Page 643 – Cherwell

Hollywood’s lesser known gender gap

Film

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4th March 2019

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a male actor in Hollywood in the ripe stages of mid-life, is paid significantly better than his female colleagues.

This was vividly illustrated by the Wahlberg/Williams controversy last year. The entire cast of All The Money In The World had to participate in a reshoot following the urgent need to replace Kevin Spacey. Michelle Williams was paid $1000, whilst Mark Wahlberg was receiving an extra $1.5 million, a fact unknown to Williams. The backlash ensuing from the expose forced Wahlberg to donate his extra earnings but failed to get Williams better pay.

The story is only one example of the gender pay gap in Hollywood. Spectators tried to attribute many reasons to the mind-blowing disparity. Although both actors were represented by the same agency, they had different agents. Wahlberg’s agents were well-known for being tough negotiators that pushed for higher pay, whereas Williams’ agent seemed to have taken a much softer approach in anticipation of an awards show nomination.

There are wider trends that permeate the entire industry. Between 2016 and 2017, Wahlberg was the highest paid actor in the world, with earnings of $68 million. Whereas the top female earner, Emma Stone, only made less than half of that, $26 million. Nineteen male stars earned $15 million or more whereas only five women managed to do so. The pay gap can be attributed to the dominance of blockbusters and paucity of opportunities for older women. Wahlberg topped the list thanks to soaring fees for films including Daddy’s Home 2 and Transformers: The Last Knight, according to Forbes. Natalie Robehmed, Forbes associate editor, said: “This pay disparity comes down to roles: in release schedules dominated by superhero movies and brawny blockbusters, there are simply fewer parts for women that pay the sizeable backend profits that result in leading men’s large paydays, or the franchise sequels that permit aggressive negotiation for favourable deals”.

According to a 2016 study, women comprise just 28.7% of all speaking roles in movies and only a quarter of roles for characters are over the age of 40 – an example of ageism and lack of opportunity that Hollywood’s leading men simply do not face. “Until there are an equal number of high-paying roles, there will continue to be an inequality in the pay checks of Tinseltown’s very richest.”

A study by Time magazine revealed that earlier in their careers, women receive more roles than men. That trend reverses sharply after age 30 as men continue to receive an increasing number of roles while women receive fewer and fewer. It seems that women are rather like exotic sports cars which depreciate the moment they are first sold; whereas men are more like vintage cars whose value appreciates as time goes by.

However the situation is not so bleak. The push for gender pay equality gained momentum following the aforementioned Wahlberg/Williams scandal, and industry leaders are making increased efforts to treat actors fairly.

Most relevant to this article, there are an increased amount of complex roles available for older women as evident in recent films. The acclaimed film, The Favourite, which took home several BAFTAs, featured three women in its leading roles, two of them over 40, Rachel Weisz and Olivia Colman. Colman has just won Best Actress at the Oscars. She is an example of someone beating this trend as her career has only been on an upward trajectory since she entered her 30s. Glenn Close and Meryl Streep are further examples of female actors continuing to deliver stunning performances for very complex roles. However, the abundance of offers for roles has not necessarily translated into higher pay. This is mostly due to the fact these films often have mid-level budgets.

It is in the nature of blockbusters to have strong male leads. This in turn, means that these blockbusters are the same films that can afford to pay actors millions. The two issues are intertwined at their very foundations.

However, within these confines, female actors can still negotiate for more screen time and equal pay with their male colleagues. A push for transparency can also greatly aid this process as Hollywood is notorious for backdoor negotiations and actresses tend to find out about the scale of inequalities from the paper rather than from their producers.

Pushing for more dominant roles for women and roles in blockbuster franchises is vital if we seek to close the gender pay gap. It is only when women dominate the screen that they can tilt the balance of power.

