Tuesday 10th June 2025
Blog Page 332

EXCLUSIVE: Sensitive alumni data made available in Pembroke College telethon leak

Sasha Mills
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EXCLUSIVE: Sensitive alumni data made available in Pembroke College telethon leak

Sensitive data about some of Pembroke College’s alumni from the 2021 telethon was made available to current Oxford University SSO users in a data breach. This included the full names, ages, addresses, and telephone numbers of alumni, alongside notes taken during calls held between telethon workers and alumni. The calling sheets also held information about previous donations made to the college by the alumni named, and the amount that the telethon workers were told to ask alumni for at the end of calls.

Alongside the alumni data, information about Pembroke College’s telethon training processes and admin was also made available to Oxford University SSO users. This included their gift form template, an information pack for telethon callers, the script that telethon callers were asked to follow, and the college’s training material. Cherwell could not find evidence of a similar telethon leak for any other Oxford colleges. 

In their data protection policy for alumni, Pembroke College states that: “Our shared relationship management system, DARS, is hosted on infrastructure within the University of Oxford’s network and is protected by logical access controls. Access is limited to individuals who need to see and use the data to carry out their duties, and access rights are restricted according to individual job roles in order to ensure that users only see information that is relevant to them. All DARS users receive appropriate training, including training on data privacy, before being granted access.” The breach violated this policy.

A Pembroke College spokesperson told Cherwell: “On being alerted to this breach, which we now know arose out of a technical issue when the site was created, the College immediately secured the data and launched an urgent internal investigation. The source of the problem was identified as the technical set-up of a Teams site where alumni data sheets were shared with our student telethon callers.”  

“The limited number of individuals, outside of the authorised group, who have been identified as accessing the data will be contacted to remind them of the consequences of the misuse of data, and we are contacting the alumni involved to apologise for this breach.  Reports have been lodged with the ICO and will be lodged with the Charities Commission in line with our statutory duties. The College deeply regrets this incident. We take data protection very seriously and all relevant procedures are under review to ensure that they are robust for the future. The investigation continues.”

The University of Oxford has been contacted for comment.

Image Credit: Dave_S. / CC BY 2.0

Why I’m still disappointed by How I Met Your Mother’s finale

Deepra Sinha
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Why I’m still disappointed by How I Met Your Mother’s finale

Spoiler alert!

The finale of How I Met Your Mother aired in 2014, and its discordance with everything that came before it and unexpected direction has forever marred its legacy in my view.

In case you don’t know, the premise of HIMYM is centred around Ted Mosby, in the year 2030, telling his children the story of how he met their mother, beginning in 2005. Over nine seasons Ted narrates the tale, telling every story under the sun about his life, his group of friends (Marshall, Lily, Barney, and Robin), and romantic relationships, detailing every small choice and experience that led to him eventually meeting the titular Mother. Then at last, in the show’s finale, Ted meets the Mother at a train station, and they live happily ever after… until it cuts back to 2030. It turns out the Mother has been dead for six years, and the point of Ted telling the story to his kids was actually to explain that he was in love with Robin. The show ends with him recreating the big romantic gesture he had made for Robin in the very first season.

To say this was a surprising ending is an understatement, given it seemed like a foregone conclusion that the show would simply end with the long-awaited meeting of Ted and the Mother, but it was one that also frustrated me to no end. It was revealed that the show’s creators, Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, had envisioned this ending since the show’s conception, going so far as to film the contribution of Ted’s kids to the ending around the time of season one so that it would not appear that the actors had aged. This demonstrates that Bays and Thomas were committed to having this ending, but disappointingly, they were not committed to it enough to actually lay down the groundwork for it to make sense within the narrative, following nine seasons’ worth of story and character development. Instead of producing a worthwhile twist to what most of the audience thought would be the endgame, they offered a finale full of unearned emotional whiplash.

This is especially a shame since HIMYM often engaged in unique, interesting, funny storytelling throughout its run that set it apart from other sitcoms. The show made excellent use of jumping between different time periods of Ted’s life and hinting at things to come in future episodes; there were running gags across seasons that were executed with finesse, and the show could have such broad humour yet frequently pack an emotional punch that hit perfectly almost every time. For HIMYM to stick the landing and have a legacy filled with goodwill, all they really had to do was have Ted meet the mother in an emotionally satisfying way. For a finale to be considered good, especially that of a sitcom, I do not think that it necessarily has to have unexpected twists.

Ted and Robin had been the show’s main will-they-won’t-they classic sitcom couple for much of the show’s run, even though it was made abundantly clear from the very first episode that Robin was not the Mother. But the final season of HIMYM centred on – and indeed was entirely set during – Robin’s wedding to Barney, and there was even an episode in this season that directly addressed Ted’s continued love for Robin and had him finally letting her go, like letting a balloon float away into the sky. It was a lovely way to end the whole saga, even though we’d seen them go through this before. But this is all the more reason why usurping all of this in the last hour of the final season and having Robin and Barney unexpectedly divorce and Ted apparently still harbouring love for Robin seem even more nonsensical – it came in direct contradiction to everything that had happened earlier within the same season.

Some may view Ted and Robin getting back together after over a decade apart as a realistic reflection of life and appreciate it for that, which is a perspective I can understand. However, when it comes to the actual narrative of the show, their return to each other after so many seasons of Ted and Robin being portrayed as not meant to be together simply does not follow. While Carter and Bays may have envisioned this ending from the start, the fact is that after the extent of their meandering story that often strayed from the show’s original premise and became more about the main characters’ growth, this ending just did not make sense for where the characters ended up. While the finale ending on Ted holding up the blue French horn to Robin’s window – in a recreation of the romantic gesture he did for her in the first season – could be seen as poetic, as Ted and Robin coming full circle, to me it simply exemplifies how the show ignored the sitcom’s narrative progression and the characters’ narrative arc, and brought the characters right back to where they started.

