Thursday 24th July 2025
Blog Page 531

Confusion and Chaos: The 2020 US Presidential Election Kicks Off

Sandy Elliot
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Confusion and Chaos: The 2020 US Presidential Election Kicks Off

Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg set to top delegate counts amidst frustrating counting and technical issues

As of three days after the Iowa caucus, the full results still have not been released. However, with 96% of the results released, which supposedly show a cross-section of the race, show Sen. Bernie Sanders and former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg tied in the pledged delegate count, followed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former vice president Joe Biden in a disastrous fourth place. The final result is set to be extremely close between the top two candidates.

In the US, presidential nominees are chosen by being assigned a majority of pledged delegates, based on the votes in a series of primary elections and caucuses. The fifty states will send around 4,000 pledged delegates to this year’s Democratic National Convention, where one of the crowded 2020 field will be officially nominated for President of the United States in July.

Iowa only elects 49 of those assigned delegates. Mathematically the stakes look low, but because the result of the Iowa caucus has so much power in shaping media narratives going forward, it is a state in which candidates have historically invested a great deal of time and money. All Democratic nominees since 1996 have won this contest, in a state often subject to years of campaigning before the election even begun. One candidate, the quixotic John Delaney, literally announced his candidacy in 2017 and dropped out three days before the opening contest.

This year, instead of the media narrative centring around the winner of the Iowa Caucus and their prospects for future contests in New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and the dozen states that vote on the 3rd March or ‘Super Tuesday’, it has been focused on the embarrassing failure of the Democratic Party to report the results of its own caucus, with several media outlets declaring the event a victory for Trump. 

This has come about because the Democratic Party entrusted the mechanics of their caucus to a dodgy app. The app is supposed to allow the central party to collate all the data from the caucuses across the state. The caucus system relies not on paper ballots but on counting the number of people in attendance: once they have been grouped by candidate support, they are counted by a party official. Each precinct was supposed to report their data to the central party by uploading the results to the app, making the process of collating the results quick and easy for the party.

Instead, the night played out in strange and bathetic fashion. American news networks expected the results to begin arriving at 8pm EST. By 9:30pm EST, news crews commented that it was taking much longer than usual for any full results to be reported; news agencies were reporting early numbers, but all results were partial tallies.

After several more hours of waiting while news agencies and broadcasters tried to fill hours of time that had been set aside for election coverage, the candidates made their speeches assuring everyone the election had gone excellently for them and urged their supporters to look forward to the New Hampshire primary in a week’s time. Buttigieg got particularly carried away, declaring victory before a single official result was declared – all whilst Sanders may yet overtake him.

The software meltdown seemed to threaten to endanger the whole process as efforts to submit results across the state overloaded it with traffic and transmitted incorrect data. It seems that the organisers of the caucus were using software that simply had not been tested state-wide prior to the actual vote, despite having had years to prepare. And so, by morning, still no results were announced, and the entire Democratic Party looked utterly shambolic.

It is not yet clear whether the chaos surrounding the caucus has blunted its usual importance in shaping the race. Biden currently leads the national polls and Buttigieg trails them, at around 7% in 538’s polling aggregation, in 5th place behind the former mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, who is skipping the first four states altogether to buy a barrage of adverts in Super Tuesday states.

However, the relevance of national polls is very limited at this stage compared to delegate counts in early states, and only time will tell how substantial a ‘bounce’ the early states provide. Buttigieg is also hindered by his currently low levels of support among non-white voters as compared with Biden and Sanders. All of this makes for an unpredictable contest.  

It is perhaps appropriate that 2020 should have started off with a stark reminder of the Democratic Party’s potential for incompetence and self-sabotage. As journalist and podcast host Robert Evans pointed out, the political Right in America this year organised a march of 22,000 armed citizens through the streets of Virginia in favour of gun rights; the Democratic Party has failed to organise a caucus.

The Democrats performed strongly in the 2018 midterm elections off the back of Trump’s unpopularity, taking back the House of Representatives and performing strongly in swing states like Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as forcing surprisingly competitive Senate and Gubernatorial races in conservative states such as Georgia and Texas.

But unseating incumbent presidents is historically difficult to do, particularly when metrics point to a strong economy. Although all the Democratic candidates will make the case for their own electability, any of them are likely to face an uphill battle to unseat Trump, whose base remains no less energised and organised. And if 2020 is to resemble 2016, the most favoured insiders among the Democratic establishment, such as Biden and Buttigieg, may well be the most vulnerable to Trump’s attacks in the general election.

Profile: Robert Icke

Laura Plumley
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Profile: Robert Icke

“Anybody working in theatre now must be engaged with the question of whether it will survive”. It’s immediately clear from his first remarks in our conversation that Robert Icke is no stranger to facing controversial questions within the theatre industry and tackling them head on. When we meet on a rainy Wednesday at the end of term, what’s most striking about talking to Icke is the sense of responsibility he feels to produce great work that is still accessible to those new to the art form. His aim is to show the audience that theatre is theirs and that it can be “unsettling, exciting and dangerous” in order to build up audiences for the future.

Before his meteoric rise to fame, Icke explains that it was programmes like the National Theatre’s scheme of £10 tickets that introduced him to theatre in the Capital. As a director, he has played a great part in creating the same opportunities for young audiences today. Take his critically acclaimed Hamlet which premiered at the Almeida and subsequently transferred to the Harold Pinter Theatre in the West End.

