Monday 28th July 2025
Blog Page 427

An organist’s view on a crisis in church music

Stanley Godfrey
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An organist’s view on a crisis in church music

Over the last ten years of my life, I’ve been fortunate enough to work in the music department of a small parish church in rural Lincolnshire. From my first days as a chorister in 2010, to taking up the organ a few years later, and now having become their Assistant Director of Music, it would be fair to say that the world of sacred music has become a fairly integral part of my life – until the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Before the pandemic, the longest gap I had ever gone without practicing on the organ was around three weeks (and this was around five years ago). Yet after playing my final service pre-lockdown on the 15th March, little did I know at the time that I would not play a service again until the start of August – a service with an array of Government-defined protocols and restrictions.

But though churches are now returning to the practice of worship in some capacity (whether that be wholly online, in-person, or a combination of both), for many this has exacerbated problems which have long existed within the world of liturgical music. With declining congregation numbers and a growing percentage of the population not professing any religious beliefs, many choirs are now struggling to fill their ranks with new singing talent, whether young or young-at-heart.

Whilst I am fortunate in my church work in Oxford that we have been largely unaffected by these issues, the same cannot be said for my local church back in Lincolnshire, where this is by no means a new issue. I was part of the last large intake of young choral scholars back in 2010 and, ten years on, I am the last of that intake to still be involved with any regularity.

Of course, this is not entirely the fault of the church or of the music department itself. We were all admitted at the age of around eight or nine and, as such, we are all now university students or graduates – put simply, we are now carving out our own lives and, for some of my fellow choral scholars, continued participation in the life of the church is not part of that path forward. That may be for a variety of reasons – not being in the local area; no longer being as ‘musically active’; not professing the same religious beliefs as 10-years ago – but it all comes back to the same bottom-line: the church has lost someone who, at the point of admission, was deemed musically-able to continue the musical traditions of a community which, in the case of my particular church, has existed for almost 900 years.

So, if we are to tackle these issues, what can be done? Much has been said by Directors of Music in recent years of attempting to diversify the musical content of services, so as to hopefully attract younger singers who might be put off by the largely ‘classical’ repertoire. In attempting this style of endeavour, a particular anecdote springs to mind from around five years ago, where the introduction of a more modern hymn book (aptly named ‘Hymns Old and New’) led to a rather elderly congregation being introduced to such wonderful and high-brow Gesamtkunstwerken as ‘Shine, Jesus, Shine’ – a piece whose name alone strikes fear into the deepest recesses of every organist’s heart. Needless to say, the hymn book was only in use for a few weeks before we reverted to the older tome.

But perhaps this experiment was indicative of the resilience of the church towards modernisation and reinvention. Even as a religious movement whose very origins came from (in simple terms) wanting to modernise part of the Catholic Church without the issues of papal supremacy, the Church of England and its members have routinely held back from any radical change until being forced to succumb to intense pressure and lobbying – whether that be on larger-scale issues, such as allowing women to be consecrated as bishops or allowing homosexual couples to be married by a priest in a church, to much smaller-scale issues, such as using a more modern hymn-book or deciding for which religious festivals it’s appropriate to light the chandelier.

So, if the church is to come back from this pandemic ‘stronger than ever’ (as seems to be the new mantra these days), perhaps it is time to truly reconsider how we as an institution connect with young people and with our congregations. After all, as has been said on many occasions, even if our congregations are our present, young people are our future.

St Anne’s Principal swims in open water for coronavirus support fund

Abigail Howe
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St Anne’s Principal swims in open water for coronavirus support fund

Helen King, the Principal of St Anne’s College, has swum 5 kilometres in Queenford Lake to raise money for the College’s COVID-19 support fund.

The swim, as well as being a sponsorship opportunity, was also part of the Queenford Challenge, set up by the Oxfordshire Queenford Lakes, a nearby open water swimming facility.

In a statement publicising the Covid-19 fund, Helen King said: “We are all facing an unprecedented challenge as individuals, a nation, a University and a College. At St Anne’s we are doing all we can to help our students through this incredibly difficult time. Your support will help our students and those in the greatest need.”

