Friday, May 2, 2025
Blog Page 570

Cambridge student quits over “structural racism”

Rachel Cordery
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Cambridge student quits over “structural racism”

A PhD student has withdrawn from her course at Cambridge due to “structural racism” within the university.

Indiana Seresin, whose government-funded doctorate focused on contemporary American artists and writers, claims to have witnessed an “accumulation of racist incidents” during her time at Cambridge.

In an open letter published online, she described a lecturer repeatedly using the n-word during class discussions and in an undergraduate lecture.

Miss Seresin revealed that her friend, one of the few black students in the faculty, attended the lecture and made her discomfort at the use of the word known to the lecturer.

Instead of an apology, however, she was “patronisingly told that she did not understand the context in which the word was being used.”

Miss Seresin and her friend were invited to raise the issue at the Teaching Forum, a procedure described as “intimidating”.

This experience, in combination with the “near total absence of black students and lecturers” at Cambridge made her aware of the prevalent “structural racism” in the university.

In her withdrawal statement, Miss Seresin said: “I concluded that I have an imperative to leave. As a white researcher whose scholarship draws significantly on black studies, I believe that I need to earn the right to do this work.”

“I also believe that the ethical and intellectual integrity of my research was compromised by the fact that it was situated at Cambridge. This is particularly true because, as a white student, I benefitted from the structural racism of the university,” she added.

A Cambridge University spokesperson said: “The Teaching Forum, which included students, met and following a well-informed exchange of views it was decided that there should be no prescriptive rules on what language is appropriate to reference when reading from texts, but that academics should consider the contemporary and political discourse around particular words or terms.

“The very best academic teaching, thinking and learning requires an environment which encourages diversity. The University strives to create a culture free from racism, discrimination, prejudice and harassment.

“We have introduced a number of prevention initiatives and anonymous, informal and formal reporting options to make it easier for staff and students to call out and report any form of harassment or discrimination.”

The spokesperson added: “A University-wide action plan on race equality is being implemented following extensive consultations with staff and students.”

New initiatives include a leadership programme which includes training on race awareness and implicit bias, as well as a University Diversity Fund, which aims to promote race equality. Academic courses are also being reviewed “to ensure a diverse curriculum is offered.”

Cambridge is developing a “reverse mentoring” scheme in which senior white members of staff are mentored by a BAME staff member. They have developed new staff recruitment guidelines “to assist appointment panels in attracting and recruiting diverse applicants.”

The University has also introduced a policy whereby all BAME students can request access to a counsellor from a BAME background.

University embarks on major new accommodation partnership with Legal and General

Luke Dunne
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University embarks on major new accommodation partnership with Legal and General

The university has announced a £4 billion partnership with multi national financial services company Legal and General, who manage around £1tn worldwide, to redevelop 5 sites around Oxford. 

It is the most recent and ambitious attempt by the university to tackle the problem of unaffordable housing for staff members. The homes will be offered at 3 year leases, at no more than 80% of the market rate. 

The agreement will see the university co-design housing projects with Legal and General in Jericho, Summertown, Iffley, Osney Mead and Begbroke. 

At Begbroke, near Kiddlington, 2000 homes will be built on green belt land.

A University spokesperson told Cherwell: “The District Council has proposed that this land be removed from the Green Belt and designated for development. We support this proposal and would want to make the best possible use of the land for new housing and employment.

“The new housing will support our junior members of staff and in turn ease the burden on Oxford’s rental market, and the science park will provide high-quality local jobs and contribute to the regional economy.

“It will be a requirement of any planning permission that our staff housing will be rented at 80% or less of the market rate.  Our aim is for it to be as affordable as possible for our staff, so if we can get below 80% we will do so.”

The development in Iffley is expected to consist of student housing, with the aim of offering every new student accommodation. 

David Prout, University Pro-Vice Chancellor for Planning and Resources, said: “There are many issues to consider but fundamentally, they want good quality, affordable homes within touching distance of the city centre.

“At the moment working in Oxford is a bit like working in London in that people have to travel in from all over. We want to do what we can to make life a bit better for our staff”.

Nigel Wilson, CEO of Legal and General, said: “Our partnership with Oxford University is leading the way in bringing together dynamic cities and patient capital, creating great outcomes for long-term investors and for the cities themselves.”

The plan now awaits approval from the government. 

10 years after the civil war, Sri Lankan Tamil community in Paris demands justice

Jeevan Ravindran
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10 years after the civil war, Sri Lankan Tamil community in Paris demands justice

It is May 18th, 2019. The Parisian neighbourhood of La Chapelle looks very different to its everyday hustle and bustle. The street is blocked with thousands of people from the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora; as well as their allies, who have gathered to commemorate 10 years since the end of the country’s civil war. They demand a justice they feel has still not been delivered to them; nor to accounts of the genocide of their people, a historical trauma that remains unrecognised by the world.

A memorial fire is lit in the main square, paying tribute to the Tamils who died in Mullivaikkal. This was the scene of the final battle of the war, and dominates the content of speeches and presentations by various Tamil groups and activists. One woman cries as she placed a rose in front of the flames: others follow, flocking to offer flowers, wearing black wristbands to pay tribute to the tragedy. A Tamil recording plays over the speakers. It is a soft voice, begging participants not to forget about the tragedy of Mullivaikkal, and to fight for justice so that the souls of those who have died can finally rest in peace.

May 18th, 2009 marked the end of a war that spanned almost 26 years, culminating in the Sri Lankan government’s defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (the ‘Tamil Tigers’). Ethnic tensions had been mounting for years before war broke out in 1983, exacerbated by the policy of standardisation, which increased university requirements for Tamils while lowering the requirements for the ethnic Sinhalese majority. The year was marked by ‘Black July,’ the same year, a series of riots and massacres of Tamils, resulting in a death toll estimated to be between 400 and 3000.

