Tuesday 22nd July 2025
Blog Page 724

Let’s Talk About: Rustication

Francesca Whitfield
-
0
Let’s Talk About: Rustication

Rustication is an utterly Oxonian term. The word has a mysterious, almost taboo-like element to it. It’s often whispered rather than spoken, some of us not entirely sure what it is or what it entails, though are aware it’s a serious decision.

I was your stereotypical first year hermit: relatively social for the first two weeks of Michaelmas before disappearing into my room never to be seen again. Whenever I left college I went via the back gate. The one time I went through the Porter’s Lodge, I had to show my Bod card to prove I wasn’t a tailgating tourist.

During that brief spell of sunshine last Trinity, when everyone else sitting out in the sun, I was sitting in my room and polishing off my 20th boxset of the year. Later that week I went to a tutorial and spent the whole hour and half crying. After that things moved very quickly.

I went to the GP, spoke to all my tutors, and my friends from home before I finally worked up the courage to tell my parents and sister that I wanted to rusticate. Like most parents, they were worried I was making a mistake by leaving. I think their biggest concern was I might never come back.

Looking back, I had spent my whole first year of Oxford in a torturous existence. I was unhappy, though rather than acknowledging it, I adopted that all too familiar British ‘stiff upper lip’.  When I was finally brave enough to make a completely selfish decision, I realised it was probably the most important one I’ve ever made.

As soon as I knew I was suspending my studies, it felt like a physical weight had being taken off my shoulders . I had a whole 15 months of academic relief ahead of me. It took me a long time to build up to doing any work again. For my first three months off all I did was rest, socialise, travel and see friends. It was a tremendously liberating experience. I felt in control of my own life again. If my university experience was the subject of a history essay, rusticating was my turning point, my watershed moment, albeit a good one.

In September 2016 I got a job at the local Sainsburys, this kept me productive and gave me a feeling of independence I was yet to experience.  When I left that job ten months later, it was not just a bit of extra cash I’d earnt, but a lot more self-esteem. By doing something very different to academic work, I had proven to myself that there was more to life than studying. To be at a place like Oxford is both a choice and a privilege, but I learnt I could still take another route in life if I wanted to, moreover I could still be happy.

Rusticating led to me feeling fulfilled again.  I went to see my friend in Japan and I went interrailing around Europe. I even started reading around my subject about half way through the year for pleasure, because studying was no longer dictated by deadlines. I felt happy.

Coming back this year has been amazing, I’ve found a wonderful group of friends and comfortably passed my Mods. I am far more settled, secure, and I enjoy my subject. If I hadn’t had the confidence to rusticate, I would still be struggling through now – utterly miserable, isolated and with far fewer fond memories of my time at university to look back on.

Don’t be afraid to do what’s best for you. Sometimes the road less traveled is the one which can change your university experience for the better.

Recipe Corner: Kebabba

George Goodman and Will Langdon
-
0
Recipe Corner: Kebabba

That’s right – KEBABBA. You’re here now and you can’t go back, lured in like the drunken revellers are drawn to the lights of the kebab shop, intrigued by the sights and smells. But, what is this KEBABBA, you ask? Is it the long anticipated reveal of Oxford’s answer to McCauley Culkin’s Pizza Underground — a doner themed ABBA tribute band? Is it a new word which joins together in an incongruous harmony both of my staple late night nutritional and listening habits? Is it an inane pun constructed for the sole purpose of spinning 500 words about the time me and my friend William made a Kebab?

Well to answer your entirely valid questions, dear reader, it is because over the past few days I have come to the startling conclusion that, and bear with me on this one, ABBA and Kebabs are the same thing: food is music, life is art, ABBA is kebabs.

How is that possible; one is the greatest pop group of all time, and the other is the greatest and most pervasive late-night meal? Yet both occupy the same space in our collective heart. Our yearning for ABBA is the same as our insatiable desire for a dripping lamb kebab.

1. They are at once repulsive and alluring. If foods were bands then kebabs would be ABBA. There is something grimly fascinating about ABBA. It’s so kitsch, so cheesy, some of their songs contain suspect lyrical constructions, and yet you can’t get enough because they are addictive. You just don’t get bad ABBA songs. You don’t get bad kebabs. You get good ones for sure. But the bad ones are still good. You enjoy the moment you sink your teeth in like you enjoy the “uh huh” in the chorus of Knowing Me Knowing You: slightly guilty but without regret.

