Sunday 29th June 2025
Blog Page 416

Professor Paul Ewart wins age discrimination case against university

Sofie Jones
-
0
Professor Paul Ewart wins age discrimination case against university

The University of Oxford discriminated against professor of physics Paul Ewart on the basis of age, after failing to renew his contract in 2017, according to an Employment Tribunal ruling last November. Ewart re-joined the faculty this fall under the orders of a remedy judgement issued earlier this month.

Ewart, the former head of atomic and laser physics at the university, was awarded almost £30,000 in compensation and re-employed as a senior lecturer. He will also retroactively receive the salary he would have been paid from Oct. 1, 2017 to Sept. 30th, 2020.

“It has never been a matter of money, it’s a matter of allowing people the dignity of continuing employment and providing worthwhile work in their life,” Ewart told a BBC reporter last week.

Ewart, who is now 72, always planned to retire next September, but was forced out by the university before turning 70. As is outlined in the court decision, he will still retire in 2021 as planned but will work in the full capacity of his position until then.

While the ruling dictates that Ewart was the victim of age discrimination, it does not require the university to change their controversial Employer Justified Retirement Age (EJRA) policy, which forces all employees at grade 8 or higher to retire before their 69th birthday. The policy, according to the University’s HR website, is meant to “enable inter-generational fairness, improvements in diversity, and succession planning.”

The university has received significant criticism about the policy and its ineffectiveness in promoting the hiring of younger, more diverse faculty members. Although the tribunal did not require the university to change its policy, it did dictate that it had failed to properly justify the forced retirement age.

While Ewart is now re-employed, he plans to continue to pursue legal action in hopes of changing the university’s broader policy.

“It’s important for others that I carry this battle on,” he said, in an interview with the Belfast Telegraph. “I really wasn’t doing it just for me. I’ve got what I wanted but I’m doing it for some of my colleagues who are engaged in very important work and should have the lawful right to keep working until they choose to retire.”

The University did not respond to Cherwell’s request for comment.

Image Credit: D.S. Pugh. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.

Intimations of Closeness: what might a distanced theatre look like?

George Rushton
-
0
Intimations of Closeness: what might a distanced theatre look like?

It would be a dramatic understatement to say that Covid-19 has been disruptive for the United Kingdom’s creative industry – but live drama is exactly what’s in short supply at the moment. Theatre workers specifically have seen job stability disintegrate: many will suffer from the ending of the furlough scheme this month before theatres have actually fully reopened. And that’s if they do reopen, as 70 per cent of theatres are facing permanent closure.

Oxford student theatre is of course not exempt from the government restrictions, which necessitate a distanced cast and crew at all times during the production process, and no audiences for indoor performance. Were we in ordinary times, the shows scheduled for this term could be put on in a matter of two weeks.  

There had been some outdoor productions planned, but as a result of more recent restrictions, most if not all of these have unfortunately been cancelled. Indoor performances are in the works, though, and will be filmed with the intention of online distribution. These include, among others, original student comedies such as Wadham student Alison Hall’s V-Card, and Full-Grown, by Queens’ Bella Cooper-Brown, recorded at the Burton Taylor Studio and the Keble O’Reilly respectively. My own play, The Future Lasts a Long Time, is set to be recorded at the Burton Taylor Studio – I think. 

From a practical point of view, my crew and I are ultimately not sure how the final performance is going to look. Here’s what we know: the actors will perform two metres apart from one another, for example, and we certainly won’t have an audience. But there does remain a significant amount unknown to us. The Burton Taylor haven’t been able to confirm yet when we will be able to record—and Covid might yet render even this use of an indoor space impossible. 

With so many unknowns, contingency plans are a must, a fact I’m sure the other productions are also facing up to. The BT might close their doors, which would send us outside. An outdoor recording would mean wet weather insurance, and of course a new venue. But one focus of this play as I had originally conceived it was to explore how literal theatre space can analogise the inner emotional life of a character— so how best to translate that to somewhere outside?

The answer is that we don’t know yet. A marquee, a cloister…an open field? The Mound? Somewhere none of us have thought of? (Suggestions are welcome.) This increasingly familiar sense of uncertainty definitely makes our task a more challenging one. But it also unfolds a web of new possibilities. 

For background: the plot revolves around Evie Brightly, a microbiologist working on a cure for Insomnia, a pandemic preventing victims from falling asleep. When her husband succeeds in opening a portal to another dimension, and subsequently shows symptoms of the fatal disease, she resolves to go through it. She risks losing her final days with him for the chance of finding a cure in the unknown.  

As always, necessity mothers invention, and constraints are strangely freeing. These necessary constraints are stranger than normal, it’s true, but the fundamentals are the same: you must work with what you have. The student comedies need to try to not be funny ‘in spite of’ Covid restrictions, but, somehow, because of them. And as for Future, though I had initially bemoaned the current state of things as an environment which would shackle creativity, it might yet prove a blessing. 

Writing it this summer, one focus was the theatricality of it all: the play was designed to work both halves of the stage simultaneously, with each half representing one of the two dimensions. I wanted to work on a philosophy of total engagement of the viewer, by playing on their emotions, intellect, and sense of presence, of ‘being in the theatre’, all at once.

One thing we know is that it won’t quite be live anymore. And we won’t have the ‘presence’ of the audience to play on: there are no sets of eyes for a character to almost meet as they speak. The audience is funnelled into a single point of view. Those eyes concentrate into the single eye of the camera. 

A major thread running through the play is time, and our flawed perception of it. In moments of intense emotion it can seem to dilate like a pupil. Being in love can seem to halt it, as when Athene lengthens the night for Odysseus and Penelope’s long-awaited reunion; but grieving the absence of the person you love can stretch it miserably. 

The streamed performance, as opposed to the one experienced in the theatre, is live, yet not; it’s there in front of you, yet not. I hope to mix certain qualities intrinsic to theatre – accidents of speech, errors in movement, the rush of hoping not to get it wrong – with the magic of post-production, where, for instance, we can adapt sound to screen, and dictate which ear you hear it through. We can pluck subtitles from bookshelves on stage; we can darken clouds, and give booming qualities to voices. 

The depth of theatre is resolved into the flatness of a screen, which at times looks like a page to be read; the characters become moving words, writing themselves in front of you. Just as the portal in the play is literally a mirror which the characters walk through, when the monitor (a word which comes from the Latin ‘to warn’) is turned off, the screen too becomes a Black Mirror. In some strange sense, you are watching yourself watching the play. 

The actors are physically separate from one another, but by being so might intimate more strongly the possibility of closeness. The outside space might well evoke the inside, doing a better job of it than the inside might have done for itself. ‘Liveness’ in the theatre involves introducing accident, which goes hand in hand with creativity – but by producing in a time like this, I think more than enough things will happen by accident to compensate. 

