Thursday, May 15, 2025
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Oxford SU Assessment Consultation results show little agreement between students

Violeta Perea Rubio
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Oxford SU Assessment Consultation results show little agreement between students

The Oxford Student Union has released the results of the Teaching and Assessment Student Consultation (TASC) which received a total of 5462 submissions. This consultation has been and will be used to aid university planning for remote teaching and assessment in response to the coronavirus crisis.

However, the results from the TASC show a divided student body, with little consensus over a university-wide assessment option for Trinity 2020.  

The aim of the consultation is “to ensure that the University was aware of the effects its various potential policies would have on students”, states Ray Williams, the SU Vice-President for Access & Academic Affairs.

Williams asserts he has used the consultation as the “basis” of his arguments “in conversations with top University officials and stakeholders across the collegiate University”, stating that the TASC’s “findings have informed policymaking around teaching and assessment in Trinity 2020.”

Indeed, the ‘safety net policy’ set to be released in the upcoming week and a suspension policy allowing for optional deferment of examinations to Trinity 2021 to specific students have been directly influenced by TASC results.

The student demographic partaking in the consultation was overwhelmingly composed of undergraduates, making up 84.6% of respondents. Over 2600 finalists and a further 2800 non-finalists were surveyed.

Overall Summary

The consultation was divided between optional full, written responses and scalar responses to different scenarios and solutions, with 1 indicating an “overall negative effect” and 5 indicating “an overall positive effect”. These were graphically represented in the report. The written responses reflecting specific, detailed comments were grouped to show key areas of concern with regards to each option.  

The study presented students with 10 different “assessment solutions”: an open-book timed exam (3hr); an open-book prolonged timed exam (5hr); online Vivas; portfolios of work; coursework submission; exam postponement; suspension; alternative on-course performance grading; classification based on grades achieved throughout degree; and, graduating with an unclassified degree.

The options viewed most positively were assessment via Portfolios of Tutorial-Style Work, with 3,020 students ranking it either 4 or 5 in the negative to positive scale.

The options viewed most negatively were remote ‘open-book’ exams, with 3,213 students ranking it 1 or 2, 2000 of which stating it would have a very negative effect. The option of an Online Viva was also widely rejected, with 3,015 students claiming it would have a negative impact.

The most divided options were those offering alternative grading methods such as grades based on previous on-course performance or on previous grades already achieved in other on-course examinations and assessments.

The option to postpone exams was also generally rejected, however the proposals for an optional suspension of studies until Trinity 2021 or awarding an unclassified degree were positively viewed if chosen at the student’s own discretion.

Detailed breakdown of results.

Regarding remote exams, an overwhelming majority of students felt that open-book exams following a similar format to conventional exams would have a negative impact, with only 6% of students thinking it would be a very positive solution. Many students emphasised their concerns about home conditions, including technical issues such as WiFi connection. Others showed concerns about the suitability of specific subjects for adaptation into online formats.

The suggestion of an open-book prolonged 5-hour exam was also viewed negatively overall. However, this was seen less negatively than the 3-hour option. Similar concerns were raised.

Online Vivas that would replace exams with live assessment through videoconference were widely seen to have as negative an effect as the 3hr remote exam option, with many students raising concerns regarding unfamiliarity with the format and the stress this would cause. However, of those who viewed it more positively, they asserted this method was fairer than online exams, particularly with regards to cheating or collusion.  

Assessment via Portfolios of tutorial-style work or Coursework submissions were largely viewed more positively. Those who viewed it most positively emphasised this as a good solution to the issue of differing home conditions.

Nevertheless, students voiced concerns about the unequal access to libraries and resources and the possibility of cheating. Moreover, many expressed concerns over an increase in difficulty and expectations inherent in the format which they would be unprepared for. Many on the negative end stressed this method was inapplicable to their specific degree course.

The proposition to postpone exams to the end of the summer vacation was rejected by many students, with over 1800 stating it would have a very negative impact on them. This was primarily because of concerns about other commitments both in summer and beyond their degrees, many stating this would simply prolong stress. The University agreed with these claims emphasizing the need for students to complete their degree in “a timely fashion.” Nevertheless, many STEM exams with integrated masters have been postponed to October.

On the possibility of suspension of studies until Trinity 2021, many students agreed it should be an option, albeit only opted for by a minority of the student body. The University has directly responded to this and announced they will offer a “second sitting of Trinity 2020 exams in Trinity 2021” which students can pursue “with the blessing of their college”.

The option to award grades based on on-course performance was divisive among students. Paradoxically, students both stated it would be an accurate representation of performance whilst others asserted the direct opposite. Many postgraduate students who are tutors themselves expressed “deep concern” over this option.