The final events of the civil war left perhaps the greatest mark, with the mass execution of Tamil civilians in the north-eastern town of Mullivaikkal. The town was essentially a ‘no-fire zone’ but was overrun by the Sri Lankan government army. Estimates of the Mullivaikkal civilian death toll vary, yet are generally placed at around 40,000. According to the United Nations, however, the overall death toll is up to 100,000.

Mullivaikkal was unquestionably a scene of inhumane tragedy – children were executed and women were stripped, raped and shot. All of this footage was captured on government soldiers’ phones as war souvenirs, said Callum Macrae, producer of the award-winning documentary No Fire Zone: The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka, writing in an article for The Guardian in 2013.

38-year-old Yasodha, and her eleven year-old daughter, Devi, were caught up in the final scenes of disaster at Mullivaikkal. They escaped to France soon after the end of the conflict.

“I’ve endured a great deal of hardship,” Yasodha says, tears streaming down her face as she tries to talk about what life was like in Sri Lanka. “I was arrested in 1996, and they filled a shopping bag with petrol and put it on my head. They were going to burn me.” She told the story of her life to her daughter, who was two years old at the end of the conflict. Devi takes to the stage at this year’s march to read a poem her mother wrote.

“Is there nobody who will save us? All the love has gone,” Devi reads, her voice ringing out to an audience of thousands. Life after the conflict is still not what it was for the family, as Yasodha’s two brothers are among the thousands of people who have allegedly been forcibly disappeared by the Sri Lankan government. She has no idea where they are.

“Tamil people have nobody to take care of them,” says Chandrasekharan, a political lobbyist for a Tamil organisation in Paris. “Sri Lanka is a country which is killing its people.” He organises the march every year, having moved to France after fleeing Sri Lanka during the war. He insists the Tamil Tigers were not terrorists, despite being blacklisted by the European Union in 2006. “Tamil people took up arms because there was no other way,” he says.

However, the Tamil Tigers were known for their suicide bombings and alleged use of child soldiers. Their conduct in the final stages of the Mullivaikkal conflict has also been called into question, with allegations that they prevented Tamil civilians from leaving the area to access the government-controlled safety zones.

When questioned about the Tigers’ pursuit of a Tamil homeland – or ‘Tamil Eelam’ – in the north of the country, Chandrasekharan says the United Nations must recognise the Tamil Eelam as a nation, and award it observer status accordingly. His colleague Maheswaran, who works in London, agrees, stating that “…only in Tamil Eelam, we can live without genocide.” He insists that they have nothing against the Sinhalese majority, saying the Tigers only fought against the army and not against civilians. “Tamil and Sinhalese can live side by side, next to one another.”

It’snot just Tamils who have taken to the streets to protest the lack of justice for their community. 54-year-old Antoine Aubry, who lives in Paris, has attended marches for the last ten years. He participated in lobbying actions in France during Mullivaikkal, including the occupation of République square, but says activists were forcibly ejected from the area by French police. “It’s unacceptable,” he says. “My country was illegally occupied by the Germans, and I think the Sinhalese are illegally occupying Tamil Eelam.”

Aubry has provided financial aid to a Tamil man rendered paraplegic during the war in Killinochchi, the former administrative centre of the Tigers. He says the French government had a moral responsibility to do something to intervene and alleviate the situation for Tamils. This may be easier said than done, however, as Chandrasekharan reports that Tamil flags around Paris have been removed by local authorities, and that local media outposts wrote an article about the community without their consultation. The article describes the flags as ‘sinister’, contributing to ‘unease in the neighbourhood.’ However, there is some hope for the Tamil community, as political figures – including French Member of Parliament, Jean-Christophe Lagarde – are present at the march to recognise the genocide and call for action.

The youth of the Sri Lankan diaspora continues to feel this impact too, despite their lack of lived experience. 18-year-old Maya, who was born and raised in France, says recognition of the genocide matters to her because if there had been no war, she would have been born in Sri Lanka. She participated in a narrative dance with a group of young Tamils at the march, relaying the history of the conflict and the causes preceding it. 

“It’s as if we don’t exist,” she adds. “In 2009, I was nine, and I knew exactly what was happening. It was traumatic.”

According to the lobbyists, discrimination continues in Sri Lanka despite the end of the war. They say the army tortured Tamils, who are held and charged according to confessions extracted under torture.

“Where will you find that sort of justice system?” says Maheswaran. Yasodha concurred, saying saying many things have been kept quiet because people are afraid to speak up, but that Tamil people need their rights and recognition of the genocide.

“We are not asking for remembrance,” says Chandrasekharan. “We have the right to remember. We’re asking for justice.”

All names have been changed.

A Literary History of the F**kboy

Aine Kennedy
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A Literary History of the F**kboy
“Eliza has no use for that foolish romantic tradition that all women love to be mastered, if not actually bullied and beaten. ‘When you go to your woman,’ says Nietzsche, ‘take your whip with you’… But to admire a strong person and to live under that person’s thumb are two different things.”

George Bernard Shaw, on his protagonist in the sequel to Pygmalion

The narrative of resistance and domination in relationships has been the recourse of storytellers since pre-Christian times, with the same lurid, visceral quality evident in Greek myth as in the modern trend of disturbingly violent porn. Yet these primal, animalistic tropes of female subjugation now exist in a ‘civilised’ society, whose vernacular is one of #TimesUp, sex positivity and high-street feminism. The image of man as vessel of brute, primitive physicality has proved more appealing than ever in the modern age, persisting from Stanley Kowalski to Christian Grey, but it has been coloured by changing attitudes to violence against women in the last 50 years.

