Friday 15th May 2026
Blog Page 3

Internet Babies: Students of Subculture

Sharon Wilson
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Internet Babies: Students of Subculture

There’s a certain kind of artist that I keep coming back to lately: artists who seem to know exactly what I want to hear before I do. Not algorithmically, but instinctively. Their music feels hyper-specific yet universal; familiar, but not quite verging on nostalgic.

I’ve started thinking of them as ‘internet babies’ – artists born and raised online, whose creative instincts have been shaped not by a single scene but by years of immersion in fragmented, overlapping subcultures. 

What defines these creators is long-term exposure to subcultures. Years of YouTube rabbit holes, Tumblr aesthetics, game soundtracks, and online music recommendations. A cultural collage of sorts, an environment in which emo sits comfortably next to UK garage, and indie sleaze bleeds into rap. Nothing feels out of place because everything was encountered together.

There’s also a practical shift underpinning all of this. Music-making has never been more accessible. Any kid with an iPad can stumble across YouTube tutorials, free sample packs and intuitive software that can quickly turn curiosity into something more structured. While barriers to music careers still exist, the act of creating music is no longer subject to gatekeeping in the same way. More self-sufficient artists are emerging outside traditional industry pipelines, marked by a notable increase in artists from working-class backgrounds – particularly female producers – breaking through via online platforms.

All of this marks a clear break from older models of music culture. Scenes were once tied to geography and gatekept by labels, with genres functioning as boundaries rather than starting points. For internet-native artists, taste is no longer shaped linearly, but accumulated and in flux. 

Jim Legxacy – a student of everything, bound by nothing

Jim Legxacy is one of the clearest examples of this shift in the UK right now. The Lewisham artist, of Nigerian heritage, makes music that on paper shouldn’t cohere, with rap, emo, Afrobeats, indie, R&B, even folk elements all pulling in different directions. And yet, on his genre-fluid album Black British Music (2025), it comes together in a kind of effortless logic.

You can hear echoes of Britpop and indie alongside more contemporary rap and club influences. The album’s title – often shortened to BBM – nods not just to Black British identity, but to the BlackBerry Messenger era that defined a specific kind of 2000s UK youth culture. It’s nostalgia, but not in a heavy-handed way; it’s embedded in his sound and aesthetics, but never allowed to define them.

What makes the MOBO-winning artist’s work land is not just the range of influences, but the way they’re carefully stitched together. UK rap, especially in its underground iterations, can sometimes risk collapsing into its own conventions; a kind of anti-mainstream becoming a new ‘box’ itself. Legxacy sidesteps that entirely. His music feels raw and unpredictable, yet intentional. It reflects a broader shift away from scene-based identity towards something more fluid.

PinkPantheress – the algorithm made human

If Jim Legxacy represents the collage, PinkPantheress represents the algorithm. Her rise was inseparable from the internet: posting snippets on TikTok and SoundCloud while still at university, initially without even showing her face.

Her music pulls from a wide range of influences: emo’s emotional directness (seen in artists like My Chemical Romance and Paramore), K-pop’s polish and melodic precision, and the rhythmic backbone of UK garage and drum & bass, all filtered through a distinctly British pop lens. The result is deceptively simple – short, hook-driven songs that feel immediate and endlessly replayable, built from a complex set of references.

Her songs feel designed for how we now consume music: in fragments, on loop, through clips and snippets – a natural extension of growing up with a musical and cultural landscape that’s constantly reshaping itself.

At the same time, PinkPantheress is acutely aware of the downsides of this hyper-online existence. In ‘Internet baby (interlude)’, she gestures towards the dissonance of being both shaped by and exposed through the internet, a tension that sits quietly beneath much of her work. Still, her impact on modern British music is undeniable. We see her breaking through to international audiences, with a recent showstopping performance at Coachella, and being the first woman to win Producer of the Year at the BRITs. She feels like a frontrunner in any conversation about defining stars of the 2020s.

Natanya – genre as a palette, not a boundary

Natanya offers a slightly different angle on the same phenomenon. She was classically trained in piano from a young age, with clear jazz influences, but also draws from Amy Winehouse, Aaliyah and even Vocaloid artists. However, her work doesn’t sit neatly within any one lineage. It moves between neo-soul, R&B, indie, even touches of grunge, without ever fully settling.

