When I sit down to interview second-year Ancient and Modern History student Robin Munday, he happens to be wearing his Swiss Glacier Pistol Club fleece. The Oxford University Pistol Club (OUPC) captain is right to sport his discipline with pride. In his first year at the club, the team beat Cambridge twice: in an official varsity match in Hilary, and an unofficial competition in Switzerland during the long vacation. A few further victories against other university teams in the summer also contributed to OUPC’s “moderate success” last year, he tells me.
This year does not look set to disappoint either. Competition has not started yet, but since an appearance at Freshers’ Fair, the club’s weekly training sessions at Iffley Road Sports Centre are fully booked, and its group chat has over 200 members. “There are some very talented freshers,” Munday tells me. “By and large most have never touched a gun before, but some of them have and are very promising shots.” Munday mentions how some of the new members are getting to grips with trickier techniques, like aiming at targets that collapse when the bullet hits.
The incoming pistol shooters could not be in safer hands. “I’d always grown up around shooting,” Munday says. “The first time I was on a shooting range I was a few weeks old, and I started shooting aged five, with an air pistol I got for Christmas. When I was six, I was on centre-fire, more powerful revolvers.” Munday started competitive shooting at the 2015 Swiss Federal Shooting Festival aged ten, the youngest of around 35,000 competitors. He went on to win the under-21 division of the Swiss Feldstich contest in 2024, and a year later placed third.
His affiliation with OUPC, though, started well before its recent successes. Munday’s parents met at OUPC as undergraduates. His father served as “one of the early captains” after the club broke off from the Rifle Club in 1976, and his mother became captain a few “generations” later. He still owns and occasionally wears a size XS OUPC polo shirt which the club gave his parents as a gift for him.
“For a very long time, I’ve wanted to become captain of the OUPC – I’m proud partly because I’m following in my parents’ footsteps,” Munday tells me. The club’s events lined up for this year will certainly make his tenure an exciting one. “In a couple of weeks there’s the Oxfordshire Rifle Association Gallery Rifle Championships, and, like every year, there’s the Faded Blues.” In part of the latter event, Munday tells me, OUPC alumni compete against current members, who, he adds, “are almost always defeated”. Whatever the case, there cannot be anyone better placed than Munday, with his unique overview of OUPC’s history, to take part.
Oxford City Council has approved plans to transform Oxford’s Clarendon Centre into a new public square, with trees, seating, and a water feature.
The redevelopment, proposed by the site’s owner Goldmoney Properties, will involve removing the shopping centre’s roof to create an open-air square measuring approximately 41 by 42 metres. The pedestrianised space is intended to host events including Christmas markets, ice skating, and outdoor concerts.
Council planning officers concluded that “the proposal would make best and most efficient use of the existing site” and that “economic benefits would be derived from the provision of high-quality retail, food and beverage and office uses”.
Plans for Clarendon Square were first submitted earlier this year. On 24th February, Goldmoney Properties Ltd submitted an application for planning permission, proposing the demolition of over 8,000 square metres of existing floorspace and the removal of the centre’s roof to create a large public square open to the sky.
The 3.5-acre site, located on the corner of Cornmarket Street and Queen Street, was conceived by Roy Sebag and designed by Quinlan Terry CBE. Terry’s design features classical stone facades along both streets.
Goldmoney Properties acquired the site in a £30 million deal after its previous owner, Lothbury Property Trust, entered liquidation. Sebag, the investor behind the redevelopment, outbid a joint venture involving the Crown Estate, Pioneer Group and Oxford Science Enterprises.
The Council accepted a previous application, submitted in July 2024. It also aimed to remove the roof of the Clarendon Centre and create a new public space, but included plans for student accommodation that are not in the current proposal.
The approval marks a significant step toward the redevelopment of one of Oxford’s central shopping sites. Sebag told Cherwell: “I am delighted that Clarendon has received planning approval and grateful to everyone who has helped us reach this point. My intention is to create a beautiful public square in the heart of Oxford: somewhere people can meet, sit and enjoy the city.”
A spokesperson for Goldmoney Properties Clarendon Square Ltd told Cherwell: “At Clarendon, we have made a deliberate and quite radical choice: to reduce the amount of built space and open the estate to the sky, creating a substantial outdoor square and open-air streets.”
They added: “We believe the relative scarcity of this kind of setting in central Oxford, together with the quality of the architecture and the interest we are seeing from prospective occupiers, gives the scheme a strong commercial foundation.”