St Anne’s has also taken its largest ever cohort of state-educated students, 75%, as well as taking a first-year intake which is 12% larger than usual.

On 6 September 2020, Helen King embarked on her swim, completing the journey in a speedy 1 hour and 49 minutes.

In a series of tweets, she thanked donors for their support, saying that she was “glad to report I’m back on dry land”, continuing that donations would provide “additional teaching, accommodation & welfare support”.

King has been Principal of St Anne’s since April 2017. She was previously an Assistant Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police Service and originally studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at St Anne’s College.

After the event, the Queenford Lakes team praised the “amazing” response to the challenge and reminded swimmers that “there are more of those amazing sunrises and sunsets to come still” over the lake.

Speed or Safety? Science publishing in the time of COVID-19

Robbi Sher
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Speed or Safety? Science publishing in the time of COVID-19

Global pandemics demand fast, evidence-based responses. This poses a conundrum. Communication of scientific research is deliberately and excruciatingly slow. After an article is submitted to a journal of choice, rejected, and re-submitted several times, it is sent to a group of peer reviewers, where it probably sits untouched on a desk for a number of weeks before being evaluated. The full submission-to-publication timescale is about nine months – clearly, this is not an option in the current climate. Science must be rapidly disseminated to guide our response to the outbreak. And although preprint servers – platforms where scientists can post full drafts of papers (preprints) that skip the formal peer-review process – have been endorsed as a solution, there are concerns about their communication to non-scientific audiences that need to be addressed.

Preprints make research available at least three months prior to journal publication. They are becoming increasingly popular; in the four months following the first COVID-19 case, at least 37.5% of all COVID-19 related articles were hosted by bioRxiv and medRxiv, the two preprint servers for biomedical research.

At first glance, this can only be beneficial. Preprint servers host a remarkable diversity of institutions. By allowing research groups to access and build upon one another’s preliminary results, they ensure that the scientific community is using its resources effectively, and avoiding simultaneous duplication of work. These global collaborations are the only way research can keep up with the virus – but also remain neutral, objective and statistically valid, in compliance with the standards of the scientific method.

Problems arise when preprints are prematurely broadcast outside the scientific community. Scientists consider themselves to be writing for other scientists, who treat preprints as what they are; unfinished products (in the sense that they have not been checked outside of the research group). But preprints are available to all. And in a pandemic, the audience of scientific articles grows dramatically – COVID-19 preprints are accessed and distributed at least 15 times more than non-COVID-19 preprints. Open access has hundreds of benefits; dropping paywalls increases scientific participation in developing countries, for example. However, making a draft freely available is dangerous. It allows politicians and the media to irresponsibly overhype information which is, on the whole, speculative. And it risks damaging public trust in scientists when they inevitably get things wrong.

In January, a preprint by scientists in Delhi appeared on bioRxiv, discussing resemblances between the coronavirus and HIV (the virus that causes AIDS). The ambiguous phrasing of its abstract, though (“uncanny similarity … unlikely to be fortuitous”), suggested that the coronavirus had somehow been engineered by humans – and fuelled a spread of Twitter conspiracy theories that COVID-19 was a laboratory accident or, worse, a bioweapon. Luckily, the study was withdrawn before any news outlet could cover it – since the world of preprints is relatively new, and many are still sceptical, the retraction of faulty work is fast. But these responses cannot be relied upon indefinitely.

So, it is the overhyping of preprints, not the existence of them, that has the potential to influence behaviour and endanger public health. How can this be avoided? A small yellow banner on the screen reminding readers that preprints aren’t conclusive is not enough; neither is a comments section, which journalists and communicators almost certainly do not read. Either preprints should be available only to scientists, or their use should be made safer for non-scientific audiences. One route could be to require authors to include a plain-language summary, addressing the specific limitations of their research, as part of the preprint submission process. This way, we would see the collaborative benefits of preprints without misleading the public.