On Feline’s Return (2025), that fluidity becomes the point. The project feels ambitious and deliberately uncontained, drawing from both formal training and eclectic, internet-driven listening habits that define her generation. Her songs refuse to resolve into a single identity.

What’s striking about Natanya is that she doesn’t just draw from different subcultures – she moves between them so seamlessly that they begin to lose their boundaries altogether. In an interview with Exeposé, she said: “I think in worlds. Instead of genre, I’d rather imagine I’m somewhere”. When listening to Natanya, you are transported to the scene that she sets with her diaristic lyrics and unique sound.

From everything we’ve ever clicked on

Taken together, artists like Jim Legxacy, PinkPantheress and Natanya point towards something broader. Their work is defined by how it processes influence, reassembling fragments of culture shaped by years of online immersion. What emerges isn’t just collage, but music that feels both widely legible and unexpectedly personal.

There’s a common criticism that the collapse of traditional ‘scenes’ have flattened music into a set of aesthetic blends, with styles endlessly recycled. But what these internet-native artists are doing isn’t simply repackaging the past – it reflects a different mode of cultural consumption, where broadly ranging influences are accumulated, reworked and made intuitive.

To me, this generation has a distinct creative instinct. Their music is rooted in shared cultural memory but not limited by it. With the right level of craft and imagination, it becomes generation-defining.

It makes me think about how I listen, not just what I’m listening to. I’ve grown up on everything from FIFA soundtracks to Paramore to K-pop – a constant stream of sounds that never really resolved into one identity, but gradually moulded my taste through constant exposure. Maybe that’s why this music feels so familiar. It reflects that same way of consuming culture: scattered, overlapping, always in motion. I’m hearing it not just as a listener, but as a fellow internet baby.

Gareth Lim elected Oxford Union President for Michaelmas 2026 in re-poll

Cherwell News
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Gareth Lim elected Oxford Union President for Michaelmas 2026 in re-poll

Gareth Lim has been elected Oxford Union President for Michaelmas Term 2026 at a re-run of the election.

Lim received 299 first preference votes, by a margin of 80 votes over Liza Barkova, who received 219 first preferences. Hamza Hussain and Victor André Marroquín also contested the election, receiving 66 and 61 first preference votes respectively. Six hundred and forty-six valid votes were cast, well below the 1787 votes cast in the original poll, with Lim receiving a majority of 327 votes including second preferences. 

Speaking to Cherwell following his election, Lim said the victory shows that “the Union is able to unite around a non-political figure; that the union believes in something that’s much greater than politics”.  He thanked his “good friend” Katherine Yang, President for Hilary Term, among others, and described his supporters as a “very large coalition”. He said this election had “no slates”, meaning “people were far more able to vote [with] their conscience”. 

Gareth Lim first ran for President for Michaelmas Term 2026 at the end of Hilary Term, coming in 3rd place behind Catherine Xu and Liza Barkova. He acknowledged to Cherwell the difference between the two campaigns, his first as a “guerrilla campaign” and his second which “had the support of a lot more traditional political figures within the Union”, proving that people “can unite behind something brilliant”.

In a victory speech in the Union bar, Lim expressed his appreciation for the other candidates for their campaigns and those who backed his campaign. He told the assembled audience in the Union bar that “this victory belongs to all of us who voted for me”. He promised to “take back the Union” and change the “conduct” of the institution. 

During his campaign, Lim focused heavily on, what he described to Cherwell as, restoring “intellectual rigour”, arguing that recent terms had become dominated by controversy and internal disputes. He called for a broader range of debates and speakers, suggesting the Society should place greater emphasis on areas outside politics and international affairs.

Lim also raised concerns about the Union’s disciplinary culture, claiming that candidates had become “incentivised to use the Union disciplinary procedure as a replacement for campaigning”. He added that the Society had become “over-reliant” on disciplinary processes and criticised what he described as a wider “culture of fear” within Union politics.

The election took place in the context of ongoing backlash surrounding the Oxford Union’s invitation to several high-profile figures, including Carl Benjamin and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson. Speaking to Cherwell after his victory, Lim repeated that he would not have invited Yaxley-Lennon to the Society, but said the Union should “stand by [its] decisions” and said incumbent President Arwa Elrayess had “done a pretty good job” at deciding who she wanted to invite. He said Elrayess was considering changes to the debate format to “ensure that people like Tommy Robinson answer the questions” and that it will be “only after we see the debate” that we could judge whether the invitation to Yaxley-Lennon was “the right thing to do”.

