Saturday 23rd May 2026
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24/7: College porters and the Oxford night shift

Jiayue Shi
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24/7: College porters and the Oxford night shift

You return to your college at night, after anything between a day of work and an evening of cavorting. The view admits the welcoming glow of the porter’s lodge and the reassuring presence of a porter behind the reception desk. Past the gates, you enter the secluded safety of the inner-college dark, smelling now of grass and early summer cold. The perfect picture of an Oxford homecoming.

Late one evening, I paid a visit to John, Somerville College’s night porter of 19 years. As he let me through the gate, he was curious about the article. “We don’t get much attention, us night porters”, he explained. The warmth of the lodge fanned my face. His colleague was out patrolling the premises. Between the two of them, they are responsible for everyone on site from eleven at night to seven in the morning. The students, engrossed by their term-time miseries, appreciate their presence only occasionally: when they stumble into the lodge bleary, intoxicated, tearful, or lacking keys. For many, the night lodge exists as a background certainty, noticed chiefly in moments of crisis, vulnerability, or inconvenience.

Most Oxford colleges and accommodation sites have porters on duty around the clock. Since March 2025, every college with a porter’s lodge manned overnight is in the University’s Safe Lodge scheme, providing support and ensuring safe return for any student seeking help at night, regardless of their original college. So for a majority of college residents, 24/7 lodge availability is a matter of course. Colleges like Somerville, Hertford, and Oriel employ permanent night porters, while at others, porters work variable hours on a rotating day-or-night shift system. St John’s College told Cherwell that the College recently updated shift arrangements to a three-on/three-off rota pattern, following feedback from the lodge team. This is to ensure porters have structured rest periods and sufficient time to adjust and recover from nocturnal work.

Overnight staffing is neither universal nor standardised across colleges. Working hours vary, and pay is not centrally regulated by the University, in a city currently ranked amongst the most expensive in the UK to live in. Some lodges see eight to nine-hour night shifts, which John at Somerville describes as relatively comfortable compared to his previous employment, as compared to the weekly twelve-hour shift rotations at colleges like St John’s and Worcester. A number of colleges offer porters a Grade 3 to 4 salary, some with an additional monthly night workers’ allowance. Regent’s Park College, which employs casual evening porters on select days of the week, lists in 2025 hourly portering rates of £12.60 (lower than the 2025-26 Oxford Living Wage, at £13.16) with holiday pay and meal allowance. The college’s night porters are available from Wednesday to Saturday, with junior Deans on call on the remaining nights of the week. When asked about the particulars of the night security system, the College declined to comment. These disparities reflect a broader feature of Oxford’s collegiate structure: welfare and security systems often depend on the budgets and priorities of individual colleges.

What happens in a night? A shift at the lodge involves more than dealing with late-night mischief and drunken mishaps, and tending to students who have accidentally locked themselves out of their own rooms. The role combines security work, customer service, emergency response, and informal welfare provision. Night porters are first responders to any emergencies that arise, from fire and security alarms, to medical emergencies, calls for assistance, and emotional distress. First-aid training is usually mandatory or provided by the college. Front-of-house business proceeds as during the day, for any student or guest arrivals. Like John and his colleague at Somerville, night porters working in pairs take turns carrying out random security patrols, though for his first 13 years, John was the College’s only night porter. Some night porters are also asked to clear litter while doing site checks. Inside the lodge, they are vigilant of anything out of the ordinary as they monitor the CCTV screens.

Students often most clearly notice the integral role of night porters when they are no longer there. After University College removed its overnight lodge staffing on the grounds of financial limitations in the 2021-22 academic year, JCR condemnation and further discussions with the college’s Governing Body brought it back in 2024. The common perception remains that the overnight lodge is the staple feature when it comes to feeling safe at Oxford.

John drew attention to the fact that colleges’ increasing emphasis on mental health in recent years is reflected in night porter duties as well. This means that porters are instructed to stay attentive to signs of distress among students and follow set procedures if anything raises concern. “If a student is having a mental health issue, there’s 100% support there. If we spot a student not looking too happy or a bit tearful, maybe didn’t want to speak to us, we could refer it on to the welfare team”.

Especially during exam time, many students pass through the lodge visibly struggling with stress. Porters ensure the lodge is a grounding, approachable space for the student body, and that, when needed, the appropriate resources are provided, and wellness information is relayed confidentially. Night porters are among a number of out-of-hours workers at Oxford who provide welfare support to people at their most vulnerable. In practice, they frequently act as students’ first point of human contact during moments of panic, loneliness, intoxication, or distress. Colleges without permanent overnight staffing at the lodge often choose to raise awareness of the local Samaritans and Safe Haven service, and the Oxford Nightline, run by student volunteers.

Recounting notable incidents in the past, John found that they had been rare enough during his 19 years at Somerville to list with ease. The college encountered a burglar only once, who broke in by scaling one of the walls, and managed to go as far as the principal’s lodgings before the night porters caught him. In another episode, an abusive boyfriend had to be forcefully removed from college grounds. He had been acting aggressively towards his girlfriend and her friends, and grew violent while being escorted out. John got punched, and had to punch him back. Other than these, the occasional intoxicated student needs to be talked down. Some return to the lodge the next day, embarrassed and apologetic.

