Monday 9th June 2025
Blog Page 335

Review: Lana Del Rey’s Chemtrails Over The Country Club

J Daniels
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Review: Lana Del Rey’s Chemtrails Over The Country Club

Lana Del Rey’s seventh album, Chemtrails Over The Country Club, suggests a new sense of assuredness in the singer and builds on some of her favourite themes – nostalgia, exhaustion with fame, delicate femininity and, of course, America.

Chemtrails leans even more deeply into the 70s feel of her previous album, Norman F*cking Rockwell! but is distinctly more folk in feel and production than any of her previous work. The tracks are filled with trailing high notes and soft synth beats, both of which often seem to simply dissolve into the song. The bridge of track eight, ‘Yosemite’, evokes an even more bygone era, mentioning a 40s film and ‘television static’ – which is mirrored by Del Rey’s voice suddenly sounding echoey and slightly crackly, as though being recorded on old equipment.

Almost as if mocking the controversy she faced after her infamous ‘Question for the culture’ Instagram post where she complained of being ‘slated’ for being her ‘authentic, delicate’ self, Lana Del Rey opens her latest album testing the limits of her feathery soprano in ‘White Dress’, reminiscing about a time before fame when she was just ‘a waitress wearing a tight dress’. This nostalgia is linked to her dissatisfaction with fame, especially in the sixth track, ‘Dark But Just A Game’, which has a particular focus on the latter: Del Rey sings ‘I was a pretty little thing and God, I loved to sing/But nothing came from either one but pain’. Track ten, ‘Dance Til We Die’, offers a sort of solidarity between women in music who have experienced the same fame rollercoaster as Del Rey herself. The track contains some not-so-original lines, such as describing herself as ‘burdened by the weight of fame’, but opens with references to some of her female inspirations, including two folk singers who were particularly influential to this album. The final track on Chemtrails is actually a cover of Joni Mitchell’s song ‘For Free’ – a sort of lament on a career-orientation consuming perhaps purer artistic motives in creating music. Lana Del Rey has evidently not ceased her soul-searching and may still be contemplating her retirement from the music industry.

“she walks this peculiar line of being both stronger and more self-assured but within that, being more unapologetically delicate and sentimental.”

But Chemtrails presents a Lana Del Rey more sure of herself as an artist and a public persona than in previous albums. She revisits an image used in previous albums, but describes herself now as not being a wavering ‘candle in the wind’; throughout the album, she walks this peculiar line of being both stronger and more self-assured but within that, being more unapologetically delicate and sentimental. In a duet co-written and performed with Nikki Lane, lyrics reference Tammy Wynette who is best known for her hit song ‘Stand By Your Man’. This song lauds the same kind of dated woman-as-refuge-of-man supporting character role that Lana Del Rey has been accused of celebrating, and which she seems to have evoked some of the spirit of in ‘Let Me Love You Like A Woman’ where Del Rey sings ‘Let me love you like a woman/let me hold you like a baby’.

A love of her country is usually present in her albums, and Chemtrails is no exception. The geography of her music once again reflects her own moves (after early songs like ‘Brooklyn Baby’ coming from her New York days and Norman F*cking Rockwell! focusing heavily on California after she moved to Los Angeles). Lana Del Rey has been spending time in the Midwest, and this also helped to prompt her shift towards country and folk sounds in this album. She sings with her typical, almost saccharine relish for Americana of ‘suburbia, the ‘Louisiana two-step’, ‘getting high in the parking lot’ and, of course, the ‘white picket chemtrails over the country club’.

Fans of Lana Del Rey will have nothing to complain about (except perhaps it being a few songs shorter than her other recent albums), and those who have yet to come around to her music might find this slightly different sound more to their tastes. I personally have always been a far more casual than committed Lana Del Rey fan, but if any album could, Chemtrails Over The Country Club might be the one to change that.

