Thursday, May 15, 2025
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The Witching Hour

Cherwell Fashion
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The Witching Hour

Have you ever been to a séance? Candles, half-light, incense, the smoky air encouraging you to see spirits in the shadows… There is no better setting for seductive silks, delicate lace, trailing scarves and softly textured furs.

The act of deliberately placing yourself in a liminal space, allowing yourself to (quite literally) be in touch with the best of both worlds – there is an allure to the other-worldly that has long been a fascination of creatives everywhere, and the fashion industry is no exception.

Fashion and magic have much in common. They both deal in enchantment, in visual spectacle, in pushing the boundaries of what is seen as acceptable or everyday. Both have an element of performance, and both – when carried out successfully – result in a sly confidence that you are tapping in to something others don’t know about. Secrecy and exclusivity go hand in hand; it is no surprise that many rituals demand specific ensembles of clothing, so that the outfit makes up half of the occasion. For any kind of magic to work, you need to look and feel the part. After all, what is a witch without her pointy hat and billowing robe? Symbols of power are as important as the power itself, and surely there is a hint of witchery in how a certain item of clothing – a fix-all dress, or a lucky piece of underwear – can alter your mood, like holding a secret spell in your pocket.

And in each type of act – the rituals of magic and the art of getting dressed – it is important to embrace the irrational. One person’s best look will be anathema to another, even someone with the same body shape, height, and hair colour; nothing stands to reason. Style and taste are intangible, just as difficult to pin down as the tricks of a conjuror.

Which is yet another cross-over between the two spheres: the infinite possibilities of illusion. Clothes are a way of transformation, allowing you to be anyone you want to be: to mask, to disguise, even to masquerade as another. Everyone who has ever learnt a magic trick knows that it is all in the confidence, in how you carry it off – and the same applies for clothes. You don’t need magical powers to shape-shift.

Journey’s End Review – ‘powerful commemoration of the centenary’

Adam Radford
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Journey’s End Review – ‘powerful commemoration of the centenary’

One of the key justifications for so many of the past four years’ commemorative events, marking the centenary of the First World War, has been that today’s younger generations must not be allowed to forget both the tremendous amount of suffering, and numbers of lives lost in that harrowing conflict. This would seem an uphill task when barely any of us will have known anyone who lived through that war, or indeed many who served in the Second. It is, therefore, all the more impressive to see millennials not merely engaging with acts of commemoration this seminal weekend, but leading and enacting them.

The commemorative potency of Cosmic Arts’ production of R.C. Sherriff’s Journey’s End this weekend at St Mary Mag’s church is unquestionable. The play follows the officers of one British company of soldiers over the course of four days in 1918 while positioned on the front line of the Western Front at St. Quentin.

Performed in a church, this production invites the audience’s faith and trust that the massive loss of life in the Great War was of some ultimate worth and that those who fought and died deserve not only our respect and honour but our gratitude. The action of all three acts remains within one trench dugout, serving as an officers’ mess. With the stage positioned at the east end of the church, the central dining table evokes both an altar and the tomb of the unknown soldier, adorned with candles as if for a commemorative vigil.

Theatre can serve as a potent instrument for commemoration, but the latter, emphasising the historicity of its subject, will always be in some tension with the immediacy on which the force of most naturalistic drama depends. In her programme notes, director Agnes Pethers acknowledges the consequent fine line between “remembrance” and “vivid realism”, but her production does not consistently manage to tread it.

Partly, this is a result of the unavoidable restrictions of amateur theatre. The impressive costumes, presumably hired, were notably unsoiled, suggesting more readily that the cast were preparing to embark on parade, not coming to the end of a gruelling winter amidst the notorious mud of Flanders. More substantively, the production gives only a limited sense of the daily, hourly horrors of life in the trenches. Flinn Andreae gives a strong performance as the terrified officer, Hibbert, who feigns neuralgia in the hope of being sent “down the line” for medical attention. However, having been compelled to remain with his company and see out a major German offensive, his reluctance then to engage in what history now remembers as the Battle of St. Quentin is presented as the result more of teenage obstreperousness than of mortal terror.