But overall: “19 years, I don’t think that’s too bad”! Generally, troublemakers among a new cohort of students can be identified within the first three weeks. The porters concentrate on easing them into the way the college works, and after about five to six weeks, “It’s all happy families again. College life goes on”. John said the priority is simple: to keep the place secure and everybody safe. “You deal with it, thinking on your feet, and it gets you and the College through the night”.

More than burglaries and abusive boyfriends, the COVID-19 pandemic stuck in John’s memory as the most difficult event in all his time working as Somerville’s night porter.

“COVID was just a nightmare… It really was hard work.” It’s a well-documented experience for many non-academic staff at Oxford. In 2020, roughly half of Keble’s non-academic staff were furloughed, and the College went into consultation on a redundancy programme as a result of major pandemic-induced revenue losses. Across Oxford institutions, frontline staff found themselves responsible not only for enforcing emergency rules but also absorbing the frustration and hostility those rules produced. In early 2022, Oxford University Hospitals (OUH) introduced body cameras for its staff after a 125% rise in violent incidents during the pandemic, launching the ‘There’s No Excuse’ initiative in a call for the respect and protection of hospital workers.

The unhappy pandemic-year undergraduates faced by the porters had the excuse of being denied their promised university life. “The COVID intake of freshers was horrendous”, John recalled. The students were resentful of being confined to their ‘bubbles’. The policy was put in place as part of the College’s social distancing measures, and enforced by porters who often bore the brunt of that resentment. Students sometimes grew even more unruly when porters reminded them it was against the regulations to mix outside their bubbles. “They were very rebellious students…They didn’t seem to think it was a risk”. But John, after years of shepherding Oxford’s blithely demanding youth, is sympathetic.

“It was sad because those students never really got the experience of the Oxford University situation, as their predecessors or the ones that followed on afterwards, because everything was so restricted. I felt sorry for them, and I could understand the way they were reacting. But it just went on for a whole year. They tried to rule the roost… but of course you couldn’t let them do that, there were things in place for a reason”. And once the pandemic had passed, “It was like they were different students completely!”

As a porter who only works nights, John is candid about the relative invisibility of his role. “You could work here for 13 years, and no one knows you,” he says, recalling how a tutor who had been at the College for many years had come in one morning, greeted him brightly, and asked if John was new.

Still, grappling with dissatisfied young people and distracted teaching staff on a regular basis, John says that he feels well-supported by the college institution, and is happy working here. “You get so many people from different nationalities… and it works. Everything together works”.

“Apart from that COVID situation”, he adds. “That will stick with me until I die”.

St John’s College told Cherwell that it keeps Lodge staffing under regular review, seeing to both staff wellbeing and effective operations. Considering the reactive and ad hoc nature of much of their work, porters are “trained appropriately and aligned to the responsibilities they may encounter in their roles. They are also supported by wider, well-established welfare provisions, including on-site student welfare advisors and an on-call system, ensuring that any situations beyond routine duties are managed safely and appropriately”.

College porters, typically hired directly by the College as permanent staff, report to the Lodge Manager and Domestic Bursar and are embedded into the College’s administrative structure. There has long been a push, however, for all colleges to formally extend the same protection and wage standards to their sub-contracted staff employed in housekeeping, catering, maintenance, and events – arrangements that vary depending on the wealth and policy of individual colleges. The lodge, therefore, sits within a wider conversation about invisible labour at Oxford: the workers responsible for maintaining the University’s daily operations often remain peripheral to its public self-image.

As the sky grows light and early risers trickle out into the streets, the night porter hands over the shift and goes home to family, or into a routine slumber with blackout curtains. Through personal and collective crises, the lodge and the porters are always there. Meanwhile, the collegiate system remains a patchwork of rota structures, pay scales, budget limits, and levels of transparency. “Everything together works”, as John says. That clockwork constancy depends on labour which most students rarely see, but routinely rely upon.

Tommy Robinson Union invite sparks controversy across University

Beatrix Arnold and Ned Remington
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Tommy Robinson Union invite sparks controversy across University

The Oxford Union has invited Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who identifies as Tommy Robinson, to speak at a Week 5 debate on the motion ‘This house believes the West is right to be suspicious of Islam’. The invitation has generated backlash from University societies, senior Union officials, and Stand Up to Racism UK. 

Yaxley-Lennon’s invitation has provoked censure from national organisation Stand Up to Racism, which posted a joint statement on social media with Oxford Against Discrimination to condemn the invitation “in the strongest possible terms”. They also called on Oxford Union President Arwa Elrayess to confirm that the invitation has been rescinded; “issue a public statement apologising for extending the invitation and promising full transparency with speakers’ events”; and “acknowledge the harm” caused to students by the decision. Stand Up to Racism has organised a protest to take place outside the Oxford Union on the 28th May, the day of the Week 5 Debate. 

Several University societies condemned the decision in statements to Cherwell, with Oxford African and Caribbean Society (ACS) telling Cherwell “granting Robinson an academic stage at a time of increased far-right activity confers a degree of respectability to ideologies that have historically marginalised our communities.” It Happens Here (IHH) accused Robinson of using sexual violence cases “to advance anti-Muslim sentiment”, and said his presence at the Union “ signals to survivors that their experiences are being instrumentalised, instead of taken seriously”. 