Image credit: Beatriz Alvani via Flickr & Creative Commons/License: CC BY 2.0

Review: Ben Howard’s Collections From The Whiteout

J Daniels
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Review: Ben Howard’s Collections From The Whiteout

Ben Howard’s fourth album, Collections From The Whiteout, marks, not quite a new direction, but a new adventure for the folk singer. Many of the songs were co-written by its producer, Aaron Dessner, who has recently garnered more acclaim through collaborations with Taylor Swift on her albums folklore (winner of the Grammy Album of the Year Award) and evermore. I confess to enjoying 2011’s indie-folk album Every Kingdom more, but while I was previously unfamiliar with ‘folktronica’, Howard has introduced electronic elements to his folk music more successfully than I would have thought possible before hearing Collections From The Whiteout. Howard’s trademark poetic lyrics are combined by turns with pure acoustics, discordant electronic experiments and meandering arpeggios, and, surprisingly, it works.

“Howard has somehow transformed the usually significant divide between the ominous and the amusing into a fine line.”

Collections takes a great deal of inspiration from real-life events and people, frequently recounting dark tales, but also incorporates a sort of irreverent whimsy which Howard would surely be pleased to hear comes across distinctly as he has previously expressed his fear of taking himself and his music too seriously. This is particularly evident in ‘Finders Keepers’, a song inspired by a friend of his father’s anecdote about finding a body floating in a suitcase. Howard transforms this into a darkly humorous exploration of the adages ‘be careful what you wish for’ and ‘curiosity killed the cat’. With the melancholy but also irreverent lyric ‘Why am I stood here up to my knees?/Isn’t there a birthday, a place I should be?’ and the rest of Collections, Howard has somehow transformed the usually significant divide between the ominous and the amusing into a fine line. Howard’s sombre words: ‘I picture you suffocating/In last tulip polytunnel’ from the tenth track, ‘Unfurling’, are another example of this striking technique.

On paper, Dessner and Howard might seem almost too well matched, but nevertheless they have jointly produced a record that is distinctly experimental from both collaborators in much of its sound. Unfortunately, this isn’t wholly successful – I find the scratchy, grating loop in ‘Sage That She Was Burning’ too distracting and unrelated to the song. It is altogether superfluous as becomes clear when the song temporarily abandons it halfway through in favour of a melodic guitar with a dreamy quality that better reflects the lyrics. Interestingly, the two elements do marry up much more harmoniously in the final segment of the song, but this does not fully absolve the jarring opening. However, the pairing’s successes far outweigh their foibles in the album. My personal favourite is the penultimate track on Collections, ‘The Strange Last Flight of Richard Russell’. For those unfamiliar with the tale of Richard Russell, he is ill-famed for shocking his friends, family, and much of the world in 2018 when he stole a commercial plane and managed to fly it surprisingly proficiently for a time before deliberately crashing the aircraft and ending his life. Howard’s song appears to be from the perspective of Russell’s widow, and combines soft percussion and electronic echoes to create a calm but almost otherworldly sound, as if it came from a different plane (if you will forgive the unfortunate pun). The words are beautifully mournful and offer a resigned, if tongue-in-cheek, philosophy in the form of my favourite lyric from the album: ‘Some threads/Don’t fit the loom’.

While the sonic experiments are not, in my opinion, always pleasing, the album as a whole is a triumph. Howard’s lyric is as powerful as ever and he demonstrates adroitness in retelling stories taken from news and infusing them with both the personal and the universal, giving listeners both an insight into the artist himself and a chance to learn more about themselves through their own interpretations of the music. His song inspired by the exposing of fake socialite Anna Sorokin, ‘Sorry Kid’, offers both a warning and almost an exoneration with the lines ‘To be a magpie in the safe/Sure must be a tempting place’. Collections From The Whiteout is an exploratory but not overly dramatic departure from his earlier work, and its closing track ‘Buzzard’ in particular will be familiar to fans of his other albums – its atypical brevity notwithstanding.

Image credit: Abigail Hoekstra via Wikimedia Commons: CC BY-SA 3.0

Oxford University state school admission intake reaches record high of 68.6%

Sasha Mills
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Oxford University state school admission intake reaches record high of 68.6%

The University of Oxford has released its annual admissions report, collating data from 2016 to 2020, with the proportion of state school students reaching a record high of 68.6% at the University. In her foreword to the report, Vice-Chancellor Louise Richardson highlights that the data suggests that the student body is becoming more diverse, with the proportion of BME students increasing by 7.78% in the last five years, and the number of students from the most deprived areas increasing by 7.7%.


