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‘Connivery’ and ‘cheating’: Former officials interfered with Oxford Union tribunals

Arina Makarina and Gaspard Rouffin
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‘Connivery’ and ‘cheating’: Former officials interfered with Oxford Union tribunals

On 1st February, during a tribunal hearing, Samy Medjdoub – the former Secretary of the Oxford Union, who is currently suspended for having fabricated minutes – texted former President Israr Khan: “Donald can hear, so don’t mention… that you know the panel is rigged or that I know him.” Donald Jenkins is one of the three panelists of the Appellate Board, the Union’s highest adjudicatory body, and was hearing two cases involving Medjdoub as a party.

Cherwell has since reviewed exclusive direct communications between Samy Medjdoub and former Union officials – including former Presidents Israr Khan and Moosa Harraj and former Treasurer Rosalie Chapman – discussing Medjdoub receiving direct advice on proceedings and feedback on submissions from Donald Jenkins, who was a member of the Appellate Board hearing cases involving him.

Medjdoub, Khan, and Chapman “categorically and unequivocally” denied the allegations, while Harraj said his denial was “complete and unequivocal”. They deny any claims that they were involved in the “rigging” of the tribunals, and the existence of any private communications suggesting this. Cherwell has seen extensive evidence disproving their claims.

They also deny having benefited from the rulings of the Appellate Board or other Union tribunals as a result of interference. In addition to denying the allegations, Medjdoub told Cherwell “at no stage did I obtain the outcome I was seeking”. Medjdoub remains suspended from the Union, and his political opponent, Arwa Elrayess, was reinstated in her position as President-Elect.

While the Appellate Board did not rule on the two cases involving Medjdoub, it issued a directive temporarily suspending Elrayess, and two binding interpretations that could benefit Medjdoub’s future appeals.

The Oxford Union, founded in 1823, describes itself as the “world’s most prestigious debating society” and as a “bastion of free speech”. Frequently making headlines in the national press over controversies, the institution has been called a “cradle of democracy” for launching the careers of countless British and international politicians.

However, recent revelations have attracted criticism of the Union’s democratic integrity and the transparency of its disciplinary processes. The tribunals have been described by a former Returning Officer who prefers to stay anonymous as “the most unfair thing [they have] seen happen at the institution”.

In reference to Medjdoub stating in public that he had obtained documents from an Appellate Board panelist “illicitly”, a former Returning Officer told Cherwell: “This is the sort of connivery and cheating that cannot be happening.”

The tribunals in question were ruling on a series of cases related to the Trinity term 2026 election, where Arwa Elrayess was elected President with 757 first preferences, by a margin of around 155 votes over Liza Barkova. Subsequently, several allegations of electoral malpractice were raised to the Election Tribunal, some of which were further appealed to the Appellate Board.

The Senior Treasurer

In November 2025, Peter Petkoff, the Senior Treasurer, while not explicitly against the Union rules, acted against standard practice in constituting the Michaelmas 2025 Appellate Board. The Senior Treasurer is “responsible for oversight of the Union’s finances and staff”, and is usually a senior academic at the University.

In an email exchange seen by Cherwell, Petkoff wrote to Chris Mentis Cravaris, the Returning Officer – an elected role with oversight of elections and who also acts as the clerk of the Appellate Board. In the email, Petkoff directly put forward three names to sit on the panel and asked Mentis Cravaris to constitute it. The Returning Officer immediately expressed his concerns in an email response to Petkoff. 

Several senior officials familiar with the Union’s rules explained that the standard practice is not for the Senior Treasurer to directly put forward names, but rather for the Returning Officer to constitute a shortlist based on 200-300 initial contacts, before referring them to the Senior Officers. They expressed concerns regarding the irregularity of Petkoff’s conduct, citing worries that it undermined the shared appointment mechanism.

Petkoff responded to Mentis Cravaris’ concerns with what was described to Cherwell as a “conversation ending tone”, first stating that the “composition of the Board is settled and should not require further discussion”, and in a further email “Once again please CONSTITUTE the [Appellate Board]!”.

Mentis Cravaris further raised concerns after speaking with Iftikhar Malik, the Senior Librarian, who indicated that he was unaware of the names Petkoff had put forward. Cherwell understands that, under Rule 33(f)(v), it is standard practice for both “Senior Officers” to approve the composition of the Appellate Board. 

In previous correspondence seen by Cherwell, Petkoff had implied Malik’s consent to the proceedings, using formulations such as “The Senior Officers have formally determined the composition [of the AB]”. Petkoff ultimately responded with a four-word email: “Please proceed as requested”.

In response to Cherwell’s request for comment, Petkoff denied any wrongdoing, and claimed that these allegations are “wrong and removed from reality”.

This is not the first time that Petkoff faced accusations of overstepping his authority. Earlier in November, a Disciplinary Committee report had expressed “grave concerns about the Senior Treasurer’s attitude towards the Rules and Standing Orders and the false assertion of his own (non-existent) interpretative power”.

Petkoff is an Associate Professor of Law at Regent’s Park College. Four sources familiar with the situation told Cherwell that Petkoff enjoys a close personal relationship with Israr Khan. Petkoff assumed his role in June 2025, a few months after the end of Khan’s presidency. A current Union officer described Petkoff’s conduct as “wildly unprofessional for someone who is an academic at the University”.

An amendment to the Union’s rules passed in Week 4 means that Petkoff’s term as Senior Treasurer was cut short, and that the appointment process for Senior Officers now involves more scrutiny. A previous motion had expressed concerns of “a clear apparent bias” regarding Petkoff’s candidacy to the Senior Treasurer role given his involvement in Regent’s Park.

The role of Senior Treasurer is open for election on Monday 2nd March, with nominations closing at 4pm. Cherwell understands that Petkoff intends to run again for the position. A member who had previously voted against Petkoff told Cherwell: “If the Union wants to be better, it needs better procedures that prevent institutional corruption of this level from ever happening again.”

An unusual appointment

Of the three names put forward by Petkoff, two were eventually selected to sit on the Appellate Board, one of whom was Donald Jenkins. Several sources close to the matter have raised concerns about the professional backgrounds of the two panel members nominated by Petkoff, and about the fact that neither has previously held elected officer roles in the Oxford Union.

Donald Jenkins’ most senior position at the Union was as a member of the Standing Committee, which a former Returning Officer described as “a bit of a low position in this context”. Cherwell understands that Appellate Board members are usually former elected Presidents, Librarians, Treasurers, or Secretaries.

A former Returning Officer with knowledge of the composition of the Appellate Board told Cherwell that the second person proposed by Petkoff was a “very weird name” given that she was an ordinary Oxford Union member who had never been elected to a formal role, and that she has no professional legal expertise. 

In private communications with Harraj, Medjdoub wrote: “If we can only have two people it should be Donald Jenkins [and the second person].” The third name initially proposed by Petkoff was ultimately replaced by Stephen Rubin KC, a senior lawyer. He was privately described by a former Returning Officer as “the most qualified person we’ve ever had [on a panel]”.

Inconsistencies in the email addresses used to contact the panelists proposed by Petkoff were also noted by a senior Union Officer with access to the internal membership database. Indeed, the contact details for Donald Jenkins sent by Petkoff to the Returning Officer appear different to the ones listed in the Union database. 

For the second person proposed by Petkoff, the Senior Officer confirmed that her contact details were not listed in the Union database. It is therefore unclear how Petkoff would have been able to contact Jenkins and the second person without having had prior contact through an intermediary and outside of the standard Union procedure. 

Cherwell has seen evidence in private communications between the Michaelmas term 2025 President Moosa Harraj, and the Secretary Samy Medjdoub, indicating that they supported Petkoff’s deviation from standard practice.

Harraj described the Senior Librarian Malik as “being useless” for “not letting the names go through”, referring to the people suggested by Petkoff. Medjdoub responded by saying: “These names have to sit. They have all agreed to expel everyone on [the other] side from the society on the most bs [bullshit] grounds.”

In communications with former President Israr Khan, also seen by Cherwell, Medjdoub asked him to confirm that the people Petkoff named for the Appellate Board are “the right ones”. 