The Future Lasts A Long Time is expected to premiere at the BT Studio in mid-November.

Oxford’s Eyesores: Brutalism’s Place among the Dreaming Spires

Caitriona Dowden
-
0
Oxford’s Eyesores: Brutalism’s Place among the Dreaming Spires

For most, to think of Oxford is to think of its historic architecture, from the Anglo Saxon Tower of St. Michael and Christchurch’s twelfth century cathedral, to the neo-classical buildings of the Victorian era. The city centre has retained an unusually consistent aesthetic, largely thanks to the limestone favoured by centuries of architects. It has served as a backdrop for ‘Harry Potter’, ‘His Dark Materials’, and ‘Brideshead Revisited’; for a lot of prospective students, the idea of studying in ‘the Hogwarts Library’ (the Duke Humphrey’s) is no small part of the university’s appeal.

But the dreaming spires are only one side of the story. They might dominate the skyline, along with the dome of the Radcliffe Camera and the Magdalen bell tower, but the concrete Denys Wilkinson building is just as striking, and many newer colleges are more evocative of Soviet apartment blocks than the courtyards and cloisters of a fictional wizarding school. Often, buildings that don’t conform to the city’s historical aesthetic are decried as ‘eyesores’. At best, they are treated as functional, but unfortunate. They rarely appear on prospectuses or postcards, with the oldest, most typically picturesque buildings tending to take centre stage.

Most colleges have an ‘ugly’ quad built during the 1960s or 70s, tucked out of sight, and tourists are often unaware that the Bodleian Library complex includes the brutalist EFL as well as the Radcliffe Camera and Old Bod. For those who live in North Oxford, Margery Fry and Elizabeth Nuffield House (the concrete accommodation block overlooking Little Clarendon Street) is as much a part of their surroundings as Wellington Square, or St. John’s College. Yet the description of the block on Somerville’s website is almost apologetic: ‘As for the architecture, well, it was the 1960’s, everyone was doing it!’.

The city’s ‘eyesores’ are hardly the product of thoughtless design. St. Catherine’s College, opened in 1962, was the brainchild of Danish architect, Arne Jacobson. He designed not only the building, but the furniture, lampshades, and even the cutlery, guided by the principle that everything should be both highly functional, and aesthetically pleasing. The result is a building that captures the spirit of an Oxford college in an innovative way, using modern materials and a more open plan layout than is typical of older institutions. The quad was designed so as to integrate the building with its environment, and the grounds were declared a Registered Garden in 1994. Jacobson’s decision to build a college without surrounding walls is indicative of the level of consideration that informed his design. According to the architect, when visiting the city, he noticed that the students’ gowns were often in tatters. When he asked why, they explained that they had to climb over the college walls when they came back late, and that the gowns were useful for covering the glass shards protruding from them. St. Catherine’s might not be as ostentatious as medieval colleges that teem with gargoyles and boast ornate facades, but it is certainly not antithetical to the principle that academic institutions ought to be aesthetically inspiring.  

Perhaps it is this contrast that makes Oxford’s concrete structures such a talking point, because they are hardly unique to the city. Across the UK, the need to repair damage caused by the Blitz gave rise to rapid rebuilding efforts during the 1950s, and concrete was a practical choice: cheap, relatively durable, and easily cast into shape. Brutalist structures are far more prevalent in areas that were more heavily bombed, such as London, Manchester, and Southampton. Their popularity declined from the mid-1970s onwards, with brutalism coming to be seen as a mark of poor taste. Concrete ages poorly, showing water damage and decay, and is often associated with the perceived deprivation and hardship of Soviet Europe. Certainly, brutalism often went hand in hand with socialist ideology, and proliferated in Yugoslavia, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and the USSR. It was considered a means of ensuring good living conditions for all at minimal cost. In the capitalist West, ‘communist’ has often been a sufficiently pejorative adjective to consign the brutalist movement to the category of failed architectural experiments.

Often these criticisms are misplaced, resting on the assumption that because brutalist buildings are functional, they are the result of austere pragmatism as opposed to more elaborate architectural styles that embody lofty ideals. But it is inaccurate to characterise the concrete landscapes of the 1950-80s as an elevation of the practical over the aesthetic. The intellectual climate that gave rise to brutalism was inherently utopian and ideological. The name itself is somewhat misleading, suggesting violent or austere connotations, when it is in fact derived from ‘béton brut’, a French term for raw concrete. It was coined by the critic Reyner Banham to describe the movement of modernist architects such as Le Corbusier and Alison and Peter Smithson, who sought to create simple buildings without unnecessary ornamentation, characterised by geometric shapes, sharp lines, and modular design. Functionalism was certainly a driving force; brutalist buildings first and foremost fulfilled their purpose. But brutalism also espoused positive values; central to the movement was the idea that buildings should honestly express their materials. This was a conscious rejection of styles considered bourgeoise and associated with earlier forms of government, in-keeping with the post-war emphasis on social welfare, cooperation, and equality.

Perhaps it is unsurprising, then, that brutalism is seeing a revival. There are 836k Instagram posts tagged ‘#brutalism’, and photography books such as Christopher Herwig’s ‘Soviet Bus Stops’ have garnered considerable attention. With the economic downturn of 2008, and the political disillusionment of young people in the wake of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the appeal of brutalist idealism is understandable. With growing appreciation for the buildings described by Prince Charles as ‘piles of concrete’ will Oxford’s ‘eyesores’ come to be seen as integral to its architectural wealth, rather than antithetical to it? Ought we to treat the Denys Wilkinson building and St. Catherine’s College as a celebrated chapter in Oxford’s aesthetic history, or as evidence of a period better forgotten?

The challenge of how to build in a city so saturated with history is not a new one, and the brutalists of the 1960s were not the first to face criticism for altering Oxford’s urban landscape. The Oxford Movement emerged in the 19th century, amongst members of the Church of England whose ideology would eventually develop into Anglo-Catholicism, and made a decisive mark on Oxford’s skyline. It originated at Oriel College, where a group of young fellows including John Henry Newman and William Palmer attached themselves to the older John Keble. They advocated a revival of ‘catholic’ thought and practice, railing against the idea that state ought to have supremacy over the Church in ecclesiastical matters. This was accompanied by a renewed interest in medieval social structures and consequently, its architecture. In the Cambridge Camden Society’s journal, ‘The Ecclesiologist’, John Mason Neale argued that Churches should only be built in the Gothic style, because it reflected the religious priorities of striving for heaven through prayer, sacrament, and the Christian virtues. These ideas were influential, and gothic revivalism became increasingly popular during the nineteenth century. Pusey House Chapel and St. Barnabas Church exemplify the style, using modern materials to imitate the design of medieval churches. Perhaps the most ambitious attempt to express the Oxford Movement’s ideology through architecture is Keble College, built during the 1870s in memory of the eponymous churchman. Its architect, William Butterfield, was closely associated with the movement. In the words of William Whyte, his design sought ‘to make visible the dogmas and creeds of the Catholic Church’. The chapel is particularly impressive, with its high, vaulted ceiling evoking the twelfth and thirteenth century churches designed to inspire awe and elevate the soul. Whereas brutalism abhors unnecessary decoration, proponents of gothic architecture, such as Abbot Suger (1091-1151), believed that contemplating material beauty allowed the mind to ascend, and apprehend divine truths.