Councillor Susanna Pressel, who previously welcomed the plans, told Cherwell: “I’m glad this planning application got permission – with some sensible conditions. I think the new Clarendon Centre will be a great asset to the city.
“Students are lucky to have access to dozens of college quads, but most townspeople would never think of going through those private-looking doors, so a new green space will be very welcome.”
Pressel added: “The developers have promised to seek out lots of independent stores and cafes, and not charge ridiculously high rents, so let’s hope for some interesting new places to go to.”
The redeveloped Clarendon Centre is set to open in 2028.
Pro-Palestine protesters marched from Cowley to the Weston Library on Saturday 31st October, demanding Oxford University’s divestment from Israel.
Around 120 people attended the protest, including groups such as Oxford Students for Palestine (formerly Oxford Schools for Palestine), Oxford Action for Palestine, Oxford City Green Party and Health Workers & Allies for Palestine.
The protest started with a speech about Oxford-educated administrators’ role in the creation of Israel, notably through the Balfour Declaration.
Green councillor Ahalya Bala also commented on the current situation in Palestine: “This is not a war. This is annihilation… The atrocities are still happening. It is just the pace that changes.”
“In the West Bank, forced displacement, seizures, neighbourhoods levelled to the ground, military raids, arbitrary detentions, torture, rape, executions, and land theft for Israeli expansionism are the results of the cruel racial segregation and domination of Palestinians.”
A large banner at the centre of the gathering read: “Israel bombed 36 hospitals in Gaza and murdered more than 1700 healthcare workers. Targeting healthcare is a war crime. Arms embargo & Sanctions now!”
As protesters moved through Oxford, they chanted “blood money on your hands, show us your divestment plans”, “arms embargo right now”, and “Oxford University pick a side, justice or genocide”.
Two march attendees, Lisa and John, have been protesting for Palestine daily outside Carfax Tower. They spoke to Cherwell about the current state of the student movement for Palestine. Lisa, a current graduate student said that: “For students the consciousness is there and the willingness is there but people are afraid.” John added that Oxford’s prestige meant “there is a lot of power and opportunities to speak up concentrated here”.
Outside the Weston Library, protesters heard speeches from Nick Maynard, an Oxford alumnus and surgeon who has worked extensively in Gaza, and Haya Adams, an activist from the SOAS-liberated zone. Maynard, who went to Exeter College, said in his speech: “There are moments in history when silence becomes a form of complicity… More than 22,000 children have been killed in Gaza in the last three years.” He told the audience about individual patients he had seen in hospitals in Gaza, explaining that, on one occasion, his colleagues were stripped of critical supplies of baby formula by the Israeli military upon entering the strip.
Regarding the international treatment of Palestine, Maynard later told Cherwell: “We know it’s been failed by our governments, we know it’s been failed by our media, but it’s also being failed by our academic institutions… They have not given students a sufficient platform to talk about the genocide. Students have been fantastic. The university needs to give a much bigger platform to its students.”
Oxford Students for Palestine, one of the groups organising the protest, told Cherwell: “We wish to remind the University and others that Oxford city is extremely pro-Palestine, that we call for the end of the genocide and apartheid, and we call for every Palestinian to be liberated and have the right to return. We are twinned with Ramallah for a reason.”
The group added that “we’re calling on Oxford University and its colleges to disclose and fully divest from any Israeli investments, products, or banks like Barclays”. They also criticised the Oxford University Endowment Fund (OUEM) as “fundamentally resistant to disclosure and divestment”.
Adams, from the SOAS-liberated zone, told Cherwell: “The most basic and bare minimum thing that Oxford University can do is cut ties with genocide through their investments, through their partnerships. There really are ethical alternatives… Oxford University can also protect the right to free speech by allowing students to speak up for Palestine with no disciplinary action. They need to be held accountable for the arrests that happened during the time of the encampments.”
In response to a right of reply, Oxford University said: “Oxford is steadfast in its commitment to freedom of expression and to the right to peaceful protest within the law. At the same time, we have a legal and moral duty to uphold the rights, dignity and safety of every member of our community. When behaviour, including protest, causes serious disruption, harassment or safeguarding concerns, we will act in accordance with the law and our own established procedures.”
OUEM did not respond to our request for comment.
As the march ended, Oxford Students for Palestine reflected on how it fit with the global student movement. They told Cherwell: “The last thing we will say is that the students united will never be defeated, as we’ve seen across the world.”