Medjdoub denies the existence of this correspondence, telling Cherwell that he “did not send this message” and that he had “no such conversation with Israr Khan”. Harraj says these allegations are “completely false”, while Khan denies involvement “categorically and unequivocally”, stating that he was “not aware of [Petkoff’s] conduct”.

A ‘biased’ panelist

Cherwell has seen comprehensive evidence that Donald Jenkins, one of the three ruling members of the Appellate Board, was engaging in direct external communication with Samy Medjdoub, including cases where Medjdoub was a party, without the knowledge of other parties. Several senior Union officers have since privately raised concerns regarding the impartiality of the Appellate Board.

In private communications with Israr Khan, Rosalie Chapman, and Alexander Sproule – then Deputy Returning Officer – seen by Cherwell, Medjdoub makes over 20 references to exchanges between himself and Jenkins over a four-month period during which Appellate Board proceedings were ongoing. These exchanges took the form of phone calls and text messages, at times occurring daily.

A former Returning Officer, who wishes to remain anonymous, told Cherwell that during an “ongoing case”, it would be “entirely inappropriate” for “the panellists [to] be communicating with the complainants”. Medjdoub categorically denies the existence of this communication, and told Cherwell: “I have never had any contact with Donald Jenkins.”

Jenkins told Cherwell: “I strongly dispute the allegations about my conduct and regard them as unproven”. He added: “It is regrettable that criticism has been directed at the first disciplinary body which has tried, in a serious, principled and impartial way, to address the manifest and systemic problems in the Society’s electoral machinery.”

Furthermore, Jenkins did not disclose any conflicts of interests when he sat on the panels with cases concerning Medjdoub. A former Returning Officer told Cherwell that they would have generally expected the panelist to be “very forthcoming about declaring [a conflict of interest] themselves”, and to “offer to recuse” to be “replaced with someone else”.

On 1st February, during an online hearing of an Election Tribunal – a panel below the Appellate Board on which Jenkins did not sit – Jenkins covertly listened in to the Zoom with the help of Medjdoub. Several officials with knowledge of Union rules told Cherwell that they would not expect panelists from higher panels to listen into lower tribunals.

Medjdoub told Harraj that “Donald [is listening] in on call [sic.]”, and also texted former President Israr Khan: “Donald can hear, so don’t mention… that you know the panel is rigged or that I know him.”

Medjdoub said he “was not in contact with Donald Jenkins” on 1st February and denied that Jenkins was listening in. Medjdoub, Khan, and Harraj deny having any such communication.

A former Returning Officer emphasised to Cherwell that the decisions of the Appellate Board “cannot be challenged”. Reflecting on the transparency of the tribunals, they told Cherwell: “Members serving on the board must therefore hold themselves to the highest standard. It is a basic requirement of natural justice that every panellist should be free of bias, actual or apparent.

“The entire process depends on trust. A panellist communicating directly with a party unhappy about the outcome of the election is simply unthinkable. It undermines confidence in the system and puts all candidates at risk of grave injustice.”

‘Feedback’ from the panelist 

The communications between Medjdoub and Jenkins also suggest that Jenkins was involved in providing feedback and directly writing submissions to Union tribunals on behalf of Medjdoub. On 15th December, Medjdoub texted Moosa Harraj that he would share his Notice of Appeal with Jenkins “informally” to “get feedback” before submitting. The expectation is that submissions to the tribunal are independently prepared by the parties or their representatives, and are usually not shared with panelists prior to formal submission.

On 22nd January, Medjdoub messaged Alexander Sproule, then Deputy Returning Officer. He forwarded a 700-word long text beginning with “Samy, A few thoughts on your latest Response to the No Case to Answer”. Medjdoub immediately followed up, sending “from jenkins”. Sproule responded: “I love how he gives suggestions and then just writes it for us.”

Jenkins also directly contributed to the drafting of at least seven separate submissions by Medjdoub to the Appellate Board and other tribunals. On 8th January, Jenkins was involved in the preparation of a Notice of Appeal sent to the Appellate Board by Medjdoub and seen by Cherwell. On that day, Sproule sent a first draft of the Notice accompanied by the message “send this to jenkins but tell him it’s really jumbled and we could use his help straightening out the argument”. 

Shortly after, Medjdoub sent two links in his chat with Alexander Sproule, followed by the message “from donald jenkins”, to which Sproule responded “Wait I didn’t realize he [Jenkins] wrote it for us”. Jenkins was also involved in the drafting of two additional documents submitted to the Appellate Board that day, as confirmed by a private message sent by Medjdoub and seen by Cherwell: “Donald just needs ideas he said he will write it up for the other two”.

Cherwell has seen evidence that Jenkins also drafted a Submission of No Case to Answer for Medjdoub on 18th January, and that he drafted “most” of a Rebuttal on 20th January after having also provided feedback on the document.

Medjdoub claims that this is “false”, that he “did not send those messages”, and that he “denies entirely” that Jenkins was involved in the drafting of documents that he submitted to the Appellate Board. Sproule also denies this, and stated that he had “no knowledge of or connection to Donald Jenkins”. Donald Jenkins did not respond to Cherwell’s request for comment.

Leaked confidential documents

On at least four occasions, Medjdoub found himself in possession of information or documents that were confidential and that were only supposed to be circulated between the three panelists, including Jenkins, Mentis Cravaris (RO), and Jake Dibden (Deputy RO). This happened while Medjdoub was in frequent communication with Jenkins.

One such instance concerned an internal direction issued by the Appellate Board on February 4th – titled “AB-11” – which was only circulated between the panelists, the RO, and the DRO. Dibden and Mentis Cravaris received reports AB-11 “appears to have been disclosed without authorisation to Samy Medjdoub”.

They shared concerns that there was “indirect or direct contact outside of proper channels”, with information of private conversations between Jenkins and the DRO reaching Medjdoub “within hours.

In a WhatsApp conversation seen by Cherwell, Medjdoub claimed to have “got this in a way that is super illegal” – an apparent colloquial reference to having obtained the document through improper channels. He added that if it was found that he was in possession of this document, “they will expel me over this”.

The RO and DRO immediately informed Jenkins that they believed “AB-11 has been leaked to third parties”. Jenkins offered the explanation that the RO email inbox had been “hacked”, but a check conducted by the Union IT services “confirmed no compromise”, disproving this theory.

On another occasion, on January 25th, Medjdoub sent to Israr Khan an internal deliberation note with the mention “INTERNAL – FOR THE APPELLATE BOARD ONLY” in the header. Medjdoub shared this document with Khan three hours after having sent to Khan “On phone with Donald important”.

A few days later, Medjdoub shared with Khan and Harraj one more document with the same mention “INTERNAL – FOR THE APPELLATE BOARD ONLY” in the header, regarding the same appeal. Medjdoub followed up with the words: “Don’t share.” 

Khan and Harraj denied ever being in possession of any such documents or knowing about their existence. Medjdoub denied ever speaking to Jenkins, and he said he “did not share any such document with Israr Khan or with anyone else”.

‘Chapman v Pryce’

On 6th January, Medjdoub sent to Chapman a confidential email by Abaraonye to the Appellate Board, that should not have been circulated beyond the panelists and the clerks of the board. In the email seen by Cherwell, Abaraonye asks to “register as an interested party in the appeal made by Chapman to the Appellate Board”.

Aware of Jenkins’ link to Medjdoub, Chapman asked him to “tell Donald that he [George Abaraonye] can fuck off”, and added that she “was just making a legal point”. In January, Chapman repeatedly solicited updates from Jenkins via Medjdoub on the situation.

The Appellate Board, on which Jenkins was one of the three panelists, ultimately ruled in Chapman’s favour on two separate cases. The Board dismissed Shermar Pryce’s appeal on one case. In the other, the Board granted Chapman another hearing on a case that had previously been dismissed. That case involved alleged electoral malpractice committed by the @Overheard_at_Oxford Instagram page.

Chapman denies any involvement in the matter, and says that the allegations are “categorically untrue”. She told Cherwell that she “never received confidential Appellate Board material via Mr Medjdoub or anyone else”. Medjdoub says that it is “false” that had contact with Chapman on this matter.