However, just because a study has been peer-reviewed doesn’t necessarily mean it should form the basis of public policy. Peer-review has its own problems; aside from being slow, it’s often skimpy, and authors can have competing interests. Indeed – most retractions of COVID-19 papers have been from not preprint servers, but high-profile medical journals – with severe consequences.

The Trump administration’s decision not to accept COVID-19 testing kits from overseas in March was based on a single, unreplicated study which claimed that “50 percent or 47 percent” of positives were false. This would have been bad enough, but the study had actually been retracted, for unknown reasons, just a few days after its publication in a Chinese journal. In other words – at a critical time in the early development of the pandemic, an entire continent may have been denied access to World Health Organisation-approved tests, because of findings that weren’t even trusted enough to remain in the scientific literature.

Another paper published in Annals of Internal Medicine in April concluded, alarmingly, that neither surgical nor cotton masks were effective in preventing the spread of COVID-19. Before it was retracted, this study was cited by over 100 news outlets, almost 10,000 Twitter users, and the World Health Organisation. Not only did it only have four participants, it actually went on to describe an 80.4% reduction in viral emission by cotton masks (how this was classed as “ineffective” is baffling, given that even N95 respirators block out 95% of the virus).

It is evident, from the fact that formally peer-reviewed studies could be this misleading, that the main issue with the COVID-19 publishing landscape is not peer-review status, but fast and careless distribution – an issue that is not unique to preprints.

Even in the face of a pandemic, we cannot lose sight of the fundamental aim of scientific research: to lower uncertainty and provide healthcare systems, policy-makers and the public with the necessary information to improve individual and public health. The collective effect of too much hasty, unvetted research is that science loses its credibility. Herbert Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of Science, begs scientists to underpromise and overdeliver – to structure COVID-19 papers with a larger and more diverse audience in mind, and be clearer about the limitations of their work. We are moving towards an open-access, preprint-first world, and effective communication would ensure we all benefit from it.

Artwork by Arpita Chatterjee

‘The knack of living’: Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett

Joseph Turner
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‘The knack of living’: Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett

‘What are days for?’, the poet Philip Larkin once asked. That question has felt particularly pertinent these last few months. Claire-Louise Bennett’s strange and brilliant Pond (Fitzcarraldo, 2015) might be read as offering an answer in keeping with Larkin’s, both profoundly straightforward and infinitely complex: ‘Days are where we live’.

In a series of twenty relatively short chapters, Pond records infrequently minute detail the psychological condition and quotidian experience of a young woman living alone in a coastal cottage in the west of Ireland. The work, formally balanced somewhere between a novel and a collection of short stories, distinguishes itself by its attention to the various things that go on in days, both mighty and trivial: eating, sleeping, talking; loving, thinking, cooking; reading, walking, confronting.

One section, entitled ‘Stir-fry’, describes the disposal of a meal in concise and brutal detail: ‘I just threw my dinner in the bin’ — ‘I put in it all the things I never want to see again’. One of the bracing pleasures of reading Pond is Bennett’s recognition that homes, like novels, are rarely wholly confining or wholly comfortable, but rather spaces of powerfully mixed feeling. The warmth of morning coffee rubs up against a reflection on ‘the essential brutality of love’. Bennett’s narrator knows that, in the blink of an eye, a home can flip from being a place of refuge to one of pain and decay, like the bananas she eats for breakfast which ‘don’t, in fact, take well at all to being forgotten about’: ‘They wizen and stink of putrid and go almost black’. It is in such moments of tonal unpredictability that Pond is at its most exciting, and its most real, because it rejects the spurious consolations of cosiness in favour of a narrative that is by turns fragmentary, aimless, languid, and fierce — and stubbornly loyal to the complicated reality of the feelings it describes.

One of the most striking aspects of the book is Bennett’s distinctive prose style. At once chatty and finely wrought, it moves deftly between the establishment of familiar intimacy and the piercing deflation of expectations. Snatches of the confessional first-person voice are juxtaposed with passages of stark impersonality: ‘Thinks of twilight, privet hedges, and a bookcase falling forward.’ Another chapter delivers a raptured address to tomato purée in all its ‘kitsch and concentrated splendour’.