Enter the f-boy, a more sophisticated cousin who doesn’t rely on brute force to subjugate women, and who seeks the challenge of emotional as well as physical conquest. Outwardly a paragon of refinement and civilisation, the f-boy is in fact a repackaging of age-old misogynist attitudes, enacted in the psychological rather than physical realm. Despite increased visibility around gaslighting and coercive control in the modern day, literature suggests that the danger of this mental domination has been understood for centuries. Epochs pass, empires rise and crumble, but, like the cockroach, the f-boy has persisted through it all.   

Urban Dictionary defines the f-boy as “a boy who plays with girls’ feelings and will do or say anything they want to hear to have sex with them… they hurt many girls.” The term lacks a non-explicit synonym which can impart the bitterness and derision of a word invented by girls, for girls, to curse a man who has toyed with their emotions. English critic JC Hawley’s concept of the ‘sacred’ in the untranslatable offers an interesting perspective on the untouchable vulgarity of this recently conceived term, fiercely claimed and defended by the female voice: since it loses its meaning with censorship, the word cannot be fully detached from its original emotional context and an equivalent ‘f-girl’ just hasn’t caught on.

Pseudo-intellectuals on Tumblr have long pointed to Zeus as ‘the OG f-boy’. This claim has some merit, as his conquests bridge the archetypes of primitive violator and smooth-talking seducer, but it falters with the recollection that he is a serial rapist and abductor. Although an emotional element might be seen in professions of love to his victims, his conquests rely on force rather than charm. Despite a f-boyish propensity for serial cheating and hollow promises, Zeus is overwhelmingly a force of crude, physical domination. Another favourite, Hamlet, equally fails to make the cut: for leaning too far in the other direction. While his interactions with Ophelia – and their ultimate result – are textbook f-boy, he is too emotional, too sensitive; the true f-boy uses, discards, and emerges unscathed, while Hamlet inflicts collateral emotional damage as part of his own breakdown. Too depressed and unstable to execute a conventional, f-boy ruination, Hamlet might instead be compared to modern ‘sadbois’ whose emotional issues harm their partners in a less calculated manner.

But Hamlet does embody a crucial tenet of f-boy ideology: a disdain for women, and an urge to harm them. He targets Ophelia not as a casual sexual conquest, but as an expression of his desire to punish his mother and women in general. This fundamental misogyny is key to the emotionally detached, callous f-boy who we know and love today, and to his illustrious history of fetishized female exploitation.
Exploitation is the modern face of the primitive, ravishing impulse, where the gestures of violation and domination apparent in Zeus’s rapes are mirrored through structures of ‘civilised’ society.  Rejection and repression of such behaviour on the superficial level only serves to heighten the fetish around the unviolated and ‘good’ epitomised by the rural maiden. The age-old lust for innocence and vulnerability is demonstrated by the relish with which medieval soldiers write of attacking convents. 

The first English pornographic novel is the story of such a maiden, whose sexual appeal survived well into 1748 and beyond. 14-year-old orphan Fanny Hill is tricked into working in a brothel – in modern parlance, she is a victim of child sex trafficking – yet she emerges as relatively empowered for a woman in an 18th century novel. Her sexual deviance is a source of pleasure rather than shame, and she ends up living a life of wealth and contentment with her loving husband and children. While Cleland’s novel is the product of exploitative attitudes, not least in its voyeuristic nature, at least its author does not revel in inflicting suffering on his creation.

The same cannot be said of Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, due partly to its morally constrained Victorian context, which ensures that although its heroine is admiringly portrayed, she is doomed to a tragic fate. Hardy expands the rural maiden trope into a ‘Wessex Eve’ making Tess a pagan-Biblical sacrificial victim upon whom he inflicts constant suffering. Men, of course, are a major instrument of this. The introduction of Angel Clare provides one of the most resonant depictions of the f-boy state of mind in classic literature:

“This white shape stood apart by the hedge alone. From her position he knew it to be the pretty maiden with whom he had not danced. Trifling as the matter was, he yet instinctively felt that she was hurt by his oversight. He wished that he had asked her; he wished that he had inquired her name. She was so modest, so expressive, she had looked so soft in her thin white gown that he felt he had acted stupidly.

However, it could not be helped, and turning, and bending himself to a rapid walk, he dismissed the subject from his mind.”

Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Hardy both criticises and perpetuates the fetish for the virginal and vulnerable by martyring Tess to the sexual appetites of his male characters. While Tess is physically violated, her true ruin is emotional: Hardy loads her with assault, trauma, the loss of a child, and, most sorely, moral punishment due to the men who have mistreated her. Although Angel’s moral development makes him too complex for a characterisation as mere f-boy, he shares key traits, such as hypocritical disgust at Tess’s impurity – despite his own sexual experience – and ultimate exemption from punishment. Tess pays the ultimate price for the wrongs which he has committed against her, but Angel gets off scot-free, with an invitation to marry her sister thrown in.

Hardy uses the emotionally manipulative powers of the f-boy to transfer society’s sins onto a female scapegoat who expunges them in death. This is part of a familiar pattern of women being used by men as a means to sin or redemption. The joy of Western authors in punishing women for their mistreatment by men is paralleled only by punishing mistreatment of men; female characters are condemned for being victimised by f-boys, and for daring to reject them.