Outcome of the cases

In the first case, Medjdoub v Elrayess, the Appellate Board ultimately ruled that it could not hear the appeal because of a case precedent, meaning that Medjdoub lost his case and Elrayess remained in the office of President-Elect. However, while the proceedings were ongoing, the Appellate Board had issued a formal directive seen by Cherwell, instructing that the office of President-Elect should be considered “suspended” and “treated as vacant”. 

A statement supporting this was posted on the Oxford Union’s Instagram channel on the Appellate Board’s direction. Cherwell does not understand this to be standard practice, and a source close to the matter described it as an “unusual precedent”. 

In the second case, Medjdoub v Abaraonye and First SDC, the Appellate Board ultimately did not rule on the case, meaning that Medjdoub’s suspension was not overruled, and the matter was instead referred to a Disciplinary Appeals Committee (DAC).

The case having initially appeared in front of a Senior Disciplinary Committee (SDC), the standard appeal route should have been to a DAC, not the Appellate Board. A former Returning Officer told Cherwell that the Appellate Board had “acted entirely bizarrely” in hearing this appeal.

Medjdoub told Cherwell that he found himself “compelled to appeal the matter to the Appellate Board” because the Returning Officer “had failed to constitute the body that should have heard my appeal”. He added that he did not consider to have “benefit[ed] from the disciplinary process”, but rather to have been “harmed by it”.

However, the Appellate Board did issue two binding interpretations. A source familiar with the case told Cherwell that these interpretations provided a strong basis for Medjdoub to win his ongoing appeal in the DAC. The Appellate Board also put forward Donald Jenkins’ name to sit as one of the three panelists on the DAC. Cherwell does not understand this to be standard practice.

The Oxford Union and the current President Katherine Yang declined to comment.

This article has been updated to include a response from Donald Jenkins.

A masterclass in devising: ‘Noether’

Jessica Phillips
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A masterclass in devising: ‘Noether’

Cartesian Production’s Noether is a production driven by passion. This original play, written by Esme Somerside Gregory, tells the story of the German mathematician Emmy Noether (Yael Erez) and her struggles with the misogyny of her male peers against the backdrop of the rising Nazi state. 

This show is unique in that it was devised entirely by the company. It touches on the major academic pursuits of Noether’s life; from her struggle for habilitation at the University of Gottingen in 1915, to proving ‘Noether’s Theorem’, and finally facing expulsion from Gottingen University under the Nazi administration in 1933 and finding refuge at Bryn Mawr College in America. My degree means that I rarely interact with mathematics, yet the skill of this production demonstrated to me the value of Noether’s contribution to the field. Although maths might well be a foreign language to me, the feeling of academic curiosity and fervour that the show conveyed is impressive to students of all disciplines. 

The show deviated from the usual OUDS venues, held in a lecture theatre in the Mathematical Institute. And that’s all it was, complete with a podium and a whiteboard and jazzed up with a wooden cabinet, ladder, and chair. The audience were seated behind desks, which was particularly convenient for this reviewer scribbling away in my notebook (I like to think the scratching of my pencil was more immersive than distracting). I was initially skeptical about this somewhat sparse set design but it proved to be suitable for a play so entrenched in academia. The production didn’t need a complex set to transport us to Noether’s lectures; they were played out immediately before us by Erez, and watched by the rest of the cast seated in the front row. 

Physical theatre was a recurring motif in Noether, with some moments triumphing more than others. The first use of this technique, where the cast arranged chairs which Noether stepped across and then leapt off was executed deftly but didn’t seem to contribute much meaning or visual interest to the moment for me. However, the company later staged an argument between Maggie Kerson and Esme Dannatt, in which Kerson, embodying the misogynistic resistance to Noether’s habilitation at the university, climbed a step ladder, with each step punctuating the words “every step of the way”. She was met at this level by Dannatt, raised up by the other cast members arguing in defence of Noether’s exceptional intelligence. The movements, paired with excellent performances from both Kerson and Dannatt, imbued this moment with an emotional intensity, and produced a captivating scene. 

During one of Noether’s lectures, Erez explained the maths while the rest of the cast began to move their arms rhythmically, creating shapes with the air; they pulled, tilted, raised, and lowered. The cast then joined Erez onstage, still reaching and compressing in these dancelike motions, first discordantly, until gradually the group began to cohere, and they were stretching, raising, inhaling in perfect sync. This dexterous expression of the learning process was undoubtedly one of the best moments of physical theatre in the show. 

Somerside Gregory’s script was well written, tight, and rich. She has clearly engaged in a ruthless editing process to capture a lifetime of devotion to mathematics within an hour. The script felt well paced, if a little dense with information that I was underqualified to process, but nonetheless, the narrative overall kept me engaged. The script balanced between focusing on Noether’s struggles in the university, and moving out to the wider tumultuous social climate. This provided a level of depth to the play, simultaneously the story of an extraordinary individual, and yet familiar to anyone who knows their European history. This script resonates ever more jarringly with today’s political climate – a line about America as the “hospitable” antithesis to Nazi Germany came across as sadly ironic, and highlighted the script’s relevance and sensitivity to its context. 

There were some issues with projection, with some lines getting lost, or trailing off towards the end. The cast were not fitted with microphones, and they had a big space to fill, so this is an understandable technical challenge. It caused particular difficulties when the audience were faced with a script that was already at times difficult to follow because of the richness of information. The show also featured an interesting composition by Nicole Palka, the initial few bars of which felt a little anachronistic, evoking something of an 80s sci-fi rather than 20th-century Germany. However, it soon came into its own, and underscored the cast’s movements with an almost cinematic quality. 

With its 1930s setting, the play inevitably interacts with the rise of fascism, and what this means for the Jewish Emmy Noether. The production doesn’t tiptoe around its difficult topics; it tackles them boldly, most notably in a scene where Noether’s teaching is interrupted by a bang at her door. The lights turn red and reveal a brown-shirted officer descending the stairs through the audience towards Noether, wearing a red armband. The officer’s silent presence instills a ripple of discomfort among the students, which bleeds into the audience thanks to a combination of the fidgeting and murmuring of the cast underlaid with the gradual intensifying of the sound. This moment was captivating; so simple, and yet so well executed. 

Noether was a masterclass in devising. The passion conveyed in Somerside Gregory’s script combined with the enthusiasm and precision of the cast produced a show that illuminates Emmy Noether through the skilful intersection of history, abstract algebra, and stagecraft. 

In defence of academic writing

Ben O'Brien
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In defence of academic writing

In my year out before my postgraduate degree, I made the momentous decision to start writing fiction. I’d recently got back into reading novels, and thought becoming a novelist would be an ideal way to commit my name to posterity. I started with short stories. I wrote about a man who moved to France and discovered that French milk was tastier than English milk. I wrote about a man who hated growing up and so spent his days playing with his miniature toy truck, ‘Little Truckie’. I wrote about a man who wanted nothing more than for his thesis supervisor to think he was the cleverest person in the world, though, in the end, said supervisor could never remember his name. Who said that fiction never strays far from autobiography? None of my stories got published. Shocking, I know.

I say I ‘wrote stories’, but what I really mean is that I spent most of my spare time vomiting a few paragraphs onto the page before losing all faith in what I was doing. Writing fiction turned out to be one of the hardest things I had ever done, a kind of self-inflicted torture rather than anything enjoyable. I began story after story, each time convinced that this would be the one that would make me famous, before running out of steam and lamenting the worthlessness of ‘making stuff up’. Not long after starting postgrad, I gave up altogether. No Nobel Prize for me, then.

So naturally, I was ecstatic when I discovered that there’s a ready-made explanation for my struggles: namely, Oxford. Susan Sontag, in an interview, once asserted that academic and creative writing are “worse than incompatible. I’ve seen academia destroy the best writers of my generation”. Once you’ve heard this kind of damnation, you start noticing it everywhere. Steven Pinker tells us that academic writing is antithetical to writing comprehensibly, let alone writing with style. Creative writing programmes are accused of being mere production lines for generic writers who go onto churn out generic novels – the very opposite of creativity. Humanities and arts degrees are being closed down everywhere in the name of preparing students for the ‘real world’, for which they supposedly must have a STEM degree. Given all this, it’s difficult to escape the idea not only that a university education sucks all creativity out of you, but also that creativity itself is worthless. 