2. They are things which drunk people enjoy. Drunks like ABBA. Drunks like Kebabs. Do you remember that pres when your friend jumped up on the table to sing along enthusiastically to “Take a Chance” and the table leg buckled and she fell over and everyone won’t let her forget it? Do you remember when when your mate came back from a night out and fell asleep on your bed with the side of his face resting delicately on his half-eaten kebab and only woke up at 8am the next morning? ABBA is the soundtrack to our embarrassments in the same way kebabs are their taste. When you wake up the next morning you’ve either got that song from pres stuck in your head or the taste of the garlic sauce in your mouth, or if you’re lucky, both.

3. They fly in the face of pretension. “Yeah mate, no yeah would definitely be up for going bully tonight, yeah I’m a big fan of (insert buzzy rah DJ) gonna be mad” – except you don’t really want to go to the Bullingdon do you? What you actually want to do is get a cheap bottle of wine, get some ABBA on at pres, get to the undisputed Best Night in Oxford: FNE (Friday Night Emporium for the uninitiated), request ABBA over and over again for 45 minutes until the DJ eventually succumbs and plays ABBA songs to all 6 of you in the club. Then when it shuts, you want to walk down the High Street to see Ahmed’s in the distance, just peeking out from around the bend, ready to dish up a dripping, oil-sodden, delicious, disgusting, meaty, perfect kebab. And then you want to walk back past all of the miserable looking people coming back from Cowley, with their cool hair and their identical clothing, and their sad eyes, and you want to eat your kebab and shout out The Winner Takes it All in its entirety and feel great.

That’s that really. If you would like to know how we made a kebab and want to make one yourself there’s a recipe below. A good idea for a barbecue is one of the big roasting trays from Robert Dyas filled with coals because it gets way hotter, and is better, than a one-use tray. 

Ingredients:

For the meat and marinade:
Chicken thighs (skinned and de-boned or breasts if you’re lazy)
Greek yoghurt
Harissa
Crushed garlic
Lemon juice
Lots of salt
Pepper
Cumin
Olive oil

For the rest:
Something to hold it in (I.e. bread, pitta, wrap etc)
Salads and sauces

Method: 

1. Mix all the ingredients for the marinade together and taste it to work out ratios for yourself. The yoghurt mix should just about coat the chicken and it should have quite a lot of lemon juice and salt. The flavour will get less intense during the cooking so make the marinade more powerful than you think it should be.

2. Add chicken thighs and leave to marinade for about 8 hours (or as long as you can realistically – 2 hours is probably minimum).

3. Poke multiple skewers through one of the pieces of meat and layer the rest on top until it resembles a kebab.

4. Try and keep it high over the flame so it doesn’t cook too quickly on the outside. We used bricks to support our one and turned it manually every minute/couple of minutes.

5. Wait for probably longer than you initially expected (will depend on the heat of your barbecue) and shave off the outside bits of the kebab when they get browned.

6. Serve in pitta/wrap/bread with salad and sauce.

7. Take photos of your kebab and show them to Ahmed who will be politely underwhelmed and cause you to question why you even attempted this undertaking in the first place.

In search of Irish Revolutionaries

Eric Sheng
-
0
In search of Irish Revolutionaries

‘Hearts with one purpose alone / Through summer and winter seem / Enchanted to a stone / To trouble the living stream.’ So wrote Yeats of the Easter Rising in ‘Easter, 1916’, the poem from whose first line Roy Foster’s most recent book, Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland 1890–1923, takes its title. Foster’s focus, however, is less on political events than on the men and women who participated in, experienced and interpreted them. And the central argument of this book is that these individuals were not actuated by ‘one purpose alone’. In characteristically elegant and readable prose, Foster paints a rich tableau of pre-revolutionary Ireland, revealing a diversity of aspirations among the future revolutionaries. Political liberation was to be accompanied, for some, by sexual or literary liberation; the boundaries of gender and religious confession were to be reshaped as well as political boundaries.

Foster’s approach is prefigured by his previous books, but is perhaps best summarised by the course description of the revolutionary Ireland further subject that he taught to a generation of Oxford history students. He concentrates on ‘the less conventional aspects of the period’, and uses ‘pamphlets, newspapers, memoirs, polemic, poetry, and fiction’ to create an account in which ‘Yeats [and] Douglas Hyde … are as central as Charles Stewart Parnell … and Eamon de Valera’.

Four chapters of the book are creatively titled ‘Learning’, ‘Playing’, ‘Loving’ and ‘Writing’, discussing respectively the educational, theatrical, romantic and literary milieux of the revolutionaries. Throughout these chapters Foster builds up a recurring cast of characters: pedagogical reformer Patrick Pearse, painter Countess Markiewicz, feminist Kathleen Lynn, antiquarian F. J. Bigger, secularist Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, and many others. Set among the unconventional figures and eccentrics who populate these pages, the affairs of a Roger Casement appear rather less unique.

