Thousands took to the streets of Oxford yesterday morning to race in the Oxford Half Marathon, a 13.1-mile closed-road route that started and finished on Mansfield Road, taking runners past landmarks like the Radcliffe Camera and through Summertown in the process.
Runners had the option to run to raise money for one of the Half Marathon’s charity partners, which includes Cancer Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, and Oxfordshire Mind. Entertainment points along the route blasted music and offered refuelling for runners to break up the monotony of the run.
Kitted out with homemade banners and bright yellow clappers, supporters of all ages lined Banbury Road to cheer on their friends and family. Some memorable signs included “No one likes a quick finisher”, “Why is everyone running?”, and, in true Oxford fashion, “Hurry up so we can hit the pub”.
For as many runners proudly sporting the kits of their local run clubs, there were as many students who looked unprepared but surprisingly enthusiastic. Merton College student Atrijo Bhattacharyya, who proclaimed he’d not trained for the run at all, told Cherwell: “I thought that the half marathon was a really good experience and a great first race for someone getting into long distance running. I think my biggest takeaway from doing the half marathon without training is that one of the most crucial aspects of long distance running is willpower.”
As runners sped past the finish line, marshals shepherded crowds down Parks Road in the direction of the Event Village, nestled in University Parks, where live music and food stalls awaited to furnish runners with electrolytes and energy bars.
All finishers were awarded a medal and a T-shirt. Speaking to Cherwell, a participant said: “I run a lot usually, but I’ve been out with an injury, so this is my first race back for the love of the game. It was a lot of fun.”
“Running is awful”, a participant unwinding with a pint at the King’s Arms told Cherwell after completing the marathon, “but it’s also so good”.
Oxford college heads have claimed more than £333k in expenses over the past two years, with some charging tens of thousands for travel, hospitality, and entertainment.
There is currently no standard practice governing how college heads use funds and report spending, and the University declined to answer Cherwell’s questions regarding expense claims.
The data, obtained by Cherwell through Freedom of Information requests, shows that spending patterns differ sharply across the University. While some colleges reported comparatively low totals, others claimed tens of thousands for international travel and hospitality.
The combined expenses total for all undergraduate college heads amounts to £333,530, with the office of Dinah Rose, President of Magdalen College, accounting for nearly a quarter that total.
Rose’s office claimed £82,239, more than any other college, and more than double the £30,496 claimed by the runner-up, New College, which can be seen on the graph below.
Magdalen did not provide a detailed breakdown of expenses, claiming that it constitutes “personal data” despite the figure constituting the spending of an office rather than an individual, for duties carried out in official college capacity. Other colleges did, however, provide itemised lists of expenses, including the names of hotels and restaurants to the penny.
Graph Credit: Oscar Reynolds for Cherwell
International trips are among the most common expenses, particularly to Hong Kong. The Warden of New College, for example, claimed over £10,000 for a visit there. A spokesperson noted that such trips can generate significant fundraising returns, with recent donations from Hong Kong alone amounting to more than £30 million.
On a similar visit to Singapore and Hong Kong, Stephen Blythe, Principal of LMH, stayed at the 5-star Clan Hotel, and later charged a “champagne event” in New York to the expenses account, as well as a £600 afternoon tea with prospective donors.
A spokesperson for LMH told Cherwell that over the past three years, over £15 million has been raised for the College, and that “fundraising expenses incurred in the course of this work are approved and reimbursed in accordance with College policies”.
Colleges function as independent charities, relying on their endowments and donations to fund operations. Unlike the central University, colleges are financially autonomous, making fundraising a key part of the job for a head of college. For example, this year Pembroke College announced a fundraising goal of £100 million in order to fund fellowships, a new library, renovations, and outreach efforts.
Other records, however, show funds from different colleges being used for activities linked to external organisations.
In June 2023, Clair Craig, then-Provost of Queen’s College, charged £824 for “wine, prosecco and soft drinks” at an event for INGSA, a science advisory network, and a further £80 at a Mayfair lounge for the organisation. The college also covered £1,937 for Craig’s flights and accommodation to attend the World Science Forum with INGSA in Budapest.
Her expenses also include spending on furnishings, from £282 on flowers to over £300 on photo frames, as well as food bills including £25 at Gail’s, £29 at Hotel Chocolat, and £11 on crisps.
Responding to these claims, a spokesperson for Queen’s told Cherwell that “the expenditure either directly advances or supports the College’s charitable purposes.” However, they did not respond to questions over expenses related to INGSA.
Other data shows that Nigel Clifford, Rector of Lincoln College, managed to spend £79 in Wagamama at Heathrow Airport on a meal for three. Clifford also charged the College over £276 for a chauffeur service to Heathrow.