Perhaps a reason for this rosy depiction of morale in the trenches is Pethers’s stated aim of presenting the soldiers as romantics, “who fought, and died for a belief, for love in its many forms, for us now.” Most of the cast share a tendency to stare out and upwards as if in wide-eyed rapture when recounting what is most dear to them – whether this be their home, their sweetheart, or their garden. Whilst there can be no doubt that millions of soldiers in World War One were spurred on by love of country and family, to play this up so pointedly risks presenting their heroism as an insincere, assumed pose.

It may also be this romanticisation that has led this production to an under-appreciation of the importance of humour and role-playing as strategies by which soldiers tried to lighten their otherwise unremitting gloom and anxiety. Dialogue about onion-flavoured cups of tea and the proportion of lean to fat in the supplied bacon are played in this production at face-value as banal, mundane conversation.

Greater consciousness of the context of perpetual fear and discomfort would, I feel, have revealed these exchanges as the superhuman efforts of men, standing on the brink of hell, to try and block out the reality of their situation with gallows humour and some attempt at play-acting a reassuring domestic, normality. Nevertheless, moments of such quasi-tongue-in-cheek roleplay as when the company officer drunkenly asks his second-in-command to tuck him up in bed and kiss him goodnight are still pulled off with stomach-churning pathos.

Cutting through the slight hints of sentimentalisation, two central performances stand out in the production for their particular sensitivity. Joe Woodman as the new arrival, Raleiegh, initially takes as much delight in the prospect of a raid behind enemy lines as he does at the thought of playing ‘rugger’ for England. Yet, with devastating credibility, he then depicts Raleigh’s utter deflation and disaffection after the avuncular Osborne is killed in action, movingly revealing the inability of public school notions of honour and sportsmanship to withstand the sheer, indiscriminate brutality of trench warfare.

The second is by Albert McIntosh in the leading role of the Company Officer, Captain Stanhope, whom Raleigh has known and idolised since childhood. McIntosh brings a compelling ferocity to the part and shows how the ravages of war have transformed and embittered him. With his aquiline features and patrician delivery, McIntosh conjures a flavour of Olivier, who famously created the role of Stanhope in 1928. However, amidst the snarling and barking, there was little sign of Stanhope’s fundamental humanity and decency, for which Raleigh first so admired him and for which the men in his company still hold him in such high regard.

Whilst disagreement may still rage about whether the First World War was necessary, just, or served any beneficial purpose, there can be no dispute that many millions of combatants displayed extraordinary heroism during the course of the war, not only through courage and valour but in the compassion and selfless devotion to their fellow soldiers. Sherriff’s Stanhope stands high amongst literary depictions of just such characteristically modern war heroes – flawed, anguished but human.

Although greater volume and projection would benefit audience members sitting further back, this show boasts a strong ensemble cast. Joe Stanton and Louis Cunningham both do exceedingly well with parts intended for older (and rounder!) actors, the former imbuing ‘Uncle’ Osborne with both wisdom and kindness, the latter injecting some much-needed moments of light-relief in his portrayal of the salt-of-the-earth Trotter.

Audience members already familiar with Journey’s End may be disappointed that this production does not attempt to conclude the play with the technical coup-de-theatre, envisaged in the script. However, the coda to this performance, unique to this student production in Oxford, is more than sufficient compensation.

One would have struggled to find a more affecting or powerful commemoration of the centenary of the 1918 armistice in Oxford last weekend.

Overlord combines fun, gore, and flaws galore

Molly Chell
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Overlord combines fun, gore, and flaws galore

Combining Nazis with zombies is not exactly a novel idea at this point, but Overlord brings the concept to the big screen in ways that will have you laughing one minute and peeking between your fingers the next.

The story follows a plucky team of American soldiers who go behind enemy lines in France to destroy a Nazi radio tower. Stakes are immediately set at maximum as D-day’s success hinges on their mission, which is quickly complicated by the discovery of secret Nazi experiments that turn local inhabitants into zombies in a grisly laboratory under the village’s Church.

This tension is never lost for a moment. A nail-biting sequence opens the film, as the team are packed like sardines in their transport plane that is being destroyed around them. Viewers are so submerged you feel like you’re trapped with them, plummeting out of the sky and straight into hell. Director Julius Avery has created a well-paced film that lives up to its dramatic opening and will keep you on the edge of you seat for the whole runtime. Even more generic tropes like jump scares are used with careful economy, so they genuinely take you by surprise.