On the Basis of Sex: battling through a man’s world

Film

Jules Pars

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4th March 2019

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On the Basis of Sex: battling through a man’s world

With the recent releases of The Favourite and Mary Queen of Scots, Hollywood appears to be taking an ever-increasing interest in the stories of strong female figures plucked from history. On the Basis of Sex arrives as part of this welcome influx of female-led films, its heroine the legal and gender parity icon, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Felicity Jones). The film is a biopic which begins with her first day at Harvard Law School and rushes to its the dramatic core: the landmark tax appeal for unmarried male carer Charles Moritz in 1970. This case saw the beginning of her role in overturning U.S. laws based on sex discrimination.

While the film takes its title from Bader Ginsburg’s work on legal gender bias, the theme of sex discrimination pervades its entire two-hour running time. This preoccupation is established in its beautiful opening frame: the bright blue of Bader Ginsburg’s dress as she walks up the Harvard stairs induces a stark colour contrast with the darkly-suited mass of men with her, highlighting the gender imbalance of a 1950s law school intake. Merely a few scenes later, Bader Ginsburg and her female peers will be asked by the dean why they have “taken a man’s place” at Harvard.

The education-based chapter of the film highlights Bader Ginsburg’s personal struggle against institutional discrimination (such as being almost farcically ignored in class), before jumping to law firms rejecting her for being female, then abruptly fast-forwarding to her stint as a law professor at Rutgers University in 1970. These time jumps preclude a more in-depth exploration of Bader Ginsburg’s struggles with sexism in her early career and the transition from the 1950s to the 1970s – an otherwise fascinating period for women’s rights. The few scenes in which these issues are expressed are evocative and effective vignettes, but the lack of more intense exploration renders this beginning somewhat superficial.

While director Mimi Leder does a good job in steering scenes fecund for schmaltz away from the saccharine, the implied relationship between Bader Ginsburg’s motivation and the opinions of her teenage daughter, Jane (played with passionate teenage aplomb by Cailee Spaeny), is overdone. It comes across as both oversentimental and patronising to Bader Ginsburg. Yet Leder cleverly suggests that the cresting of second-wave feminism catalysed Bader Ginsburg’s motivation to fight against sex-based discrimination.

Once the film reaches its primary storyline of the Moritz case, the pace slows down. It is a testament to Leder that despite knowing the outcome of the case, the dramatic tension as to its result remains. While the film retains its historical integrity in not over-dramatising or elongating the courtroom scene, it is an inspirational and thought-provoking twenty minutes that it is worth seeing this film for alone.

While perhaps not an obvious choice to play Bader Ginsburg, Felicity Jones deftly evokes her calm determination and intellectual ferocity. Although Bader-Ginsburg is clearly the protagonist of her own biopic, the film must also be applauded for its skilful handling of the relationship between Bader Ginsburg and her husband (Armie Hammer). Leder manages the difficult balance of presenting a mutually loving and respectful relationship in a prominent way, without making it a distracting element of the narrative. Ultimately, this film is a thoughtful tribute to Ruth Bader Ginsburg which deserves a careful viewing.

Lord Adonis: I “can’t wait” to debate Nigel Farage at the Oxford Union

News

Christopher Sinnott

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3rd March 2019

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Lord Adonis: I “can’t wait” to debate Nigel Farage at the Oxford Union

Cherwell can reveal that Nigel Farage is expected to speak at the Oxford Union on Thursday’s eighth week debate on Brexit.

The announcement of Farage’s appearance had not yet been made by the Oxford Union, but instead was pre-empted by Labour peer and People’s Vote supporter Andrew Adonis, who this morning tweeted: “I’m debating Nigel Farage at the Oxford Union on Friday. Can’t wait”. Given that Oxford Union debates are, under normal circumstances, held every Thursday of term, and that the Union’s term card places the Brexit debate on Thursday 7th March, it is not known whether the date announced by Lord Adonis is correct.

The specific motion that will be debated at the upcoming Brexit debate and which speakers would be attending has been kept a secret from the Union’s members throughout the term. The Oxford Union’s website has for weeks read “speakers to be announced”.