However, Butterfield had more in common with his brutalist successors than the elaborate décor of Keble College might suggest. Students have mocked the building for looking like a lasagne, because its redbrick exterior is punctuated by stripes of yellow and blue. This was a controversial choice at the time. Supposedly, when the new college was unveiled, it was so hated that students at St. John’s founded ‘The Destroy Keble Society’, with the aim of demolishing it one brick at a time. The material had partly been chosen because it was cheaper than stone, but Butterfield was also driven by idealism: Keble was admirable because it was honest, and truthful, a guiding principle of neo-Gothic architecture. Rather than adding an ornate façade, he had designed a building whose decorations were integral to its structure. The brick was self-ornamenting, and its beauty was not used to hide its structure. At the centre of gothic revivalism was a conflation of ethics and aesthetics characteristic of medieval thought: the truth of a building was inherently beautiful. The college also shared many of the social principles embodied by brutalist architecture: it was built as cheaply as possible so that those from poorer backgrounds could attend, and the large dining hall was a reaction against the habits of aristocratic students who ate in their rooms, attended to by servants. Criticism partly arose from elitist opposition to that vision, and one wonders if similar attitudes are responsible for some of the 21st-century complaints about 1960s architecture. Both celebrating the middle ages and signalling reform, Keble College evoked both tradition and progress.

This reflects a tension within academia itself. While scholarship seeks to further knowledge, institutions such as Oxford are often accused of being out of touch. The university has its roots in a curriculum that exalted the authority of early church fathers, ancient philosophers and mathematicians. Whilst a lot has changed since the middle ages, the debate about the role of the canon in academia is ongoing, and sometimes controversial, with students questioning the Western-centric reading lists that are often the default. The Theology faculty changed its name to ‘The Faculty of Theology and Religion’ in 2012, to reflect a more global approach, and there is ongoing discussion in the Philosophy Faculty as to whether an historical or conceptual approach ought to be taught. Students wear archaic academic garb (sub-fusc) to exams, but it has been gender neutral since 2012, again reflecting a reverence for tradition tempered by a desire to evolve with the times.

Unlike the Oxford Movement and its architecture, brutalism does not attempt to reconcile those forces. Whilst Butterfield sought to enjoin medieval values with reforming ideals, brutalism unapologetically looks forwards, celebrating the new and disregarding the old. It is sometimes associated with futurism, an early twentieth-century movement that emerged in Italy, although while brutalism is underpinned by socialist values, the latter came to ally itself with fascism. The futurists celebrated invention and progress, and favoured art and architecture that expressed movement.  In his provocative 1909 Futurist Manifesto, F.T. Marinetti called for the destruction of everything old, including museums and libraries, in favour of industrial landscapes. Rather than seeking to build a lasting legacy, the futurists envisaged their successors following suit, destroying what had come before them in pursuit of progress. There was certainly a darker side to the movement’s idealism, with its celebration of violence and struggle as essential for development. Whilst the brutalists embraced these principles of progress, they emphasised the importance of humane social structures. In light of recent discourse surrounding the removal of statues celebrating Britain’s colonial past, and calls to acknowledge that so much of Oxford’s iconic architecture has profited from the oppression of the colonised, the appeal of a movement such as brutalism, that refuses to glorify its predecessors, is understandable.

The widespread disdain for both Keble College, and the city’s brutalist architecture raises the question of whether it will ever be possible to design new buildings for Oxford without being accused of erecting yet another ‘eyesore’. Must architects simply imitate the aesthetic of the medieval university? The tension between tradition and progress is evident in many of the university’s newest buildings. The Blavatnik School of Government, designed by Herzog and Meuron and unveiled in 2016, was described by the RIBA as ‘a modern cathedral of learning’. Much as the Keble College chapel expresses religious ideals through its architecture, Blavatnik was designed to communicate a commitment to democracy and political progress. As the RIBI Journal surmises, ‘It’s about democracy, so it’s circular, political transparency, so it’s glass, and Oxford, so there’s stone’. Its glass exterior reflects the more typically ‘Oxford-esque’ University Press building opposite, while the almost futuristic structure is striking in itself. It both literally mirrors the historic university, and envisions its future. Whether new generations of residents deem it worthy to join the ranks of the Bodleian Library and Christchurch Cathedral, or dismiss it as a misguided blemish marring the university’s archaic beauty is yet to be seen.

Ultimately, it is in-keeping with a city whose architecture embodies the ongoing tension between tradition and progress that is so often at the centre of academic institutions. It is a centuries-old question posed not only by the city’s students and academics, but by its streets and its skyline.

Artwork by Rachel Jung

Power of the People: Toppling Europe’s Last Dictatorship

Cal Hopkins
-
0
Power of the People: Toppling Europe’s Last Dictatorship

How might a society, in the face of an uncompromising authority and lapdog police force, successfully overthrow a dictator with more than two decades of experience in keeping power?  This is the crux of the matter for the people of Belarus, who are currently taking part in the largest protests seen since modern Belarus’ inception.  Fuelled by  successive illegitimate elections, widespread political repression, and a waning economy, the Belarusian protests are aiming to force the incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko into resignation.  However, these political and economic transgressions are not ‘recent’, but hallmarks of Lukashenko’s twenty-six-year rule. And he has survived – admittedly smaller – protests following previous fraudulent elections.  To measure the potential the protests have for success, it is first necessary to determine how Lukashenko’s self-styled authoritarianism has survived thus far, and what has changed since Belarus’ last protests that may strengthen the movement against him.