The re-run election was triggered after President-Elect Catherine Xu was found guilty of electoral fraud by a Union Tribunal. The Tribunal concluded that Xu had orchestrated a scheme to impersonate legitimate voters during the original election, held in Hilary Term 2026, by distributing Oxford Union membership cards to individuals not entitled to vote and instructing them to cast ballots in other members’ names.

Oxford researchers trial non-invasive diagnostic scans for endometriosis

Melissa Eddon
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Oxford researchers trial non-invasive diagnostic scans for endometriosis

Researchers led by University of Oxford academic Dr Tatjana Gibbons have successfully trialled non-invasive scans to diagnose endometriosis.

Published in The Lancet Obstetrics, Gynaecology and Women’s Health, the study involved 19 individuals with either strong signs of “pelvic or thoracic endometriosis”, or who had already received a diagnosis. The non-invasive scan was carried out after the intravenous administration of an imaging agent that binds to tissue, and makes endometriosis growths visible on screen. 

The study demonstrated 100% specificity, meaning no false positives were reported. As such, the scan offers a viable alternative to the existing invasive diagnostic procedures. Dr Gibbons told Cherwell: “This imaging method could support patients getting an earlier diagnosis and could help diagnose endometriosis subtypes that can’t be reliably seen non-invasively.” 

Endometriosis is an inflammatory disease, in which cells similar to those found in the uterus grow in other parts of the body, such as the ovaries and fallopian tubes, but can also spread to the bladder, bowel, and chest. Symptoms such as heavy periods accompanied by severe pain and pain during sex are triggered when endometriosis growths break down but cannot leave the body.  

The condition affects an estimated 10% (190 million) of women of childbearing age. The causes of endometriosis are unknown, though some research has connected it to immune system dysregulation. The disease can also have significant impacts on fertility, with 25-50% of infertile women having endometriosis. 

At present, there are no known cures for the disease. 

Typically, diagnosis requires invasive laparoscopic surgery, which involves directly observing tissue or taking samples for examination. The complexity and expense of the procedure often lead to delays in treatment and the continuation of suffering for the patient, with one study by the charity Endometriosis UK suggesting wait times have reached an average of nine years. Currently, around 40% of surgical procedures produce negative results. Gibbons hopes the study will tackle these waiting times, and “empower the development of new therapies”. She added that the next step for the pilot study is a larger clinical trial, which she hopes will validate the team’s findings. 

Oxford Women in STEM Society told Cherwell: “The pilot scheme is a positive step, but it also highlights how delayed progress in this area has been…Conditions like endometriosis have been consistently underfunded and dismissed, which has led to real harm.”

The society hopes that the study will not only improve treatment timelines, but also “force a shift” in attitudes towards women’s pain by healthcare companies and professionals. 

The Oxford study has made national news, and was featured in an episode of Saturday Night Live UK. As part of the “Weekend Update” skit, the study was used in a joke about the pain that has come to be associated with female health procedures.

May Morning

Elizabeth Bourn
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May Morning

Smudged mascara and the curling of coffee steam. Small yawns and the shuffling of boots. Tangled hair plaited by the same girl from first-year, a crumbly pastry shared with her, too. Heads resting on shoulders, tired eyes looking skyward for the song that is coming. Fresh, crisp air and butter-yellow sunlight you could reach out and taste. There is excited chatter of stories from the night before, looks shared. A hush falls. May morning. See what the world can do before sunrise.

Sunday

Rory Maguire
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Sunday

That Sunday could arrive first-class,

Wrapped in tissue and stickers with minimalist logo.

Sent anonymously (from a fan?).

It will be a crisp, sunblushed Sunday.

The first in months without rain or

Export tariff.

Sunday, with speechless morning

and an afternoon

of step-counts exceeded.

Inside, there will be boutiques browsed,

with flat whites from 

an independent coffeehouse, where we know the owner.

We could unpackage this Sunday

Share it and save the tissue

For Christmas giftwrap.

We might duel over whether

we go to yours for the holiday,

Or mine, across the sea.

We might get workaday Mondays, Milky-white Tuesdays, 

dreary Wednesdays, Thursdays with dinner parties,

Two-for-one Fridays, and dancey Saturdays.