Additional reporting by Stanley Arlidge and Freya Robson.
How could the outcome of the US midterm elections ever affect an Oxford student? Well, the elections might affect the cost of your next Tesco or Sainsbury’s visit. This month, diesel prices surpassed £2 per litre. British grocery inflation also just ticked up to 2.5% from 2.3%. The two are not unrelated. Many attribute Britain’s inflation to the ongoing conflict between Iran and the United States in the Middle East. On top of this, the Trump administration has threatened a 100% tariff on UK goods if the country does not abandon its digital services tax.
For better or worse, US government policy can affect the world, and with President Trump’s party holding slim majorities in both legislative chambers, current US policy may be challenged or forced to change. While, strictly speaking, the midterm elections only involve voting for representatives and senators, many view them as a vote of confidence in the president. Historically, the election has generally reflected a lack of confidence in the president, at least within the House of Representatives. Since 1946, regardless of party, the incumbent president’s party has gained seats in just two midterm elections: 1998 and 2002. These elections stand out because 1998 was the year President Clinton was impeached and 2002 was the election following 9/11.
Making sense of the midterms
Let’s say you agree with the notion that the outcome of the midterms may affect your grocery spend or your travel spend between or after term time; how on Earth do you make sense of the US election? Why do some politicians appear up for election and others do not? How do you know if power has shifted and a debate will occur on issues that affect an Oxford student?
In the US, Congress consists of two elected legislative bodies: the House and the Senate. Every two years, the entire House and one-third of the Senate stand for election.
A representative serves a two-year term in the House. This means the entire House stands for election on a two-year cycle, which includes the presidential election and the midterms in between. Currently, the Republican Party holds a slim majority in the House, and the Democratic Party would need a net gain of 3 seats to take control.
A senator, on the other hand, serves a six-year term, and there are 100 Senators. Further, the Senate is divided into three classes, with about 33 Senators per class. Senate elections are staggered so that one-third of the Senate stands for election every two years. Like in the House, the Republicans hold a majority in the Senate, and the Democrats would need a net gain of 4 seats to take control.
What Congress can do
Now that we understand how the election works, how would a change of power in Congress affect an Oxford student’s daily life?
Congress was designed as a restraint on the presidency. Congress possesses extensive power in budgeting, defence, foreign policy, trade, and other matters which can be used to counter the president. If the opposition party, the Democrats, wins control of either or both chambers, then expect attempts to foil President Trump. This matters to students from the UK and abroad. As mentioned before, US global policy might increase our food bill, but even more, as petrol prices rise, so will prices for all travel and, in particular, air travel back home for international students.
The Iran war
So, what can Congress do? Congress has a variety of options to influence the Iran war, one of which is the War Powers Resolution. Under this law, Congress could force an end to hostilities by voting to instruct the president to begin withdrawing the US military from hostilities within 60 days. However, this would require a supermajority of Congress because the president would likely veto a War Powers Resolution on the Iran war.
Alternatively, Congress can take other steps to impede the war. This includes restricting the military’s budget, rejecting or not voting on nominees, holding hearings, forcing Department of Defense officials to testify, and more. If the Senate doesn’t confirm a nominee, the president is limited in whom he may select, and the ‘acting’ official tends to hold little political power. All of this pressure would go a distance in bringing an end to a conflict that has increased petrol in the UK by 16-30% on average and increased airline jet fuel globally by 20%.
Tariffs and the power of the purse
On tariffs, Congress could pass legislation to terminate specific tariffs or rescind the president’s authority more broadly. Much of the same congressional options that applied to the Iran war also apply to tariffs. The key difference is that if both chambers of Congress switch to the Democrats, there is a good chance legislation curtailing the President’s tariffs could override a presidential veto.
The congressional power of the purse should also not be underestimated. In 2019, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi refused to allow appropriations legislation to pass over a dispute to fund a border wall on the US-Mexico border, leading to a government shutdown. This can hurt the American public, as the lack of funding ceases or slows essential operations and functions like airports, issuance of small business loans, court proceedings, and heavily used public venues like national parks. Traditionally, this stalemate places great pressure on the party that appears unwilling to compromise and in 2019, President Trump found himself in that position. All of this puts the President’s 10% tariff on UK goods in jeopardy and diminishes the risks of new tariff threats.
