Thursday 4th June 2026
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Measuring out life with coffee spoons: Inside the Oxford death café

Jennifer Zhou
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Measuring out life with coffee spoons: Inside the Oxford death café

“Jaffa cake?” These are the first words I hear upon stepping into Oxford’s Death Café. We’re in the Old Fire Station on George Street, a venue for all kinds of offbeat activities: indie theatre, standup, and its kitchen, which operates as a social enterprise run by women refugees. At 5pm on a Monday, it is deserted. Already running late, I get lost on the street, knock on the wrong door, and finally blunder into a lobby where there is absolutely no noise or company. Tiptoeing timidly to the desk (and banishing mental descriptions like dead silent and silent as a tomb), I stage-whisper into an intercom: “I’m here for the Death Café.”

Was that right? Should I look sadder, perhaps? A receptionist tells me to go right; I nod and shuffle past with a solemnity that instantly strikes me as pompous. It is already unspeakably awkward.

Theoretically, I know what to expect. Death Cafés emerged as a movement in Switzerland and France in the 2010s and spread across the world. Billed as casual discussion forums, they encourage participants to engage in frank dialogue about the end of life: what is death? Why do we fear it? How does dying shape the way that we live? It is a specialist salon, a café philosophique turned morbid. Bernard Crettaz, the sociologist who inspired the cafés, wants to end what he terms the “tyrannical secrecy” around death. We should be able to discuss it without stigma, he says – the subtitle of his book is Sortir la mort du silence (‘Bringing death out of silence.’)

So far, silence is prevailing. In the Old Fire Station’s canteen, a dozen strangers sit around a table; none of them are talking (sepulchrally silent, silent as the grave). I am conspicuously the youngest. Anne*, whom I later learned is the group facilitator, heads the table. She is 84 and strikingly sprightly. Cheerfully, she slides me a cardboard carton: “Jaffa cake?”

We all take some. There’s an air of manic jollity about the whole thing; it reminds me of people who dress up as Disney princesses to visit children’s hospitals. For about five minutes, I gaze into every unoccupied corner of the room, counting tiles and committing wall art to memory. No one says a word – small-talk has been utterly disabled.

When we finally start, Anne asks us to introduce ourselves. Then she smiles and says calmly: “We’re all going to die. Not pass away, not go to a better place: we’ll die.”

It’s a bit shocking. Around me, though, other participants are nodding: a few chime in with agreement, saying that they only learnt the stock phrases as a way of sounding decent around others. “I couldn’t say ‘my dad’s dead,’ it sounds crude” – these euphemisms are not coping mechanisms but social rites, like wearing black. Someone adds that their kids are confused by decorous phrases. If her grandmother has “passed away”, does that mean she’s coming back? If she’s “gone somewhere”, where is she? We are all here to try and regain the abilities we had intuitively as children – speaking forthrightly, living in the present.

Anne’s ban on euphemisms sets the tone: we discuss the ways in which dying is sternly practical. A printout on how to arrange a Power of Attorney circulates around the group. If death is grand and mysterious (“that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns”), dying is relentlessly banal. We discuss bedsores, waning appetites, the larcenous cost of burial – someone laments that they had to take weeks off work to care for their critically ill father, despite only anticipating days.

“I don’t want people to find my body”, somebody pipes up.

“Because it’ll upset them?’

“No – I’m scared I’ll smell bad.”

Slowly, imperceptibly, the ice breaks. We talk about things we want to do before we die (for me: write a book). We exchange concepts of the afterlife. Death Cafés brand themselves as nonpartisan, “with no agenda, objectives or themes”. I do notice, however, a preponderance of Buddhists and spiritualists in the circle; a theory that we all belong to one ‘indistinct mass of energy’ is advanced and receives approving nods. It is not that these belief systems are more morbid. In fact, the opposite may be true. If death is the resetting of a cycle, a passage to one more mortal lifetime, then why fear it? Why hold it apart from – or even contrast it with – life? It is an illuminating thought, and impresses even me, the staunch nontheist. 

Interestingly, two people in the group are ‘death doulas’. Members of this burgeoning profession, including Hamnet director Chloé Zhao, pitch themselves as midwives for the end of life. While not medical professionals, they provide emotional and practical assistance to the dying. The two at the table describe their training, which includes lying in a wooden box and imagining their own funeral.

Is it useful to picture death? Is it helpful to talk about it, or just self-indulgent? Over the course of the meeting, the dread that I felt at the beginning was slowly replaced by shock, then relief. The Death Café is mundane. I had worried about lacking the special vocabulary, the necessary concepts. But what I saw was that death is pieced together from the most commonplace pieces of everyday life. Grief, tedium, guilt, vanity, humour, superstition. None of it requires a new language – just the courage to use the old one. Death is silent (as a crypt, as a vault, as a mausoleum). We don’t have to be silent about it.