This ending could have still worked if the show had not constantly dangled the mystery of the Mother over the audience’s head for the entirety of the show, reinforcing the notion that meeting her would be the endgame. If she had been introduced sooner, and Ted carried on narrating the story as their relationship progressed, to her eventual death, and then we saw him getting back to a point where he could be with Robin again (and saw the decline of Robin and Barney’s marriage over multiple episodes, rather than shoe-horned in during the last hour of the show), it would have been much more palatable. But Ted meeting the Mother after nine years of the audience waiting, only to kill her off minutes later, and then immediately tell us that Ted is ready to be with Robin again is just an unwelcome shock. Frankly, if Carter and Bays wanted this ending so badly they should not have let HIMYM carry on for as many seasons as it did, adding ever more character development and relationships that would require even more work to make their planned ending justifiable. And while my main gripe with the HIMYM finale is the abandonment of Ted’s and Robin’s development throughout the seasons, I can’t say that I’m entirely satisfied with how the other main characters’ stories ended either.

I truly believe that it would have been relatively easy for HIMYM to end on a sweet, positive note with Ted finally meeting the Mother, even if it was predictable – but its predictability would have been precisely why it would have been satisfying, since that’s what the audience had eagerly been anticipating for nine years. Ultimately though, the finale of HIMYM is a story of how the show creators’ insistence on an ending that did not make sense nearly a decade down the line means that the show’s legacy will always be slightly tarnished, no matter how good its earlier seasons were. Or at least, it will always be tarnished to me.

Image credits: vagueonthehow via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Sexual violence in Oxford Sport: in conversation with Sofia Baldelli, President of Atalanta’s Society

Ariana Rubio
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Sexual violence in Oxford Sport: in conversation with Sofia Baldelli, President of Atalanta’s Society

CW: sexual violence and rape

Sarah Everard’s tragic passing in March of this year and the ensuing interest in the @everyonesinvited Instagram account, which shares anonymous testimonies of sexual harassment at secondary schools and universities, catalysed a chain reaction of discussions. From top government officials to family and friends, everyone was talking about women’s safety. Shortly after Everard’s death, Home Secretary Priti Patel stated that “every woman should feel safe to walk on our streets without fear of harassment or violence”, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson took to Twitter to express his “shock” and “sad[ness]” at the “horrifying crime”. In the context of these recent events, I was able to meet with Sofia Baldelli, third year medic and President of Atalanta’s society, to discuss issues of sexual harassment and assault in sport at Oxford.

Atalanta’s is a society that “promotes and supports” women in sport at Oxford. The club was initially founded in 1992, partly in reaction to Vincent’s Club which, at the time, accepted only male members. While Baldelli acknowledges that the social dimension of the society, which enables sportswomen to meet each other, is “commendable”, she emphasises that Atalanta’s “creates” a mutually supportive “community” that aspires to improve the general environment for women in sport at Oxford. For example, they provide financial aid for both teams and individual players, promote matches via social media, and carry out outreach work. In addition to raising funds for various charities, members join forces with Vincent’s Club to run an outreach sporting camp for school-age children annually. Baldelli stresses that Atalanta’s strives to become a “force for change”, and make “room to keep trying to push” Oxford sport, which was originally built for men, in the “right direction”.

Recently, for instance, Baldelli is “most proud” of their work on issues of sexual harassment. At Iffley Road Sport Centre, Atalanta’s spearheaded a scheme to put up posters in bathrooms that detail steps one can take after experiencing sexual harassment. The society is also working with the Sports Federation and “It Happens Here”, an anti-sexual violence campaign associated with the Student Union. One of Atalanta’s aims is to establish a specific reporting system whereby whole sports teams and even clubs can be held accountable when an incident of sexual harassment or any form of discrimination occurs. This is not, she is careful to say, a system in which everyone would be castigated for the actions of a few individuals. Rather, this shifts the emphasis from punitive retribution to collective accountability. Captains would have to provide evidence that they had acknowledged the incident and held a team wide discussion to identify what they need to do differently. “Peers holding each other accountable is really important”, Baldelli says, and an effective method of ensuring that there are consequences for inappropriate behaviour. As she emphasises, this is about “all women and gender non-conforming individuals in Oxford” who interact with sports players and deserve to feel and be safe. She notes that such a reporting system, as well as the posters at Iffley, seem like “common sense” necessities, and is proud that Atalanta’s is at the forefront of such grassroot efforts to change sport at Oxford for the better.

In a sense, however, any such change for the better is bittersweet because it was so desperately needed earlier. In a discussion with one of Atalanta’s trustees, Baldelli learnt that she (the trustee) had established a sexual violence charity in Oxford in the early 2000s, and that she could not believe that the situation had not improved almost twenty years on. While Baldelli is appreciative of the recent emphasis on women’s safety, this is tinged with a “slight resentment” because it is so long overdue. She also draws attention to the fact that this is a mainly female-driven enterprise, describing being in a meeting full of women to discuss these issues and wondering where the men are. That said, she points out that Vincent’s Club has recently come out with a no tolerance policy for sexual harassment, and that Atalanta’s male members, who are all involved in women’s sport in some way, are leading the way by implementing changes and leading discussions. Baldelli stresses that men should use their platforms in this context and that, equally, there should be space for the voices of historically marginalised socio-demographic groups to speak out.

Earlier this year, Atalanta’s compiled a small pool of testimonies of incidents of sexual harassment and assault that occurred within the context of sport at Oxford. In addition to a number of reports about groping, there were over ten reports of non-consensual sex. While unsure of the scope of circulation and uptake, the fact that such a large number of rapes happened in contexts tied to Oxford sports teams is, as Baldelli said, “harrowing”. Another common theme of the testimonies, which mainly occurred in nightclubs and other social settings, was the lack of response and sense of powerlessness in the face of injustice. Many did not know where they could report the experience to and, when they did, were “blatantly ignored”. In contrast to Boris Johnsons reaction to Everard’s murder, Baldelli maintains that this is “not shocking”, but rather, to be expected. The poor structural support for reporting incidents of sexual assault and even poorer response to those that are reported make such experiences common. This is not exclusive to the university reporting system: only 1.5% of reported rapes, which represent just a fraction of those which take place, result in legal action. This lack of accountability has reached endemic proportions, and the testimonies, for Baldelli, “really highlighted that things need to be done in the sport setting” at Oxford and in society at large.