These characters belong to overlapping circles. The Plunkett siblings used their family wealth to set up not just a training camp but also a theatre and a commune. Gaelic League camps were less important in teaching Gaelic than in forming friendships and loves. Revolutionary haunts in Dublin are described in detail (the absence of a map of the city is a pity), but small-town and rural Ireland, and Ulster, are also considered.

Foster uses diaries to wonderful effect. We discover unknown sides to well-known figures like Terence MacSwiney, the Lord Mayor of Cork who died of hunger strike in 1920, whom we find writing frenetically of his love of Ibsen and his deeply emotional experience of the Irish countryside. And we receive vivid and often moving insights into the lives of more obscure participants, like Rosemary Jacob, a young Quaker woman whose fears and desires – sexual, social and political – Foster excavates with remarkable sensitivity.

But the idealism of the pre-Revolutionary years is only half the story. Looking back, the Ulster revolutionary Bulmer Hobson remarked: ‘the phoenix of our youth has fluttered down to earth … a miserable old hen’. For Foster, what happened after 1914 was a tragic failure. The diverse hopes of the earlier period were buried by an oppressive conservatism, which, as last week’s referendum reminds us, has frayed only very recently. Why this conservative turn occurred is a question that perturbs Foster, but to which he does not give a definite answer. Here, perhaps, the almost exclusive focus of Vivid Faces on elites is an obstacle. You may not realise it from reading Vivid Faces, but there were more instinctive sectarians in revolutionary Ireland than reasoned secularists, more traditional Catholics than radical feminists.

But we should be grateful for what we have. At his inaugural lecture in Michaelmas, Ian McBride, Foster’s successor in Oxford’s chair in Irish history (now re-named the Foster Professorship in his honour), addressed the question: why study Irish history, especially if you are not Irish? His answer was that Ireland was an instructive case study for those interested in wider themes like violence or revolutions. Very true, as the introduction of Vivid Faces, which considers the Irish Revolution in comparative context, demonstrates. But Vivid Faces also suggests another, for me more compelling answer to the question. It is the richness and intrinsic interest that it reveals of the experiences and feelings of Irish men and women and how they gave expression to these – the capacity of this island to produce far more of the zest of living, learning, loving, playing, writing, fighting and remembering than its size would warrant. To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, if you are tired of Ireland and Irish history, you must be tired of life itself.

Dichotomous Lives: The Lives of Diaspora Kids

Yinni Hu
-
1
Dichotomous Lives: The Lives of Diaspora Kids

If there is one thing I have learnt from churning out philosophy and politics essays for almost a year, it is that there are two sides to everything, even when we only want to acknowledge one of them. The cross-cultural lives led by second generation immigrants and other multi-cultural kids are no exception. On the one side, we’re told that we have the best of both worlds: People envy us for being bilingual, for getting to eat exotic food at home, for being able to celebrate foreign holidays. What is not nearly as often addressed however, is the other side of the coin. The somewhat less enviable truth that in a sense, we’re neither fish nor fowl: That many of us spend years trying to puzzle the bits and pieces of our mixed cultural heritage into one coherent identity.

In the world today, there are at least as many bilingual children as there are monolingual ones. One in every four children born in England or Wales in 2014 had mothers that were themselves born outside of the UK. Wherever we look, the rise of globalisation has brought with it an ever-growing number of cross-culture kids of all kinds and yet, it is rarely acknowledged that many of these children grow up with the feeling of not belonging in the very country they were born and raised in. If this does not call for change I don’t know what does, and I want to share my own experience of a dichotomous life because fostering understanding is the first step towards encouraging change. While I don’t have the answers for how to bring it about, I hope to do my share by shedding some light over what it might be like to live a dichotomous life today’s society.

Born and raised in Norway, the biggest difference between me and my Chinese born parents has always been our sense of belonging – or rather, their sense of belonging and my ack thereof. We travel to China every year and once the plane lands in Beijing Capital Airport, my parents are home. They might have lived in Norway for 40 years, but their home will always be on Chinese soil. The experience is different for someone like me. I might look and sound just as Chinese as any other person seen on the busy streets of Beijing, but in the eyes of natives I am nothing but a “banana person”. Someone with yellow skin but white insides. They are always pleasantly surprised when I turn out to be a fluent Chinese speaker or admit liking Chinese food because it’s unexpected. They assume that I primarily belong in the country and culture I grew up in and that anything Chinese that remains is just extra bonus – me getting the best of both worlds if you like. I’ve long lost count of how many times I wished it was that simple.

