Monday 21st July 2025
Blog Page 728

Access denied: Oxford’s white privilege is revealed

Ryan Gould
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Access denied: Oxford’s white privilege is revealed

The full extent of Oxford’s access problem is still unravelling as new analysis by Cherwell has revealed the white privilege at the core of its admissions system.

Following the release of the University’s first-ever undergraduate admissions report on Wednesday, new analysis of the data has shown that of every 100 white applicants who applied between 2015 and 2017, over a quarter –  27% –  were given offers. White British applicants were twice as likely to gain admission as their black British peers.

Just 16% of black or black British (African) and 20% of black or black British (Caribbean) students who applied at the same time were given offers. The total black minority ethnic (BME) offer rate for the 2015-17 period was 18%.

The findings come after Cherwell revealed on Wednesday that Oxford admitted more pupils from Westminster School than black students in 2017.

Naomi Kellman, founder of Target Oxbridge, said that the findings were unsurprising: “Target Oxbridge has been working to improve the representation of black students at Oxford since 2012, and so the statistics did not surprise me, as it is an issue we work on every day.”

“I am please to see some improvements in the number of black students admitted to Oxford each year however, and am keen to continue pushing for greater change.”

Kellman said that Target Oxbridge, which aims to help black and mixed race African and Caribbean students increase their chances of Oxbridge admission, will expand to provide support for black pupils in Years 10 and 11, as well as their parents.

“If we want to see significantly better statistics in future years, we must start working with students before they start their A-levels,” Kellman said.

Of the 120 black students admitted to the University between 2015 and 2017, Corpus Christi College admitted just one despite attracting a dozen applications. Seven other colleges –  Balliol, Exeter, Jesus, Magdalen, New College, University, and Worcester  –admitted just two.

At the same time, the overall number of BME students admitted to Oxford rose from 13.9% in 2013 to 17.9% in 2017, with the number of UK-domiciled BME applicants to the University also increasing by 38% during the same period.

The disparity in ethnic inequality remains vast on the college level. While BME students made up 20.3% of the total UK students admitted to Keble College between 2015–17, this figure was just 10.8% at St Edmund Hall in the same period.

Labour MP David Lammy, who has outspokenly criticised Oxford over the last 18 months for failing to improve equality in their admissions process, said on Wednesday that the latest data reveals little has changed.

“The University is clearly happy to see Oxford remain an institution defined by entrenched privilege that is the preserve of wealthy white students from London and the south-east,” he said.

In a tweet, Lammy said that there are “huge differences between the individual colleges on admissions of state school students, BME students, and students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Some colleges are working hard to address this issue, many simply seem to not care. They are just recruiting their in own image [sic].”

Lammy also criticised what he called the University’s “institutional failings” for ethnic inequality in course and programme admission, citing the statistic that only a single black student received an offer for Computer Science between 2015-17 despite 30 applications.

“For four of the biggest courses – Law, PPE, Medicine, Geography – you are twice as likely to get in if you are white compared to if you are BME. Oxford need to address these institutional failings instead of spinning the figures and blaming the schools or applicants,” he tweeted.

Just 10 black British students were admitted to the University to study PPE between 2015-17, the data showed, while six black British students gained places to study English Language & Literature.

Lammy said: “If Oxford is serious about access the University needs to put its money where its mouth is and introduce a University-wide foundation year, get a lot better at encouraging talented students from under-represented backgrounds to apply and use contextual data when making offers.”

Lammy’s comments on Wednesday come after a new study revealed yesterday that disadvantaged students from the worst performing schools do just as well or better in Medicine as students from top schools, even when their A-level results are worse.

The study, led by the University of York, found that these pupils outperformed their independently-educated peers with the same grades. The researchers suggest that competitive medical school entry requirements should be contextualised for schools with low average A-level results.

Despite just 5% of students in the UK being schooled privately, currently half of Medicine entrants are independently educated.

Earlier this month, Conor Ryan, director of the new Office for Students, called for a switch to a post-qualification admissions (PQA) system, claiming that disadvantaged teenagers lose out in an admissions system that requires school students to apply to university using predicted grades.

A University spokesperson told Cherwell that Oxford is “very concerned about fairness and does not believe in a system that inadvertently excludes bright but disadvantaged candidates.”

“The limitations of a pre-qualifications admissions system are well known, but it would be logistically very difficult to move to a post-qualification system and therefore would need to be considered carefully; a consultation several years ago across the higher education sector found universities raised a number of concerns about moving to PQA that still need to be addressed,” the spokesperson said.

New analysis from Wednesday’s release also reveals a systematic weighting in favour of students from independent schools.

Between 2015-17, 5,007 applications were made from students at state comprehensive schools, with an offer rate of 22% – four percentage points lower than the offer rate for applications made from independent schools (26%) in the same period. The University received 14,636 applications from students at independent schools.

The figures also showed that the top twelve independent schools sent more students to Oxford in 2017 (321) than all state comprehensive schools (308).

17 of the top 20 schools for Oxford admissions in 2017 were fee-paying, while three prestigious grammar schools completed the top 20.

Westminster School, which charges £12,580 per term for boarding, topped the list. Out of 98 applications, 54 pupils received offers and 49 were eventually admitted to the University.

