The Boat Race will return to London this year, taking place on the traditional Championship Course on Sunday 3rd April 2022.
Due to COVID-19 related restriction, the 2021 race was moved to Ely, Cambridgeshire and took place in a ‘closed’ format. Spectators were asked to stay at home and watch the race on television.
Next year’s race will be back on London’s Championship Course, which stretches over 4.25 miles of the Thames. The Women’s Boat Race will start at 14:23 and the Men’s Boat Race will begin at 15:23.
Spectators are welcomed to watch directly from the riverbank. The event will also be broadcast television and on The Boat Race’s social media channels. The Boat Race is regularly attended by over 250,000 spectators according to organisers, and viewed by more than 5 million on television.
The 2022 race will be the 76th Women’s and the 167th Men’s Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge University. The rowers are all students and sporting ‘amateurs’. University rowing is a big sport at both Cambridge and Oxford, with many students following rigorous training programmes. Boat Race have rowed for Team GB in the Olympics in the past.
Last year’s race between Oxford and Cambridge saw Oxford’s Men and Women’s Team lose the competition by “a single boat length”. Cambridge have a historic edge over Oxford, having won 84 vs 80 of the men’s competitions, and 44 vs 30 of the women’s competitions.
Oxford University Men’s Boat Club’s President, Martin Barasko, said: “It is extremely exciting that The Boat Race is returning to London after two long years. Oxford is very much looking forward to racing again on the Championship Course. Both the Women and Men have had a strong start to the season and have established a solid foundation on which to build on over the next six months. Thank you to the BRCL for their tireless work in organising what is shaping up to be a thrilling contest on the Tideway.’’
Cambridge University Boat Club’s Women’s President, Bronya Sykes said: “I’m hugely excited for The Boat Races’ return to the Tideway in 2022. The Ely Boat Races were the perfect place for the 2021 Races in the COVID-19 pandemic and both Women’s and Men’s Races were great contests. But the Tideway is the home of The Boat Races, and we’re looking forward to the atmosphere and challenge of racing that you can only get racing against Oxford from Putney to Mortlake. We’re truly grateful for BRCL’s work in getting The Race back to the Tideway, and to being part of one of the UK’s great traditional contests.”
Did you know that the “did you know that you only use 10% of your brain” factoid is false?
You probably do. But the myth persists, a result of the near-universal obsession with education and what the brain can do. And it makes sense: if you’re a student reading this, you’re probably hoping that studying will open up the career and life you want, and even if you’re not, you’ve undoubtedly been inundated with methods to improve your mind: meditation, learning to avoid logical fallacies, developing a particular mindset for success, and so on. And of all the books that explore the question of how and why we learn, I find that Frank Herbert’s Dune offers an unsettling, prescient answer to this question.
The novel imagines a future where computers and artificial intelligence are forbidden, with humans training their minds to replace these machines. In its world, the brain can be augmented to do everything from lie detection to foreseeing the future. The “10% of your brain” myth isn’t explicitly stated, but finds a close parallel in the book’s vision of the incredible things the mind can be capable of. It’s difficult to read Dune and not walk away wondering if there’s a (more realistic) equivalent to the mental perfection that the novel’s characters train towards.
This perfection doesn’t just manifest as superhuman powers, but is also linked to more traditional forms of strength. Herbert contrasts the Galactic Empire, a technologically powerful but stagnant civilization, with the Fremen, a tribal race made strong by harsh environments. “People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles”, a scholar within the story states, and the novel presents the Fremen’s psychological resilience to suffering as the key reason why they eventually overpower the Empire. The idea that peace leads to decadence while suffering creates strength is a contested view of history, but Herbert portrays hardship as the key to mental strength.
In fact, characters in the novel define humanity by the barometer of mental discipline. In one of the novel’s most famous scenes, a character’s “humanity” is tested by examining whether he can endure extraordinary pain. It’s explained that an animal would flee from a painful trap, but a human would control itself, “feigning death that he might kill the trapper”. This is a novel which places massive weight on humanity’s ability to learn—it seems to say that strength comes from subjecting oneself to suffering and discipline, until the potential of our minds is unlocked.
But things in Dune are rarely so simple. Most of us probably see education as something with the potential to make us more free. Dune, however, presents a feudalistic future where every form of mental advancement is conscripted in service of those in power, with soldiers and advisors refined through brutal methods into the perfect tools. Even when the protagonist uses his knowledge to demolish the old order of things, it is to establish a new, arguably equally repressive, system of control. The novel presents an awe-inspiring picture of how characters suffer for the sake of mental excellence, but also reminds the reader of the bleak goals that their training guides them towards.