Modern day Belarus was formed from the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic of the USSR in December 1991, during the, perhaps hastily named, ‘third wave of democratization.’ While the Balkan region underwent a rapid transformation to democratic, ‘western’, capitalism, much of Central Asian and Eastern European slowly grew into non-democratic regimes.  This was due, in part, to the formation of the Eastern Bloc itself.  Peripheral regions like the Balkans tended to have greater degrees of autonomy and much more devolved economies. Regions close to the ‘centre’ of the USSR, such as Belarus, tended to be heavily controlled by, and deeply integrated with, the Communist Party and what is now the Russian economy.  This legacy of Communism, which was nepotistic, corrupt, and totalitarian in practice, was survived by a generation of ex-Soviet politicians such as Lukashenko, and stopped what at the time was expected to be a pan-Eurasian conversion to conventional Western democracy.

Like most Soviet career-men, Lukashenko began his public service as a member of the Red Army, before working his way through various peripheral positions in the Communist Party to become, ironically, the interim chairman of the anti-corruption committee of the Belarusian parliament in 1990. In 1993, he accused seventy senior government officials of corruption, including the Supreme Soviet chairman Shushkevich and the Prime Minister Kebich, leading to their resignations.  Naturally, the charges later proved to be without merit, but Lukashenko at the time became hugely popular as a stalwart of anti-corruption.  He won the Presidential election of 1994 in the second round with 80% of the vote compared to Kebich’s 14%, in what is considered the last free and fair election held in Belarus. Lukashenko’s five successive re-elections since 2001 have been lambasted by Western governments and supranational organisations for being unfair, uncompetitive, and unfree.

We might consider the above three characteristics, and by extension Lukashenko’s Belarus, to be ‘non-democratic’ – but what exactly does this mean?  A widely accepted view of what democracy is involves genuinely free competition for the legitimate right to power, an independent judiciary, freedoms of association and communication, and a functioning economic society. In each of these areas, Lukashenko’s political project is severely lacking. 

However, the notion of what it meant to be ‘non-democratic’ has often implied transition, as if the country were far from, but on its way towards, democracy.  As Lukashenko starts his hotly contested sixth term as President, it appears as though the Belarusian political system developed into a stable authoritarian form of governance unaffected by the sway of the European Union’s democracy. 

Worth noting are the moral undertones that permeate casual discussions of democracy.  There is nothing inherently wrong with a ‘non-democratic regime’, insofar as they simply employ a form of rule that may not be centred on freedoms or collective public agency.  Moral precepts on the value of rights and freedoms form the foundation for the idea of democracy – precepts which have been extensively developed and are widely accepted, but are still moral rules and not facts or laws of nature.

The moral foundation of democracy often encourages notions of implied Western democratic superiority, or of Eastern European ‘otherness’, which taints discussions of non-democratic regimes. Even the term non-democratic puts states on the negative side of a Western-centric metric.  To avoid this, it is worth exploring the particular style of authoritarianism employed by Lukashenko.  This also allows us to explain how his unique ‘adaptive authoritarianism’ has persevered where other former Soviet regimes have failed, and why it may have met its match in the Belarusian protests.

At first glance, Lukashenko’s authoritarianism is like any other found in the space left by the Soviet Union.  He exercises direct control over elections, uses state resources to secure loyal public and political bases, and both acquires consent and employs coercion to arrive at his political aims.  What distinguishes Lukashenko from his ex-Soviet contemporaries is, as argued by political scientist Matthew Frear, his “pragmatism, expediency, and opportunism” in modifying and applying each of these measures. The success of this form of governance is best elucidated by comparing Belarus to other so-called dictatorships in the former Soviet Union.

Belarus was not unique in developing into this type of hybrid authoritarian system – much of Central Asia and Eastern Europe also transitioned into pseudo-democracies. These ‘democracies’ had parliaments and elected presidents, but also totalitarian leaders unwilling to step down from power.  The unpopularity of these regimes is well documented, culminating in the so-called ‘Colour Revolutions’ across Eurasia from 2000 to 2005.  The Bulldozer – my favourite colour – Revolution in Serbia, 2000; the Rose Revolution in Georgia, 2003; the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, 2004; and the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan, 2005, were all precipitated by fraudulent elections run by their cripplingly corrupt regimes.  

Curiously, however, the Belarusian elections are even more fraudulent than those which led to the Colour Revolutions.  The official turnout for presidential elections since 2001 has averaged 88% of the voting population, with Lukashenko obtaining an average of 80% of the votes each election.  For comparison, British turnout for general elections since 2001 averages just 65% of the voting population, with both the Labour and Conservative vote share adding to just under 72%. Considering elections are often used to obtain domestic and international legitimacy to rule, it is strange (and perhaps now a mistake) that Lukashenko has made little effort to conceal his fraud.  The fact that he has been able to retain his position of power, then, lies in the surprisingly stable socioeconomic system he has implemented.

One of the auxiliary reasons for the successes of the Colour Revolutions was the vulnerability of the regimes themselves.  Structural issues, such as pervasive corruption and weak economic growth, combined with the spark that was fraudulent elections, gave publics a significant enough grievance to spontaneously mass protest in favour of regime change.  Why Lukashenko remained while the other ex-Soviets leaders around him dropped like flies is a result of his close control of both his regime’s image and the Belarusian economy. 

Since 2001, Lukashenko has courted Putin’s Russia in exchange for hugely subsidized energy imports, which are then re-sold to the EU at a marked-up price for profit.  Belarusian industries are also heavily dependent on Russian consumerism, allowing the Belarusian economy to sidestep the economic troubles of liberalisation by leaning on the Russian economy. 

Lukashenko has also developed a staunchly anti-corruption image, for himself and his regime.  Indeed, while the entire political arena has been corrupted, it is, compared to neighbours, relatively un-corrupt.  Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index currently places Belarus in 66th out of 180 (where 1st is the ideal), up from 139th in 2009.  For comparison, Russia and Ukraine are 137th and 126th respectively. Furthermore, lack of a credible or united opposition (until the most recent protests) has allowed the obviously fraudulent elections to come and go with little criticism – small protests in 2010 were followed up by the absence of protests entirely in 2015.

The relative – if artificial – stability and legitimacy of Lukashenko’s regime has historically posed a problem for those desiring a rotation of power in Belarus: there was no strong combination of longer term structural and immediate term grievances to encourage the wider general public to protest.  This echoes the ‘collective action problem’, which suggests that as the individual cost of protesting falls, more people will protest.  People tend to act collectively and spontaneously in response to what are perceived as universal grievances, which minimizes the risk for the individual protester and maximizes the pressure levered onto the regime to step down from power.  Previously in Belarus, this collective action problem has proved a hard limit on the effectiveness of any anti-regime protests.