It hasn’t quite left the depot

Though,

And you won’t be in to answer the door.

Students encounter issues with voting registration during local elections

Hattie Simpson
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Students encounter issues with voting registration during local elections

Multiple students across Oxford have reported being turned away from polling stations during Thursday’s local elections after discovering they were not listed on the electoral register despite believing they had registered through the University’s enrolment system.

Students across several colleges, including St Anne’s, Somerville, and Pembroke, said they had opted in to share their information with the electoral register during online enrolment through the University’s Student Self Service system at the beginning of the academic year, only to be informed on polling day that they were not registered. 

A student at St Anne’s told Cherwell: “I’m really frustrated I couldn’t vote today, especially because I’d talked directly with the candidate I was going to vote for, put up posters in my window, and tried to spread the word. I’d gotten very involved, and now it feels a bit like it was for nothing. I also find it frustrating and concerning that my registration for the county council elections last year did not carry over this year.”

In a statement to Cherwell, a University spokesperson said: “The University takes its responsibilities to support student electoral registration seriously and has an established process, developed in partnership with Oxford City Council, to help students register to vote through the University enrolment system.” The spokesperson added that the University was “aware that a small number of students reported difficulties or confusion regarding their polling location or registration status on polling day” and said it was “looking carefully into those cases.” 

Oxford City Council also told Cherwell that “a handful” of students who registered through the University were not picked up during the registration process. It added that, where students were able to confirm they had applied via the University, “all were able to vote on May 7th.” Multiple students affected told Cherwell that they were not informed of this by the polling station. Some were encouraged to call the Council’s electoral services, yet upon fully explaining the situation, were told, as one student put it, “to register through the government website next time, but nothing about being allowed to vote this time”.

The issue affected at least one student council candidate. Harry Morgan, a student at Pembroke College and candidate for Osney and St Thomas, told Cherwell that he was unable to vote because he wasn’t listed on the register despite applying via the University. “I saw my name on the ballot papers, but they didn’t give me one”, he added. 

Former St Anne’s college student and successful Green candidate for Holywell, Alfie Davis, told Cherwell that they had experienced a similar issue whilst a student after assuming the University had registered them correctly.

Other students were registered to vote by the University under their specific accommodation block rather than their college address, including for on-site accommodation, which also caused further confusion at polling stations. A student at Somerville explained how students in her accommodation building were initially turned away because polling station staff searched for them under the college address rather than their block. She told Cherwell: “It’s the kind of technicality that would have made me think the mistake was on my end, if it hadn’t happened to literally everyone in my building.”

In a statement to Cherwell, the University spokesperson notes that some students were registered at their specific term-time accommodation address rather than a “central college site”, which “may have led to confusion about the correct polling station”. Several students were ultimately able to vote after contacting electoral services and confirming they had been registered under their accommodation block rather than their college site.

Multiple students at Somerville said when they contacted electoral services, after being prompted by election workers at polling stations, they were informed that students living in halls are removed from the register annually because of “high turnover” of accommodation. 

In a statement to Cherwell, Oxford City Council confirmed that removing students from the electoral register is “normal practice” and said it had done so “for decades”. The Council said students living in university accommodation are typically removed from the register during the annual canvass in autumn, usually around October, on account of the complexity of student registration and the high turnover of addresses. It added that the introduction of Individual Electoral Registration in 2014 meant Electoral Registration Officers in university towns were expected to “delete students from the register and require them to re-register”. The Council added that it works closely with the University and Oxford Brookes during the annual registration process, including receiving lists of eligible students living in halls and contacting those who have not registered independently.

However, Cherwell found that Oxford City Council’s ‘Register to vote and the annual canvass’ webpage does not explicitly state within its student registration guidance that students living in halls must re-register annually. A link on the page directing users to Electoral Commission student guidance was also non-functional at the time of publication. Whilst moving addresses is listed as a requirement for re-registering, this does not highlight that moving between on-site college accommodation buildings constitutes a change of address requiring re-registration. 

Guidance published by the Electoral Commission and the National Union of Students similarly refers to students needing to re-register if they change address, but does not make clear that students will be removed from the register on an annual basis.

The University spokesperson told Cherwell: “We are reviewing how information and guidance can be made clearer for students in future elections.”