Cherwell has contacted representatives of Nigel Farage, Andrew Adonis, and the Oxford Union for comment.

It is not yet known which other speakers from the student body or elsewhere have been confirmed to speak at the event.

Along with the Union debate, Adonis also announced on Twitter he would be speaking at Leeds, Eddisbury, Oxford, Llanelli, Swansea, and Wrexham in the upcoming week.

The Oxford Union organised a now-famous debate on Britain’s membership of a European community in 1975, two days before the referendum which saw Britain’s voters consent to membership of the EEC. Speakers in proposition included Edward Heath and Jeremy Thorpe, while Barbara Castle and Peter Shaw spoke in opposition.

More on this story is expected to follow.

David Bowie: The art of getting on a bit

Kavya Deshpande

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2nd March 2019

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David Bowie: The art of getting on a bit

During his 1995 tour of tiny club venues across England, David Bowie opened all his shows the same way. Newly-goateed and newly-toothed – American dentistry had overhauled what used to be a physical manifestation of the warning on a cigarette packet – he’d lean into the microphone and grin.

“D’you want to hear the hits?”  

The crowd would explode.

“Bad fucking luck, I’m playing my new stuff.”

It was cheeky, not hostile; this wasn’t a latter-day Bob Dylan concert, where he treats the audience like an irate teacher being held back to supervise detention. Nor was it the Rolling Stones’ school of geriatric performance, which is essentially an extended exercise routine to keep Keith Richards alive.

Decades after Ziggy had been buried, the Duke deposed and Berlin evacuated, the only character that remained for a middle-aged David Jones to play was that of a middle-aged David Bowie. He was trickier than all the space-messiahs and occult-idols that had come before. He was also infinitely more sublime. 

Bowie built his legacy on what is widely considered to be a near-perfect thirteen-album run. His conquest began with the 1969 record that gave us ‘Space Oddity’ and culminated in 1980 with the one that tossed out ‘Ashes to Ashes’. By this point, he was thirty-three and tired. He was feeding the press a prodigal-son narrative about leaving behind his hedonistic past while still secretly struggling with cocaine. After signing an 18-million-dollar contract with EMI, he threw together a couple of hollow singles and was wheeled out to play them to stadium audiences. He felt, in his own words, “like Phil Collins” (unfortunately for those who’ve had a spiritual experience to In the Air Tonight, he didn’t mean this in a good way).

It’s the hero-worship of the young, flawless, Dionysian genius that makes the older, clumsier, “Uncle Dave” – as he started jokingly calling himself – more fascinating. It’s also not without reason that the latter is often known for his glorious fever dream of a midlife crisis.

He crash-landed in 1988 as a member of the short-lived garage band Tin Machine, a project for which one music journalist told him to “go home, man; you’re an embarrassment” in a review that purportedly made him cry. He soundtracked his own wedding to Somali model Iman and released it on CD in 1993. In 1997 arrived a drum ‘n’ bass album to coincide with his 50th birthday and new hairstyle (remembered lovingly as the ‘Bohawk’ – look it up, or don’t). Some of this was tiresome. A lot of it was wince-inducing. All of it, however, is worth listening to; not just for its occasional moments of beauty, but because there is something to be learnt from a man who refused to do the decent thing and keel over at 27 with an unspoiled legacy.He always found it exhilarating, personally fulfilling and a little bit funny to keep flinging his new stuff at confused crowds who’d only come to hear ‘Let’s Dance’. (‘Let’s Dance’ was eventually incorporated into his live set; a flamenco-infused version with a two-minute-long intro played on classical guitar).

And then, just like that, the mania fell away into silence. After suffering a heart attack onstage in 2003, David Bowie went back to being David Jones for a little while. He retreated to his penthouse in New York, rummaged about in bookshops, strolled the streets in a cap and sunglasses with his middle finger surreptitiously extended towards the rare errant paparazzo he noticed. In the 2010s, he gave everybody a lovely shock by releasing two more albums whilst maintaining his self-imposed exile. And then he died.