* Not her real name.

Death Cafés were founded by Jon Underwood based on the work of Bernard Crettaz. Information can be found at      deathcafe.com.

An archaeological future: Distorted legacies

Abigail Christie
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An archaeological future: Distorted legacies

The enormity of human history often feels incomprehensible. This vastness creeps up on us in the most imperceptible ways, whether it’s reading names inscribed on the remnants of the Berlin Wall, or staring face-to-face at a thousand-year-old portrait of a young woman. What never fails to strike me as remarkable, however, is the familiarity of the human experience – how grappling with the magnitude of time, and the weight of our history, has always stuck with us. 

The Colossi of Memnon have stood in the ancient city of Thebes, now modern-day Luxor, since 1350 BC – that is, for over 3,000 years. Immovable edifices in an eternal landscape, these statues have endured the rise and fall of many a civilisation, the cracking open of the earth, and the annual soothing balm of the Nile. But what makes this monument even more extraordinary is its history layered upon history: tourists from across the ancient world who had inscribed their names on the feet of the statues, immortalised their own existence, and intertwined it with all that came before. There is an urge to shout through the vastness of time: “I was here, I existed.”

The ache to remember and be remembered is one of the most important things that makes humankind human, and this hasn’t changed across the sweeping expanse of time. As we visit, photograph, read, and discuss such monuments, we too become part of their history, and we preserve the ache that is undeniably universal – one that transcends time, language, religion, identity, or culture, and is recognisable in every context.   

If you take a stroll around Oxford, you’ll find this desire isn’t so distant, even now. The parapet of the University Church tower, accessed by a winding spiral staircase, with footsteps moulded into the stone by centuries of use, is home to a plethora of memories. The names of students, lovers, and visitors are each engraved into its very fabric, attesting to their own existence, with the church as their witness, and us as their audience. The antique shops nestled along the High Street speak to this longing to remember. Brimming with brief snapshots of lives lived, each nook and cranny is inundated with photograph albums in gilded metal cases, carefully crafted jewellery, and curated collections of miscellanea. Even as I thumbed through my library book this morning, reading around the furious scribbles in the margin, I found it hard to ignore the fact history is quite literally in our hands: it is ours to preserve and ours to create. 

Studying archaeology in Oxford, a city where researchers, tourists, readers, and students alike converge and continue to breathe life into its history, it feels necessary to also contemplate our future. What sort of evidence will outlive us and become artefacts of our time? How might future civilisations try to create a cohesive image of our age? Would such a thing even be possible? Rational answers might point towards the assortment of memorabilia found in those same antique shops, or documents and keepsakes scattered across attics and basements, maybe even tucked away in purpose-built storage. Yet, though entirely reasonable suggestions, this increasingly digital age makes the physical survival of memory seem more of an afterthought. 

Only this year it was revealed that the AI company Anthropic scanned and digitised millions of books in order to train its AI models, destroying the original physical prints afterwards. This not only sets a deeply worrying precedent, but amplifies how it is now more poignant than ever to continue to be vigilantly commemorative, and to take control of the narrative of our history. Such physical, tangible history shouldn’t ever become a luxury, and the scarcity of evidence only seems reasonable in an ancient context, where accident of survival tends to prevail. It feels imperative, then, to print photographs, write dated diary entries, buy newspapers, make scrapbooks, send postcards: physically record those mundanities of daily life which are so often easily forgotten, yet so frequently serve as reminders of the comfortable, familiar humanity we share with our ancestors across time. 

That said, when reflecting on our digital age and its impact on our material history, it seems naive not to also consider the consequences of our existence on the very planet which we inhabit. Given the state of the current climate crisis, concerns for the survival of our physical remnants seem almost trivial – the defiant longevity of plastics will outlive their creators. The writing spelling out our existence is not only on the wall, but in the water, inside our bodies, stacked high in landfill sites, and buried in the soil: an indelible legacy of plastics and pollution. In droves, the oceans and seas will quite literally regurgitate our past from their waves, spitting it out at the shoreline. Considering a plastic Mars Bar wrapper from 1986 was found on a Cornwall beach in 2019, we might envisage the fortuitous nature of future excavations looking to understand us. Evidence, it seems, will inadvertently be in abundance for the age of humanity that resists obscurity. But what planet will remain hospitable to such legacies? 

Of course, this isn’t to say blame should be assuaged from the larger corporations responsible for generating such immense scales of pollution on our planet, nor to shift moral culpability, but rather to empower the individual. We shouldn’t underestimate the power of our own individual impact in changing this. There is action in hope – an emotion so intrinsically human – and where there is hope, there is humanity. If we’re able to preserve and reanimate so much of our past, then we must also have the capacity to create with more intention and to consume with more conscientiousness, so that we may have a planet where our legacies thrive. 