The soldiers’ ability to retain their sense of humour despite the horrific revelations of the Nazi’s perverse experiments, renders Overlord as much a war film as a horror flick, as it captures the natural human response when faced with terror. The majority of the humour is dark so that at no point does Overlord dip into becoming a full comedy-horror movie, but the inclusion of this levity renders it a genuinely enjoyable watch.

Jovan Adepo makes a likable protagonist as Private Boyce and acts as the moral centre throughout the film. His commanding Officer Corporeal Ford (Wyatt Russel) determines that the only way for the team to succeed is to be as depraved as the Nazis, a status he achieves with ease when he proves himself a dab hand at torturing a German officer in sequences of seat-gripping horror. Overlord raises important moral questions about how far you can go to deal with an evil, before becoming that same evil yourself.

At times it feels like Ed is wearing invisible armour gifted by the screenwriter, as he manages to sneak in and out of the Nazi’s compound whilst sentries watch, and escape situations of overwhelming peril in fantastically unlikely fashion. No matter how many times he is body slammed against a wall, our indomitable hero jumps right back up for more. But rather than have you rolling your eyes when the film stretches the bounds of believability to breaking point, scenes like these feel deliberately funny.

Horror fans will not be disappointed by the amount of violence and gore that Overlord has to offer. I’d advise viewing on an empty stomach. Convincing zombie makeup, impalings accompanied with grisly sound effects of metal tearing flesh and bones puncturing skin will have you grimacing in your seat, especially if like me you’re not a regular viewer of horror movies. Overlord’s premise may not be unique but it approaches the genre with a fresh perspective and entertains its audience in a way that many horror movies fail to do.

Sufjan Stevens: Saying is believing

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Sufjan Stevens: Saying is believing

To Sufjan Stevens, a Detroit-originating singer-songwriter, believing in God is no different to loving anyone else. He feels the same when it comes his lovers, to his best friends, and even his mother.

Perhaps nowhere is this clearer than in his song ‘Beloved My John’, from his 2015 record Carrie and Lowell, which received an incredibly high rating from Pitchfork under ‘Best New Music’.

Both faith and love require intense devotion against all odds; Sufjan knows he will doubt, viewing it as integral to his faith. “Still I pray to what I cannot see”, he sings in ‘Eugene’, knowing that the entities to whom he sings – God, his mother – might not ever even hear his words. He knows that, eventually, he will be forsaken by someone.

Sufjan needs to put his love, his faith, into words. In ‘Beloved My John’, his need to put devotion into words is accompanied by intense anxiety – “Beloved of John, I get it all wrong”. In the same way as prayer is a way of performing faith, a way of believing in itself, professing your love is a way of loving in itself.

Beyond the question of how to express his feelings of love and devotion, Stevens also wonders whether saying ‘I love you’ is the same as loving. Does one have to say ‘I love you’ to be loving at all? And can saying it bring back the moment in which you loved? Can saying that you love turn back time?

In ‘The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out To Get Us’ on his fifth studio album, Illinois, Sufjan sings “I can tell you, I love him each day”. He tells the audience what he could never tell his childhood best friend. He loves and he loves, and he tries anew each morning.

Everything about Stevens’ work is an attempt to love right, to believe right, to ‘Get Real, Get Right’, and, ultimately, to vocalise this in music. He asks continually whether a choir, or an orchestra, or centuries-old Christmas carols, or Drake’s ‘Hotline Bling’, or even just the voices of three Sufjans can say what one can’t.

There is so much air in his voice, creating a space in which his lyrics sound like a whispered confession. Space in which to try and speak his faith. The thing about faith and love, is that it always happens in the attempt. Sometimes he fails – Stevens ends ‘Futile Devices’ knowing that, even if he had spoken his love aloud, he’d probably “sound dumb”.

Words don’t have to work for his devotion to be real, but in the attempt, they are sanctified. We, are sanctified. To Sufjan Stevens, saying is believing.

How to beat the fifth week blues

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How to beat the fifth week blues

Oh we’re halfway there! One month in. One month to go. Our health is short of optimal thanks to appalling weather, piling up work, too much alcohol and too little sleep.