Parts of a different culture are not something you can simply fuse with another coherent identity like some add-on upgrade. If you win some you lose some, and while I wouldn’t trade my Chinese heritage for the world, feeling like I fully belong in Norway at the same time has been impossible. Because it’s not easy to identify entirely as Norwegian when you grow up with other children squinting their eyes at you because they are curious as to “how you see the world”. It’s not easy to develop a genuine feeling of belonging if the lady in the grocery store instinctively talks to you in heavily accented English instead of in your common mother tongue. And it sure isn’t easy to feel completely at home when you’re in a park two quarters from your house and a jogger slows down to tell you how happy he is to see that his local park has become more popular with tourists.

I came to realise that belonging is a two-way street – you cannot identify with someone who doesn’t accept you as one of their own, and it seems like neither the Chinese nor the Norwegians were entirely willing to do that when faced with a hybrid like me who appears to be neither fish nor fowl.

It used to make me angry and bitter and I thought the people around me prejudiced and insensitive for ignoring and mocking the efforts I had made to fit in. It was only recently that I realised my feelings were unwarranted and misdirected, and that no individual was at fault for me being unable to reconcile the different aspects of my cultural identity. I was hit by the realisation that the lady at the grocery store and the talkative jogger and the vast majority of the people I was blaming were not being consciously racist or microaggressive, but simply reflected beliefs and habits that had been entrenched in society for centuries.

For as long as history has been dominated by nation states, our sense of belonging has been closely connected to our cultural and national identity. It is therefore no wonder that as globalisation brings with it increasingly complex identities, the question of belonging becomes more problematic. While I can only speak from my own experience and observations, it seems like society has not yet learnt how to properly accommodate for the existence of cross-culture children. The sense that you need to feel British in order to belong in Britain is still ever so strongly imbedded in social norms and conventions, and once we realise that, it becomes clear that this situation cannot be improved through anger, frustration and the blind assignment of blame. What we need is to draw attention to this relatively rarely addressed global phenomenon and to aim for a wider and better understanding of how it affects people.

And thus, we have come full circle. The reason I emphasised the importance of fostering understanding at the beginning of this article is because I believe that is the only way to change society from within. I no longer, like I once did, look for a way in which I can become Norwegian enough to be accepted. Rather, I now wish for a world in which I can feel at home in Norway without feeling 100% Norwegian. I wish we could make the first steps towards a society in which people can belong without being 100% anything. Where no cross-culture kid feels the need to forcefully reconcile the different parts of what will likely always be a dichotomous identity and a dichotomous life, because they know that they have a place where they belong regardless.

 

Total denuclearisation is a complete fantasy

Lee Chin Wee
-
1
Total denuclearisation is a complete fantasy

Putting aside the crass posturing surrounding the – as yet unconfirmed – diplomatic summit between North Korea and the United States, it’s important to ask: what constitutes ‘Mission Success’ for the international community when it comes to North Korea?
‘Mission Success’ is not North Korea’s willingness to engage in diplomatic summits and peace negotiations with international actors. That would be a conflation of the means of diplomatic success with the ends of said diplomacy.

The sustained failure of the six-party talks is one such example – North Korea has returned to the negotiating table intermittently since 2003, yet no concrete steps towards de-nuclearisation have occurred. Instead, it appears that North Korea’s nuclear programme has gone from strength to strength. Last year, North Korea successfully tested its longest ever flight of a ballistic missile. The missile travelled 3,700 miles and passed over Japan before landing in the Pacific.

North Korea is either close to achieving, or has achieved, the ability to threaten the United States with an intercontinental ballistic missile. There remain doubts over whether it has the technology to miniaturise a nuclear warhead, but experts – including Ian Williams, an associate director at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies – believe this is “just a matter of time”.

North Korea sees nuclear weapons as a guarantee of regime survival. It will not countenance de-nuclearisation even if the United States signs a non-aggression treaty. What else explains North Korea’s response when John Bolton, the US national security adviser, referred to Libya as a model for North Korean nuclear disarmament? Pyongyang’s reply was immediate: “(The world) knows too well that our country is neither Libya nor Iraq, which met miserable fates”.

The fates of Muammar Gaddafi, who gave up his nuclear weapons in a 2003 deal, and Saddam Hussein, who did not possess nuclear weapons during Operation Iraqi Freedom,
are plain to see. This is the main reason why the six-party talks failed miserably – North Korea would not budge an inch when it came to de-nuclearisation.