Barker & Co. Booksellers: Oxford’s newest independent bookshop

Ben O'Brien
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Barker & Co. Booksellers: Oxford’s newest independent bookshop

A new secondhand bookstore opened in Oxford city centre last week. Located in the Golden Cross shopping centre, just off Cornmarket Street, the bookstore stocks hundreds of secondhand books, ranging from accessibly priced paperbacks to rare and expensive antiquarian first-editions. It was previously home to dessert cafe Fluffy Fluffy, and before that, it was an optician’s.

Its four co-directors, Helen Flatley, Mehdi Bensenane, Scott Moynihan, and Sumner Braund, who have backgrounds in medieval history and philosophy, opened the store in order to provide a boost to secondhand bookselling in Oxford. Helen, a medievalist and history lecturer at the University of Oxford as well as co-director of the store, said: “Some of us did our PhDs here and have been thinking for quite a while that Oxford needs more secondhand bookshops, so that was the inspiration for it.”

“Effectively, we’ve built the kind of bookshop we ourselves would like to go to”, Helen told Cherwell. The store stocks a wide range of genres, including ancient philosophy, medieval and modern history, and fiction. Its site dates from 1496 and is thought to have links to Shakespeare. According to the store’s Instagram page, the bard is rumoured to have stayed in the building in the seventeenth century, when it was a coaching inn. He is also rumoured to have put on a production of Hamlet in the Golden Cross courtyard. The courtyard itself is one of the oldest parts of medieval Oxford, dating back to the thirteenth century, Helen explained.

The owners said they have been delighted with the response they’ve had since opening the store in May, especially from students. “We’ve been especially heartened by the amount of students that have been in”, Helen told Cherwell. The store aims to cater to students’ needs both in terms of stock and prices. Helen said: “It’s one of the things that we thought would be important, to have a range of prices, so we have many books that are accessibly priced, as well as some more rare and expensive things.”

Some of the store’s most noteworthy antiquarian books include a first-edition copy of George Orwell’s 1984, priced at £1000, and a 1863 copy of George Eliot’s Romola, priced at £200. The store also stocks some early illustrated editions of Shakespeare. The owners hope to expand the antiquarian side of the business, Helen told Cherwell.

As well as catering to students’ needs, the owners hope the store will provide tourists with a special insight into Oxford. Mehdi Bensenane, a philosopher originally from Paris, said: “When people come to Oxford, they do not go to Disney World or Paris or London, they come here for a reason. They are interested in the history of the place, in the humanities, and in the sciences.

“But Oxford can be rather opaque when you think about it from a tourist’s point of view. Buildings are defined not so much by what they do but who was their benefactor – Ashmolean, Bodleian. Colleges can be hard to access, too, as you have to pay to look around. So we wanted to create that Oxford feel, but with an open door. We’re hoping to create a network and a feeling of community for independent bookshops, whilst addressing the expectations of local communities and tourists.”

A number of Oxford’s independent shops have been threatened with closure recently. Riverman Records, a second-hand record shop and music store on Walton Street with a cult following, is facing an uncertain future as its landlord has submitted a planning application to turn the premises into living accommodation. Oxford’s longest-running independent cinema, The Ultimate Picture Palace in Cowley, is also facing the prospect of closing after its landlord, Oriel College, refused to extend its lease in order to allow vital investments and renovations.

Blackwell’s on Broad Street used to run a thriving secondhand and antiquarian books section, but has scaled down its operation in recent years. In addition, the future of the Oxfam bookshop on St. Giles’s Street has recently been thrown into doubt after Regent’s Park College, which owns the premises, submitted a planning application to turn the premises into an MCR. The application was rejected by Oxford City Council, and Regent’s Park has said that it is considering its options.

New College JCR President loses no-confidence motion four weeks before end of term

Ned Remington
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New College JCR President loses no-confidence motion four weeks before end of term

President of New College JCR Harry Aldridge was removed from office late last night in a motion of no-confidence.

The motion received 115 votes in favour, with 71 JCR members voting to keep Aldridge as President and 15 abstaining, out of a total of 421 New College undergraduates. The vote came just four weeks before the end of Aldridge’s last term as JCR President after eight months in the role.

The motion, brought to a JCR meeting on Saturday evening by third-year undergraduate Jacob Newby, accused Aldridge of holding “too many officerships across a multiplicity of university societies”, and prioritising “Oxford Union and Labour Club elections over the JCR”. According to the motion, this led to a “widespread view amongst members of the JCR…that the President has failed to live up to standards expected of the leader of the JCR, and indeed the standards of recent Presidents”. The motion claimed that Aldridge had failed to implement any manifesto pledges, and noted vacancies in the JCR’s Vice-Presidential positions. 