I couldn’t help being pleased with all this because, even if it turned out that the institution which was supposed to make me better at everything has in fact been depriving me of my chances of greatness – it’s always nice to have something to blame for my own failings. In any case, there’s something intuitive about the idea that academia drains creativity. It’s surely not a complete coincidence that I put away ‘Little Truckie’ altogether once I’d come back to Oxford after my year away. When there’s so much pressure to do well in your degree, not to mention all the things that might get a job once you graduate, it’s hard not to tell yourself that any pastimes that conceivably come under the heading of ‘fun’ must be forgotten. And if creative writing is about putting ‘thinking’ aside and instead just letting the words flow, then in many ways a university education seems the opposite of that. After all, we are taught to define our terms at the outset, identify the hidden premise of the essay question, and signpost our argument every step of the way – in short, to ‘think’.

But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve come to think that, maybe just this once, we’re being unfair on academia. For one thing, many highly-successful novelists have been academics, so it can’t all be bad in academia. More to the point, though, the idea that academic and creative writing are somehow incompatible misunderstands what the two involve in the first place. It’s easy to imagine that the so-called great writers, when they finally find the voice which makes them great, do so only because they put thinking to one side and let their true selves out onto the page. In reality, things are often very different. Take a closer look at how most writers produce their best books and you’ll see just as many abandoned starts and agonising over the futility of it all as I experienced in my own short-lived career as a novelist. In other words, just as much thought goes into creative writing as it does into my thesis – and probably a whole lot more.

With hindsight, a large part of the reason why I found writing fiction so hard was because I’d unknowingly bought into the false dichotomy of academia versus creativity to begin with. I had the idea that writing fiction should be the very opposite of writing a tutorial essay, and when it turned out that it wasn’t, I gave up. Ironically, maybe if I’d put a bit more thought into it, I’d have gotten further. I haven’t gone back to writing about Little Truckie yet, but I have a feeling that one day I will. It would be nice if everything just flowed out onto the page without any thought on my part, but I won’t get too frustrated when that doesn’t happen. And maybe I’ll even do a paragraph plan before I begin. Just maybe.

“Everything is political!”: How The Hot Mess Project is reviving Oxford’s creative communities

Maya Heuer-Evans
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“Everything is political!”: How The Hot Mess Project is reviving Oxford’s creative communities

If you’ve been online recently, browsing in search of something to fill an empty evening, you will probably have run across The Hot Mess Project, the intersectional arts group who are quietly shaking up Oxford’s nightlife. With an Instagram full of striking visuals and a Google drive full of digicam pictures from their club night collaborations with Phaser and Isis, it’s hard to believe the project began only last academic year. I (virtually) sat down with Mindy, the Music student behind the project, to reflect on this success and what it means for Oxford’s creative scene.

Cherwell: We might as well begin with the name – why ‘hot mess’?

Mindy: I wanted something fun, not too serious, and something that would encapsulate the energy of the project – but I basically own a pair of bright pink tights that say ‘HOT MESS’ on them, so the inspiration wasn’t too hard to find! 

Cherwell: How did the project come about?

Mindy: I set it up at the end of Michaelmas in my first year (currently second year), after my conducting teacher suggested I run a small chamber concert to get some experience in the area. This, however, snowballed, and I basically added about 30 of my friends/acquaintances who I knew were creatively minded to a group chat on Instagram and pitched the idea to them. The idea being that I wanted to set up a womxn and queer-led collective to put on a large multimedia project at the end of the year. I was really pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm for it: even though only 20-30 people ended up staying on through the year, we did have about 60 people on the group chat at one time, and we’re still knocking about, so I guess we must be doing something right! 

Cherwell: To my understanding, you’re an intersectional arts collective encouraging feminist creativity. Was the project begun to fill a conspicuous gap in the Oxford art scene?

Mindy: Definitely not! As said before it really just started as a single project scheme, but then we gained so much traction and it had so much positive reception from people – who did somewhat view it as filling a gap of sorts – and I decided to keep it going this year. And as part of that I restructured The Hot Mess Project a bit and gave it a more obvious set of principles in the manifesto, with one of the main being this sense of community. That’s what I feel Oxford has been missing – there are definitely some great societies that involve art, or drama, or music, all very separate and pretending to be fair and accessible, but if you speak to any involved in OUDS [Oxford University Dramatic Society] or OUMS [Oxford University Music Society] or the student mags it’s a different story. The reason we have a WhatsApp community for one is so that people can share the stuff that they’re working on more easily with like minded people who can opt in and out whenever. I don’t know if we’re filling a gap in Oxford, but I’m just happy to be a part of the scene in general and have people take notice! 

Cherwell: The Hot Mess Project is also unashamedly political – you gave part of the profits from the Meet Me in the Bathroom club night to Oxfam Palestine, for instance. How important do you think artistic expression is in terms of politicising people and raising awareness? Are things like clubbing, dance nights, open mic poetry, or art shows inherently political?

Mindy: Everything is political! You can’t convince me that it isn’t – even the absence of political intention is political, because we are all affected by these political choices made by our governments, and the principles that have raised us to believe certain things (which are political even if not in relation to UK government politics). I think art is an amazing tool for raising awareness because it really does catch you out sometimes – as in someone might just being going to watch a concert, and then be moved in such a way that they’re reminded of their own humanity, reminded that others are robbed of this joy, and therefore urged to do something about it. And even in very obliquely political art there is so much emotion behind it because creatives are able to catch the human being of it all, which I think is really unique and special. Clubbing as a woman is a very political act in various different ways, but you can see the different ways in which people go out and dance indicating their differing political beliefs (trust me). Plus who doesn’t love going out on a week night and excusing it by saying it’s ‘feminist’! 

Cherwell: What I find really interesting is that the Hot Mess Project isn’t specialised to one art form – you host everything from workshops to showcases – and is dedicated to increasing the collaboration between STEM and humanities subjects. What do you gain by having all these different disciplines in dialogue?

Mindy: It’s the play for me – by getting all these people together from different subjects/experiences/skill levels people are really inspired to play with their own art form in new ways, whether that be presenting scientific research through sculpture or working on musical improvisation in combination with a poet. And again I can’t stress enough how much community is key to my understanding of the arts. Without connection to each other and dialogue then how can we ever hope to learn new things about ourselves?

Cherwell: Oxford’s feminist scene seems to be blossoming at the moment, with the Cuntry Living zine, Bluestockings magazine, and you guys. Are you in conversation with the other feminist societies in Oxford? And why do you think this revival is happening now? Is it a new kind of feminism from what has been done before?

Mindy: I’m really hyped by the feminist scene in Oxford at the moment, not just because it seems like there are lots of societies to get involved with but because there are all these conversations happening in the normal world – like at the pub or with my mates. The feminist is no longer an outlier in public circles. The magazines are very busy so we haven’t had any contact with them really this term, and we’re still relatively new and do run things very differently to them, which I think can be hard to navigate for some. I cannot stress enough that we are not a publication! We’ve had a few convos with WocSoc, Kolour Theory, and Femsoc, which have been really fun – it’s interesting to talk with other groups about how they are trying to navigate the political mush that is Oxford (see our livestreams on Insta!). And we are doing a few more [collaborations] next term, including with Bluestocking. I’m not sure if it’s new feminism, or just what happens when people get to uni? Potentially both – the excitement of being able to really be yourself amongst a supportive community, plus the more extreme right wing stuff we’ve seen in the media lately – it’s fucking scary! So I think it’s a bit of community, and a bit of realising that we do in fact have a voice within that community to do things and educate others for the better to protect ourselves. 

Cherwell: You guys also have a substack, along with what seems like every other person at Oxford. Why do you think there’s been such a growth in what is essentially social media for essay writers?

Mindy: Lol I’m getting rid of the sub stack; I did have interest from writers to do articles but for us it’s actually just a bit too clean (not hot and messy enough). I guess the idea is that it’s a less intense form of publication – you don’t have to pay to print! But also the move to long form content is really nice to see, and I guess, in a narcissistic way, it’s another form of a diary, but people seem incapable of doing things for themselves so the sub stack performance is a good alternative [and incentive] I guess. Plus there are just so many interesting things out there that talk about the world at large without being as intense or depressing as reading through the BBC website! 

