University is not cheap. For most of us, it will be one of the largest set of debts we ever take out.
It remains to the Treasury, however, a debt largely left unpaid. By March 2024, outstanding student loan debt to the government stood at an eye-watering £236 billion, and that figure is predicted to double in the next 25 years. This is symptomatic of very active choices from governments, both Tory and Labour, over the last few decades; Blair made a pledge to send over half of young people to university, a pledge which has had untold negative consequences on the country as a whole. His 50% target was finally reached in 2017-18, and what has it gotten us?
The results are disappointing: a nation full of shortages in key industries (plumbing, electricals, etc.) and an incredibly over-saturated graduate market. As with anything, when you increase the supply the item itself becomes significantly less valuable – and so being ‘a graduate’ is no longer the golden ticket it once was. Combined with the domestic fees cap, we now also see a university sector subsidised heavily by international students and the British taxpayer, with many universities struggling to be financially viable.
Encouraging people to go to university seems now to be a compulsion, as opposed to being considered one of the most significant financial decisions of one’s life. My own decision was thought through long and hard – after the Navy rejected me for medical reasons – and to this day I often feel that I may have been better placed diving straight into the real world. Indeed, I often feel that my year of employment before I started at Oxford taught me significantly more about life than this degree ever will.
And there are, of course, plenty of excellent non-university options out there. Someone I know recently took up a Ministry of Defence apprenticeship instead of going to university, and I’m beyond convinced that this was a fantastic decision. He earns an excellent salary, and is learning skills that are actually incredibly valuable to both himself and the nation – and crucially he won’t be saddled with £50,000 of debt. We can, and should, do more to open up new opportunities to people – to show them that in today’s world a piece of paper with the word ‘Bachelor’ written on it doesn’t have to define your ability, skill, or indeed earning potential.
So what’s the solution? In my ideal world, the government would do everything in its power to expand and celebrate non-university options. They would encourage the establishment of more degree and non-degree apprenticeships, and careers that start at 18, not 21. At the same time, they should raise tuition fees and end the repayment threshold, acknowledging finally that higher education is a privilege, not a right, and currently an outsized burden on the taxpayer.
Student Finance is a truly wonderful thing: it has enabled millions of young people to access the world’s best educational institutions. But it comes at a massive cost. Not everyone needs to go to university, and that’s not at all a bad thing.
Importantly though, we must recognise that someone pays for these degrees – either that is the person who chooses willingly to go to university, or it’s the taxpayer. I know which one of those options I prefer.
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The trial of Gisèle Pelicot exposes the disturbing reality of consent ignorance, even among those convicted of sexual violence. This case underscores the need for more effective, comprehensive consent education to address widespread misconceptions on the topic of rape and assault.
CW: Sexual Assault
“No means no.” We’ve all heard the phrase, repeated in a variety of settings; ranging from public campaigns to Freshers’ Week consent workshops. Yet, despite this clear-cut message, consent continues to be misunderstood, misrepresented, and in some tragic cases, ignored. The recent trial of Gisèle Pelicot in France has brought these issues to the fore, forcing us to confront uncomfortable truths about the state of sexual consent laws, education, and attitudes – not just in France, but across the globe.
A case study in consent
Consent workshops have been a mandatory part of Freshers’ Week at Oxford University since 2016, in a bid to create a safer environment for students and initiate a more open conversation about the issue. While some colleges opt to carry out their own JCR welfare-led sessions, others opt for Oxford’s internal training system, CoSy, offering a comprehensive course dispelling myths on consent and its associated laws. Every one of us has sat through the excruciating awkwardness of these sessions, placed into groups of five or six people, whose names we might not even know yet. We’re presented with scenarios, then asked to decide whether or not consent was given. A typical example might read something like this:
“A 59-year-old woman lives in Avignon with her husband of 38 years. Between 2011 and 2020, he used an online chatroom to invite over 70 different men, aged from 21-68, to violate her. One of the perpetrators arrives, a 53-year-old baker and father of three. The woman is splayed on the bed, motionless and snoring; she is unconscious. Rape, or not rape?”
This was no imaginary scenario, but the horrifying reality for Gisèle Pelicot.
Over nine years, Dominique Pelicot, Gisèle’s husband, contacted men from all walks of life, including trusted professionals from nurses to journalists, to violate his wife whilst he filmed them. To most people, there is no question that this is rape – and indeed, the court in Avignon reached this verdict for 51 of the men guilty of these abominable crimes. But this clear-cut case did not stop almost a quarter of the convicted claiming that they had not realised Gisèle had not given her consent, or even that she was unconscious. This defence raises major questions about the state of consent education in France: it seems inconceivable to us as students who have been through the consent workshops offered at school and university, despite their flaws.
Other participants in the mass rape claim that they were coerced by the formidable Dominique, revealing the problematic emphasis of male influence in society. It’s perhaps sickeningly ironic that a group of consent-ignoring rapists argued that they ‘couldn’t say no’ to the demands of Gisèle Pelicot’s husband. This serves as a reminder that rape is a crime deeply rooted in misogynistic attitudes, reflecting a disregard for women and their rightful place as equals to men in society. The voices of men therefore continue to be unfairly prioritised over those of women. One video played during the trial shows Gisèle, eyes closed, tongue lolling from her mouth, rendering consent totally impossible. It seems banal that we still have to debate the basics of consent in the 21st century, so how can the argument of so many of the men be that they “didn’t know what consent was”?
A lack of knowledge
What was perhaps more concerning during the Pelicot trial was the argument that Gisèle’s husband gave consent for her. Many of the men during the trial argued that they were convinced they were taking part in a sex game with a consensual couple. Needless to say, there are no consensual couples, only individuals.
For the vast majority of us, consent is not a difficult thing to understand. Should we not know what consent is by the time we reach the age of 18? However, the reality is more complex. Research shows that many young people, particularly men, may not fully grasp the nuances of consent due to the widespread consumption of pornography, which often portrays explicitly non-consensual scenarios as normal or even desirable. This can lead to a distorted understanding of consent, with some individuals internalising harmful ideas about coercion, manipulation, and entitlement in sexual relationships. In fact, one YouGov survey indicated that 36% of British men, compared to 4% of women, consume pornography at least once a week. This has prompted growing concerns that these influences shape perceptions of what is acceptable behaviour. In order to keep such problems from worsening, it is therefore vital that secondary education provides adequate teaching on the subject. In many cases, comprehensive sex education is still lacking or inconsistent, often focusing on the biological aspects of sex rather than emotional, psychological, and ethical dimensions like consent. This leaves many young people ill-prepared for navigating complex situations around consent once they reach adulthood. Given these realities, it seems more necessary than ever that consent workshops at university are conducted – workshops that aim to challenge common misconceptions and provide clear, comprehensive education on the importance of mutual respect, communication, and boundaries in sexual relationships.