The data broadly suggests an increase in the number of state school students being admitted to the University, with an increase from 58.0% to 68.6% in the proportion of state school students admitted between 2016 and 2020. These figures vary across college and course, with colleges such as Christ Church admitting only 54% state school students between 2018 and 2020, and other colleges such as New College and Lincoln College having similarly low state school representation. Approximately 93% of the UK population is state school educated.

Figures also vary across subjects. Classics is the only subject which has admitted more private school students than state school students from 2018 to 2020, with only 35.6% of students admitted coming from state schools, and Mathematics has admitted the most state school students, with 78.4% of the course made up of those from state school backgrounds. 

The report also offers figures for BME representation on courses and colleges across the University, with a breakdown into different ethnic groups including UK students with Black African or Caribbean heritage, Asian students, and mixed heritage students. Representation across all groups included in this section of the report has increased between 2018 to 2020, although the proportion of BME students at the University remains lower than the national average of 26.9%.

Professor Louise Richardson, Vice Chancellor at the University of Oxford, said: “While the pandemic has, in many ways, changed the way we operate, it has not weakened our commitment to diversifying the make-up of our student body. The progress evidenced in this, our fourth annual Admissions Report, is a testament to the dedication of our Admissions Teams, the support of school teachers and, of course, the many talents of able and ambitious young people.”

“Notwithstanding all the adjustments and adaptations required by the pandemic we remain committed to ensuring that every talented, academically driven pupil in the country, wherever they come from, sees Oxford as a place for them.”

Dr Samina Khan, Director of Undergraduate Admissions and Outreach at Oxford University, said: “The pandemic will continue to hit the least advantaged students for a while, hence we remain resolute in stamping out inequality in access to Oxford. Working together with schools across the country, we are increasing our focus on reaching regional ‘cold-spots’ where the most talented young people are still under-represented at Oxford – driving down the risk that we are missing out on some of the UK’s brightest students.”

Image Credit: Jill Cushen

Review: Catullus: Shibari Carmina by Isobel Williams

Grace Bartlett
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Review: Catullus: Shibari Carmina by Isobel Williams

The poetry of the late Roman Republic does not immediately move the mind to think of shibari – a Japanese rope bondage art – and yet Isobel Williams manages to blend the two in a singular fashion with her vibrant new translation of Catullus.

The first thing you notice about reading Catullus’s poetry is that he tends to surprise you. His poems range from the curiously endearing ‘da mi basia mille’ to the notoriety of poem 16, which was sufficiently scandalous as to be frequently censored in translation until the late twentieth century. He’s a poet of immense range and versatility, a man in love, a man scorned, and a man constantly at sea in the uncertainties of Roman public life. It’s hard not to like him, and it’s even harder to translate him properly.

Williams’ translation alone is fascinating, ranging from desperate sadness with the Catullus who ‘can’t go on but does/Can’t be borne, but must be’, to the outright pettiness of Poem 42. The solemnity with which she has rendered Catullus 101 is particularly touching. Often Williams strays daringly far away from the original Latin and yet almost always strikes the perfect balance. Her art is simple, bold and evocative, and serves to draw out the frank sexuality of many of Catullus’ poems.  

On the one hand, shibari allows for an excellent demonstration of some of Catullus’ main talking points – he’s a man, and a talented one at that, but he’s hopelessly in love with a high-status married woman (who might just like her brother better anyway…) and trying to prove himself in a world that doesn’t always take him seriously (note poem 16 again to see what he thought of that). It’s a world of shifting power balances, perpetual give and take, which is perhaps why Williams selected shibari as a ‘context’ for exploring the same power dynamic shifts and subversion of traditional social norms. However, while Catullus might be a highly skilled poet with points of reference that people can empathise with across the world, he’s still a Roman. It feels a bit odd that an art form sometimes accused of misappropriation and exoticisation is being utilised to furnish Catullus’ words, especially in this context and when personal connections vary.

Her translations offer an excellent introduction to the Latin poets of the real world, although some of her more modern influences may need further examination.