Many things make Dune a novel that speaks to our times: its analysis of religious extremism, the way it explores ecological issues, or how it critiques “white saviour” narratives. But its portrayal of how education becomes nothing but a means to an end also feels starkly prescient. You may have read about a recent study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies claiming that women earn less because they choose the “wrong” degrees, linking the graduate pay gap to how women make up only a third of graduates in Economics, the degree with the highest financial pay-off, but “disproportionately choose to study subjects that yield low financial returns”, such as Creative Arts. If this study is correct, these are the “wrong” degrees if one’s goal is profit. But, at the risk of stating the obvious, there are other goals that are equally—perhaps more—valuable, even if the job market may say otherwise.
Maybe there isn’t a hidden 90% of your brain to tap into, or a way to train yourself to see the future. But we so often try, hoping that current hardship equates to future happiness. Dune entices us with a fantastical sci-fi universe, but Herbert also makes it clear that it’s a brutal, limiting world, where education is a mechanical process of creating tools for the powerful, with little thought to individual needs or personal passions. So, for the students reading this: take the breaks you need, go for a walk, and read a book.
Just maybe not Dune. It’s a work of genius, but having said all this, you might find it a bit depressing.
The Oxford Union voted overwhelmingly in support of a motion of no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government. The motion passed with 228 votes in favour and 95 against.
The debate was the first to be held in the debating chamber since COVID-19 restrictions were imposed, and was held in a packed chamber with spectators crammed into the viewing gallery. It came in the wake of a cross-party parliamentary report on the failings in response to the COVID pandemic, and as the nation faces the prospect of shortages and rising prices.
The Union holds a no confidence debate at the beginning of each academic year, attracting high-profile speakers from both sides of the political divide.
Speakers in favour of the motion included Shadow Home Secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds MP; Layla Moran MP, who is the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for foreign affairs and international development; and Wes Streeting MP, who serves as the Shadow Secretary of State for Child Poverty. Amber Warner-Warr, Chair of the Consultative Committee at the Oxford Union also proposed the motion.
In opposition, three Conservative party MPs debated alongside Arjun Bhardwaj, Treasurer of the Oxford Union. They included the former Attorney General Sir Geoffery Cox QC MP; former Secretary of State for Justice Sir Robert Buckland; and the Leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg MP. They were greeted with boos from some members of the audience as they entered the chamber.
After Union President Chengkai Xie opened proceedings, Ms Warner-Warr kicked off the debate by welcoming the audience and speakers to the chamber.
Ms Warner-Warr accused the government of “empty rhetoric”, using slogans like “build back better” and “get Brexit done” without any meaningful action.
Mr Bhardwaj began the case for the opposition by accusing the proposition of failing to come up with suitable alternatives to the Conservative government. He praised the government’s post-Brexit UK-Australia trade deal, and increase in funding for the NHS through raising national insurance contributions.
The Rt. Hon. Thomas-Symonds MP received cheers as he took to the dispatch box, before praising the standard of debate set by the student speakers. He drew the audience’s attention to the heavy death toll from the pandemic, and reminded them of Boris Johnson’s remark that his cinematic hero was the Mayor from Jaws, who kept the beaches open despite warnings to close it.
He also said Dominic Raab should be in court for “gross negligence” over his handling of the withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan. Referring to Mr Raab’s infamous claim that “the sea was closed”, he said “ with nonsense like that, even Mr Cox and Buckland [who are both QCs] could not defend him”.
In response, The Rt. Hon. Sir Geoffrey Cox QC MP began by acknowledging that the task of defending a government in midterm was not an easy one, especially considering the applause and cheers which met Mr Thomas-Symonds’ speech. He assured Mr Xie “ that with not one but two experienced advocates, they could defend in front of this hostile court”.
His theatrical delivery, reminiscent of a Shakespearian actor, prompted frequent laughter and applause from the chamber. He said Mr Johnson understood the “pulse and beat of the nation”, pointing to his inclusion of criminalising pet theft in his conference speech.
Ms Moran MP began by praising Mr Cox’s sonorous tone, thanking him for telling the audience that this government consisted of “pluckers and pet theft”. She said the government had “neither compassion nor competence”.
A Liberal Democrat MP, Ms Moran focused her speech on the government’s handling of Brexit’. She described Mr Johnson’s decision to abandon the Northern Ireland Protocol as an “embarrassment”, asking whether he was “dim or disingenuous”. She said that food shortages in supermarkets were “foreseeable”, and described the proposed solution as “pitiful”.
The Rt. Hon. Buckland QC MP said the country was facing “the most existential questions it had ever faced in peacetime”. He accused the proposition of providing a “stream of whinges and complaints”, but that it failed to produce a case for this motion
He spoke about why he joined the Conservative party while living in Wales during the Miners’ Strike, saying he wanted to alleviate poverty. He warned the audience against accepting the proposition’s rhetoric that the “government doesn’t care”.He pointed to the furlough scheme, and falling unemployment as reasons to have confidence in the government. He said the country was “roaring back to life”, because the government had “saved the economy”.
Before the concluding speeches, the floor was opened for debate.