University consent workshops
The sessions conducted during Freshers’ Week are instrumental in explaining the nuances in body language, continuation, and withdrawal of consent. Many workshops attempt to address these nuances by exploring both real-life and hypothetical scenarios, to help participants understand that consent is an active process that can evolve throughout a situation. They emphasise that consent can be communicated not just verbally, but through physical cues and body language as well. However, the effectiveness of these sessions can vary. While some students report a deeper understanding of how consent works in practice, others feel that the workshops oversimplify complex issues or fail to address the subtleties involved, especially when it comes to non-verbal signals or ambiguous situations. Moreoever, as rape can take many different forms, the issue of consent is not black and white either. This raises issues with the application of a blanket law, leaving no room for nuance in situations which can turn out to be far more complicated than they first appear. French criminal law defines rape as a penetrative or oral sex act committed on someone using “violence, coercion, threat or surprise”. It makes no clear mention of the need for a partner’s consent and prosecutors must prove the intention to rape to secure a guilty verdict. What the men in the Pelicot trial failed to understand was that the absence of a ‘no’ is not a ‘yes’.
While this renders these educational workshops more necessary than ever, it is important to acknowledge that they are far from perfect. One college welfare rep told Cherwell: “The resources we are given by the SU are fairly fundamental and there is no guidance from college or the welfare professionals in it towards more effective resources.” It is also important to remember that a team of welfare reps and second-year volunteers now trying to educate had sat through the workshops themselves only a year ago, and received no formal training or guidance. In order for these workshops to succeed, they need to feel less like another obligation in the overwhelming Freshers’ Week timetable, and more like an essential step in educating the next generation of students. In order for this to be the case, the responsibility needs to be placed on trained professionals rather than welfare reps and well-meaning volunteers. Colleges or the central university must therefore increase funding to ensure resources are comprehensive and well-designed, and establish standardised, high-quality sessions that are regularly updated and tailored to students’ needs. Professional facilitators, with expertise in consent and sexual violence prevention, should lead these sessions, guaranteeing a more informed and impactful delivery.
Assault happens everywhere
The domestic setting of Gisèle’s ordeal reminds us that assault does not just take place in busy bars and clubs at the hands of a stranger. Dominique was seen as a loving father and caring grandfather to his three grandchildren. Nor was this an isolated incident carried out by one man, with so-called ‘disciples’ of Dominique Pelicot taking inspiration from his heinous crimes. Such copy-cat behaviours only highlight that rape and assault are not hypothetical moral quandaries, but the reality for women everywhere. According to the university-wide Our Space study from 2021, more than half of Oxford students reported being sexually harassed within a single year, and over one in five said they were victims of sexual touching or rape, demonstrating that universities can be a breeding ground for sexual harassment in the forms of both physical and verbal targeting. Despite all students having access to the free online consent platform ‘Consent for Students’, roughly two-thirds don’t complete the training. Granted, this is an improvement on the mere 949 from the previous year, but this only highlights the need for quality resources and training in mandated sessions. Freshers are simply unlikely to engage with over-simplified, seemingly obvious scenarios where they come away from sessions feeling bored and patronised.
Yet, even with such workshops in place, the defence used by the perpetrators in the Pelicot case – that they didn’t understand what consent truly meant – suggests a larger societal failure. If adults, particularly those of legal age, are still unclear about the concept of consent, what does this say about our educational systems and cultural attitudes towards sex? This misunderstanding of consent often manifests in dangerous ways, such as the defence used in the Pelicot case from one of the men that: “My body raped her, but my brain didn’t,” as if a lack of intention could erase the harm caused. This line of defence, which hinges on the claim that the accused didn’t understand the situation fully, is not only legally weak but morally reprehensible.
More needs to be done
The Gisèle Pelicot trial forces us to confront the harsh reality that, despite the good intentions behind consent workshops, much work remains to be done. Beatrice Zavarro, Dominique Pelicot’s lawyer, has said that she believes “change will not come from the Ministry of Justice but from the Ministry of Education”. This only highlights the need for systemic change. The Gisèle Pelicot trial teaches us that student consent workshops, whilst often simplistic and even a little condescending, are vital in ensuring that the excuse: “I didn’t know what consent was,” can never be used again. It’s about recognising that consent is not just a rule dictated in an isolated workshop, but a responsibility that we must actively enforce.
If anything in this article has made you uncomfortable, please do look at the resources provided by the University’s Sexual Harassment and Violence Support Service at the link: https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/welfare/supportservice.
Behind a constant veil of thick tobacco smoke, students relax and chat in a night of music and dancing far from Oxford’s usually formal settings. This might sound like a club smoking area, but it actually describes Oxford’s ‘smoking concerts’. An integral part of entertainment at the University in the early twentieth century, they speak to a time where smoking was an inevitable backdrop to everyday life. Smoking was more a constant part of its scenery than a University-wide ‘culture’.
This ghost of smoking past left me wondering: is there a smoking ‘culture’ at Oxford today? And how much has it changed?
Changing times
Those days of carefree smoking have vanished. The 1950s saw a definitive link established between smoking and lung cancer, and smoking rates have been largely on the decline ever since. When the Health Act of 2006 made some premises smoke-free, the University seized the opportunity to introduce a no-smoking policy inside its buildings. Philosophy students could no longer indulge in endless nights in their rooms spent staring at an unwritten essay question, a cigarette between their fingers.
Cast out of doors, even smoking outside has faced heightened restrictions. Most colleges have restricted smoking to a few fringe areas. The areas in question are generally dingy, such as a small hole outside Lincoln College’s bar. When that’s the space on offer, little wonder barely any of Oxford’s smokers picked it up at the University.
Some colleges have banned it entirely from their main sites: Brasenose, Mansfield, and Queen’s to name just a few. Unhappily for smokers, but a victory for those concerned with the significant health threats of second-hand smoke. These policies have seen occasional reversals – St Peter’s College rowed back on a ban on smoking on-site in 2019 after a JCR majority opposed it – but the trend of increasing restrictions continues at pace.
Declining rates
Health concerns and the steady encroachment on smokers’ terrain has won results. Today, the dangers of smoking have never been better-documented: It is currently the leading cause of preventable illness, responsible for over 74,000 deaths a year. Whereas in the 1950s we might have expected 80% of students to smoke, a survey of 84 Oxford students showed only 23.8% now do so. The decline is unmistakable. Smoking has been limited and de-normalised as a habit for students. A smoker described to Cherwell his shock that: “At Oxford, if you smoke other students will ask you about it: ‘why do you smoke?’ I haven’t seen that anywhere else.” Ever fewer smoke, and ever fewer spaces allow them to.
Smoking survives outside bars, pubs, and clubs. Tobacco and alcohol go hand-in-hand as some of the substances available to students looking to cool off from the University’s “stress machine”, as described by one interviewee. Oxford’s nightlife helps students socialise and de-stress, and smoking provides both. Even within clubs cigarettes facilitate these roles – who hasn’t taken a breather from Bridge in its smoking area?