There exists a theory that his vanishing act was an imitation of Marcel Duchamp’s withdrawal from the art world in 1942. Another suggests he’d finally had enough, that he desperately desired a total and decisive break from his past. Listening to the final two records, however, this is difficult to believe. They are ridiculously transcendent as always, yelped rockers on the penultimate, followed by a swan-song spun from space jazz. But now and again, there are winks and nods to those who remember the old stuff and care enough to stick around. A drumbeat from the Ziggy opus ‘Five Years’ is grafted onto a track on 2013’s The Next Day. On the last ever song of the last ever album, a harmonica line from 1977’s Low is exhumed. It is the sound of a boy from Bromley who will later remark that by all the laws of reality, he should have ended up an accountant. It is the feeling of being punched in the stomach.

David Bowie was never more interesting than when long after most people had ceased paying attention. He shrugged off his legacy and ran, returning only to make things that he didn’t expect would satisfy anybody but himself. Most of the time. In 2007, the voice of Lord Royal Highness in the 92nd episode of SpongeBob SquarePants did sound vaguely familiar to many viewers.

Sometimes an artist growing old will continue working because they still have something left to say. And sometimes it’s just because they want to make their seven-year-old daughter laugh.

Death and the maiden

Sophie Jordan

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2nd March 2019

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A naïve ear listening to Verdi’s Requiem might wonder which part of the score was really designed to accompany the deceased into their final rest, or any kind of rest for that matter. From the hushed opening notes in which the violins’ languishing tirade softly underlines the soprano’s opening phrases; the basses, alone for a handful of measures, lead on to the crescendo until the ensemble reaches an already booming mezzo forte. By the fifth minute, the strings, the orchestra and all of the doubled chorus have struck the audience’s ears with their passion and power, leaving only the four soloists to be introduced successively within the next section.

Blame it on the Romantic epoch, on Italy ’s much parodied love for fiery, from-the-heart music or even on the composer himself: Requiems as a sub-category methodically play with extremes, regardless of the period or place they were written in. Mozart’s own beast of a piece follows a similar pattern, drawing the audience into the work’s dizzying dynamics after a few counterpoint measures, with the chorus’ layered murmurs rapidly gaining momentum. By definition, the Requiem mass evokes the vertiginous prospect of eternity and the finality of death in turns, displaying the widest range of spiritual attitudes to the end of life on Earth whilst showcasing the composer’s own capacity to transcribe these superlatives into music. Although its early transposition from the initial context of the funeral mass to the concert-hall demonstrates the Requiem’s particular propension for Romantic expression beyond strictly religious settings, the short time-span which saw the first performances of Brahms, Verdi, Dvořák and Fauré‘s pieces in the last decades of the 19^th century only stresses the text’s flexible offering. Here, turn to Fauré for all the blown-up beauty of troubled lentos and near-mystic adoration, with a little boost from the organ.

Perhaps more than most genres, the Requiem appeals to individual conceptions of the human being’s short existence. Ironically, setting Biblical verse to music and presenting it in a concert turns the pious dialogue of the original Catholic mass for the Dead into a very public event. Beyond the tragic accents in the exclamations sung by Verdi’s soprano, the liturgical structure framing the work in lieu of a narrative renders the Requiem into a paroxysmal expression of emotion. Yet precisely this stripped form may seem an obstacle against catharsis: a Latin text, the meaning of which we might have gathered through its thematic repetition, remains a Latin text, and its subdivision into the various postures of the mourning soul heightens the abstraction.