Afterwards, Mr Streeting MP concluded the proposition’s case by attracting boos for saying Oxford was the second best university in the country, before saying “jokes aside, because there’s enough joking from the Prime Minister”. He accused the government of leaving the country exposed to the pandemic, by underfunding public services, and denounced Mr Johnson’s past statements about gay men, black people, and muslim women who wear the niqab.
The Rt. Hon. Rees-Mogg MP closed the debate, attracting boos as he took to the dispatch box. He said the proposition painted a “rose-tinted” view of Labour’s record, announcing that it was “no Garden of Eden”.
When he defended fiscal conservatism, he was heckled by a member of the audience saying money for public services “should come from [him]”. He attracted loud heckles from Mr Thomas-Symonds MP and the floor after he accused the Labour party of being soft on crime. After Mr Thomas-Symonds took to the stand to say the Labour party proposed an amendment to raise the length of sentences for rape, which the Conservative
He defended the government’s delay in locking down, saying it was because Boris Johnson was reluctant to put restrictions in place on people’s lives.
He ended by saying: “We have a clear policy…And what are we opposed by? Nothing.”
Finalists reading Philosophy, Politics, and Economics are cosigning an open letter to the departments of philosophy and politics to ask for open-book online exams at the end of the year.
Economics finals will be held in an open-book online format, while politics and philosophy are set to be sat in-person. The signatories say that this discrepancy will disadvantage them, since finalists who matriculated in 2019 will never have sat an in-person exam during their time at Oxford University.
The letter says that because students have become accustomed to revising for open-book exams, switching back to closed-book would penalise students who have started preparing for open-book exams. It says: “Online exams require a different skill set; they focus less on memory, and more on the ability to synthesise information effectively into an argument. To prepare, we have been looking at making detailed notes that can be easily used to answer a question, rather than memorise large quantities of information. Advising students now of the in-person format leaves them minimal time to completely re-write their notes before Finals.”
Justifying their decision to hold exams online, the economics faculty said: “Finals exams in 2022 will take place in the online, open-book format used in 2021, recognising the fact that Finals students in 2022 will have done most of their college collections in that format.”
The students added: “To switch the format now devalues the work students have put in, and rewards those that saved time by not putting work in for collections or who have not yet started consolidation of notes.”
The letter also raised concerns about the suitability of the exam halls, and the possibility that sitting multiple students in one room for three hours could lead to the spread of COVID-19, or cause problems for people with health anxieties.
The letter continued: “The move to in-person exams is yet another burden after the unpredictable and anxiety-inducing eighteen months we have all had. And make no mistake, this cannot be compared to ‘standard’ exam stress. The additional stress here is due to students being required to abandon the exam skills they have cultivated for the last 18 months, and begin the process of preparing for a new and unfamiliar exam format. This is not unnecessary stress for students who have already dealt with so much change.”
Pandora Mackenzie, a PPE finalist at The Queen’s College, highlighted concerns that the variety of optional papers available to finalists would lead to students having radically different experiences. She told Cherwell: “I’m most upset that there will be such a disparity between candidates within the PPE degree: some will sit only 3 in-person, handwritten exams whereas others will be sitting 8, and yet we will all come out with the same degree and be graded against each other. Had I known about the different formats, I would have picked different Finals papers.
How can the coronavirus mutate so quickly? It seems like every week there is a new variant that messes everything up. A new collaborative study from Oxford and Dundee could help us to understand exactly which mutations will be the most deadly, allowing us to design new vaccines before its too late.
When organisms (and viruses) reproduce, they must copy their genetic material so that the offspring has all the instructions needed to grow and survive. The parent’s double helical DNA is unzipped and each strand acts as a template for its own replication. Adenine must always pair with thymine, and guanine with cytosine.
This ingenious replication mechanism of DNA was first theorized by Watson and Crick, right after solving its 3D structure. At the end of their famous 1953 paper Francis offhandedly stated, “It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material”.
The enzymes that copy your DNA are incredibly efficient but they sometimes make mistakes. Roughly 1 in 100 million Bases are paired incorrectly. This incredibly high accuracy is only possible due to a proofreading site inside the DNA polymerase complex: When the wrong base is added, a little kink is formed in the double helix and it gets lodged inside the enzyme. A magnesium ion will catalyze its removable so that the polymerase site can try again.
The enzymes that copy most viral genomes do not contain these proofreading sites, so far more errors slip through the cracks. HIV for example contains an RNA-dependant RNA polymerase enzyme that makes a mistake every 1 in 10000 base pairs!
Viruses give rise to thousands of offspring every single day so it doesn’t matter if most of them are rubbish. It’s a bit like the famous scenario of a thousand monkeys on typewriters trying to produce the complete works of Shakespeare. The few that randomly acquire an advantageous mutation will be even better at infecting cells and the cycle continues.
The protein structure of a spike protein (orange) compared to an ACE-2 receptor.