Oxford Student Greens told Cherwell that “there is no space for the kind of inflammatory, hateful rhetoric”. The Oxford Labour Club published a statement on Instagram saying it was “disgusted” by the invitation, writing that while “free speech is important… that does not mean that Tommy Robinson, a far-right extremist convicted of assault and harassment, should be platformed by the Union”. The Student Union (SU) published a statement recognising that “many students may be concerned about recently announced, upcoming high-profile speaker events in Oxford”. The SU  expressed “support and solidarity” with any students affected, “particularly those from marginalised groups”.

Condemnation has also come from senior Oxford Union officials. Cherwell understands that Prajwal Pandey, Oxford Union Librarian for Trinity Term, criticised the decision to invite Yaxley-Lennon in a speech before the Week 2 debate at the Union. A petition to call for a vote by Union members on the invitation to Tommy Robinson was circulated online by the Overheard at Oxford Instagram account. 

Cherwell has also seen a letter of resignation by Shermar Pryce, formally Chief Advisor to the President, in response to the decision to invite Yaxley-Lennon. Pryce cites his displeasure at what he dubs a “clown show”, and accused the Union of “appealing to malformed conceptions of ‘free speech’”: “To not rethink this invite, after members of all backgrounds and dispositions have expressed their concerns and fears, borders on malicious.” The letter further alleges that the decision was made without the knowledge of the majority of committee members. 

Candidates in the re-poll for the position of President-Elect, including the successful candidate Gareth Lim, unanimously condemned the invite when asked for their opinion by Cherwell during the election campaign. However, speaking to Cherwell after his victory, Lim repeated that he would not have invited Yaxley-Lennon to the Society, but said the Union should “stand by [its] decisions” and said incumbent President Arwa Elrayess had “done a pretty good job” at deciding who she wanted to invite. He said Elrayess was considering changes to the debate format to “ensure that people like Tommy Robinson answer the questions” and that it will be “only after we see the debate” that we could judge whether the invitation to Yaxley-Lennon was “the right thing to do”.

The reported invitation comes within the context of longstanding accusations against Yaxley-Lennon of Islamophobia and intimidation. He was a co-founder of the English Defence League in 2009, whose supporters have repeatedly targeted Muslim communities and mosques across the UK. He has also been convicted on multiple occasions, including for contempt of court in 2018 after livestreaming defendants accused of sexual exploitation outside a trial in Leeds, in breach of reporting restrictions. He was jailed for 18 months after admitting to the charge.

Yaxley-Lennon has faced further convictions for assault and harassment, and has been widely criticised for his rhetoric, accused of fuelling anti-Muslim sentiment. His public statements have included describing Muslim refugees to the UK as “fake refugees”, a 2011 threat to “every single Muslim watching….the Islamic community would feel the full force of the English Defence League” if another Islamist terror attack were to take place, and a 2018 admission that he “doesn’t care” if he “incites fear” of the UK’s Muslim community. 

He previously warned members of the press: “If you’re a journalist and you think your office or your home is a safe space…it’s not”, and referred to a female BBC journalist as a “slag” after Yaxley-Lennon was questioned by police over an alleged assault of a man at London St Pancras Station in 2025. Yaxley-Lennon was not charged over the incident.

Defending her decision to invite Yaxley-Lennon in an article in The Telegraph, Elrayess wrote: “For more than 200 years, the Oxford Union has existed to host debates – not to platform views uncritically, but to subject them to the most rigorous scrutiny. You do not invite a speaker to endorse them: you invite them so that their ideas can be examined, and their claims tested.”

Elrayess also appeared on the right-wing television news channel GB News to explain her defence of both the debate and the invitation to Yaxley-Lennon. She addressed concerns about the security risk raised by the event, and called it “a shame that we can’t even debate these topics anymore without the feeling of things crashing down.”

A spokesperson for the Oxford Union previously told Cherwell that the Union gives “members the opportunity to challenge…a broad range of speakers” and “only host[s] speakers who agree to be challenged”.

Oxford’s Turning Point UK society also defended the invitation. Their President described 

Yaxley-Lennon as “a culturally relevant figure in British politics” and that “the debate is of incredible importance”. They described the event as “the perfect opportunity for those who vehemently disagree with Tommy Robinson to put his ideas to the test”. 

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon was contacted for comment.

Life on Earth: Art as armour in Mandel’s ‘Station Eleven’

Cici Zhang
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Life on Earth: Art as armour in Mandel’s ‘Station Eleven’

“I stood looking over my damaged home and tried to forget the sweetness of life on Earth.”
– Emily St John Mandel, Station Eleven 

In a world on the brink of a catastrophe, Miranda Caroll draws the story of Dr Eleven. 

Dr Eleven, a jaded physicist, lives on a space station the size of our moon after escaping from the ruins of a destroyed Earth. The planet’s artificial sky was damaged when they fled from an alien invasion, leaving its surface in perpetual twilight. Human communities live in the Undersea, a lonely network of submarines and fallout shelters under the space station’s oceans. The creator of this kaleidoscopic world, Miranda, is a shipping executive by day and comic artist by night. Miranda is one of many characters – the toughest, or perhaps the tenderest – to populate Emily St John Mandel’s post-apocalyptic epic, Station Eleven: a story of pandemic survivors trying to navigate the ruthless wilderness of a world without civilisation. 