Even with this appeal, smoking wins few converts at Oxford. A few respondents discussed picking up smoking to deal with stress. One told Cherwell: “Oxford is stressful so there’s peace in smoking.” But 87.5% of respondents who smoked started before coming to the University. The alluring thought of a quick cigarette to calm the nerves before a collection only occurs to those already used to it.
Oxford’s smoking cultures
Carried over by incoming students as opposed to being home-grown at the University, smoking is more a passive practice at Oxford than a ‘culture’. It is in the background of other parts of life. This is exactly the same place it held when smoking was much more common, but now confined to some dank smoking areas and the cold streets of the city.
A narrow majority of the students surveyed disagree. 54% believe there is a smoking ‘culture’ at Oxford. Yet even here it was seen as largely passive. Non-smokers rarely felt pressured to smoke. If one person went for a smoke, others wouldn’t necessarily follow. But if non-smokers are naturally more likely to come from environments where smoking was rare, the culture shock of seeing students their age smoking semi-regularly might lead them to think there is a smoking culture. One non-smoker interviewed described exactly that, though they conceded this may be because they were “sheltered”. This chimes with how sceptical the smokers interviewed were of the idea of a university-wide Oxford smoking culture.
A wider consensus emerged among respondents that the case was more one of smoking cultures than a single one for the whole university. Here, different subcultures develop their own smoking ‘cultures’ as part of the images they wish to cultivate: the Oxford Union and Oxford University Conservative Association, “posh kids”, student journalism (The Isis even have branded lighters as stash). PPE and English had by far the highest proportion of smokers by subject – the same groups most likely to be active in these subcultures. The connotations of smoking here become more attractive: a social currency; a tool for hacking; something more glamorous or worldly. Smoking becomes adopted as a part of the subculture’s aesthetic.
The result is a feedback loop encouraging new participants to partake as well. Smoking becomes a social glue within these contexts, helping to cohere the groups by the opportunity it provides for socialising within them. Its position as a natural part of the subgroup’s culture and image is then consolidated. However, if you weren’t a part of these specific groups you wouldn’t necessarily draw the same associations. One interviewee told Cherwell: “I used to walk past the smokers outside Port and Policy without thinking about it. It was only when I picked up smoking and started attending that I saw it was a culture there.” This explains why drinks and stress were much more commonly associated with smoking as being more widely applicable.
Oxford’s cigar-smokers exemplify this. I was unaware such a subculture even existed, but a few respondents described it. Limited to a tiny group who can afford them and are “almost always dressed formally”, cigars are used by them as symbols of wealth and ‘refinement’. Freshers assimilate into the groups and adopt the practice, but otherwise the subculture is so compartmentalised as to be largely invisible. The symbols are only for each other to see – in these contexts smoking is as much a social signal as an outlet.
Generational Changes
Yet the future of smoking at Oxford appears to be a bleak one. With a declining proportion of smokers between years, it is increasingly endangered. Ever higher cigarette prices mean the habit can easily cost over £100 a month, discouraging any new intake. The decline may also be part of the wider trend in recent years of Gen Z proving increasingly abstinent. One in three is teetotal, as a shift occurs away from a ‘going-out’ culture and the substances like alcohol and tobacco that accompany this.
As ever fewer students participate in the ‘going-out’ culture and ever more pubs and clubs are forced to close, this has a knock-on effect on smoking. Those spaces are the very ones most closely associated with the practice. Its ground is yet more limited, leaving it with too little space to even become a University-wide culture. The subcultures are its last bastion.
At a more direct level, the proposed Tobacco and Vapes Bill of 2024-25 – set to be passed into law early this year – will ban the sale of tobacco products to people born on or after 1st January 2009. This raises the prospect of Oxford’s Freshers of 2027/28 being nearly entirely smoke-free. A black market will almost certainly develop, with products even more expensive and difficult to attain. Students still smoking will be far less willing to freely give them out, and Oxford’s casual smoking culture will face extinction. It will be too much effort for something banned in so many places to be worth it.
Smoking’s Future at Oxford
I can only speculate about what smoking cultures in Oxford will exist then, but I can think of two alternative paths. First, existing smoking cultures may slowly die out due to the expense and legal difficulties of the purchase. Second, smoking may become further limited to even fewer subcultures, but become more important in and culturally distinct to those contexts. If I had to place a bet, I would count on the second one, since it’s hard to believe smoking will lose all of its appeal by becoming illegal (you need only look at the UK’s drug culture to see supportive evidence – a subject for another article).
Smoking retains its allure: many identified it as a “cool” aesthetic for Oxford. The practice has recently seen a resurgence in pop culture, most notably as ‘a pack of cigarettes and a bic lighter’ became the symbol of Charli XCX’s provocative ‘Brat Summer’. In a context where it is limited and threatened, smoking gains its own attraction as something almost counter-cultural in breaking with those norms. It hardly possessed this trait when it was a constant presence around Oxford. It is precisely the restrictions designed to limit it that make smoking more attractive to specific groups.
The proven health dangers of smoking may mean that it is not a practice whose passing should be lamented. But it has evolved into a symbolic prop for many of Oxford’s vibrant subcultures, complementing their chosen aesthetics and images. Smoking has also maintained its older role as a passive practice occurring in the backdrop of Oxford’s nightlife and entertainment.
Nicotine is hardly the most attractive social glue. Still, the fact that it retains a social role despite its dangers and increasing restrictions is testament to its staying power. Any judgements on smoking’s demise may be premature. And while there has never been a University-wide smoking ‘culture’ as such at Oxford, different smoking cultures have developed and look set to continue, for now.
St Hilda’s College is set to plant 5000 trees in Radley Large Wood over the next three years to help protect and diversify the woodland area and combat the impact of ash dieback – a fungal disease which kills ash trees. The college received £21,115 from the Rural Payments Agency to fund the project as part of the government’s Countryside Stewardship Programme.
St Hilda’s purchased Radley Large Wood, which lies just south of the Oxford ring-road, in 2022 and has worked closely with the Forestry Commission to create a 10-year management plan for the area. Before St Hilda’s became the custodians of the woodland area, there was scant active management, with many areas overgrown and, in some areas, ash dieback affecting up to 40% of trees in some areas.
The tree planting is part of St Hilda’s broader goal of improving sustainability which involves achieving net zero emissions and improving biodiversity. The college also hopes that the project will enhance local wildlife habitats.
The college also wants to ensure that the wood remains accessible to the public. Falling branches as a result of ash dieback can make woodland areas unsafe for visitors and nearby properties. St Hilda’s bursar, Chris Wood, told Cherwell by combating the disease, “the College’s intention is to ensure that Large Radley Wood becomes a truly living woodland for the benefit of all.”
The college has warned that occasionally the active management of woodland areas can appear “stark” but emphasises that it is crucial for the long-term health of the area and limiting the impact of ash dieback disease.