The company claims to provide “luxury” cars to the House of Lords, Whitehall, Government Offices, and importantly, Oxford University. A Lincoln College spokesperson told Cherwell that the chauffeur service was “the most practical and economical” means of transport.
Colleges often defend expenses as part of their fundraising and alumni relations efforts, which they argue bring in donations that benefit students and college life. For example, Miles Young, Warden of New College, had the second highest expenses tab of the surveyed college heads, though over £3000 went towards the College’s choir tour, and over £400 for a Chinese New Year event for students.
However, the disparity in claims raises questions about the transparency of college finances in an unstandardised collegiate system. A spokesperson for Magdalen even pointed out that if New College and Magdalen were excluded, the average expense claim would “not appear to be sufficient to accommodate the travel, hospitality, and entertainment that would normally be expected” of a head of house.
New College, for example, told Cherwell that their policy includes one trip to the USA per year, which is “necessary to attend the annual Board Meeting and associated events of the American Friends of New College”. There is an additional trip every three years to meet alumni and donors in Asia, including Hong Kong and Singapore, for fundraising and college events.
By contrast, the head of Wycliffe Hall reported the lowest expenses of any college head, spending just £52 over two years. The Principal of Hertford College spent £245 over the same period, while Brasenose’s President spent a similar £280 on expenses.
The University has an expense policy for work undertaken in the course of University business, though individual colleges have their own autonomous policies due to their status as independent self-governing charities. Cherwell understands that the University has no official duty under charity law to monitor spending by colleges.
This autonomy applies to how expenses are recorded, with no standardised system governing how colleges track spending by college heads. Some colleges may reimburse their head after they pay personally, while others cover costs directly, meaning the same trip could appear differently in separate colleges’ accounts.
Graph Credit: Oscar Reynolds for Cherwell
The impact of this spending varies drastically when measured against college endowments, which are the invested funds that generate much of colleges’ income. Oxford’s colleges vary enormously in wealth, with some holding endowments worth hundreds of millions while others operate on far smaller budgets.
The College Disparities Report, authored by then-SU President Danial Hussain, highlighted the impact of these stark differences between colleges. For example, in the 4 years prior to the release of the report, Christ Church’s wealth increased by £169 million, larger than the combined endowment growth of the 10 poorest colleges.
Analysis of expense claims against college wealth by Cherwell on the above graph shows a different angle to the scale of these claims. When measuring expenditure this way, Regent’s Park wins by some margin, with the Principal’s £10,947 claim looming larger than that of Magdalen’s £82,239 in expenses.
In fact, when compared to college wealth, Magdalen figure is the twelfth highest, with our runner-up, New College, ranking thirteenth. Despite its eye-watering endowment, the Dean of Christ Church spent only £8,430, making it the ninth lowest figure when compared to the College’s endowment.
Last year, Cherwellrevealed that Oxford Vice-Chancellor Irene Tracey had claimed £47,564.97 on expenses since her appointment in January 2023.
The figures show the University covered over £25,000 for her flights and £12,000 on rail and car travel, on top of her baseline salary of £573,000, which includes £100,000 for housing. Tracey is the second-highest paid vice-chancellor in the country, just behind her Cambridge counterpart.
Senior members of Coventry University have recently come under scrutiny from the University and College Union (UCU) for spending around £150,000 on flights, with the vice-chancellor spending £7,870 on one business class flight with Emirates. The Coventry University Group announced in December 2023 that it needed to deliver nearly £100m in cuts over a two-year period.
Though Oxford colleges argue that expense claims are a vital part of fundraising efforts and leading alumni engagement, the wide disparities in these sums of money raises questions about the accountability of the money that colleges spend. Given this inconsistency, it is impossible to effectively compare how money is spent, and unless it is actively sought out, this information is allowed to slip entirely under the radar.
There is no reason why a remake should remain inferior to its source material; even less so when it’s a ‘reinterpretation’ by an auteuras opposed to a cynical scheme for studios to cash-in on audience’s nostalgia. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) comes to mind: Douglas Sirk’s Hollywood melodrama All that Heaven Allows (1955) provided Rainer Werner Fassbinder with the template he needed to explore Germany’s own prejudices and social divisions, while also allowing him to comment on the ability of (American) pop-cinema to bring us closer to simple emotional truths. Unfortunately, no such sensitivity or consideration seems to have gone into Spike Lee’s decision to reinterpret Akira Kurosawa’s masterly High and Low (1963). For most of its runtime, Highest 2 Lowest struggles to provide a reason for its own existence.
We begin with a superficially similar set-up of Kurosawa’s now classic dilemma: a wealthy but principled businessman, who has just risked everything he owns on a deal to regain control over his company, receives a phone call demanding a ransom for his son. It quickly transpires that the kidnapper has made a mistake and is holding hostage his chauffeur’s son instead, but he demands the payment anyway. Our businessman, Gondo Kingo in Kurosawa’s original and David King in Lee’s latest film, faces an internal struggle: does he pay and lose all his wealth or leave a child to face death?