Brahms’ answer to this tradition was to compose a Requiem in his mother-tongue. Using lines from Luther’s Bible translation, the German composer premiered his Deutsches Requiem just over 150 years ago, on 18^th February 1869. Without necessarily delving into the historical matter of nationalist sentiment on the eve of Wilhelmine Germany, this re-appropriation evidently intensifies the sense that public discourse and the inherently private are interwoven in the genre. In choosing the most comforting lines from Luther’s text, Brahms positioned his Requiem at the more soothing end of the scale, addressing the mourner’s perspective first. From Mozart’s galvanised memento mori and Verdi’s triumphant ode, to Britten’s fragmented work on atmospheric effects, the Requiem mass has been set to a wide range of styles and plied to many different emotions. These swansongs cry to spiritual glory, simultaneously being implicitly deemed the most authentic examples of their composer’s voice. To any enraptured audience, the energy in Mozart’s work overwrites the unfinished state of the original score, to class it somewhere very near the top of the list of his greatest works.

More paradoxically still, this same audience will likely hear the Austrian master’s mass more than once. Who wouldn’t, when a piece which condenses so much into a comfortable short hour’s worth of music, is programmed at least every other year in all ambitious concert-halls? This swansong, like the other composers’ Requiems, is played year after year as part of the standard repertoire, and it isn’t far from there to saying the Requiem immortalises its author’s voice as a meta-consequence of the content’s universal dimensions. Words hardly get any bigger than ‘immortality and ‘the universe’, and this is exactly what Britten’s timpani cries out for in its rather overstated pairing with a less than timid glockenspiel: the king is dead, long live the king!

Wilberforce Academy set to return

News

Libby Cherry and Joanna Lonergan

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2nd March 2019

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The Wilberforce Academy, a residential course affiliated with the evangelical Christian group Christian Concern, is set to return to Oxford this September.

It is not yet known if a college will host the academy, however in the past Trinity, Exeter, Jesus, and most recently Lady Margaret Hall, have received criticism for considering hosting the group.

Rt Revd Michael Nazir-Ali, Honorary Fellow at St Edmund’s Hall, is listed among the ‘Faculty’ who will be teaching participants on the course.

Christian Concern describe themselves as “passionate to see the United Kingdom return to the Christian faith” and express their concern that “in the last few decades, the nation has largely turned her back on Jesus and embraced alternative ideas such as secular liberal humanism, moral relativism and sexual licence. The fruit of this can be seen in widespread family breakdown, immorality and social disintegration.”

Nazir-Ali is listed as a Director at the Oxford Centre for Training, Research, Advocacy and Dialogue, a centre which aims to “prepare Christians for ministry in situations where the Church is under pressure and in danger of persecution.”

Nazir-Ali had also previously commented on a complaint made by a master’s student at Oxford University in 2017, which was reported on Christian Concern’s website.

The student, Shahriar Ashrafkhorasani, claimed that the lecturer had forbidden him from asking critical questions about Islam. Nazir-Ali said at the time that a “politically correct” atmosphere was “very widespread in the university as a whole”.

Also on the faculty are Paul Diamond, Andrea Williams and Sam Solomon, all of whom have participated in rallies in association with the Tennessee Freedom Coalition (TFC) in America, which itself has strong links with the English Defence League (EDL), headed by Tommy Robinson.

On their website, the TFC have expressed their support for Robinson, describing him as a “brave man” and defending his “right to bring truth to light regarding the spread of radical Islam both in the United Kingdom and around the world.”

In 2011, Solomon spoke at one of these TFC rallies with Dutch politician Geert Wilders, a man Theresa May, the then Home Secretary, believed would “pose a genuine, present and significantly serious threat to one of the fundamental interests of society…[his] statements about Muslims and their beliefs…would threaten community harmony and therefore public safety.”

Also in 2011, Diamond spoke at another TFC rally alongside John Guandolo – a disgraced former FBI agent (who believes the US to be at war with Islam and excused the June 2017 Finsbury Park Mosque attack on the grounds that, with a ‘Jihadi mayor’ in London, it was akin to an act of self-defence) and two activists, Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, both banned from entering the UK for their anti-Islamic campaigning.