The use of grades already achieved in summative assessments throughout the degree was also a divisive option. Many students asserted this was inapplicable to their course because of a lack of assessment until final year. Nevertheless, the University has confirmed they will use previous grades as the foundation for their safety net policy, to be released in the upcoming week.

The final option to award unclassified degrees was largely rejected if implemented universally, however many suggested this should a least be an option for students, particularly those struggling most because of the pandemic. In light of this, the University has decided to make a DDH (‘Declared to have Deserved Honours) degree an option for all students, which would be accompanied with “an enhanced reference letter” to aid in future prospects.

The University affirms its collaboration with the Student’s Union in the development of policies for the upcoming term.

The University told Cherwell: “The SU has been very closely involved in the development of all our policies – and sit on all of the education workstreams supporting our approach to teaching and assessment during Trinity term. The feedback from the student consultation has directly influenced this work and our plans to minimise any potential negative impact from the move to online teaching and assessment.”

Oxford students set up COVID-19 support website for Zimbabwe

Imogen Duke
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Oxford students set up COVID-19 support website for Zimbabwe

Five Oxford students are part of a global group of Zimbabwean students and young professionals who have founded the Zimbabwe Covid-19 Support Hub. The website pools data, advice, and support information to amplify the Zimbabwean government and civil society’s responses to coronavirus.

About 30 Zimbabwean volunteers use their expertise in programming, communication, economics, law, and other fields to run the website. The Oxford students are postgraduates originally from Zimbabwe: Terrens Muradzikwa from Keble College, Prince Abudu and Itai Muzhingi from Balliol College, and Jason Brickhill and Ngoni Mugwisi from Trinity College.

They collect and share information from authoritative sources, including accurate health advice, government information on the spread of the virus in Zimbabwe, and government measures. The website also collates details about how to access and support community-based projects, and the organisations to contact for assistance.

Muradzikwa explained to Cherwell how the website will support Zimbabwe’s response to coronavirus: “One, through busting fake news by sharing verified and accessible COVID-19 information in local languages such as Shona, Ndebele and Kalanga. We have translated expert-reviewed information from various sources such as the Ministry of Health, WHO, and COVID-19 Health Literacy Project. We have been distributing this information over our website and social media channels reaching over 100,000 people.

“Two, through amplifying the efforts of others in Government and civil society in Zimbabwe, including by encouraging Zimbabweans in the diaspora to help wherever they can. This includes information on GoFundMe campaigns and innovations by local universities.”

Abudu told Cherwell: “It was really the first COVID-19 death that was the wake-up call, because the case was of a young rising media star we all knew: Zororo Makamba. Motivated and deeply saddened by this, we had to act in such uncertain times and provide a platform to use our talents to contribute to the fight against COVID-19 in Zimbabwe.”

The website states: “We are a group of Zimbabwean professionals and researchers in the diaspora. We all have family and friends in the country. We are living through COVID-19 in other countries, but are deeply concerned about the threat of the virus to Zimbabweans. Zimbabwe faces challenges of poverty, a weakened public health system, high rates of HIV-AIDS and other underlying medical conditions, food insecurity, unemployment and fiscal instability that make the COVID-19 threat to Zimbabwe particularly severe.”

Zimbabwe Covid-19 Support Hub shares information on its website, and can also be found on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

For whom the Tik Toks speak

Sofía Sanabria de Felipe
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For whom the Tik Toks speak

“Tick tock… Tick tock… It’s a clock! The arena is a clock”, screamed the preteen memory of Katniss Everdeen as my Uni friends introduce me to “TikTok” on a random term night. I smiled to myself. How bizarre it seemed to me that they’d give such an ominous name to an entertainment app. That was my sole reaction to it, though. I brushed it off as just another one of those modern-day social media platforms that bombard people with unnecessary information and provides them with a virtual sense of “being in touch”. It would become, I was sure, something I’d actively try to avoid engaging with. You see, the thought of getting a notification from my phone, displaying a percentage increase in time spent on the device is a haunting one, and I couldn’t help but think an app named after the passing of time would undoubtedly bring that fear to life. And so, I proceeded to ignore it. Nod along to my friends’ references. Kept the onomatopoeic ticking of clocks as background music to the structuring of my everyday life.

A couple of weeks later, the news app on my phone updated me on the appropriate way of defining the situation we were all under. A pandemic, it called it. Everyone was to remain inside. Outings were to be limited, exclusively for the purchase of goods and/or some form of exercise. As uncertainty towards the future and term-time rose, the ticking of clocks grew fainter every day. It became harder to conceive a tomorrow and a yesterday when every day felt roughly the same. It was as if Plutarch Heavensbee had decided to alter the settings in the arena and disorientate us, seemingly making ticking clocks redundant.