The bottom line
So, today, take note of these facts if you attend a University of Oxford watch party. The election taking place 3,000 miles away may affect you more than you imagine, as it may affect the cost of what you eat, the cost of travel around Oxford, the cost of a flight home following term time, or even more; it may affect the global economy every Oxford student wishes to work in. Don’t stay up too late, but hopefully, if you watch the election, you will appreciate its significance, and it will also provide some entertainment.
Two forms of identification will be required to vote at the Oxford Union following consecutive instances of electoral fraud involving impersonation. Voters will now need to provide their membership card and one additional form of identification, after the Standing Committee accepted a rule change earlier this week.
Union President Gareth Lim told Cherwell that the change aims to protect the accuracy and integrity of the electoral process, especially to avoid the impact of counterfeit and illicitly obtained membership cards. The proposal to the Standing Committee described the previous system as “open to abuse” and added that the new rules are written under the principle that “the election system should be fully defensible against attempted fraud”.
Impersonation and false membership cards disrupted the two most recent Union elections.
In Trinity Term 2026, the election count was suspended after a Returning Officer identified evidence of substantial interference before boxes were opened. CCTV showed individuals attempting to cast votes using membership cards which were not their own.
Similar electoral fraud occurred during elections in Hilary, as President-Elect Catherine Xu was removed after a separate Tribunal found she had distributed membership cards belonging to other people for voting.
After both elections, membership cards were seized, and those found guilty have been suspended from the Union.
Lim proposed the new double-identification system over the summer. The Standing Committee recommended the changes, and they were affirmed by the Union’s ‘house’ on Thursday.
When asked why these measures have only come under consideration after the second instance of attempted fraud, the President told Cherwell the rules follow suspected large-scale counterfeit voting in June, whereas the Hilary election was suspected to be the scheme of one individual at the time.
Guidance on what will be accepted as secondary identification has not yet been confirmed. Cherwell understands that student identification, including Bodleian cards, will be sufficient.
A mock election to trial the new system will be conducted by the Returning Officers during the Union’s US Midterm Election event this evening. Attendees have been directed to bring both their government ID and Union card. The new rules will take effect for the next election on 27th November.
Ti-Jean Martin: Oxford’s political party societies are not fit for purpose
Entering Oxford University as a left-leaning student, word-of-mouth references and a Cherwell feature quickly gave me the impression that its party-aligned political societies did indeed constitute “a drifting elite with few ideas”. This didn’t put me off the concept entirely – I was in favour of the move to create a Green Party society, a feat that, this Michaelmas, has been accomplished alongside a Reform UK-aligned equivalent.
Yet whilst these moves will diversify a stagnant atmosphere in terms of party allegiance, it seems unlikely that they will break the mold of the political society. Neither will they move the Oxford political scene any closer to the relevance it sorely lacks.
One needn’t look as far back as 1968 to see the potential of campus politics to catalyse change. At Oxford, however, the idea that political action can actually change things seems to have been forgotten, or perhaps never thought of. Members of the Labour Club (OLC), Liberal Association (OSLA), and Conservative Association (OUCA) – or all three, as many political BNOCs seem to be – themselves would probably acknowledge that the ‘big three’ do more drinking and Union connection-making than political action.
If they are breeding future prime ministers, as the reputation goes, they’re doing it the old way, serving as old boys’ networks-to-be between their many shared members. This is demoralising in a place with the potential to create future leaders, a place with the power to turn a generation’s disillusionment into meaningful, different politics. It doesn’t do anything to help Oxford’s reputation as an elite bubble, cut off from political issues that actually matter, either.
It would have been nice to think that creating two new societies could remedy these issues, yet change can cut both ways. Concerns have already been raised about the implications of the Reform Society’s affiliation with Reform UK, a party that has been accused of Islamophobia, for the safety of Muslim students at Oxford. The society has also recently invited the controversial self-described “race realist” Nathan Cofnas to speak at Oriel College in November, spawning the announcement of a protest by the campaign group Stand Up to Racism. It remains to be seen who will constitute the Oxon Universities Reform Society’s membership, but it is quite possible that many of them will carry OLC, OSLA, or OUCA cards – the same may well be true for the Oxford Student Greens.
This cannot be the price we pay for an ostensibly more diverse partisan landscape. But where does Oxford’s politically-inclined student body go, then? To the ‘big three’, which the aforementioned feature labelled the “stand-up comedy clubs” of a faded elite? To the new societies on left and right, whose potential for both harm and good remains to be seen? And should we abandon partisanship altogether? Something like the October Club, which in theory constitutes a left-wing space without party alignment, could be replicated across the political spectrum, but this model has its own problems – the Oxford Social Democrats’ (formerly Left Society) attempt to create such an environment appears to have fizzled out.