How to survive fifth week blues? Food is thy medicine.

For the committed health nut, a big icy fruit and veg smoothie is beautiful brain food – cool drinks in cool weather are the coolest. Any combination can work. The green ones are especially useful for curing a particularly bad hangover, or simply as a study break treat.

As much as a mug of hot chocolate or a brownie offer a hefty dose of sugar, properly nutritious foods are said to help with concentration, and to safeguard against flu – or rather contain it, because we seem to have flu all the time.

For the millennial with a deep pocket, and who has not turned vegan, poached eggs are ideal. Breakfast, lunch or dinner, eggs are a cheap, protein-packed choice. The warm, runny yolks deserve to be enjoyed with eyes closed. It’s all about the smooth, sticky, thick but still liquid texture — not easy to achieve and a test of a chef’s skills. But luckily Oxford’s cafes generally hit the mark. Cutting open poached eggs (preferably accompanied by a crisp piece of sourdough toast, of course) on a cold morning to see the yolks oozing out is such an aesthetic and sensual pleasure. Plus, the comfortably satisfied belly is always conducive to a good day.

For the less health conscious, there is the ultimate comfort food of chicken nuggets and chips. Regardless of the other sauces you choose, always get mayo as well. The hot, juicy chicken nuggets and the salty, crisp chips (they are meant to be eaten quickly, so open the takeout box and start eating immediately on your way back!) are just missing something without that essential mayo – just like your lunchtime sandwich. Caution: this item must be consumed in moderation. If overdone, you will feel quite horrible the next morning.

Enjoy food and enjoy life. My go-to foods in mid-term dizziness might just make this happen.

Journey’s End preview – a play about brotherhood

Bessie Yuill
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Journey’s End preview – a play about brotherhood

2018 marks both the centenary of the First World War’s end, and the 90 year anniversary of R. C. Sherriff’s ‘Journey’s End’, the hit play that would launch Laurence Olivier’s career and change how many people saw the war.

When producer Jessica Bradley and director Agnes Pethers looked at the OUDS schedule for this term and realised there was no productions specifically planned for the centennial Remembrance weekend, they knew that this play was the right one to shake people out of their cliched view of the war.

“After 100 years we’re just too comfortable with it – ‘this happened, it was sad, we’ll wear a poppy’. 60,000 men dying in the Somme becomes just a number, so you can avoid the tragedy,” Agnes explains to me. “With this production, all these young alive faces acting and becoming these characters, at the exact same age as they would have been, you can’t escape it.”

Their aim is to evoke the real experience of the trenches in order to shock modern audiences.

This production is affiliated with four charities in this aim: Walking with the Wounded, Combat Stress, SSAFA and Oxford Winter Night Shelter.

Sherriff was certainly writing what he knew: he was an officer during the end of the war, and the play is set over the course of the three days before the Battle of St Quentin, in March 1918. In the dugout, officers had the lowest life expectancy of any group involved in the war, and the battle written about would result in 38,000 British casualties on the first day.

The implication that these characters are all going to die is inescapable. Sherriff certainly would have been picturing the friends and brothers who he saw killed. His experience helps the script to show the reality of war, separate from the heroes and machismo. Instead, he emphasises the experience of individuals.

This authenticity brought about visceral reactions from veterans when it first debuted, with some PTSD sufferers actually having to leave theatres. However, it was still embraced.

Agnes and Jessica mentioned the significance of their tag-line in our interview: ‘Think of it all as – as romantic. It helps.’ As I watch the actors rehearse scenes, that line starts to makes sense. It both challenges a complacent 2018 reaction to the First World War, where we can repeat tragic statistics from a century ago with no real emotional reaction, and empathetically encapsulates the coping mechanisms of the characters themselves, who have to believe they’re fighting for something in the midst of chaos.

‘Journey’s End’ demonstrates a wide range of reactions to this directionless trauma. Characters like Hardy and the Colonel (played by Dom McGann and Charlie Wellings) cope by shutting themselves off and focusing on trivial matters, so that they don’t have to think of the Germans in identical trenches 70 yards away as humans.

