Wednesday 2nd July 2025
Blog Page 374

Oxford City Council calls for vaccine to be accessible

Jill Cushen
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Oxford City Council calls for vaccine to be accessible

Oxford City Council is supporting a campaign to remove bureaucratic barriers that prevent people in the UK from receiving the Covid-19 vaccine.

The government has stated that everyone living in the UK will be able to access the vaccine, however failure to provide the right documentation as well as fear of accessing healthcare services are preventing people from receiving the vaccine. Migrant communities, people experiencing or at risk of homelessness and Black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups are among those who are being disproportionately impacted in the vaccine rollout.

The City Council has added its name to a statement written by a coalition of 140 organisations urging the Department of Health and Social Care to ensure that the vaccine is accessible to everyone. Migrant rights’ charities, health institutions, trade unions, faith groups and local authorities are all signatories of the statement initiated by the Patients Not Passports campaign. They call on ministers to take action to end the “Hostile Environment” and allow everyone living in the UK regardless of immigration status, ID or proof of address to receive the vaccine. Oxford City Council is one of two local councils to join the campaign with Haringey Council also pledging their support.

In order to receive the vaccine, people are required to show ID and must be registered with a GP. According to the UK government website, a person does not need to provide proof of address or immigration status when registering with a GP but can be refused registration under certain grounds. The Council is urging residents to register with a GP if they have not already done so.

Last week the government said that people living illegally in the UK would not be at risk of deportation as there would be no checks on immigration at vaccine centres. However, the coalition states that this does not go far enough to ensure that people are not left unvaccinated. In a press release on the Oxford City Council website, Councillor Dr Hosnieh Djafari-Marbini said “This welcome step from the government makes it clear that the Hostile Environment is a public health failure.”

Steve Valdez-Symonds from Amnesty UK told the BBC that many undocumented immigrants are “too afraid” to access healthcare services. He also added that “it has been the message, very clearly, from the government that access to health care is something that leads to information being passed about them to the immigration authorities”. 

Councillor Louise Upton said that Oxford City Council “believe it is in the interests of everyone that UK residents are able to access health care regardless of their migration status or homelessness. It’s not just the right thing for those individuals, these are people who live and work in our city and we know them as part of our communities and our businesses. Protecting their health is part of protecting all of us. We oppose any discrimination in government policy or the way it is delivered that denies them access to healthcare.”

The Oxford charity Asylum Welcome also signed the call for action and said they were “proud” that Oxford City Council had joined the campaign. They added that “temporary offers of safety are not enough to undo the decades of harm caused by policies that have embedded immigration controls into public services.”

Oxford GP Dr Kathryn Brown stated: “This is our chance to make lasting change to promote better access to healthcare for all and seek to improve the health gap that exists in our country not just for the vaccination programme but for the longer term”.

Oxford SU release summary of their work in 2020

Sasha Mills
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Oxford SU release summary of their work in 2020

The outgoing SU committee, headed by SU President Nikita Ma, has released a summary of their accomplishments in 2020, as well as their key initiatives until the end of their term. Some of the key priorities that the SU outlined include digital resources, ensuring no rent is charged to students not in Oxford, and the fair outcomes for students campaign. 

Oxford SU have worked with the University to establish a new Mental Health Task Force, headed by Sir Tim Hitchens, President of Wolfson College. Some of the priorities for the task force include support for those affected by pandemic, including those self-isolating and those that have faced disciplinary measures in light of Covid-19 rule breaches. The Mental Health Task Force will be providing an update on their work later this term.

Alongside the open letters penned by other groups, the SU were involved in writing their own open letter calling on Oxford to tackle systemic racism within the University, and commit to initiatives such as making equality and diversity training for staff mandatory. This open letter was written by the previous 2019-20 SU committee. The SU are currently working with the University as representatives on their race equality taskforce. 

Some of the SU’s largest achievements were in mandating the University to tackle the climate crisis. The Oxford Climate Justice Campaign, supported by the SU, led to a commitment from the University to formally divest from fossil fuel investments. The SU have also been mandated to lobby for the University to stop selling lamb and beef, which they have committed to until March 2021. 

The Oxford SU has also worked to support graduate students, expanding the University’s Covid-19 hardship fund. They plan to lobby for support for graduate students starting in 2021, particularly at the new Reuben College. 70% of common room elections were conducted through the SU, and the SU held 20 RepComms online in Michaelmas 2020 online. These are conferences designed to promote communication and support for common room representatives. The SU also launched their online training platform, including workshops on issues such as disability training and training for socially distanced activities. 910 training sessions have been completed by students so far.