Within the current system, there seems to be no answer to these questions. Unless the party-aligned political societies start actually doing politics, they will remain unfit for purpose.
Elizabeth Millett: Oxford’s political party societies are fit for purpose
Oxford’s political party societies have a dual reputation. On one side of the coin, many boast long-standing histories and influential alumni, from Clement Attlee to David Cameron. Flip to the tail end, and you find a termly reality of boisterous drinking socials and inconclusive debates that are, in the words of Cherwell’s Stanley Smith, “more fixated with personality than party”. But does this reputation really disrupt the confines of what these political party societies are made for?
The recent establishment of Reform and Green Party societies has prompted a return to analysing the state of Oxford’s student political groups. A predictable flurry of apprehension has followed this broadening of a scene that currently appears both contradictory and relatively subpar. Though understandable, I feel these criticisms have lost touch with the actual purpose of political party societies.
We appear to have deluded ourselves into viewing these political societies, like all student societies for that matter, as more than what they are designed to be: a place for amateurs to channel and discuss their interests. At what point were student societies discouraged for being merely recreational? University environments are defined by members undergoing a process of growth and learning; they are not a final product. An unjust amount of pressure is placed on these student groups to provide term cards and socials of the calibre that might produce our next generation of leaders. This expectation is purely based on the careers of a few outstanding predecessors that are, bluntly put, anomalies. While politics should certainly not be considered a mere pastime (I have no intention of being satisfied with low-quality debate in these forums), these societies are certainly in an adequate position to carry out their self-proclaimed purpose of having passionate and engaged discussions.
Whether they do this well is a different matter. There is no denial that the list of zero-tolerance “Terms & Conditions” set out by the Reform society for their fourth-ever speaker event (chosen to be with controversial academic Nathan Cofnas) makes one wince. Similarly, the Green’s “lemonade and leftism” sessions are destined to lose any sliver of prospective zest when debates on nuclear energy and climate change are bound to become an echo chamber when held amongst students of the same political disposition – there is a clear distinction between being functional as a society and remotely impressive.
These societies can admittedly be disappointing in their execution, allegedly devolving into sessions of networking and natter. Their wavering relevance is not, however, symptomatic of being unfit for their purpose, but a case of often not living up to what they could do with the frameworks already in place.
It is a worrying thought that what sits on your bookshelf today could be out of reach tomorrow. You might believe book banning to be a thing of the past – the stuff of Nazi Germany or Mao’s China – but restricting public access to books still happens today; you may be affected without even realising. The issue has recently resurfaced in the UK after UK markets and eBook platforms removed Sally Rooney’s books. The content of her novels was not the reason for their removal; it was her pledged support of the proscribed organisation Palestine Action. Furthermore, the decision was made with Rooney’s agreement to avoid legal risk. This self-censorship by a celebrated author has unsettled the UK media and should draw attention to the quieter instances of censorship around the world.
There is some confusion surrounding what it means for a book to be ‘banned’. The American Library Association describes book censorship (or banning) as the act of restricting access to books due to images, ideas, or information contained that is found to be objectionable. It can also involve relocating books to less accessible sections, requiring special permission to access a book, or obscuring sections of materials from readers. It is these latter, more subtle methods that usually go unnoticed. But, they are just as problematic as outright removal.
If you are a historian like me, mass book bans are all too familiar. Examples can be found as far back as 213BC, when books were burned by the Chinese Emperor to strengthen the dominance of the governing philosophy. Most famously, tens of thousands of books by Jewish, socialist, and pacifist authors were burned by the Nazis in the 1930s for being un-German.
Today, Russia and China sit at the extreme end of book censorship. Russian law enforcement has raided major publishing offices and detained executives with charges of extremism, for the content of the books they publish. Often books are removed from shelves, given black-and-white wrappers, or text fragments are physically blacked out. In China, the CCP censors books through a state-mandated system. Problematic books are categorised as either black (political works that criticise the CCP or its history) or yellow (immoral, obscene, or ‘spiritual pollution’). This runs on a case-by-case basis, and authorities frequently order school and public libraries to destroy books – in 2019 books were actually burned in Gansu province. Ironically, this article itself most likely could not be published in China. These countries, however, have historically been notorious for a low tolerance for criticism and high levels of censorship. What may be more surprising is its existence in the ‘Land of the Free’.