Diamond also spoke at at “Nashville-area megachurch”, where he expressed the hope that Christians in the US and the UK should stand “shoulder to shoulder” to battle dual enemies of Islam and anti-Christian sentiment, warning that “What’s happening in Europe could be coming to your state.”

In 2013, Williams attended a conference in the Caribbean, following the country’s repealing of its ‘buggery laws’. According to Buzzfeed, in her speech Williams said: “It is not compassionate and kind to have laws that lead people [to engage] in their sins [that] lead to the obliteration of life, the obliteration of culture, and the obliteration of family.”

Williams is also reported to have encouraged Jamaica to resist the “man-boy movement” in Europe, saying: “Might it be that Jamaica says to the United States of America, says to Europe, ‘Enough! You cannot come in and attack our families. We will not accept aid or promotion tied to an agenda that is against God and destroys our families.”

In a response to Williams’ comments, Martin Warner, the Bishop of Chichester – where Williams is one of the elected representatives to the General Synod – said: “The comments by Andrea Minichiello Williams about the decriminalisation of same sex intercourse in Jamaica have no sanction in the Church of England or the diocese of Chichester. Insofar as such comments incite homophobia, they should be rejected as offensive and unacceptable.”

Diamond and Williams are both part of the Christian Legal Centre, an organisation established in 2007 to provide legal representation to Christians who believe they have been discriminated against on the basis of their faith.

The Centre told the Observer in 2011 that they were “receiving up to five calls a day” from Christians seeking legal aid, with Diamond in particular representing clients in many cases.

However, in 2011 a Judge described more than one of his arguments as “couched in extravagant rhetoric” and a “travesty of the reality”.

In his response to Cherwell, Mr Diamond said: “Fake News [sic]. I rarely respond to persons lacking integrity, but you should be able to gain employment with CNN. As a former Labour Councillor, I remain concerned at the reports of widespread anti-Semitism associated with the Oxford University Labour Party.”

In 2012, students at Exeter College petitioned the Rector, Bursar and Chaplain to donate any profits made through hosting the Academy.

The students also alleged that members of Christian Concern had made homophobic remarks about one homosexual student, comparing his sexuality to that of a paedophile and labelling him “immoral”.

The following year, the then President of Trinity College, Sir Ivor Roberts, released a statement of apology after a backlash from students.

Roberts said: “Trinity regrets that any current or old members were upset by the fact that we gave houseroom unwittingly to Christian Concern. Any profits from the conference will be given to an appropriate charity.”

Last year, Jesus College JCR accused the college of “subsequently covering up” their hosting of the Academy. Jesus College denied any “intentional” cover up.

The Academy applied to Lady Margaret Hall for their 2019 course, however after JCR opposition, concerns for student welfare and a reconsideration on the part of the SCR, the application was rejected.

In a press statement released on their website, Christian Concern referred to Lady Margaret Hall as being “afraid of its own community” and “unable to maintain peaceful protest, bringing into question their own college values of ‘fairness, openness and equality’”.

The statement went on to say: “It is disappointing that the college and its students would appear to feel so threatened by an event promoting the same Christian values as Oxford University has so clearly been shaped by.”

Teddy Hall, Nazir-Ali, Andrea Williams and Sam Soloman have been contacted for comment.

Oxford interns paid below minimum wage

News

Liam OConnor

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2nd March 2019

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Undergraduates interning in the University of Oxford’s Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division last summer were paid below the minimum wage, Cherwell has learnt.

Interns have been found to have received as little as £200 per week. The internship scheme attracts second- and third-year students from across the U.K interested in pursuing Ph.D.- level research.

Concerns with intern pay was first raised last year when Student Union MPLS Graduate Representative Ben Fernando complained to the MPLS Board, as well as raising concerns with former Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation Sam Gyimah before his resignation.

Fernando told Cherwell: “UKRI are not currently requiring universities to pay the mini- mum wage to summer interns on the basis that these are not ’salaries’ and they are not ‘doing jobs’, but rather are getting ‘bursaries’ for ’training’.