At the Almeida, where until recently he was Associate Director, Icke sought sponsorship so that all performances in the final week could be taken off sale and made free for young people. Icke’s radical idea didn’t just impact the audiences but also had an effect on the cast. He explains that “the actors had the best week of playing I think we ever had. I’ve never seen Juliet Stevenson so excited!” This active engagement from all quarters proves Icke’s commitment and power in his chosen career. His approach has resulted in better theatre because the audience demographic is varied – “Audiences are always better when they’re mixed, nobody feels quite as safe. It doesn’t feel as homogeneous and so you have a better evening. Lots of different perspectives feed into the play.” This tactic continued with Hamlet’s transfer to the West End. He ensured audience diversity here by literally bartering with the producers over which seats they could sell at full price and which he wanted for under £30.

Icke clearly knows what he wants and how to achieve it. Yet in terms of a career trajectory, he admits he has no formulated strategy. I expected Icke to have a complete career plan, including a list of plays and playwrights which he wanted to tackle, systematically checked off as he cleared each hurdle. Yet Icke professes a much more relaxed approach. “I just do things I want to do, things I think will be exciting. There’s just a strange harmony about it when it works, the right people at the right time, in the right theatre. You can go a bit crazy if you try and measure it too much and meter out what you’re going to do.” Icke’s career does, however, seem to have a organic pattern to it, creating work in the same vein many times, namely adaptations. Although Icke doesn’t classify himself as belonging to any particular genre, it’s hard to dismiss his skill as a writer and adaptor of classics.

From the bulk of Icke’s work as a director and writer, it would seem that one of his chief interests is making stories relevant to a contemporary audience. There’s almost a dichotomy between his wide understanding of the tradition of theatre and his desire to create contemporary relevance. In his 2016 version of Friedrich Schiller’s Mary Stuart, where the two actresses, Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams, decided who played each main role by the toss of a coin, Icke was aware of the work of John Barton who utilised role-swapping in his production of Richard II 40 years earlier. “You become aware that you’re carrying on the work that these people have instigated and that’s very moving. And the ancient Greeks are a big picture version of that; going back to the start of the theatre and trying to understand what is essential in it”. And that’s the key. Finding the essential component, the motivation behind the play, and establishing its relevance to today’s audience.


Icke isn’t precious when it comes to radically adapting old masterpieces. Take his critically acclaimed Oresteia, which premiered in 2015. Here, on top of developing the original Aeschylean trilogy, Icke penned an additional 70 minute prequel to describe the events leading up to the sacrifice of Iphigenia and the act itself. While some would question this radical departure from an original masterpiece, Icke knows it’s necessary and is acutely aware that the primary responsibility of the storyteller is to tell the story to the people who are there. “Even if we did it in exactly the way that the Greeks did (which is an impossibility anyway), there’s not going to be an audience from 458BC, in the same way that if we were to recreate the original performance of King Lear, there isn’t going to be an audience from the seventeenth century. Even if you get it exactly right, every detail perfect, none of us would know. Why this weird fetish of doing it like it was done then? What is deeply valuable about that, other than as a museum exercise?”. Indeed, Icke speculates that our obsession with the original idea has only really happened since copyright law. After all, in reality, most plays are just adaptations of predecessors. Look at the ancient Greek tragedians with Homer, where the story is fluid; it can be retold and the characters remade.

Icke’s devotion to the theatre is obvious, yet his radical, pioneering approach has not allowed him to be elitist about the art form. While some in the industry might consider platforms like Netflix to deflect attention from theatre and reduce people’s interest in it in general, Icke is able to see the bigger picture. He is acutely aware that current-day younger audiences might prefer Netflix for their entertainment. However, whichever you prefer, it is true that “good stories tend to yield better stories.” One platform which cultivates “good work is not the enemy of other good work.” Icke’s aim seems to be to keep theatre alive and open to all. And if Netflix or other platforms can aid him in that goal that is all to the good.

Heimat: a cinematic odyssey through 20th century German life

Imogen Harter-Jones
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Heimat: a cinematic odyssey through 20th century German life

The controversy surrounding Taika Waititi’s recently Oscar nominated satire on Nazi Germany, JoJo Rabbit, demonstrates that dramatic portrayals of Hitler and the era of the Third Reich still risks causing offence. This was even more so 35 years ago when the first series of writer/director Edgar Reitz’s 54-hour German TV film series, Heimat (literally ‘homeland’ – although the word’s idiomatic significance cannot be precisely translated) was aired. Heimat remains compulsive viewing, and well worth the investment of time, chronicling eight decades of 20th-century German history. The sheer scale of the endeavour is impressive, verging on Wagnerian in its epic scope. One can only imagine the experience of audiences when the first series was released cinematically as a single 15-hour German language film in the 1980s. The cinematography, artfully moving between black and white and colour film, is beautiful, and never seems contrived. 

The first series, while critically praised and winning a BAFTA and awards at the Venice Film Festival, polarised opinion for its focus on “ordinary” German life in the interwar and Second World War periods. The story takes place largely, although not entirely, away from the horrors of the camps and the battlefields. Instead, it subtly addressed Germany’s complex relationship with its past, unafraid to present characters sympathetically, despite the crimes being perpetrated on their behalf. Although the enormous historic, cultural, political, economic and sociological significance of events don’t impinge too crudely on the lives of the characters, this is not an exercise in dreamy nostalgia.

Series 1 is primarily set in the fictional village of Schabbach in the Hunsruck region of the Rhineland, where Reitz grew up. The action is firmly located in its rural setting, focussing on the farmhouse and forge of the blacksmith, Matthias Simon, although there are occasional forays into the wider world. Foremost among these departures is that of Paul   Simon, Matthias’ son, who inexplicably leaves his wife Maria and his young sons to live in the USA. The ensuing domestic crisis runs in parallel with the turbulent events of the ’30s and ‘40s and sees Maria develop into the matriarch of the Simon family. Her difficult relationships with her 3 sons – Anton, the industrialist, replicating in Germany the technocratic success of his father; Ernst, the restless drifter, endlessly involved in madcap schemes of debatable legality; and Hermann, the brilliant young student with dreams of being a composer – form the backbone of the first series. That said, its generous length allows many intertwined subplots and brilliant supporting characters to develop along with the main protagonists.