It is not needless showboating when the first 40 minutes of Kurosawa’s film take place within a single location, the living room of Gondo’s modernist house, in long takes staged in deep space. We are invited as witnesses to a theatrical display of human passions and resentments emerging under excruciating pressure. Class differences, normally ignored, are brought to the surface, and the actors’ entire bodies define their characters. We see the way the chauffeur is relegated to secondary status, a strict social hierarchy forcing him to remain silent even as he longs for his son’s freedom, by observing him hovering, hunched over, in the background of the action. Equally, we witness the insecurity of the nouveau riche in patriarch Gondo’s abrupt dismissals of his wife’s feminine insight, his eyes seething with resentment as he remembers her socially superior upbringing.
With Lee, clumsy exposition informs us of the thematic issues he wants to explore – authenticity in the age of AI, amongst others – and each line of dialogue sets up a ‘problem’ which we already know will be resolved in the film’s course. By the time we get to the phone call informing us of the kidnapping, the dialogue has divested us of the possibility of seeing these characters as humans in a sympathetic plight and we watch with near disengagement. Lee’s visual touches also alienate and encourage us to emotionally withdraw at crucial points. They evoke security cameras or occasionally, replaying moments of human connection from various angles, sports broadcasts. Formally the complement to the story’s themes of 21st century digital paranoia and the way that all human action now takes place under the weight of virtual judges is obvious, but never explored satisfactorily. Ironically, this is because Lee struggles to establish a physical sense of space into which these anonymous bodiless online presences can permeate. The King family home never once feels threatened in the way that Gondo’s house atop a hill is endangered by the watchful eyes of the lower classes living below him.
It is fascinating to read Joan Mellen’s 1975 interview with Akira Kurosawa in which her understanding of High and Low, which in its second half transitions to a proto-police procedural where the law attempts to capture the kidnapper, is contrary to the filmmaker’s own. Kurosawa did not see the police as heavy-handed in their pursuit of him (he saw the criminal’s actions against a child as truly abominable) and did not want to make him sympathetic, but acknowledged that in the act of directing that was how it came together. The power of Tsutomu Yamazaki’s performance as the doomed Dostoevskian antagonist, cut off from charity and determined to hate, cannot help but transform in the film’s final minutes what has been a mysteriously sun-glassed visage for much of the runtime into an image of the despair to which a materialistic society can drive anyone. His scream of horror and the descending metal shutter are the final sounds we hear before the screen fades to black. Kurosawa goes on to confess that he cut a sequence it took two weeks to complete, in which the kidnapper is analysed by Gondo and the police chief, so that this would be the shot with which we are left.
Lee, however, wants to be in control and dictate to the audience what they can and cannot believe. This obviates the more interesting visual ideas, particularly an inspired rap number, in which fluorescent lighting plays across kidnapper Yung Felon’s and King’s faces alike, as King grins and a split screen unites them. The heavy-handed writing returns to rescue us from the notion of Felon as King’s own shadow, differentiated by status alone, making these moments little more than a trace left behind by a superior work. When we end with David King, a multimillionaire back in his penthouse, angry that the kidnapper from the ghetto did not receive an extra five years on his sentence, imagining his future business success, and with every cut effacing irony to solidify the audience’s support for him, we are not only watching a film completely opposed to Kurosawa’s, which showed Gondo achieving spiritual enlightenment after renouncing his wealth, but a film which celebrates a world which Kurosawa, in his humanistic plea for mercy, condemned.
Former Wadhamite Verity Babbs has created a practical guide to the history of art – breaking away from the traditionally dense Oxford academic style. Comedian, writer, performer, and all-round free spirit, Verity has produced a beautiful book to deal with your anxieties around discussing art. It provides a unique voice filled with quips and jokes that prepare you to discuss art with anyone – be it your tutor, your friends, or a date.
In its extensive coverage of 50 artistic movements, each is given three to five pages that describe their features, basic historical facts, and key artists and paintings of the movement. In total you learn of about ten new names, five or so paintings, and a couple of ideas. The question-answer format of the book provides ample opportunity for bizarre facts that you can utilise yourself. It opens with traditional discussions of early modern Italy, and eventually branches out into the experimental German and British art of the 20th century. It was a little jarring, even if welcome, to go so quickly from learning of Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro, to the parties of the Bauhaus.
An example of Caravaggio’s use of Chiaroscuro – Image Credit: Public Domain from Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caravaggio_-_Sette_opere_di_Misericordia.jpg)
Despite her comedic origins, though, this book remains informative. It is ultimately an art history book that has cast aside its academic trappings. The formal language, tone, layout, and visuals are all cut. For Verity, art is about stories. The book revolves around the wacky and bizarre. This is where Alexandra Ramirez’s illustrations come into play. Verity’s unique voice and witty humor are accompanied by an extensive set of cartoon-like illustrations. Famous artwork is reworked in this style, notably a two-page spread of Dürer’s Rhinoceros. It makes for an engaging read, that allows you to focus on the particularly striking features of art history.