That same night, messenger alerted that someone had shared a link with me. It was one to a TikTok, from what I presumed was a Timothée Chalamet fan, commenting on the swell of emotions that hit them every time Visions of Gideon came on, emotions undoubtedly associated with the heart-breaking ending to Call Me by Your Name. It made me laugh. In those mere 45 seconds, someone had managed to conceptualise their reaction to a movie in bittersweet terms, spurring, in true Gen Z spirit, a comedic reaction to one’s own suffering. And I had enjoyed it. Maybe I’d dismissed TikTok too fast. Maybe there was more to it than yet another way of wasting my time.

My pleasant reaction to the TikTok lent itself to a great conversation with said friend. A conversation, might I add, which featured further links to other videos, each and every one of them expressing, in a matter of seconds, an array of emotions shared by two individuals, miles apart. The ticking of the clocks had always been a language I’d associated with order and structure, with things to do and places to be as part of human life. Now, dropping the c’s along the way, it was becoming, in my eyes, at a moment when those old structures seemed pointless, another sort of language, better suited to the needs of our time. Jokingly, I texted saying that looking through the chat seemed like we’d been “speaking in tik tok”. My phone autocorrected it to “tick tocks”. And never had autocorrect been more wrong.

You see, there was more to the dropping of those c’s than a marketing decision made when the company took over Musical.ly. The former, that is, tick tock, speaks of a time when structuring your day in a specific manner marks your exits and entrances, the places you ought to be at for the realisation of a series of activities. The latter symbolises a virtual form of communication, better suited to social distancing and limited exits to the outdoors. It speaks of a reality in need of reconceptualization. And so, what would have previously been defined as 45 seconds of wasted productivity time, became a vessel for a catching up session with a friend.  

When people learn a language, often they’re taught a set of roles that go with it. Structures they ought to follow. A (relative) logic to the way letters are pronounced. A process of association by which words acquire meaning and the contexts in which it’d be most appropriate to use them. That’s all fair enough. Indeed, it’ll get you through most box-standard language exams, and possibly even allow you to flex in front of your family and friends as you order something at a restaurant on holiday. But often people forget to mention what I find to be the most crucial part: its organic, ever-changing nature. People forget to mention that those rules are, and ought to be, revised. That they didn’t give birth to language but were rather a result of it as people attempted to homogenise different strands of what seemed to be a single being. Language is very much a living entity, something subject to context just as much as our identities are. Subject to time in the same manner as we are. It will take up different forms, engage with the arts and society in an array of creative ways, creating all sorts of symbols and adding layers to meaning.

And Tik Tok is a strand of this modern language. One based on creative attempts to disseminate clear cut, often intentionally comedic, ideas about people’s common interests. One designed to keep conversations going with friends, to share a beacon of random surrealism and get that friend of yours to crack a smile every now and then. One entirely based on embracing ridicule as an element of life, and, above all, providing the world with the necessary tools and space to develop an inherent ability to make fun of ourselves. A creative ability, might I add, which becomes most poignant, it seems, when the outside world has been infected with overwhelming destruction, and it is up to us to keep watering the creative (now house) plant.

Don’t get me wrong. TikTok remains in my mind something to be understood, largely, as banal and superficial. There for short term entertainment, in all its glorious superficiality. And there’s definitely value to that. No real need to have profound thoughts on it or see it in any different light. But for those of you out there who, like me, will turn your nose at anything that seems too “trendy” and unproductive, this article encourages you to revaluate its worth within the broader framework of twenty-first-century popular culture and communication. And for future historians, who will attempt to reconstruct our experience of the COVID-19 induced lockdown as part of their histories from below, may they be encouraged to come to terms with how the ticking of clocks became a communication tool far beyond the structuring of dystopian days.

Uniquely comforting consolation: a look at Netflix’s Tiger King

Timea Iliffe
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Uniquely comforting consolation: a look at Netflix’s Tiger King

A desire for escapism is one of the most common reasons people seek media. The circumstances in which we are currently living, and the fact that there is literally no excuse not to be watching Netflix right now, means that regular reality TV or standard binge-worthy true crime just aren’t cutting it anymore.

Enter Tiger King, helpfully and aptly subtitled Murder, Mayhem, and Madness. Other nouns you could add include Bleached Mullets, Ex-Drug Lords and Country Songs About Brutally Murdering Your Spouse. The show blazes in all its absurdity, smoking like a motorway car crash, while thirty-four million people slow down to take a better look.