What, then, might convince Belarusians that this time, Lukashenko is on his way out of power?  Since the last major protests in 2010, much of what was keeping Lukashenko secure has changed, and, globally, there has been considerable development in effective anti-authoritarian protest.  The success of the Hong Kong protests in sustaining an internationally recognised movement against the Chinese government for months is the result of their ‘guerrilla’ style of protest – appearing, disappearing, occupying, and retreating, to avoid the massive police presence.  Closer to Belarus, the Velvet Revolution in Armenia in 2018 proved how mass public protests could simply overwhelm unpopular political systems.  Both have had considerable influence on the style of protest currently being carried out in Belarus.

Furthermore, the stable Belarusian economy that Lukashenko has relied on for legitimacy is finally showing its flaws.  The Belarusian-Russian partnership has become increasingly strained as of late, due to Lukashenko resisting Putin’s desires for further integration. This has threatened the considerable amount of trade for which Belarus relies on Russia.  The successive fraudulent elections since 2001 have been met by increasing economic sanctions imposed by the US and the EU, further reducing its trade options.  Finally, the ongoing Covid-19 crisis has further pressured the economy.  In a bid to maintain economic growth, Lukashenko claimed the virus would kill no one in Belarus, and avoided any kind of lockdown or restriction on movement. The resulting tens of thousands of cases, and over 800 deaths, illustrates a huge failure in his economic policymaking.

The protesters have also benefited from a change in the political atmosphere in Belarus.  In searching for an alternative to Lukashenko, Belarus developed a relatively credible opposition in the form of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a human rights activist and politician.  Although running as an independent, Tsikhanouskaya garnered support from across the Belarusian political spectrum – including the Christian Democrats, the Social Democrats, the Women’s party, and other presidential hopefuls barred from running in the most recent election.  The immediate rallies in support of Tsikhanouskaya and opposing Lukashenko following the confirmation of Lukashenko’s fraudulent victory were the largest in the history of modern Belarus, with crowds in the tens of thousands in Brest and Minsk.  Thus, due to the faltering foundations of Lukashenko’s claim to power, combined with a renewed electoral scam, the people of Belarus have finally overcome the ‘collective action problem’, and have taken to their streets en masse.  Indeed, according to Belarusian journalist Franak Viacorka, “the idea was to create a critical mass of people filling out the streets … to demonstrate the new majority.”

With all this history in mind, it is worth asking, “What happens next?”.  Swathes of Belarusians are currently on strike, and large cross sections of society have lent their support to the movement – including farmers and factory workers, traditionally thought to make up the backbone of Lukashenko’s support base.  The Belarusian economy is expected to contract by 4-6% this year, providing longer term grievances to pin to the regime.  The 2020 election itself has been disputed or not been recognised by much of Europe and the West.  Lukashenko, however, remains in power.

That Lukashenko has not been ousted yet is likely a testament to his relationship with Putin, who recently confirmed Russia could send a police force into Belarus if necessary. However, Putin will likely use Lukashenko’s precarious position to pressure him into further integrating the Belarusian economy into Russia’s.  The gamble for Lukashenko is whether Putin will continue to lend him personal support after this integration happens; it is not unreasonable to assume that Putin might prefer a less provocative neighbour. Domestically, Lukashenko continues to enjoy a loyal security force, which is responsible for the mass arrests, abuses, and even reported torture of protestors, designed to discourage further collective action.

Currently, the people of Belarus are locked in a war of attrition with their President.  Should the protesters and political opposition develop and widen their political net, there is a possibility that Lukashenko’s security apparatus will be overrun, or will switch sides in order to survive a transition of power.  However, the removal of Lukashenko would only solve part of a larger structural problem that plagues the countries of the Colour Revolutions.

The primary issue is that free and fair elections in and of themselves do not automatically produce democracy, in that elections alone fail to resolve deeper problems of corruption, clientelism, underdeveloped political parties, and opaque decision making.   ‘Electoral revolutions’ in Europe have not been overly successful – Serbia and Ukraine achieved just a small level of democratisation, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan did not, and all of these countries remain deeply corrupt, with weak political parties and a lack of impetus to continue to democratize. Again, while it is not necessarily the case that Western democracy is the gold standard to aspire to, it is difficult to make a case for a political system in limbo between democracy and authoritarianism, with almost non-existent public support.

Furthermore, the current ‘credible opposition’ spearheaded by Tsikhanouskaya in-exile is already beginning to show divisions.  While some proponents of the opposition are arguing for a reversion of the Belarusian constitution to reintroduce Presidential term limits, others including Tsikhanouskaya stress that the primary aim of the protests should be to remove Lukashenko, and that directing public anger elsewhere allows him an avenue to retain power. Indeed, much of the opposition can only offer the public short term, radical manifestos, in part due to the party-less political system created by Lukashenko.  Unfortunately, this means once the uniting grievance of “Lukashenko” is removed, voting divisions and patterns would likely reappear in Belarus.  This would fragment the united opposition, and could heavily impede any future government’s ability to implement effective political or economic change

However, intriguing as they are, hypotheticals only offer us a glimpse of what the future may hold for Belarus.  For now, it is a waiting game, balanced between an incensed public and an unrelenting president and police force.  The collective explosion of a suppressed Belarusian identity is a daring testament to the power of the people, and serves as a reminder that even the most entrenched dictators can be made vulnerable.  While the path to stability – should Lukashenko fall from power – is certainly not without challenges, it is for many Belarusians the only path worth taking.  What remains to be seen is whether the collective efforts of the Belarusian people alone will be enough to topple ‘the last dictator in Europe’.

Artwork by Justin Lim

Identity and Identicality in Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half

Tallulah Griffith
-
0
Identity and Identicality in Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half

As a child, it seemed as though ‘growing up’ were a linear journey with a stable destination in adulthood; for many, getting older only makes it increasingly less clear whether we’ve arrived at that final destination. Brit Bennett’s second novel takes growth as its central theme, grappling with what it means to change yourself in search of a fixed identity. Centring on identical twins Stella and Desiree Vignes, who come to pursue radically different racial identities, Bennett’s timely The Vanishing Half (2020) asks not only how much we know about others, but how consistently we really know ourselves. Abandoning her family in ‘Mallard’—an unmapped town in the 1950s Jim Crow South—and suppressing her black origins, Stella utterly reimagines her own life. What follows is an elegantly realised Sliding Doors storyline, where the identical twins—one ‘black’, one ‘white’—exemplify the troubled natures of common and individual identity.