Rhett Butler of Gone with the Wind and Rawdon Crawley of Vanity Fair are examples of that rare and mythical being: the f-boy tamed. Pining for another (more boring) man, Scarlett O’Hara tolerates Rhett for a time and then progresses into deliberate cruelty; their relationship goes from toxic to beyond dysfunctional, until he physically subjugates her in a drunken confrontation that retorts to the language of the brutal-primal and the rape.

“She screamed, stifled against him (…) Suddenly she had a wild thrill such as she had never known; joy, fear, madness, excitement, surrender to arms that were too strong, lips too bruising, fate that moved too fast. For the first time in her life she had met someone, something stronger than she, someone she could neither bully nor break, someone who was bullying and breaking her.”

Rawdon Crawley, Gone with the Wind

Rhett exemplifies the typical f-boy combination of intense psychosexual impact with intense emotional risk – but he also subjugates himself to the increasingly dominant, masculine Scarlett. Beginning as a girlish Southern belle, she becomes defender of the homestead, murdering a male attacker and refusing to mother her children, leaving Rhett to fill this domestic role. However, she is cursed for her refusal to submit to her husband, and conventional femininity, with perpetually unrequited love, first for her cousin’s husband and eventually for Rhett, whose assault makes her appreciate him at last. 

Similarly, while Vanity Fair’s Rawdon seems initially f-boy-esque, he ultimately serves to highlight his wife’s masculinity, proving that the truest f-boy of them all is his spouse Becky herself. She manipulates men and women alike in an unflappable, calculated manner, with the further outrage of violating ‘girl code’; she too rejects her child, leaving her moustachioed soldier husband in the maternal role. And while Thackeray emphasises the turn of Fortune’s wheel – rewarding Becky’s vice while the soppy Emmy is stranded on the moral high ground – Becky’s f-boyism does not extend to the benefit of escaping punishment, and like Scarlett, she meets an unhappy, manless end.

The Snapchat Casanovas of today are the product of centuries of ‘civilisation’: a turn against the overtly forceful man-beast of antiquity, against violence, against women, against ‘the institution of the patriarchy’. But the same hypocrisy Thackeray mocks in Georgian society is present in the modern age: the rejection of such attitudes in polite society does not remove them from the human psyche and the gulf between civilised ‘propriety’ and its convoluted and two-faced fetishization remain. The dichotomy between accepted ‘progressive’ values and the sexual taboo of breaking them is as evident today as in the days of Fanny Hill. And sex itself has been civilised, brought above board: women now claim to be empowered because they can choose subjugation. This is epitomised by the mass appeal of BDSM, evident in the racks of collar necklaces and ‘daddy’ shirts on sale at Forever 21. But how much agency do teenage girls really have in this choice when they’ve grown up in a culture of hypersexualisation, 50 Shades, and influencer as career aspiration?

In an age where the battle of the sexes has moved from the physical to the psychological plane, one would do well to turn to DH Lawrence’s illustration of the entanglement of mind and body in Lady Chatterley’s Lover. “A woman had to yield to (a man) what he wanted, or like a child he would turn nasty and flounce away… but a woman could yield to a man without yielding her free, inner self” – aware of her role in sex as “a passive, consenting thing, like a physical slave”, his protagonist refuses to relinquish mental autonomy: revealing “everything about (herself)” to a partner would be a “bore”, a “disease”. Confidence in one’s own mental faculties is the best defence against the trademark mind-games of the f-boy, and it is increasingly relevant in helping women to recognise when casual philandering crosses the line into emotional abuse.

‘The Lost Properties of Love’ by Sophie Ratcliffe

Lewis Roberts
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‘The Lost Properties of Love’ by Sophie Ratcliffe

Following the publication of her book, The Lost Properties of Love (2019), Sophie Ratcliffe set up an Instagram page (@thelibraryofloss) to collect books on the subject of grief and loss. The squares contain the covers of books by authors ranging from Julian Barnes to P.G. Wodehouse, whose letters (in her alter ego as Oxford don) Ratcliffe edited in 2013. The Lost Properties of Love in a similar way to her online library offers an imagistic recollection of Ratcliffe’s experience with loss in self-contained episodes. In fact, its subtitle reads ‘an exhibition of myself’.

The Lost Properties of Love is a sentimental and nostalgic memoir. From its opening, recollecting Ratcliffe’s fear of losing her father, her quaint remembrances of reading on trains put her father’s illness into a jarring frame of optimistic youth. Later, she tells of her admiration for Anna Karenina, which stems from Tolstoy’s obsession with detail: ‘the precise colour of a mushroom, the type of leather on a sofa, and the way it feels to scythe a field of grass.’ The book’s brilliance is rooted in the belief that life is a series of moments rather than a big ball of indeterminate stuff. She connects with the slightest thought in her busy modern life and creates something solid out of it: ‘affairs create a negative imprint, a second life. If a camera is a clock for seeing, as Barthes has it, then an affair is a clock for living.’ She is a theorist at heart.

Ratcliffe’s style is knowing and intimately connected with emotion. Her descriptions of the eponymous properties show us how closely she associates her material life with her emotions: ‘I kept losing the notebook, as if it were all down to a lucky dip.’ Her similes and suppositions are sometimes markedly performative. The book treads a fine line between a deeply personal and so anecdotal memoir, and an academic exploration of how we associate emotions with experiences. It reminded me of Max Porter’s wonderful book, Grief is the Thing with Feathers (2015), not only because for both authors grief is very much something to be lived and something painfully immediate, but because both authors’ careers lie elsewhere: Porter’s in publishing and Ratcliffe’s in academia. It is perhaps inevitable that the person who guarded Wodehouse’s letters is vibrantly aware of her own technique.