Dr Eleven’s story is one of conflict and melancholy, of anger and longing. So is Mandel’s Station Eleven. As Mandel’s narrative spans across temporalities both before and after the catastrophe of a world-ending contagion, we observe the traumas inflicted upon a landscape when law and order crumble. We observe the cruelty of a fragmented world and its inhabitants’ attempts to survive and heal. Just as memory is power, art becomes a tool for survival. 

The world before the contagion is populated by Arthur Leander, Miranda Caroll, Clarke Thompson, and their contemporaries, who navigate lives of triumph and heartbreak with a lostness that is deeply human. By contrast, the post-pandemic generation confronts a lawless wasteland of violence. Kirsten Raymonde, our narrator, performs Shakespeare for the enduring human settlements with a troupe of musicians calling themselves the Travelling Symphony. In this lost land, each character seeks their own solace. Some turn towards religion and violence, conjuring fables in a distorted fantasy of new gods and prophets. Others, like Kirsten and her companions, inscribe through memories and artmaking. 

Electricity and gas become myths to the children of this new world. The aeroplane becomes a symbol of manmade freedom. The Symphony salvages food and clothing from abandoned houses. They build fires as the generators run out of propane. They whisper old words of poetry and pluck tunes on old strings, clinging to some semblance of familiarity in a land no longer recognisable. 

Mandel’s voice is elegiac. Sections of the novel become a chorus of mourning. “No more diving into pools of chlorinated water lit green from below. No more ball games played under floodlights. No more towns glimpsed from the sky through aeroplane windows. No more flight. No more cities.” This polyphony of voices mourns the loss of human infrastructure with a haunting mixture of grief and tranquillity. 

Did Earth ever belong to us, or have we only borrowed it for too long? Mandel investigates questions and claims of ownership. The lives we meticulously build rest on a perilous network of manmade structures, ranging from social norms to resource access. But these structures of technology and the socioeconomic systems can collapse. Our time on Earth is fundamentally transient, vulnerable to entropic forces insentient to human existence. 

The only way to honour this impermanent earth is to make art about it. Miranda sketches visions of a fictional world that bleeds into a bruised sunset along the Malaysian coast, just as the Symphony scrapes together performances of Shakespeare and Beethoven in the ruins of a new land. Art anchors us to identity. It is our armour. A survival without identity, without imagination, is meaningless. 

Art is power. The thirst for beauty connects us when we are floundering, cast adrift.  In a stroke of metafiction, Mandel’s novel shares its name with the title of Miranda’s comic: Station Eleven. At the novel’s climax, Kirsten is captured by Tyler Leander, whose cultivation of a manic religion has earned him the name ‘prophet’ and a cult following. With a gun pointed at Kirsten’s forehead, Tyler quotes from the comic: “We long only to go home. We dream of sunlight, we dream of walking on earth.” Kirsten quotes it back at him and, in doing so, stalls her own death. In a world where their shared language is violence, these words open a bridge across the divide of blood and hatred. 

This shared devotion to a comic book tethers the two to their humanity. Kirsten survives because both she and Tyler are joined, however momentarily, by a power greater than themselves. 

“We have been lost for so long. We long only for the world we were born into.”

Does anything at all belong to us? This spectacle we call society can be uprooted in the blink of an eye. This claim over our Earth – our cities, our factories, our electric towers – is perilous. We are easily broken. Yet Station Eleven not only acknowledges but celebrates our fragility. The novel demonstrates how speculative fiction is a genre ultimately concerned with the relationship between the environment and the individual, between Earth and humanity. By the end of the novel, our wandering characters survive in a shaky diaspora, imagining a painstaking reemergence of human society as they cradle each other for warmth. There are no answers, but there is the hope of an endless search. 

We must do this, I think. We must make stories out of our own fragility. We must write novels about the world ending that manage, also, to be breathlessly hopeful. This is our power. To stare our demise right in the face, to imagine beyond the lives we know. 

We are owed nothing except our store of carbon. The Earth does not endow us with the right to claim anything but the people we are, at a moment in time: memories, thoughts, scars, and all. As Mandel’s characters wander a world beyond the edge, confronting the brute of physics, the harsh lashings of a landscape, they discover in themselves a ruthless optimism that mutates to survive. This is how we live on an Earth that is temporarily borrowed. This is how we survive. This is how we ache, and long, and lust for life.

Think tank publishes report calling for centralised Oxbridge admissions

Daniela Braw-Smith
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Think tank publishes report calling for centralised Oxbridge admissions

The Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) has published a new report advocating for centralised admissions procedures for applications to the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, arguing that the current collegiate system increases the opacity and complexity for applicants and their teachers.

Charlotte Armstrong, author of the report, told Cherwell that the collegiate admissions system “can place a significant burden on teachers and advisers trying to support students, and risks discouraging capable applicants who may see the system as confusing or inaccessible”. In the report, Armstrong pointed to several factors complicating the admissions process, such as variation in outreach funding, fragmented outreach provision, and poor institutional coordination.

Alongside its national outreach initiatives, such as UNIQ, the University delegates regional outreach to colleges. The University’s Common Framework for Admissions outlines shared principles and procedures to “ensure a fair, consistent and academically rigorous admissions process across all subjects and colleges.” 

However, HEPI’s report noted the impact of the huge wealth disparity between colleges: In 2024, Christ Church College’s endowment (£758 million) was around 17 times that of St Anne’s College (£44 million). According to the think tank, these differences prevent there being a consistent level of support and connection, with some colleges budgeting up to twelve times more on widening access than others. Armstrong told Cherwell that “this risks creating an uneven landscape where a student’s exposure to Oxbridge – and the guidance and support they receive – can depend on their geography, and which colleges happen to have been allocated to their area.”