Obsessively turning single words — cantilevered; ottoman; chopping — over and over, as if to try and catch something of their essential character, Bennett revels in the little details of which sentences, homes, and lives are made up. Pond is the exemplary proof that ‘the knack of living’ lies in attending to such ‘small matters’ as the number of spoonfuls of sugar added to a cup of coffee, or the sight of a leaf falling through a bathroom window in the middle of a storm.

The French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, from whom Bennett takes one of her epigraphs, wrote that ‘an entire past comes to dwell in a new house’. Pond is wonderfully attuned to the ways in which domestic spaces both accommodate and shape human personality and of which we are often only half-aware. In one of the book’s most memorable stretches, the narrator describes her filthy kitchen and reflects on ‘attempts to arrange one’s awareness upon the immediate surfaces always and not let it drop into the ravines of smeared disarray everywhere between things’. Efforts to suppress or sanitise the messiness of domestic life (we might think of the trend for ‘decluttering’ in interior design) spring from the false conviction that such disarray can be meaningfully separated from the business of living. Pond, by contrast, finds its very narrative energy in those ravines, and revels in their heady mixture of ‘goose fat and unrefined sea salt’.

Bennett’s title encapsulates the concerns of the book: in its primary meaning, it refers to a strictly circumscribed and small body of water, reminding us of the small compass of the novel’s geography, wherein much life is nevertheless concentrated. But in its verbal form, ‘to pond’ can also mean to collect or accumulate, to restrict the flow of water, and, most dramatically, to throw somebody into a pond. Our experience of the work is apt to its title: the reader is plunged into a tightly defined space whose depths are not at first discernible, and, like being pushed into a pond, it has the potential to be either suffocating or enlivening (or both). The initial shock of the plunge soon gives way to the imaginative richness of being immersed in another world, however momentarily. Throw yourself in.

Illustration by Francesca Nava.

Oxford archaeologists help achieve access to satellite images of Israel and the Palestinian territories

Ellen Hendry
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Oxford archaeologists help achieve access to satellite images of Israel and the Palestinian territories

Two Oxford archaeologists have contributed to the declassification of satellite images of Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, with “huge implications” for visual access to the areas.

A 24-year-old US prohibition has restricted access to these high-resolution images. While most international satellite imaging is available to a resolution of 0.4-0.7 meters per pixel, the Kyl-Bingham Amendment (KBA) meant that US companies could not share – commercially or privately – images more detailed than 2 meters per pixel.

This is the difference between being able to make out the blurry outline of a block of flats to seeing clearly the people walking next to it. This has limited the detail in which archaeologists, climate experts, humanitarian groups, politicians, and Google Maps users can view these areas.

Two Oxford archaeologists – Dr Michael Fradley and Dr Andrea Zerbini – headed the pressure movement to overcome this. Their main argument was that the KBA should have been dropped already as companies like the French Airbus were already producing high-quality images, making the KBA invalid. Despite this, no moves were made to amend the KBA until Fradley and Zerbini’s research paper was published, limiting research due to US predominance in the field.

Fradley and Zerbini were involved in the Endangered Archaeology of the Middle East and North Africa Project. But the potential for the declassified images stretches beyond archaeology. Dr Fradley has called this development “a big win for science”, as it will affect many areas outside his own research.

Climate studies can monitor crop change, desertification, soil conditions, erosion, water tables, and pollution. Cultural heritage professional can assess looting, urban development, preserve heritage, and map sites. Politicians and humanitarians can monitor potential human rights abuses.

The original impetus for the KBA came after images of an Israeli nuclear ‘research’ plant, suspected by some to be a weapon-manufacturing plant, were released in 1995. Senator Kyl, a co-author of the KBA, said that instances like this could be used by “enemies of Israel… to target Israel for long-range attacks or assaults by terrorists”.