At times Ratcliffe’s self awareness can be frustrating; but as the book draws to its close, it is hard not to forgive her. Her subject is not so much grief as a concept, but her attempts to process a very specific grief: her own. The non-linear timescale of the book is uncomfortable and emblematic of the whole premise of the book. It is about the incoherent madness of living in a grief-stricken world which makes one value every tangible moment. As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once wrote in mode akin to Ratcliffe’s: ‘It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.’

Bishop of Oxford joins call for action on climate change

Rachel Cordery
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Bishop of Oxford joins call for action on climate change

The Bishop of Oxford, Rt Revd Stephen Croft, joined thousands in Westminster on Wednesday to demand action on climate change.

‘Time Is Now’ saw 12,000 people gather to put pressure on politicians to act on the need for unprecedented action to tackle climate change.

Organisers from the Climate Coalition and Greener UK reported that people from 99 per cent of the UK’s constituencies signed up for the march.

In his latest blog, the Rt Revd Croft called for action to prevent “apocalyptic” damage, saying: “The time is now to arrest the emission of greenhouse gases which are causing such lasting damage to the Earth.”

 “Life on Earth is about to change in apocalyptic ways during the remainder of this century if we continue to do next to nothing.”

“Setting the care for the earth again at the front and centre of our politics and our lives must be the priority if there is a fair and rich future for life on earth,” he added.

The Westminster protest comes after months of mounting demonstrations, including several in Oxford.

The demands are not going unnoticed: last month, the House of Commons approved a motion to declare an environmental emergency, while this week, the House of Lords debated a target to decrease greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050.

Despite these advancements, activists continue to call for an Environment Bill to clean up polluted air and tackle plastic pollution. Greener UK published a draft of the bill in December.

The Environmental Bill would also include legally binding targets and an independent watchdog to enforce environmental laws.

Extinction Rebellion holds parody of University Encaenia ceremony

Rachel Cordery
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Extinction Rebellion holds parody of University Encaenia ceremony

Last week, on a day reserved for the prestigious Encaenia ceremony, Extinction Rebellion took to the streets of Oxford to raise awareness of climate change.

Demonstrators took part in a parody of the event, entitled ‘Insania’, walking from Radcliffe Square to Broad Street.

Before the walk began, activists crowded Catte Street, along which the academics walked to the ceremony, chanting “shame, shame, shame on you.”

Encaenia is the ceremony at which the University of Oxford awards honorary degrees to distinguished men and women and celebrates its benefactors.

At the ceremony, eight people were awarded honorary degrees, including Professor Sir Simon Wessely, of the Royal Society of Medicine, and Yo-Yo Ma, a world-renowned cellist.

The activists’ own procession mimicked the award ceremony, by featuring awards for David Attenborough and climate change activist Greta Thunberg.

Extinction Rebellion spokeswoman, Hazel Dawe, said: “The Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford has told students that ‘Divestment will not have any tangible impact against climate change; it’s better to focus on research and green campus initiatives. This is muddled thinking and ignores the fact that the university’s international reputation requires it to show leadership and divest from fossil fuels.”

Oxford University has been contacted for comment.

Rate my tinny!

Ellen Sharman
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Rate my tinny!

Someone once said Oscar Wilde would regularly exclaim in his time as an Oxford student that “no sunny day is complete without engaging in the great British pastime known as ‘tinnys in the park’”.

Knocking back one of these canned beverages in the sun is as British as the Spice Girls, royal scandals, and Tory drug-taking. When done right, a can consumed joyously among friends can prove as entertaining as just about any other British summer activity.

You may have already sipped your inaugural canned lager of the summer, but why not try something a little more adventurous for your next tin-based excursion?

“What about my red stripes at Notting hill?!” I hear middle-class millennials clamour in fear. Do not fret! I am not suggesting we relinquish our steadily warming 2% beers for good, but only that we treat ourselves to something a little more decadent on the next scorcher.

Pre-mixed cocktails in tins offer the punter a flavourful and cost-effective way to drink themselves towards merriness, oblivion, or perhaps, like me, third-degree burns. Practicality wise, if you are looking to get tipsy quick, the tinned cocktail offers a sensible and bladder friendly alternative to smashing six cans in under 30 mins.

One issue of drinking tinned beverages in the sun is their temperature, but much like Sean Paul, these cocktails have it right. As revitalising as a cold beer in hand on a hot day can be, by the time you arrive at the sixth, you are well into the danger zone of sun-boiled larger. A six pack in the sun swiftly becomes undrinkable, the remnants banished to the fridge for another day. With pre-mixed tins, the pairing of a higher alcohol percentage with the drinkability of squash sees these nifty little cans get you drunk at a deceptive rate whilst preventing your beverage brewing from a margarita into a Molotov cocktail.

These pre-mixed cocktails have been on supermarket shelves for a number of years, but their growing popularity has seen an increasing number of high street supermarkets attempt to cash in with their own-brand versions of classic cocktails and well-loved mixed drinks.

In October of last year, M&S food halls across the UK presented eager punters with their own selection of cans, best experienced on the London overground (serving suggestion). Sainsbury’s also have really pushed the trend, even promoting a brand of ‘nitrogen infused’ drinks to try and create a bar standard experience in a can.

Yes, a cannabis lassi may sound more exotic than a cocktail stored in aluminium, but who wants to be like Jeremy Hunt? Be more Dianne Abbott and go forth into the world tinned cocktail in hand!