In its application guidance, the University describes how “while it may look different from applications to other universities, each part of the process has a clear purpose and guidance to help you understand what to expect.” Applications to Oxford involve an earlier deadline for UCAS personal statements and references, choosing between applying to a specific college or an open application, a potential admissions assessment and/or submission of written work and at least one interview, all before the main January deadline for UCAS has passed. HEPI’s research identified Oxford’s additional application requirements and earlier timelines as another factor limiting students’ and teachers’ ability to navigate the admissions process. 

In response to these barriers to transparent and accessible admissions procedures, HEPI has recommended a multi-stage approach, culminating in full centralisation of Oxford applications. The proposed first step would be to develop a more consistent approach to interviewing to establish a more level playing field for students and teachers. 

Under a fully centralised application model, applicants could be interviewed by academic staff from several colleges before being allocated to a college through a ranked preference method. This system would, as Armstrong told Cherwell, “reduce the risk of strong candidates missing out because of where they applied and make the system clearer, more transparent and fairer from a student’s perspective”.

The gap between funding and belonging at Oxford

Leo Jones
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The gap between funding and belonging at Oxford

Oxford is keen to tell a particular story about itself: that it is open, that it is trying, that it is changing. Without a doubt, this rings true, particularly on a financial level, as exemplified by the generous Crankstart Scholarship and the University’s many hardship funds. And to be clear, they matter. For many students, that money is the difference between being here and not. 

But there is a quieter problem embedded in how this support is structured and discussed – one that reveals a set of assumptions about working-class students that the University has yet to fully confront. At its core, the issue is not the existence of financial support, but the expectations that come attached to it. 

Schemes like Crankstart tend to operate on the premise that financial disadvantage is primarily a matter of shortfall. Give students money, and the problem is essentially solved. This sounds reasonable until you consider what it assumes – namely, that recipients already possess the knowledge, confidence, and cultural fluency to manage that money “correctly” within Oxford’s uniquely opaque financial landscape.

But money at Oxford is not neutral. It comes embedded in systems like battels, college charges, book grants, rent schedules, vacation storage fees, formal wear expectations, unpaid internships, and the subtle but constant pressure to spend in ways that signal belonging. Knowing how to navigate these is not intuitive. It is learned often informally, sometimes through family experience, and long before arriving here.

Working-class students are far less likely to have had that exposure. Yet the structure of support assumes they will simply “figure it out.” This assumption shows up in small, but consequential, ways. Funds are frequently disbursed in lump sums, with little guidance beyond generic budgeting advice. Hardship applications require students to anticipate and articulate financial needs in a system they may not yet understand. There is an implicit expectation that students will know when to save, when to spend, and when to ask for more – all the while managing the social pressures of a university where spending norms are rarely explicit.

This gap is intensified by how difficult it is to earn money while at Oxford. Term-time work is typically discouraged in favour of prioritising academic commitments, leaving many students with little flexibility to respond to unexpected costs or social pressures. The assumption is that financial support will be enough. When it is not, there are few alternatives. The option to simply “work more” – a common fallback elsewhere – is largely closed off, further narrowing the margin for error. 

When things go wrong, the burden quietly shifts back onto the student. Overspent? You should have budgeted better. Didn’t apply in time? You should have known the system. Struggling socially because you can’t afford to participate? That’s unfortunate, but invisible. The underlying message is subtle but powerful: you have been given the opportunity, now it is your responsibility to make it work.

But is it not natural that, upon receiving extra money in your bank account – possibly more than you have ever had before – you would be tempted to spend dramatically? Those Ryanair flights for a European city break? Suddenly affordable. Tesco Finest over their value products? Why not treat yourself? 

Initially, it might seem obvious to respond to this gap with more “support” in the form of budgeting workshops, financial literacy sessions, or compulsory guidance on managing money at Oxford. But this risks reproducing the same problem in a different form.

If framed incorrectly, these initiatives can feel deeply patronising. They rest on the assumption that working-class students lack basic financial competence, and that they need to be taught how to budget, rather than supported in navigating a system that is itself unusually complex. In reality, many students from lower-income backgrounds arrive at Oxford already highly skilled in managing limited resources. The issue is not ignorance, but context.

Budgeting at Oxford is not the same as budgeting at home. It involves decoding unfamiliar charges, anticipating irregular expenses, and negotiating social expectations that are rarely spelt out. A workshop on “how to manage your money” does little to address this, and risks talking down to the very students it claims to support.

What’s needed instead is not remedial education, but structural clarity. Clearer information about likely costs, more transparency from colleges, and a recognition that the difficulty lies not in students’ abilities, but in the University’s complexity, at both a social and institutional level. We all have different relationships with money, which therefore makes blanket advice on budgeting pretty pointless. We all know what we should be doing, but how we implement it when suddenly able to afford that round of shots, dinner out, or a last-minute ticket, is far less straightforward. 

The issue is not a lack of discipline or understanding, but the collision between individual financial habits and an environment where spending is both highly visible and socially loaded. In that context, generic advice about restraint offers little real guidance. 

