There have been criticisms of the decision to put the money in an endowment, however. Anvee Bhutani, President of the Oxford Student Union, when speaking to the Guardian, expressed frustration that: “Oxford and its constituent colleges have a lot of money but oftentimes, having this money in investments and endowments means that they are unable to draw on it on a day-to-day basis.”

She also urged: “that colleges prioritise and financially support current initiatives around big issues such as sustainability, diversity, access and more.”

Dinah Rose told Cherwell: “The additional income will principally be used for the benefit of Magdalen’s students,” and the list of plans for the extra spending seem to fit with the Student Union President’s wish list. They include “financial support and student welfare”, “broadening access and outreach”, “sustainability initiatives”, and “improved accommodation and facilities for both graduate and undergraduate students.”

How quickly these benefits come about is yet to be seen, however, as Rory Maw, Bursar of Magdalen College and Chief Executive of TOSP, has said: “[the additional income] will take five years to feed in fully.””

The Science Park, founded in 1991, was originally a joint project between Magdalen and M&G Real Estate, but in 2016 Magdalen acquired full ownership, buying out their partners for £18.1 million. Now the park as a whole is valued at around £400 million.

It is home primarily to start-ups in the field of medical research and life sciences, and hosts over 100 companies and 3,500 employees.

Notable companies based there are Vaccitech, who developed the chimpanzee adenovirus technology that was used in the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine; Exscientia, who use artificial intelligence in drug development, and were recently valued on Nasdaq at $3 billion; and Oxford Nanopore, who on September 30th almost reached a valuation of $5 billion.

The buyer of the 40% stake is GIC, formerly called Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, a sovereign wealth fund with an investment portfolio of £300 billion. It is owned by the Singaporean government, and its mission is to manage the foreign reserves of Singapore.

Rory Maw has said of GIC: “its objectives are aligned with ours… and of Magdalen College.”

The President of Magdalen College JCR was approached for comment.

Image: Ed Webster/CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

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