Think Pink

Marnie Ashbridge
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Think Pink

I could sit here and leave you in awe with cancer statistics and scare you half out of your mind with story upon story that would break your heart. Instead, I want to share with you stories about the incredible people I have met while working with Oxford Pink Week, who have taught me that the conversations that we shy away from are the ones most worth having. 

Oxford Pink Week aims to raise awareness for breast cancer, and this year we are raising money for five incredible causes: Breast Cancer Now, Coppafeel, Walk the Walk, Sakoon Through Cancer and The Leanne Pero Foundation. This project came about in 2007 as a result of Guardian journalist Dina Rabinovitch’s mission to raise money for cancer research without the need to run a marathon. Her philosophy asks fundraisers to think outside the box when raising money for a cause — and now, more than ever before, adaptation and change have been necessary. Ordinarily, each year we arrange a Pink Ball sometime in February, which is where most of our proceeds come from. However, this year we made the tricky decision to move Pink Week to the middle of May and embrace it as a few weeks of awareness rather than one single night.

Cancer is associated with great sadness, which can put a lot of people off from speaking about it. Nevertheless, organisations such as Coppafeel and Walk the Walk find light in something that is so often shrouded in darkness. With their quirky memes and colourful marketing strategy, Coppafeel are not saying that cancer is something to joke about. Instead, they know that this is the best way to get information out there to save people’s lives — which definitely is something to smile about. Recently, I had the opportunity to interview founder of Walk the Walk Nina Barough for the Pink Week podcast. Built on Nina’s dream to walk the London Marathon in a pink bra for breast cancer, Walk the Walk’s ‘moonwalks’ are now hosted across the world each year and have raised a whopping £131 million in total. We spoke about her organisation’s advocacy for a holistic approach to cancer, epitomised in their encouragement of individuals to get out walking and to live a healthy lifestyle. Her organisation has been involved in a recent social media campaign #onecancervoice, which is the collaboration of 46 cancer charities demanding the government to put cancer patients at the centre of pandemic recovery plans. According to an analysis by the Epic Health Research Network, screenings for breast cancer have dropped by 94% from January to April this year. In an article in The Lancet they stated that the “substantial increases in the number of avoidable cancer deaths in England are to be expected as a result of diagnostic delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK.”

This is why I am writing today: to tell people that now more than ever it is essential that you check yourselves and tell your friends and family members too — and I’m not just talking to women here. Breast cancer is something that affects people of all genders and backgrounds. In another episode of the Pink Week podcast, I spoke with Giles Cooper, one of the 370-400 men in the UK each year to be diagnosed with breast cancer. Whilst this figure is significantly lower than in women, the percentage of those diagnosed who pass away is 20%, whereas in women it is 2.6%. When trying to raise awareness, Giles felt a strong backlash, and knows first-hand how challenging it is to face breast cancer as a man without the support of other men. Thankfully, progress is being made and he described to me the sensation of walking into a room for a men with breast cancer support group and no longer feeling alone.

The two trustees of Sakoon Through Cancer, Iyna Butt and Samina Hussain, further attest to the importance of community in cancer networks, having created their organisation to aid other South Asian women like themselves who are affected by the taboo of cancer. Samina met Iyna in a waiting room and was struck by the sight of a young mother going through cancer all alone, so she wrote down her number, telling her to call if she ever needed advice or a chat. As a person who understood her struggle, Samima’s support network helped Iyna through her journey.

The imagery associated with breast cancer often suggests that it affects only white cis women, but many of the charities being supported by Oxford Pink Week aim to dismantle this deadly misconception. Leanne Pero’s Foundation aims to empower BME people going through breast cancer in their ‘Black Women Rising’ campaign, which provides support groups and spreads information through their podcast and magazine. Leanne Pero, who set up this organisation, realised that the NHS lacked cancer support packages for BME cancer patients and felt that her community was being excluded from the UK’s mainstream media outlets and cancer charity campaigns. Misdiagnosis and a lack of mental health support have left many in the BME community to feel excluded and unhelpful myths and taboos surrounding cancer for some individuals in the BME community may have prevented them from speaking out about their ordeals. This has led to many members of the BME community lacking awareness about breast cancer, resulting in late-stage diagnoses and higher mortality rates than in their white counterparts. Connecting with one another and sharing experiences is an essential part of Leanne Pero’s objective. 