Humans are only capable of producing one baby every 40 weeks. If they have a damaging mutation, it is highly likely that they will die and no innovation will be passed on at all. This is why it takes millions of years for dramatic changes to appear in higher organisms, but viruses are reclassified by the week!
I’ll stop ignoring the elephant in the room now and begin to explain why this knowledge is so important to us at the moment.
Since its discovery in 2019 SARS-CoV-2has rapidly spread around the world, gradually mutating to best suit the local environment and population. When this happens to a significant degree, epidemiologists will name it after the Greek alphabet so its development and spread can be tracked.
In December 2020, an Alpha variant was designated due to its 40-80% higher transmission rate. The most famous recent example is the delta variant. It was first sampled in India last year, then named in May 2021. As of October, there are >858,000 cases in the UK alone and it has spread to nearly 200 countries.
Mutations are often described in abstract terms and it is difficult to visualize exactly what is happening to the virus to make these new variants so infectious. In order to understand this we will take a look at the spike protein on a molecular level.
The surface of the coronavirus is covered in antigens called spike proteins. In order to infect a cell this spike must form a strong bond with a protein on our lung cells outer membrane called ACE2. This tricks the cell into letting the virus inside.
This diagram shows the molecular structure of a SARS COV-2 spike protein interacting with the molecular structure of an ACE2 receptor. It is this interaction which allows the virus to enter cells.
Proteins are made up of a long chain of amino acids, curled and folded into a specific 3D shape. When 2 proteins come together, a Velcro like bond is formed. Each amino acid contributes a weak electrostatic force of attraction but all together they are strong enough to hold the 2 surfaces together.
The key function of DNA (or RNA in the case of the coronavirus) is to code for the order of amino acids in a protein. If one of the DNA bases is changed, there is a chance that one amino acid will be substituted for one of the other 20 common choices.
Each amino acid has a different ‘functional group’ with varying chemical properties. Some hydrophobic, some hydrophilic. Some positively charged, some negatively charged, etc. The binding surface of ACE2 is overall negatively charged so if a neutral amino acid in the spike protein mutated to become positive: the bond would become stronger.
Alternatively, a mutation could occur higher up in the protein that makes it more evasive of the immune system. Several amino acids in spike accumulate bulky sugar side chains that shield the surface from proteins of the immune signals that recognize ‘pathogen associated molecular patterns’ (PAMPs)
The spike protein is over 1200 amino acids long so it if often difficult to identify whether mutations in a newly identified sample will make it more infectious or not. How can we measure this before thousands of people start to get infected?
In August 2021, researchers from Oxford and the University of Dundee made incredibly improvements to analytical techniques such as ‘surface plasmon resonance’ and ‘bilayer interferometry’ that made their measurements of Spikes binding affinity with ACE2 for more accurate.
The pitfalls of previous experiments were that this process was often measured at lower temperatures ~20’C to stop the proteins from denaturing. That meant that the kinetics would be far slower than reality. Many studies did not even report their temperature at all! This new experiment managed to stabilize it at a physiological temperature of 37’C.
Another common issue with older studies is that proteins tended to aggregate on the detector meaning that the Spike got tangled up and it wouldn’t dissociate as much as it should. This time, a far lower concentration was used and the sensitivity of the measurement was cranked up.
The key finding of this research is that mutation that provide the greatest infectiousness and dominance in their respective regions are in the receptor binding domain (RBD) of spike.
These findings correlate strongly with epidemiological studies for example: A mutation of asparagine-501 into a tyrosine amino acid is what helped the alpha variant to become so infectious. Kinetic analysis of this N501Y mutation proved that it binds to ACE2 five times more strongly.
Now that these affinity measuring techniques are more accurate to biological reality, scientists will be able to identify particularly deadly variants far more early. Communities can be quarantined and vaccinated before it spreads across the entire world. Thousands of lives will be saved.
In Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, a novel in verse based on fragments by Stesichorus about the myth of Geryon, shame is being a monster with red wings in a world of people without wings. I think we all carry some trace of shame within us, but some of us have bigger wings than others. Wings that are harder to hide when we press our backs to the walls.
I grew up in a very non-Jewish area, and I have been self-conscious about my Jewish identity for as long as I can remember. It doesn’t help that my mother is Jewish but my father is not, meaning that I feel too Jewish among non-Jews, and not Jewish enough when I am with other Jews. Much of the time, I seem to be standing on the sidelines, watching everyone else and trying to work out how to fit in.
I was told as a small child that I was Jewish, because my mother was. Like my having brown hair or poor hand-eye coordination, this was just a fact about myself, whether I liked it or not. I was never really sure what it meant, though; the only way it was generally expressed was through my family celebrating Hanukkah alongside Christmas, and through my refusal on principle to sing Christian hymns at my Church of England primary school. This was my act of defiance, my self-demarcation of difference; I would stand up in assembly with everyone else and then press my lips shut as they sang about Jesus. I’m still not sure why – it’s not like I have ever really been religious – but something about it seemed important to me. Given that as a child I was painfully shy, my refusal to assimilate into my Christian environment felt like a daring act of rebellion.