Joe Stanton’s Osbourne becomes a fatherly figure to all the younger men, like the impressionable Raleigh (Joe Woodman). This brings heart-wrenching pathos to one scene in which the latter doesn’t understand how dangerous their next raid will be. Hibbert (Flinn Andreae) falls apart entirely, racked with neuralgia from the shellshock (here treated with more empathy than in previous productions.) A German soldier similarly collapses when kidnapped – Sherriff extends an unprecedented amount of sympathy towards the other side in his script.

The twitchy body language and brittle accent of Albert McIntosh’s existentially petrified Stanhope may be the most compelling characterisation, however.

In a play about brotherhood, his paranoia and alcoholism threatens to cut him off from the other men. All the other soldiers, in interacting with this character, see the debilitating potential of war, and this strains all conversations.

The scenes I watched were filled with long pauses which brought about gut-wrenching tension.

Agnes tells me that creating the sound design was crucial to the play. They focused on creating a sparse soundscape evoking the endless waiting and existential horror of the trenches.

The set will also be minimal: earthy materials, a black backdrop, and candles instead of electric lighting to immerse you in the time and place.

“All the bids had passed for the traditional spaces over summer,” she explains, “so we’ll be in St Mary Magdalene’s Church, which is kind of perfect, in terms of a respectful venue. It feels like we’ve got the right place, the right dates – since it’ll be performed on the actual 11th November.”

Respect for the individuals is clearly a crucial aspect of this production. The play’s purpose isn’t to either lionise or dismiss the cause all these young men are dying for: either approach would do a disservice to the fellow soldiers who R.C. Sherriff actually saw die, and the veterans that this production honours through its charitable associations.

What the original script emphasises, and what this production aims to honour, is the soldiers’ devotion to each other, and the complicated relationships that are borne out of such horrific circumstances.

The cast and crew here themselves seem equally devoted to the play’s young characters and its message.

“Everyone’s really doing this to honour the centenary, you know?”, Agnes tells me as she lets me out of a side gate. “They’ve all given up their time for an actual cause.” I believe her – the First World War won’t be forgotten or romanticised at this centenary production.

‘I just try to see the world clearly’: An Interview with Louis Theroux

Abby Ridsdill-Smith
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‘I just try to see the world clearly’: An Interview with Louis Theroux

I am a little apprehensive to interview Louis Theroux. A two-time BAFTA award winner, the presenter of over 60 documentaries, and an acclaimed writer and journalist, he is an icon , a treasured one man brand. Over the course of his career, he has redefined the documentary making scene, winning over the British people with his frank, faux-naif style, and thought-provoking insights.

But more intimidating than his career history (and it is intimidating) are the comments of journalists who have spoken to him before. Previous interviews describe Theroux as ‘inscrutable’, and bemoan the fact that he knows all the ‘machinations and deflections’ of interview technique. When I tell a flatmate about our conversation, I get a sage nod and a helpful reminder: “It’s not going to be easy, is it? Interviewing the interviewer?”

But in reality, Theroux is (or seems) a much less terrifying interview candidate. Although he is just as intelligent and perceptive as you would expect (his conversation is peppered with references to enlightenment ideas and existential issues), he is also disarmingly funny and considerate. When he joins in at the end of a point, he offers me an immediate apology, “Sorry I interrupted- what were you gonna say?”

We are calling to discuss Theroux’s latest series, ‘Altered States’, which, like his other series, is filmed in America. The series is wide ranging: going, via polyamory, from open adoptions to assisted dying. He explains that the series looks at ‘different ways of doing important life decisions’, adding that “America has always had a kind of utopian spirit […] when you think of the American spirit, it involves a certain wide-eyed ingenuity and the idea of human perfectibility. Each [episode] is to do with both that can-do culture and also a kind of commercial culture [… that] points towards the possibility of a certain way of handling these existential issues that many of us have to face at one point or another”.

America holds an important place in Theroux’s heart. His father, the travel writer Paul Theroux, is a native Bostonian; Theroux himself got his first break in the States, as a correspondent for TV Nation. But Theroux says it’s more than that: America has “a fascinating culture and society with extremities of wealth and poverty. It’s a vast country, large population. Culturally, British people grow up with […] the idea of America, that it has a certain brashness and unselfconsciousness, in certain cases a stereotype of vulgarity.” His relationship with America has changed over the course of his career: “There’s been an old tradition of shows that slightly make fun of America – maybe I was slightly guilty of that at one stage.”