Our key mission at Oxford Pink Week is to get people talking about breast cancer. It is often that when something makes us feel uncomfortable, like cancer, we want to look away. Our stiff upper lip kicks in and we find it best not to talk about it. When I tell people that we are raising awareness for Breast Cancer they are often confused. They tell me that pretty much everyone is already aware of what breast cancer is, it is the most common cancer to affect women, after all. However, this is not the point. People still need to check themselves each month and we need to start normalising conversations about cancer. I know it can be very upsetting, but we need to talk about it more and more. This way, those voices that often go unheard can finally be heard. Talking about it can save lives. So, what are we waiting for?

Join us on the fortnight of 3rd and 4th Week of Trinity (10th – 24th of May) for a multitude of different events and activities ranging from a 10K walk, a debate night with Femsoc and a picnic in the park, to a boys versus girls lacrosse match, karaoke night at the Oxford Union and Pink Night Finale on the 23rd of May at Freud with live music and cocktails. We are also selling a variety of merchandise: t-shirts, earrings and facemasks. You can go to our website (https://oxpinkweek.wixsite.com/) to shop and to find out more about our Pink Week podcast mini-series. Follow us on Instagram or Facebook where our term card will be released.

Image used with permission from Oxford Pink Week

When breath becomes scarce: why Oxford must engage with India’s COVID crisis now

Damayanti Chatterjee
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When breath becomes scarce: why Oxford must engage with India’s COVID crisis now

Fear is not nearly so disarming as helplessness. And this pandemic has introduced new ways to understand fear. Last March, there was a fear of the unknown, of stepping into restrictions on daily life that had not been encountered in living memory in Britain. Oxford was left echoing out into its own silence with the sound of footsteps untrodden, a deserted river uncut by the wakes of punts, and an Exam Schools, grim-faced and empty, towering over a traffic-less High Street and the ghosts of carnations, shaving foam, and mortarboards.

Our previous fears have somewhat dissolved into new ones; the anxious fear that we have forgotten how to speak to each other; the silent fear that life as ‘normal’ is perhaps gone forever and at best we will get back a distant relation of it; maybe even the more hopeful fear as we watch the snaking queues walk through the vaccination clinic, praying that the net of safety this casts will fall around all those that we care about in time. We faced these fears; faced them with shaky, disbelieving laughs and parting calls of ‘stay safe’ last year, and we face them this year with hundreds of thousands of volunteers donning PPE, picking up syringes of vaccine and welcome leaflets.

It seems, however, this pandemic has unturned corners down the road yet. 14 months into my COVID journal, a new crisis has the world in its tightest grip yet. Since the start of April, a fast-spreading new variant has meant that India has posted a new global world record for the number of coronavirus cases every single day. This gruesome triumph has in the last two weeks come to a peak even by its own standards, topping out at around 400,000 officially recorded cases a day.

India’s purported silver COVID bullet of a remarkably low death rate is flagging in the face of a daily death count in the thousands…if we take the official records. If we take the reports from exhausted health workers, the journalists wading into the hellfire, and the crematorium workers who break up the battles the living have so their dead can pass peacefully, the death toll is likely several times higher each day. Perhaps the equivalent of the University of Oxford’s population is dying in India every week. We will not know until the dust has settled, and perhaps not even then. For the thousands of migrant and daily-life workers who die due to a lack of oxygen, if they are not seen by the journalist at the door of the crematorium, there may be no one left to mark their death.

The time is both past and not yet come to explicate whether these are the effects of years of chronic under-investment in healthcare, the re-election of a nationalist party or simply the contingent complacency borne of early victories. In 2019, the idea of a singular event being able to rock the entire world, to enter into even those crevices of humanity that have resisted politics and wider society the longest and the hardest, was unthinkable. The first four months of the new year was an immersive masterclass in exactly how that could happen. You could look people in the eyes and see there was only one conversation, one word on their lips. And yet, watching doomsday itself unfold in India as a South Asian person in Britain has felt more different than this still; a more personal global crisis. All of a sudden you are plugged into the diaspora, not only by fear but by desperate helplessness.