Pimm’s

Though not strictly a cocktail, Pimm’s sell their own pre-mixed cans to save you lugging a weighty jug of fruit and cucumber (is cucumber really a fruit though?) to your public green space of choice. Without prior experience of a fresh glass of homemade Pimm’s, one might be satisfied with this purchase. To the more experienced Pimm’s consumers, this substitution very much lacks the flair and flavour of a cup overflowing with fruit and fresh mint. I personally was disappointed with this drink, feeling cheated of the best thing about the summer classic; alcohol steeped strawberries.

Price: £1.80

Volume: 5.4%

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

Sainsbury’s

The offerings from this supermarket’s own brand range are decidedly less sophisticated than its competitors. The choices of spirits are limited to Vodka, Gin, and Rum, and the mixers get no more exciting than rose lemonade. These cans are essentially glorified college bar pre-drinks in cans – cheap and cheerful, but not very sophisticated. If you are just looking to get day drunk ASAP (which is fair enough), then the star rating would probably go up considerably given the cost and percentage.

Price: £1 – £1.25 (the 25p extra goes towards adding a hint of rose or rhubarb to your basic gin)

Volume: 5%

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Tesco

Tesco’s themselves are yet to launch an own brand pre-mixed range, but if you are still desperate to rack up your club card points at all costs, they do sell a range of other brands’ concoctions on their shelves. I personally found this to be a cost-effective way of sampling numerous brands and flavours. Unlike any other supermarket, the current 3 for 4 deal means you can pick and mix between popular brands like Absolute, Gordons, and Sipsmith, or try more varied and innovative cocktail flavours by ‘All Shook Up’ including espresso martini’s or violet flavoured cosmos. Though I like the ability to choose from a very wide range of flavours and brands, I withhold my fifth star as I would have expected a giant chain like this to have created their own branded versions by now.

Price: 3 for 4 on all tins (cheapest free)

Volume: Varies per brand from 4.5% to 7.2%

Rating: ★★★★☆

M&S

As well as giving you the opportunity to live your middle-class Labour fantasy on the tube home, M&S offer a genuinely enticing range of drinks. The flavours are refined and classic (much like the brand’s reputation) and allow you to transport your favourites from the plush seats of a cocktail lounge to the verdant planes of port meadow. I gave M&S’ range a full 5 stars for the experience of shopping in the store is as soothing as the drinks are delicious. They have managed to create an own-brand range which is both varied in flavour and cost effective, given that the average alcohol volume per can is 8%.

Price: £2 each or 4 for £6

Volume: 8%

Rating: ★★★★★

The Rise of Podcast Journalism

Adam Dalrymple
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The Rise of Podcast Journalism

It is no secret that journalism is experiencing a crisis in the digital age of media. As circulation numbers plummet alongside advertising revenues, national newspapers are haemorrhaging money, while many smaller outlets have bled dry. Between 2005 and 2018, 245 regional and local newspapers shut-up shop in the UK alone. Digital advertising now outstrips traditional forms of advertising so optimists in the media industry might suggest by moving content online, journalism could survive in the 21st Century. Yet news corporations have not enjoyed the opportunities presented by the rise of the Internet. Facebook and Google have established an uncompromising hegemony on the digital advertising market, accounting for 60% of its revenue this year.

In the wake of this profound dislocation, media companies have scrambled to adapt to their new reality to avoid going extinct. Online news sites have resorted to click bait stories. Newspapers have retreated behind paywalls, with the FT leading the way in 2002, and the Times and the Telegraph following its lead in 2010 and 2012 respectively. The Guardian still allows free online access to their journalism but has resorted to begging for donations at the bottom of every article. Internationally, some newspapers have survived by acquiring billionaire philanthropic patrons, like the Washington Post with Jeff Bezos.

Journalists and editors are innovating, adopting new forms of media and new business strategies to keep their industry afloat. Amidst this turmoil, one promising type of “new media” has experienced an incredible rise in recent years to provide some hope: the daily news podcast.

When podcasts first appeared, they were known as audioblogs. They represented a democratic alternative to radio, a space where anyone with a microphone could make their voice heard. Through the 2000s podcasts became more polished and professional but still struggled to make a significant mainstream impact. That all changed in 2014 when a radio show called The American Life produced a true-crime podcast spinoff called Serial. It quickly became a sensation as 5 million people tuned in to its 12 episodes. It proved the potential of the podcast in a time when smartphones allowed people to consume them at any time and in any place. They became recognised as a high quality and in-demand alternative to radio one could personalize to their tastes.

The popularity of the podcast has soared in the five years since Serial. In the UK weekly listeners have doubled. Podcast networks have been created, such as Earwolf and Gimlet Media, who curate a range of shows for a dedicated core of fans. Earwolf now attracts 400,000 listeners across 50 shows and Gimlet was this year sold to Spotify for $230 million. Recognising the opportunity to boost their personal brand, celebrities have flocked to the medium. Today one can listen to podcasts hosted by Ricky Gervais and Russell Brand, Gwyneth Paltrow and Amy Schumer. Audioblogs may have originated from modest beginnings, but podcasts are now a force to be reckoned with.

Yet despite this success, podcasts have found it difficult to monetise their popularity. After quickly gaining popularity, true-crime series like Serial, S-Town or Sleuth have found it difficult to attract advertisers before their seasons came to an end. Serial relied on audience donations to create a second series. Yet the medium seemed perfect for advertisers as most podcast listeners are in the 18-34 age bracket that advertisers find notoriously difficult to access. Research shows 85% of people listen to the end of podcasts and at 90 seconds on average, podcast adverts are longer than those on TV or radio.

Thus in 2017, journalism was looking for new forms of media to expand into and podcasts were looking for a reliable revenue stream. Like some strange corporate rom-com, they found exactly what they were looking for in each other, and the daily news podcast was born.