On an individual front, Baldelli emphasises the power of discussion as a force for change. This can be as simple as reading the posters at Iffley, or talking about these issues with family and friends. “There is no individual without the collective”, Baldelli summarises, and the impact of even one person taking note and demanding accountability cannot be overstated. Again, this is not simply an issue of women’s safety, but applies to all forms of harassment and discrimination. As students, we all live in Oxford for a significant proportion of the year, and should all take responsibility for making it a safe place. Societies and sports clubs should enact this on a larger scale. On the 27th of March, Atalanta’s released a statement urging university sport captains and presidents to join them in standing “in solidarity with those who have been affected by acts of sexual violence” or “discrimination based on their gender, sexuality or race” and “bring about changes within their clubs so that everyone can feel safe and supported within Oxford sport”. Ideally, Baldelli explains that every club would release a similar letter acknowledging what has been done wrong, what has not been done, and what can be done to improve the situation. In addition to vocalisations of support, however, she emphasises the necessity of concrete action and a more general change in the ethos of sporting culture at Oxford. Baldelli believes that, at the present moment, there is “too much of a culture” where individuals feel pressured to “let [cases of sexual violence] slide”. With the cumulative efforts of Atalanta’s, other clubs and individuals, she hopes to engender a culture of increasing accountability.

While Baldelli stresses the positive effects of discussion, she is cognisant of the fact that this can sometimes feel like a burden. As well as personal experiences of sexual violence, the general ubiquity of distressing news on this topic can, in her words, be “exhausting”. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to this, or perhaps even a solution, but Baldelli suggests that one should “take comfort from friends”, from “the people around you” and from “the fact that you know that there are people out there” trying to change things. And Baldelli herself believes that “things are changing”, like the small but tangible example of posters in the Iffley bathrooms. Ultimately, one needs to find a “balance” between promoting discussion and one’s own welfare because, “when it comes down to it”, this movement is essentially about health and wellbeing.

In terms of Atalanta’s short-term goals, Baldelli explains that they aim to design and produce final posters with comprehensive flowcharts that outline the steps of a robust reporting system. At their general meeting at the end of this term, the society is introducing a welfare representative, which will hopefully allow Atalanta’s to support even more members and non-members in situations of sexual harassment and assault. In the long-term, and more abstractly, the society aims to create a space for these kinds of issues be talked about, particularly those to do with women and women’s sport. In terms of more general, structural changes, Baldelli would like to see a complete “overhaul” of the university’s sexual harassment reporting and welfare system.

While the prevalence of manifestations of rape culture in sport at Oxford are distressing beyond measure, it is heartening to see that societies like Atalanta’s and people like Baldelli and their other members are so committed to combating this. I follow Baldelli in maintaining “hope that things will change”, and in personally taking measures to contribute to making sport and life at Oxford safer and more supportive.

Image courtesy of Sofia Baldelli.

Return of the silver screens: Oxford indoor cinemas to reopen starting today

Yan Chen
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Return of the silver screens: Oxford indoor cinemas to reopen starting today

The vast majority of Oxford cinemas are planning to reopen today, Monday 17th May, after going dark for months since the last national lockdown began in December. These include the Oxford branches of film chains Odeon (George Street location), Curzon, and Cineworld, as well as Oxford’s only and oldest independent cinema Ultimate Picture Palace on Cowley Road. Phoenix Picturehouse, owned by Cineworld and located in Jericho, will reopen on 19th May.

Both Phoenix Picturehouse and the Ultimate Picture Palace are making up for their closure during the film awards season by unveiling a slate of award-winning and award-nominated films. These include Oscar-winning biographical drama Judas and the Black Messiah, about the betrayal of Black Panther Party activist Fred Hampton, and Sound of Metal, the story of a drummer coming to terms with losing his hearing. 

Additionally, Phoenix Picturehouse will serve up a mix of action, comedy, and vibrant solo melodrama, screening Godzilla vs. Kong, Peter Rabbit 2, and Pedro Almodóvar’s The Human Voice with a recorded director Q&A, starring Tilda Swinton and filmed during the pandemic. 

The Ultimate Picture Palace will also screen Chloé Zhao’s Best Picture Oscar winner Nomadland, starring Frances McDormand as a jobless, “houseless” woman wandering through the American landscape, and Lee Isaac Chung’s Golden Globe-winning Minari, the story of a Korean family trying to set down roots in rural Arkansas. To complement the two works, it has curated a series of classic films about pastoral America from David Lynch, Terrence Malick, and Bob Rafelson. Romances historical (Francis Lee’s Ammonite, starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan as a couple) and suspenseful (German director Christian Petzold’s latest, Undine) add an arthouse touch to the programming. 

Representatives from Odeon and Curzon pointed viewers to their websites for soon-to-be-available screening schedules. Anticipated screenings over the summer and autumn include blockbusters Fast and Furious 9, Black Widow, Top Gun: Maverick, and the latest Bond film, No Time to Die. 

Cinemas are offering new discount schemes in the wake of reopening. Odeon has reduced the price for myLIMITLESS, its unlimited viewing scheme, to £9.99 per month. Its free-to-sign-up membership scheme, myODEON, allows audiences to see films for as low as £6 on its “Member Mondays” and selected showings Tuesday through Sunday. A representative stated that Curzon will offer a discounted membership for patrons under 25 and concessionary tickets available for students on some films. 