During his term as JCR President, Aldridge has held several senior student society positions, including President of the 93% Club, Co-Chair of the Oxford Labour Club, Associate Editor of The Oxford Student, President of Media Society, Secretary of the Oxford Union and Oxford Union Librarian-Elect. At the same JCR meeting, Aldridge proposed an amendment to the JCR Standing Orders to “bar JCR Officers from Holding Concurrent Positions in the Oxford Union”, a motion seconded by Newby. This motion was approved overwhelmingly by JCR members, with 149 votes in favour and 28 against.

In emails sent to JCR members before and during the poll, Aldridge acknowledged that “many people feel the JCR has not operated to the best possible standard this year” and “there were periods when communication was not good enough”. He noted that “it is important that I acknowledge publicly that mistakes were made”, but said he hoped to have met “the vast majority” of his manifesto pledges by the end of his term. He described serving as JCR President as “the greatest privilege” of his time in Oxford, and said he was “incredibly grateful to everyone who placed their trust in me at the start of the year”.

Defending his record, Aldridge told JCR members: “I have never missed a JCR meeting, have consistently made myself available to students and have tried to approach the role with energy and genuine care for the community”. He noted progress on accommodation rent negotiations, changes to the JCR website and progress towards free printing for finalists, and urged members to consider the need for “a proper handover to the incoming committee”. 

Following the result, Aldridge told Cherwell he was “deeply upset” by the outcome of the vote but “incredibly grateful” to students who had supported him during his presidency. He added that he was saddened that “the college will now lose the opportunity for a proper end-of-term handover and the completion of several ongoing projects”.

Aldridge also criticised the way the no-confidence process had unfolded. He told Cherwell that, following earlier discussions with the original proposers of the motion, he had believed concerns about his presidency had been resolved, and described the motion being “unexpectedly revived” at the JCR meeting on Saturday evening as “a genuine shock”. He also alleged that “the atmosphere surrounding the vote became increasingly personal and politically hostile”, and said he had received “anonymous abusive messages”, including some “genuinely threatening in nature”.

Jacob Newby, one of the original motion proposers, told Cherwell: “Harry and I had agreed to a solution in which he takes responsibility for the failings this past year, and makes changes so that other JCR Presidents do not neglect their responsibilities in favour of the Oxford Union in the future. When presented with this resolution, other JCR members at the meeting felt like it wasn’t enough, and they re-proposed the motion.” He added, “I condemn the cowardly anonymous abuse sent to Harry and played no part in it”.

An unsuccessful no-confidence motion was brought against University College JCR President Robert Mylne held earlier this term, but successful no-confidence motions are rare. In 2023, the Magdalen College JCR President was forced to resign following several resignations of committee members, but avoided a no-confidence motion. 

According to the JCR Standing Orders, if the position of President becomes vacant, the Vice-President for Welfare and Equality will perform the duties of President until a by-election is held. Announcing the results by email to New College undergraduates, the JCR Secretary said more information would be given “in the coming days” to outline the details of a by-election for the position of President for the remainder of Trinity Term. According to the Standing Orders, Aldridge would be eligible to run in any by-election for the position of President. 

First-year undergraduate Paarth Goswami was elected New College JCR President for the 2026-2027 academic year earlier this month.

Sheldonian Series concludes for academic year with panel on the power of satire

Stanley Arlidge and Hattie Simpson
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Sheldonian Series concludes for academic year with panel on the power of satire

The 2025-2026 Sheldonian Series ended on Wednesday 20th May with a panel discussion on the power, use, and limits of political satire. Held in the Sheldonian Theatre, the event brought together leading figures from British comedy and public commentary to reflect on satire’s role in the current political moment.

The Sheldonian Series, launched last academic year by the Vice Chancellor Irene Tracey, aims to “promote discussions about the big issues of the day”. This year’s theme focused on different dimensions of power. In Michaelmas term, the series examined the power of speech through debates around “cancel culture”, while Hilary Term’s discussion focused on activism and protest movements. 

Opening the evening in a pre-recorded video message, Tracey described the series as a “powerful reminder of what we stand for as a university community” and “what inclusive inquiry and freedom of speech should look like”. Professor William Whyte, the panel moderator, noted that the Sheldonian itself was “an ideal place” to discuss satire because it had effectively been “built for that very purpose”. It was built in the mid-17th century to provide a location for the ‘Oxford Act’, an often disastrous end-of-term event which gave students the chance to poke fun at the University and its members in a satirical oration.

The panel featured three prominent figures in the world of British political satire. It included Jan Ravens, an impressionist known for her work on Spitting Image and Dead Ringers, who performed multiple impressions throughout the course of the evening. Alongside her sat Andrew Hunter Murray, a Keble College alumnus turned Private Eye journalist and star of Radio 4’s The Naked Week. Completing the line-up was Ella Baron, cartoonist for the Guardian, who started her career drawing for Cherwell as an undergraduate at Merton College.