Emotionally, the show is the polar opposite of stuff like Queer Eye or Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, but it fulfils the same need. While the latter can make you feel better about the chaos of your own life by pointing your gaze upwards to an aspirational vision of colour-coded cabinets and Tan France’s immaculate fashion sense, the lure of true crime is that it can do the same while making you look downwards and outwards into the gutter and fringes of society.

That’s what has made it so incredibly popular. There’s something deeply comforting in knowing that, as much as your life might be slipping off balance in self-isolation, you’ll never end up as a white-blonde, gun-toting, mulleted polygamist facing two decades in prison for hired murder and nine violations of animal protection laws. Probably.

The show also does so well because of the absence of truly sympathetic victims. In more grounded true crime series, like Making a Murderer or Abducted in Plain Sight, significantly more attention is paid to the victims’ pain. It’s difficult to fully lose yourself in the story because you are rightly reminded, often by their testimony, that actual, innocent people died or suffered violence at the heart of the story the producers are telling.

In Tiger King, the primary victims are – depending on who you believe – Carol Baskin’s late husband, the workers, and the animals themselves, whose stories the documentary was never truly interested in telling. You get, in short, the release and the disgust and the adrenaline of true crime, without being weighed down by the realities of the people and animals who are hurt by it.

And on the topic of sympathy, Tiger King also does well because of the type of person it chooses to mock. You couldn’t really have a show like Tiger King featuring a traditionally marginalised minority – not without facing an intense social media backlash. But younger and more liberal viewers are willing to uncritically accept the caricature the series offers, of the lower-class, redneck, hillbilly, gun-toting white American, garlanded in leopard print and covered in spray-tan. Which is why it works. A show perfectly designed to offer release has to do that without troubling itself with the burdens of social responsibility.

That isn’t to say that culture critical media analysis is a bad thing; for the most part, it’s incredibly beneficial, and a deeply necessary project in the ongoing task of making the art we consume conform to the values we hold. But it does take effort. The liberation of watching something like Tiger King is that it demands nothing from you but your instincts.

In a time when everything is anxiety-inducing and exhausting, Netflix has created something that can wrench your attention away from the twenty-four-hour news cycle without making you do anything more than keep looking at the screen. And, for better or for worse, that’s what most people need right now.

NHS staff and rough sleepers offered college accommodation

Mark Robins
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NHS staff and rough sleepers offered college accommodation

Several Oxford colleges have made rooms available for homeless people and health workers to combat the impact of the COVID-19 crisis.

University College and Pembroke College are part of a council-run scheme which has given 121 rooms to vulnerable people. University College has made twelve rooms in its Banbury Road annexe available to rough sleepers. The annexe will be run by St Mungo’s, a homeless charity, and is available free of charge. The College has offered a further six rooms to people displaying symptoms of coronavirus.

In addition to providing accommodation, Pembroke is contributing to the Council’s food delivery scheme which provides 100 homeless people with three meals a day. Drivers deliver two hot meals and a cold breakfast to people housed in temporary shelters in Oxford. “Everyone in college is immensely proud of our catering team who are once again putting in extra effort to show the meaning of being a caring community,” says Dame Lynne Brindley, the College’s master.

The Saïd Business School, the YHA, and commercial hotels are also part of the scheme which the Council initiated after government advice said it was “imperative that rough sleepers and other vulnerable homeless are supported into appropriate accommodation.”

“Our housing team and partners old and new have worked incredibly hard to protect homeless people from coronavirus”, said Councillor Linda Smith. “We’re exploring options to provide a wider range of accommodation that will help ensure nobody should have to sleep rough in Oxford during these unprecedented times.”

The Dean of the Saïd Business School said the School was “glad to offer support to our wider community at this time of crisis. Once the emergency is over, we look forward to opening our doors to our students and colleagues once again.”

Other colleges are facing pressure to make unoccupied rooms available. 149 people have signed an open letter calling on more colleges to offer “whatever housing facilities they can”. The letter says: “The University of Oxford and its Colleges, with their stock of currently unoccupied housing for staff and students, are in a unique position to be of service at this time.

“More self-contained rooms are needed, though, and we urge other colleges to get in touch with the Council. We must—as a community—find ways to cope with the present need, supporting the most vulnerable amongst us.”

Several colleges have also offered accommodation to NHS workers who need to self-isolate. Wadham has offered 30 rooms in its Merifield site in Summertown. A spokesperson told Cherwell: “We have organised contract cleaners and a laundry service and a team of Wadham students and staff have volunteered to welcome and guide newcomers to their rooms while maintaining social distancing.