As I grew older, I wrestled increasingly with the tension between being Jewish and yet not really feeling Jewish. I would make jokes about my Jewishness, but always follow it up with some kind of denial, a sort of get-out clause; I was only ‘half-Jewish’, I wasn’t religious, I wasn’t a ‘proper Jew’. I think this was in large part a knee-jerk reaction to my discomfort with suddenly outing myself as a curiosity, a sort of domesticated freak; other than my two siblings, I didn’t know another Jew in any of the schools I attended until I encountered one other Jewish student in sixth form.
This student was in the year above me, and I vividly remember that after he left school, he told me about joining his university’s Jewish Society (JSoc) and encouraged me to do the same. I was bemused by this suggestion, saying that it couldn’t be the place for someone like me; someone who barely qualified as a Jew, sitting on the uncomfortable rough edge between Jewish and non-Jewish identity. At the same time, however, I felt a sense of wistfulness as he described celebrating Jewish holidays within a community to which he unequivocally belonged; how nice it would be to feel unquestionably at home.
When I arrived at university, one of the first friends I made at my college was also Jewish. I still remember discovering this fact and treasuring it, thinking it was almost a miracle; what were the chances? (Given I’d almost never encountered a Jew outside my family up until that point, my assessment of the statistics was probably skewed.) He too tried to encourage me to come along to a Friday Night Dinner at the Oxford JSoc, and once more I laughed the suggestion off. Such community events were for the real Jews. I was an imposter, a fraud.
And yet I certainly felt Jewish enough when I was in a room full of non-Jews making tacky jokes about the Holocaust, or talking about how left-wing antisemitism was a fiction invented for malicious political ends. I always felt Jewish enough, painfully so, when exposed to antisemitism – and the depressing thing is that much of the time, it was the only way in which I fully experienced my Jewishness. My Jewish identity came to be almost entirely defined by the world’s hatred of it – of me.
Living as a Jewish person in a non-Jewish environment made me hyper-aware of my identity and sometimes uncomfortable with it, which ultimately bred a sort of shame. Over time, it becomes all too easy to internalise the non-Jewish world’s perception of us: privileged, greedy, neurotic, manipulative, predatory – there are too many stereotypes to list. We come to see ourselves, in our darkest moments, through the antisemites’ eyes: as freakish monsters who don’t – who can’t – belong. And so of course we develop the habit of negating our identity, of distancing ourselves from our Jewishness, as a mechanism to insist to ourselves – and to those around us – that we’re just like them. To assert our humanity.
I was trapped for a long time in a strange limbo, with my Jewishness always creating some kind of awkwardness, regardless of my company. Eventually – perhaps largely because it became too exhausting not to – I started to reclaim my identity on my own terms. Antisemitism in a way forced me to reckon with my Jewish identity whether I liked it or not, and I decided to rise to the challenge by living as a Jew loudly and proudly, and rejecting the attempts of anyone else to define what that means.
In all honesty, I’m still negotiating the contradictions and difficulties of this process; I’m routinely worried in Jewish spaces that I’ll somehow slip up and be exposed, though for – or as – what I’m not sure. Jewish holidays in particular tend to heighten my feelings of inadequacy, as I have to Google the correct traditions, which even then I’m unlikely to perform, and greetings, which I’m sure to mispronounce. But, to my relief, every Jewish person I’ve met at Oxford so far has been perfectly welcoming and respectful; funnily enough, no one has asked to see my credentials before accepting me into their community. It turns out that all along I was needlessly gatekeeping myself.
To return to Carson’s depiction of Geryon: one of the things which stuck most in my mind while reading Autobiography of Red is the beauty of Geryon’s wings; they are delicate, colourful, and sensitively responsive to emotional shifts. Maybe having wings is not the problem. Maybe our wings are not what make us monstrous, but what make us human. And maybe shame after all is not having wings, but hiding them because we are too afraid to fly.
Today, I checked to see if I’d locked my bedroom door five times before heading over to the library. I walked down the stairs and was sure not to step on any cracks or gaps in the pavement on my way over. For good luck in writing my first essay at Oxford, I tapped my temple five times with my index finger.
At the age of 13, after months of waiting, I was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or OCD, as it is commonly abbreviated. Having originally been referred due to my experiencing tics, which I would later find out were a symptom of my OCD, I was surprised when I found out that the behaviours I had exhibited for my whole life were actually conducive to this disorder. It’s odd to hear that your own personal ‘normal’ isn’t actually ‘normal’ to everyone else; an entire reshaping of my reality and how I had perceived myself occurred in an hour-long hospital appointment. Especially groundbreaking to me was the reconsideration of how I perceived time and numbers; having to perform certain acts at intervals of five and ten minutes for fear of something dreadful happening if I were to be even a minute out was just as much a manifestation of my condition as washing my hands sixty to one hundred times a day was. But at the time, I didn’t consider that either were out of the norm.