In the US, social media has recently fixated on sensationalised stories of nationwide lists of proscribed books. The reality is not so absolute, but it’s still more alarming than you might expect. PEN America describes current censorship in the US as being the worst wave of book bans since the Red Scare of the 1950s. Its most recent report from the 2025-2026 school year found 12,000 instances of book bans in public schools and libraries nationwide – the most in a single year. The states with the most bans were Texas, with 8,100, and Florida, with 3,200, both far outranking the rest. In the majority of districts (72%), state legislation drives removals, though encouraged by politicians’ campaigns, pressure groups, and parents. Following Texas’ Senate Bill 13 in September 2025, books are removed from its public schools on the pretext of being harmful, sexually explicit, vulgar, indecent, or profane. This has made hundreds of renowned works of fiction become inaccessible in the name of safeguarding. These include Jane Eyre, A Clockwork Orange, The Handmaid’s Tale, and practically every work of Stephen King.
Across the pond, the UK has its own controversy around school libraries and their contents. An investigation by the Index on Censorship found that 53% of surveyed UK school librarians reported being asked to remove books from their shelves. Following the report, the Minister of State in the Department of Education reaffirmed that no books or genres have been banned by the government, and schools are free to make their own choices about which resources and books they hold. Anyway, the sample was small and in just a few cases were books actually removed. Thus far, the country seems safe from the Bible-belt style morality bans. However, Reform UK councils have also directed libraries to remove Pride displays, and discussions around what is ‘appropriate’ for the public are ongoing. We should be wary of what could be on our doorstep.
Having limited access to certain books on a larger scale can impact your worldview and ideology. It is a form of propaganda and control that nowadays goes unnoticed. In schools especially, book bans cut students’ access to diverse perspectives, and so hinder the individuality of their thought. Under the guise of limiting books to their age and maturity, this rhetoric has removed pivotal works of modern literature from their education. What is more, those that rely more on public libraries and schools are more susceptible to the effects of these bans. Diversity of viewpoint should not be only for those who can afford it. Independent minds will not grow from greater control; creativity does not come from gaps on the shelves.
We can all name at least one musician who has performed behind a balaclava, helmet, or hood. Whether to preserve anonymity, cultivate mystery, or construct an entirely new artistic identity, masking the face is common among those under the limelight.
Mask-wearing among musicians is hardly new. The French electronic music duo Daft Punk famously traded their faces for futuristic robotic helmets in 1999 – certainly an upgrade from the black fabric bags they donned in their early days. Similarly, the oversized, two-tone wigs the Australian pop singer Sia is known for have become a hallmark of her style, while the American music producer Marshmello fittingly sports a white, marshmallow-shaped helmet punctuated by a black, cartoonish face. Names like Deadmau5, MF Doom, Planningtorock, and Angine de Poitrine might also spring to mind.
One of the most recent faceless sensations, EsDeeKid, is a Scouse rapper who has exploded out of the UK underground scene. His meteoric success has seen him allegedly signing the biggest-ever record deal for a UK rapper, all while keeping his face obscured.
From late 2025, rumours that the rapper was actually the actor Timothée Chalamet made it as far as The Guardian, GQ, and Rolling Stone. This theory, often but not always tongue-in-cheek, eventually led to Chalamet featuring on a remix of EsDeeKid’s ‘4 Raws’, with the accompanying video accumulating over 40 million views on TikTok and over 15 million on YouTube.
Fascination with EsDeeKid’s ‘true identity’ – synonymous with his government name and facial features – reveals a curious assumption: that the obscuration of his face is deemed an obscuration of his identity as a whole. Yet there is actually a great deal we know about him: that he is from Liverpool, that he grew up with a single mum in a council house, that he has a penchant for marijuana, that he hates when the plug uses AI art. Without a face to tether them to, these details are somehow insufficient. The face rules all: conceal it and identity melts away.
For many musicians, the unavoidable anatomical fact of the face is a burden, and masking up hardly eliminates the public’s fixation on it. The rumours surrounding EsDeeKid expose this thirst for the face, with one user on the r/EsDeeKidd subreddit confessing that their “head is churning out crazy ideas about who he really is … I can’t stand the desperation”. Rather than accepting the concealed face, fans claw at the mask, superimposing recognisable faces onto the void it creates, even if only as ironic placeholders. On a societal level, it seems that we cannot look away, that we are pathologically incapable of laying a face to rest.