“We are waiting to hear from NHS representatives if and when the accommodation will be required.” The college has also donated surplus gloves and aprons to the NHS to help deal with shortages.

St Anne’s and Exeter have confirmed that their accommodation is available to NHS workers. St Anne’s has offered rooms in north Oxford, whilst lodge manager Peter Burden used the College van to deliver 40,000 items of personal protective equipment to local health services.

A St Anne’s spokesperson told Cherwell: “As an outward looking and collaborative College we are keen to play our part supporting the City of Oxford, particularly key workers, at this challenging and uncertain time.”

An Afternoon in Late Autumn

Joe Williams
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An Afternoon in Late Autumn

Dormant warrens thronged and gasped in the clay;
Trees groped empty space, hung with wilting flesh;
A pond sat stagnant, scummed, long rid of joy –.
Autumn’s slow coil had caught me in its crush.

Yet, for all the shapes of decay and grief,
No wails or groans gave sound to the pain,
Not even a twitch told the slightest strife,
All writhings were locked in an ugly mien.

They were locked – diseased limbs and drawn faces –
Near their sad drop’s end, on the verge of lull.
Withheld was death’s allaying catharsis.
Preserved was agony, silent and still.

And I was all the warmth and life around
To breathe and beat against the frozen air,
Except for a rabbit with matted eyes
That fumbled and fell in the mud.

* * *

Above, the ailing sun had drooped and spewed
Its sickly amber on the sky; a cold,
Quiet blast of waned might, gathered and heaved,
Before its final fall below the world.

And I was all the warmth and life on earth.
Bright cities of gardens and art, crowds thrilled
On their victory march, my homely hearth –
All dropped before the sun and left that mould.

Pushing into my ears, the grim coil closed,
And I was all the warmth and life that was;
Childhood games, old flames, cooed words memorised
Did their colour, voice and likeliness lose.

So, I stood alone on that lonely plain,
That scrap set to sink with the sun’s last moan,
That waste that was all that ever had been,
Expecting the end and wanting it soon.

* * *

Then all illusions, high and low, were cracked
When, from a hedge-hid road, a yob’s car hacked,
Enforcing plain old truth, neutral and slacked,
And my next meal tapped at my brain.

Image Credit: Francesca Nava

Comfort Films: What We Do in the Shadows

Isabella Colletta
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Comfort Films: What We Do in the Shadows

Niche is one way to describe a dark comedy about a group of vampires muddling through day-to-day life in Wellington suburbia. However, Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s 2014 horror mockumentary secured its place as a familiar favourite, if one with a bit of a cult status, through its bizarre and banal satire. Both gag-fuelled and gory, it’s a film that will keep you smiling throughout its entire 97 minute run – frankly a better way of using your quarantine time than messing around with a sour-dough starter.

Filmed by a small group of camera men provided with crucifixes and full immunity from their subjects (of course), the mockumentary depicts the nightly activities and bickering of four centuries-old vampires. Dandyish Viago (Waititi) laments the state of the sink whilst Deacon, the 183 year old “rock star” of the group, maintains “vampires don’t do dishes”. Meanwhile Vladislav (Clement) explains his tardy appearance at flat meetings citing mass demonic orgies as an excuse and 8000 year old Peter is left in the basement with his chicken carcass.

The film is ostensibly about a group of “man-children” and their immature gags and petty feuds. There is a well meaning idiocy to the hypnotic tricks they play on their victims that can also be found in their rigorous traditions. The characters relentless pandering to their documenters is reminiscent of a host of mockumentary sitcoms. Waititi and Clement have painstakingly fleshed out their characters, and the friendship and tensions that exist in the household feel comfortably and humorously familiar. 

Yet trouble arises when one of the coven turns Nick, an intended food source, into a vampire, and suddenly the house dynamics must deal with an excitable and egotistical addition. As the youngest member of the house, Nick brings an even greater level of ridiculousness to the group, but also a self awareness regarding the contemporary cultural associations of vampires; the others must confront him over his keenness to tell every club-er in Wellington “I am Twilight”.

When Nick invites his friend Stu (a human) into the house, the group begins to form a bizarrely touching attachment to him, despite their admitted desire to eat him. He becomes an additional house member and the resident technology guru, teaching the archaic vampires some new skills such as Skype, web surfing and DJing. Despite the lack of action, the film maintains a sharp and fast paced humour, which makes up for the occasional feeling that the plot is somewhat sparse.