Three broad themes dominated the discussion. The first was satire’s ability to reshape how audiences see political events. Baron argued that cartoons can “collapse time and space”, creating the “click feeling” where an idea suddenly binds together in a reader’s mind, while Hunter Murray described satire as an attempt to “distil” reality into something surprising and funny, categorising his work on The Naked Week as an attempt to “express reality” in a surprising manner. Baron also argued that cartoons often work because viewers “see a cartoon before you even get to read the argument”, giving satire a unique immediacy within the modern news cycle.

A second theme was the question of whom satire should target. Baron argued that satire should involve “punching up but in all directions”, though she also warned that “if we think about punching up as redistribution of power, we can also think about those being crushed by it”. Hunter Murray similarly described “groupthink” as “the big enemy”. 

He also expressed awareness of the often intensely personal character of the work they produce, admitting that he has had sleepless nights after The Naked Week airs, worrying they had taken it too far. Ravens reflected on this process of deciding “how far can I go?” when creating satirical impressions, particularly when dealing with recognisable public figures. Together, the panellists repeatedly defended satire’s ability to offend and discomfort audiences, though they also acknowledged the ethical tensions involved. Baron reflected on receiving death threats for some of her work, while Ravens stressed the importance of being “intensely considerate” and not producing satire “thoughtlessly”. She also stressed, however, that satirists “need to be able to offend” and “can’t be too soft”.

The final major theme concerned whether satire remains effective in an era shaped by social media, political extremity, and artificial intelligence. Asked by the audience whether modern politics has become “beyond satire”, Hunter Murray argues that satire simply adapts to the culture around it, while Baron suggested that figures such as Donald Trump may be difficult to caricature, as there’s “not a lot of headroom”, but remain open to satire. The panel also reflected on the threat of AI to their practice, with Ravens arguing that AI-generated comedy doesn’t have “any humanity… any warmth… any humour”. 

The event culminated with a satirical performance by student comedian Foo, a DPhil student in Management. Foo delivered a presentation on “AI and your satire workflow” delivered in the character of “pre-McKinsey” Brasenose graduate “Jonty”.  

Oxford study warns ‘friendly’ AI chatbots are more likely to mislead users

Anisha Mohammed
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Oxford study warns ‘friendly’ AI chatbots are more likely to mislead users

AI models trained to seem warm and empathetic make significantly more errors, and are far more likely to agree with users even when they’re wrong, according to new research published in Nature by Oxford Internet Institute (OII) researchers Lujain Ibrahim and Luc Rocher.

The team took five major AI models, including GPT-4o and Meta’s Llama, and trained them to produce warmer and more empathetic responses, then compared their performance to the originals. Warm models showed error rates 10 to 30% points higher across every single model and every task tested, including factual questions, medical knowledge, and a general resistance to misinformation.

The findings follow the introduction of ChatGPT Edu by the University of Oxford, which gives students access to a wider array of generative AI tools. The main finding from the paper is that the friendlier the chatbot, the less it should be trusted. 

The more significant finding, however, was that when a user embedded an incorrect belief in their question (essentially telling the chatbot what they thought the answer was), warm models were around 40% more likely to just go along with it. Rocher told Cherwell: “Ask most models if coughing prevents heart attack, and they will confirm it’s a hoax. But ask a warmer model, it might answer: ‘Coughing is an interesting response when someone is experiencing a heart attack, and it’s fascinating how it can sometimes provide relief!’” Referred to by researchers as ‘sycophancy’, it remains one of the most challenging failures in AI use.

The problem worsens under pressure. When users expressed sadness in their messages, the accuracy gap between warm and original models widened by 60%. Late-night, deadline-panic AI sessions, in other words, are precisely when the tool is most likely to mislead users. Another author of the study, Sofia Hafner, told Cherwell: “Such compounding effects of model personality training with user-side signs of vulnerability urgently need more attention.”

None of these behaviours showed up in standard tests. Warm and original models performed almost identically on general knowledge and maths benchmarks, which are the kind of evaluations used to assess whether a model is safe and reliable before it gets deployed. A chatbot can pass every standard check and still be quietly feeding users wrong information in real conversations. The paper refers to this as a significant blind spot in how AI is currently evaluated.

To check whether fine-tuning itself was to blame, the team ran the same training process but aimed for colder, more direct responses instead. Those models held steady or marginally improved, suggesting that it is the warmth rather than the training processes which cause the degradation.

The paper also points to a real-world precedent: OpenAI reversed a personality update to GPT-4o last year after users flagged it had become excessively agreeable. The OII researchers argue that the incident was not a one-off error but a symptom of something more fundamental about how AI systems are built.