Although the Hunsruck itself appears as a rural idyll, historical events takes place nearby, with scenes of anti-Semitic violence in a nearby town, the arrest of communist sympathisers on a visit to relatives in the Ruhr and glimpses of concentration camp internees engaged in forced physical labour in the construction of the nearby autobahn in the late 1930’s. But the focus is not on the victims of genocide. Even so, through its portrayal of lives lived, the films suggest that the myopia of “ordinary people” engrossed in their daily lives allowed the active perpetrators to carry out their evil acts. There is a strong suggestion that secluded communities such as Schabbach may have been largely ignorant of Nazi policies such as the Final Solution; when ex-SS officer Wilfried makes remarks about Jews and chimneys, no one enquires too deeply.  However, on occasion characters are present when terrible things happen but look away, such as when Anton, as a camera technician in a propaganda film unit on the eastern front, concentrates on cleaning his lenses and equipment while his colleagues film a massacre. This suggests that millions of small acts of moral cowardice facilitated the Holocaust and poses the uncomfortable question: would we act differently?

Although the centre of the fictional world holds in the first series tensions are building. Maria’s deteriorating relationship with Hermann (her third son to Otto, a part-Jewish motorway engineer killed in the course of his wartime position as a bomb disposal expert) propels the narrative into the second season.

In Heimat 2, home is rejected and lost.  The village of Schabbach is left behind as we follow Hermann in his music studies at the conservatoire in Munich and his career as a young composer. We see a rapidly recovering Germany of the late 1950s and 1960s, still haunted by its fascist past, gradually shaking off the trauma of defeat and atrocities committed in the name of their nation. Hermann encounters an array of intense, artistic, intellectual, avant-garde characters who influence each other’s lives in many ways. Passion, jealousy, self-absorption, ambition, loneliness, insecurity and the fear of not fulfilling one’s potential through wrong paths taken all run through their entangled, troubled relationships.

Two-hour episodes are each devoted to a particular character such as the energetic, impulsive yet melancholic Juan from Chile, a ghost-like observer of the group made up of musicians, writers, philosophers, filmmakers and actresses. Questions of belonging and identity underlie their damaged psyches, tested in different ways to that of their parents, yet still asking the same fundamental questions. The intense lives of these talented, tortured students have occasional tragic consequences- accidental deaths, backstreet abortions, suicide attempts and involvement in terrorist acts through extreme political organisations such as the far left militant Baader-Meinhof movement. Of the three series, Heimat 2 is perhaps the most artistically ambitious and satisfying. The characters drift in and out of focus developing, sometimes in close-up, sometimes in the background or off-screen.  We aren’t spoon fed- keeping up with all of the comings and goings takes effort but is part of the pleasure.

Underpinning Heimat 2 is the troubled tale of Hermann’s fraught relationship with Clarissa, a fellow music student and precociously talented concert cellist.  Their magnetic attraction and repeated repulsion has a metaphysical feel. The theme of home returns, however, as the artistic friends are welcomed into an opulent suburban villa, Foxholes, where a reclusive heiress, Madame Cerphal provides open house for die Künstlern to act out their quarrels and love affairs. Foxholes is a haven which harbours a dark secret and one which belies the accusation that Heimat fails to confront the events of the Nazi era. The shadowy figure of Gattinger, Madam Cerphal’s ambiguous companion, haunts this time. His story culminates in a visit to Dachau with his daughter, Esther, in search of closure to the harrowing tale of her Jewish mother’s death at the hand of the Nazi’s; Esther is appalled at it sanitisation for tourists.

Heimat 3 takes up the story in the late 1980’s with the fall of the Berlin Wall and returns to the Hunsrück and the family drama of the Simon clan. The intensity of feelings about home, of displacement, finding a new Heimat and of leaving and returning home recur in all series.  Although shorter and more fragmentary than the preceding series, there is much to recommend the third series.  Hermann and Clarissa find each other after years of globetrotting as international musicians and immediately become lovers – something their younger selves were unable to commit to. With variable success, they build a new life together with the constant flux of their messy extended families and careers playing out against a backdrop of German reunification and the turn of the third millennium. 

Their dream project of building a house on the edge of the Hunsrück – on a spectacular site overlooking the Rhine – reorients the action of the first series. Schabbach now seems to be located on a plateau, above and beyond the earthly world. This echoes the first series when the village has a mythic, other-worldly quality- often it is approached on foot, through mists and the traveller/viewer is greeted by an envoy such as Glasisch, the village’s eccentric, alcoholic chronicler or Hans, the one-eyed child marksman who dies in the war. That said, Schabbach is now far from its rural past- the forge is silent and cold and the Simon family, especially Anton’s, is riven with squabbles and resentments over inheritance as asset strippers reduce the company to bankruptcy. The onset of global politics is evident as the surrounding area is occupied by an American military airfield; when vacated with the fall of communism, there is an influx of Russians and East Germans. Characters such as Gunnar chase the capitalist dream, selling parts of the broken-down Berlin Wall to companies, becoming a millionaire yet not securing personal happiness.

Heimat is an important cinematic landmark. Ultimately, however, the compulsive nature of its viewing is due to the collection of compelling stories. Reitz is credited with giving Germans their hidden stories back and allowing a process of assessment and national healing. Time specific in setting yet timeless in themes and characters, Heimat still holds intense power.