It truly is the script and performances that stand out in this film, and for the most part, these features are left to speak for themselves. In line with the mockumentary style, the cinematography and the role of the camera are fairly simple. On the rare occasions when special effects are used, such as in examples of the film’s gore based humour, they end up leaving the intended comedy slightly flat. You wouldn’t define What We Do In The Shadows as “uproarious comedy” by any stretch of the imagination. However, it is a delightful blend of utter ridiculousness, sharp puns and continuous gags, and it’s cheerful enough to make for perfect quarantine viewing. There is definitely solace to be found in watching a group of people muddle through their own endless boredom with a level of remarkable idiocy and genuine enjoyment of each other’s company.

Daunting, but rewarding: introducing Oxford’s caving scene

Thomas Lyne
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Daunting, but rewarding: introducing Oxford’s caving scene

First things first: let’s get our bearings! What’s caving, what’s pot-holing and what’s spelunking, and difference between them? 

Caving is one of the most unusual sport clubs you might find at university! It’s a team activity that involves walking, crawling, climbing, and abseiling through underground passages. The sport’s main appeals are the sense of embarking on an adventure in a team, the variation of the underground architecture, and the incredible formations that uniquely grow in caves. There are lots of opportunities for those seeking to challenge themselves physically and mentally. Crawling in confined tunnels or abseiling through lofty chambers can certainly be daunting, but it’s also remarkably rewarding.

Terminology-wise, “caving” tends to imply going through horizontal underground passages while “potholing” usually refers to ascending and descending vertical shafts. Most cave systems have both vertical and horizontal sections, so the activity of going into them is usually referred to as caving! Spelunking is an American term for caving.

It seems like there’s a long history of caving in Oxford. How did the club get started, and where have been the traditional go-to locations? 

Geology Professor Marjorie Sweeting started the club in 1957 with the help of some students who had some caving experience. The first trip for the club was to a cave in Somerset called GB. This is a cave the club continues to visit today.

Over the years, the club has thrived, and during term time, we do a rotation of weekend trips to the main UK caving areas: Somerset, South Wales, Peak District, and Yorkshire Dales.

What’s the social scene like at OUCC?

During term time, we have weekly pub catch up socials, which are also used to refresh on skills such as knot-tying, rigging, and to plan which caves we’d like to visit on the next upcoming trip. Alongside this, we host talks about caving and expeditions that members have been on. We also have an annual dinner and a Summer BBQ and punting day, which are always fun events.

How much scope is there for competition, then? Do we just have to take your word for it that you’re better than Cambridge?

We usually run a varsity match of caving-related games on our joint trip. I am happy to report that we shoed the Tabs at the last varsity 4-1.

It looks like one of the big things the club has got up to over the years is exploring, and mapping out new networks of caves, both in the UK and abroad. Can you tell me more about this, and about any projects you’re working on at the minute?

OUCC ran expeditions to the Picos de Europa in Spain from 1962 – 2014 where the club found extensive caves that are among some of the deepest in Europe. The current depth of the cave system is 1.2 km. The Club does not currently run any expeditions, but members are very welcome to join the expedition that still runs to the area ‘The Ario Caves Project’, which is a great experience. There are also many other expeditions that students can get involved with using the skills that they learn with the club to places such as Austria, Borneo, and China.

Do you have any recommendations for caving-related books and films to introduce people to the sport while they’re locked down?

There is a film about the OUCC’s exploration in Spain called ‘The Ario Dream’ which can be accessed at https://vimeo.com/ondemand/ariodream, and there’s a book entitled Beneath the Mountains available on our website, http://www.oucc.org.uk, which are both excellent introductions to caving.

How did you get into caving? What’s the beginners’ scene like in Oxford, and how do you get involved?

The university Caving Club is probably the easiest way to get into caving that there is. Nearly all of our weekend trips are suitable for complete beginners and on most trips there is at least one person who has not done it before. We have all of the gear that you need for caving in our hut, so you don’t need to buy anything to come along. To get involved, you just have to rock up to a weekly pub meet or email a leader. Weekend trips cost £40 which includes accommodation, food, transport, and caving kit.

For more information on what OUCC is up to, or if you’d like to get in touch with them, check out their instagram page (@oxford_uni_caving), their Facebook (Oxford University Caving Club) or their website (http://www.oucc.org.uk/).

This introduction to Oxford’s caving scene was written with contributions from Rory Rose, Amelia Steane, Nick Adams and Rebecca Miller.

Image Credit: Thomas Leung, 2019

Shorts: The world after Covid-19

Various contributors
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Shorts: The world after Covid-19

1. Jed Burkat (Brasenose)

Slavoj Zizek, beloved pop-culture icon and philosopher, has called Coronavirus a ‘perfect storm’ which ‘gives a new chance for Communism’ in Europe in a series of writings and interviews. Unfortunately for the sniffling Ljubljana Marxist, I must disagree.