It is difficult to prescribe a rank to the set of reasons for which the University and its students should take action against the crisis in India. But perhaps the most obvious reason is this one. India’s Prime Minister has talked of the ‘living bridge’ that exists between the UK and India – a description a string of Conservative Prime Ministers have hastened to match in clunky urgency. The political expediency in such descriptions is clear, and the dancing around colonial history that accompanies these speeches is awkward at best.

However, in May 2021 it is unavoidably evident that any cultural ties that may have begun with an empire are sustained today by an individual, personal link, magnified a million times. Entire generations of South Asians have settled in Britain, and their children have diffused through every level of society. To be greeted with a picture of Rishi Sunak’s beaming face plastered over every option on the Wetherspoons app last summer is perhaps the most cringe-inducing proof in this microwaved pudding.

A crisis in India will, now and henceforth always, wash up a wave of pain on Britain’s shores. The pandemic has thrown a new urgency in the duties of care a University owes to its students and staff, and at this moment, most of its members are about two degrees of separation away from a relative or friend in immediate danger. Scouts, porters, tutors, students of Indian heritage wait on tenterhooks and Indian students face a Trinity term of exams and significant deadlines whilst waking up every day to a country and a home on fire. This crisis is also Oxford’s crisis, and Oxford has the resources to help.

Moreover, the Serum Institute of India is an enormous player in the battlefield to end this pandemic and wrest our lives back. It has been producing vaccines since January for international use and the Global South as well as for domestic use. Five million of Britain’s planned doses originate from the SII at a time where North American countries and Western European countries have been imposing restrictions and outright bans on vaccine and component exports. 30 million doses have been provided by the SII to Covax, the WHO-based international program to distribute to vaccines to low and middle-income countries. This in addition to the bilateral transfers of tens of millions of doses to neighbouring countries at little or no cost. The SII is integral to accelerating the global rollout of vaccines that will end this nightmare, and whilst its resources are otherwise diverted, the variants (like the one that brought the NHS to its knees in January) are a real and ever-present danger – we’ve now learned that complacency towards the things that matter will come back to bite.

There are clear, present, pressing needs emanating from India now: oxygen, hospital resources, medical consultations. And there are clear, present, pressing ways that the country and the University of Oxford can provide them. The resources required exist, as does the human capital necessary, in this country and that one, to re-innovate and direct them to where they are needed. Now what is needed is the financial resources to facilitate this. The Oxford India Society, HUMSoc, and the Oxford South Asian Society in collaboration with their Cambridge equivalents have in the last week set up a fundraiser with a chain of expert evaluation behind it directing financial resources to exactly where need and impact is greatest. The fundraiser has blown well past its initial targets, but more is needed. The University of Oxford, its colleges, and its common rooms and supremely well-placed to contribute the kind of finances that will make tangible difference. Students within that can exert the pressure to make this happen.

Whatever else we describe of our university experience in later life, we already know this story is one that will be told. In decades to come, we will be asked about the months and years following March 2020 – where we were, how we coped and, more than anything, what we did. How we helped. In the coming weeks, standing up and being counted in this newest crisis will come at very little effort to us, but is capable of making the enormous differences we need to make this a story to tell rather than the life we are living.

Submit a motion to your common room to transfer funds to the Oxford India Society to directly support the crisis.

Call on your head of college to support the fundraiser from college funds, and address the welfare needs of Indian students.

You can donate to the fundraiser here.

Image Credit: Gwydion M. Williams. Licence: CC BY 2.0.

Government funds Oxford-researched Early Language Programme in 6,500 primary schools

Angela Eichhorst
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Government funds Oxford-researched Early Language Programme in 6,500 primary schools

The Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) secured £8 million in government funding last week to roll out their programme to over a third of UK primary schools free of charge this upcoming academic year. 

The 20-week-long intervention course gives four-to-five-year-olds with the weakest language skills two 15-minute individual sessions and three 30-minute small group sessions a week. The focus is on developing their narrative and listening skills. 