Yet, is a faceless singer such a surprise when the voice is supposedly the locus of transfixion? Most listeners familiar with an artist can instantly identify them at the sound of their vocals. The face, however, remains the seemingly irreducible nucleus of identity, even in its absence. EsDeeKid’s balaclava is arguably as iconic as his Scouse accent, the absence of his face equally as remarkable as his music.
The desire to conceal one’s face extends far beyond the music industry, and while it may evoke associations with criminality, it can also stem from entirely innocuous motivation – think of the self-described intergalactic space warrior and UK politician Count Binface, frontline healthcare workers, and religious veil wearers. Yet beyond political satire, medical necessity, and religious motivation, facial concealment is a growing response to increasingly pervasive surveillance in the UK and beyond. With extensive CCTV networks, commercial biometric authentication, and the rise of facial recognition technology, faces are no longer merely means of expression and communication but sources of data from which identity can be constructed, recorded, and tracked. Perhaps, then, in the 21st century, masks offer relief from the omnipresent gaze which renders faces readily observable and knowable objects.
Here lies the paradox of the modern face: at the same time as identity is seen to crystallise on its surface, this surface is increasingly malleable and transformable. The musician SOPHIE, for instance, leans into the plasticity of the 21st-century face in her well-known music video for ‘Faceshopping’, in which her digitally rendered face is twisted, remoulded and spliced. As both surgical and digital technologies make faces ever easier to transform, the notion of the all-telling face becomes increasingly difficult to sustain. Vis-à-vis the unknown, the question remains of whether the facial imaginary will warp accordingly.
And so, we wonder: will tomorrow’s musicians hide their faces or invent entirely new ones, polyfaciality trumping the mask? If so, what exactly would a ‘face reveal’ reveal if yet another is ready to take its place?
Oxford University’s investigations into suspected academic misconduct involving artificial intelligence (AI) have risen 46% in a year, Cherwell can reveal, with most investigations in the last three years occurring in the Social Sciences Division.
Data obtained by Cherwell through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request shows 35 investigations into unauthorised AI use in university assessments in the 2025-2026 academic year, a rise from 24 in 2024-2025. Only one such investigation occurred in 2023-2024, the first recorded since the emergence of large language models (LLMs) and generative AI in 2022.
The data comes from records held by the Proctors’ Office, which is the central University body responsible for handling cases of academic misconduct. Investigations by the Proctors’ Office only involve summative assessments by central university faculties and departments, and do not involve college-administered assessments such as collections. Unauthorised AI use is recorded as plagiarism.
Responding to the figures, a spokesperson for the University told Cherwell: “Oxford takes academic integrity extremely seriously, and the number of recorded academic misconduct cases remains low.” The university added that there were 1.3 such investigations for every 1,000 Oxford students, telling Cherwell that “comparable published data suggests that such offences are relatively rare at Oxford compared to UK universities more widely”.
Graph Credit: Ned Remington
Social Sciences responsible for majority of cases
Out of 60 investigations into suspected plagiarism involving AI from September 2023 to the end of the last academic year, 31 (52%) were from the Social Sciences subject division. An average of 27% of Oxford students across the same period took social science subjects, and the division is home to the Faculty of Law, the Department of Economics, the Saïd Business School, and the Blatavnik School of Government, among others.
Another FOI obtained by Cherwell revealed that of 20 completed and ongoing investigations into suspected plagiarism in the Social Sciences division in the 2025-2026 academic year, 19 involved suspected AI use. In the humanities division, six out of ten completed and ongoing plagiarism investigations in the same period involved suspected AI use. An expanded definition of plagiarism in the 2025-2026 Academic Disciplinary Procedure included “use of material generated wholly or in part through use of artificial intelligence” without prior authorisation. Whilst Cherwell has not seen similar data for previous academic years, the high prevalence of AI in suspected plagiarism suggests advancements in artificial intelligence have placed a significant burden on the Proctors’ Office’s academic misconduct procedures.
According to data received through Cherwell’s original FOI, the Department for Continuing Education conducted eleven investigations in the past three academic years, with nine in the Humanities and eight in the Mathematical, Physical, Engineering and Life Sciences (MPLS) division. Only one such investigation occurred in Medical Sciences, which includes Medicine, Psychology, Biomedical Sciences, and Biochemistry, despite the division accounting for an average of 16.7% of the university’s students across the same period. Twelve investigations (20%) were into research-based assessments, whilst the remaining forty-eight (80%) were into non-research-based assessments.