This approach, however, is not without limitations. The illustrations are a striking addition to Verity’s jokes. Yet, it is difficult to introduce the precise differences between art movements, or techniques, or the use of colour, without at least one example of the art. Bold introduction pages which feature blocks of colour could’ve instead featured a photo of key works. Conveying the sublime in the art of the romantics is difficult through the medium of words and cartoon depictions. The book is best when it is not taken seriously – when not every sentence is read, but rather the curious mind seeks out what sparks interest.
When read in this way, I did have a considerable amount of success. The section on drowning guests in rose petals (in reference to The Roses of Heliogabalus by Lawrence Alba-Tadema) led me to further research. I sent a photo of the painting to my friends, and started to discuss it alongside others of the same style. Verity’s fun fact on Alba-Tadema importing roses from France every week to produce the work, was a launchpad for my curiosity as to the aesthetic features of the art, and the uniqueness of the artwork’s production. It is these ‘magpie’ style interactions that Verity wants to encourage with the work. It is an opportunity for curious minds to discover more about art history, without a daunting reading list attached.
Image Credit: By Lawrence Alma-Tadema – Superb magazine, The Désirs & Volupté exhibition at the Musée Jacquemart-André, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=755081
When asked what she would recommend to those interested in art, rather surprisingly Verity told Cherwell to stay away from the galleries. Memorising the contents of the Christ Church Picture Gallery, or attempting to learn every obscure philosophical take on art, are anathema to Verity. This view is reflected in this book. Art is not a subject that is to be learnt by rote to impress your tutors, it is expression. To Verity, this comes through adding art to her existing interests. This is the brilliance of the book – it bridges the gaps of knowledge that prompt you to start experimenting with art and art history, rather than memorising theory.
Oxford students stand to learn a lot from both this book, and the approach that Verity has taken. Oxford, and art history, are not places to simply memorise, regurgitate, and have polite conversation with tutors about age-old debates. Rather, it is the best opportunity in life to develop your own unique perspective, approach, or angle on things. This is what Verity did at her time at Wadham. Rather than attempting to participate in the academic race to the top, she discovered a love of comedy, drama, and how art plays a role in this. Oxford is a set of induced identity and academic crises that should force you to become a more unique and interesting individual.
I never expected to go to Oxford. As a S4 (Year 11) Scottish state school student, the University sprung to mind as a place for the English upper class, not somewhere I could even aspire to. I had assumed I’d go to Glasgow or Edinburgh, or St Andrews if I was lucky. When the time came to choose, my friend suggested applying to Oxford. A decision made partly as a joke eventually transformed into an entrance test, then an interview, then an offer. By the time I arrived at my college, after a 600-mile journey, the first thing I noticed was how rare my Scottishness was.
During the entirety of Freshers’ Week, I met a grand total of four Scottish students. This, although low, is actually a high proportion of the entire group at the University. A Cherwell investigation found that only 19 Scottish state schoolers received offers to study at Oxford in 2018; 13 English private schools each sent more than that in the same year. This indicates a massive failure on the part of the University. An Oxford degree can launch one’s career far faster than most Scottish universities can, especially in the humanities. Oxford also receives funding from Westminster, which the Scottish taxpayer contributes to. The best Scottish students fundamentally have a right to study at top universities in England, just as their English counterparts easily can in Scotland.
So why are there so few Scots at this world class university? Beyond the obvious financial disincentive for applying (unlike their English and Welsh counterparts, Scottish universities do not charge for students’ first undergraduate degrees), the reason boils down to a problem of perception. Many Scots feel Oxford to be a distant, unaffordable, and isolating place. Many of these concerns are legitimate: living a five hour (or more) train journey away from one’s university can be tiring. Relationships are harder to maintain, seeing university friends during holidays is near impossible, and, during term, students are an entire country away from their parents. There is no recourse to a weekend at home, which can be especially difficult in an environment as stressful as Oxford.
Yet much can be done to alleviate these concerns. Scholarships would certainly help tackle the barrier tuition fees represent, as the University has previously attempted in the past. Access to international storage (which many colleges open to their Scottish students) prevents the torturous experience of lugging all of one’s belongings through Birmingham New Street. The three-term system also allows students to return home frequently, and the internet means that parents are only ever a video call away. Life is certainly more uncomfortable, but, besides my little nap on a bench in Crewe after my train was cancelled, it’s not too back-breaking.