The course is the first of its kind to go through randomised trials, which involved 1,156 pupils in 193 schools. An independent evaluation process found that participating students made three additional months language skills progress than the non-NELI control group. Furthermore, NELI was awarded the highest out of five EEF padlock levels, showing that gains made will be maintained in the months and years to come. 

The cost of NELI is £43 per child, which covers learning materials and training sessions for the teaching assistants who administer the course. NELI is expected to close the learning gap for disadvantaged children, who can struggle to grasp material further on in the curriculum if they don’t have a solid foundation in language. In trial schools, 34% of children who qualified for NELI were also eligible for free school meals. 

According to the National Literacy Trust, 16.4% of UK adults (7.1 million people) are functionally illiterate, which has been strongly linked to reduced economic, physical and personal wellbeing. Problems start early, with one in five 11-year-olds unable to read well.

This £8 million in government support is granted as part of the £350 million allocated to tutoring through the £1 billion Covid-19 “catch-up” package for schools announced in June 2020. 

In a survey carried out in the Autumn Term of 2020, 96% of schools reported being ‘very concerned’ or ‘quite concerned’ about the development of their pupils’ language and communication skills due to the pandemic. Now more than ever, early language interventions will be crucial for children’s lifelong success. 

The programme was developed by a team led by Professor Snowling, Dr Bowyer-Crane and Professor Hulme, who are associated with the Nuffield Foundation, an Oxford based fund for social well-being issues. 

Professor Snowling has been approached for comment.

Image: Ben Wicks via unsplash.com

In-Person Fundraiser held by Oxford Students for COVID Relief in India

Matthew Schaffel
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In-Person Fundraiser held by Oxford Students for COVID Relief in India

Last Sunday afternoon, Indian students gathered at Bonn Square to raise funds for the Oxbridge Student Action for COVID Relief in India. After three hours the fundraiser raised £580 in cash donations and £1000 through online donations.

Oxford South Asian Society Events Officer Gayathree Devi KT and Treasurer Sameer Rashid Bhat led the fundraiser. They were also joined by Oxford India Society President Anvee Bhutani and Treasurer Sushrut Royyuru, and a number of members from all three of the societies, who had organised the event.

This follows the joint online fundraiser, set up by the Oxford India Society, the Oxford University South Asian Society, and the Oxford University Hindu Society, which reached its initial target of £10,000 last week. Subsequent to this a joint fundraiser with the Cambridge South Asia Forum, the Cambridge University India Society, and the Cambridge University Bharatiya Society was set up with the aim of raising £50,000.

Devi KT, a DPhil student at University of Oxford, said regarding the event: “We are very grateful to the Oxford community for standing by us at this very difficult time. We will continue our in-person fundraising efforts over the next few days and hope that the Oxford community will continue lending their support to us by donating generously and by spreading the word in their networks.”

Shrinidhi Narasimhan, an MPhil student at the University of Oxford added: “It was heartwarming to see so much solidarity and support for what is happening back home. The coverage that India’s COVID crisis has gotten in global and Western media outlets has really helped because most people seemed to be aware of how bad things are in the country. For those of us living away from home, coming together to organise the online funding campaign and do street canvassing has been a really meaningful way of channeling our anxiety, anger, and frustration with how crippled the public healthcare system has become in India.”

Piyali Chatterjee, an MSc student at the University of Oxford, who was also present at Bonn Square commented: “I was feeling helpless and desolate listening to the news coming back from home in India. The support we received from people in terms of raising funds, awareness as well as empathy for my home country was overwhelming and proved yet again how humanity binds people across the globe. We hope to use the funds in the best possible way to support COVID relief efforts at the grassroots level in India.”

Image Credit (top and in-line): Anvee Bhutani

OxMatch criticised for ‘homophobic’ question

Matthew Schaffel
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OxMatch criticised for ‘homophobic’ question

OxMatch has received criticism for a ‘homophobic’ question used in its matchmaking form. The form asked users to rate on a scale of one to five the question “I would be ok if my children were gay”. This has led to condemnation of the service by some students and student groups.