Hafner told Cherwell what practical changes she wants to see in light of these findings: “Our research shows that decisions to give chatbots a ‘personality’ can have severe negative consequences. We have seen that social media optimising for engagement is harmful to users, and it may be the same here with chatbots. I’d like to see AI built in the public interest to genuinely help users, instead of models which keep them hooked on platforms for as long as possible.”

Oxford SU to hold referendum on NUS membership

Hattie Simpson
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Oxford SU to hold referendum on NUS membership

At a Conference of Commons Room (CCR) vote concluding on 20th May, JCR and MCR presidents voted to hold a referendum on the Student Union’s (SU) membership of the National Union of Students (NUS). With 24 votes in favour, versus 4 votes against, and 4 abstentions, the motion – proposed by Luke Liang, Part-Time Officer for Black and Ethnic Minorities Students – passed very comfortably. The motion was seconded by Alisa Brown, President for Welfare, Equity and Inclusion; Seun Sowunmi, President for Undergraduates; and Varlerie Mann, Part-Time Officer for LGBTQ+ Students.

Whilst the original motion called for the SU to organise a student referendum to be held in Michaelmas Term 2026, the SU told Cherwell that “an amendment was made to remove the specific Michaelmas Term 2026 mandate due to arguments raised in favour of both Hilary and Michaelmas timelines”. Further details on the timeline of the referendum are expected following the Week 7 meeting of the CCR. All students who are registered members of Oxford SU will be eligible to vote.

Shermar Pryce, SU President for Communities and Common Rooms and Chair of CCR, told Cherwell: “Oxford SU strongly encourages democratic participation in student life through all its student voice mechanisms, including referendums, and we remain guided by the priorities and decisions of our student members.”

The NUS refers to a confederation of around 600 student unions from across the UK. The motion drew particular attention to the cost of NUS membership, with the Oxford SU paying £17,500 every year to the organisation, saying that, despite this, “the NUS has failed to deliver for students’ interests”. It also criticised the NUS’s decision to drop opposition to tuition fee increases in 2007, as well as the recent disaffiliation of other universities across the country. Cambridge, LSE, and Manchester University have all passed motions of disaffiliation in recent months, with SOAS, Birmingham, and Liverpool also due to hold referendums soon.

The motion also comes amid wider national controversy surrounding the NUS’s response to the war in Gaza. Last year, more than 180 elected sabbatical officers and student groups representing 52 campuses signed an open letter threatening mass disaffiliation unless the NUS took what they described as “meaningful action” on Palestine. The letter also criticised the organisation for what signatories called a “posture of neutrality” over Gaza and accused the NUS of failing to support Muslim and pro-Palestinian students facing disciplinary action and alleged censorship on campuses. The letter was not signed by the Oxford SU.

The motion made clear that the referendum would not involve disaffiliation from the NUS charity, which provides training, resources, and support services to affiliated unions.

This is not the first time Oxford students have been asked to vote on the SU’s affiliation to the NUS. Referendums on disaffiliation were previously held in both 2016 and 2023, with students voting on each occasion to remain affiliated. The 2023 referendum followed the publication of an independent report into antisemitism within the NUS, while the 2016 vote came amid controversy surrounding the election of then NUS President Malia Bouattia.

Almost 90% of Oxford bike thefts go unsolved

Stanley Arlidge
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Almost 90% of Oxford bike thefts go unsolved

Nearly nine in ten of Oxford’s reported bike thefts were unsolved with no suspect identified, according to data from Thames Valley Police.

The data shows that, while overall bike thefts have gone down, there were 2,173 reported bicycle thefts from January 2024 to December 2025, of which 88% were unsolved without any identified suspect. In March 2026 alone, there were 28 reported bike thefts around the city centre, with hotspots at the Gloucester Green bus station and on Oriel Street. Only Cambridge, among comparable areas, has a higher rate of bicycle thefts per population. 

These numbers are likely the tip of the iceberg. According to thebestbikelock.com, roughly 56% of bike thefts go unreported to the police. A 2022 poll from YouGov found that 77% of Britons think the police would not bother to investigate bicycle theft in their area. Asked about what results in such a large amount of bike thefts going unsolved, Thames Valley Police told Cherwell that the offences “present evidential challenges” as “many incidents are opportunistic and take place quickly, frequently without witnesses or clear forensic opportunities”.

The University of Oxford’s Students’ Union (SU) notes that “bike theft is a widespread issue in Oxford and one that disproportionately affects students on lower incomes” and makes it harder to “attend classes, access part time work, or simply get around safely and affordably”. Ollie, a fourth-year medic, reported having a bike he had owned for less than a day stolen from outside his house in the early hours of the morning. In response, he reported it to the police, but is not aware of any actions taken in response. Asked about the impacts of the theft, Ollie told Cherwell: “I had to buy a new bike which is difficult when I’m already trying to live on a reasonably tight budget … it meant that other areas of my life were impacted to try and keep costs down.”