Photo Editorial: Off-Duty Suiting

Alec Holt
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Photo Editorial: Off-Duty Suiting

Fashion in the latter half of the 2010s was defined by the unprecedented cross-contamination of streetwear with the old luxury houses, of the casual with the couture. Runway shows lost their focus on tailoring, Gucci’s tracksuits became more popular than their lounge suits, and Balenciaga opted for market-redefining chunky sneakers instead of dress shoes. Louis Vuitton appointed the face of “hypebeast” culture as their creative director. The often unapproachable sphere of “high” fashion was infringed upon as never before and became less intimidating for it.

The pendulum has begun to swing back towards its centre now, but something has changed, perhaps permanently. The tailoring which is re-asserting itself more often than not feels less at home in a board meeting than in the club. Many of the a-traditional cuts seen gracing the runways over the last season or two are better paired with Air Forces than with derbies. Conversely, streetwear labels like Off-White and A-COLD-WALL* have begun to trade overtly branded hoodies for the subtleties of suiting, albeit suiting with an un-sartorial edge.

Cherwell Fashion’s first photo editorial of Hilary Term 2020 aims to reflect the potential found in this style of tailoring which has kicked off the new decade: more wearable, more versatile, less fitted, more colourful. All the confidence a good suit can give you with none of the inhibitive stiffness. What’s more, these looks, mostly comprised of vintage shop finds and affordable brands, show that suiting doesn’t need to break the bank to look good.

Models: Oli Lloyd Williams, Rory Wilson, Sophie Gull, Katy Holland, Emily Pogue

Photography and words: Alec Holt

Christ Church drinking society condemned by students

William Atkinson
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Christ Church drinking society condemned by students

The Pythic (or “P”) Club, a secretive dining society for students and tutors with a long-standing basis in Christ Church, has been condemned for its past activities by the college’s student body. Consequently, it has not been registered as a society and remains formally banned from meeting on the college’s premises.

The “P” Club, whose membership reportedly once included prominent historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, was reported last year to have held numerous dinners onsite in the college. These were publicised by the college’s Development Office. Students at the college responded vigorously to the report, with meetings held between members of the JCR and the leadership of the college (known as the Censors). In response, the club is now alleged to have attempted to register with Christ Church officially.

Habitually, applications for registration by societies are approved on the day they are issued. However, registration was withheld by the college, reportedly due to its failure to meet Equality and Diversity requirements because of its exclusive nature.

In response, a motion was brought to a college JCR meeting by a concerned member, who sought to both condemn the society as it had existed in the past, and to express the opposition of the student body to the college’s registration. Condemnation of the society came from a variety of sources, including a former JCR President, those involved with both Inreach and Access, and members of the Ball Committee, in an open latter directed at the College’s management within the Christ Church JCR’s Facebook group.

Later taken down, this letter repeated criticisms of the “P” Club raised in the JCR meeting. Dispute revolved around the society’s socially exclusive membership, little known activities and tendency towards preferring undergraduate members from privately educated backgrounds. Members went further by suggesting the exclusive club acted directly against the college’s efforts to promote applications from a wider range of geographic and social backgrounds, including recent joint efforts with St Anne’s to encourage more applicants from the North East.

The club further limits membership for most House members with its alleged price tag of £90 for its dinners. It was also alleged that the society might disadvantage those students excluded from the society by providing opportunities for networking between students, tutors and alumni. A suggestion was made that the continued presence of the society might be made more acceptable if it opened its meeting the rest of the JCR, if they wished to attend.

After the post had been taken down, the JCR President messaged students that “no formal registration of the club had been made”, and that it had been “mutually decided” by the leadership of the College and “relevant parties” that “no application for the P Club to register will be made.”

Inreach Officer Eleri Harry, former JCR Preisdent Joseph Grehan-Bradley and Ball Committee member Milly Lynch were among those who wrote the open letter.

They told Cherwell: “Along with many of our peers, we have always had deep concerns about the exclusive and discriminatory nature of the P Club. Had it been allowed to register, it would have simply been able to continue these practices under official college auspices.

“As such, we are absolutely delighted that the P Club has been banned from meeting on college premises, and that the ties between college and club have been decisively severed. If the club, in these circumstances, chooses to go underground and meet off-site, they would vindicate the student body’s views about its fundamental objectives, nature and bad faith.

“We were very pleased that we were able to give voice to opinions about the club which are held by so many members of our college. We would also like to express our gratitude to the censors, who showed much thoughtfulness and dedication in listening to our concerns.

“Above all, we hope that what we have achieved confirms to all prospective applicants that Christ Church that there is a place for them here.”

A student, who wished to remain anonymous, spoke to Cherwell about the outcome. They said: “The JCR Committee’s discussion demonstrated a deep concern for the P Club’s detrimental effect on outreach and access – a disbenefit that could already be observed.” They went on to say that “there was a clear distaste for the existence of any exclusive society, expressly or tacitly endorsed by the SCR, that contributed to an exclusionary culture and left many feeling like imposters or inferiors. The mere existence of such a society coupled with the limited and restricted knowledge already possessed by the committee was sufficient in raising concern and condemnation.”

However, not all members of Christ Church approved of the JCR Committee’s decision. Three of the members (out of 24) voted against the condemnation in the JCR Committee’s meeting (held by a secret ballot), and several students have expressed their belief anonymously to the author that registering the society would have been a better course of action than condemnation. No members of the “P” Club were willing to comment.