Clearly, then, Oxford tries to alleviate the concerns of Scottish students. But the issue is one of communication; Scottish preconceptions of Oxford go unchallenged because outreach remains minimal. Unlike every region in England, Scotland has no link colleges and little-to-no outreach programmes. My own admissions process was largely self-driven, apart from some needed advice from Michael McGrade, Brasenose alumnus and founder of the Clydeside Project. Active from 2019-2021, the initiative provided mentoring from Scottish Oxbridge students to potential applicants. With the project no longer accepting applications, there are now even fewer Scotland specific outreach programmes. Within Scottish schools, help for those applying is lacking. I found myself relying on various teachers’ personal effort as the structural support simply did not exist.
In a Britain that claims to be a “United” Kingdom, having only around two-dozen Scottish state schoolers at one of its most prestigious and influential universities does much to foster division. Oxford ends up being one of many institutions that is supposedly British, but is really only populated by England’s middle and upper class. The University and its colleges ought to do more: commitments to outreach programmes, link colleges, and scholarships would do much to alleviate many of the problems faced by prospective Scottish applicants. It would open the door for those, like my 17-year-old self, who would have otherwise never considered Oxford as an option.
Kim A. Snyder’s The Librarians (2025) draws the audience into a pernicious web of censorship, repression, and culture-war collisions.
Embroiled in a fierce, sombre, and at times failing fight for free speech, the film balances its heavy themes with moments of light-hearted humour, principally in the fashion of hilarious one-liners from the high school librarians that act as the documentary film’s heroic, and immensely empathetic, underdogs. The crowd gathered for the private screening at Weston Library in Oxford – only the second screening of the film, which premiered last week – oscillated between the laughter of disbelief and shaking heads.
The film follows the librarians who found themselves at the vanguard of the battle against censorship in U.S school libraries. Their collections were targeted by white Christian nationalists, in an organised movement led by Moms for Liberty. These perhaps unlikely heroes rise to the occasion, becoming – as Amanda Jones, one of the featured librarians, phrased it in the panel discussion – accidental activists.
Beautifully crafted, the film interweaves archival footage of Nazi book burnings, interviews, literary quotes, school board meeting footage and even discursive TikToks into a network of corresponding ideas that are visually pleasing, contemplative, and poignant.
It’s hard to ignore the fact that all of the eponymous protagonists are women persecuted on the basis of their profession. Amongst the panellists for tonight’s screening are Amanda Jones and Julie Miller, two librarians who’ve dealt first-hand with the professional and personal impact of the so-called ‘Krause List’, a 2021 document of 850 titles compiled by then Texas-state representative Matt Krause deemed to contain inappropriate and/or illicit content.
“You never think it’s going to happen to you or your community”, says Jones, a school librarian and anti-censorship activist based in Louisiana. “It’s very scary. They do it so quietly. You don’t realise it’s happened until it’s already happened.”
“I know about censorship. Here it is in the handbook. I’m ready for this”, ironizes Miller, an ex-librarian who was ousted from her post in Clay County, Florida, after vocalising her opposition to new state regulations on school reading material. “I was not ready.”
Miller maintains that her personal politics have never had any bearing on what titles she chooses to add to the school collection; she believes her locale was identified as a fruitful site to propagate pro-censorship ideals. “I didn’t realise that the community I was in was being specifically targeted”, Miller says.
When asked if censorship mania is exclusive to the south, the panellists concur on its ubiquity.“There’s a certain flavour of it [in the south]”, Snyder concedes. “[But] it’s everywhere. It’s metastasising.”
Speaking to Cherwell, Snyder, an Oscar-nominee for her documentary Death By Numbers (2024), indulged that ‘documentarian’ was her favourite way to be described. The best thing about the job? That she is able to be “perpetually a student”. She loves being able to “open up a whole new world, to start all over again”.
Richard Ovenden OBE, Bodley’s Librarian, received the Royal Society for Literature’s Benson medal prior to the film screening. “We need to be alert to the dangers we face”, said Ovenden, invoking the significance of the Public Libraries Act 1850 in his acceptance speech. “We take these things for granted at our peril.”
Later, Ovenden is seated on the panel beside a surprise panellist, Dame Mary Beard. Politely declining the opportunity to discuss Roman book burnings, Beard half-jokingly describes her own experience of censorship, at the hands of her mother.“Sixty-five years ago, my mum didn’t let me read Enid Blyton [books]. Because they were far too posh and conservative.” Beard uses the anecdote to wrestle with the fact that censorship can be – and is – a tool used at both ends of the political spectrum: “It’s hard to feel that anyone is innocent”.
Snyder compares her team to “canaries in the coal mine” when they started filming. Her compulsion was “we have to tell this story; it’s about us”. Today, Snyder says, invoking the escalation of events since the dismissal of Carla Hayden in May 2025, it’s “everyone’s story”. This was only the second screening of the film, which premiered with Macmillan Publishers last week. “Some of those people at the top”, says Snyder. “They’re brave.” Very ominous, indeed.