Since my diagnosis, I’ve learned a lot about myself and about OCD. It’s not been a matter of learning to live with it, but rather understanding how it is a part of myself and how I can harness it for good. After all, the doctor who diagnosed me told me that I could make my perfectionism and pedantic nature that comes from my OCD an asset for my work, encouraging me to become a surgeon so I could use my precision, which I chose to disregard in studying a humanities degree. Some of my symptoms have lessened over time, for example, though I still struggle with germs and dirt, exposure therapy helped me to reduce the amount of times I compulsively wash my hands in a day, and similarly I can cope with eating from a table rather than having to hold a plate in my hand.
However, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, for myself and many individuals who live with OCD, led to the arising of new compulsions and the worsening of certain existing ones. For example, I found that my hand washing compulsion once again took hold; including the use of hand sanitizer, I probably got back to the levels of handwashing I was exhibiting when I was younger and my OCD was completely untreated. I’m also not alone in this: a US study conducted into the impact of COVID-19 on individuals with OCD, published in November 2020, found that 72% of individuals with OCD that participated in the study reported an ‘increase in OCD’, denoted as the worsening of compulsions, greater severity of OCD symptoms and the arising of new compulsions. Therefore, the combined shift that the pandemic and coming to university is something that I believe has impacted me, as an individual with OCD, in an incredibly unique and at times immensely difficult manner.
I have always struggled to deal with change, as my condition has meant that I rely on having control over my surroundings and what I encounter for my stability. Thus, experiencing possibly the greatest shift I have ever had to deal with in my life has really caused me to evaluate how my OCD impacts not just me personally, but now my life at university and how the next three years will pan out in terms of my academic study. How do I navigate a post-COVID world and the hygiene-related compulsions that I developed due to the pandemic, and how will these impact my experience of university life? How will my perfectionistic tendencies, arising from an OCD-induced deathly fear of failure, interact with my academics?
Through this column, I hope that I provide an insight into life at Oxford whilst coping with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and document my experiences of my first term in this situation. Understanding the issues surrounding the interaction of mental health conditions and academic study is a vital first step towards improving provisions for those who live with these in their day to day lives.
Image: Jesper Sehested Pluslexia.com/CC BY 2.0 via flickr.com
CW: Police Brutality, Sexual Violence, Racism, Homophobia
On 9th March 2021, Britain shuddered as a morbid, harrowing story flooded news and social media. Kent Police had arrested Wayne Couzens, a serving Metropolitan Police Officer, on suspicion of the kidnapping of Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old marketing executive from South London. Everard had been reported missing since 4th March 2021, and her remains were found the day after Couzens’ arrest in a builder’s bag in Hoads Wood, Kent. Nationwide vigils in memory of Everard took place on the 13th March, against the wishes of police chiefs and incumbent Home Secretary Priti Patel, citing the COVID-19 risk as the reason. Small vigils nevertheless went ahead, notably one in Clapham Common that was attended by hundreds, including representatives of the organisations Sisters Uncut and Reclaim the Streets. This particular vigil soon gained notoriety as footage emerged of the Metropolitan Police attempting to break up the crowd. In particular, a photo of attendee Patsy Stevenson being handcuffed on the ground of the bandstand went viral and soon became a defining symbol of Everard’s case.
Months later, on 30th September 2021, Couzens was handed a whole life sentence for the kidnap, rape and murder. The trial found that Couzens had kidnapped Everard by falsely arresting her under the pretence of breaching COVID-19 guidelines, before handcuffing and abducting her.
The motto ‘serve and protect’ and some variant thereof has historically been presented as encompassing the ethos of the police. It makes sense: the police are supposedly in existence for that very reason. Yet I urge you to pause and reflect on the events just described: at what point, if at all, did the police ‘serve and protect?.’ The nauseating antithesis is, unfortunately, true. A woman was brutally murdered by a serving officer in Britain’s largest and most prestigious police force, whose modus operandi involved abusing his position of power, using a false arrest tactic. Then, when British women, once again made to feel unsafe on the streets of the towns and cities they call home, attempted to grieve and seek solidarity, the very organisation at the root of their anxiety swept in and bulldozed them down in an authoritarian flare. From this one tragedy alone, a simple fact can be ascertained. Britain’s police are fundamentally failing their citizens, and that must change.
When having any conversation about the politics of the police and its reform, one cannot ignore history. As a public body, arguably one of the most powerful and respected in Westminster, it is just as important to look outside of the police at the political, social and economic factors influencing decisions, as it is to look at internal decisions and the actions of certain units and officers. When such history is examined, it becomes clear that many groups have been historically and repeatedly failed by Britain’s police systems, and one doesn’t have to look that far.