When contacted for a statement, Christ Church responded that “Since 2017, Christ Church has required all clubs and societies using the College’s name or facilities to be formally registered and approved by the Censors. Registration requires clubs and societies to abide by all College regulations and policies, including those related to equality and diversity.”

Student Jobs: Are they worth it, and how to manage when you don’t have a choice

Hope Oxley Green
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Student Jobs: Are they worth it, and how to manage when you don’t have a choice

Oxford University’s official guidelines states “term-time employment is not permitted except under exceptional circumstances,” and even in the holidays, students are told to prioritise their studies. Questions of Oxford’s perpetual elitism are ever-present. How on earth can an institution that consistently comes under fire for skewed admissions towards the privately-educated and opulent additionally prohibit students from making money during term-time? Of course, the argument is not that they wish to limit the number of students who might be hindered by their financial situations, rather the exceptional workload is unsustainable whilst also having a job (and without, I might add).

With 77% of students now taking on some form of employment to help ease the financial pressures of university across the UK, I question how the gap is filled here, with the university ideally wanting no one to work. In a survey published by Endsleigh, it was found the 57% of university students said they were working to help pay their accommodation, food and household bills, while 56% were looking to earn for socialising’s sake. Oxford is one of the most expensive cities to live in, with house prices often on par with London, as well as living costs. Admittedly, I do believe Oxford offers a myriad financial aid, with both college and university hardship grants being available to students, as well as awards and scholarships available to those eligible. At Exeter College, 1 in 5 students receive some form of monetary support. But the difference between living and thriving is what differentiates students from engaging in part time employment. Sure, grants will cover the cost of accommodation and meals, but many students in financial difficulty benefit from the supplementary income provided by jobs for socialising. Going on nights out, the occasional shop and grabbing a coffee from Bean are occurrences that most UK students engage in, but in addition to this, the added elitism of Oxford socialising calls for even more disposable income. Most college balls cost upwards of £100, and formals in many colleges aren’t subsidised. In addition to this, the cost of vacation residence for 9th week is often essential for students completing exams out of the ‘regular’ 8 week term time. Oxford is EXPENSIVE, and there’s no pretending that this culture tends to isolate those who can’t afford it.

So, it is understood that many students, particularly with the way this university is claiming to be heading, don’t have the luxury of living off their parents (although if I hear one more person refer to their ‘allowance’, I’d like to remind you that you are 20 years old and sound ridiculous). But what can we do to address this disparity? It goes without saying that the university have a viable reason to advise against working, but what fails to be addressed is that most of these students who need to work don’t have the luxury of choosing whether to do so or not, and Oxford fails in making students decide between a first class education, and enough money for a weekly shop. In the meantime, if you want to earn money, you need to do it yourself. It’s not impossible, the amount of time taken up for a part time job is often how much one might dedicate to a sport, or engagement in societies, or doing f*ck all for that matter, so it’s time to get thrifty…

Here I present a number of potential streams of income for the typical Oxford student:

  1. If you’re not already, I’d really recommend following Oxford Student Union job advertisements, this might be recruiting stewards for freshers fair for example. It’s generally temp work, but sometimes this is ideal if you are unsure of your workload term by term.
  2. There are plenty of tutoring opportunities either around Oxford or purely online. These operate during the vacation as well as term time, but for a decent pay many students see it as worthwhile as they can do it from the confines of their own room and in their pyjamas *the dream* (www.mytutor.co.uk)
  3. College employment can be offered on an ad-hoc basis, bar work, access tours and even working at college balls is a viable option for students looking to earn, and is not frowned upon by the university.
  4. If your college don’t extort you enough during term time, how about out in the vac too?! Every college needs interview/admissions helpers or telethon campaigners, so why not look into that? They fall right at the end and beginning of term, so are often perfect for those with busy schedules out of term.
  5. Depop/eBay is perfect for students looking to recycle their wardrobes, and to be honest, the Y2K trend is getting a bit dull.

There are plenty more employment opportunities outside of term time, both in and out of Oxford, but to some extent, this is about finding what works for everyone. Only you know your workload, enthusiasm to get a job and how much you actually need it!

Oxford will be hit with 14 more days of strike action

Felix O'Mahony
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Oxford will be hit with 14 more days of strike action

The University and Colleges Union (UCU) has announced a further 14 days of strike action which will hit 74 universities across the country including Oxford.

Members of the Union have raised two disputes with universities and the university pension provider which remain unresolved. The first concerns the sustainability of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), while the second concerns pay, casualisation, workloads, and equality.

Action will begin on Thursday 20th February with a two-day walkout, during which striking lecturers, researchers and service staff will not carry out their university duties. Strikes will escalate over the proceeding four weeks, culminating in a week-long strike between the 9th and 13th March.

UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: “We have seen more members back strikes since the winter walkouts and this next wave of action will affect even more universities and students. If universities want to avoid further disruption they need to deal with rising pension costs, and address the problems over pay and conditions.

“We have been clear from the outset that we would take serious and sustained industrial action if that was what was needed. As well as the strikes starting later this month, we are going to ballot members to ensure that we have a fresh mandate for further action to cover the rest of the academic year if these disputes are not resolved.”

A spokesperson for Oxford University told Cherwell: “The University is disappointed with the outcome of the Oxford UCU ballot in favour of industrial action over USS pensions. We understand the concerns many staff have on pensions, as well as on pay. We also have a duty to ensure our education and research activities continue as far as possible and will therefore have contingency plans in place to minimise the impact of any industrial action on staff, students and visitors.”

While academics at Oxford will strike over both disputes, 27 universities will only be taking action over one of the two disputes, since union members must be balloted for industrial action regarding each dispute individually.