The head of Israel’s Defence Ministry, Amnon Harai, told Israeli media that their government is looking into “what exactly the intentions are” are the loosening of restrictions: “We would always prefer to be photographer at the lowest resolution possible. It’s always preferable to be seen blurred, rather than precisely.”

Reuters reports that Israel is worried about how Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Gaza’s Hamas militants could “plan rocket strikes on key civilian and military infrastructure” using commercial satellite imagery.

Zena Agha writes in Foreign Policy that the enhanced quality of the satellite images means Israel “can’t hide evidence of its occupation anymore”. Agha says that the restrictions were “implemented under the guise of protecting Israel’s national security”, but were actually “more an act of censorship”. Dr Michael Fradley tweeted his support of Agha’s article.

Dr Zerbini passed away from a rare form of cancer in July last year, before finding out that the restrictions had been lifted.

Image Credit to Axelspace Corporation / Wikimedia Commons. License: CC-BY-SA-4.0.

Tracing apps effective at reducing deaths even with low uptake, Oxford researchers find

Dania Kamal Aryf
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Tracing apps effective at reducing deaths even with low uptake, Oxford researchers find

Epidemiologists have suggested that contact tracing apps could reduce the transmission of infections, even with low levels of app uptake. Modelling by Google Research and Oxford University’s Nuffield Department of Medicine showed that infections could be reduced by 8% and deaths by 6%, with just 15% of a population using the app.

These findings were based on a combination of Oxford’s epidemiological model, OpenABM-Covid19, and data from a study conducted in Washington State which engaged in the usage of the Exposure Notification Systems contact-tracing application. Real-world data taken from the three largest counties in the state – King, Pierce, and Snohomish – were used as sources for this study.

The study shows that a higher number of Exposure Notification Systems regular app users led to greater reductions in the number of COVID-19 transmissions. The study includes different scenarios and outcomes which allow policymakers to anticipate phased re-openings and the loosening of COVID-19 social restrictions, while still attempting to keep the pandemic within control.

Professor Christophe Fraser, scientific advisor to the UK Government Test & Trace Programme and Group Leader in Pathogen Dynamics at Oxford University’s Nuffield Department of Medicine, said: “We’ve been exploring different digital contact tracing uptake levels for some time in the UK. We see that all levels of exposure notification uptake levels in the UK and the USA have the potential to meaningfully reduce the number of coronavirus cases, hospitalisations and deaths across the population.”

He also adds that contract-tracing apps should not be standalone initiatives, but should be integrated with other preventative measures such as social distancing and restricted travel. 

Similarly, Dr David Bonsall, scientific advisor to the UK Government Test & Trace Programme and senior researcher at Oxford University’s Nuffield Department of Medicine, stated: “Lockdowns and travel restrictions are damaging to society so we need smarter, more efficient systems that notify only the people at risk and keep the rest of us moving freely.”

In regards to cross-border collaboration and contact-tracing interoperability, senior researcher Dr Robert Hinch, from Oxford University’s Nuffield Department of Medicine, said: “We’d like to gather further evidence to assess to what extent coordinated deployments of digital exposure notification applications and public health policies result in the more effective COVID-19 infection control, and continue to find ways to ensure the maximum impact for often limited testing, tracing and isolation resources.” 

Image credit to Card Mapr/ Unsplash.

World-class concert hall to be built in Oxford

Ellen Hendry
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World-class concert hall to be built in Oxford

Though Oxford may have a world-leading university, it is yet to have a world-leading concert hall.

In a bid to change this, the university has chosen acoustic consultant Ian Knowles to design a world-class multi-space performance hall. It will feature a 500-seat concert hall, a 250-seat performance space, and a 100-seat ‘Black Box’ lab for experimental performance.

It is due to be unveiled by 2025 as part of the £150m Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities.

Dame Hilary Boulding, Trinity College President and former Principal of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, is a chief adviser to the project. She cites the lack of an internationally-renowned music hall as a critical barrier to drawing in world class musicians into the city.

Dame Boulding says the concert hall will “attract the leading artists from across the world” and “transform the concert life of Oxford”.