Take, for example, Northern Ireland- arguably nowhere demonstrates better the damaging consequences of a discriminatory police force protected by the incumbent political system. Since the island’s partition in 1920, a significant chunk of Northern Ireland’s policing was left to the quasi-military Ulster Special Constabulary (USC), known colloquially as the ‘B-Specials’, a force that was almost exclusively Ulster Protestant and in fact carried out several revenge killings against Catholic citizens during the 1920-22 unrest. When the USC was disbanded and its functions merged into those of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), these problems did not go away- yet again the force remained majority Protestant and saw accusations of police brutality, sectarianism and collusion with loyalist paramilitaries, by the Catholic minority. For a large chunk of modern British history, a significant ethno-religious group was left largely without protection from the organisation established to do so.
In the wake of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020, the Western world ignited in a spur of protests, conversations and activism regarding police brutality and race. Once again turning to history, we can see that in the UK, racial and ethnic minority groups have borne the brunt of the police’s institutional failings and systemic prejudices, despite the assertions of those like Kemi Badenoch to the contrary. There have been several instances of black and mixed race men dying in British police custody: Colin Roach (1983), Leon Patterson (1992), Oluwashijibomi (Shiji) Lapite (1994), Christopher Alder (1998), Sean Rigg (2008), Edson da Costa and Rashan Charles (2017). Black people only comprise 3% of the UK population, yet account for 8% of all deaths in police custody. And, like with the Clapham Common vigil, discriminatory attitudes are so entrenched that forces respond in grossly disproportionate ways to calls for citizens from change. In 1979, Blair Peach was fatally assaulted by an officer of the Special Patrol Group (SPG) during an anti-racism demonstration in London. An investigation into the SPG found that they were in possession of a cache of unauthorised weapons.
It is truly a dire state of affairs where the very organisation established to ensure security and peace for all is failing so catastrophically, that not only is it simply not doing its job, but is instead actively contravening the basic principles of its very existence by posing an active and ongoing threat to the safety and wellbeing of various groups from around the UK. This conversation must be put into a careful context. By no means, of course, is this to say that every serving police officer in the UK, past and present, is a bad person. Many indeed join the police force since they see it as the best way to serve their country by protecting citizens from a host of abhorrent crimes. Nevertheless, even in the wake of cuts, the police remain one of the most powerful public bodies in the UK: the powers of arrest, i.e. depriving a person wholly of their civil liberties, is one of many reasons why the organisation must attract a higher level of accountability. The fact that officers openly sporting racist, sexist and homophobic attitudes are admitted to forces in the first place, and many of these are not dealt with until too late, represents an unforgiveable negligence on behalf of the police, that as aforementioned contravenes their very raison d’être. Everard’s murder has reignited a long running, necessary national conversation, about how the police as an institution acts as a breeding ground for a culture of discrimination, where such views are protected under the guise of the institution’s status[1].
Reform of the police is a controversial subject in British politics- not quite as electrically discussed as our American counterparts, but nonetheless a crucial one, and one that must be had whilst the incumbent government seeks to protect police forces at all costs[2].
Everard’s horrific murder leaves policy makers with a vital question: if large swathes of the public do not feel safe or able to trust the institution whose very existence is ensuring citizens’ security in the first place, how can that organisation continue to exist in its current form?
Over the next few weeks, I want to write about the singular experience of being diagnosed with and getting rid of a tumour in my brain. Readjusting to the world after cancer is a complicated process, one which I will try to put into words in this column.
It was around this time two years ago that I got told about a lump that was not so tenderly nestled at the back of my brain, somewhere between my posterior fossa and my fourth ventricle. An optician told me to go to A&E after it winked at her when she was looking behind my eyes, trying to work out why I’d been seeing double for the past few weeks. I will never forget that moment, chiefly because my immediate response to being told to run to the John Radcliffe Ophthalmology Department was – “I’m going to miss my tutorial!” Yeah. None of us think that we’re stereotypical Oxford students until we come out with a gem like that in the face of brain cancer.
The next 8 months were comprised of the NHS getting rid of the lump. It involved a coordinated team, deft hands, and high-tech technology. It could very well be compared to bomb defusal – if they cut open bombs three times for a total of over 24 hours and then beam them with protons travelling at 60% the speed of light over the course of 56 sessions, that is. My body did not really belong to me for those 8 months. It was the property of surgeons, oncologists, and nurses – a lot of the time I couldn’t shift in bed or go to the toilet unless someone switched off a drain that was buried in my skull. It was no one’s fault, of course. But when you’re an ill person, a lot of the time you have to let someone else be in the driver’s seat. It was weird to know that despite having inhabited my body for 19 years, a group of strangers now knew it better because it had become dysfunctional.