Maybe he’s a little guilty again in this series. One of the more surprising scenes in ‘Love Without Limits’ finds Louis stripping off to engage in a sensual eating party. Over the credits, we hear Theroux explaining that it wasn’t entirely enjoyable: he was fed far too much cheese. It’s a departure from weightier approach the presented has adopted over the last few years.

“The reason I do it sometimes is partly because I find it quite funny and partly because I think it’s a helpful way of changing the dynamic with the contributors,” Theroux explains, “it’s a little bit of going naked almost in sort in an ethnographic way. It’s like the idea, if you’re going to live in the village, you have to live the way the villagers live. “I think that’s quite revealing. As I say, it’s sort of fun for me up to a point, sometimes its uncomfortable. […] One of the reasons I enjoyed doing the polyamory program was that it was a chance to turn the clock back a bit and do participation and do things that I haven’t done in a while. […] We were all aware on the team that it would be fun to get back to a slightly lighter and more comical mode of film making of which the sensual eating workshop was a part.”

Indeed, quite a lot of ‘Love Without Limits’ (his episode on polyamory) feels like a throwback to Theroux’s earlier work. In the discussions he has with Bob, Nick and Amanda about monogamy and conventional relationships, there are echoes of his trip to meet swingers. His massage at the party feels like it could have been filmed back at the brothel in Weird Weekends. Theroux released a handful of retrospectives earlier in his career: he made two documentaries with the Westboro Baptist Church, and another two with the porn community in California, back in the early 2000s.

But Theroux hasn’t revisited his subjects in a while. “It’s something that I’m always tempted to do,” Theroux tells me, “I’m naturally curious about what happens to the people that I film with after I leave. Even going back to when I was at TV Nation I remember always thinking… gosh – what happens to these people? … For the most part, they don’t really change that much… You know yep, they’re still waiting for the UFOs to land, or – yep, he’s still a neo-Nazi living in Idaho like – no change […]

“My lesson from it was if you go back on something you need to have a really good reason for doing it.” He cites his documentary ‘Savile’. Filmed in 2016, the program responded to ‘When Louis met Jimmy’, an early documentary made when Savile was just an eccentric children’s entertainer. “The fact that someone I spent a couple of weeks filming with turned out to be one of the most notorious sex offenders of modern times in Britain was a massive change in the landscape,” says Theroux.

I observe that the opportunity to release these retrospectives is a privilege borne from Theroux’s immense popularity. Theroux has a cult following; he can assume that his audience will have watched the majority of his repertoire. Theroux isn’t so sure: “I’m aware of a cult following, whether it’s growing or not, I don’t know.

“And I can’t always tell how big it is and in general, I’d be in dangerous territory if I was trying to second guess what my cult following was interested in. Having said that,… we have talked about some kind of, you know it’s 20 years since we did Weird Weekends and we’re sort of thinking – is that something we should mark? Or is there a case for doing a revisit? Or is there a story we should follow up on? But we haven’t quite decided what it would be.”

For Louis, this concern about relevance, or appropriate subject matter, has spread through his entire career: “There came a point when the idea of making programs about people doing odd things felt limiting.

“We more or less ran out of road on a certain style or tone of storytelling. There’s always more people you can find who are up to something that seems a bit ridiculous, but for me the idea had been for the shows to have some depth and some broader resonance, so we weren’t making shows about Elvis conventions, we weren’t making shows about cheese rolling or Ernest Hemingway lookalike conventions…it just felt too trivial… There came a time when I had a choice to make about telling stories that were funny but lacked grit or weight, and telling gritty, weighty stories that weren’t funny. We went with the not funny and that’s more or less … been the area of inquiry for us as a production for the last ten years.”

We turn to the politics behind, or alongside, documentary making. Though Theroux has talked politics in the past, he says it’s not at the forefront of his documentary process: his programs are “not conceived as political documentaries … I just try and see the world clearly.”