However, the hall will not only facilitate musical performances from international stars. Music students, local groups, drama groups, dancers, recording artists, and others will have access to the space.

The aim is to not just accommodate traditional recitals, but to cultivate innovation in the field. Knowles has previously built the UK’s first Soundlab, a 3D-sound studio purpose-built to improve concert hall and building design.

The ‘Black Box’ will be the primary hub of novel performance creation. Its design incorporates acoustic devices and technology that will enhance electroacoustic and experimental music production.

This is part of an effort to create a new “hub of humanities” in Oxford, in the form of the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, a large development to be built in the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter which will house a library, learning spaces, and a dedicated AI research centre.

The Centre was announced in 2019 after a £150 million donation from Stephen A. Schwarzman, which sparked protests from students and staff. An open letter was signed by 130 Oxford residents and staff and students at the University expressing concern over the acceptance of this donation.

Schwarzman is a major donor to President Donald Trump. The UN has accused his investment company Blackstone of worsening the global housing crisis and an investigation by The Intercept claimed that Blackstone played a role in the deforestation of the Amazon. Blackstone denies both claims.

The Vice-Chancellor has previously defended the donation: “It’s really important to me that this gift is a real endorsement and a vote of confidence in the humanities. STEM has been getting all the attention lately – there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s great to be reminded how critical the humanities are too.”

A spokesperson for the University said: “This gift was accepted after consideration by the University’s Committee to Review Donations, whose members include Oxford academics with expertise in relevant areas like ethics, business and law. As with any donation, academic activity in the Centre will not be influenced by the donor.”

Image credit to Martin Addison/Wikimedia Commons. License: CC BY-SA 2.0

Be more Banksy: how the UK continues to fail refugees in need

Sofia Cotterill
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Be more Banksy: how the UK continues to fail refugees in need

Louise Michel was a French anarchist and revolutionary born in a commune in North East France in 1830. Deeply involved in feminist campaigns, Michel went on to play key roles in the Paris Commune and the anarchist movement, taking inspiration from her belief in a world based upon humanity and justice, one in which there would be no exploiters and no exploited.

Louise Michel died in 1905, yet over 100 years later her name is now the name stencilled onto the port side of the M.V. Louise Michel – a ship, as pink as the Japanese cherry blossoms in Spring, that has been funded and transformed by the street artist Banksy.

Born in Bristol in 1974, the anonymous British artist is famed for his political activism and works that have appeared across the world from Palestine to New York, addressing topics such as war, capitalism and greed. Yet his most recent project has been rather different – instead of painting on concrete or on the insides of underground carriages, Banksy has recently converted the old French patrol boat Suroît into the rescue ship the M.V. Louise Michel for use on the Mediterranean.

The mission of the M.V. Louise Michel and her crew is one of solidarity and resistance. The ship’s aim is to reach distressed parties crossing the Mediterranean from Libya to Europe, before the Libyan Coastguard, in order to prevent unnecessary, pointless and callous loss of life and to obstruct the return of refugees to Libyan detention centres that are, in all but name, prisons, in which refugees may find themselves detained indefinitely.

Not to be outdone by Banksy, the British government have too launched new responses in reaction to refugees attempting to reach the UK, although in many ways these have been the antithesis of the work of the crew of the M.V. Louise Michel and other vessels often run by NGOs.

In 1950, the UK signed the European Convention on Human Rights, a document drafted by the newly created Council of Europe, holding that individuals have the right to life as well as the right to liberty and security. Yet on the 9th August 2020 the British government again demonstrated that the UK’s commitment to human rights is a wafer thin and precarious one at best, liable to be forgotten when the parties in question do not carry a passport with the Royal Arms emblazoned onto its front or hold British citizenship.

Home Secretary Priti Patel is not renowned for her open mindset or for her internationalist outlook, yet on the 9th August 2020 she exceeded herself by appointing former Royal Marine Dan O’Mahoney to the role of Clandestine Channel Threat Commander, tasking him with the job of ‘making the Channel route unviable for small boat crossings’.