The trailblazer for this new form of journalism was undoubtedly The Daily podcast from the New York Times. Hosted by Michael Barbaro, The Daily is a 20-minute deep-dive into a single news story, produced five days a week. Episodes are put together through interviews between Barbaro and other New York Times reporters, who outline and comment on their articles. The podcast concludes with a “Here’s what else you need to know today” section that summarises the day’s headlines.

The team at The Daily boldly claim, “This is what the news should sound like,” and it is hard to disagree with them. Rather than start with the headline, Barbaro and his crew wind back beginning of every news story, revealing the true origins of every conflict, the basis for every constitutional clash. Immaculate sound design give the podcast momentum and intensity, while astutely chosen sound bites weaved through the interviews transport the listener right into the action with a real sense of immediacy.

The Daily debuted in February 2017 and caught the zeitgeist early on, becoming extraordinarily successful in a matter of months. Before a year was up it had been streaming 100 million times, and a deal with national radio was sealed. Today, 2 million listeners tune in every morning.

I spoke to Ellen Barry, the Chief International Correspondent for the New York Times based in London, about what it was like to watch the success of the Daily from inside the newspaper. “I just don’t think any of us had any idea what a phenomenon it was going to be,” she said. “We’re in a period where the newspaper is trying all kinds of experiments … and this one just took off beyond anyone’s expectations.”

I wondered whether it was annoying to be hauled away from your desk to be interviewed for The Daily, but she laughs as says, “I don’t think there’s a single journalist in The New York Times who wouldn’t be thrilled.” She tells me that Michael Barbaro has become somewhat of a celebrity in the Times’ office, “he’s a matinee idol.”

The Daily draws back the curtain on the process of journalism, as you hear journalists putting together their stories and grappling with the evidence in front of them. In an episode about the New York Times’ investigation into Donald Trump’s wealth, journalist Sue Craig retells the riveting story of how she went to her mailbox one day in 2016 to find 3 pages of Donald Trump’s previously unreleased tax returns anonymously posted to her from Trump Tower. Her colleague Russ Buettner, when asked what he felt in that moment, says “it was just like holy shit.” Sue and Russ then outline how they collected 50,000 pages of Trump Family’s financial records, as you hear audio of them taking Barbaro around their investigation room, shuffling around the documents that made up this groundbreaking report. Every episode has an air of All The President’s Men to it, and every Times journalist who is interviewed inherits the role of Woodward and Bernstein.

Ellen Barry is thrilled that journalists can now tell the story of how they put together their articles. “The segment [in the Daily] obviously gives you more insight into the personalities and the screw ups and the ambiguity behind the process. I just think it added so many dimensions to the print piece.”

“This is all what would end up, traditionally, on the cutting room floor, right? Like people saying “fuck you, I don’t want to talk to you,” or people sort of going back and forth on their version of events… but it just turns out that everything we were cutting out tells you so much more about the story.”

Beyond its production value, the success of The Daily can be explained by the resources at their disposal. Barbaro’s team can tap into The New York Times’ unrivalled news network consisting of 31 international bureaus and 200 journalists. Moreover, The Daily’s emergence has coincided with a moment when the news is receiving unparalleled attention. As Barbaro put it himself, “We launched in the opening days of a polarizing new presidency that seemed to produce earthquake-sized news every day.”

Although the New York Times does not disclose how much money The Daily brings in, it is clear that they have cracked to problem of monetising the podcast. With the regularity of their schedule, advertisers know roughly how many listeners there will be on any given episode. There isn’t a scramble to find advertisers halfway through a season and there isn’t a specific order that people must listen to the episodes in. A leaked sales proposal shows that a sponsorship slot on the show costs $290,000.

Beyond direct revenue, The Daily boosts the brand of the New York Times, and attracts new young subscribers to the paper, on which its funding is now based. The New York Times have a record 4.5 million paid subscribers right now due to what people at the paper call the “Trump Bump”, as they have received 200,000 new subscribers every quarter since the presidential election. Staff at the New York Times recognise that it could equally be called the “Barbaro Bump.”

Ellen Barry said, “Audiences are key to the survival of the industry, it used to rely on advertising and the advertising base is melting away. Audiences are the only possible way to continue this kind of investigative journalism of accountability and believe me it is an absolute obsession to connect quality reporting of this kind with people who otherwise might not be newspaper readers. The Daily is doing that better than any other alternate form we have.”

Other media outlets have followed in the wake of The Daily’s success. Since its debut, the number of daily podcasts has tripled as, in the words of Felix Salmon of WIRED, “publishers are racing to own the money-printing machine that is the daily news podcast.” The Times, The Telegraph, The FT, The Economist, Sky News and The Spectator have all invested in the podcast business recently. The podcasts closest to the formula of The Daily in terms of production and format is probably The Guardian’s Today in Focus and Vox’s Today Explained. The news podcast could possibly prove the saviour for local papers too. Google has recently invested half a million pounds into a project called Laudable, which aims to create audio content for regional media companies as a means of keeping them financially sustainable. This could just be the tipping-point for the industry, as some analysts believe the audio market could be worth $656 million by 2020, with a large portion of that coming from podcasts.

Maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s look at the numbers. How significant was the couple hundred thousand that The Daily brought the New York Times in the context of the 1.7 billion the newspaper earned altogether in 2017, even if you account for the subscriptions the podcast accounts for on top of that? Even if the podcast market’s explosive growth continues, can it really make up for the losses sustained by the decline in newspapers sold?