Leaving Mallard, Stella Vignes flies the nest, uprooting her life and casting off former ties as she ‘passes’ as white. In fleshing out Stella, Bennett uses the notion of ‘passing’ as a rich symbolic terrain. To pass is to change hands, to exceed a limit, to get through an exam, or to approve. Possessing an affinity for learning and an aptitude for maths, Stella achieves better grades at school than her sister. Her love for maths persists into her new life, providing both a common thread linking her back to the skin she shed in Mallard, and an explanation for the cold rationality of her highly calculated adoption of a white persona. Stella’s deep-seated desire for white privilege is rooted in a childhood trauma: the memory of her father’s lynching at the mercy of a white mob. To pass is the stamp of success, denoting a kind of legitimacy: to be white is to exert control over life, and when Stella becomes a white woman, the black life she ends is her own. But in a touching testament to her family’s sense of abandonment, Stella’s chosen path is also frequently described as ‘passing over’, an ambiguous loss her family never cease to mourn.  

By Bennett’s reckoning, the many and various meanings of ‘passing’ are far from confined to racial limits: the sophistication of Bennett’s novel lies in her location of Stella’s alter ego among other renovations of self. Reese, a trans man besotted with Desiree’s daughter, Jude, also works to shake off his former self; Stella observes that ‘youth is the thrill that you could be anyone’. Passing disrupts not only racial labels, but any notion of true identity. 

 A complexly layered coming-of-age story, The Vanishing Half asks whether we are identical even to ourselves. I think of Maggie Nelson’s recent The Argonauts, in which the ship of Theseus—the thought experiment which queries whether objects survive change—provides the extended metaphor for ageing, pregnancy, and transition. When Stella’s ‘white’ daughter, Kennedy, struggles to understand her racial identity, she insists that ‘Swapping out one brick wouldn’t change a house into a fire station. She was still herself. Nothing had changed.’ But racial classifications in the U.S. are, of course, not bricks but fundamental building blocks. 

We might recall Stella, and her love of maths. If Stella is the ‘vanishing half’, we might question: half of what? Are there mathematical terms that could describe how we identify? Numerically speaking, am I one, whole, complete? In Bennett’s lucid prose, identity comes with overlapping parts, self and other intermixed. Barry, a minor character connected to Reese in LA, conceives of his drag alter ego like a lover, thinking about her endlessly and buying her trinkets. Stella and Desiree are each not quite half, not quite whole. As ‘identical’ loses all meaning, identity also falls apart. How can we pin down identity, after all, if we aren’t identical even to ourselves?

Bennett uses her fiction to point to a whole realm of others. What is race, gender, and identity, if not legal, social, and individual fiction? Appropriately, Stella hails from a place which is not quite real; her hometown, Mallard, stages this sense of indeterminate origins and unclear boundaries from the outset, ‘A town that, like any other, was more idea than place.’ In one sense, the town seems to lie off the radar because of its radical initiative for black government. ‘White people couldn’t believe it even existed.’ The town was founded by a former slave, whose own father was once his master, and who sought to carve out a space for people like him. In this, Mallard, ‘named after the ring-necked duck’ presents an agitated community, a place for those victimised by white supremacy: sitting ducks with necks lassoed. There is something similar in Moby Dick, where the Polynesian Queequeg’s homeland is unimaginable to white society because ‘It is not down in any map.’ 

On the other hand, colourist hierarchies remain very much in effect in Mallard—the mulatto town founder prized light skin, intending that each generation be lighter than the last. This place so unimaginable for its African American self-sufficiency is not beyond the grasp of white nationalism. But Bennett’s Mallard allows us to think on all places as fictions, all societal norms as made-up. Neither black nor white, Stella’s origin can’t quite be mapped because it goes against America’s dominant story of race. Racial identity, Bennett seems to say, is a fabrication, and an important one at that.  

The key strength of Bennett’s writing is its rich use of colour imagery, through which the complexities of identity are carefully rendered. Stella’s whiteness becomes shorthand for all kinds of erasures; wiping the slate clean and capitalising on the invisibility of whiteness as a racial category. African American characters find they can best express themselves during a blackout, away, perhaps, from the imposition of whiteness. Photography, art, and theatre dominate large portions of the novel, signposting the performance of identity. Stella’s first foray into the world of racial passing comes when she visits the local gallery, flouting segregationist restrictions. There, she studies the ‘fuzzy Impressionists’, those paintings so deceptive in their colouring. From afar, the daubs blurs into recognisable forms; up close they separate into many and varied pigments. Their colouring, like Stella’s, depends on who is looking, from what angle, and how closely they scrutinise the detail. The only dark child in her class, Jude thinks of herself as a black speck on a photograph: an error. Later, Reese obsessively photographs dying things, preserving their state of flux, suspending them in transition. Bennett conjures up characters who construct themselves, who endlessly and artfully reimagine who they are. 

Deeply personal and loosely metaphysical questions weave through Bennett’s effortlessly rich prose. Tender and thought-provoking, The Vanishing Half offers a reflection on whether a person can choose who they are. In a world where Stella and Desiree represent black and white, Bennett embraces the grey area of personal, racial, and gendered identity. 

Society Spotlight: The Oxford Forum for Questioning ‘Extremism’

Asma Waheed
-
0
Society Spotlight: The Oxford Forum for Questioning ‘Extremism’

In Phaedrus, Socrates warns against the latest invention of writing, fearing that this new tool could spell the destruction of the oral tradition of learning and communication. Certainly, Socrates understood the utility of writing in recording information and making it distributable, however he feared that humanity would become too reliant on this invention and would descend into engagement with the page, as opposed to one another. Perhaps Socrates’ forecast has not aged well with regards to writing. However, his overarching concern on the social impact of a new apparatus that changes our process of acquiring knowledge seems relevant now more than ever. Modern technological advances were intended to bring us closer together, giving us access to more information than ever before. Yet in today’s internet age, many of us cannot help but feel disconnected, polarised and isolated. How is it that social media and our online presence has engulfed us in a sea of misunderstanding, with islands of truth few and far between? The answer seems to lie in the monetising of our digital presence and the manipulation of the consumer to profitable ends.

Advertising is a central tenet of the capitalist model of consumerism. Motivating people to buy your product has been an essential part of business strategy since Edward Bernays pioneered public relations by integrating glamor into promotions. Billboards and television commercials have always been an arena for corporations to persuade large audiences to choose their commodity, however with handheld mobiles and personal social media accounts now, ads can be increasingly more tailored to the individual consumer. Search for a camera on Google, and  you might see ads for a camera on Instagram the following day. In-built microphones can track conversations and background noise to build a profile of the consumer which social media platforms like Facebook have access to – a writer at Vice conducted an experiment to test this phenomenon in mid-2018 and showed that our conversations are being tracked. The existence of webpage cookies, which hold a significant amount of data specific to an individual user, are also undoubtedly important in tailoring ads to the individual. Such targeted ads might come across as innocent and even convenient, but the algorithm behind this mechanism can be used for more sinister ends than one might immediately anticipate.