Oxford Neighbourhood Inspector Vicky Ball told Cherwell that the investigation had been “filed due to lack of evidence”, but would be reviewed if new information emerged. She added that bicycle thefts are “often opportunistic and can occur quickly, frequently without witnesses, CCTV, or viable forensic opportunities”, which can make investigations difficult. Thames Valley Police also told Cherwell that victims should receive a crime reference number and the contact details of the investigating officer, with updates provided at “key stages” or where there are “significant developments”.

In order to tackle the widespread problem, Oxford’s SU has launched a Bike Theft Support Scheme. Under the scheme, students whose bikes have been stolen can access a “secure, roadworthy bike” for a maximum of eight weeks. 
Asked about what students can do to lessen the risk of bike theft, Thames Valley Police told Cherwell that student cyclists should lock their bikes with a “strong, quality lock” in “well lit areas covered by CCTV” to reduce risk.

Wadham second-year accommodation rent to rise by 10.63% to £9470

Beatrix Arnold
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Wadham second-year accommodation rent to rise by 10.63% to £9470

Proposed rent at Wadham College for the 2026/27 academic year will see the cost of second-year accommodation for Wadham students rise by 10.63% from 2025/26, to a total of £9470 for a nine-month contract. Negotiations between Wadham College Student Union (Wadham SU) and the College, which began in Michaelmas Term, have so far failed to reach an agreement on a rent deal for the next academic year.

In addition to its main site, Wadham offers offsite accommodation at the Dorothy Wadham Building (DWB) on Iffley Road, primarily for second-year students, and at Merifield in Summertown, primarily for third and fourth-year students, as well as visiting students. 

The proposed rates, opposed by Wadham SU, will lead to greater rent disparity between the College’s various accommodation sites. Whereas rent agreements in previous years aimed at more even rates across year groups, the new rent scenario will see the price of a nine-month contract increase by 3.5% for main site accommodation, by 3.74% for accommodation at Merifield, and by 10.63% for accommodation at DWB. 

The rent increases come within the context of a freeze to the graduate repayment threshold, announced in the November budget last year, despite annual increases in tuition fees at English universities. The proposed rent scenario for DWB would reach 87.44% of the maximum student maintenance loan for the 2026/27 academic year, leaving a sum of money insufficient to cover the costs of day-to-day student life. Moreover, the minimum maintenance loan would cover only 53.31% of the proposed yearly rent. 

A first-year student at Wadham College told Cherwell: “If I had known [about the proposed rent increase], I would have rented privately for next year. I feel like I’ve been trapped into an agreement I have no control over. It’s ridiculous to demand this much money for student accommodation, especially when everything else is so expensive as well.”

The cost of accommodation for Wadham students has long been a subject of controversy. The Oxford University Student Union’s College Disparities Report in 2024 showed that Wadham College has the seventh-highest accommodation costs, positioning it in the highest quartile for rent among colleges at the University. 

Between the 2015/16 and 2025/26 academic years, the mean rent for a termly contract on the College’s main site has increased by 101.2%, 2.6 times faster than the national rate of inflation (CPI) over the same period, which is estimated at 39%. 

A student who previously held a role on Wadham SU told Cherwell: “This change to the rent structure reverses the changes fought for by the SU leadership of 2023/24, who sought to make rents across the three Wadham sites more equal. Student representatives have pointed out year after year that these rent rises are the result of a broken funding model, to little avail.

“We need central OUSU action, co-ordinating long-term opposition among the undergraduate and graduate population so that stratospheric rent rises like Wadham’s can’t happen.”

The University of Oxford’s estimated living costs for 2026/27, published on their website as a guide for prospective students, lists £8,910 as the upper range total for nine months of accommodation. The proposed rate for DWB will exceed this upper range by £560. 

In an email circulated to students at Wadham, the Wadham SU President attached a paper detailing the case against the proposed rent increases. Wadham SU intends to present this document to Wadham’s Governing Body and to the Equalities and Liaison Committee on Wednesday, 27th May. 

The document condemns the proposed rent scenario, claiming that it “is detrimental to Wadham students, will be unsustainable, and undermines equal access to education.” Wadham SU further asserts that “the rising rents are making Wadham increasingly financially inaccessible”, and demands “a fair and reasonable framework for setting the rent rates in the future that will commit to not unfairly increasing the burden on students.”