Words can’t really describe the intensity of those few months – they chewed me up, tearing at every millimetre of my soul. Then the hungry wolf that is cancer spat me out at the end of it. I was free of the lump. I remember what the (amazing) oncologist at the Christie Proton Beam Therapy Centre said to me after my last session:
“Go and live your life now.”
Okay.
I’m trying to do that now. Live my life. But entering the world again post-cancer feels like coming out of a dark room into the sunlight. Disoriented, blinking, fumbling for direction. Except I’m the only one who finds it hard to adjust to the light. People function around me. And they don’t just function – they thrive. And I try so hard to thrive and grow, but the memory of the tumour has me pinned down.
Friends tell me about their relationship issues.
Yeah, but I had a brain tumour.
I get invited on nights out and told to enjoy myself.
Yeah, but I had a brain tumour.
People relate to each other easily and connect quickly.
Yeah. But I had a brain tumour.
When my head was opened up and they spend hours removing the lump they didn’t just remove the cancerous cells. It was like they let my essence escape, my personhood. So, I’m trying to find it again, piece myself together. I want to know what it’s like to be a person again, because it feels like I’ve forgotten. And I really can’t wait to learn how to exist again.
20 minutes and 57 seconds. That’s the duration of the most recent voice recording I’ve made of my father trashing my choice of degree (Classics with Sanskrit). There are so many of these recordings that I’ve made a special folder dedicated to them, to show to my relatives when they try to assure me that he would never actually say these things.
Baba- whose parents were born in India- didn’t actually know what Sanskrit was when I first told him, so on numerous occasions has attempted to persuade me to take a modern language rather than Latin or some other “unmarketable” dialect. Something like German or Mandarin, something that I can use in the world of business or law- two fields that he somehow believes I can simultaneously enter post-Oxford. Two fields which I might have implied I would enter willingly were he to allow me to study Classics.
This inevitably leads to the question: ‘what are your plans after university?’ My father asks this with both frustration and glee, knowing what I’m about to say yet hoping I’ve changed my aims. My response that “I want to work in Pakistan on heritage conservation projects” is met with “this isn’t feasible, beta”, and honestly, he might be right.
When I was younger, I used to entertain these fantasies about me and my cousins living in Karachi all together, the way our parents’ generation did. The best memories of my childhood were spent in the marble-floored rooms of my grandfather’s house in Karachi, cultivating my obsession with Kanye’s ‘Graduation’; driving through gulleys looking at the crumbling billboards advertising Pakola; and most of all, being with my family.
I had no reason to think that this should end, not until my bhai moved to England to get a job. Following him, various other cousins began to migrate to the UK and beyond, leaving the house more desolate than I had ever known. It feels like a personal tragedy to see the plaster on the walls cracking and falling away, quickly as have the years for my Phophas and Khalas. As I see them age and grow weaker, my potentially-selfish worry grows: who will be left for me to return to? I don’t think it’s uncommon for much of the desi diaspora, whose links to the homeland can be negotiated through family or other indirect means, to worry that our identities might become estranged from their roots.
I don’t like the way that my father’s tone matches that of my relatives when they disparage their home. The fuel I use for nostalgia- from the welcoming sound of the Azaan to the softness of my Phopho’s hand on my head, and her tears when I leave- cannot surmount my guilt in knowing that it is not me but them who lay a claim to that country. A guilt that arises from the fact that even their most cynical feelings towards that country are more valid than my kindest fantasies. My yearning to belong to the land in the way they do sounds as shallow as clichés about mango trees and sweltering heat.
It’s the hardest truth to accept that I might not have anything to ‘return’ to, because ‘returning’ requires that the home I have there be more than just a ghost made of memories.
More than this, however, is the thought that I might not be able to build a life from the foundations laid by my ancestors. Tasks that might be achieved with one phone call here require a plethora of connections to bypass the minefields of negligence and political complexity (just watch 10 minutes of Geo News and this will become evident).
Life there is hard, harder than I knew when I was too young to savour its apparent simplicity.
A time when my biggest irks with the place were cockroaches in the toilet or getting salmonella from tela-wala ice cream.
So, as my elderly relatives get older and my network there shrinks, my ability to live in Pakistan decreases. But not my desire.
Despite the possibility of the grass being greener on the other side of Eurasia, being there or even just-not-here feels more worthwhile. As impossible as it is to do the most basic of things in Pakistan, life in Britain feels no less dysfunctional. Plain to see are the endless tiers of bureaucracy and kafkaesque administration. When we live in abundance but with a deficit of time, things lose their sentimental value; the pleasure one might seek in cooking or seeing family is replaced by quick fixes and duty-driven decisions. I don’t want to be compelled to climb the corporate ladder and join the rat race. I want to go outside and be met with a crowded, odorous, but familiar reflection of the images I keep in my mind, where I can be soothed by the sound of my mother’s language wherever I go.
I want that to be my home, even though I’m not sure how that could be.