The Countryside Stewardship scheme is an initiative by the UK Government which aims to protect, restore and enhance the environment by providing grant funding for farmers, foresters and lang managers. It is especially committed to countering the effects of climate change.
The grant will cover the essential activities of the project which involve planting, maintaining and protecting the newly-planted trees to ensure their growth and survival. Hilda’s will plant several varieties of native species in segments across the Radley Large Wood, including oak, sweet chestnut, and hornbeam. This particular variety of species has been selected to ensure ecological resilience, as well as the long-term health of the woodland.
The college has warned that occasionally the active management of woodland areas can appear “stark” but emphasises that it is crucial for the long-term health of the area and limiting the impact of ash dieback disease.
Alec Tiffou is a student playwright for Matchbox Productions. His past two plays, Daddy Longlegs and Moth, have ran sold-out shows at the Michael Pilch Studio.
Cherwell: Where does your writing process start? Where do you generally get inspiration for your plays?
Alec: I think it’s difficult to say it comes from one place. So far, it’s probably come from people that I shouldn’t like, but I do – meeting a person who’s a bit strange, that I feel suspicious of but interested in, and then forming a life that I imagine around them.
I’m not Christian, but for the first play, Daddy Longlegs, I lived in a monastery for a while. Every day I would go to confession, and one of the monks I would confess to would always want to know a little bit too much about my personal life. I think he’d always lived in the monastery and saw me as a peephole into the outside world, in a strange way. It made me feel really uncomfortable, and at the same time, I completely understood him.
So in my own time, I built a life around him, and I imagined what his childhood would be like, and that’s basically how the play started. It was similar for the next play, where I would meet someone, who I knew I shouldn’t like, but I did empathise with, and then I somehow created a world around them.
Also, in terms of inspiration: in my parent’s car, we have one disc, and that’s Lou Reed’s Berlin. Everything about that album is how I wish I wrote – he says really demented things in such a composed, casual way. You almost want to replay it because you think you must have heard it wrong. There’s a song called ‘The Kids’, and it’s basically about the police taking away a woman’s children, only he sings it like it’s a bed-time lullaby. It’s a complete severance between the tone of the song and the content, and I love it when plays do that.
In terms of playwrights that inspire: Alexander Zeldin. His first three plays are amazing, and I think he devises the dialogue, but it feels like it’s a conversation you overheard on the bus. It’s completely vulnerable, but never confessional.
Cherwell: With that idea of picking out specific people that are outside of our norms, what do you think draws you to those kinds of characters, and do you think plays as a medium are particularly suited to those kinds of characters?
Alec: I think so. I just like to give an audience a character that you’ll see – maybe they’re narcissistic, maybe they’re hyper-masculine, or something like that – and you feel like you should immediately hate them, but then the layers are peeled back a bit, and then there’s something loveable about them. You kind of hate yourself for loving them, but you do, and then you kind of feel uncomfortable with yourself as a result. I love going to a play and feeling guilty that I liked someone that I shouldn’t. Maybe that’s because that person lives a completely different life to me, but at the same time there are small aspects that are relevant to my life, or relatable, so I can’t help feeling empathy.
Cherwell: I know that with a lot of Matchbox’s productions before Moth, there’s been a lot of technical innovation. What informed the decision to strip back those elements for Moth, and have it as something that’s ‘just a play’?
Alec: It was scary, but there’s something about just seeing raw events happening that I really like. I love technical innovation in theatre, but there’s something really nice when it’s just stripped back and it’s just events as you see them. I think it allows for a more direct interaction between audience and story.
I remember being in Arkansas, and for some reason, I decided to go into a Pentecostal service. Again, I’m not Christian, but there was a pastor just screaming and yelling, and the audience was just going wild – speaking in tongues, falling on the floor, dancing, foaming at the mouth. I think if a play can have even a fraction of the effect on the audience as a Pentecostal service, then I think it’s worth it. There’s something about having a play without technical innovation, that just has that directness with the audience.
Another thing is, for some reason, I’ve really been into WWE videos recently, and seeing those completely oiled-up, spandex-ed men, and how happy it makes an audience member – that’s somehow exactly what I want to do. I think there’s something about how there’s no veil of technical innovation when it’s just the audience and the action happening, that allows for that a bit better. There’s this amazing thing when you see a really good play, and you know that it’s good just because of the action – it’s bodily and unintellectual, and I love when I see a play and it’s like that.
Cherwell: A lot of the articles on Daddy Longlegs and Moth have pointed out that both are your first forays into playwriting. How do you hone that skill in writing?
Alec: The thing is, I have no idea really how narrative works, or how exposition should be done, or how to time a beginning, middle and end. I bought a book on it, and I got half a page through, and they had this diagram, and I got scared so I closed the book.
A few things helped. I’ve always written, just before, it was really bad poetry, and I wrote an awful book when I was 12 that I’m not going to say the name of, it’s just too embarrassing. But more than anything, when I was a kid, I was a really good liar. I lied all the time to my friends. I would tell them that after school, I had this amazing life where my dad was a gun-slinging cowboy who travelled around the world robbing banks. The lies would get more and more complex, and you’d have to expand your narrative out, so that when a friend came over to your house and saw that your dad was a normal guy, you’d have to be like “Oh, that’s because my actual dad has hired a stand-in while he’s on the run from the police who are searching for him”.
I think that meant that actually starting playwriting felt quite natural. My parents definitely sat me down and the whole pathological liar thing was drawn out of me, but there’s still that tendency in a play where it feels like a complexifying web of lies that you have to detail more and more and more. So even though I’d never written a play before Daddy Longlegs, it felt like quite a natural thing to do, despite not really knowing all the infrastructure that goes into it.
Cherwell: Did you feel like things like pacing, those elements you mentioned, were things that you were conscious of as you were writing? Or did it just feel like a much more natural process?
Alec: In terms of pacing, a lot of it happens in the rehearsal rooms. In the first read-through, you’re all reading, and it goes on for two hours, and you’re melting in embarrassment, because you can clearly see that everyone thinks it’s too long, or that things should be cut, or things should be added, and it’s not a nice process. But I love editing the script through rehearsing by asking what the actors want to keep and don’t want to keep. I would love to work on a play just by not having written anything, and just devising it from that.
A lot of the pacing came from just seeing how the actors interacted with the work. But in terms of trying to get the pacing right when it’s on the page, I attribute it to people like Lou Reed. His music is this kind of monologue, but at the same time it has this rhythm to it. I think my pacing probably comes from wanting to recreate those musical influences that I have.
Cherwell: That also links in with the idea of a collaborative process. I know that throughout Matchbox, you’re developed quite a close relationship with Sonya Luchanskaya and Orli Wilkins – what does that kind of collaborative process look like for you guys?
Alec: First of all, I love them, they’re some of my closest friends. Our collaborative process is basically us meeting up with the pretense of it being play-related, then we do that for about five minutes and then basically just talk about everything else. It’s pretty un-work related – the amount of work that we do happens in very small, intense bursts.