Snyder reiterates Beard’s suggestion of self-directed suspicion, but this time on the topic of making art. “Am I not going towards that because of fear?” she asks herself when pursuing new projects.
The film highlights how incredibly well-organised these proponents of censorship are, but it’s not a one-sided arms race. In 2022, Jones co-founded the Louisiana Citizens Against Censorship, as well as founding the Livingston Parish Library Alliance. Meanwhile, Miller signposts the Florida Freedom to Read Project.
“The calvary’s not coming”, says Jones, her voice ringing out in the Weston Library foyer. “We have to save ourselves.”
I went to Ometepe in search of a view, but found something closer to a memory.
The island floats inside Lake Nicaragua, its twin volcanoes rising like ancient lungs out of the water. The air was still, but the lake moved, breathing slowly. It’s not the sea in name, but it carries that same unfathomable pulse. I stood at the edge where the sand blackens underfoot, watching the tide lick the shore with old, deliberate gestures.
The water was dark, mineral-rich, quiet, and yet it spoke. Not in words, but in weight. In reminder. Saltwater – here and elsewhere – is always a force of return, not just to places, but to feeling. It doesn’t heal exactly, but it erodes, shapes, and strips things back to essence. On Ometepe, I felt that more clearly than anywhere else.
The sea, in all its forms, is incandescent and immovable. It refuses us. Refuses to be mapped, mastered, or owned, even in myth. Caligula once tried, lashing the ocean with whips, demanding tribute. His soldiers collected seashells in defeat. The absurdity of it still stings, because we haven’t stopped. We drill, dump, and dredge. We chart it, name it, and exploit its beauty. But the sea remains as it was. Brilliant. Dangerous. Unmoved.
Something stirred in me that day on Ometepe. Not quite peace, not quite fear. A deep awareness of time. Of the self as a soft thing up against something vast. I thought of my beginnings, of white-linen childhoods on other shores, and how even those bright memories now feel marbled with oil, with grief, with a kind of unnamed loss.
I think of Scotland, too, where the sea is grey and often brutal, but still worshipped. Where black-rotted rocks rise like bruises, and yet beauty is formed there – the coast as a kind of scripture.
Central America, like Scotland, is shaped by water. Bordered by it, threatened by it, defined by it. Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica – each written in tide, in flood and flow. Identity here doesn’t stand apart from water. It comes from it.
And always, behind this geography, there’s mythology. We eulogise the sea. We make it a metaphor. But perhaps it doesn’t need our myth-making. It generates its own. It carried the first missionaries to these shores – Ninian, Columba – and with them, a new language of God. Easter tide, Pentecostal wind. Christianity itself was carried in the rhythm of waves. But the sea is older than any religion.
Keats called it the sublime: a beauty so vast it terrifies. Iris Murdoch wrote of love as the painful realisation that something other than ourselves is real. The sea offers that realness in full. It’s a confrontation, not with death, but with limit. A recognition that some things cannot be solved, only witnessed.
We project onto it – our sorrow, our longing, our rage – and still, it resists us. It does not mirror us. It swallows us. Everything returns to water. Memory. Nation. Faith. Ruin. Even language breaks apart against the shoreline.
And the sea, incandescent and immovable, keeps on.
Sometimes, all we can do is stand on the sand – student, traveller, wanderer – and listen.
We all know the type, or at least the meme. The tote-bag sporting, wired-headphone wearing, matcha latte drinking, so-called ‘performative’ men flooding our social media feeds, and even threatening to infiltrate our social circles. Such men are defined by the careful curation of clothes, taste, and aesthetic to attract clout – and implicitly women – rather than as an act of earnest self-expression. The issue lies in their affectation. The performative male parades his own worthiness, his emotional availability, his uniquely feminist perspective, but does not practise it, resulting in a clumsy caricature of what appeals to the female gaze. His theatrics are unconvincing – it’s doubtful that he knows the first thing about the feminist authors he loves to vaunt.
While this is a discernible phenomenon in the real world (see how many you can spot around Oxford), the online component is built on a degree of self-awareness. The formula is exaggerated and skewered, either to deride or to self-deprecate. The whole trend is dripping with irony; parody layers upon parody, as every participant is determined to prove themselves to be in on the joke. Such self-awareness does not ultimately free us from the performance, but merely adds another layer to it. The satire in itself becomes another form of performativity: an in-group of men emerges, who reassure their female audience that they get it, that they can recognise and make fun of these performative men, because they themselves are different. In this way, they quickly deflate the aims of the performative male: once it has been named, the device becomes ineffectual.