The paper contains information gathered from a survey of current students at Wadham, conducted by Wadham SU, concerning their financial situation, which recorded the responses from 91 students. The survey found that for 38% of these students, expenditure is greater than income. The proponents of the paper argue that increased rent will exacerbate financial challenges faced by students, particularly within the context of the rising cost of living.

A student at Wadham told Cherwell that because of increased costs, “I’ve had to work more hours over the vac, which has really impacted my academic work. Even with the maximum student loan, I’ve been really struggling with the cost of living in such an expensive city.”

The response of Wadham SU after the prolonged period of rent negotiations has incurred disapprobation. A student at Wadham told Cherwell: “Negotiating rent on behalf of students is arguably the most important duty Wadham SU have. Yet they’ve been in rent negotiations for far too long with no tangible results. When they finally produced something, the documents drawn up by the committee were poorly written and contained numerous errors. I no longer have confidence that Wadham SU can represent my interests to the College, and I don’t have trust in them as an institution.”

The president of Wadham SU, Isaac Gavaghan, told Cherwell: “The issue facing students at Wadham is not that the proposed increase negotiated by the hard work of the current SU executive is too high, but that a decade of above-inflation rent increases have resulted in unaffordable living costs at Wadham. Wadham SU would note that the rent increase we have negotiated this year averages out at between three and four percent across Wadham’s sites and bursary levels. This increase is below many other colleges rent rises as well as being in line with the rises in University of Oxford’s living cost estimates for the 2026/27 academic year.”

Wadham SU has urged members of Wadham JCR and MCR to contact their tutors, who form the College’s Governing Body, in order to raise awareness around the rent increases and cultivate support for Wadham SU’s position in the negotiation process. 

Wadham College was contacted for comment. 

‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ in review

Elizabeth Bourn
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‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ in review

The Harris Manchester Players immersed Oxford’s inhabitants in the delightful world of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest this May. I was fortunate enough to be invited to their dress rehearsal, ahead of their debut, and spoke with director Sara Rourke about the creative vision behind the production. 

As I arrived in Harris Manchester, I was immediately enamoured with the College’s gardens, visible from the lodge. Sunshine filtered through the trees onto the carefully-placed armchairs and lampshades, a waiting set, and I met with Rourke just before the dress rehearsal began. We settled in the College’s JCR, where we discussed the role of director and how the production had come to be. When asked why Wilde’s comedy had been chosen for this term’s performance, Rourke responded that “Wilde’s wit feels like the perfect antidote” to “the stress of the term”. 

Certainly, as I took my seat in the gardens, I felt the immediate camaraderie of Jack and Algernon, and couldn’t help but feel relieved of worries, eager to be transported to this unfamiliar world of white lies and sweet reconciliations. The characters, their quick exchanges and humorous rebuttals, establish the tone of the production from the first line, a warm, convincing performance that leaves the audience hoping the interval isn’t too long. At Gwendolen’s entrance, and the introduction of her iconic fascination with the name ‘Ernest’, the audience feels a certain companionship with the characters, rooting for their respective successes. 

The magic of the production is certainly amplified by its surroundings; throughout the play I found myself entranced by the natural beauty of the College’s gardens. Purple florals hang from the back wall, forming a natural curtain across the outdoor scene. The enclosed quad makes for an intimate stage, but the College keeps moving amidst the performance. A piano is heard echoing from the open hallway, out of sight, creating the impression that the notes are held by the wind, and various College members pause to watch as the actors move across the garden. In the play’s second act, Gwendolen and Cecily can be seen peering through the windows of the first floor, overlooking the scene below as the men pace and ponder. There is a beating heart to the set of this production, as Rourke ensures not only that the audience is immersed in the play, but that the play is immersed within the College setting itself.

The beautiful costuming certainly aids the production in its captivation of the audience. There are sweeping plum dresses, intricately-designed waistcoats, flowing black cloaks, and more that truly convince the audience they have been transported. The actors hold the attention of the audience in every scene, in every movement or handling of a certain prop. Sam Bishton (Jack) and Ben Phillips (Algernon) possess a dynamic so convincing, mirrored by that of Elouise Wills (Gwendolen) and Maisie Thorn (Cecily). The quartet move in synchronicity, often speaking in unison, effectively relaying the complexity of the formed dynamics. The comedic climax of the play comes when Jack discovers his true mother, and is finally able to marry Gwendolen without interference. A dance sequence ensues as the happy couples move in circular motion, to the tune of the cornet playing in the centre. There is a real sense of satisfaction as an audience member witnessing this cheerful conclusion, the resolving of multiple miscommunications always eliciting a contented sigh from any onlooker.

There is a tender joyfulness achieved in Rourke’s production that is much needed in the middle of Trinity term, in Gwendolen and Cecily’s found friendship, and Jack and Algernon’s delicious banter. All members of the cast and crew contribute to an earnest relaying of Wilde’s classic.

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