Oxford SU are currently in the process of analysing the results of their sexual health education survey, which received over 1000 responses. This year, they hope to develop and deliver online sexual health education resources from “world experts.” From the 13th October 2019 to the 30th September 2020, the SU processed 1350 student advice cases, 87% of which raised two or more issues and are therefore classed as “complex” cases. 42% of students that accessed the service contacted the SU for advice again, and in 2021 the SU hopes to continue supporting students with housing, academic, welfare, educational, and financial concerns.

Number 19

Katie Bowen
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Number 19

Walking along the Edgware Road 

It’s ten o’clock at night

I glance down at my phone amongst it all

And it’s your name that glows in the light

In this busy city, we work here, find anger there,

Ride on the tube to seek love

Your face floats in my mind as I stare

At the towering skyscrapers above

Sitting on the Jubilee line 

With a few glasses of wine on board

Isn’t much fun, far away from home

But here’s hoping that I can afford

Your love, with the fiver in my pocket, left over from tonight.

This rat-run of a place isn’t always the best

But then it pulls me to home, and you

Sleeping in a dodgy pub on Orchardson Street

Hoping you’re dreaming of us, too.

Artwork by Rachel Jung.

Rice-cakes

Ursy Reynolds
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Rice-cakes

So I sat on my bed and ate a rice-cake.

Then it was gone.

I took another, thinking of last Tuesday:

standing naked in front of a man I didn’t love,

thinking sex was exciting. With the next,

I remembered forgetting to wear a bra

to school, the red-faced embarrassment of it,

sure everybody could tell. Crunch, and

I’m back falling in love again, lying

by myself watching Peep Show.

A few more down, a few more days

of worrying about weddings, wondering

why we seem to copy the lives of those

we wish would love us, and then I forgot

to take the pill and bled all over the jumper

that had made a car beep at me.

So I sat on my bed and ate a rice-cake.

Then it was gone.

Artwork by Rachel Jung.

Two Poems

Danielle Rae Childs
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Two Poems

Swollen 

for H.

It wounds me that I can’t tempt him

from his fate, but

I did feel beautiful this morning, 

weeping in the shower

and charmed by my cartoon 

balloon eyes—

skin stretched tight,

catching the light.

You should see them (he should,

he has, no avail). 

They are lovely, open sores, ripe

with paradox:

swelling up the more

they’re drained out.  

Voyeur’s Video 

for C.

The memory is hazy,

the photographic still 

of the memory I keep

in my head, more so.

It’s a fraction of face,

with the ear center frame,

little blonde hairs wisping

around, too short to tuck,

but I tried anyway. 

When the still breaks into

memory in motion,

that’s what I see: a hand, 

desperate to possess.

I don’t know that the hand 

is mine until the film blurs,

and I’m back in my body,

feeling my fruitless fingers:

I couldn’t reach him. 

Was the graze as good,

as the grasp might have been?

Next time I had his head

near me, I tucked it tight

under my chin.

Image Credit to the author.

Love from,

J Daniels
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Love from,

You’re a pelican-shaped cloud in the sky,

You’re sunlight on the back of a bird

You’re the home in the eyes of a friend

You’re that song I sing along to in the car

You’re in all the details, taking up the small spaces

You’re filling in the gaps between words in this poem.

You’re the smile I can’t keep off my face

You’re the cold of splashing into the waves

You’re all the love letters I don’t write

And in every letter I do sign:

Love from,

Artwork by Rachel Jung.

Tesco

Ursy Reynolds
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Tesco

Two bottles of wine down, I stumbled

into Tesco, ran my fingertips along the shelves

looking for a note between the bottles or something

which would tell me what to do, how to stop

the colours of the limes and lemons popping out

and the sound of the tills, something in the bagging area

I looked down, and it was me, crouched there,

like in an incubator, maybe waiting for someone to

pick me up and take me home, an unexpected item,

then got up: those first steps to the automatic doors,

someone outside saying something through them,

their mouth moving. I couldn’t hear them.