Hail Agnes full of grace: ‘Hamnet’ and the perfect mother figure

Ruya Oral
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Hail Agnes full of grace: ‘Hamnet’ and the perfect mother figure

A couple of days ago, I saw an Instagram reel (in the Friends tab, no less) regarding Jessie Buckley’s recent Best Actress win at the 2026 Academy Awards. The reel was praising Buckley for the apparent embrace of her most important role as wife and mother, highlighting her talking adoringly of her months-old baby, addressing her husband and exclaiming “I want to have 20,000 more babies with you!” in her acceptance speech. The caption on the reel recalls Michelle Williams’ Best Actress acceptance speech at the Golden Globes in 2020, wherein she discussed how her abortion allowed her to advance her career, as if to say ‘look how far we’ve come!’ It is impossible not to be reminded of that meme, which has now been played for irony, depicting two clipart-style women with one holding a trophy and crying, “I won!”, while the other swaddles a baby and retorts, “No, you didn’t.” If not claiming that a successful career and familial bliss are mutually exclusive, it seems clear that within this narrative, one is being valued far over the other.

The discourse surrounding motherhood is a strange one. The cliché that the left’s weakness is its inability to reach a consensus certainly holds some truth, and the issue of reproductive rights is proof of it. For decades, feminists have oscillated between pro- and anti-natal stances, and the crackdown on access to abortion services in recent years has shifted people both ways along the axis. At the same time, the right has unfailingly tokenised the mother figure as a paragon of Biblical femininity, lamenting how she has been cheated and let down by those supposed women’s rights activists, whilst they themselves simultaneously strip her of her essential rights and prohibit her from taking on any other label. As a result of this dichotomy, depictions of motherhood in film occupy an equally strange space in the mediascape.

Buckley swept this year’s award season for her performance as Agnes in Hamnet, Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of the Maggie O’Farrell book of the same name. The film centres around Agnes (more commonly known as Anne Hathaway), a magical healer, and her romance with the then unknown town tutor William Shakespeare. The crux of the film comes when Agnes and William’s 11-year-old son, the titular Hamnet, passes away. The remainder of the runtime explores how each parent deals with the grief as it threatens to tear them apart, both from each other and their own senses of self. It seems unbelievable that even this – a historio-fictional account of Shakespeare that centres not him, but a woman in a relationship with him, which has led not to the hunky white-boy-of-the-month lead receiving accolades, but his relatively less-talked-about co-star – can be milked for ‘tradwife’ content. Yet it is not the tragedy of the plot or even Buckley’s vast success as a result of her performance (one that, by virtue of her gender, she could not have taken on in Shakespeare’s time) that people are ooh-ing and ahh-ing over. 

Whether by chance or by Freudian fate, I have ended up watching every recent blockbuster concerning motherhood (of which there have been, perhaps suspiciously, quite a few) with my mum. When we watched Lady Bird (2017), which consensus dictates is Greta Gerwig’s magnum opus, I remember both of us shifting awkwardly in our seats and sniffling as we lamented our failure to understand what all the fuss was about. I managed to get through most of Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) by myself before she wandered in right as the gorgeous final montage was playing on screen. It took her at least 15 minutes to stop pattering about her day and notice the tears streaming down my face. I hadn’t seen her in four months when we sat down to watch Hamnet together, one of the longest spans of time we’ve been apart, and I could anticipate the pain I would feel in my chest in roughly two hours before we even hit play. 

On the one hand, I sympathise with the kind of cognitive dissonance showcased in that reel about Jessie Buckley. I, too, want to see my beliefs platformed by individuals with influence, and I, too, want people with the power to do so to speak out for the betterment of society. It is maybe a simple matter of chance that I’ve escaped the logical fallacy of using Buckley as a defence for wanting women to return to their rightful places in the domestic sphere, though she is anything but exemplary of that in practice. But the pathos to which these movies appeal by depicting the complicated but ultimately incomparably rewarding relationship between a mother and her child, along with Buckley’s dedication of her award to the “beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart”, makes me momentarily wonder whether it is a necessary part of my journey through womanhood to experience that dynamic on the other side of it. It makes me question whether I am a worse feminist for not wanting it. 