Phoenix Picture House continues to offer a £14 annual student membership which includes two free tickets, discounted food and drink, and priority booking. The Ultimate Picture Palace’s new free-to-sign-up Five Pound Film Pass allows 15-to-25-year-olds entry to all its screenings (barring special events) for £5. It also continues to offer its £20 annual student membership scheme. 

In accordance with government guidance, cinemas will follow COVID-19 guidance, with masks required indoors except when eating and drinking, social distancing measures including limited seating, more rigorous cleaning, and staggered starting times for screenings. 

Image credit: Motacilla / CC-SA 4.0

Broad Street protesters demand a “People’s Vaccine”

Charlie Hancock
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Broad Street protesters demand a “People’s Vaccine”

Protesters on Broad Street have demanded that a “People’s vaccine” be made available to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. The demonstration was part of a “global day of action” organised by the People’s Vaccine Alliance, a “coalition of organisations and activists” who are calling for pharmaceutical companies to share information about how to produce COVID-19 vaccines with laboratories around the world. 

Students and campaigners gathered to raise awareness of the campaign, and call upon Oxford University to use its influence to encourage companies to share their technology.

Currently, intellectual property rights prohibit laboratories who are not affiliated with vaccine developers from producing their own supplies of the vaccine. This means countries cannot produce their own vaccine supplies, and either have to rely on global health initiatives such as COVAX. Meanwhile, richer countries have been able to stockpile supplies of the vaccine by purchasing over a billion more doses than needed for their population.

Placard laid on cobble stones reading “People’s vaccine not profit vaccine”

The People’s Vaccine Alliance are arguing that once these intellectual property rights have been waived, companies should share their knowledge and the biological materials needed for vaccine production through the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP). The scheme was set up by the World Health Organisation to “share COVID-19 health technology related knowledge, intellectual property and data” in order to ensure fair distribution of resources which could combat the pandemic.

Molly Clark, a student at Merton College who is also part of the Oxford Climate Justice Campaign, told Cherwell that the demonstration was particularly important given that they were held on the same day as AstraZeneca’s annual general meeting. She continued: “When they did the research for this vaccine, they had this vision that the vaccine could be used across the world, and not only by governments who could pay a high price. We want to make sure that AstraZeneca stays true to that vision, and doesn’t allow wealthy countries to hoard the vaccine while others suffer”.

Ms Clark also drew parallels between the lack of parity in global vaccine distribution, and the consequences of climate change. “We often see wealthy countries, particularly in the global north, consuming and consuming. Then it’s nations in the global south which are often suffering”, she added.

Students hold signs reading “Support 4 the People’s Vaccine”, “Suspend the patents”, “Share the technology”, and “Solidarity”.

Nicole Jashapara, a student reading English at Linacre college, also spoke to Cherwell. She said: “97% of the funding that went into making the AstraZeneca vaccine was either from public funds or charitable funds. And yet it’s now patented by a private company. We don’t believe that big pharmaceutical companies should have the right to control vaccine supply and demand. They should be publicly available”.

Jane Burt, an environmental consultant and educator from South Africa, was also present at the demonstration. She highlighted how the slow pace of vaccination in the country had hampered “There’s no way South Africa can keep lockdown. The economy just collapsed…when there was a lockdown people were starving. They’d lost their jobs. Starvation became more of a risk than COVID-19.

“I felt guilty getting the vaccine here. I just want people to know that [COVID-19] is destroying people’s lives, and children’s lives. I watched it in South Africa with the HIV pandemic, where a whole generation died. For ten years they fought for the patent to be dissolved. In that time, millions died.”

Campaigners hold signs asking Oxford reading “Global right to life”, “Oxford use your influence. People’s vaccine now”, and slogans in African languages.

In Cambridge, protesters blocked the entrance to the venue where AstraZeneca were holding their annual general meeting. Four arrests were made.

Nick Dearden, Director of Global Justice Now, told Cherwell: “It is simply shameful that Big Pharma companies like AstraZeneca refuse to openly share the vaccine knowledge and technology they control. It’s no wonder that people are angry and we applaud those who engaged in civil disobedience today to protest against this vaccine apartheid, in which our own government is also complicit. 

“That these young activists are willing to put themselves at risk like this should shake company executives, who seem more concerned with trying to add millions of pounds to their already whopping salaries today than waive their patents and ramp up production. 

“We will not be silent in the face of this injustice and today’s action is surely a sign of things to come unless Big Pharma immediately gives up its monopolies and the British government stops putting corporate profits ahead of the lives of millions around the globe.”

A spokesperson for Oxford University told Cherwell: “The vision for the Oxford vaccine has always been that the University wanted to make it available to the world.  That is why we were determined to do so on a not-for-profit basis for the world during the pandemic, and in perpetuity for low- and middle-income countries. 

“It is also why we have partnered with AstraZeneca, with their extensive world-wide development and manufacturing capabilities. This partnership has meant the vaccine is now approved and licenced for use in over 165 countries, and over 300 million doses have already been delivered from over 20 manufacturing sites across the world, including the Serum Institute of India.   

“The manufacturing of adeno-virus vector vaccines is complex and requires significant investment in infrastructure and expertise to ensure the safety and quality of the vaccine. That is why significant technology transfer continues to happen between AstraZeneca’s 20 global manufacturing sites and their supply chains.”

A spokesperson for AstraZeneca told Cherwell: “We agree with the view that the extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures. AstraZeneca has risen to the challenge of creating a not-for-profit vaccine that is widely available around the world, and we are proud that our vaccine accounts for 98% of all supplies to COVAX. We have established 20 supply lines spread across the globe and we have shared the IP and know-how with dozens of partners in order to make this a reality. In fact, our model is similar to what an open IP model could look like.”