Our online presence exists within an echo chamber. The algorithm used by Facebook and other platforms tailors news feeds specific to each account. By analysing our previous attention patterns, our news feeds predict what material we are most likely to engage with to maximise our time spent on its platform. For example, if you have already engaged with politically left-wing content, the algorithm will continue to reproduce similar material for you to consume. These companies are not primarily concerned with the accuracy of the information that is being disseminated, but more so with monetising your time spent on their service. This positive feedback loop of only seeing content that you are likely to engage with creates an echo chamber where outside opinions and views are blocked out. Not only does this harden one’s views without any effective counterbalance or credible fact-checking, but it often misrepresents the views of others, leading to hostility and distrust of those with differing opinions. But what users fail to realise is that no one person will see the exact same feed that they themselves will see. The media that we all consume on these applications are completely different. Due to social media, political leanings have become increasingly polarised, with the middle ground slowly dissipating and opposed groups less willing to engage each other in debate.

Social media companies have been operating with little regulation and transparency until relatively recently. They have capitalised upon a new marketplace which trades on our personal and private experiences. This is made possible by the mass surveillance facilitated by cookies in people’s internet usage. Shoshana Zuboff coins the term ‘surveillance capitalism’, defining it as “…parasitic and self-referential. It revives Karl Marx’s old image of capitalism as a vampire that feeds on labour, but with an unexpected turn. Instead of labour, surveillance capitalism feeds on every aspect of every human’s experience.”  Often without an individual intentionally consenting, our data has become a commodity that can be sold to the highest bidder. 

The insidious results of what happens when our data is not protected, or even seen as private or personal, is exemplified by the Cambridge Analytica scandal during the 2016 Brexit vote and the US election in the same year. The Vote Leave campaign supposedly laundered around £750,000 through the data company and a Canadian data company called AggregateIQ. This was done, via offshoots of the campaign such as BeLeave and Leave.EU, to intentionally release a barrage of targeted ads to those that Cambridge Analytica had identified as “persuadable”. These were ads of misinformation, used to sow fear and hatred of migrants and refugees to manipulate the electorate into favouring stricter border control. And it worked. These targeted ads swayed the small fraction of people needed to swing the vote to leave the EU. Similar tactics were used in the 2016 US Election: Cambridge Analytica illegally harvested 87 million Facebook profiles in the US under the guise of academic research, and manipulated them through targeted ads to sway the vote in Donald Trump’s favour.

Cambridge Analytica took advantage of the fact that these social media platforms did not have a fact checking service (however, Twitter has recently introduced one and Facebook is in the process of launching one) — the algorithm does not care what the users consume as long as the users spend a long time consuming. This mechanism was exploited to spread fake, sensationalist information to a consumerist population that barely bothers to fact check for themselves. Whether a fact checking service will be of any use is highly disputed —a study at Yale found that informing users to potential fake news was not effective with helping users to correctly identify fake news, with only a 3.7% improvement. Regardless, such platforms should take accountability in providing such a service, and consumers should take responsibility in confirming the news that they read.

Political parties haven’t just been using social media to manipulate elections to their own benefit, but also to destabilise other countries. A more popular example of this is Putin’s Russia: the Russian government was able to exploit already existing political divides in order to cause chaos and spread more misinformation during the 2016 US election and Brexit, paying particular attention to racial divisions. In the countdown to the US election, they directly reached 30 million accounts. Through hacking Hillary Clinton’s emails and posting them online via Wikileaks into the public domain, the Russian government directly aided Trump in smearing her campaign. Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) also had some influence on the EU referendum: studies have shown that around 15 to 150 thousand Russia-affiliated Twitter bots collectively sent tweets regarding the Brexit vote in “an effort to spread disinformation and discord”; the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) calculated that these Twitter bots were responsible for 1.76% of the Leave vote share. Although the effectiveness of Russian interference during the 2016 US election and Brexit is highly contested, this nevertheless serves as undeniable proof of the ease and intention to manipulate a population’s voting patterns through unregulated social media platforms. 

Currently, the future looks bleak: if we continue on this path where personal data and privacy are valuable commodities, the already faltering notion of democracy will cease to exist. Society itself has become fractured and divided, to the extent that the middle ground is scarce, and compromise seems off the table. What can be gleaned by the abuse of social media and surveillance capitalism in manipulating our mindsets is that we must increase awareness of targeted advertisements, encourage consumers to question the accuracy of the content they receive and engage in discussions that need to be held. Strategies have to be constructed and implemented by governments to challenge the misinformation pandemic and restore some sense and trust into our democratic institutions.

You can find out more about the OFQE’s events and activity at www.OFQE.co.uk.

A Letter To Those Whom my Light Will Guide, In Honour Of Those Whose Light Has Guided Me

Pax Butchart
-
0
A Letter To Those Whom my Light Will Guide, In Honour Of Those Whose Light Has Guided Me

First, I will say close your eyes.

Lock them tight shut and look at the phosphenes

That whir and dance in the darkness.

Colour and noise are within you.

Next, I will remind you

You are not wrong.

You are not too much,

Or too little.

What you are, is complicated.

And I love you for that,

Because you are complicated,

Because you are raw, and soft, and broken.

Yes even you, and your scarred hands,

Your shaking heart’s bloodrush

And your endless glorious failures.

I will not stop my faith in you.

I will bathe you in goldglow like a searchlight,

Illuminating roiling oceans and the safe path

To shore.

Yes, you can grow beyond this. 

You will and you must.

You do not have to sit in this alone,

You can open a window

To let out the noxious brown fog

Of your anger. You can pull up a chair,

To relieve the pressure

On your suppliant knees.

Also, I will tell you to remember that 

Your light will guide others,

As mine guides you.

As others’ have guided me.

Do not discount the possibility

That the very people whose light brightens your path,

Might be those for whom you gleam

As a wayfinder.

It is not always a hierarchy or a chronology.

Sometimes it is two lamps burning

Across a dim and silent street,

And where the lights cross,

There is home. So grasp my hand,

The candle flames of my fingers,

Let the sun blaze out from your palm.

There is light in your voice and your soul

And your hope, even when you cannot see it.

You are only blinded by its brightness.

Honour your light, as you honour mine.

For where there is light, the darkness cannot come in,

Though it beats and howls at the window.

And the hollow pools inside you

Where the dark has made a home,

Will not vanish with time. They are part of you,

A backdrop, a contrast to make the light

Burn more wild and true.

I name you lux aeterna, in defiance of our transience.

I call myself leoht ecelic, laughing at my end.

Beacons in the night, reaching for one another,

Until we are absorbed into the greater daylight

That comes, as rest, on the wings of the morning-birds,

In the song of the cold dawn rain.

Artwork by Rachel Jung.