What students need is not to be told how to budget, but to be given a clearer sense of the landscape they are budgeting within – one where expectations, pressures, and costs are made explicit, rather than left to be inferred. 

Until that visibility exists, the burden will remain unevenly distributed. Students will continue to arrive equipped to meet the academic demands of the University, but left to decipher its financial and social logic alone. 

Access without understanding is not access at all. And that is a gap no scholarship, however generous, or life-changing, can fully close.

St Catz reopens dining hall following RAAC renovations

Anisha Mohammed
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St Catz reopens dining hall following RAAC renovations

St Catherine’s College has reopened its dining hall, following more than two years of disruption caused by the discovery of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) in parts of its estate.

The issue, which forms part of a wider national concern over RAAC in public buildings, led to the closure of key facilities, including the original dining hall. RAAC, a lightweight material commonly used in mid-20th century construction, has been identified as structurally vulnerable, prompting precautionary closures across schools, hospitals, and universities.

In response, St Catz introduced temporary arrangements to maintain dining provision, installing a temporary tent structure. 

The reopening of the dining hall represents a major step in the College’s recovery, with St Catz describing the moment to Cherwell as “an exciting day”. In a statement, the College told Cherwell they had taken “a careful and precautionary approach throughout”, prioritising the safety and wellbeing of students, staff, and visitors while maintaining day-to-day College life. They added that its focus had been on restoring core facilities “as quickly and safely as possible”, while minimising disruption.

Alongside the dining hall, other parts of the estate, including the JCR, have now returned to use. The College confirmed that further areas are expected to reopen in the coming months as remediation work continues. St Catz told Cherwell that the reopening of key facilities represents “strong progress” in its programme of works addressing RAAC on site.

While the College continues to navigate the long-term impact of the material, the return of the dining hall restores a central hub of student life, marking a step toward normality following a prolonged period of disruption.

Who gets to speak? The rise of the male podcast epidemic

Amy Lawson
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Who gets to speak? The rise of the male podcast epidemic

With Trinity in full swing, and the mornings finally getting light enough to justify a pre-8am wakeup, I’ve started running earlier in the day (in spite of the pollen count’s mission to decimate anyone brave enough to stray into Oxford’s green spaces). And, as those runs have grown longer, so has my need for something to fill them, particularly since my carefully curated Y2K playlist is wearing thin. No stranger to the world of podcasts, but definitely someone who has largely remained firmly on the fringes of that particular corner of the internet, I decided it might be time to swap my beloved playlists for something different. 

As a staunch fan of Dish – a food podcast hosted by Angela Hartnett and Nick Grimshaw, which interviews celebrity guests on their favourite dishes and relationship with food – and very much a creature of habit, I found it hard to branch out. Perhaps it’s because of sheer saturation: on their website, the Podcast Index reports a total of 4,671,900 podcasts ‘registered’ with them (each one required to have at least three episodes, and at least one of those to be over three minutes long), and such high numbers make innovation within the genre challenging. It’s hard to make your mark in the podcast scene when it is, format-wise, literally just people talking, making reliance on the entertainment value of a particular topic imperative. Or maybe it was simply my fried attention span, which struggled when confronted with 50 minutes of chatting.  

I couldn’t help but notice, however, that one of the reasons for my disillusionment with the genre was likely the glaring gender imbalance, often when it came to the most successful, well-known podcasts. A quick glance at the top ten in Spotify’s UK Podcasts Charts is telling, with the chart dominated by podcasts written and produced by men, with the exception of The Rest is Entertainment, co-hosted by Marina Hyde and Richard Osman, The Rest is Politics US with Katty Kay and Anthony Scaramucci, and The News Agents, featuring top journalist Emily Maitlis. It is interesting, though, that when women’s voices do appear in this top ten, they are often present as part of an ensemble. This is not to downplay the importance of their voices, or what they have to say; however, the lack of representation of standalone female voices in this high-profile list should ring alarm bells. 

Similar numbers can be seen beyond Spotify. A 2025 study from Sounds Profitable suggests that twice as many men create podcasts as women. This is not to say that women don’t produce or host successful podcasts – and in fact, the same study informs us that female creators show better retention once they’re established – but when we consider, for example, the average UK listener on a homeward commute, their exposure to female-produced content is considerably less than it ought to be. 

There is also the fact that male-produced podcasts have increasingly become assimilated with the voices of the far right. Andrew Tate gained fame partly through his official channel, Tate Speech on the platform Rumble, where his ‘Emergency Meeting’ episodes provide discussions on legal situations and media debates. Right-wing public figures such as Ben Shapiro dominate top charts for conservative shows, and Infowars with Alex Jones has served as a long-standing platform for conspiracy theories and anti-globalist narratives since 1991, before its closure earlier this year (and, in an ironic twist of fate, it is set to be taken over by satirical newspaper The Onion).

This is the dark side of podcasting. Requiring little more than decent recording equipment and access to the internet, it becomes a platform for anyone willing to talk for over three minutes, where personal opinions are laid down as fact and dangerous narratives are bounced around in an echo-chamber soundproofed by male voices. It is easy to write off some of these ‘manosphere’ podcasts as meaningless prattle, and they have certainly been subject to parody – even four years ago, SNL’s ‘Podcast Set’ sketch, centring on a fired employee who is gifted a Fisher-Price ‘Podcast set for white guys’ at his leaving party, was right on the money – but the rhetoric used by many of these men gains currency outside of the podcast sphere. Indeed, the business model of many podcasts is such that, in order to avoid one-dimensionality, brand deals, spin-offs, live shows, and Patreon subscriptions, promoted on social media, build an ecosystem that reaches far beyond the recording studio. 