Images: Charlie Hancock

The Ashmolean reopens with new exhibition: ‘Pre-Raphaelites: Drawings and Watercolours’

Matilda Gettins
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The Ashmolean reopens with new exhibition: ‘Pre-Raphaelites: Drawings and Watercolours’

The Ashmolean will reopen to the public today with a new temporary exhibition, ‘Pre-Raphaelites: Drawings and Watercolours’ opening tomorrow, the 18th of May.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of young artists founded in 1848 in London, but with strong Oxford ties. They were opposed to the Royal Academy of Art’s promotion of the ideal, which they saw exemplified in the work of Raphael. Instead, they sought inspiration in late medieval and early Renaissance art that came ‘before Raphael’, depicting scenes with maximal realism. Key figures include Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt. 

The Ashmolean’s exhibition will span across four rooms, depicting Pre-Raphaelite portraits, ‘stunners’, studies and landscapes. Most of the works are part of the Ashmolean’s own permanent collection, largely a result of donations from pre-Raphaelite patron Martha Combe. Planning for the exhibition started in October 2019 already, with the exhibition originally set to open in February 2021. However, with international loans prevented by safety and travel restrictions, being able to draw from own collections has greatly relieved the difficulties of setting up the exhibition. The exhibition’s curator is Professor Emerita of History of Art, Oxford Brookes University Christiana Payne.

Booking is required, with only a limited number of people allowed to enter at any time. Payne recommends booking soon, as much of the first week is already sold out. The exhibition will only be on for five weeks, ending on 20th June. Ticket options include the daytime ticket, which includes entry to the general museum and café as well, or the evening ticket, permitting entry only to Pre-Raphaelite exhibition from 4-8pm on Friday or Saturday evening. 

Booking and tickets are free for Oxford University and Oxford Brookes students, but students are asked to bring their student ID or Bodleian Card as proof of eligibility. Visitors are required to wear a mask, unless they are exempt for medical reasons. 

To help maintain social distancing, drawings and paintings have been hung further apart or beneath each other. There will be no audio guides or public guided tours due to the pandemic.

The exhibition is on the third floor but is accessible by lift. However, the Ashmolean has reduced the occupancy of its lifts, and hence asks those who can to use the stairs. More information on access is available on the Ashmolean website. 

Image: Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–82) The Day Dream, 1872–8
Pastel and black chalk on tinted paper, 104.8 × 76.8 cm
Image credit: Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.

What Makes A Great Writer: A Biblio-Biography

Wang Sum Luk
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What Makes A Great Writer: A Biblio-Biography

What makes a great writer?

Practice, of course, and undoubtedly that unique spark called talent or inspiration. But as every writer, great or otherwise, knows, the whole business of writing is built on reading. I have ambitions of being a published author, and every story I’ve ever written can be traced in some way back to the fiction I love. Consider, then, this article as a little trip into my mind—a list of the books that played the biggest role in helping me to become the writer I am now.

As I write this, the book that inspired me to be an author is sitting in a bookshelf just a few meters to my left. I wish it had been something weighty and literary by Flaubert or Faulkner, since that’d make for a more dramatic beginning—but the unromantic truth is that it all started with How A Book Is Made by Aliki Brandenberg. It’s a children’s book which explains the process of publishing through  illustrations of anthropomorphic cats and, well…that’s all. But once I read it I knew, in that uncomplicated way in which very small children are very certain of themselves, that I wanted to be an author, and that conviction has stayed with me for as long as I remember.

Fast-forward to my early teens, and I was still a bad writer. I wrote rambling pastiches of Riordan and Rowling, cribbing some metaphors from Ray Bradbury’s short stories if I was feeling particularly inventive. But then I had the bright idea of looking further afield in my school’s library, and I discovered Hemingway. His concise prose, which valued subtext over verbal flourishes, was exactly what I needed to trim my writing into something worth reading, and I learned the rigorous process of editing, cutting down on unnecessary words and passages. The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway still takes  pride of place on my bookshelf, and while I’ve moved away from the stark minimalism of his style, I owe him an unmistakable debt.

I was about fifteen when I moved from studying in Hong Kong to a boarding school in England. My parents did so in part to support my interest in English, and soon after I began my first term in this foreign land, I made my next discovery. An older student in the school’s creative writing society (over-generously) complimented a description in one of my poems by comparing it to T.S. Eliot, leading to me  stealing  a pocket-sized volume of Eliot’s Selected Poems from an English classroom and reading it until the pages literally fell out. What really captivated me, however, was Eliot’s philosophy of writing. His essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” argued that authors should draw on the writers before them, with new works critiquing and expanding on older ones, and in this I saw my lack of originality become a strength. During quarantine, I wrote a web novel that was a response to the tropes and themes which I disliked in YA literature, and I accompanied it with a blog post explaining the story’s nature as a critique of existing fiction. This post was titled “Tradition and the Lack of Individual Talent”—I may not be very original, I reasoned, but at least I can be honest about it.

Now, I may love slow-paced, ambiguous literature, but what I also crave are gripping plots and exhilarating drama, and Raymond Chandler does all of that, nowhere better than in The Big Sleep. Chandler codified the tropes of the private eye novel, with convoluted plots, unscrupulous detectives, and even more unscrupulous femme fatales, which later writers would imitate and never quite be able to match. I first read his novels in preparation for writing a mystery story, and The Big Sleep—despite having a plot so complicated that Chandler literally didn’t understand all the details—was exhilarating and clever, and is my benchmark for the entertainment value that my works aspire to. I suspect that my penchant for filling my stories with manipulative men and femme fatales owes something to Chandler’s work- that, and I just like scenes full of tense dialogue.

Speaking of dialogue (pun intended), this was something I struggled with for years. The stories I wrote during high school were novel-length exercises in awkward, grating conversations, and I knew that I would have to train myself to do better—especially since I am not blessed with the gift of the gab in real life, giving an extra thrill to the idea of showing off dazzling verbal wit in my stories. I began reading through the plays in my school’s library, examining how they conveyed layers of meaning in conversation, and editing my stories based on what I’d learned. Of all the plays I studied, David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, with its sharp, profanity-laden, infinitely quotable lines and rich subtext about the nature of masculinity within American capitalism, was the most transformative influence on my style, helping me craft the fast-paced exchanges that now fill my stories. Writing conversations remains something that is difficult and exhausting, but at least now, I can be proud of the results.