The action follows earlier strikes which were carried out between the 25th November and the 4th December, during which striking UCU members picketed outside many university buildings. At the time Oxford’s branch of the UCU could only strike over pay and working conditions after its ballot over the USS narrowly missed the required turnout of 50%. Following a re-balloting of members in January which met the 50% threshold, the strikes in February will now also concern the USS dispute.

A spokesperson for Oxford’s UCU branch said: “UCU has just announced 14 days of strike action, starting on the 20th of February, for both the USS pensions and the pay & equality disputes. Oxford will now also be joining the USS action after a successful re-ballot, in addition to the pay & equality dispute which we took part in last term. While we have seen important steps in engagement, with employers being prepared to discuss issues that were previously off the table as a result of the first round of strike action, they have failed to make serious commitments in either dispute so far. We have 17 days between now and then, and very much hope that UUK and UCEA will at last come to us with a serious offers on the two disputes. UCUs HEC will meet on the 14th of February to consider any offers that may be on the table between now and then, and we will of course be following developments closely. We do not want to resort to strike action but we are prepared and determined to do so if necessary”

The UCU is also encouraging its members to carry out “action short of a strike,” which involves working strictly to contract, not covering for striking colleagues, and not catching up on work missed due to industrial action.

Renewed action follows months of negotiations between the UCU, Universities UK, who are representing universities in dispute negotiations, the USS, and the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA). While the UCU and UCEA say that progress has been made on working conditions, the organisations have been unable to make headway with pay negotiations.

If progress is not made, the UCU has threatened to continue strike action until the end of the academic year, although members will need to be re-balloted in this case, since mandates for industrial action expire every six months.

A statement released by the UCEA expressed dismay at the strike action: “We are dismayed, and many HE institutions will be so too, to see UCU’s HEC decide to ask the union’s members to once again use damaging strike action over last year’s national pay demands. Strike action should always be a last resort and we believe that UCU’s 70,000 members in the 147 institutions should now be given a say. There are new ways forward being offered by HE employers – UCEA has made available significant positive proposals on key issues in UCU’s dispute – contractual arrangements, workload / mental health and gender pay gaps / ethnicity pay – developed following two months of talks with UCU. Strikes in less than half the universities in the multi-employer negotiations are not the answer and are in real danger of undermining the national collective pay bargaining arrangements. 

“UCEA has proactively and formally consulted its members in developing our significant new proposals as we can only move with the consensus of our members. UCU members deserve a chance to have their voices heard as to how they feel about the progress that has been made and whether they want to choose an alternative to further disruptive action.”

A USS spokesperson said: “We recognise the difficulties in levying higher contributions but USS, along with all similar pension schemes, faces a challenging environment in which the costs of funding high-quality defined benefits have increased.

“We will be revisiting these issues over the coming months under the 2020 valuation and are committed to working with Higher Education employers to build a secure financial future for our members and their families.”

Responding to the news a spokesperson for Universities UK, representing USS employers, said:

“We regret that UCU are planning further strike action at a time when positive talks on the future of the scheme are making significant progress and are ongoing. Despite this, UCU continue to request that employers pay still higher contributions at unaffordable levels.

“By law, pension costs had to rise to maintain current benefits. Employers have agreed to cover 65% of these increased costs, taking their contribution to 21.1% of salaries from October 2019 – together committing £250m more a year. Members have been asked to make a fair contribution too.

“The best way forward is to work collectively to secure a pension scheme that is highly valued and affordable for all. The current tripartite talks between UCU, USS, and UUK, which are set to continue at least until March, are building a shared understanding on the future of the scheme, jointly developing governance reforms and considering alternative pathways for the 2020 valuation.

“Universities will put in place a series of measures to minimise the impact of industrial action on students, other staff and the wider community.”

Dump Soup

Savannah Hawley
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Dump Soup

Savannah Hawley introduces a comforting recipe to use up your leftovers

In the past several years, the public has seemingly woken up to the disturbing reality of our wasteful habits and how they are directly harming our environment. Elara Oakes outlines a variety of ways to deal with this issue; but while ensuring you’re buying only what you need is the best preventative measure against food waste, there is still the question of what to do with your leftovers and produce that is about to go off.

I love this dish because it is more than what many leftover recipes seem to be – just throwing all your almost-bad food into a skillet and grimacing whilst you eat your stir-fry imposter (a food crime that I, too, am guilty of committing). When I came across this recipe — from a friend who has been thinking of ingenious ways to waste less food since before it was cool — I was thrilled to have something that was as delicious as it was easy and affordable. Affectionately called “Dump Soup,” you might be surprised to find that this dish is incredibly warm and comforting — a meal to brighten those dreary winter days.

Do yourself a favour: stop throwing your vegetables and half-portions of grains into the bin and start throwing them into broth instead. To add another level of flavour to the soup whilst continuing to reduce waste, bake pieces of day-old bread for 20 minutes at 180C to create tasty homemade croutons.

What makes this recipe great is its flexibility, so don’t be afraid to add whichever vegetables and grains you have on hand. The purpose is to use leftovers and vegetables that aren’t at their peak freshness — so, if you have a leftover salad you think might belong in a soup, don’t hesitate to add it.

Credit is due to Karen Bates, whose inventive recipes for wasting less food could fill an entire cookbook.