You can find The Hot Mess Project at @the.hotmess.project – their upcoming projects include a collection of STEM related work on a digital archiving platform, and a mysterious event for international women’s day which they’re describing in teasers as “BIG”, in all caps. After what I’ve learnt from Mindy, the Hot Mess Project looks set to be big, indeed. 

Students join protest outside re-opened Campsfield House

Mercedes Haas, Archie Johnston, and Ned Remington
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Students join protest outside re-opened Campsfield House

CW: Suicide 

Students from the University of Oxford society Student Action For Refugees (STAR) today joined a protest outside Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre (IRC) in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, calling for its closure. 

The protest, comprising around 40 people, was divided into two groups: one demonstrating on the road outside the Campsfield House site, and one standing just outside the IRC gates on the site grounds. Protesters held banners reading ‘Immigration detention: what a cruel invention’, and chanted “shame on you” at police arriving at the scene.

Passing cars were heard honking their horns in support of protestors standing on the side of the road. As the demonstration wore on, the second group returned to the road following pressure from police officers.

The protest was organised by the Coalition to Close Campsfield (CCC). The group was founded by Oxford STAR and the asylum seekers’ charity Asylum Welcome, and holds similar demonstrations at Campsfield every month calling for the facility’s closure.

A CCC spokesperson told Cherwell: “Campsfield has a long history of resistance from detainees and local people, including faith groups, trade unions and students. We do not accept detention as a normal or necessary part of the asylum system. We believe our city and county should be a place of welcome and safety, not a site of incarceration for people seeking protection.”

Campsfield House became an IRC in 1993, and ran for 25 years before being closed down in 2018 by the Conservative Government. Boris Johnson’s government announced in 2022 that the site would reopen, and the Labour government invested £70 million in refurbishing the IRC before it reopened in December last year.

A protester at the scene told Cherwell: “I’m here standing in solidarity with the detainees inside Campsfield House. We want everyone inside to know that they are not alone – that we will continue to show up for them. And for those of us outside on the street, we want the community to know that Campsfield has reopened and that they should come stand with us.”

The CCC has highlighted repeated hunger strikes between 1994 and 2012 by detainees, often in protest of their indefinite detention, as well as the deaths by suicide of two inmates in 2005 and 2011. Prior to the initial closure of the site in 2019, a report by HM Inspectorate for Prisons noted that 42% of detainees reported feeling unsafe. An earlier report from 2015 noted that a 16 year old child was detained for 62 days from 2012 to 2013, with torture survivors also being held in violation of contemporary Home Office regulations. 

The campaigners also called for the UK government to scrap its “One-In-One-Out” asylum agreement with France. Under the deal, one asylum seeker is permitted to travel legally to the UK in exchange for one person, typically someone who arrived via boat, being forcibly returned to France. 

A CCC spokesperson told Cherwell: “The ‘One in, one out’ scheme treats people seeking asylum as units to be exchanged rather than as human beings with rights and individual protection needs. It has been condemned by the UN and is being challenged in the courts.” 

A group of 16 migrants recently launched a challenge in the High Court to halt deportations under the policy. Since the policy was announced, campaigners have highlighted several cases of children being illegally detained and threatened with deportation.

The site is managed on behalf of the Home Office by the private company Mitie, which also manages IRCs at Heathrow and Dungavel in South Lanarkshire, Scotland. Mitie is the largest provider of immigration detention management for the Home Office, with responsibility for over 1650 detainees. Mitie first took over management of Campsfield in 2011, and received a new contract to manage the reopened site in 2025. 

A spokesperson for Oxford STAR told Cherwell: “Detention is an inhumane way of treating those seeking safety and shelter from persecution, yet the Labour government has chosen to double down on this policy, even offering the license to run Campsfield to the same contractors, Mitie, as last time.”

A Mitie spokesperson told Cherwell: “Our colleagues are committed to upholding the highest standards of dignity, safety, and respect for those in our care. At Campsfield, our experienced team is focused on creating a safe and supportive environment for all.” 

The Home Office has been approached for comment.

Who Owns Net Zero? Climate Action in a Collegiate University

Anish Vedantham
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Who Owns Net Zero? Climate Action in a Collegiate University

Oxford University’s sustainability ambitions are increasingly visible. At the central level, strategic commitments articulate ambitious targets, governance mechanisms, and investment frameworks. In built form, newly completed University buildings such as the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities and the Life and Mind Building are presented as low-carbon exemplars of Passivhaus design and biodiversity integration. Yet these institutional ambitions coexist with a plural collegiate system in which individual colleges retain autonomy over their estates, governance, and environmental policy. The resulting architecture of sustainability across Oxford is not a unified programme, but a patchwork of strategies, practices, and priorities. This raises a fundamental question: in an era defined by climate urgency, can a decentralised collegiate system deliver coherent environmental outcomes across an institution of global standing?

The University’s Central Strategy

In March 2021, Oxford University’s Council approved the Environmental Sustainability Strategy, which sets two core institutional targets: net zero carbon emissions and biodiversity net gain by 2035. The strategy’s scope extends well beyond estate engineering, encompassing research, teaching, resources, and investment. The Environmental Sustainability Subcommittee, a formal governance body, is tasked with integrating sustainability into institutional decision-making, and the University has established long-term financing through a major Sustainability Fund intended to support decarbonisation and systemic change.

These commitments are embodied in flagship capital projects. The Schwarzman Centre has been certified as Europe’s largest Passivhaus building and is presented as an exemplar of low-energy performance through high-performance insulation, controlled ventilation, and integrated renewable systems. Similar principles inform the Life and Mind Building, whose design documentation emphasises reduced energy demand and enhanced thermal efficiency relative to typical higher education construction. In central estates planning, then, environmental performance is not an afterthought but a design parameter.

At the same time, the University’s central carbon planning recognises that buildings are only part of the story. In its carbon management plans, it lays out detailed goals for electrifying heating and reducing residual emissions. These technical frameworks signal a level of corporate coherence and ambition that, in principle, could extend across the University’s broader estate.

Collegiate Autonomy and Varied Implementation

Oxford’s colleges, however, are not centrally managed. Each college is an autonomous charitable corporation responsible for its own buildings, finances, and internal governance. This autonomy extends to environmental policy: colleges may choose whether to adopt central targets, publish emissions data, or allocate governance resources toward sustained environmental planning.

Some colleges have developed structured approaches that align closely with the University’s strategic targets. Merton College has publicly adopted carbon net zero and biodiversity net gain by 2035, integrating those targets into its institutional framework. St Edmund Hall, too, has published multi-year sustainability objectives and governance arrangements intended to monitor and improve its environmental performance with a goal of being as close to carbon neutral by 2030. Other colleges have instituted sustainability working groups, educational events, and operational measures without formal targets or transparent reporting. Many other colleges, such as Christ Church, Corpus Christi, and Exeter however, have net zero targets after the University’s goal of 2035 or have failed to release targets at all. 

The Oxford Student Union’s sustainability demands, first articulated in 2022, set three expectations for colleges: adoption of net zero targets at least as stringent as the University’s, publication of an actionable strategy with annual emissions reporting, and formal governance structures with student involvement. The SU released a traffic light assessment grounded in these demands, which showed significant variation across the collegiate landscape, with only a minority of colleges meeting all three demands, and many showing minimal progress on any of them. This divide is supported by work done by the Climate League of Oxford and Cambridge (CLOC), which has published a ranking of Oxford colleges on their sustainability efforts. CLOC found that in 2023, only five colleges (St Antony’s, Kellogg, St John’s, Trinity, and St Hilda’s) received passing marks on their metric, while two colleges (Oriel and St. Hughes) received scores of zero. The resulting institutional patchwork contrasts starkly with the central University’s unified strategy.

Is this a problem of institutional design?

The institutional dynamics at Oxford reflect a core public policy dilemma: how to manage collective action in a decentralised system. The University’s central strategy provides a coherent blueprint and sets ambitious targets, yet lacks mechanisms to ensure uniform adoption across autonomous units. Colleges, meanwhile, face differentiated constraints, whether that’s heritage, finance, governance turnover, student politics, or institutional blockages that shape their capacity to act.