That said, I still have my share of weaknesses as a writer (and person), one of which being  the tendency to take myself a little too seriously. My earlier works sagged under the weight of their ‘Important Social Themes’, trying so hard to be great literature that they forgot to be good entertainment. But when I feel at risk of having my head disappear up my own backside, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels are there to keep me from vanishing in a puff of ego. Pratchett’s ability to blend truly hilarious scenes with heartbreaking and thought-provoking ones, from exploring revolutionary politics in Night Watch to faith versus dogmatism in Small Gods, act as a reminder that wisdom and self-seriousness rarely go together, and that to convince someone of a point, the best way isn’t to preach or harangue, but to find common ground—and what’s more universal than a good joke? And with one of my more successful stories so far being one I wrote half-seriously, beginning it as a way to stay entertained over quarantine and then adding more depth and richness as I went along, I think that reminder has helped.

That brings me to the present, and the last book on my list, Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. It may surprise you that I’m not including it because Smith’s writing style influenced mine,although the way she navigates social commentary, humour, and deep empathy for all her characters is something I do hope to learn from. I’m writing about it because of the hope that it represents. Smith finished this novel while studying at Cambridge, and published it soon after to incredible acclaim… and even though I can aspire to a career like hers, I’m also aware that Smith’s commercial success is the exception and not the rule, that all this work and more may never land me a book deal, that my dream career may stay a dream.Should I, as the UK government so controversially suggested last year, look for my next job in ‘cyber’? Or bear down a path that could end in failure? In a few months I’ll have to decide between getting a summer job and/or devoting my time to working on the novel that I hope to finish by the time I graduate. I think that story (a more cerebral—and semi-autobiographical—twist on a YA romance) will be successful, but I’ve been wrong before. Whichever choices I make, this story will have to continue some way or another, its ending impossible to know.

Image Credit: Jonathan Kim (CC BY-NC 2.0), via Flickr.

Manchester, football and the Glazers: the background to the Manchester United fan protests

Ciara Garcha
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Manchester, football and the Glazers: the background to the Manchester United fan protests

Old Trafford, the Theatre of Dreams, has seen many iconic moments of footballing history. And yet, fans flooding onto the perfectly manicured pitch in protest against the clubs owners, the Glazer family, and the now defunct English Super League shocked many in the footballing world.

Hours before the largest fixture in English, and arguably European football, Manchester United vs Liverpool, fans congregated outside Manchester United’s home stadium. Spurred on by the fallout from the European Super League, United fans met to protest the ownership and governance of the club by the Glazer family, whose takeover 16 years ago was highly controversial at the time and has remained so ever since. Fans arrived wearing green and gold, the colours of United’s ancestral club, Newton Heath, and carried banners expressing their desire to see the introduction of the 50+1 model of governance in place in Germany, which sees fans hold a majority of shares and votes. Protests quickly progressed, however, from a largely peaceful demonstration outside Old Trafford and the team’s Salford hotel, the Lowry, to a storming of the stadium and, at times, violent confrontations with the police. Sunday’s fixture was eventually cancelled, and rearranged for 13th May.

The Glazer family took over Manchester United in June 2005, but in doing so unloaded over half a billion pounds of debt on the club. Over the next sixteen years, the Glazers drained over £1 billion from the club and have garnered criticism from fans for failing to invest their earnings back into United. Manchester United Public Limited Company (PLC), formerly fittingly registered at Manchester’s Sir Matt Busby Way, but now registered in the notorious tax haven, the Cayman Islands, pays the six children of the late former owner, American businessman Malcolm Glazer, a yearly dividend, amounting to nearly £100 million since it was introduced in 2015. Even during the Covid-19 pandemic, as revenues declined and the club made a loss of over £20 million, this dividend continued to be paid. Their business model at the takeover in 2005 also included disbanding the now-revived Manchester United Women’s Team, claiming it lacked profitability.

This financial model, of extracting revenue from the club, as opposed to investing and reinvesting, has drawn fans’ ire over the years. Speaking as Sunday’s fixture looked to be falling apart, former Liverpool player and Sky Sports pundit Graeme Souness claimed that fans’ discontent was linked to the trophy drought of the post-Ferguson era and that the Glazers had become a “focus of their anger”, which was “slightly misdirected”. However, Souness is mistaken in that fans have been voicing their dissatisfaction with the ownership since the takeover and for the 16 years since. FC Manchester United was formed soon after the “Malcolm Glazer’s hostile takeover” of the club in 2005. It describes itself as a “not-for-profit community football club…owned and democratically run” and as “committed to delivering affordable football to as many people as possible”.

Attempts to express frustration within the club have been embodied by green and gold scarves, which have become synonymous with anger towards the owners. These scarves have been visible at Old Trafford since shortly after 2005, as part of a campaign coordinated by the Manchester United Supporters Trust, which represents and organises fans. Most notably, David Beckham donned a green and gold scarf, when returning to Old Trafford as an AC Milan player. In an image that has now become somewhat iconic, Beckham tapped into fan’s anger to make a powerful visual statement against the Glazers. The slogan ‘Love United, Hate Glazers’, along with the colours green and gold, have become symbolic in the footballing world: they are emblematic of a desire to return to the original principles and values that football was founded upon.

The dramatic protests ahead of the Liverpool fixture were merely the culmination of several years of deep-rooted dissatisfaction with the United ownership and governance of the club. Contrary to what Souness claims, staunch opposition to the Glazers has been constant since the trophy-laden era of Sir Alex Ferguson’s management, which concluded in 2013, through to the bumbling difficulties of the succeeding managers. Discontent with the Glazers and anger towards the governance of the club is not a new phenomenon.