Ultimately, the rise of podcast journalism is valuable mainly as a statement of intent. It shows that media companies will continue to innovate maintain a viable financial future in this new digital age. The New York Times has been at the forefront of other exciting innovations. Ellen Barry said that at times it has felt like the newspaper’s leadership was “throwing spaghetti at the wall” to see what stuck. Yet she gives them credit for creating flagship new products. “They recognised very early on that printing an account of what happened yesterday could not be our only product… to their credit they were willing to break with established forms.”

 Alongside The Daily, in recent years the newspaper has debuted a parenting website as well as a cooking website that gives subscribers access to 19,000 recipes. The New York Times is also ingratiating itself with Hollywood. A documentary series on FX called The Weekly was announced in May 2019, which will follow reporters every week as they investigate news stories across the world. The New York Times aren’t the first media organization to turn to TV; VICE have a daily news show on HBO and both Buzzfeed and Vox agreed deals with Netflix.

Another vast source of revenue for newspapers in the 21st Century is in the events business. The leader in this instance is probably The Atlantic magazine, which runs 125 events a year accounting for a incredible 20% of their annual revenue. GQ organizes a comedy gig at the Hammersmith Apollo to coincide with their comedy issue, while Vogue India puts on the Vogue Wedding Show. Media companies have the contacts and spaces pull in big revenue in the events business, especially considering how much people are willing to pay to meet top journalists. The FT put on a conference in New York last week titled “Trust, Technology and Transformation in an Age of Upheaval” with speakers including the editor of the Washington Post, the editor of Vanity Fair and CNN news presenter Don Lemon. Tickets for this one-day event cost $900, making the Oxford Union membership finally seem like value for money. The New York Times has proved with The Daily that newspapers can flourish in the digital age, even they need to look beyond their print circulation to do so. Podcasts bring quality journalism to new audiences, and illuminate the mechanics of investigative journalism for existing customers. The success of the daily news podcast, and other new forms of media that newspapers are diversifying into, proves that advent of the Internet does not have to represent the death knell of journalism. Technological change causes dislocation, but it also forces valu

If Ever I Stray

Simone Fraser
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If Ever I Stray

On 4th May 2018, Frank Turner released his seventh studio album, titled Be More Kind.Strongly political, the record features songs like the sarcastically named anti-racism anthem ‘Make America Great Again’ and cynical ballad ‘21stCentury Survival Blues’. Yet this wasn’t what caused some fans to take offence at the album – it was the fact that it was considered too close to the kind of pop that Turner has taken care to stand apart from over recent years.

Taking a quick glance at his Wikipedia page, it’s easy to see that his music has changed dramatically over the years. Beginning in post-hardcore punk band Million Dead, after their 2005 split Turner switched suddenly to a solo blend of folk and punk, predominantly on acoustic guitar, releasing classic albums Sleep Is for the Week (2007), Love Ire and Song (2008) and Poetry of The Deed (2009). These albums show clear evolution, but set up a style of music and lyrics that Turner is increasingly becoming haunted by. Admittedly, the three albums are beautiful. They range from bitter to hopeful, desperate to furious, and sarcastic to just plain sad. Anthems like Long Live The Queen, written about his friend Lex who passed away from cancer stand as a triumphant and desperate celebration of life, emulating the combination of melancholy but furious hope that Turner’s fans adore. To some, this is the kind of music that raised Turner to success, and this devotion to pure and unpolished emotion is what they love about him.

Turner’s next album, England Keep My Bones (2011) similarly echoed these ideas, albeit in a slightly more polished way. However, it was with Tape Deck Heart (2013) that Turner began to shift his style. Whereas the earlier albums leaned heavily on raw emotion and acoustic sounds, with some recorded literally in the living rooms of his friends, Turner’s current sound is much more polished and produced, with Be More King being labelled “indie rock/indie folk”, and opposed to the “folk punk/folk rock” of his earlier days. Instead of playing dive bars and pub shows, Turner has now sold out Wembley, and although he remains committed to playing smaller venues. Yet has this shift meant that he was lost the heart of his music? This calls into question whether it’s right for musicians to move away from the genre that they originally began in, and whether it’s right for their supporters to accuse them of selling out if they begin to shift towards more accepted styles like pop or indie rock. 

The main accusation levelled against Turner is that in moving to a more produced sound, he has lost the raw emotion that originally made people fall in love with his sound. Turner is open about his autobiographic style of song writing, and over the years, we have seen him break his own heart through music, and slowly mend it. We, as humans, are constantly going through emotional turmoil, and having this sort of honesty about everything from his troubled relationship with his father, alcoholism, and breakdown of long-term relationships from the perspective of the person who is leaving have comforted people of all ages, including me, when we’ve faced similar difficulties.

Possibly the real reason why people are angry with Turner’s music then isn’t that he has sold out and somehow lost his devotion to the genre of music that he won our hearts with. Maybe the real reason for people’s anger is that Turner isn’t writing sad, desperate music anymore, because he’s finally happy. Instead of going through a string of toxic relationships, Turner is now happily engaged, and his music reflects a maturity and contentment in life that he simply didn’t have before. Songs like Little Changeshave been described as vapid because of their catchy, pop-like chorus, but in reality, they tackle important issues like his experience of CBT and relationships, but with an undying layer of emotional stability that his music didn’t have before. 

Ultimately, Frank Turner owes us nothing. Even so, he continues to draw tattoos for those who ask, supports charities like Safe Gigs for Women, and tour constantly – he recently played his 2265thgig. Frank hasn’t stopped being devoted to honest music, but he has grown personally and musically, and in over a decade of releasing music, this has caused some significant changes. So ultimately, what a musician creates is their own choice. It is possible to remain devoted to making honest and poignant music without remaining static in your sound – and after all, if you don’t like it, no-one’s making you listen. 

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