But he adds, “I’ve tried to make these shows hint at or speak to a kind of a background of what’s going on, a bigger picture to do with inequality of income or slight lack or provision for the more vulnerable. “These more recent shows aren’t really about people making choices that are utterly bizarre,” he notes, “they are speaking to a wider social issue, though it’s not explicit throughout the program. “What lies behind them is a sense that there is a vulnerable class of people…who aren’t very well off; their choices are conditioned by not having much money.” But is his presence somewhat political?

I observe his ability to shift the narrative of the program, convincing his subjects to challenge their opinions. He concedes that, “just by being there, we’re altering reality in some way”, but argues “this whole idea of being there as a blank slate, or to be non judgemental, is a bit misleading. “You’re there to reflect a kind of reasonable position on how the world is, not just to report fairly, but if someone’s a Nazi, to challenge them on why, if someone’s killed people, to reflect a view of that being horrendous and inquiring why on earth someone would do that?… It’s not so much with the job of changing [their] mind, its more with the job of figuring out what’s happening.”

He recalls a moment, in the ‘Choosing Death’ episode, when he tells one of the contributors that her broken heart will pass: “in a sense I’m kind of breaking the rules of conventional journalism, but it just felt like the right thing to do,” he says. There is a pause.

“It’s only human to want to tell people that things will get better,” I tell him. Louis agrees. “I think there are times when to be human and not strictly journalistic is appropriate. Sometimes, those are the most powerful moments in the program.”

Students ‘infuriated’ over VC’s access event

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Students ‘infuriated’ over VC’s access event

Oxford University Vice-Chancellor Louise Richardson was grilled over the University’s access schemes and policies at a student Q&A panel on Tuesday, with concerns being raised over her shifting of responsibility towards the colleges and away from the central administration.

During the student-organised “access and diversity brainstorming event” held at the Oxford Martin School, Richardson described access as “one of the biggest challenges the University faces”.

Richardson also noted that since colleges independently select the students admitted, they are responsible for the resources they provide for their students.

However, some students expressed disappointment with the Vice-Chancellor’s comments.

Mansfield JCR President Daria Lysyakova noted that Richardson’s view on issues of access was one that “[she does] not share”.

Lysyakova said in a statement that “as the exemplary college for access, [Mansfield] needs to make [their] voice heard louder”.

Currently, Mansfield admits the highest percentage of state-school students out of all of the University’s colleges and PPHs.

Lysyakova told Cherwell: “Whilst I understand that the Vice Chancellor does not have the authority to tell colleges how to run their business, as each college is a charity independent from the University, what the Vice-Chancellor does have, in light of her position, is the necessary status and influences to effectively encourage colleges to priorities access and allocate their resources in ways which would best aid students in need.

“I strongly disagree with the opinion of the Vice-Chancellor that the onus of continuing access should be entirely on the Colleges.

“I believe that such a mindset would eventually bring colleges who are currently leading access, such as Mansfield, to reconsider their priorities.

“The University is not giving Colleges a substantial incentive to improve access – instead the Vice Chancellor seems to believe that this would come about through the good faith of Colleges alone.

“I hope that she would reconsider this position and work to encourage wider diversity across Oxford.

“I would further like to note that access has always been a priority at Mansfield and will continue to be at the heart of our ethos.”

In a post on the Mansfield’s JCR noticeboard, Lysyakova stated her intention to write a letter on behalf of the JCR and to lobby other JCR presidents to do the same.

Third-year Mansfield student Sara Harb, who attended the meeting, said that she felt a “disconnect” between the student-led access schemes and those of the University, which “the VC has to take responsibility for”.

She told Cherwell: “It isn’t good enough for her to effectively accept that student experience at Oxford is simply a matter of a college lottery.

“She wants us to address the wider societal inequalities, while there are clearly some massive inequalities between colleges, which is something she is responsible for and can feasibly address.”

At Tuesday’s meeting, Richardson also agreed with suggestions that the University should start to pressure the government to improve access provision earlier in the education system, claiming that early education is “central to Oxbridge access”.

Richardson stated her continued support for the current main undergraduate access programme, UNIQ, which brings 850 state school students to Oxford every summer. The capacity of UNIQ is expected to increase by 500 places in the coming years.