Image credit: Chrisloader via Creative Commons

hands/face/space

Katie Kirkpatrick
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hands/face/space

hands

the world is smothered by a plastic seal, everything vacuum-packed and ziplock-bagged, and my fingertips are crying out for love, crying out for the hot touch of papercuts and the tongue kisses we like to call splinters. the lines on my palm are joining up the dots between plastic gloves and your arms, telling themselves that these neoprene creases are as soft as the skin on the inside of your elbow.

face  

eyes are everything to me; i am an eleven-year-old girl counting the seconds between stares, clicking the brown eyes box on the does your crush like you back buzzfeed quiz. your eyelashes flutter like fans, relieving my fever and reminding me what breezes used to feel like back when they were allowed. today the wind waits at bus shelters, hides behind terraced houses and sings the grass to sleep. 

space

how we feel now must be the way that stars feel all their lives: always in sight of each other, always feeling each other’s presence, but kept apart by forces they can’t quite comprehend. we wish on streetlamps, watch them light up in constellations and follow them home, hoping to find a new face at the front door. but the lights are always the wrong shade of orange, and you are always looking down on me from another part of the sky. 

Artwork by Amir Pichhadze.

Requiem for a marriage

Anna Stephen
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Requiem for a marriage

CW: Domestic violence

Look at you

Writing poems about me

Because that is your job.

You published under a different name, 

But I recognised the slander

I knew it was about me.

You pulled pies from the oven (burned)

I saw your arm

Which had bruises on it.

I had done that, on a morning, maybe ten:

In the same clothes as yesterday, on my way back in 

Through the front door.

Still scented with perfume (not yours) that I knew

Lingered on my lips (I could taste it).

You had kissed me hello, moving back my hair

And I saw something redden in your eyes,

And you smiled but you seemed to struggle for breath

As well as words,

And you walked away quickly

With your head bowed.

(You might have mumbled something about

Tending to the baby.)

I didn’t sleep in the bed that night

Because I was crying myself to sleep (on the sofa).

I’m sure she was too, upstairs in the bed 

We shared.

You

Who was so good with the children

Saw them, without seeing them.

Your head was hollow, your vision dark.

In their wails and screams you heard your own.

You grew sick and I could not play nurse for you.

I stood outside the door, listening for your breathing, but 

I did not go in.

When you were up again (I was still well)

Something had changed: you had your smiles back.

But your relation to them

Was not the same. You kissed me out of choice and it felt wrong.

I didn’t return again that night. It was routine now. 

She knew 

What I was doing.

She started doing it too. Some nights I am sure

The baby was left alone in the house.

The day before you went,

We had a conversation.

It was about the situation. It involved many things;

I felt many things.

I wanted to kiss you, even though I didn’t love you.

I wanted you, all the more because I knew

Someone else was getting you.

What does that mean now?

You knew it as well.

We went to our separate beds. I knew you wanted to join me

Somewhere inside you. You wanted me,

Somewhere inside you.

The next day you were gone. You must have left very early,

Because I rose with the sun, and saw fresh frost on grass and rooftops –

The jewellery of the mist. There were no tracks, there was nothing.

You had taken the baby.

I had failed our marriage.

Translation questions dropped from most FHS Classics exams

Sasha Mills
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Translation questions dropped from most FHS Classics exams

The Faculty of Classics has announced that all exams, excluding Second Classical Language, will be run open book and will now exclude translation questions. Commentary and gobbet questions will remain in the open book questions. The Faculty of Classics plan to release further information about their FHS exams later this week.

This comes after an open letter penned by finalists set to take FHS Classics examinations which urged examiners to “commit to a finalized exam format” and encouraged a commitment to open book examinations by the faculty, citing the commitment by the Modern Languages and Oriental Studies faculties earlier in the academic year as an exemplar. The open letter has received 66 signatures from students so far.

Master’s exams conducted by the Faculty of Classics are also expected to take place online, although not all exams have been converted to open book. Some involving translation will be expected to be completed “without looking things up,” and will be remotely invigilated “in a relatively unobtrusive manner.” The communication noted that “it is not the case that all our Master’s exams will be ‘open-book’; each Faculty and each exam board makes its own arrangements.”

These changes have been made to both the Greats exams as well as joint schools examinations. This comes following the cancellation of first year Mods exams earlier this year, after an open letter calling the faculty to cancel exams received 90 signatories. The faculty have replaced Mods with a prelims-style exam at the end of Trinity, which also removes translation elements from text-based papers.

Image Credit: Lewis Clarke. License: CC BY-SA 2.0.

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