In those bursts, a large part of the process is disagreeing on a lot of things. On casting, on blocking, if some of the lines work, if some don’t. We’ve had actual arguments in front of the whole cast about decisions, and everyone quietens down, and it’s like we’re the actors for a second, being watched by the cast. But it’s so nice, because we care about each other, so much more than we care about a play. And it’s always funny in hindsight.
Also just in terms of them individually, Sonya and Orli can just see a play being performed in ways that I can never understand. Like with Moth, I really wanted the play to end by releasing real-life moths into the theatre, which would spin around the light, and I had this idea of catching moths and training them so they would do that. I was convinced it would work, and they just shut that idea down, and thank god, because there would have just been hundreds of moths running wild.
I think it’s a lot of that – a lot of having ideas, and then, because we’re close enough to feel comfortable with each other shutting down the ideas, it doesn’t feel awkward or cruel or anything.
Cherwell: Is it more of an artistic collaboration, or do you think you three are drawn together by your friendship and closeness to each other?
Alec: In terms of taste, our taste in art is quite dissimilar. From what I understand, Sonya quite likes Sarah Kane and those kinds of plays, which I love, but I don’t think are my favourite. Orli and I don’t exactly have the same taste in films, or plays, or things like that, but I think we have a closeness in our relationship that means any criticism that’s play-related will never feel personal. Because it’s not one person making decisions, nothing is tyrannical, or just one person’s perspective, and we can just feed off each other in a really nice way. At the end of every show, the three of us just hug, and it’s the nicest part of the show, because we just understood each other’s stress. So to answer your question, I think it’s more personally-driven than artistic-vision-driven.
Cherwell: Is there any interaction between what you study and your more creative pursuits? Does one feed into the other, or do you see them as very distinct?
Alec: I studied MathsPhil in first year, then I realised I was really bad at maths, so I changed to Philosophy and Theology. I find philosophy sometimes difficult, because you’ll read a paper, and I find that it uses really big words to cover up quite small ideas, whereas plays can use really small words to uncover big ideas. That’s what I see as their difference, and why I kind of struggle sometimes in my philosophy degree. The truth is, I’ve never read a philosophy paper and been like oh damn, maybe I need to change my life based on that, whereas I have come out of plays and just felt I experienced an epileptic shock – that I’m just so overwhelmed, and that it has affected the length of my life. So I don’t know if they’re that inter-related, but I think I see them as quite separate spheres in my life.
But I do love the philosophy in my life, I don’t want to hate on it. Occasionally you do get someone who’s not ultra-dogmatic in their views, and that’s much nicer – like I studied Wittgenstein recently, and I think he has a tendency to articulate a thought experiment, and not necessarily derive some kind of dogmatic conclusion at the end of it, and I think that’s more in line with theatre. Whereas you have someone like Plato, who might hide behind the fact it’s a dialogue, when really it’s just Socrates being like ‘ah, justice is this’, and his interactor being like ‘you’re so clever, Socrates, of course it is’.
Cherwell: Theology, or religion, seems to have a big through-line in your life. Do you think there’s something in particular that draws you to those ideas?
Alec: I always think about this, and I feel like it’s a lot of coincidences. Like I always go to Quaker meetings, because I love Quaker meetings, and they have the best tea and biscuits at the end of it. And there’s also something just really dramatic about a Quaker meeting, that it’s 95% silence, but then in one moment someone can say something which has such weight, that it has all the emotional intensity of a two-hour play. I feel like if there is a relationship between theatre and theology, in the context where I’ve been in a religious environment – in a monastery, or a Pentecostal service, or a Quaker meeting – I think there’s just an inherent drama to it. I don’t like the words ‘religious experience’, but in a really good play, you can have an experience which is somewhat similar to a religious experience. So maybe it’s that. And maybe I’m a little bit jealous that I’m maybe too atheistic in my views – maybe that’s what draws me.
Mark Goldring is the outgoing CEO of Asylum Welcome, a local organisation in Oxford that assists asylum seekers, refugees and vulnerable migrants. He had been the CEO of Oxfam GB until 2018.
I turned Mark’s mind back to the unsettling civil unrest of the summer, when, fuelled by misinformation and racism online, anti-immigration riots broke out across 27 towns and cities in the UK. Asylum Welcome, the Oxford-based charity that Mark directs, was one of the locations circulated as a possible target.
“It certainly was quite a shock, coming to work on Monday morning to find out we were on a hit list for a Wednesday demonstration,” Mark told Cherwell. “The staff were scared and the clients were scared. Not everyone we work with knew of the threats, but they could feel the change in temperature across the country.”
Balancing the need to keep their vital services for the community running and the need to ensure employees safety, Mark had made the decision that the offices would close early that Wednesday. Just as they were preparing to leave, the reception was greeted by two unexpected visitors, Imam Monawar Hussain and Bishop Steven Croft, who walked in bearing lunch.
“They brought pizza! For the staff, the volunteers and the clients. That solidarity is really what we felt very powerfully through the next 12 hours.”
After lunch, the office was emptied. Mark told me of how, from the office, he then went to a local hotel to spend the evening with some of the 250 asylum seekers housed there. Inside the hotel the already tense atmosphere was brought to a climax by the sudden sound of chanting outside.
“We then realised it was the supporters of the refugees who were singing, not the demonstrators and we went out to join them. It was a threat that turned into a marked opportunity for people to express solidarity.
“Obviously, the atmosphere was very different in some other parts of the country. But in Oxford there was the sense that our solidarity was stronger than the extreme right wing.”
In light of these threats, I asked if he believed that anti-immigration sentiment in the UK had worsened in recent years. Something that Mark was keen to address was that the narrative of scapegoating migrants, perpetuated by some of the media and politicians, needed to change: “People were equating a sense of exclusion, that local services, jobs, opportunities weren’t good enough, with a sense that other people are taking it from us.
“No, I don’t think we can’t get healthcare because we’ve actually got too many migrants. Those very migrants are providing the healthcare. We would have a fraction of the students and professors that we’ve got. We’d have a fraction of the businesses. We’d have a fraction of the doctors and nurses and so on. Oxfordshire would collapse without migration.”
At Asylum Welcome the focus has been on assisting asylum-seekers and the most vulnerable migrants in the Oxford community. Mark described it as “a deliberate philosophy of responding to a broad range of needs.” This certainly rings true: Even a cursory glance at their website revealed the seemingly endless list of services they provide. These range from opposing government plans for the re-opening of the Campsfield detention centre, to providing translators to help individuals express traumatic experiences for Home Office cases, to supplying free bus passes.
A large obstacle for the charity was the unequal support available for asylum seekers depending on which country they come from. Mark told Cherwell: “Some refugees arrive welcomed by the government like the Ukrainians and the Afghans were, and there’s public funds to help them. Others arrive as asylum seekers where the government provides the minimum legal requirements and nothing more.