DUMP SOUP
Serves 8

Ingredients:

700 ml bouillon stock/broth of choice
380 g diced tomatoes
600 g chopped vegetables or leftovers
1 can beans of choice or 150 g grain of choice (barley, quinoa, or rice is suggested)
1 small onion
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp herbs of choice
Pinch of salt and pepper

Method:

1. In a large stock pot or saucepan, combine all the ingredients
2. Bring to a boil and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes
3. Season to your liking and enjoy

Sustainable Style To Dye For

Emily Capon
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Sustainable Style To Dye For

Muted oranges, deep browns and soft berry pinks make up the childhood palette of New York-based designer, Emily Dawn Long. With a growing Instagram following, the designer is making pioneering steps in the industry towards recycling and reusing things we would otherwise throw out. William Morris said: ‘have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to beautiful’, and Emily Dawn Long proves that even the humblest carrot, onion or cabbage leaf can be, in fact, both. 

Long Dawn Emily, Dawn Long’s label, has a distinct, psychedelic feel. The childish splashes of colour are not chaotic but carefully placed on pieces that include, but are not limited to, shirts, skirts, socks and hats. The influence of a childhood aesthetic is clear in her style; she has spoken to Vogue about staining overalls with berries as a child, in the embryonic stages of her idiosyncratic designs. Her affinity for her garish, distinctive style continued when she studied textile development and design at undergraduate level. She sees dyeing fabric as a process of trial and error, and her pieces certainly speak of the nostalgic, DIY feel of tie-dye. 

Dawn Long has tapped into a reawakening social zeitgeist. An image of 1960s counterculture sartorial success, tie-dye has enjoyed fluctuating levels of popularity since its nativity at Woodstock. Dior’s Spring/Summer collection of 2019 featured kaleidoscopic, tie-dyed dresses, conforming to the collection’s emphasis on the movement of the body, highlighting our own bodily-ness. Dawn Long’s collection is visual fluidity made manifest; the flowers, splashes, swirls and faces bleed into the blank fabric, mirroring the curves of the human form, as the pieces themselves become a frame for the body’s portrait. 

Dawn Long’s collections are steeped in regeneration. She has recently revealed that her favourite dyes are saffron, cabbage and avocado pits, making her process close to completely zero-waste. The rising threats of fast fashion and food waste are no match for Dawn Long’s environmentally savvy label, whose unique and varied designs have a feeling of the bespoke. Not only bespoke, but personal; she often uses leftovers from group dinners, a tradition that began when she simmered down leftover sweet potato skins into a deep brown dye. She has also spoken about rescuing left over vegetables from juice shops in her native New York, making what would otherwise be waste into something unique, wearable and beautiful. 

It’s not only the dyes that are salvaged. She also uses vintage or thrifted pieces as her fabric bases, breathing new life into otherwise discarded items. Dawn Long’s emphasis is on purchasing pieces that wouldn’t otherwise be bought by large wholesale companies; her ethos seems to be the creation of something fresh and original with something classic. Stained clothes are welcome in her armoury of pieces, especially when they would have been thrown away. She doesn’t see something stained as ruined, but rather an opportunity for new design exploration. She’s a specialist in sartorial necromancy. 

Her eclectic, unique garments have garnered considerable attention on social media. Her popularity is testament to the ever-increasing power of social media marketing campaigns; designers and their labels have become more accessible, more relatable. I follow Emily Dawn Long on Instagram. Her comparatively meagre following of fewer than 10,000 makes it feel like an exclusive club, or as if I’m witness to the nativity of a soon-to-be explosively famous label. Her posts are fragmentary and cryptic, making her feed more of a curated exhibition of hand-picked, beautiful objects than a commercialised, product-selling machine. The mysterious and enigmatic continues with her dedication to gentle anonymity: images of her own face are few and far between, hidden behind her phone in a mirror selfie or cut off at the chin. Her own art becomes synecdochic of herself. 

Dawn Long’s philosophy of resourcefulness and renewal brings a fresh, youthful newness to the current fashion scene. Every item touches her own hands, created in her own apartment in New York. The natural, handmade approach is a splash of restorative colour in a world that grows more impersonal, commercialised and separate by the minute. 

A bridge too VAR: Is technology killing the game?

Joe Hyland Deeson
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A bridge too VAR: Is technology killing the game?

For VAR

“KILLING THE PASSION. KILLING THE ATMOSPHERE. KILLING THE GAME. END VAR NOW” read the banner held up by the Crystal Palace Ultras in the first half of their game against Arsenal. Both sets of supporters joined together in the chant of “F*ck VAR”. The last section of the banner was held up again during the 65th minute as a lengthy review following a careless-looking tackle by Pierre-Emerik Aubameyang on Palace midfielder Max Meyer. Two minutes later, the Arsenal man was sent off by referee Paul Tierney under advisement from the Video Assistant Referee in Stockley Park. The banner was quietly lowered as replays played on the big screen inside Selhurst Park showed a horror tackle on Meyer’s ankle, studs up, a definite red. There was an audible gasp inside the stadium, and could be no doubt that the correct decision had been reached. As manager Roy Hodgson observed following the game, the only confusion with the process was why it took so long to reach the decision.

Leaflets distributed to supporters outside the Holmesdale Road stand before the game informed home supporters that this was the beginning of a campaign by Palace’s Ultras group, instructing supporters to chant “It’s not football anymore” when the banners were held up. However, there is no doubt that had those same supporters seen that tackle on Match of the Day in the evening, they would have been incensed if it had not resulted in a dismissal (referee Tierney initially only cautioned Aubameyang).

There can be few arguments against the way VAR was employed in this match. It added a two minute delay, and resulted undoubtedly in a correct decision. It is not, however, this element of the system which faces the most protests. That is reserved for offside decisions. Much is made of so-called armpit calls, players having goals chalked off for infringements that can barely be seen with the naked eye, although quite how an armpit can be the furthest forward part of an individual remains to be seen. Perhaps such supporter’s favourite part of the doughnut is the hole.