This can be conceptualised as a principal–agent problem. The central University (the principal) sets goals and governance structures, but colleges (the agents) exercise discretion in how they interpret, implement, or even ignore those goals. Without aligned incentives, binding standards, or transparent accountability systems, variability in environmental performance is predictable.

The absence of formal enforcement mechanisms – such as linked funding conditional on environmental reporting or central planning approval requirements for college estates – means that sustainability alignment across Oxford relies on voluntary coordination, peer networks, and institutional norms. While these can generate pockets of excellence, they also produce uneven outcomes that complicate claims of cohesive institutional progress.

Variation in the capacity of colleges 

Collegiate variation is perhaps most evident when viewed through the lens of student governance. At Oriel College, the JCR Environmental Officer occupies a role that is simultaneously advisory and promotional, yet constrained by both student preferences and administrative caution.According to Libby Rees, the Oriel JCR Environmental Officer, there is genuine high-level interest in sustainability within the college’s senior team, including the Provost. At the same time, proposals for visible interventions, like green walls or rooftop solar panels, have been subject to prolonged internal debate. Funding sources, precedent, and reputational risk all shape the calculus of institutional decision-making. In one illustrative case, concerns about alumni perceptions influenced proposed sustainability investments, highlighting the complex interaction between donor relations and environmental planning. Specifically, Rees discussed how donors may have been less willing to support environmental planning while Oriel is celebrating its 700 year anniversary in 2026. While only one case, it highlights issues concerning the framing and timing of sustainability issues at colleges. 

On routine matters such as recycling and composting, operational and organisational constraints matter. While there is glass recycling in the kitchens, the logistical implications for scouts and the local council’s contamination policies limit what can realistically be rolled out. As Libby explained: “The [Oxford City] council apparently doesn’t like when recycling isn’t clean, so they’ll throw away recycling if there’s [leftover] milk in the bottle or other contamination”. She continued: “Some scouts have the time where they’re environmentally conscious and they want to think about that and clean up the recycling, yet some of them don’t have the time”. These micro-operational frictions point to a broader institutional reality: sustainability interventions are negotiated within a lattice of labour practices, regulatory frameworks, and organisational norms.

Student-level governance similarly introduces variability. The JCR at Oriel has in the past rejected proposals such as vegetarian nights, not for ideological reasons per se, but as expressions of aggregate student preference. This means that environmental officers must navigate shifting student opinion, use informal polling, and manage expectations within a short tenure of often just nine months. The result is that even straightforward initiatives can become entangled in processes of negotiation, temporal impermanence, and institutional inertia.

Rees also identifies coordination deficits across student bodies. While JCR presidents meet regularly, there appears to be no structured forum for environmental officers to exchange strategies, share best practices, or build cross-college momentum. A predecessor reportedly mentioned the existence of such a forum, yet today it is no longer visible. This absence mirrorsthe broader governance pattern: without formalised mechanisms for intercollegiate environmental coordination, progress remains segmented and contingent.

Wadham College presents a contrast, in which sustainability is more deeply embedded within institutional planning. According to its sustainability strategy, its estate spans seventeenth‑century listed buildings, twentieth‑century additions, and contemporary facilities, producing complex and uneven thermal performance. Rather than relying solely on major retrofit projects, the college has invested in detailed analysis of room‑level energy behaviour to inform prioritisation and sequencing of interventions.

Heritage constraints – often cited across Oxford as barriers to change – have instead shaped the form of intervention. As Frances Lloyd, Director of Sustainability at Wadham College, explains: “where there is a need to improve the thermal performance of our listed buildings and the works require listed building consent (LBC), we work closely with a heritage-skilled professional team and adopt a staged process involving early discussions with Conservation Officers before formally submitting for LBC”. An example is a reroofing project in one of the College’s oldest quads, where reclaimed stone slates were paired with hemp insulation and secondary glazing. Such interventions illustrate how environmental improvement and preservation can be negotiated rather than treated as mutually exclusive.

Governance structures further differentiate Wadham’s approach. Sustainability is integrated into the college’s medium‑term strategic planning and aligned with the University’s 2035 targets, while participation in sector‑wide networks enables the exchange of technical knowledge and operational practice. Targeted interventions – including boiler optimisation, thermal upgrades, renewable energy generation, LED replacement, and occupancy‑sensing energy management –have produced measurable reductions in energy use in recent years.

Yet even at Wadham, institutional actors are conscious that the largest component of the college’s environmental footprint lies in Scope 3 emissions: supply chains, travel, and other indirect sources. Frances explains that while water and waste CO2 have been calculated and reduction targets set, the complexity of measuring embedded emissions in procurement and travel remains a persistent challenge for both planning and governance. 

Though Wadham appears to excel in sustainability, its trajectory may reflect favourable institutional conditions rather than a universally replicable model. Financial capacity, governance continuity, and sustained strategic commitment shape the feasibility of such interventions. Within a collegiate system marked by uneven endowments and administrative priorities, the transferability of this approach remains uncertain. Wadham therefore illustrates not the resolution of Oxford’s coordination problem, but its asymmetry: meaningful progress is achievable where capacity, stability, and prioritisation align, yet such alignment cannot be centrally assumed.

Limits of Structural Critique

Institutional analysis alone does not capture the full landscape of sustainability activity. Even in the absence of formal net zero targets or divestment commitments, most colleges participate in some form of environmental engagement. Initiatives such as Green Impact awards, Fairtrade campaigns, and awareness programmes are often dismissed as symbolic. However, symbolic action can shape behaviour and social norms in ways that aggregate beyond institutional boundaries.

Engagement programmes aimed at influencing consumption, travel, and daily practice correspond to a significant share of national emissions tied to household and consumer activity. Cultural change within collegiate communities may therefore constitute a meaningful – if indirect – dimension of environmental governance. While such measures cannot substitute for structural decarbonisation, neither are they negligible within a broader ecology of climate action.Reconciling Collegiate Autonomy and Collective Responsibility

Oxford’s sustainability architecture combines a strong central strategy with a highly decentralised collegiate system. This institutional arrangement has produced both notable progress and pronounced variation. Central governance frameworks articulate clear long-term targets and provide financial and technical resources. Colleges, in turn, pursue sustainability through a combination of strategic planning, operational optimisation, student-led initiatives, and informal networks of collaboration.

The question facing the University is not whether it should abandon autonomy or central ambition, but how the two can be reconciled more effectively. Formalised mechanisms for intercollegiate coordination, transparent reporting standards, and aligned incentives could reduce fragmentation without eroding collegiate discretion. At the level of student governance, durable forums for cross-college exchange and capacity building could strengthen institutional memory and sustain progress across leadership turnovers.

Ultimately, the University’s challenge mirrors a broader organisational question in contemporary climate governance: how can complex institutions with distributed authority systems manage collective responsibilities that demand coherence and scale? The answer will shape not only Oxford’s environmental performance, but its institutional credibility as an epicentre of research, education, and global engagement in a climate-constrained world.

The (family) stories hiding in plain sight

Amy Lawson
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The (family) stories hiding in plain sight

Like many people, I used to zone out a bit when my parents started talking about family history. Being the youngest child – by quite a large gap, since there are eight years between me and my older brother – a lot of the memories which seemed to belong to the “family” as a collective happened before I was born. I would sit through conversations about “great grannies” and stare at grainy photographs of unknown people in unknown gardens, trying to piece together a sense of the past, a past which wasn’t actually that distant – we’re only talking three generations back – but one which felt like a foreign land all the same. As we delved further into the past, these figures became even more hazy. 

My parents would consult the grandparents, oracular-style, on whether certain cousins were once or twice removed, on what so-and-so did during the war, and so the puzzle became increasingly difficult to muddle through. All the while, I wondered about the true relevance of any of it. None of my ancestors were noble, or appeared all that interesting. It was highly unlikely that, like Josh Widdecombe on Who Do You Think You Are, we’d accidentally discover we were connected to a figure of royalty, making the seemingly endless sifting through old parish records and censuses worth it. 

Unsurprisingly, this was quite short-sighted of me,especially since I’ve always been interested in history. Admittedly, it was the kind that happened thousands of years ago, often involving gripping tales of aristocratic betrayal, missing tombs, and undeciphered languages – I wasn’t the only one to be taken in by that big shiny golden book about ancient Egypt in primary school. For such a long time, I was excited by the history that seemed to rewrite the rules of the world I was familiar with, one where ritual practice and superstition often dominated, of generals leading battle charges with plumed helmets and naval battles staged in amphitheatres. All those unsolved areas of history also seemed to beckon to me, promising a treasure trove of untold secrets and scandals around every corner. 