“As a local organisation we can’t pretend to have a national influence, so we join coalitions, or we help on an individual level. Wherever we can, we’ll do it by giving voice to our clients so that they can actually speak for themselves. We’ve taken up successful cases to stop deportations to Rwanda or to keep them off that awful barge which was rented last year.”
On the issue of advocacy, we discussed student campaigns for change and reform which were often met with opposition from their universities.
“Well.” He chuckled. “History shows students being opposed by their institutions. Many of which are run by people who used to be students themselves and fully understand both sides of that picture. I think the real challenge for student campaigning is longevity and consistency.
“Something like the Campsfield detention centre is not in the power of the university but our attempts to get the University to take a position on it have not made any progress. The science park development site has actually got land right next to it. They don’t even answer our letters.”
The work that Oxford University has done to become an accredited ‘University of Sanctuary’ was where Mark viewed the University as making the most progress. “There are some very committed people working on it at senior levels and student levels… A few tutors even came together to set up a maths club for displaced academics from around the world.
“I’m interested in what [Oxford] does to help refugees and asylum seekers who might not be students because, you know it’s only ever going to be a tiny privileged few who get into the University.”
Despite having had a long and varied career in the charities sector, Mark did not have a clear idea of what he wanted to do when he graduated from Oxford.
“I studied law. The only thing I knew when I graduated was that I didn’t want to be a lawyer. I had a much more ‘live now, get paid later’ mindset. And that was what took me to volunteer in Borneo.
“I’ve now run four different organisations, completely different. My last job was leading Oxfam and Oxfam spent more money in a morning than Asylum Welcome spends in a whole year. It’s a difference of scale, but that’s what I wanted.”
We reflected on his resignation as CEO of Oxfam in 2018, following news of Oxfam employees using aid funds to hire sex-workers while responding to the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Mark told me: “I think it was the right thing to do. I wasn’t CEO of Oxfam when the Oxfam staff behaved in the way that they did, but I was in the front line of the public storm about it and it was clear to me that Oxfam wasn’t going to rebuild without a sense of starting afresh.
“What would I have done differently at the time? It was a whole host of small [mistakes] rather than one big decision where we chose that we weren’t going to do something. That never happened – no one ever thought ‘we’re aware of this, but we’re just not going to respond to it’. We just weren’t forceful enough consistently enough.”
Much of Mark’s career has centred around Oxford and even now, as he retires as director of Asylum Welcome, he plans to work in a part-time role for South Oxfordshire Housing Association.
“I think that there is something that’s very special about [Oxford], you know. The name Oxfam comes from Oxford famine relief… I think [here] you have a liberal society, a comparatively wealthy society, and you have lots of forward-looking people. So, it doesn’t always feel like that on a day to day, but overall, [Oxford] is a positive place to be in at all levels, you can work in practical ways.”
Oxford University Development declined to comment.
An anesthetised rat was laying on its back, limbs splayed open. “Look away,” a group of first-year medicine students were told as their demonstrator stuck a metal rod into the rat’s head, cutting its brain stem so that it wouldn’t feel pain. Its tail jerked.
Practical experiments that end in animals’ deaths had been compulsory for Oxford University’s medical students. At the start of this academic year, however, Oxford’s application to continue teaching with animals was denied by the Home Office.
Universities in the UK are subject to the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, which regulates how they house animals, run experiments, and conduct harm-benefit analysis. Licenced accordingly, Oxford University’s animal experiments have decreased over the years but remains the second-highest amongst UK universities, just after Cambridge.
In 2023, Oxford performed procedures on 194,913 animals, including ten macaques – primates usually underwent skull implants and removal of brain tissue. The same year saw 2,049 deaths: Animals used for teaching constituted a small fraction of these ‘non-recovery’ procedures.
A contentious past
When Oxford’s Biomedical Sciences Building began construction in 2003, the work was soon suspended due to anti-vivisectionists’ intimidation – until the University was able to obtain an injunction and establish an exclusion zone.
In light of the building’s opening in 2008, an animal rights “fanatic” planned a series of terror attacks including homemade bombs: Two exploded in The Queen’s College sports pavilion and two failed to detonate on Green Templeton College’s property. They caused £14,000 of damage to Oxford, and the extremist was sentenced to a decade in prison.
Terrorist attacks – including parcels of HIV-infected needles – also targeted the late Sir Colin Blakemore and his family. Prior to becoming a professor at Oxford, he sewed shut newborn cats’ eyelids and later killed them to study their brains. His experiments significantly advanced the understanding of Lazy Eye – the most common form of childhood blindness – rendering it curable today. To Blakemore, animal research was a necessary evil he hated: He opposed animal testing for cosmetics and fox hunting, refrained from eating factory-farmed meat, and owned a pet cat.
Until this summer, a small group associated with this violent past had been protesting outside the University’s Medical Sciences Teaching Centre on South Parks Road – visible to medical students as they headed into their practicals.
Emotional toll
For the first-year Physiology and Pharmacology course, a compulsory practical class titled “excitation and blockade of α and β adrenoceptors” involved rats that are anesthetised, decerebrated, and injected with drugs, according to practical books viewed by Cherwell. In order to inject drugs into the rat, their jugular veins were cannulated with tubes, and in order to measure their heart rates as the response variable, electrodes were placed under their skins.
A second-year medicine student spoke to Cherwell about watching this experiment, which she did twice. Both times, the rat’s brain stem was destroyed to prevent reflexes and pain.
“The demonstrator told us to look away, but most of us kept looking anyway. He took this metal rod and stuck it into the rat’s head,” she described the decerebration. “Its tail shot up and moved in a very jerky sort of way, even though it’s completely under anesthetic and not going to feel anything.”
The rat was then injected with a sequence of six drugs – noradrenaline, adrenaline, isoprenaline, phentolamine, propranolol, and angiotensin II – to observe the effect of large dosages on its heart.
Although the experiment itself ended there, the rat was also dissected. The student said: “The demonstrator also cut the rat open, took its heart out, and showed us its heart beating in his hand.”
She said her friends could see her acting “visibly disturbed and distraught” after practicals such as this.
The teaching varied between different groups: Sometimes only the demonstrator injected the rat, while other times students were also able to do the injection and pass around the beating heart. One rat was used per every five to 15 students (with an average of 149 medicine students in each year, anywhere from ten to 30 rats were killed per year).
Diagram from medicine students’ practical book. Image credit: With permission of Oxford University.
In another practical for Organisation of the Body course, pairs of students used forceps to “tear apart the beating heart” of chicken embryos in their eggs to observe under a microscope.
“I literally could not get myself to do it,” the student said. “For me this is a living thing, and you want me to kill it – I can’t.”