There is, I hasten to add, no shortage of high-quality, creative female-and-queer-produced podcasts around. And they are often highly successful – My Therapist Ghosted Me has sold out multiple nights at Dublin’s 3Arena for its live shows, whilst The Log Books, a podcast on LGBTQ+ history, won Best New Podcast at the British Podcast Awards in 2020. But it is not simply the presence of women’s voices in the podcast industry which is important – it’s the sense of intimacy which is often created. Listening to the same voices each week, often in the same, strangely personal settings – like my runs around Oxford, or washing dishes after making dinner – establishes a kind of companionship, which is part of what makes the medium so persuasive.

But not all forms of conversational intimacy are made equal. Podcasts such as Dish, with its rotating guests and easy cohost dynamic, feel balanced and genuinely dialogic, where conversation serves to exchange perspectives rather than consolidate authority. Other podcasts, however – not only those in the ‘manosphere’, but also those in its orbit, or those who parody it so closely that the distinction begins to collapse – rely on a different dynamic entirely. In these cases, the performed casualness of the medium can conceal something more ominous. When a lone voice speaks, at length and unchecked, confidence soon begins to resemble expertise, and this is the hallmark of many of these popular male-produced podcasts.

The issue, then, is not that men occupy these intimate listening spaces, but that the podcasting industry seems to reward the performance of masculine certainty within them. And in a medium built on this relationship between listener and speaker, the voices we spend hours listening to will inevitably come to shape the way we understand the world. As such, it may be time to listen a little more closely.  

Violent clash outside Oxford Union during visit of Sudanese prime minister

Beatrix Arnold and Stanley Smith
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Violent clash outside Oxford Union during visit of Sudanese prime minister

A violent altercation broke out between the entourage of Prime Minister Kamil Idris of Sudan and protesters during Idris’ visit to the Oxford Union on Wednesday, 13th May. The incident occurred as Idris was exiting the Union after participating in a speaker event.

In a video seen by Cherwell, a crowd can be seen gathered around Idris’ car outside the Oxford Union, to protest the Sudanese prime minister’s visit to the debating society. Chants in Arabic of “Hurriya, salaam, wa ‘adaala” [“Freedom, peace, and justice”] and “madaniyya khiyar al-sha’b” [“civilian rule is the people’s choice”] can be heard from the protesters. 

The video shows a violent clash wherein a member of Idris’ entourage can be seen punching and pushing a man who was standing with the protesters. It is unclear from the video what provoked the altercation. The confrontation continues until Idris’ car drives off.

Idris was appointed prime minister of Sudan last year amidst the country’s ongoing civil war between the military-controlled government and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Opposition to the Union’s invitation of Idris voiced online cites the authoritarian nature of his government as well as accusations of war crimes committed by the Sudanese Armed Forces, particularly the killing of civilians and perpetration of sexual violence. 

The Rapid Support Forces have also been accused of war crimes, notably the mass-killing of civilians in the city of El Fasher in October, 2025. Amnesty International has reported the widespread use of sexual violence as a weapon of war by the paramilitary group.

In a statement posted on Instagram on Thursday, Oxford University Sudanese Society “unequivocally” condemned the violence, asserting that “the right to dissent is one of the bedrock conditions of life in this country, in this city, and at this institution”. They further stated that “the respect owed to Sudan’s valued diaspora is not optional, and it does not pause for a motorcade. Yesterday, that line was crossed”. The society extended its “solidarity to those affected”, and promised to “support them in whatever they choose to do next”. 

During the event at the Union, Idris was interviewed by Yousif Yahya, the son of a Sudanese career diplomat. 

Yousif Yahya told Cherwell: “I understand that some members of the Sudanese community at Oxford disagreed with the invitation and with my role in moderating the discussion.” However, he emphasised that “the purpose of the event was not endorsement, but scrutiny and engagement through public questioning. The interview addressed difficult and contested issues directly, including questions relating to the current political process and the future of civilian participation in Sudan.”

A spokesperson for the Oxford Union told Cherwell: “It is not unusual for the Society to invite current and former heads of state to be challenged by members. Our events are organised and moderated by students. It is established practice that those students who have a direct interest in the relevant speaker event will assist in running the event. In this instance, Idris was interviewed by a Sudanese student who also assisted with the organisation of the event.

“Further, Sudanese students were given priority to question Idris live. One asked ‘What would it take for you to resign?’, and another asked ‘What are you doing to end the war?’, for example. It would be deeply misleading to suggest that questions were unfairly controlled or censored. The Society cannot control the answers given by speakers, but it can certainly give a platform for exposure, challenge and debate.”

Idris’ invitation and the consequent protest come amid wider controversy about the individuals invited to speak at the Oxford Union. Earlier this term, the far-right anti-feminist YouTuber Carl Benjamin was disinvited from a debate shortly before it took place, following opposition from student groups. The Union has also invited Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who identifies as Tommy Robinson, to speak at a debate in Week 5, a decision which has generated widespread backlash from both student organisations and within the Union itself. 

Kamil Idris was approached for comment. 

Translations of Arabic provided by Sofia O’Casey.