What about the recent inter-Korean summit, where Kim pledged to work towards a “nuclear-free Korean peninsula” and a formal end to the Korean War? We’ve been here before.

Eighteen years ago, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il signed declarations about ending the Korean War and uniting the two countries. Kim Jong-il even agreed to create a joint South Korean/ North Korean industrial park in Kaesong, and to reunify families divided by the demilitarised zone (some suspect that North Korea used this particular scheme to smuggle spies into South Korea). Little has come of Kim Dae-jung’s “Sunshine Policy”. North Korea has not stopped its nuclear programme and continues to enslave political opponents.

Yes, negotiations are good. But Kim Jong-un is no liberal peace-maker. Negotiations are a necessary but insufficient condition for any substantial progress to be made He’s acting out of a decades-old playbook which mixes provocation with peace offerings meant to convince the international community to relax sanctions and legitimise his dictatorial regime.
It would be a mistake to treat the North Korea/United States summit as a negotiation over de-nuclearisation. President Trump and John Bolton might fantasise about stripping Kim of his nuclear arsenal and arm-twisting Pyongyang into a peace deal, but this is not happening. Kim, surely, views American promises as worth less than the paper they are written on – President Trump’s sudden reversal of the Obama-era nuclear treaty with Iran is one such example.

Any negotiation, therefore, requires American willingness to broach compromise. This means allowing North Korea to keep its nuclear weapons in return for Pyongyang’s own set of compromises. There are no two ways about it. Short of a military intervention which would entail incalculable human suffering, Pyongyong will not give up the one bargaining chip it views as essential to regime survival. In exchange, we must force North Korea to halt any future development and production of nuclear weapons. We can enforce this with regular IAEA and UN inspections, with clear rewards for sustained adherence to the deal (and, conversely, punishments if North Korea were to halt inspections or show a disregard for the deal).

These ‘rewards’ might include a gradual relaxation of sanctions, or American investment in light-water reactors. At the same time, there are some red lines that the United States cannot accede to – withdrawing troops from South Korea, for example, might lead to South Korean nuclearisation, due to a perception of profound insecurity. Instead of any genuine progress, however, I expect to see more posturing on the part of President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un.

If this summit does take place, Trump will brand it as a ‘historic’ (‘the BEST’) meeting, deserving of a Nobel Prize. Kim will use it as propaganda and proof that North Korea’s nuclear status gives it a seat at the table of equals.

Blind Date: “Honestly, we couldn’t really have been more different”

Cherwell Life
-
0
Blind Date: “Honestly, we couldn’t really have been more different”

Milly Lee, Second Year, French, LMH

We met at the King’s Arms for an early evening drink. We chatted about some things we had in common: both Arsenal fans, both go to Pure Gym (me at 6am, him at 11pm). While the conversation flowed relatively easily, I felt this was more out of my fear of silence and awful habit of filling any quiet moments with inane questions. In all honesty, we couldn’t really have been more different. He regaled me with tales of going out clubbing five times a week; I don’t think I’ve ever managed five times a term. I felt second-hand stress at just the mention of his incredibly last minute essay writing, and may have pretended my deadline was two days earlier than it actually was so as not to seem so painfully square. He seemed like a nice enough guy, we just weren’t particularly compatible.

First impressions?

I couldn’t hear his name, so awkwardly had to ask him to repeat it.

Quality of the chat?

Asked me the same question twice. This happened a couple of times.

Most awkward moment?

Asking to have our photo taken.

Kiss or miss?

Miss.

Akhil Palani, Second Year, Law, Worcester

I had a pretty good time. There was a bit of nervousness at first but Milly was really easy to talk to, we grabbed a couple of drinks and had a chat about stuff like how she feels about going on her year abroad next year. I was delighted to discover that she was also an Arsenal fan and we chatted about Arsène Wenger’s legacy for a while. Milly was a great listener and seemed willing to put up with my chat, which quickly helped us to relax and settle into a fun conversation. Even though we didn’t really share the same interests, Milly was easy to talk to and we never really had any issues finding things to talk about. The topics we covered were broad and varied, but I didn’t feel any sparks flying. Considering how I felt before the blind date, I’m really happy that it turned out to be a chill chat with a fun person.

First impressions?

She didn’t seem very nervous and was very polite.

Quality of the chat?

8/10

Most awkward moment?

I didn’t really feel awkward at any point on the date.

Kiss or miss?

Sadly a miss.

Union under fire for hosting anti-LGBTQ+ speakers either side of Oxford Pride

Cherwell News
-
0
Union under fire for hosting anti-LGBTQ+ speakers either side of Oxford Pride

Angered students confronted the Russian ambassador to the UK on Tuesday, as the Oxford Union faced criticism for hosting both “a stooge of the homophobic Putin regime” as well as “an abhorrent transphobe” either side of Oxford Pride.