Additionally, several practicals use animal tissues such as chick muscles, guinea pig hearts, guinea pig intestines, and rat uteruses. The turnover of these materials vary. Some can be re-used between different students, but others degrade over the course of the experiment. While each animal only has one heart, many pieces of smooth muscle can be extracted from each life lost.
Vivisection or Video
Oxford was one of only two institutions in the country that still used live animals in education until this academic year. Over summer, the Home Office declined its application to continue, in line with the government’s shift toward limiting teaching licenses where suitable alternatives exist.
A University spokesperson told Cherwell: “The Home Office took the view that the use of live animals for teaching purposes was no longer justified and that teaching objectives could be achieved using alternatives such as videos and computer simulations.”
In response, the Medical Sciences Division replaced live animal practicals with video recordings of demonstrators doing the experiment. For one second-year student, this format is “perfectly fine” because she’s still learning the same material.
During in-person practicals she sat aside and took notes, “not engaging very much” because she felt uncomfortable. In contrast, she was able to focus better when she watched the videos.
While she acknowledges that students can gain insights from looking at animal anatomy, she believes it’s more helpful to look at human cadavers in the demonstrating room.
“Firstly, to pursue a career in medicine it’s a lot more helpful to understand the anatomy of a person,” she told Cherwell. “Secondly, we have consent to do this from the people who donated their bodies… Animals of course cannot do that. It just feels dirty.”
A fourth-year medic, reflecting on her experience, told Cherwell that although she believes the use of animals in education is justified in many cases, she “did not feel like the [rat] practical was of sufficient educational value”. She continued: “Especially as the animal died midway through the practical, it couldn’t even be used to deliver the teaching points it was intended to demonstrate.”
Another student against these practicals is Sheen Gahlaut, treasurer of Oxford Animal Ethics Society. Despite her personal belief that animal research is necessary for justified causes, she agrees with the Home Office’s recent assessment that these practicals are not justified.
The replacement with video recordings elicited mixed reviews. Gahlaut acknowledged that some medicine students argued animal research is a worthwhile endeavour, and some demonstrators shared their belief that it was unfair to deprive students of a learning opportunity.
Gahlaut also pointed out that Oxford’s “impersonal” way of rat vivisections wasn’t the only possibility. Rather, she described a research lab she volunteered at this summer where animal research was conducted with more sensitivity:
The scientists there put rats in CO2 chambers to study their intestines. In these moments, they would always ask everyone to be quiet and say: “We thank you for the sacrifice. We appreciate we’re doing something that is harmful for this creature, but we’re thankful that we can do this to advance research.”
On her experience with Oxford’s practicals, Gahlaut told Cherwell: “The worst part was the impersonal nature of it, how there was never really any thought or respect given [to the animal].”
A University spokesperson told Cherwell: “The pharmacology teaching practicals used humane approaches (terminal anaesthesia), minimised animal numbers, and were used to demonstrate fundamental pharmacological and physiological principles of clinical significance.”
Severities of suffering
The discontinuation of Oxford’s animal teaching licence does not affect its research licences.
According to Understanding Animal Research (UAR), an organisation that supports use of animals in biomedical research in a humane way, “sub-threshold” severity is defined as procedures which were originally expected to cause suffering but in retrospect did not. 64.1% of procedures in 2023 fell into this category. Meanwhile, 19.5% of the animals underwent “mild” procedures, 14.2% underwent “moderate” procedures.
“Severe” procedures were done to 2,139 of the animals in 2023. UAR defines this category as procedures where the animals are likely to experience severe pain, long-lasting moderate pain, or “severe impairment of the well-being”. It lists examples such as:
Any test where death is the end-point or fatalities are expected
Inescapable electric shocks
Breeding animals with genetic disorders that are expected to experience severe and persistent impairment of general condition.
Lastly, 2,049 animals, including the rats used for medicine demonstrations, fall into the “non-recovery” category, meaning they never regained consciousness after being placed under general anesthesia.
From mice to macaques
The vast majority (98.5%) of animals that underwent procedures in 2023 were mice. Other species included rats, ferrets, guinea pigs, pigs, birds, and fish. Only 10 non-human primates – they receive greater protection under the legislation – underwent procedures in 2023, with one classed as “mild” and the other nine as “moderates”.
Animal Research at the University of Oxford in 2023 by specimens numbers: 192,039 mice, 611 rats, 21 other rodents; 10 non-human primates; 29 domestic fowl, 45 other birds; 1919 zebrafish, 128 other fish; 21 ferrets, 48 guinea pigs, 42 pigs.
An official video titled “Animal research at Oxford University” shows shelf after shelf lined with plastic units, each with several mice inside. The footage details how the animals are housed in accordance with their natural environment. For example, mice have shredded papers to burrow into, while macaques live in social groups with stimuli, such as swings to play on and paper bags to forage from. The video doesn’t mention how the animals are used in research.
Experiments on primates are described on the University’s webpage. The macaques spend most of the time in group housing, with several hours a day dedicated to behavioural work, such as playing games on a computer screen for food rewards. They then undergo “surgery to remove a very small amount of brain tissue under anaesthetic”. After a few hours, they are up and about again.
Additionally, these macaques “often will undergo surgery to have an implant attached to the top of their heads. An implant may consist of a post to hold this animal still (e.g. during an MRI scan),” according to a virtual tour of the Biomedical Sciences Building’s primate research facility.
A macaque in the primate research facility with an implant. Image credit: With permission of Oxford University.
In a video, the animal welfare officer said: “It’s really important that we have ongoing assessments of their welfare, obviously for their own welfare…but also…that they remain that way for the science – we want to have normal animal models that will produce good quality data.”
Scientific consensus, ethical debate
There is a scientific consensus worldwide that some extent of animal research remains necessary. Nevertheless, animal research only forms a small part of the University biomedical research, with the vast majority using in-vitro techniques or humans.
The University’s website features several scientists discussing how their animal research advanced medicine. For example, Dr John Parrington used sea urchins, mice, and hamsters to find treatment for men’s infertility, while Professor David Gaffan uses primates to identify the processes behind memory disorders in the human brain.
“Just by being very complex living, moving organisms [animals] share a huge amount of similarities with humans,” the website reads. “There has to be an understanding that without animals we can only make very limited progress against diseases like cancer, heart attack, stroke, diabetes, and HIV.”
Other members of the University’s faculty disagree. Theology professor Revd Andrew Linzey, who founded the independent Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, told Cherwell: “I fear the University has not yet caught up with the moral paradigm change that sentient beings, human or animal, should be treated with respect.”
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The growing private tutoring industry for Oxford and Cambridge admissions is one of British education’s most visible fault lines. The practice of paying for specialised admissions coaching has become increasingly common – and increasingly controversial.
Private tutoring for Oxbridge admissions exemplifies everything wrong with educational inequality. Wealthy families can spend thousands of pounds on specialised coaching, mock interviews, and application guidance, while equally talented students from less privileged backgrounds navigate the process alone. This contradicts universities’ stated commitment to selecting students on academic merit and potential not background or resources.