“I think it’s essential that these internships pay fairly as else they are restricting applicants to those already in Oxford.”

This controversy arises from the ambiguous nature of internships in British law. Employers only have to pay the National Minimum Wage “if an intern is classed as a worker”, but “work placements” and “work experience” do not have their own legal statuses.

MPLS Head of Strategic Planning and Projects Keri Dexter commented: “The UKRI summer schemes for undergraduates are offered as placements, rather than internships, meaning the minimum wage regulations do not formally apply.”

Interns expressed frustration that their wages drained their savings or did not cover their daily costs. The City Council sets the living wage at £358.53 for a 37-hour work week with it said to rise to £370.74 in April.

One MPLS intern told Cherwell, “I think it’s fairly obvious that that wage isn’t enough to allow a student to move to and live in Oxford, especially for only 8 weeks.”

MPLS’s Keri Dexter said, “MPLS endorses the goal of ensuring that students on placements are supported at a rate equivalent to the living wage. #

We have taken action to ensure that students on [Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council]-funded placements in Oxford will receive this level of support for a 37 hour working week in summer 2019 by drawing additional funds from other EPSRC training grants.

The Department of Physics’ Head of Administration Nicole Small stated: “The Department of Physics follows University guidance, which in turn is based on employment law. We consider that our advertised internships are an employment relationship and accordingly we pay the Oxford living wage.”

“We believe that internships are an important opportunity for the next generation of Physics researchers to gain valuable research experience on which to ground their academic careers.”

A spokesperson for UKRI told Cherwell: “The funding provided by UKRI research councils enables universities to support students during vacation placements, which are intended to inspire students to consider a career in research and innovation.

“We are taking an organisation-wide approach to evolve and amend guidance relating to vacation placements and are in the process of moving from using tax-free stipends to wages to reflect guidance from HMRC.

“We are working with our training partners to address outstanding issues we are now aware of. This includes work to ensure that students on vacation placements are paid at least the national living wage.”

Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation Chris Skidmore was contacted for comment.

Colleges back proposal to include PPHs in CCS

News

Gabriel Whitwam

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2nd March 2019

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Colleges back proposal to include PPHs in CCS

A group of colleges are passing a motion to mandate JCR presidents to lobby their governing bodies to include PPHs in the College Contribution Scheme.

The College Contribution Scheme (CCS) is a mechanism designed for richer Oxford colleges to contribute to poorer colleges’ maintenance and costs. Currently, PPHs are not included in the scheme, despite being typically poorer than other colleges.

St Catz, New, Somerville, and Merton have all passed the proposal, while Corpus, Anne’s, Brasenose, Exeter, Magdalen, Keble, Harris Manchester, Trinity, and Pembroke have the motion tabled for their 8th week JCR meetings.

Mansfield have also supported PPHs being able to access the fund but haven’t passed the specific motion.

The motion calls attention to how their exclusion from the CCS “prevents PPHs from expanding independent access efforts, expanding and refurbishing student accommodation, and ensuring a basic level of student experience in line with the rest of the University. The CCS seeks to help poorer colleges, but ignores the poorest of all.”

This follows the SU passing a motion earlier this month which mandated the SU President to lobby for the scheme to be expanded. The motion was proposed by President of Regent’s Park College (a PPH), William Robinson.

Speaking to Cherwell, Robinson said: “It is incredibly heartening to see the sheer number of students across Oxford who, despite having no vested interest in including PPHs in the CCS, recognise the injustice and irrationality of our current exclusion.

“The message to the University from the undergraduate body is clear: maintaining PPH exclusion from access to desperately-needed financial assistance that is available to institutions many times richer than our own is not only unjust, contrary to the rationale and the sentiment behind the establishment of the CCS as a means to redress vast inter-college financial discrepancies that have genuinely detrimental consequences for students at poorer institutions, but it is also fundamentally unpopular throughout Oxford, even to those completely unaffected by this current state of affairs.