Alison Hall, a student at the University, told Cherwell: “The question OxMatch included on their survey completely trivialises the threat of familial rejection faced by many LGBTQ+ individuals, not to mention the fact that it is completely out of place and inappropriate for an informal personality quiz as a component for an online dating service. OxMatch’s response was also  deeply insulting, as it came across as an affirmation that their supposed expertise on collecting data trumps people’s lived experience of homophobia and disappointment at the inclusion of such a question.”

Oxford University LGBTQ society told Cherwell: “We have recently been made aware of the inclusion of an inappropriate and upsetting question in the latest OxMatch Questionnaire. We have made contact with the creators of OxMatch urging them to remove this question, and in the meantime wish to extend our welfare support to those who have been adversely impacted by this issue. 

 “The OULGBTQ+ Society Welfare Officers, Fran (she/her) at [email protected] or Lewis (they/them) at [email protected], are both Peer Support trained and available to listen. There is also a Welfare Brunch tomorrow morning at the Jolly Farmers, 10am-12pm, where in person support will be available (and also in the form of baked goods!) 

“Alternatively, if you feel more comfortable you can contact the Switchboard LGBTQ+ helpline here https://switchboard.lgbt/ for confidential support from trained LGBTQ+ volunteers between 10am-10pm.”

In the past, OxMatch has also faced backlash for violating GDPR rules alongside their own privacy policy. Students recieved promotional emails from the service, including advertising from services such as MyTutor, which they had not signed up to. 

Regarding the criticism, a spokesperson for OxMatch said to Cherwell: “The specific question was put in due to previous complaints about individuals matching with those holding homophobic views. The question was designed to filter out homophobic individuals. We have not received a single complaint about this question despite thousands of students doing the survey. The same question was used in other non-affiliated surveys that ran in Oxford and elsewhere before without complaints.”

“We have always sought to make OxMatch as inclusive as possible and welcome any suggestions about how to do that.”

Image Credit: Jill Cushen

 

Protesters act as ‘human bollards’ on Oriel Square

Matthew Schaffel
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Protesters act as ‘human bollards’ on Oriel Square

The Oxford Pedestrians Association (OXPA) has recently carried out a protest on Oxford’s Oriel Square to highlight the lack of operational bollards in the area. Regular traffic is usually prohibited from driving through the square between 07:30 and 18:30 BST.

Three campaigners stood on the square for an hour, acting as ‘human bollards’, preventing oncoming traffic from coming through. About 70 vehicles tried to pass through illegally during this time. The protesters said that they were abused, threatened and driven at by some of the drivers.

A spokesperson for OXPA told the BBC that the bollards and traffic cameras “have been broken for around four years, and cars have become accustomed to driving through, knowing they will not be stopped or fined”.

A statement on their Facebook page also said that they were “immediately confronted by drivers from all sides, who revved towards us and demanded we move so they could break the law.”

“When we refused, they first tried to argue ‘legitimate’ reasons (e.g. “I’m picking up my child”, “I need to go to the pharmacist”), and when that didn’t work they became livid.

“Many argued that they had urgent reasons to pass, but then decided to sit in their cars threatening us for the entire hour-duration of the protest rather than find an alternative route.”

The protesters noted on the post that drivers “blared their horns for minutes on end, swore at us” and that one drove at a protester “forcing her out of the way so that he could pass”. 

In a comment to Cherwell, an Oxford County Council spokesperson said: “New rising bollards have been installed together with ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) and CCTV cameras at each of the five sites in Oxford (Turl, Oriel, Cornmarket, Broad Street and Aristotle Lane). The council needs the ANPR camera to work so that vehicles with a right of access, emergency vehicles and residents, can get through the bollards without delay.  The CCTV cameras are required to ensure that, when we need to remotely raise and lower the bollards, we can do so safely and not cause a safety issue to other road users.”

“The systems need a robust broadband system to work coherently together. The council has been testing the available internet bandwidth to ensure that we are addressing the correct issue. If new broadband connections are required, we will order this immediately after testing is complete. At the same time, motorists must obey all signs and refrain from driving into prohibited areas at specified times. Failure to do so could result in enforcement by the police.”

Image Credit: sailko / CC BY-SA 3.0 

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