In tandem with financial mismanagement and the proposals for the now failed European Super League, there has been enduring criticism that the Glazers and the ownership of the club have not engaged with fans. In a letter to fans in the aftermath of the fall of the ESL, Joel Glazer told fans that events had highlighted “the great passion which football generates, and the deep loyalty our fans have for this great club”. The issue for the past sixteen years, however, has been that the Glazers have treated fans and their “passion” flippantly and failed to meaningfully engage with them. Glazer promised that, in spite of the “raw” wounds, he was “personally committed to rebuilding trust with our fans”.

These words were clearly interpreted as empty and insincere, though, as several protests, including a storming of the United Carrington training ground complex and Sunday’s dramatic events, have continued to spotlight fan anger and discontent. Following the protests outside and inside of Old Trafford, Joel Glazer issued a second open letter attempting to engage with the Manchester United Trust (MUST) and their demands for a restructuring of the club. Glazer acknowledged “the need for change, with deeper consultation” with fans and claimed to “recognise the importance of fan and football interests being embedded in key decision-making processes at every level of the club”.

But, based in sunny Florida, the Glazers and their world could not be further removed from the realities of the situation in Manchester. Unlike many more ‘modern’ club owners, the Glazers are very rarely seen at Old Trafford supporting the team and, as such, are interpreted as alien to Manchester, Mancunians and Manchester United fans. We must remember that football and football clubs are often more than mere sporting teams, but are widely perceived as cultural and community institutions, having huge importance to the local area and region. Manchester United’s success has transformed a somewhat rainy post-industrial northern city into a global tourist attraction, a world-renowned hub of football and competitive sport. Within and outside of Manchester itself, football is one of the things most associated with the city. This is a legacy that many Mancs are incredibly proud of, but one that the Glazers have undeniably ignored and failed to engage with in the sixteen years since they took over one of Manchester’s most important institutions.

But we should also remember that Manchester United fans’ protests and demands go beyond Glazer, the controversial now-outgoing Executive Chairman, Ed Woodward, and the ownership of the club. They are aimed at fundamental change in the very fabric of modern football and the manner in which football clubs operate at every level. The 50+1 demands do not simply entail the Glazers cooperating with fans, but them transferring the majority of decision-making power to supporters, empowering the people whose love of the game drives the football world. This would represent immense change in English football, far beyond just Manchester United, and would go some way to reversing the relentless commercialisation and gentrification of the game that has taken place over recent years. Embedding fans in every level of the game and in every level of clubs would significantly reshape the power dynamics of English football. Recently, for example, Chelsea FC have moved to do so in the past few weeks with the announcement that there will be a supporter presence at every board meeting. 50+1 would re-empower fans to an extent not seen since the inception of organised football in the second half of the 19th century. This would reinvigorate football clubs and their importance as centres of community and culture.

The protests at Old Trafford, which halted the footballing world’s biggest and most historic fixture, are a sign that beyond just Manchester, English football needs to re-evaluate itself. Discontent with the Glazers is nothing new, but the perception that things are at breaking point and cannot continue in this manner any longer has grown over the past few years and months. Whether the Glazers will finally yield to fan opinion and engage with Manchester and the club’s significance remains to be seen, but what is certain is that Manchester United, and indeed English football, are at a cross-roads. With fans demanding radical, fundamental change, the storming of Old Trafford is a sign that fans cannot and will not be ignored; the club’s ownership can no longer look away.

Image credit: Little Savage / CC BY-SA 4.0

 

Preview: Varsity Channel Relay 2021

Matthew Cogan
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Preview: Varsity Channel Relay 2021

This summer will see the return of the Varsity Channel Relay race for the first time in 5 years. After a postponement last year owing to Coronavirus, and a failure in 2018 for Cambridge to field a team, one of the most gruelling varsity competitions is hoping to be back with a bang. This year is even more important as, in memory of Nick Thomas, who co-founded the relay and was an endless source of support to OUSC (Oxford University Swimming Club), the relay team will be raising money for Cancer Research UK, a charity close to OUSC’s and Nick’s family’s hearts. 50% of all funds raised will go to Cancer Research UK. Should you wish to donate, visit the fundraiser’s JustGiving page.

This is the team’s 12th time taking on Cambridge, after the race was postponed last year. Oxford are the current reigning champions after a victory by half an hour in 2016, and currently lead the head to head 6-3, with two draws between the two teams (two minutes are allowed between the two sides in order for the race to be declared a draw). The Oxford team is made up of 6 swimmers, 3 men and 3 women, who will race their Cambridge counterparts across the Channel from Dover to Calais. This is an approximate distance of 22 miles and will take the teams between 8 and 12 hours to complete. Tides need to be taken into account and most swimmers tackle a sort of S-shaped course. The principle is quite simple: each team will swim in a relay with only one swimmer in the water at any one time. The swimmers will be following a piloted boat for the whole route and those who are not in the water will be cheering avidly from deck. Each swimmer will swim for an hour and then they will rotate around the team, with the first team to reach France crowned the winners.

The Cross Channel Relay Competition was founded in 1998 by Nick Thomas and Martin Davies and has been running biannually ever since. The Varsity Channel Relay Race between Oxford and Cambridge Universities in 1998 was a roaring success and has become a mainstay in the varsity calendar. This event is the only university swimming race across the Channel and has generated publicity worldwide. The race has been featured in countless publications from The Times all the way to Australian national radio. It has also received extensive features in both Universities’ student media and in the Swimming Times, a national swimming publication.

If dealing with the unpredictable weather and the huge distance being swum was not already difficult enough, wetsuits are not allowed, so the only protection from the waves (not to mention the jellyfish) will be a swimming costume, a cap, a pair of goggles. As I am sure many people will have jumped into the Channel or the North Sea before, you will know how cold it can be and this will be no different. The team have been preparing by swimming in Queenford Lake and Port Meadow as they try and acclimatise for the temperatures of 15 degrees that they will experience during the swim; with a normal ‘cold’ swimming pool being around 27 degrees, it really will be a tough challenge for those taking part.