I am my mother’s only child. She had already been in the workforce, earning a steady income for ten years before I was born. She was financially independent even before that – together, she and my father paid for their wedding by themselves, having saved up a small portion of the stipend they received as government scholars while doing their Master’s degrees here in the UK. In her career spanning three decades, she has achieved more success than most, if not all of the mothers in the films we’ve seen together. Though I am biased, I can make a strong argument for her doing a fine job at balancing her professional growth with her role as a mother. I am certainly a better person for having been raised by her, and I believe she would agree that our relationship is mutually beneficial. However, I think I would be doing her a disservice if I placed myself at the centre of all that makes her a valuable member of society. 
In the final scenes of Hamnet, Agnes attends the first performance of her husband William’s new play Hamlet at the Globe Theatre. The film conjectures that Shakespeare wrote his masterpiece as a way of processing and dealing with the grief of losing his son. The credits roll to the sound of Agnes’ laughter, as she is finally able to experience catharsis and let go. Her story is as much about loss as it is about overcoming, about reconciling the complexities of your identity before and after tragedy strikes. Ultimately, a mother is not nearly all that Agnes is. I bet Jessie Buckley, a woman who has been pigeonholed rather than appreciated for her multifariousness, would agree with me.

Going to prison during the vacation: The secret lives of Oxford students

Anonymous
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Going to prison during the vacation: The secret lives of Oxford students

The question of “So, how was your vac?” often comes up in hall after a vacation, always from those you didn’t have time to message over the break. “I spent it in prison” is perhaps not the expected response amidst stories of ski chalets and exam lock-ins. But we Oxford students take pleasure in over-burdening ourselves, and those of us who worked during the vacation have much better stories to tell than those who spent it cruising down a black run.

Over 150 hours of my Easter vac were spent inside the sturdy walls of one of His Majesty’s most secure men’s prisons – though fortunately I was able to go home at the end of the day. My job is a varied one: I help to facilitate daily family visit sessions by serving refreshments, supporting family work, and organising activities for children. Many of these children are told that their dad lives on an oil rig or that they’re visiting him at work, and my job is to make the whole establishment – with its search dogs, handcuffs, locked doors, cameras, and austere-looking guards – seem a less daunting place to visit. Wrapped up in a university that provides a college family in addition to my own real one, it is easy to forget that there are those who might only see their dad for two hours a month.

My favourite thing about work is our monthly Family Days, day-long visits where the men get to be dads again: they can get up and play with their children (rather than stay stuck in lines of dull grey chairs), they can eat lunch with their family, and they can finally spend some time relaxing. Seeing a little one yell “Daddy”, running across the visitor’s hall to be scooped up in her father’s arms brings a tear to my eye every time. I will always remember last Christmas, when Santa Claus (played by one of the officers) asked one of the older children what presents he wanted. He said: “I just want Dad to be at home again.”

Those are the highs, though, and I see the lows in equal measure: I see men who are high, unable to speak a coherent sentence. I see children coming to the play area because their parents are ignoring them. I see children who have had no male role model in their lives, children who have suffered. Just this past vacation, I was spat on, punched, kicked, and grabbed by children who know no better, whose parents sit, watch, and silently approve. Seeing this world – one so different from my own childhood – is just as unbearable to watch. Being but a cog in the machine, I can’t help but wonder whether they will grow up to imitate their dads. For the inmates’ loved ones, the worst part is the “second sentence”, the sentence that families have to bear through loss of income and community judgment. And the suffering that families have to bear makes it all the more likely that the cycle of addiction, violence, and neglect will continue.

Most days at work involve living a double life: to the officers, I am the diligent colleague who spends his breaks reading Beowulf (collections revision), but to the residents, I am just another part of the establishment. Not allowed to reveal any personal details (not even my surname), I am simply the “Sir” (or “Miss”, if they’re feeling cheeky) who serves the refreshments. For those who have been there long enough to remember me from the Christmas vacation, I do have to admit that I’ve been at university: “Yeah, I do maths at Bristol mate” is my normal response, dreading the day someone asks me my opinions on Fermat’s Last Theorem or expects me to solve a Sudoku.

But working with the men is the most interesting part. Speaking face-to-face with the people whose headshots have appeared on the news is an intimidating experience – dare I say worse than a one-on-one tutorial – but it does pop the Oxford bubble. From arguing with those who are adamant that university is a waste of money or “just for toffs” to having a serious conversation about a book they picked out from the prison library, I am (or at least I hope) able to have just a little impact on their road to rehabilitation. And though many are happy to have a roof over their head, three hot meals, and all the friends they could need, an equal number are desperate to get out and see their children grow up.