If anything, the aftermath of the pandemic will strengthen the invisible hand’s grip on our lives. The high street, already struggling from the rise of online shopping, will suffer a premature death as we shop virtually again and again, out of concern for our safety. In corona-world, such shops thrive; ASOS warehouse staff have been deemed ‘essential’ and Amazon has gone unpunished in firing union leaders under pretext of safety. Neither small businesses nor the actual workers benefit from this, and it does not bode well for the future (for the love of God – pause your online shopping!)

When we finally do leave the house, social distancing – now social code – will make it difficult for small restaurants, cafes, bars to just go back to how things were. The pub around your corner does not have the same safety net that Wetherspoons can fall back on. And what will happen to climate justice and holding corporations accountable? Unless you are willing to risk a fine, you will probably sit those protests out too.

More online, broke, and physically separated than before, we are vulnerable to erosions to our freedoms, big and small – luckily, they won’t happen unless we stand idly by. As quarantine drags on, the real risk is that we become forgetful.

2. Carlotta Hartmann (Trinity)

Imagining the world after Covid-19 is, to be honest, a grim task. It is not like the mess that we were in before the pandemic will be any easier to fix – remember climate change? The when and how of this strange world are hazy, and the projections for the next few months look anything but rosy. Still, there is some joy in this dark mist of such a scenario: Coming back to Oxford in October, seeing our friends and – what? Bear hugs and cuddles when we have all just come from different continents? Even after the worst of the pandemic has passed, that doesn’t seem too plausible. I am looking forward to more creative displays of affection: handshakes are back! Not the boring ‘nice to meet you’ kind, but the Zac and Cody ten-second rituals. The added difficulty of not actually touching? Think pantomime, lots of waving at each other and running in circles. Plenty of time to practice before October.

3. George Phillips (Brasenose)

As the pandemic spreads we are consuming more news than ever before, but Coronavirus may well have sounded the death knell for print journalism.

Almost all local papers have ceased operations, many with little hope of resuming post lockdown. Nationally we have seen print runs cut drastically and major publications ask staff to accept pay cuts.

Traffic to news sites, on the other hand, is through the roof, and so too are subscription rates; the Financial Times reports a tenfold increase in paying users over the last three weeks for example. Some new customers will, of course, revert to buying a physical paper once circumstances allow. A large portion, though, will doubtless realise that an online subscription is not just more convenient, but also better value for money and richer in content.

Suddenly, the thought of an entirely digital news landscape seems plausible. The state of the industry this time next year is anyone’s guess. We can rightly assume, however, that as people increasingly look to the web for their news fix, print newspapers are well and truly on their way to becoming extinct. After all, it was only a matter of time.

4. Amelia Wood (Balliol)

Once this is all over, the Conservatives will find themselves in a sticky situation. Having left the responsibility of the last global recession firmly at Labour’s door, they will struggle to do the same with this one. The opposition already has plenty of ammunition, from the failure to deliver large-scale testing to the government’s initially cavalier approach. What would have been the right tack is a question that will take years of inquests and articles to unpack.

The Tories would be right to be concerned. Look at Corbyn’s trials with anti-Semitism, or Hilary and her emails, any story that lasts is a story that does lasting damage. From the highs of his election landslide, Johnson will find his term dominated by this pandemic and the slow recovery from it.

As for the planet, there are crystal clear waters in Venice for the first time in living memory, animals across the globe have reclaimed the land, and air pollution has plummeted. But the healing will not last. When the virus has receded, we will return to our normal lives, the waters will muddy, the animals will retreat, and the air will be replaced by smog. Stasis is always easier than change, and the changes we need to make are impossibly hard. My guess is that the coronavirus will leave its impression on the political landscape, but not the actual one.

5. Natasha Voase (Keble)

We are clapping for our carers every week and demanding that they be given a pay rise. The Conservative government is promising to borrow billions to underwrite people’s wages and Boris Johnson put the nail in the Thatcherite coffin by saying that there really is such a thing as society. An optimist might see this as a turning point for the establishment of a fairer, more compassionate, and more unified society.

However, those who are convinced that a smiling socialist utopia is around the corner waiting for us are mistaken. The 2008 financial crisis, which revealed the cracks in the global capitalist order did not usher in an era of socialism and nor will this. As with the austerity imposed by Conservative governments since 2010, the carers we cheer for this week will be those hardest hit next week. Tory MPs cheered when they blocked pay rises for nurses in 2017, and the quiet decision to give these same MPs £10,000 to cope with the hardship of working from home proves the inclinations of our leaders. The current crisis will not be a great leveller unless we force our leaders to make it so.