In fact, almost every permutation of masculinity manifests itself as a kind of performance. Heterosexual men, most noticeably in the online sphere, seem to market themselves according to a self-purported idea of what constitutes female taste. The same impetus can be seen behind the ideology of the manosphere, whose “pick-up artists” structure an entire lifestyle around female attraction. The pressure to perform a brand of masculinity seems to dominate homosocial relationships to the same extent. Is there not a similar element of performativity driving on those men who force themselves to like Guinness, listen to Kanye, and aspire to be “one of the lads”?
Judith Butler argued that all gender is performance: perhaps the online sphere, with its proliferation of social media trends rooted in aspects of masculinity or femininity, is the perfect gallery for this phenomenon. The trad wife movement can, in many ways, be seen as a counterpart to the performative male trend, inasmuch as femininity is restaged in a hyper-stylised manner, curated to appeal to a perceived notion of male desire. The man who professes his difference from the norm, evidenced by his Clairo listening stats, is similarly aware of this need to present, to showcase the expedient gendered persona.
Amongst all these performances, the feminist-literature reading one appears relatively benign. His vapidity is widely recognised, but at least he’s not advocating the violent brand of misogyny that goes hand-in-hand with other ‘masculine’ online discourse. Yet it’s clear how parody can backfire. The instant labeling of these behaviours as aberrant, as a type of specifically female-oriented, and therefore not genuine, masculinity, only serves to reinforce the idea that it is the traditional ‘macho’ masculinity that represents the real deal, the default definition of a socially accepted form of manhood. Once this hierarchy is implicitly established, any deviation is labelled as a farce. In that too familiar way, the trend has become yet another opportunity for men to make fun of other men for a perceived failure of masculinity; their behaviour, and its association with a traditionally feminine aesthetic, is deemed ridiculous. As we irony-poison ourselves to death, we fail to unsubscribe from strictly policed behavioural binaries. Not everything should be so ruthlessly taxonomised.
The problem with the performative male is not his masculinity, but his pretentiousness, his calculated simulation of allyship. Casting the issue in terms of gender is more harmful than humorous.
Or perhaps the trend shouldn’t be taken so seriously. Perhaps gentle mockery is the way to dismantle vacuous virtue-signaling. Or perhaps our only solace is to hope that such men may, in between flashing the front cover of their Angela Davis or bell hooks at passersby, pick up a thing or two.
Welcome back, Oxford. While you were away preparing for the next academic year, or busy attending the Edinburgh Fringe, the facebook Oxford University Drama Society (OUDS) portal was readying for your return. However, amidst all the Supplementary Cast Calls and promises for location bids, some things stayed the same: conspicuously, the same titles, writers and genres still dominate the listings. As far as first impressions go, this stagnant Oxford drama scene probably offers Freshers exactly what they’d expect. My expectations, however, as an incoming third-year, have changed. Having noticed that this term’s promised programme seems to be stuck in a creative equivalent of Groundhog Day, one must ask: why has student drama lost its creativity?
Courtesy of the controversial book-to-screen productions recently teased this summer, ‘adaptation’ has been a hot topic. While Emerald Fennell appears to be offering gothic erotica in her version of the classic Wuthering Heights, Jamie Lloyd’s inventive and youthful Evita, starring Rachel Zegler, made the pavement outside the London Palladium the place to be. Given the comparative monotony of student drama, can any of the productions truly be classed as ‘adaptations’? How can a student budget imitate the creativity of professional productions, which sometimes still miss the mark themselves?
The shortcut way to adapt a story, in any form, is to give it direct political resonance. But explicitly aligning oneself with a political stance is not always worth the risk. Politicised art has been plastered all over our newsfeeds this summer; or, rather, the censorship of this creative activism has.
Earlier this summer, a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Manchester was cancelled, with the Royal Exchange was forced to scrap its entire five-week run of a modern retelling of Shakespeare’s play, in a dispute over references to the Israel-Gaza war and trans rights. If this is what professionals in the creative industries face, how is student drama to manage taking a stance?
As a literature student, I incline towards a controversial performance. Last spring, I recall my frustration at a student production of The Merchant of Venice: while the show had enough courtesy to warn audience members about the antisemitism within the play through posters leading towards the auditorium, the production itself failed to expand on that central issue. With the backdrop of ongoing conflict in Gaza, it was almost uncomfortable that the show pretended it had no contextual relevance.
The Israel-Gaza war has been a budding platform for artists to perform their politics, and for activists to literally take to the stage. Yet, on the small stages of the Pilch or Keble O’Reilly, students are reluctant to take creative risks and adapt plays in the same politicised way that other professionals are willing to.
It takes a lot for a student drama to adapt itself in this way and address politics. In Oxford and the creative arts at large, imposter syndrome is never far away. Even still, student drama depends on all participants – from actors, musicians, costume designers and audience members – to view it as a worthwhile and legitimate cause. For a whole university’s creative community to caveat and curtail their voices because their stage is ‘too small’ a platform, or their pen ‘too insignificant’ a tool, would be a tragedy, indeed.