Why Minimalist Jewellery Keeps Winning on Campus

External Contributor
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Why Minimalist Jewellery Keeps Winning on Campus

Campus style reflects a balance between practicality and personal expression, and jewellery plays a subtle but important role in that equation. Today, women’s jewellery on campus tends to favour clean, understated designs that can move easily between different parts of the day. From lectures to social events, students increasingly choose pieces that are easy to wear, adaptable, and quietly expressive.

Brands such as Edblad have become increasingly relevant within this shift toward minimalist campus fashion. Students are drawn to jewellery that combines simplicity with durability, allowing pieces to work across busy schedules and changing social settings. Scandinavian-inspired designs, known for their clean lines and understated elegance, fit naturally into modern student wardrobes where versatility and long-term wear matter more than overly trend-driven accessories.

Why Small Details Matter

Minimalist jewellery works well in student environments because it supports rather than dominates an outfit. With busy schedules and varied activities, accessories need to be reliable and versatile. Pieces that are comfortable and durable quickly become everyday essentials.

Quiet Pieces Fit Real Schedules

Student life rarely allows time for constant outfit changes. Jewellery that can transition easily from day to evening becomes more valuable.

  • Slim chains that layer or stand alone
  • Small hoops or studs that suit multiple settings
  • Simple rings that can be worn daily without discomfort
  • Lightweight bracelets that do not interfere with movement

These pieces integrate easily into different styles, whether paired with casual clothing or more formal outfits. Many students are drawn to brands like Edblad, where Scandinavian design principles focus on simplicity and function. Edblad creates nickel-safe jewellery in stainless steel, combining durability with a refined aesthetic. This makes the pieces suitable for frequent wear while maintaining a sense of understated sophistication.

Repeat Wear Signals Confidence

Fashion trends on campus have shifted away from constant novelty. According to insights highlighted in the State of Fashion, repeating the same accessories is no longer seen as a limitation but as a sign of consistency and personal style.

This shift aligns with practical considerations. Students often prefer fewer, higher-quality pieces that can be worn repeatedly across different outfits. Jewellery that maintains its appearance over time becomes part of a recognisable personal identity, rather than a temporary trend.

Subtle Style Still Feels Personal

Minimalist jewellery does not remove individuality; it reframes it. Small variations in layering, metal choice, or proportion allow students to express their style without relying on bold statement pieces.

This approach is also influenced by social media, where styling often focuses on detail rather than excess. A simple necklace or a set of rings can carry meaning through repetition and context. Over time, these pieces become associated with the wearer, adding depth to an otherwise minimal look.

Why This Style Continues To Last

Minimalist jewellery remains popular because it fits the realities of student life. It is affordable, durable, and easy to incorporate into daily routines. More importantly, it aligns with a broader shift toward thoughtful consumption and long-term use.

While bold accessories still have their place, everyday campus style favours pieces that are practical and adaptable. Jewellery that can be worn often, across different situations, offers lasting value. This combination of function and quiet expression ensures that minimalist designs continue to resonate with students.

Oxford and UN launch peace and security fellowship

Gavriella Epstein-Lightman
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Oxford and UN launch peace and security fellowship

The University of Oxford and the United Nations have launched a new Peace and Security Fellowship.

The fellowship was established by Oxford’s Department of Politics and International Relations in partnership with the UN Department of Peace Operations. It brings serving UN practitioners to Oxford to undertake research on peacekeeping and conflict prevention.

The programme, which began on Monday, 27th April, lasts eight weeks. It sees ten fellows from diverse professional backgrounds working on individual research projects and presenting their findings in a closing seminar and final paper.

Professor Richard Caplan, the director of the Fellowship, and Professor of International Relations, told Cherwell the topics the fellows are focusing on are “very varied but they all speak to critically important issues for the United Nations today”. Focuses vary from strengthening the rule of law and accountability mechanisms in conflict and post-conflict environments, to exploring how UN peace operations can adapt to the evolving geopolitical order.

Professor David Doyle, Head of the Department of Politics and International Relations, told Cherwell: “All of the Fellows [sic] work on the frontline of peace and security for the UN in some of the most challenging contexts in the world.” Doyle explained that “this is an opportunity for them to take a step back and to conduct research, in an academic context… yet informed by their extensive practical experience”.

The Fellowship launches at a time of undeniable geopolitical volatility. Caplan highlighted to Cherwell that it is “precisely because the geopolitical situation is in flux, [that] it is imperative to think beyond traditional UN approaches to international peace and security”. He added, in this context, that “it is a fitting time to be re-examining how UN peace operations and related tools can better address today’s challenges”. He also emphasised that the University of Oxford will benefit from “the insights the fellows can offer into the work of the United Nations and multilateral organisations more broadly”.

The Fellowship is funded through a contribution from Sai Prakash Leo Muthu and Sairam Institutions, in memory of the late Leo Muthu, Founder Chairman of the Sairam Institutions, a group of over twenty educational institutions. Although the programme is not yet endowed, Caplan told Cherwell that he hopes to secure “further funding to be able to offer the fellowship on a regular basis”.The programme will culminate in a public lecture on Thursday, 18th June by Under-Secretary General of the UN, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, reflecting on the future of UN peace operations. Lacroix said that the fellowship offers UN practitioners the chance to “help shape a more effective and forward-looking United Nations”.

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