Coronavirus vaccine may be ready by autumn, Oxford professor states

Violeta Perea Rubio
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Coronavirus vaccine may be ready by autumn, Oxford professor states

Sarah Gilbert, the Oxford Professor leading the research team working towards a vaccine against the coronavirus at Oxford’s Jenner Institute, has stated that a vaccine could be ready by autumn 2020. Co-leader of the Oxford team, Professor Adrian Hill affirmed that “the aim is to have at least a million doses by around about September.”

This contrasts the consensus among experts that the vaccine could take between 12 to 18 months to develop.

The Oxford Vaccine Centre states: “The best-case scenario is that by the autumn of 2020 we could have an efficacy result from the phase III trial”, however it warns that “these best-case timeframes are highly ambitious and subject to change.”

Professor Gilbert told The Times she was “80% confident” the vaccine being trialled will be effective and successful. She continued: “I think there’s a high chance that it will work based on other things that we have done with this type of vaccine. It’s not just a hunch and as every week goes by we have more data to look at.” Similarly, Professor Hill expressed his “confidence that this vaccine should work”.

The clinical trials for the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine developed in Oxford have already begun. They have finished recruiting 510 volunteers aged between 18-55 for Phase I of clinical trials, and they aim to have trialled the vaccine on all of them by mid-May, commencing next week.

The Oxford team has already tested the vaccine successfully on animals.

Phase II aims to recruit 500 people aged 55-70, with the final phase aiming for a pool of 5,000 volunteers. Prof. Andrew Pollard claimed the Oxford Jenner Institute “should have all our volunteers recruited through all three phases of the trial over the next few months”, because of its previous experience with similar viruses. Pollard noted this process “usually takes 5 years or more.”

The Oxford team, led by Prof. Sarah Gilbert, Prof. Andrew Pollard, Prof. Teresa Lambe, Dr Sandy Douglas and Prof. Adrian Hill, started work on the vaccine in early January 2020. The Jenner Institute was selected for its previous work developing vaccines against viral diseases such as Ebola, Malaria, HIV, HPV and Hepatitis B and C.

Prof. Gilbert also emphasized the Jenner Institute’s previous work with so-called “Disease X”, which she described as a hypothetical “unknown disease that was going to come and cause a pandemic at some time in the future, and we needed to plan for it.”

She stresses the similarities between the new and progressing coronavirus vaccine and previous vaccines developed by the Jenner Institute which have already been tested and are in circulation. The Insitute’s previous research allows the team “to move faster” in the development of a vaccine, according to Gilbert.

The team was granted £2.2 million by the National Institute for Health and Research and UK Research and Innovation in March. Beyond this, Prof. Hill stated that “tens of millions” or more is being spent on their vaccine research and future manufacturing.

Yet, Hill expressed concerns over Oxford’s limited funds and means, stating “manufacturing is one of the biggest challenges if this vaccine works.”

“We’re a university, we have a very small in-house manufacturing facility that can do dozens of doses. That’s not good enough to supply the world,” Hill told the BBC World Service.

Nevertheless, Hill stated that “the aim is to have at least a million doses by around about September”, emphasizing that “a vaccine is the exit strategy for the pandemic”, whilst warning that “we are very likely to need vaccines in future years because it is unlikely we’ll be able to eradicate this virus.”

Recently, Merck Millipore, a leading science and technology company, has pledged to help Oxford’s Jenner Institute with the rapid development of a large-scale manufacturing process for their vaccine once it successfully passes the clinical trial. Gilbert stresses the need to “start vaccine scalar early” through working with other organizations like Merck Millipore.

Udit Batra, a member of the Merck Executive Board, stated: “This is an important step in treating Covid-19 and other diseases that impact global public health. This work marks a milestone in the vaccine manufacturing development journey, as clinical testing continues to advance.”

Over 70 coronavirus vaccines are being developed worldwide, according to the WHO. Prof. Gilbert’s team is the first to enter their coronavirus vaccine into clinical trials. Following them, 3 other teams have begun human testing: CanSino Biological Inc./Beijing Institute of Biotechnology, Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc., and Moderna Inc./National Insitute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Professor Gilbert emphasises the need for international collaboration in vaccine research. She told The Lancet: “the WHO is in the process of creating a forum for everyone who is developing COVID-19 vaccines to come together and present their plans and initial findings.

“It is essential that we all measure immunological responses to the various vaccines in the same way, to ensure comparability and generalisability of our collective findings. Work is continuing at a very fast pace, and I am in no doubt that we will see an unprecedented spirit of collaboration and cooperation, convened by WHO, as we move towards a shared global goal of COVID-19 prevention through vaccination.”

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