It takes a lot of nerve to write your own plays. In recent OUDS memory, the success of entirely student produced shows has been fleeting. The Mollys, a production company which facilitated original scripts for comedies, garden plays, and musicals, was created as a remedy for this issue. A similar student-founded company, Lovelock Productions, debuted their new play BLANDY at the Fringe in August, and promises to tell both new and old stories. Though, seeing as the student founders of these two companies are soon to graduate, there is no natural successor to carry the baton of student originality.
Even still, why are student writers, and political themes, so scarce within the Oxford drama scene? Well, unfortunately, money does make the world go around. A show is a product to sell. While personal insecurity and fear of censorship are significant players, they are not isolated as factors from the word loathed by every creative: finance.
Last year Cherwellreported on the challenges that hinder the creativity of student drama. Finances accrued through simple technology like microphones and lighting are huge investments, and sacrifices, that productions must make. More foundational decisions are also impacted by budget, such as which shows are put on at all. Shakespeare is a staple name on college posters – last term saw the influx of garden plays, and already in Michaelmas we have promises for Twelfth Night, Love Labour’s Lost, and Richard III.
It’s therefore no surprise that the most popular names are the most basic. There is a strong financial incentive for these plays because they are in the public domain and have no rights to purchase. When many essay writing subjects reward originality, but assign a plethora of secondary reading, it is understandably daunting to go with your gut and create an original interpretation. But in the drama world, when the finance, casting, and reputation of your production are also on the line? It’s terrifying.
Oxford’s drama scene needs, therefore, to be braver, but this involves not just the dramatists. I believe that the biggest blocker to fresh and thoughtful productions is the audience’s own ego: they fear not understanding the adaptation, that it’ll be too complex, or that they aren’t well-informed enough about the cultural or political subtext. But the risk of being disappointed or misunderstanding a production is meant to be part of the chance that a viewer puts in a show, and a show cannot thrive unless it has that trust from its audience.
Hope, however, is not lost for the future of Oxford student drama. Amongst the overdone Shakespeare is a new adaptation – truly deserving of the term – with Love’s Labour’s Lost reworked as a musical and scheduled for the T S Eliot Theatre in eighth week. It also promises in its OUDS announcement that they will commit to a diverse cast, and encourage Freshers to participate. This adaptational success shows that a production does not need to be loud or controversial to be thoughtful and value originality – it is through basic decisions like this that you keep drama fresh.
So come on, Oxford, I dare you. Whether you will be in the audience, in the wings or on the stage this term, it’s time that we proved that student drama can put on a real show.
Around 500 people joined a pro-Palestine protest starting at Manzil Way earlier this evening. The crowd marched through the city centre to Bonn Square, in front of Westgate Oxford, blocking traffic and forcing it to a standstill.
Protesters marched through Oxford, chanting and carrying banners criticising Oxford University and the UK government. One of the banners read: “Oxford University, pick a side. Justice for genocide.” Several banners also called out Prime Minister Keir Starmer and former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak specifically.
One Oxford student participating in the protest told Cherwell: “We cannot rest. Students have to get organised.” He continued to state that through tuition money and attending the University, students’ existence “comes with a level of complicity”. Another student emphasised the atmosphere at the protest was “very positive”.
A speaker from Oxford Jewish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign addressed protesters at the start of the march, saying: “Of course [we] welcome the prospect of a ceasefire, but how can we trust a ceasefire broken by Israel within hours.”
The protest was organised by the Oxford branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), a national grassroots movement working to achieve “peace, equality, and justice” in the face of “racism, occupation, and colonisation”.
Members of Oxford Action for Palestine (OA4P) were also in attendance alongside other student and national campaigns. OA4P have been advertising the protest outside the Oxford University’s Student Union Freshers’ Fair this week. Members of OA4P stood outside the entrance to Examination Schools on High Street, handing out flyers with information and encouraging people to attend.
OA4P told Cherwell it “welcomes the energy and organising experience that incoming students are bringing to campus, and looks forward to building with them in the months ahead”.
At the protest, the organisers specifically thanked students who “came from Freshers’ Fair”. Flyers were distributed urging people to join “Palestine organising in Oxford” and to “organise in your colleges & departments”.
The protest was attended by the members of the Socialist Worker, the newspaper of the Socialist Workers Party, as well as Student Action for Refugees (STAR) Oxford. Oxford University and College Union (UCU), a trade union representing academics and academic-staff at the University, were also among protesters and carried a poster entitled “knowledge is power”.
The police were present and pulled aside a counter-protester, carrying St George’s flag, asking him to avoid provoking the pro-Palestine protesters.
The University of Oxford and Thames Valley Police have been contacted for comment.