As of the 11th August 2020, 4343 migrants have arrived in Britain after crossing the channel from France. These refugees arrive having fled persecution and violence in their homelands in countries such as Yemen, Eritrea and Chad. Their journeys are usually long and gruelling, most commonly involving transit through war-torn and corrupt Libya before the perilous, often lethal journey across the Mediterranean to Italy can be attempted. If individuals arrive safely in Europe, they then face a punishing passage of thousands of miles to Calais, with the Channel acting as the final hurdle standing in the way of reaching Britain.

Despite what the government would have us believe; these refugees are not monsters. They are people. People who are coming to the UK not to invade Britain or to undermine our security or to, God forbid, waste the precious taxpayer’s money, and they’re also not coming here to steal our jobs, our healthcare or school places. Refugees attempt to come to countries such as Britain most often because they have no viable alternative. These people are brave and courageous and have often faced traumas and hardships that the vast majority of us would pale in the face of. Britain claims to hold that the rights to life, liberty and security are sacrosanct and yet when refugees attempt to realise these rights, we turn our back on them. Instead, our Government has the audacity to manufacture the role of a ‘Clandestine Channel Threat Commander’, artificially and dangerously constructing an image of refugees as hostile, threatening aliens. 

These people are not hostile or a threat and still they continue to be grossly and inexcusably let down by Britain and Europe’s xenophobia, racism and nationalism. The treatment of refugees by Britain and the rest of Europe reveals the darkest parts of our political culture, scrubbing away any impression that we may have that our society is one of acceptance and justice as easily as one may scrub away the thin covering of a scratch card bought from a station kiosk.

In order to limit crossings across the channel, Patel recently called upon the Ministry of Defence and the Royal Navy for assistance, seemingly oblivious that the dangerous refugee crossings, usually undertaken in small, overcrowded boats and dinghies, will continue unless Britain implements safe and legal routes to allow individuals to reach the UK.

There are many possible courses of action that the UK could take in order to limit channel crossings and prevent refugees from unnecessarily risking their lives. For instance, in June 2019, Sajid Javid announced that a new resettlement scheme would commence in Britain in 2020, aiming to resettle 5000 vulnerable refugees in Britain during its first year of its operation. However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the scheme was suspended in March 2020 and despite the government’s easing of restrictions, the opening of pubs, beauty salons and restaurants, no date has yet been given for the commencement of the resettlement scheme, spelling out in writing that is as bold as a Banksy stencil, just how little the government cares for those who risk their lives trying to reach Britain.

Our priorities, attention and efforts in the UK are severely misplaced and poorly directed. Rather than directing our attention towards making the Channel and our nation inhospitable towards refugees, we ought to be opening our doors, massively expanding programmes such as the resettlement programme, and offering a place of safety to refugees from across the world and supporting them in their resettlement. 

Britain is not alone in its culpability and neglect. Indeed, the other nations of Europe continue to turn a blind eye to their responsibilities and to allow, and therefore to facilitate, the futile suffering of those who need our protection the most. But just because we are not alone in our negligence towards refugees, does not in any way diminish our responsibilities towards them.

Birth is a lottery and we have done nothing to earn our privilege to live in a secure and predominantly safe country. In an alternative universe it quite easily could have been you or I fleeing war and turmoil, setting off across the sea with no more protection against the wind and waves than the strained canvas of an overcrowded boat, as the world turns its back and pretends that it cannot see.

Oxford places first in The Guardian’s annual university guide

Imogen Duke
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Oxford places first in The Guardian’s annual university guide

Oxford University has been ranked the best university in the UK by The Guardian, for the first time in a decade. This is attributed to improved employment data, as more Oxford students take graduate-level jobs.

Cambridge University has dropped to third while the University of St Andrews stays in second place, splitting up the “Oxbridge duopoly”.

The Guardian’s guide to Oxford highlights the Vice Chancellor Louise Richardson’s description of the university as not just an “outdated ivory tower” and having “a real entrepreneurial culture”.