I haven’t stopped being interested in these things in the least. But something changed when I started thinking about what I wanted to study at university, and which areas of Classics appealed to me in particular. Studying ancient Epic poetry at A-Level – specifically the Iliad and the Aeneid – had awoken me to a world, not only of mythological cities and their destruction, of sea-monsters, witches and oracles, but one in which the stories of regular people were just as poignant. 

I’ll always distinctly remember coming across a particular passage in the Iliad: in a scene which comes about as close as the ancients can get to a high-speed car chase, Achilles chases Hector around the city walls of Troy, intent on single-hand combat to the death, in revenge for killing his beloved Patroclus. It’s an extremely tense episode, with everything seemingly hanging in the balance. Yet, suddenly the narrator stops. He describes the two springs that feed the Scamander river, and the stone washing-troughs which the Trojan women used to clean their clothes in times of peace.

My teacher was keen for us to focus on this particular vignette, and I came to understand that it was the heart-wrenching sense of the microcosm within the macro that was so powerful. The idea that, beyond a war which had ravaged a city and its communities for ten years, there was still the memory of people as they are everyday. Although fictional, I imagined those women talking amongst themselves, exchanging niceties whilst they scrubbed their robes. I’m sure there are plenty of Greek students who could make much more of this passage, and what is being done with the language, but for seventeen-year-old me, this changed everything. 

The thing is, the stories that have the power to fascinate us the most are often the ones hiding in plain sight. I soon realised that, actually, it was the human aspect of literae humaniores (the fancy Latin name for ‘Classics’) which drew me in and, in a much more wholesome, sustaining way than battles or mythological creatures, kept me entertained. The humanity in history is one of the main (and many) reasons why I love my subject. 

Incidentally, it was around this time that my grandma’s memory started to decline, in a fairly rapid and alarming way. She had always been so diligent in researching the family history on my dad’s side, compiling complex maps of family trees and storing away letters and photographs of people she had never met. I didn’t appreciate it fully when I was younger, how this is a task which requires an incredible amount of patience and willpower (particularly when you have an eight-year-old screeching, for the umpteenth time, “but who was Grandpa Norman?” in the background). Now, when I’m sifting through reading after reading – most recently, trying to make sense of the web of mythological characters in the Metamorphoses, and how they relate to one another – I sometimes think of her, and her eagerness to pursue the past. 

On a recent visit to their house, I was shown a photograph I’d never seen before. Extremely faded, it showed a group of seven people in a garden: two men, three women, and two younger girls seated at their feet. On the back, written in an elegant, watermark-flecked script, were their names, all with the last name “Gascoyne”. Descendants of French Huguenots who had come to England fleeing persecution – specifically, to places like Spitalfields and Soho – the group, although somewhat uppity-seeming in their Edwardian clothing, were rather unassuming. Without the context of the lives they led – the two men were silk-weavers, I’m told, and had inherited their trade from their forefathers – it would be just another old photograph, just another list of unfamiliar names. But the stories which my grandma so carefully collated – even if she can’t remember them herself now, or even who we are – make these remnants of family history so special, even if, to the outsider, the photo is just another artefact. 

UKIP leader Nick Tenconi stages Cornmarket Street border control debate

Cherwell News
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UKIP leader Nick Tenconi stages Cornmarket Street border control debate

Nick Tenconi, leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and Chief Operating Officer of Turning Point UK, visited Oxford today to take part in a public street debate on Cornmarket Street titled ‘Britain needs border control. Prove me wrong’.

The event, organised by Turning Point UK’s Oxford branch, drew a crowd of students, shoppers, and passersby in the city centre. 

Tenconi, who has led UKIP since February last year, framed the visit as part of a broader campus strategy. Tenconi told Cherwell: “Turning Point UK will go to any city where there is suspected Marxist far-left indoctrination aimed at our university students, and will be there to provide them with a conservative outlet, debate platform, and support network by setting up Turning Point UK chapters to challenge Marxist indoctrination on our campuses.”

He described the debate as “absolutely fantastic” and thanked Oxford students for engaging. “It’s all about debate. It’s all about challenging the narrative”, he said. 

Turning Point UK is an offshoot of Turning Point USA, an organisation founded by right-wing activists Charlie Kirk and Bill Montgomery in 2012 which aims to promote right-wing politics in schools and universities. The format of the event in Oxford today invited members of the public to step forward and argue against Tenconi’s position that Britain needs stronger border control. 

One woman who did so was critical of the set-up of the event. She told Cherwell: “It was mostly just a personal attack and then he’d criticise me for doing some sort of bad behaviour and debate and then do it himself.” She went on to say that “this isn’t proper debate”, arguing that the event was being held to create clips for social media that would only display “the best bits to show how great he is”, and that there would be “no actual depiction of debate”. She stated that she had not heard of Tenconi before the event.

During his exchanges with members of the public, Tenconi criticised what he characterised as “open borders” sentiment in British politics, calling it “crazy” and arguing that the political mainstream had failed to respond to public concerns about migration. He claimed that undocumented immigrants “threaten” women’s safety and framed stricter border controls as essential to protecting the public. 

Tenconi further claimed that there had been two disruptions during the event. He described those involved as “far-left militias who dress in black bloc” and said police had arrived of their own accord.

When asked by Cherwell whether such disruptions were common, Tenconi replied: “Yes, yes, yes.” He added that counter-protesters often attempt to mobilise against his appearances. He characterised critics as “indoctrinated” and argued that illegal immigration amounted to “cultural suicide”, while also describing what he saw as a broader ideological shift towards what he called an “anti-masculine” and “anti-logical position”. 

UKIP faced scrutiny last month following an attempt to rebrand the party with a new emblem that critics said bore a resemblance to the Iron Cross, a symbol associated with the German military and later the Nazi regime. The party denied this, saying the symbol was intended to reflect Christian heritage. The symbol remains in use by the party.

Reporting by: Oskar Doepke, Mercedes Haas, Archie Johnston, and Ned Remington.

Course culling is a threat to us all

Ti-Jean Martin
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Course culling is a threat to us all

I almost did a degree in Music. I’ve been involved in music-making for as long as I can recall, drawn to its capacity to create beauty from complexity. Ultimately, I chose History for a similar reason: the satisfaction of drawing interpretation from abstract overlapping narratives. If I’d applied to Oxford Brookes, or the Universities of Kent, Wolverhampton, or Nottingham, however, studying Music wouldn’t have even been an option. 

All of these institutions have closed their Music courses in the last few years. This comes alongside course culls and staff redundancies in the arts, humanities, and languages across the country. It reflects a worrying trend in government policy and public discourse, targeting ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees but ignoring their economic, social, and intellectual impact. These decisions are an injustice to the intrinsic value of education, across all disciplines, and risk tarnishing Britain’s reputation for academic and cultural excellence. 

Nottingham’s suspension of all Music and Modern Languages courses is the poster child for this trend. But it is not alone – Kingston University, for example, scrapped English, Philosophy, and International Relations last year. Financial uncertainty has driven these decisions, with universities facing deficits as high as £60 million after years of government cuts. This leaves them reliant on student and alumni funding, forcing the prioritisation of economic, rather than intrinsic, value. 

Economic value is often equated with the ‘usefulness’ of certain degrees, a term that has become synonymous with successive governments’ denigration of the arts and humanities. This rhetoric reduces a subject’s utility to its earning potential, which is seriously flawed. The difference between humanities and STEM graduates is marginal – the British Academy found that STEM graduates only earned £6,000 more annually after ten years of employment. A 2023 report found that eight of the ten fastest-growing sectors in the UK employ more humanities graduates than any other discipline, demonstrating the value of the transferable skills that humanities degrees develop.

Fixating on ‘usefulness’ also ignores the cultural and economic value of arts education. It sustains a vibrant set of creative industries, which contribute £59.4 billion to the economy each year. Britain’s cultural exports – The Beatles, Harry Potter, and James Bond, to name a few, are “disproportionately large for a country of relatively small size,” according to Arts Council England CEO Darren Henley. Ironically, a government calling for the prioritisation of “useful degrees” has frequently waxed lyrical about the importance of British film, music, and literature. 