At the meeting, Richardson reportedly told the audience that the poorest Oxford colleges continue to provide more educational funding than the vast majority of UK universities.

Event organiser Ben Fernando told Cherwell that he believed the event went “very well” and was pleased with the variety of audience members.

He added: “The point was to come to constructive solutions, so firstly I hope the students have a bit of a better idea of what’s being done on the University side, and vice versa.

“In terms of making concrete progress, obviously we’ll have to see what’s acted upon, but as I understand it some of the disability campaigners and First-Gen reps have already scheduled further discussions with the University leadership as a result of the meeting, so that’s a good start.

“I think this was a pretty effective way to discuss the issues, and I hope we’ll be able to do similar things again in the future.”

The University was contacted for comment.

Calls for Uni to introduce Oxford Living Wage

Daniel Hall
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Calls for Uni to introduce Oxford Living Wage

The Oxford Living Wage Campaign have called on the University to introduce the Oxford Living Wage, as Oxford City Council announces it will introduce a higher minimum wage for its employees.

The Council will pay its staff a minimum of £10.02 an hour from April 2019.

The Oxford Living Wage is set at 95% of the London Living Wage, as calculated by the Living Wage Foundation, to reflect the high costs of living in Oxford.

The council’s announcement has led to renewed calls for the University to adopt the measure.

Chair of the Oxford SU Living Wage Campaign, Rebecca Durkin, told Cherwell: “The Living Wage Foundation’s National Living Wage simply isn’t enough in an Oxford context, and it’s unacceptable that some employers (including colleges) continue to only pay the government’s statutory minimum wage.

“We hope that the university and its colleges will follow the City Council’s lead and introduce the Oxford Living Wage for all staff.”

In February, Cherwell revealed that no Oxford colleges pay staff the Oxford Living Wage. Two permanent private halls, Blackfriars College and Campion Hall, pay the Oxford Living Wage.

Councillor Martyn Rush, Living Wage Champion for Oxford City Council, said: “The Oxford Living Wage helps our employees afford to live with dignity. It also helps the council by improving staff motivation and retention, enabling us to provide better customer service.

“A number of other local employers already pay the Oxford Living Wage, including Oxford Bus Company, Campion Hall, Blackfriars College and My Life My Choice. Oxford City Council encourages other employers in Oxford to follow their lead and adopt the Oxford Living Wage.”

Eleven out of Oxford’s 38 colleges are currently paying the National Living Wage of £8.75 an hour, including Mansfield and Somerville.

Uni remains undecided after ‘e-exam’ pilot

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Uni remains undecided after ‘e-exam’ pilot

Oxford University has conducted a trial of written exams undertaken on computer, as University authorities consider a major rehaul of Oxford’s examinations policy.

Participants in the trial, conducted in April last year, included the Department of Computing Science, Faculty of Law, and Faculty of Theology and Religion. The project was carried out by IT Services in a selection of college collections in conjunction with the subject departments.

The Education IT Programme said: “The e-exams project investigated the potential of the digital examination system for use with typed, invigilated examinations by funding and running trials during the start of Trinity term 2018”.

The trials used Inspira software platform. An Oxford University spokesperson told Cherwell that “computers were locked down and resources including spellcheck and thesaurus were removed”.

They added: “The trial has been evaluated and the results and next steps are being discussed within the University, but no decision about wider adoption has been made.”

“The pilot was a small-scale exercise in bringing examinations into line with how students learn and will apply their knowledge in the future.”

In Michaelmas 2016, the Digital Education Strategy consultation with academic staff and studentsidentified increasing interest intrialling the use of technology for assessments.

Currently, the use of a word processor in exams is limited for students with Specific Learning Differences or physical disabilities/illnesses that make writing difficult.

The news comes as e-exams are being used more often at other universities across the country.

In the UK, according to a survey by the Heads of eLearning Forum, more than 60% of universities have introduced e-exams in at least one or two modules.

Brunel University is one of the first UK institutions to introduce digital exams, encouraging students to use their own laptops. Brunel’s director of learning, Simon Kent, said that this move tried to make assessment as authentic as possible.

However, not all are in agreement. Chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, Chris McGovern, told The Times that “we need to break the dependence on digital technology and encourage young people to remain multiskilled.”

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