BREAKING: University reports 208 cases this week

David Tritsch
-
0
BREAKING: University reports 208 cases this week

The University’s testing service has confirmed 208 cases of COVID-19 among students and staff for the week 17th-23rd October, with a positivity rate of 24.5%. This is a slight increase from last week’s 197 cases and brings the total number of cases since the implementation of the testing service on August 20th to 496.

The University’s Status and Response website states that the figures released do not include positive test results received outside of the University testing service. It notes further that “due to the time interval between a test being done and the result becoming available, it is expected that there will be a mismatch between actual results and those confirmed to us on any given day”.

The new rise in cases follows a number of outbreaks at individual colleges, as well as matriculation day last Saturday, where crowds of students were gathered around the Rad Cam. The Oxford Mail reported “anger” from fellow students, staff, and residents about large numbers of students drinking and partying in the streets.

On Saturday, The Oxford Student reported that St. John’s College had paused all in-person teaching for the next fortnight. An email sent from catering staff confirmed that as many as 150 students were receiving meals in isolation.

Councils across Oxfordshire have urged the UK Government to move the county into Tier 2 COVID-19 restrictions. In a statement, leader of Oxfordshire County Council Ian Hudspeth said: “In light of the escalating situation across the county, we are pushing hard for Oxfordshire to be moved to a high alert level. This would be a preventative measure to stem the spread of the virus and protect the county’s most vulnerable residents.”

However, speaking to the Oxford Blue, a spokesperson for Oxford City Council stressed that “it was not the COVID situation in the city that led to the collective decision to seek Tier 2 status across Oxfordshire. It was the rise in cases across neighbouring districts and among non-student demographics that was of particular concern.”

In a press release on Thursday, Oxfordshire County Council’s Director for Public Health Ansaf Azhar urged the public to “limit their social interactions” and reminded residents that “with half-term approaching, as well as events such as Halloween, Bonfire Night and Diwali coming up, it’s very easy to get caught up in the excitement of meeting up and celebrating with friends and family. But we mustn’t forget about COVID. We need to do everything we can to keep our families and communities safe and stop the spread.”

The University has implemented a four-stage emergency response, depending on how wide the spread of COVID-19 is. The current status is Stage 2, which allows the University to operate “in line with social distancing restrictions with as full a student cohort as possible on site”, with teaching and assessment taking place “with the optimum combination of in-person teaching and online learning”. A Stage 3 response would imply “no public access to the University or College buildings” and “gatherings for staff and students only permitted where essential for teaching and assessment to take place”.

Government blocks Oxford from Tier 2 status

Sonya Ribner
-
0
Government blocks Oxford from Tier 2 status

According to Oxford council leaders, plans to place Oxfordshire under Tier 2 COVID-19 restrictions have been “blocked by the government.” This comes after Ansaf Azhar, Director of Public Health of Oxford City Council, applied to the government for higher alert status. The additional COVID restrictions would prohibit people from socialising with anyone outside their household or support bubble in any indoor setting.

Both city and county officials have been pushing for Oxford to be put under “high risk” status, but no decisive action has been taken by the government. While the Department of Health and Social Care reported to be in “close consultation” with local health experts, Director Azhar continues to warn that, based on its current trajectory in Oxford, the virus could take hold of huge swathes of the community, impacting those who are vulnerable and overtaxing health care systems.

When council leaders advised the government, the most recent data from the Oxford University Early Alert Service reported there had been 288 positive tests since August 20, 2020 with a tripling of cases in Freshers Week. Since the week of 17th – 23rd of October, the number of new cases has escalated to 208 positive tests, for a total of 496 positive tests since the August start date.

Susan Brown, Labour leader of Oxford City Council, said she supports Director Azhar’s recommendation to move Oxfordshire to Tier 2 and was “disappointed that a decision has been made in London” to ignore his considered view as well as the position of the county’s six councils.

Oxford County’s four Conservative MPs, Robert Courts, John Howell, David Johnston and Victoria Prentis, said in a joint statement that there was insufficient evidence to make the case for the whole county to be put under Tier 2 restrictions, though they could see a case for potentially putting Oxford City under higher alert.Green Party town councilors of West Oxfordshire, Andrew Prosser and Liz Reason, reinforced the views of council leaders in their recent statement “the longer this Government sets itself against local government leaders,” the more citizens and businesses will suffer. To date, there has been no further response from the government to local leaders’ concerns.

BREAKING: University reports 197 cases this week

David Tritsch
-
0
BREAKING: University reports 197 cases this week

Data from the University’s testing service for the week 10th-16th October has confirmed 197 cases of COVID-19 among students and staff. This brings the total number of cases since the implementation of the testing service on August 20 to 288.

The University’s Status and Response website states that the figures released do not include positive test results received outside of the University testing service. It notes further that “due to the time interval between a test being done and the result becoming available, it is expected that there will be a mismatch between actual results and those confirmed to us on any given day”.

The numbers reported by the University follow a number of COVID-19 related escalations this week. On Friday, in the first known case of accommodation-wide isolation in Oxford, University College told all students at their accommodation site in North Oxford to stay within their households. This has now been partially lifted. The college told Cherwell that the lockdown had been caused by “a spike in the number of students at University College who have tested positive for COVID-19”.

An email sent to students from Magdalen College states that there are currently “no positive cases in College, and a very small number of students self-isolating as a close contact”. The college also announced that they will be lifting additional restrictions on guests imposed on first year undergraduates and suspending any fines handed out to members of the JCR, as a result of “the more or less model behaviour of the first-year cohort”.

On Saturday, freshers in sub fusc attire gathered in the city centre to celebrate matriculation day. Despite the ceremony, which marks formal admission to the university, being moved online this year, crowds of students have been accused of ignoring social distancing regulations. The Oxford Mail reported “anger” from fellow students, staff, and residents about large numbers of students drinking and partying in the streets.

The University has implemented a four-stage emergency response, depending on how wide the spread of COVID-19 is. The current status is Stage 2, which allows the University to operate “in line with social distancing restrictions with as full a student cohort as possible on site”, with teaching and assessment taking place “with the optimum combination of in-person teaching and online learning”. A Stage 3 response would imply “no public access to the University or College buildings” and “gatherings for staff and students only permitted where essential for teaching and assessment to take place”.

Image credit: Alfonso Cerezo/ Pixabay

1...415416417...2,514Page 416 of 2,514

Support Student Journalism

Cherwell is Oxford’s oldest independent newspaper, established in 1920. We are entirely student-run. By supporting us, you will contribute to keeping our paper in print and online. Every donation makes a difference.

Donate

Explore

Follow us

More

Oxford Student Publications Limited © 2025 - All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy

Website by James Ashley