Oxford is ranked second place for job prospects, tied with Cambridge and the London School of Economics. Imperial is placed first based on employment data.

The employment data is collected by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, rather than by individual universities. It is also collected 15 months after graduation, in comparison to the often used metric of six months post-graduation.

Matt Hiely-Rayner, who compiled the data, said: “With Cambridge’s advantage for career prospects eliminated, Oxford’s advantage in the value-added metrics shines through to elevate the university to top spot.”

The Guardian also attributes Oxford’s high position to its “superior track record” of taking in students with lower grades. Oxford comes fourth when ranked by a ‘value added score’, comparing entry grades to final degree classification, which The Guardian links to the university’s efforts to widen access.

“We attract students who are, I think, predisposed to be successful,” Louise Richardson told The Guardian. “I have sat in on these interviews, and these are [conducted by] academics looking for people who of course are smart but who also care, and are forceful, about their subject. So the manner of selection is quite unusual, highly personalised, with enormous commitment by academics.”

This success comes in the same week that Oxford University was ranked the top university in the world by Times Higher Education.

Image credit to Alfonso Cerezo/ Pixabay

Saïd Business School takes over Oxford Playhouse for Michaelmas

Rachel Muir
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Saïd Business School takes over Oxford Playhouse for Michaelmas

Oxford University’s Saïd Business School has reached an agreement with the Oxford Playhouse allowing it to use the Beaumont Street theatre’s auditorium to host lectures for its Masters of Financial Economics students. The theatre remains shut due to the impact of coronavirus.

The agreement is initially just for Michaelmas term, but Playhouse Chief Executive Louise Chantal says it may be extended “depending on the feasibility and practicality of presenting live theatre to socially-distanced audiences in the New Year”.

A spokesperson for the Saïd Business School told Cherwell that they “recognise that the Playhouse wants to return to operating as a full-time theatre as soon as is practical, but this arrangement allows the building to be used in the meantime”.

The Business School has had to expand available teaching spaces as a result of social distancing measures which require group sizes to be reduced from 80 to 20. Many of their lectures have been moved online, but a spokesperson says: “In-person teaching is a quintessential part of the Oxford experience, and we would like to restore this for students, while keeping them and our wider community safe.

“The Playhouse gives us space for larger groups than elsewhere, with 2m distancing, and we will observe the same health measures that we do in other buildings including one way flow systems and temperature checks on entrance.”

Whilst theatres have been allowed to re-open since mid-August, the Oxford Playhouse is one of many theatres which has decided that it is not economically viable to re-open with social distancing in place.

Louise Chantal said that social distancing would mean cutting capacity from 632 to 140 for couples spaced two metres apart, or to 170 for one metre.

Despite the agreement providing some income for the Playhouse and meaning that more staff can return to work, Ms Chantal told Cherwell that the “future remains uncertain because we cannot second guess audience behaviour and when (or if) people will want to come back to live performances”.

As well as receiving “a nominal rent” from the Business School, Ms Chantal says that the theatre is also waiting to hear the result of a bid for additional funding from the Culture Recovery Fund.

Ms Chantal adds: “We have been overwhelmed by the public response to our Playhouse Plays On appeal, which has raised over £170,000 so far.” She also credits the Government’s furlough scheme for enabling them to continue to employ 85% of their permanent staff throughout the closure period.

The Playhouse is trying to adapt to the post-Covid world with socially-distanced performances, and lots of digital work including 10 new commissions and co-commissions this Autumn.

Productions put on by Oxford University students, which are sometimes shown at the Oxford Playhouse, are having to adapt to the restrictions imposed by the coronavirus.

President of Oxford University Dramatic Society, Alasdair Linn, told Cherwell: “OUDS is currently working with the University Drama Officer and other University drama organisations to offer opportunities within the regulations. At this stage, we hope to go ahead with a reconfigured Cuppers, and we have a few other opportunities in the pipeline for all students.”

Image credit to Oxford Playhouse/ Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA-3.0.

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