However, for some students from non-traditional backgrounds, targeted tutoring can be a crucial equalising force. Many comprehensive school students, despite their academic capabilities, lack the cultural and social capital implicitly expected. They may have never encountered the discourse common in Oxbridge interviews or been exposed to the specific ways of thinking and expressing ideas that these universities value. A bright student from a working-class background might use tutoring to gain the same interview techniques and application strategies that come naturally to those who have grown up in academic households or attended schools with generations of Oxbridge success.
While compelling, this doesn’t address fundamental ethical questions. Should access to elite education depend on ability to pay for extra coaching? If tutoring does provide significant advantages, shouldn’t these skills and strategies be taught openly and systematically within schools rather than through an expensive private market?
Moreover, the focus on tutoring obscures structural inequalities in British education. Before students reach Oxbridge applications, their paths have been shaped by countless advantages or disadvantages consequent of their socioeconomic background. One study concluded that “most of the students with low socioeconomic status had poor achievements in their academics, which led them into the labour market at an early age”. Private school networks, family connections to academia, exposure to intellectual discussions at home, and access to cultural experiences determine who even considers applying.
The tutoring industry is a symptom not a cause of educational inequality. It has emerged in response to a system where the stakes of elite university admission have become increasingly high (or at least are perceived to be), while the preparation for success in that system remains unevenly distributed. As competition for places intensifies, families with means will seek advantages for their children – and the market, unregulated, will provide it.
The commercialisation of Oxbridge admissions is part of a shift from universities being purely intellectual institutions to gatekeepers of social and economic opportunity. Universities are not places of learning and intellectual growth as much as their prosaic mission statements would have you believe but investments to access a certain job, an economic stratum, a circle of influence.
Banning or restricting private tutoring would likely drive it underground while doing nothing to address underlying educational inequalities. Rather, structural reform and social policy is necessary as existing equity initiatives have had mixed effectiveness. Access remains concentrated, with 11% of Oxford entrants coming from just ten schools and 30% of Cambridge applicants from only 50, as of 2019. Additionally, since 2020 the gap between private school and state school access to Oxford “has only grown bigger”. Programmes like Opportunity Oxford and Foundation Oxford, while positive, especially their residential or year-long components and offer numbers, nonetheless intervene too late, when disparities are already entrenched.
Early intervention is needed: invest in high-quality early childhood education, reform education funding to better support disadvantaged schools, and address intergenerational poverty through job training and community development initiatives.
Fundamentally, though, the debate over Oxbridge admissions concerns meritocracy. Are our accolades, such as an Oxford admission, even deserved?
People believe so; we tend to think that success stems from individual effort and luck has little role. A 2023 Ipsos study three quarters (77%) of Britons view hard work as essential or very important for getting ahead in life. Less than half (46%) believe ‘knowing the right people’ plays a key role, and only about a quarter cite parental education or family wealth as significant factors. Just one in five attribute success to luck, making it the least important factor among those considered.
It makes sense why we believe this. The just-world hypothesis shows people desire to believe the world is fair, and meritocracy is fitting for this illusion. It offers something seductive: self-congratulation and absolution from guilt. Meritocracy frames success as individual excellence, failure as personal deficiency. It makes prosperity guilt-free and justifies why some go without even basic necessities. It excuses many of us who walk past, unflinching. After all, everything is earned or deserved.
However, this view ignores how a life actually takes shape. The qualities we label as “merit” – ability, persistence, determination, ambition – arise largely from chance. Our capacity for effort and achievement, including grit and resilience, depends on inherited traits and childhood environment, factors beyond our control; “early attachments to parents play a crucial, lifelong role in human adaptation.”
Circumstance informs even the most vaunted success stories, such as those of billionaires. In fact, in 2024 for the first time since 2009, every billionaire under 30 has inherited their fortune, casting doubt on supposedly “self-made” stories.
Perhaps the resolution to the Oxbridge admissions debate is to disavow any notions of meritocracy; upon this backdrop, buying admissions tutoring is one small factor in a world that is irrefutably stacked in favour of some and against others, and where the cultural desire to reckon with how deep this unfairness goes is scant.
More immediately, the veneration of Oxbridge graduates needs to stop. The system is slanted from the start, and yet, we idolise those who navigate it. Success should be viewed in context — not merely luck masquerading as ‘merit.’
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Oxford University Student Union’s board of trustees has abolished the role of president, opting instead for a ‘flat structure’ of four officer roles. This decision was made by the board which at the time had a student-elected majority, but follows an SU survey in which 86.2% supported keeping the role of president. The sample size of the survey, however, was too small to be conclusive. As part of the same restructuring, a new ‘Conference of Common Rooms’ model will be implemented by the SU to mirror the University’s collegiate structure.
Nominations will open tomorrow to elect four roles: Undergraduate Officer, Postgraduate Officer, Communities and Common Rooms Officer, and Welfare, Equity and Inclusion Officer. The SU announcement does not explicitly mention the removal of the presidential role.
After the SU entered its transformation period last year, it conducted a “Democracy Consultation” to explore student support for different structures for the organisation. Survey respondents were asked their thoughts on the roles of sabbatical officers.
According to internal documents viewed by Cherwell, only a small sample size of 61 respondents answered this question, and of this only 29 offered specific feedback. The “flat structure” being implemented was favoured by 4 respondents (13.8%), whilst 25 respondents (86.2%) supported a presidential model.
In 2022, however, former SU president Anvee Bhutani conducted a consultation with “hundreds of people – including JCR and MCR Presidents, Campaign Chairs, University staff and many more” to find that the role of president should be retained. The review argued in favour of having a president because “it is good to have a central point of contact administratively”, according to a Cherwell story from the time.
Today’s SU announcement also includes a restructuring toward a ‘Conference of Common Rooms’ structure, which coheres with the findings of the consultation. The new model would gather JCR and MCR presidents as the main democratic decision-making body of the SU.
According to the consultation, 61% of 217 students supported or strongly supported the model, with responses saying that it seemed the best suited for Oxford’s collegiate system and that common rooms receive higher levels of student engagement.
The SU will also re-introduce part-time Community Officers to represent ‘marginalised students’ whom the SU recognise ‘may not always feel an affinity to their common room’. The consultation found support for this change with 76.8% of 194 respondents supporting it.
The plan for the ‘Conference of Common Rooms’ started development in Trinity Term 2024. In comparison, the plan to abolish the presidential role happened over a shorter time frame, with a single open-ended question in the ‘Democracy Consultation’ survey in Michaelmas Term 2024.
In a press release, the SU stated: “We hope and believe that these changes will address some longstanding challenges, and establish a precedent for a more inclusive and accountable primary purpose.”
The announcement follows SU president Dr Addi Haran’s resignation earlier today to speak out against “institutional malpractice”. She cited “efforts to…undermine student leadership” and “deny students the transparency and accountability they rightfully deserve”.