When I’m deep in an essay crisis during term or stressing about an upcoming exam, it is both helpful and humbling to have a reminder of the lives lived outside of Oxford. And, in the world which we inhabit, so full of hate and loneliness, I find some inspiration in my experiences in a prison: somewhere that should perhaps epitomise these emotions. One that sticks with me most is a card written by one of the eight-year-olds: “Dear Daddy, I know you’ve been a little bit naughty this year, but that will never stop me from loving you.” 

Oxford needs a women’s college

Lucy Pollock
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Oxford needs a women’s college

Naturally, I loathe to say that Cambridge does anything better than Oxford, but I can’t deny that there is one thing I will always respect them for: Newnham and Murray Edwards (and, up until 2021, Lucy Cavendish). 

In the 1970s, mixed colleges were the way forward. They embodied a progressive attitude. One of the main justifications for mixed colleges was to increase the number of female undergraduates at Oxford. As Florence Smith showed, the admission of women to Hertford, Brasenose, Jesus, St Catherine’s, and Wadham was complex – amidst the progressive ideology, a misogynistic and unequal reality remained. Crucially, the biggest consequence of men-only colleges admitting women in 1974 was that, only five years later, former women’s-only colleges St Anne’s and Lady Margaret Hall admitted men. By 2008, there was not a single women’s-only college left in Oxford.

Mixed colleges are a wonderful thing. Having been at an all-girls school for seven years, I don’t think I would have accepted an undergrad offer from a women’s-only college. We can all agree that it is healthy for men and women to socialise, and for women to understand and participate in environments which aren’t exclusively female. However, single-sex spaces, especially for women, and in particular women’s colleges, are important. Research has concluded that girls do better (academically) at single-sex schools. It would, therefore, be unsurprising for this to continue to be the case at a university level. I’m sure many female readers are able to relate to the experience of being spoken over by a male tute partner at least once in their time at university. 

Women’s colleges can also, crucially, provide funding to women. Despite women often outperforming men at an undergraduate level, academia in Western nations has a significant gender gap – particularly within STEM – and a significant barrier to academia is funding. Cambridge colleges like Newnham and Murray Edwards provide not only places for women, but also funding, awards, and prizes. For further study in History at Oxford, an MSt will cost you approximately £17,000, whilst a DPhil will cost you around £14,000 annually (roughly £42,000 – £56,000 for the full degree). Women’s colleges help to address this gap. 

Crucially, women’s colleges retain their feminist foundations. I believe that my own college (Somerville) is a progressive place, and I’d argue it has retained its values and principles better than any other former women’s college. Yet I have heard plenty of sexist ‘jokes’ in the college bar. Casual sexism is something almost every woman is forced to confront; a women’s-only college would give women a reprieve. Somerville is the only college to have had only female principals – something I was very aware could change when our principal stepped down in 2025. Female principals are often one of the best examples young women have for a woman in a position of clear authority, particularly in an institution like Oxford, which for so long was associated with only masculinity. Whilst I do not advocate for total feminist separatism, I believe that there is real value in women’s-only spaces. Having spoken to women who attended former women’s colleges in Oxford for my undergraduate thesis, the difference in atmosphere is almost palpable. Women’s-only colleges were often described as peaceful, empowering, calm places of learning and guidance. I love my college, and indeed I love Oxford, but I think that that atmosphere has faded. 

When Somerville went mixed (amongst great protest from students), former Principals Catherine Hughes and Daphne Park justified the change by arguing that they had always taught women to be feminists; now they were doing the same for men. If that was the goal, they failed. Men who identify as feminists, and men who fight for women’s rights exist within Oxford, as they do everywhere, but this is not because of any college environment. Women’s colleges were once a place in which women could learn to take on a male-dominated environment; though various environments have remained male-dominated, the safe space for women created by these colleges, a space in which women could exploit every and any opportunity, has been lost. 

Women’s colleges don’t appeal to everyone. When the first five colleges went mixed, they admitted 100 women. How many more applied? There was a real demand for a mixed-sex environment – rightfully so. There are real advantages to coeducation – and also to cohabitation between the sexes. There were plenty of women at LMH who were delighted about the arrival of men, and many went on to marry the men they met at college. But others missed out. There are plenty of reasons women might need – not just want – a women’s-only space. I know plenty of women who chose to attend London universities – or not attend university at all – because London universities would allow them to live at home while studying. Some women also preferred this because they did not want to live in mixed dorms with men on campus, due to their religious beliefs. Colleges in Oxford do try to be accommodating for the most part, but a mixed college will never be as good at providing spatial separation as a women’s college. 