On Tuesday, Alexander Yakovenko was forced to defend Russia’s record on LGBTQ+ rights, as students questioned him on the Russian state’s reported torture of gay men in Chechnya.

The ambassador provoked widespread criticism when he denied there was an issue, claiming: “It’s difficult to say if there are any gay people in Chechnya”.

Meanwhile, Germaine Greer – who has previously said transgender women “can’t be women”, and who provoked protests the when she spoke in Oxford in 2015 – will speak at the society next week.

A Union spokesperson told Cherwell that it was “unfortunate that many have found the invitation of the Russian Ambassador ‘hugely insensitive'”.

During his speech, Russian ambassador Yakovenko spoke of his national pride, showing a four minute film displaying some of the highlights of the country – complete with orchestral soundtrack and English voiceover – and ending with a Russia-themed quiz. Russia goodie bags were awarded to the winners, and to Union president Gui Cavalcanti.

However, when the question and answer session began, he was confronted by several members over Russia’s treatment of LGBTQ+ communities in Chechnya, where authorities have reportedly round up and tortured more than 100 gay men. The Kremlin has denied the allegations.

Keir Mather, a History and Politics student at Wadham, said: “Ambassador, I’m a gay man. And if I lived in Chechnya over the last year I would have run the risk of being imprisoned, and tortured, and possibly killed by either my family or the state.

“On behalf of all the LGBT Chechnyan people who will not have an opportunity to ask a question because they’re voiceless, I’d like ask you why nobody who’s perpetrated these crimes or has condoned them has been brought to justice, or faced any sort of criminal action, and also I’d like to ask you when the LGBTQ+ community in Russian will have their rights not only has citizens but as human beings.”

His speech was met with an extended round of applause.

The ambassador replied: “That is exactly what we’ve discussed with Elton John. He had a conversation with President Putin about this before. And later on, there were a lot of publications in Britain about the gay rights, and all this. By the way I have a lot of friends who are gays [sic]. I have no problem with that.”

He added: “If you live in Russia and you are gay, or in the so-called minority communities, you have all the rights the same as the others.”

Another student asked Yakovenko if he agreed with claims made by Chechnya’s leader that the region does not have any gay people.

“Well, I don’t know,” Yakovenko said. “It’s difficult to say if there are any gay people in Chechnya.”

He added: “Probably the numbers of gays, [sic] they are not as high as in Europe. That’s why it’s a different issue”, before claiming nobody had complained about the treatment of gay minorities.

The Union president, Gui Cavalcanti, asked him if people were too afraid to speak out.

“No, no, no. Nobody’s afraid. We have so many gays [sic] for example if you go to Moscow. You have the gay sport, it’s just a normal way of life.

“It’s not something that’s a real problem in my country.”

After the event, Mather wrote on Facebook: “Just had the chance to take the Russian Ambassador to the UK to task over the purge of gay people in Chechnya, asking him why no one who perpetrated or condoned these actions has been held responsible and when the LGBT+ community in Russia will have equal rights as citizens and human beings.

“His response was beyond appalling. I’m still sat in the chamber and am fucking shook.”

He added: “The lies, obfuscation, and complete lack of moral dignity displayed here tonight is appalling, but not surprising. The fact he’s been hosted during the same week as Oxford Pride is ridiculous.”

Mather told Cherwell: “Ambassador Yakavenko’s visit to the Union was a farce. Instead of holding him and the government he represents to account, there were propaganda videos, quizzes, and goodie-bags. The Union justifies inviting controversial speakers like Ambassador Yakavenko by claiming that once there they will face scrutiny.

“The events that took place showed they had little desire to hold Ambassador Yakavenko or the government he represents to account for their abhorrent human rights abuses.”

“The Union’s decision to host the representative of one of the most repressive and homophobic states in the world on the same week as Oxford Pride is hugely insensitive.

“To make matters worse, they are hosting Germaine Greer the week after Pride, an individual who has made dehumanising and downright dangerous comments about transgender women, and their rights as human beings.

“If the Union prioritised making its events welcoming to LGBT+ members, they could have used the time either side of Pride week as an opportunity to have positive and meaningful discussions about LGBT+ issues, with LGBT+ people. Instead, they have chosen to invite a stooge of the homophobic Putin regime, and an abhorrent transphobe, putting headlines and hype above LGBT+ members.”