The Oxford 2018 team swam the Channel and despite not having a Cambridge team to race against, they were the 4th fastest Channel relay crossing out of 120 that year. Cherwell spoke to some of the swimmers from that 2018 Oxford team to ask about what the biggest challenges are for those who are undertaking such a huge task. Victoria Lackey said of her race in 2018: “I thought the hardest part was swimming in the dark. It’s difficult to prepare for that element.” Meanwhile, Lauren Burton told Cherwell: “for me, the most difficult part was psyching myself to jump off the boat for the first time into the utter unknown (not helped by the dark!). I also didn’t like the uncertainty of the swim and not knowing when we would get the all clear for the swim to go ahead.”

On behalf of everyone at Cherwell, we wish the team all the best in their final preparations before the race in June and hope that they will be able to beat the old foe in such a difficult and gruelling event.

To help the team in their race and support Cancer Research UK, in memory of Nick Thomas, donate to the JustGiving Page at:

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/oxfordchannelrelay?utm_term=RyZgdx73Q&fbclid=IwAR02mgBXTZ1SDzoQFA7E-zvE_6VNm8tP8ahzl5yPPMIcb9CwBr2QdFEO5GQ

Image courtesy of @oxforduni_openwater on Instagram.

Album Review: “Great Spans of Muddy Time”//William Doyle

Frank Milligan
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Album Review: “Great Spans of Muddy Time”//William Doyle

It’s been six years since the Bournemouth-based musician William Doyle abandoned the East India Youth moniker and took to releasing music under his own name. Along with this change of name came something of a stylistic regeneration. First, he moved away from the synth-pop flavours of his earlier work and indulged purely in his love for ambient music in a series of minor projects, before releasing his first full-length album as William Doyle in 2019, Your Wilderness Revisited. Here, he placed himself firmly in the lineage of British art-rock, inspired by the likes of David Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy and the early records of Brian Eno (who even featured on the song ‘Design Guide’). 

Now he’s returned with an album that shows yet further artistic development. It’s a playfully loose approach to genre that feels worlds away from the strict cohesiveness of prior works. The album’s title, Great Spans of Muddy Time, is taken from another, stranger influence on the album – that of Monty Don, the lead presenter of BBC’s ‘Gardeners’ World’. Don used this phrase to describe his experiences with depression, something that resonated deeply with Doyle as he worked on the record.

It’s easy to see why Doyle would be taken with Don. Your Wilderness Revisited was a Proustian ode to the blissful greenery of suburban Britain, about as horticulturally focused as music gets this side of Mort Garson’s Plantasia. References to the British landscape still abound in his new album, whether it’s a yearning for the memory of a trip to the Pennines in opener ‘I Need to Keep You in My Life’, a song that swells from childlike, arpeggiated synths into cosmic grandeur, or his framing of ‘St. Giles’ Hill’ as a place of sanctuary. But whilst it’s impossible to separate the lush, organic textures of Doyle’s soundscapes from the verdancy of England’s pleasant pastures, it’s Don’s description of a sustained emotional state that most informs Great Spans of Muddy Time. This is reflected in Doyle’s introspective lyrics, often expressing his own struggles with depression.

Your Wilderness Revisited was the work of a perfectionist, as structurally and sonically tight as possible. Great Spans of Muddy Time finds Doyle in new realms of abstraction, with a record that can feel formless, sometimes almost messy. After the sumptuous crescendo of ‘I Need To Keep You In My Life’ and the jaunty, ironic melancholy of lead single ‘And Everything Changed (But I Feel Alright)’, neither of which would have felt especially out of place on his last LP, we come to the album’s first instrumental, ‘Somewhere Totally Else’. We’re quickly struck not just by its hauntological ambience – Boards of Canada’s Music Has the Right to Children isn’t what I usually think when I think William Doyle – but even more so by the subtle glitches and warped vocal samples that threaten to throw that ambience into disarray.

That disarray is realized on the subsequent track ‘Shadowtackling’, a flurry of industrial electronics that’s more Einsturzende than Eno. Jarring stylistic shifts and blends like this permeate the album in a way that the listener never fully gets used to – the shimmering synths of ‘Rainfalls’ just before the squelching drums of ‘New Uncertainties’, or late-album highlight ‘Semi-bionic’, and its mix of harsh, metallic textures with Doyle’s typically pastoral vocal melodies. The music here is raw, occasionally even oppressively so – a far cry from the pristine beauty of Your Wilderness Revisited – but it never ceases to be compelling. 

The comparative looseness in structure and sound on Great Spans of Muddy Time is, in part, due to a hard-drive crash that left many of the songs Doyle had laboured over for the past couple of years lost. He explained that this provoked him to reassess the way he worked on his music: ‘Instead of feeling a loss that I could no longer craft these pieces into flawless “Works of Art”, I felt intensely liberated that they had been set free from my ceaseless tinkering’. It’s this sense of liberation, both artistic and emotional, that comes to define the album. The penultimate track ‘Theme From Muddy Time’ is, lyrically, perhaps the most explicit exploration of the depression that made Monty Don’s words feel so appropriate to the musician, as he pleads to himself to ‘show some love for myself’. As if to answer that plea, the song concludes by erupting into a total euphoria of analogue synthesis, a musical catharsis so strong it seems to make sense of the 11 tracks that precede it. 

The final track ‘[a sea of thoughts behind it]’ serves as a denouement to the record. Perhaps the most purely beautiful of the instrumentals on the album, it’s a perfect, meditative final track that seems to provide both Doyle and the listener with some sense of emotional closure. Great Spans of Muddy Time can be a surprising, even perplexing listen at first. But by the end, it feels impossible to disagree with Doyle’s assertion that, with this newfound freedom in his approach to music-making, ‘for the first time in my career, the distance between what I hear and what the listener hears is paper-thin’.  

Image Credit: Paul Hudson via Wikimedia Commons/ License: CC BY 2.0

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