Fundamentally, it’s not really about whether mixed or single sex colleges are better. It’s about having the ability to choose. Women applying to Cambridge can choose. Women applying to Oxford can’t. Perhaps instead of a new graduate college every five years, Oxford could reintroduce a women’s college. One women’s college would not do the University any harm, but it would be of colossal benefit to its students. 

Access to Canvas temporarily suspended by University following cyberattack

Mercedes Haas and Hattie Simpson
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Access to Canvas temporarily suspended by University following cyberattack

Access to Canvas, the virtual learning platform used by the University of Oxford, has been temporarily suspended by the University today as a precautionary measure following an external breach of Instructure, the third-party supplier of Canvas. 

ShinyHunters, a criminal hacking group, has claimed responsibility for breaching the platform and has threatened to release sensitive data, including “students’ names, their personal email addresses and messages sent between teachers and students”, unless ransom payment demands are met by 12th May. In an email sent to all students by the University, it was confirmed that “some Oxford user data is affected” and that this “may include names, email addresses… and messages exchanged between users within Canvas”. 

In the email, sent on 6th May, the University said that students could “continue to use Canvas”. On 7th May, “Instructure briefly placed Canvas in maintenance mode while it dealt with the second incident; service was restored overnight”, according to a University spokesperson. 

In a comment to Cherwell regarding the current suspension of the platform, a spokesperson for the University said: “The University has temporarily suspended user access to Canvas, its virtual learning platform, including Panopto recordings accessed through the platform, as a precautionary measure. The decision follows notification from Instructure, the third-party supplier of Canvas, of two incidents of unauthorised access affecting many universities internationally.

“Instructure is investigating and the University is working closely with the supplier. There is no evidence that University authentication systems, University accounts or Panopto itself have been compromised. The University recognises this disruption will be of concern to staff and students, particularly during the examination period, and is exploring measures to support access to teaching and course materials. As a precaution, staff and students are advised to remain vigilant for phishing or scam emails and to report anything suspicious to the University’s Information Security team.” 

Access to Panopto, the platform which shares lecture recordings, has also been suspended. However, in the notice placed on the Canvas login page by Oxford, the University emphasised that “there is no indication that University systems or Panopto have been compromised”.

The suspension has had a significant impact on students across the University, especially for those who are almost entirely reliant on Canvas to access all materials for their course. An Engineering student told Cherwell: “Being only a week away from exams is quite frustrating, since I no longer have access to the past papers.” 

A Material Sciences student told Cherwell: “It’s literally preventing me from doing any degree work as all my tutorial sheets, lecture recordings, and reading list are all exclusively on canvas”. They added that they have yet to receive any communication from their faculty regarding plans to mitigate the impact on students.

A PPE student added: “Given the pressure of a weekly deadline and the heavy reliance on Canvas for certain elements of the course, being unable to access content for several days has created needless stress.”

Some faculties have contacted their students to warn of the temporary suspension, but many remain affected and without contact. In the email sent by the History faculty to undergraduate students, they told students that “the University is putting in place measures to support access to teaching and learning materials and will seek to restore access as soon as it is appropriate to do so”, but did not expand on what these measures would involve or how long the suspension is expected to last.

The hack has affected universities across the world, with ShinyHunters listing more than 8,800 educational institutions affected, across 10 different countries – including Harvard University, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania. ShinyHunters also claims that it has 275 million individuals’ data from across these institutions. Instructure has yet to release an official press release confirming these numbers. WIRED has suggested that never before has “a cyberattack against a single software platform so thoroughly disrupted the daily operations of thousands of schools”.

On Monday 11th May, a University spokesperson confirmed that access to Canvas had been restored following “further investigation and monitoring over the weekend” and “fresh security assurances” from Instructure. The University told Cherwell there remains “no evidence that University authentication systems, accounts or Panopto itself have been compromised”, but advised staff and students to remain vigilant for suspicious emails or messages. The spokesperson also acknowledged the disruption caused during the examination period and said that users had been “directed to welfare and academic support”.

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