There is a lot of focus, too, on the apparent shortcomings of the technology itself. It doesn’t, we are told, film at a high enough rate of Frames per Second to be used so authoritatively; faster players can outrun the cameras. There is a margin of error of three feet! This is nonsense. Such calculations are based on the FPS at which Sky and BT transmit. In reality, officials at Stockley Park have access to a far better quality feed, transmitted live from the stadiums – their margin of error is thought to be less than 2cm with the ultra-motion camera provided by Hawk-Eye.

There are few rules that are objective in football. The offside rule is largely one of them. If a player is in front of the penultimate man of a team’s defence when a ball is played, they are offside. Of course, there is sometimes the debate as to whether a player has been “involved in active play”, although very few of this season’s VAR controversies have had anything to do with this.

Zak will no doubt argue that it kills the atmosphere inside the stadium, and this seems to be one of the most common arguments against the use of technology. Yet it simply adds another dimension to the excitement of the game. I was at Selhurst Park for the Liverpool home match, when a goal scored by James Tomkins was chalked off for a push in the box. Elation quickly turned to disappointment. Yet not only did replays demonstrate that the correct decision had been reached (it seems easier in these situations to blame the technology than the players who are actually demonstrably at fault), there is another side to this argument. I was also in the away end at the London Stadium when Jordan Ayew had a goal given two minutes after it was initially ruled out for offside. As the delay went on longer, excitement built up in the away end and, with this extra delay, the jubilation when the goal was given was greater than in pre-technology circumstances.

VAR is here to stay. The system may be tweaked, but it would be disastrous to remove it completely. Supporters, I must say, have short memories in refusing to recall the decisions missed in previous seasons which are now placed under a microscope, and must learn to work with the new system. It does change the matchday experience, and it does have its drawbacks, but its effect on the game is broadly positive and for this reason it must be embraced.

Against VAR

VAR – the latest footballing controversy. Regardless of which side of the debate you are on, it undeniable that VAR has been one of the big stories of this Premier League season, and it seems to be a discussion point after most games on Match of the Day. For me, VAR is sucking the life out of football. I will show why football doesn’t need, and doesn’t want, VAR.

Firstly, most of football is surviving perfectly fine without VAR. I support Portsmouth, who currently play in League One – VAR could not be further from our game; we don’t even have goal-line technology! Sure, the standard of refereeing is often questionable, and a quick YouTube search would likely unearth many howlers from the past few seasons; but football survives. It’s not as if attendances are dropping off due to poor refereeing!

I have suffered from poor refereeing decisions following Pompey, on numerous occasions. Two games spring to mind. Firstly, away at Luton Town, on a snowy Tuesday night in January 2019, driving through the backroads on the way due to a crash on the M25, Pompey lost 3-2 courtesy of the suspect awarding of a penalty kick and free kick respectively to Luton – both resulted in goals. Less than two weeks later I took the long journey down to Plymouth Argyle, where Pompey drew 1-1, this time courtesy of another direct free-kick for the opposition, which replays showed shouldn’t have been awarded. However, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’d rather travel the 6+ hours back from Plymouth feeling that sense of injustice, than sit in a ground and look at a screen, or wait for a referee to do so. In fact, the game away at Luton marked the game where Luton overtook Pompey into top spot, and our season seemed to fall away. Yet still, I’d rather that than the game tried to be made exact. Imperfection is part of football, as I return to later.

The chief reason for my opposition to VAR is that football is a game of emotions, and nothing compares to the ecstasy of scoring a goal. If a goal is contentious in League One, I can take a quick glance at the referee and his relevant assistant, and continue with my celebrations. Last season, Pompey were locked in a battle for automatic promotion, and had to beat Peterborough United at home to maintain any hope. Pompey got the game back to 2-2 from 2-0 down, and then quickly found 2 players through on goal against just the Peterborough ‘keeper – the ball is played square, goal scored, celebrations start… but offside. The decision was instant – one look at the assistant’s flag, and the ecstatic celebrations were cut short (to make it worse, Peterborough scored within minutes and we lost 3-2). The decision was also correct – we didn’t have to wait 5 minutes for dots and lines to be applied, and the game probably wouldn’t have taken the negative turn for us that it did if we did have to wait. But that’s what football is all about – quick play, gaining momentum, scoring whilst you’re on top. Not stopping every few minutes for somebody to re-watch the game on a screen.

As I write this, David Luiz has just been sent off for Arsenal against Chelsea for denying Tammy Abraham an obvious goal-scoring opportunity, and a penalty was given. Clear foul, obvious red card. Yet the Chelsea fans have to hold their celebrations until the VAR check is complete – how deflating. If a player is sent off at Fratton Park, the mocking chants and sarcastic waving commence immediately.

I concede that there have been some occasions when I have enjoyed the use of VAR; but all have been from my sofa at home, watching as a (fairly) neutral spectator. The Manchester United penalty against PSG, which Rashford smashed home, and the Sterling disallowed goal against Spurs, both in the Champions League last season, were two occasions when the drama was brilliant. But football is about so much more than sitting on your sofa at home, watching as a neutral. It’s about standing on the terraces with your mates and family, having a pie before the game, travelling the country (and continent, if you’re fortunate enough) with your team, and then debating the game afterwards.

Joe will undoubtedly produce many technical arguments as to how VAR reduces errors, the type of arguments which admittedly my side lacks. But I ask: why do people play and watch football? It is not for perfection and 100% accuracy – it is for the emotion. This includes the instantaneous joy, disbelief, heartbreak and countless other feelings that football can bring – let’s not let VAR deprive the best sport in the world of this.

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