“During the admissions process there is no way of expressing a negative preference for a college or PPH, and so the University assures applicants that their experience will be comparable at whatever college they end up at.

“This commitment is not being adhered to if the very poorest institutions are being excluded from a scheme to give poorer colleges access to funds to improve the student experience.”

The motion notes differences in the student experience which could be due to discrepancies in endowment between colleges, including: “sports facilities, travel grants, hardship funds, libraries, student mental health support, music and drama facilities, accommodation costs and vacation residence, and food prices.”

Merton President, Emily Clark, told Cherwell: “I am proud to say that Merton JCR voted unanimously to support the reduction of inequalities across student experiences at PPHs and at established colleges. We wish this campaign the best of luck going forward.”

PPHs have a limited ability to change the situation for themselves; in order to change the scheme one requires a seat at the Conference of Colleges, which PPHs do not have.

Rick Trainor, the Chair of the Conference of Colleges, has previously declined to comment on the issue as negotiations are still ongoing. The structure of the new Scheme is set to be announced next term.

Robinson added: “With Oxford’s collected JCRs and the SU officially on side, we are as best placed as we could be to give PPHs much-needed and transformative funding; regardless of the eventual outcome, this discussion simply would not have happened without their willingness to help, and for that I am beyond grateful on behalf of Regent’s and of PPHs generally for the support that we have been given.

“My hope is that this has not all been in vain, and it is now for the University to respond to this turning tide.”

Police expose counterfeit cigarette shop on Cowley Road

News

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2nd March 2019

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Police expose counterfeit cigarette shop on Cowley Road

A local shopkeeper has appeared in court charged with selling fake cigarettes.

Cowley Road Department Store on Cowley Road near St Hilda’s was found in possession of approximately £5,000 worth of illegal tobacco products.

Police seized 1,102 boxes of cigarettes and 61 packs of rolling tobacco.

The council has described the incident as “brazen” and “a public health menace”. Marlboro Golds were among the products seized.

The accused pled guilty to the offence and represented himself at his hearing, writing on Facebook: “If you’re guilty, own up and don’t look for excuses.”

He pled guilty to selling products with incorrect safety labels and fake colouring. The court hearing comes after Cowley Road Department Store was raided in July, following a six-month undercover investigation.

Police used a sniffer dog to locate the thousands of pounds worth of illegal tobacco products, which were hidden behind wall panels.

Skye Humbert, a smoker studying theology at Regents Park College, told Cherwell: “I think no matter which product is being mis- sold, it’s a total betrayal for the consumer.

“Smoking is a bad habit, but not actually receiving the tobacco from the brand you thought is not only a complete lie, it could be dangerous.”

Police estimate that up to 45 billion fake cigarettes are smoked in the UK every year. Fake cigarettes have been found to include pesticides, arsenic and rat poison.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article claimed that the counterfeit tobacco products were discovered at Euro Supermarket, and that the owner of Euro Supermarket was accused of selling counterfeit tobacco products. In fact, the products were being sold by Cowley Road Department Store, which has since closed down. Euro Supermarket has not been subject to any charges in relation to the sale of counterfeit tobacco products. Cherwell would like to apologise for this error.

Colleges back proposal to include PPHs in College Contribution Scheme

News

Gabriel Whitwam

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2nd March 2019

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Colleges back proposal to include PPHs in College Contribution Scheme

A group of colleges are passing a motion to mandate JCR presidents to lobby their governing bodies to include PPHs in the College Contribution Scheme. The College Contribution Scheme (CCS) is a mechanism designed for richer Oxford colleges to contribute to poorer colleges’ maintenance and costs. Currently PPHs are not included in the scheme, despite being typically poorer than other colleges.

St Catz, New, Somerville, and Merton have all passed the proposal, while Corpus, Anne’s, Brasenose, Exeter, Magdalen, Keble, Harris Manchester, Regent’s Park, St Benets, Trinity, and Pembroke have the motion tabled for their 8th week JCR meetings.