Beyond this, both arts and humanities are central to shaping individuals. Many of us don’t know who we’d be today without the musical instrument we played, or the performing group we joined as a child. There is a freedom of expression and breadth of knowledge within them that produces the leaders, thinkers, and creatives of the world. To limit access to education in these areas is to close the door on the successors to these luminaries. Last year, the University of the West of England’s drama department was forced to close the undergraduate programme that produced Olivia Colman and Patrick Stewart. 

The arts and humanities are not the only victims of these course culls. Recently, Brookes closed its Mathematics department, and Bournemouth and Reading no longer offer Engineering, despite such courses seemingly coming under the government’s definition of “priority courses that support Labour’s industrial strategy… to renew Britain”. If subjects framed as economically ‘valuable’ are also being cut, it is not the worth of individual subjects that is causing this crisis. Instead, it is a system that forces universities to operate for profit rather than prioritising what people used to call learning for learning’s sake.

There is a serious risk of long-term inequality. If universities continue to be pushed into course culling, education experts fear a ‘postcode lottery’ will come to limit access to a full range of university degrees by location. Students in educational ‘cold spots,’ and those to whom higher education is less affordable, are already disadvantaged amidst the cost-of-living crisis, according to the BBC.

It is becoming impossible for ever-growing numbers of students to live away from home, pricing students out of course choices. Cuts and enforced ‘specialisation’ at newer, less well-funded universities risk entrenching both this and the problem of educational elitism. In ten years time, it could be only Oxbridge and its wealthiest Russell Group contemporaries offering a full range of subjects – there are only 24 of these, and they are not renowned for their affordability. 

Course culling is “unconscionable vandalism” of British university education. Such vandalism is not accidental, but the product of a marketised system that treats universities as businesses and ignores education’s inherent value. Unchecked, the combination of funding cuts and ‘usefulness’ rhetoric will harm students beyond the arts and humanities. In the long term, it will strangle Britain’s cultural and intellectual life, reduce the employability of graduates, and entrench educational inequality. 

Amidst the rise of artificial intelligence and the attacks on student protest movements across the Atlantic, human creativity and critical thinking are more vital than ever. The trend of culling the courses that foster these skills is therefore a threat to us all. We must defend the benefits of arts and humanities education, support the students and teachers taking action to resist cuts, and pressure the government to solve, not encourage, this crisis. 

A show with bite: ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ reviewed

Rebecca Harper
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A show with bite: ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ reviewed

I first caught wind that Madi Bouchta was directing Little Shop Of Horrors around this time last year. Cayden Ong had just sent out an OUDS-wide call seeking a director for his own dream show, Little Shop. A year later, Ong and Bouchta have mounted an incredibly successful run at the O’Reilly, soon to be followed by a turn at the Oxford Playhouse next term for Cross Keys Productions’ Our House. Bouchta is a director who knows how to get things done – Little Shop has been, in her words, “a year in the making”. 

In most regards, this commitment and love for the show comes across. The top of my list of praise is puppet designer Kat Surgay, whose plants caused the opening night audience to gasp and cheer in glee, myself included. The reveal of Charlotte Ward (an Audrey II puppeteer) during the curtain call triggered a standing ovation. The design was immensely well thought-out, and the puppeteers (Ward, alongside Grace Yu and Harriet Wilson) succeed in syncing their movements to Wally McCabe’s scenery-chewing Audrey II, who similarly brought the house down upon their appearance in the bows. Rightfully so, McCabe owned every element of vocal gymnastics the role required and more; their growled delivery of ‘Suppertime’ sent shivers down my spine. 

The eight-person cast succeeded in filling the space, both vocally and physically, thanks to Miranda Forbes’ energetic choreography. Will Jacobs’ Seymour was absolute perfection, from the anxious twitching of his band-aided hands to the ease with which he belted his moral dilemma during ‘Feed Me’. This is Jacobs’ OUDS debut but my God, if he isn’t in every show that I see from here out I will riot. He had impeccable chemistry with Eliza Hogermeer’s Audrey, who also never hit a wrong note. Hogermeer was angelic, bringing a lovely grounded nature to a character so often caricatured. You can tell that the directors have worked hard to lend some weight to Audrey, exemplified in ‘Somewhere That’s Green’, where Audrey fantasises about the white-picket life she will never lead, with the Urchins (Praise Adebusoye, Lauren Lisk, and Subomi Adeleye) acting as her husband and children.

Adebusoye, Lisk, and Adeleye as the urchins had an infectious energy. I got the sense as the show went on that they were genuinely having fun with each other on stage, which is always lovely to see. Their harmonies were incredibly tight and assured, and their taunting of Seymour during ‘The Meek Shall Inherit’ was a joy to witness. Additionally, the number’s quick-change multiroling seemed to fall naturally to Cameron Maiklem, who played three characters in rapid succession (and, indeed, about eight characters across the whole show) with confidence and motorboating madness. Tell Mrs Luce to give me a call. 

Maiklem’s rendition of one of my favourite numbers from the original musical, ‘Now (It’s Just The Gas)’ was unfortunately hampered by sound issues. Maiklem, as dentist Orin Scrivello D.D.S., wore a BDSM-style Bane mask, which unfortunately garbled his diction through no fault of his own. I am certain from Maiklem’s physicality that it was an amazing performance, but audience members I spoke to who were not already aware of the lyrics did not comprehend a thing. Whilst I understand the direction that the costume department went in by making the mask more menacing than the oft-used space helmet, one wonders if this incomprehensibility is the reason that the space helmet style has become a staple in the first place. I hope, mostly for Maiklem’s sake, that this is resolved on future nights: it was clear how much work he has done to perform an incredibly difficult song, and his work alongside the directors and music department deserves to be done justice. 

The show as a whole suffered more than a few sound mishaps. The mixing issues were more than frequent, and often meant that the cast were woefully unheard below the blare of the twelve-strong band. Hogermeer’s climactic end to ‘Suddenly Seymour’, for example, as well as the layers of vocals in ‘Downtown’, and much of the complex three-part harmony in the introductory titular song were completely lost. As such, it seemed to take the show a while to get on its feet. Even when the team seemed to find their stride by Act I’s ‘Ya Never Know’, the issue recurred upon the opening of Act II, where Hogermeer and Jacobs’ patter duet ‘Call Back In The Morning’ was drowned out by the sound effect of ringing phones. 

Similarly, the slow-burn opening of the show may have been due to the cast’s lack of comfort with the set. Amelia Morton’s three-storey scaff filled much of the O’Reilly’s floor, and consequently limited much of the space that was usable for the show’s blocking. It was certainly an impressive feat, with tendrils of Audrey II’s roots taking over the stairs and shelving by Act II, but it wasn’t a well integrated part of the production. Once again, this is more than likely the mark of opening night; after all, the cast has only had limited time to get used to singing on seven-metre high shaky flooring.

Much of the lighting, however, was incredibly fitting for the show. Sarah Webb’s design was both effective and incredibly fun; my highlight was the five consecutive green-white gunshot flashes towards the end of the show. I could almost feel the stress radiating off of Deputy Stage Manager Paddy Harmer when I met him after the show and asked him about these cues, but he need not worry – they were programmed, called, and operated perfectly.

Horror comedy musicals with horrifying endings are no stranger to the O’Reilly, and Little Shop has reinstated the genre with a bang. The reinterpretation of the final number, ‘Don’t Feed The Plants’, as the ensemble torturing and taunting Seymour was a direction I didn’t expect, but nevertheless thoroughly enjoyed, perhaps even more than the traditional use of that song as a clap-along closer. It was (forgive my pretentious theatre reviewer coming to the fore here) a fitting end to this Faustian tale. 

Walking back to Wadham with Assistant Director Thushita Maheshkumar Sugunaraj, I could hear the last dregs of the cast and crew chatting excitedly behind us, pub-ward bound, all wearing plant sprouts on their heads. The pride in their show was palpable – and warranted. Despite a few teething problems, Little Shop proved itself to be a show with bite. 

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