A Union spokesperson told Cherwell: “Regarding the timings and dates for our speaker events, we are usually restricted by our guest speakers’ availability in trying to find a mutually suitable date, given their incredibly busy schedule. It is unfortunate that many have found the invitation of the Russian Ambassador ‘hugely insensitive’.

“The Oxford Union did not extend an invitation to Germaine Greer. To clarify, Greer is participating in a televised event with the Al Jazeera Media Network, on their program ‘Head to Head with Mehdi Hasan’. This is a private hire, ticketed event which is open to all students, not just Union members. We are helping in the publicity of the event, as well as Dambisa Moyo’s on the 12th June, as it falls during term time.”

Our JCRs are essential to creating a democratic student environment

El Blackwood
-
0
Our JCRs are essential to creating a democratic student environment

To say that JCRs are “irrelevant” is to underestimate the ability of students to support and represent each other within the JCR framework.

There are points to be made about the efficiency and failures of JCR committees. But it is fundamentally important to have a body that can work with (and sometimes against) the senior management to curate a student environment which is perceived to be fair, enjoyable and, most of all, reflective of what is important to the JCR members themselves.

An irrelevant JCR would be one that had no real impact on the lives of the people which it represents. Across the University, this is simply not the case. To use my own college as an example, this year we’ve got rid of 9th week exam rent for freshers and finalists, successfully argued for a college-wide access survey, and are taking action on the findings. We’ve continued to champion our new suspended students policy and succeeded in pushing for a new flag pole to be built in order to fly the Pride flag above our main entrance.

These efforts have real effects. Such efforts are decreasing the financial pressure of being at University, increasing the rights of suspended students to visit, and are doing more to publicly symbolise Peter’s pride in the LGBTQ+ community.

But none of these examples touch upon the endless support that our welfare team gives, nor the cross-college co-ordination efforts to improve the University, particularly from people who have Liberation roles on the committee.

If we are to think about possible “irrelevance”, we also have to consider absence. Without JCRs, what would happen to welfare? Who would push back against new policies they didn’t think were fair? What better method would we have of enacting change that wasn’t sporadic and most likely unsustainable?

I count myself lucky to be JCR President of a college like St Peter’s, where we have a student body that is progressive and involved, and, crucially, a receptive SCR.

However, even in a college like ours, a lack of student representation on the various committees and governing body would only lower the standard of student living and ultimately make our colleges less democratic.

To say that JCRs are irrelevant is to ignore the tangible effects and positive changes that those involved fight so hard for.

PakSoc screening controversy attacked in parliament

Isabel Morris
-
4
PakSoc screening controversy attacked in parliament

Siobhain McDonagh MP has condemned the Oxford Pakistan Society’s reluctance to co-host a documentary screening, calling their actions a “scourge of extremism” in a parliamentary debate last week.

The House of Commons Select Committee was debating the motion, “That this House notes with concern the rising tide of persecution of Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan, Algeria and other countries around the world; …[and] calls on the Government to make representations to the Governments of Pakistan and Algeria on the persecution of Ahmadis…”

McDonagh, the Labour MP for Mitcham and Morden, said in Parliament: “We return a final time to the case of Nobel prize winner Professor Abdus Salam.

“Earlier this month, Oxford University hosted the first UK screening of a film about him, but the university’s Pakistan society has been accused of discrimination due to its reluctance to get involved based on Professor Salam’s Ahmadi faith, forcing an apology after an extremely successful event.

“Such a scourge of extremism is a stain on the freedom of religion that we rightly and proudly celebrate in the UK.”

In response to McDonagh’s comments, Oxford Pakistan Society told Cherwell: “We respect the religious freedom of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. We apologised for any miscommunication and delay in our response. We realise the huge amount of work needed to highlight the plight of minorities within our community.

“We reject the suggestion that the Pakistan Society was discriminatory. As documented, any reluctance was based on the controversial nature of the event and not out of any desire not to recognise the incommensurate achievements of Abdus Salam.”

Oxford University Ahmadiyya Muslim Student Association President, Noman Chaudhry, told Cherwell: “Oxford University Pakistan Society’s reluctance to be involved with the screening event is specifically highlighted by MP Siobhain McDonagh as an act complicit to these prejudices, and one of many examples of discriminatory behaviours prevalent within the UK Muslim community.

“We are humbled that our cause has reached Parliament, and that such aggressions against the Ahmadiyya Community are recognised as being in direct conflict with the values and principles championed by our nation.

“These are values and principles that we believe must also be maintained and upheld by those in positions of leadership amongst the student societies of UK universities, as a matter of duty and responsibility.”