The prevalence of social sciences reflects broader trends spotted in the misuse of AI in university-level assessment. A 2024 UC Berkeley survey of over 95,000 US university students found that 9% admitted to cheating on exams using AI, with the figure rising to 13% for business and management students and 17% for economics or journalism students.
The Social Sciences Division was contacted for comment.
Capped exam re-sits most common punishment for AI use
Of the concluded investigations into suspected AI-related academic misconduct from September 2023 to the end of the last academic year, three led to students’ permanent expulsion. No temporary suspensions from the University were issued.
By far the most common result was a capped re-sit, which was enforced on 28 occasions, where a student was required to resit an examination but with a limit on the grade they could achieve. According to the University’s Academic Disciplinary Procedure 2025-2026, for a “Category 4” instance of “gross plagiarism”, it is not usually possible to receive a grade higher than a pass in a resit examination. On two occasions, students were required to take an uncapped resit, whilst on three occasions students received mark reductions to work without undertaking a resit.
On 13 occasions, investigations resulted in cases being returned to the examination board with no further action taken. No students were given written warnings in place of other penalties. Three appeals to the results of investigations into academic misconduct involving AI were received over the same time period, with one resulting in a lower penalty being given whilst the other two were dismissed.
Graph Credit: Ned Remington
Oxford continues use of Turnitin
Once a report of plagiarism is received against a student, evidence is submitted before a Proctors’ Office caseworker decides whether to investigate. Oxford confirmed to Cherwell that reports from the plagiarism detection software Turnitin are still used to decide whether to investigate, under the latest Academic Disciplinary Procedures which came into force on 1st September 2026.
This is despite several UK Universities, including Newcastle, Westminster, and Southampton, announcing an end to their use of Turnitin over an updated End-User License Agreement (EULA) that could potentially allow Turnitin to use student work to train AI models. In a statement published a week after Oxford’s latest Disciplinary Procedures came into force, Turnitin announced a year-long postponement and re-drafting of the EULA, and confirmed that “no student or staff data has been used to develop generative artificial intelligence (AI) models or large language models (LLM)”.
Oxford noted that not every report into suspected plagiarism involves use of Turnitin. Under Oxford’s 2025-2026 Disciplinary Procedures, any investigation into suspected plagiarism is presented in a report to the Proctors, before an appropriate penalty is decided, with the student given opportunities throughout to admit wrongdoing or accept an agreed penalty. The University “aims to conclude its consideration of any Report (sic) within 90 calendar days” of the report being made, with 20 of those days usually left for the evaluation of appeals to any penalties imposed. This timeline can prevent students from continuing into more advanced education programmes or graduate jobs that depend on receiving a final degree grade.
The wider picture
The rise in investigations at Oxford into academic misconduct involving AI comes as more UK students report using artificial intelligence in assessments and examinations. The UK’s Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI)’s 2026 Student Generative AI Survey revealed that 12% of students at UK Universities “included AI-generated text directly in a piece of assessed work”, up from 8% in 2025, whilst 15% believe such use of AI is acceptable. The report also revealed that 25% “used AI to generate text, which is then edited before incorporating into assessed work”. The report also found that “being accused of cheating by my institution” was the most commonly given reason that would make a student less likely to use AI for their studies, with 42% of respondents fearing accusations of misconduct.
The figures also come a year after The Guardianrevealed that almost 7,000 instances of cheating using AI had been recorded by UK universities in 2023-2024. This was equivalent to 5.1 cases per 1000 students, at a time when Oxford University investigated only one similar instance for a student body of over 27,000.
However, the rise to 35 such investigations at Oxford in the last academic year comes after the University’s rollout of access to ChatGPT Edu for all Oxford University students last September, amongst a “range of enterprise-level GenAI tools… with agreements in place so that data is not used to train external AI models.”
The University spokesperson told Cherwell: “We are committed to helping students use AI safely and responsibly while upholding rigorous academic standards… The University offers a variety of AI training and academic skills support to students. We offer guidance on the safe and responsible use of AI tools, set out clear policy on our expectations on their use, and our AI Competency Centre offers a range of dedicated student workshops. Critical thinking and independent learning remain at the heart of an Oxford education.”
The University also pointed to Oxford’s tutorial system, which it described as “particularly valuable in the age of AI… through regular, small-group teaching and focused academic discussion, students are challenged to explain their ideas, defend their arguments and demonstrate their own understanding”.