During the debate, Glasgow SNP MP Patrick Grady added: “We have heard from Members on both sides of the Chamber about other incidents of intolerance and bigotry towards the Ahmadi community throughout the United Kingdom. We have also heard about the issues at Oxford University this month, and all that is a matter of great concern.

“We are deeply disappointed that the Pakistani Government continue to condone and oversee the conduct of religiously motivated attacks. We call on the Foreign Secretary and Foreign Office Ministers to press the Pakistani Government to take action against religious persecution.”

Oxford must change its essay obsession

Joe Baverstock-Poppy
-
0
Oxford must change its essay obsession

By this point, everyone reading this should be familiar with how working at Oxford goes. I will spare you all the details of mine or your work schedules, for fear of sounding cliched. Often it is easy to forget that this is not the norm. Most universities do not set work on a weekly, or even fortnightly basis, but Oxford decides to.

While the University claims this produces a higher standard of student and I’m sure it does in some ways, when one really thinks about it this weekly workload is simply unhealthy, unhelpful, with worrying implications for professional culture in Britain.

First, is the fundamental fact that students have no time. Time is swallowed away by endless demands for more reading, more essays, and more late nights. This paucity of time is evident in the shallow extra-curricular lives most students lead today. Magdalen Ball was cancelled due to a lack of volunteers, a sign of overworked students with no energy to do anything else.

Hollowed out by their degree, students find that all they do is their work, with nihilistic, unconstructive clubbing to compliment. This is the age where we need to be finding a purpose, pursuing our own goals. Oxford bans such self-discovery – for an institution that claims to promote independence and self-learning, it leaves no space for it

When one’s life is one’s degree, this is a dangerous position to be in. Exhaustion, illness, social crises are allowed to creep in and once taken hold can interrupt such a degree. Students often find themselves left with nothing. It is no wonder Oxford spends more on mental health than any other university – a fact it shamefully holds up with pride, who euphemistically say they “lead the development”.

The damage that Oxford’s weekly work schedule has on student life is evident to anyone who has lived it and seen others live through it.

Having to produce written work, or answer sheets on a weekly basis does not allow for long term memory commitment but instead a perpetual cram, rushing information into one’s head on a daily basis. Once collections swing around after the vac you will wonder if you wrote those essays at all. The perpetual cram of the weekly schedule leaves no long-term memory.

Often, Oxford education does not seem like a process of learning or improvement but rather a constant test. Meeting all deadlines does not represent improved knowledge but simply a better work ethic. This fact shows Oxford to be no more than a cynical £9250 test, a way of signalling how smart we are, rather than becoming smarter as a result.

We have to ask what implications such a style of learning has upon the culture of work at large. The methods we learn at university will come to be the methods we use in the workplace.

Whether you like it or not, the alumni of Oxford come to dominate the most important workplaces in our society. By implication that means the work methods we learn in Oxford comes to be the work methods that dominate the workplace.

Making decisions and drawing conclusions from the bare minimum of information, cramming, and blagging are methods we come to learn to survive Oxford’s weekly grind. Such behaviour in the workplace leads to disaster.

In the public sector, we can all see the Oxford blag in Boris Johnson’s inflammatory bluster. In the private sector Oxford’s culture, less visibly, detriments. The value of short term results over long term stability is present in the irresponsible behaviour of corporations. The 2009 World Recession is no doubt the result of hasty conclusions and rushed action.

As a leader in education, Oxford has a responsibility to establish a culture of responsibility in its graduates. By setting unrealistic work expectations it is doing exactly the opposite. Oxford needs to change. By overworking its students, Oxford damages its students, society at large, and even its ability to educate. The weekly essay deadline, the weekly answer sheet, undermines everything.

While Oxford could reduce how many essays it sets, there is undoubtedly a value in the high standards it places upon its students in how much it expects us to learn.

The bigger problem seems to be the ridiculous time frames in which Oxford expects us to learn its content. 8 weeks is no time at all, a measly sixth of a year. Term lengths should be extended. We’ve all heard the colleges protestations that they need money from conferences and visiting students but we have all also seem the lavish sums of money in their possession.

If the University truly believes against the commodification of education, it should be willing to sacrifice some sources of revenue for the benefit of its educational experience, its student’s health, and society at large.

1...723724725...2,515Page 724 of 2,515

Support Student Journalism

Cherwell is Oxford’s oldest independent newspaper, established in 1920. We are entirely student-run. By supporting us, you will contribute to keeping our paper in print and online. Every donation makes a difference.

Donate

Explore

Follow us

More

Oxford Student Publications Limited © 2025 - All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy

Website by James Ashley