Eton College (45 students), St. Paul’s School (37), and King’s College School (31) were the other fee-paying schools to make up the top five.

Peter Symonds College (31), which is a non-selective sixth form college in Winchester, was the only non-independent school in the top five.

Hills Road Sixth Form College in Cambridge (26) and Pate’s Grammar School (17) were the other non-fee-paying schools to send more than 15 students to Oxford last year.

Though Oxford admitted more UK-domiciled female undergraduates than male in 2017, the report revealed variation at college level. In the last three years, less than 40% of Balliol College’s undergraduate intake were women. New College followed closely behind with 41.6%.

Overall, the University-wide gender split between women and men was 48.8% to 51.2%.

On Tuesday, a ‘Solidarity Rally’ organised by Common Ground, the Oxford SU Class Act Campaign, Oxford First Generation Students, and the Oxford Students’ Disability Community will be held outside the Radcliffe Camera.

According to its organisers, the event plans “to ensure that potential applicants to Oxford hear our voices and see that we are trying to change the institution from the inside”.

Keble and Pembroke win Summer VIIIs headships

Matthew Roller
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Keble and Pembroke win Summer VIIIs headships

Keble and Pembroke won the men’s and women’s headships respectively in front of a packed final-day crowd at Summer VIIIs.

Pembroke rowed over for a third consecutive day after bumping Wadham on the first afternoon of racing to ensure that for the first time since 2013, the headship changed hands, before Keble staved off the challenge of a resurgent Oriel to become Head of the River for the first time in 41 years.

There was little in the way of final-day drama in the top divisions, as the top six women’s boats and top eight men’s boats all rowed over.

Earlier in the day, the lower divisions produced some remarkable rises. Pembroke M4’s impressive over-bump on Thursday meant that they ended the week eleven places higher than they had started it, while several women’s crews – Green Templeton W1, St Hugh’s W2, Corpus Christi W2, St Catz W2, and Wolfson W4 – finished +6.

Other crews to win blades included Worcester M1, St Hugh’s M1, and New College W1.

Keble’s headship – their eighth overall, and their first since 1977 – was inspired by the presence of two Blue Boat rowers in the boat: Joshua Bugajski and Will Geffen.

Their bump of Christ Church on the first day pushed them up to head, before they successfully rowed over on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

Christ Church’s defence of their headship ended disappointingly: they were bumped by Oriel on Thursday as well, and ended the week in third.

In the women’s racing, Wolfson impressed throughout the week with a Blues-heavy boat, but Pembroke ended up winning the headship at a canter: they were dominant throughout the week, and their lead over Wadham was in little doubt this afternoon.

It was Pembroke’s first headship since 2012, and their fifth overall, and the Boat Club will be hoping that this can turn into a sustained period of success, replicating the 2000-03 crews who won the headship for four years in a row.

Jacques-Louis David’s artistic revolution

Rosa Thomas
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Jacques-Louis David’s artistic revolution

Revolutionary France was a troubling time to be an artist. ‘The Declaration of the Rights of the Man’ declared an end to censorship. Yet Robespierre’s terror saw the blood of countless artists stain the Place de Revolution. The rules were less clear but in many ways state control over the arts remained unchanged. But the state didn’t just erase art, it also sponsored its creation.

Enter Jacques-Louis David, married to a royalist and a member of the artistic elite who became the de facto artist of the revolution. David’s great talent was his ability to take stories that were known but distort how audiences felt about them. We can see this in David’s neoclassical style through which he depicted the same characters but with new emotions.

Take his painting ‘The Oath of the Horatii’, presented in the Paris Salon in 1785. The painting depicted a narrative known by the citizens of Paris: two groups of men, the Horatii and the Curatii, were selected to fight in order to resolve a conflict between Rome and Alba.

On the left of the painting we see the oath taking place, presented in the geometric lines of the Horatii. On the right we see the women, the sisters of the Horatii and the wives of the Curatii, weeping at the fate of their loved ones.

In the period dramatizations of the story there is little reference to this oath and the selection of the combatants is usually depicted as the result of aristocratic whims. Here David paints a world where the state is worth the ultimate sacrifice.

But perhaps the message here is too subtle. ‘The Oath of the Horatii’ was, after all, accepted into the Paris Salon and David continued to receive royal commissions after its release. To see David’s true political masterstroke, we must look later in his career. On 13th July 1793 revolutionary journalist and politician Jean-Paul Marat was stabbed in his own bathtub by journalist Charlotte Corday.

The real Marat bathed to ease a debilitating skin condition and his murder, committed by a woman whilst he lay helpless in a bath, was an ignominious one. Were the story to end here it is likely we would care little about Marat’s death. But we do care.

On 16th October 1793, whilst Marie Antoinette was guillotined for high treason, David unveiled his new painting in the Louvre, ‘The Death of Marat’. In the painting Marat slumps out of the bath, Christ-like with blood pouring down his chest, the skin unblemished.

There is more than a hint of religious martyrdom about the image. But Marat is surrounded by a dark background, very different from the light of heaven we are used to seeing. The soul of religious symbolism is missing. Instead Marat is a martyr for the revolution. It is through this expert and surprising manipulation of what we think we know, that David tells us how to feel. He tells us to believe in the revolution.

Café circuit: The Society Cafe

Isaac Pockney
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Café circuit: The Society Cafe

It’s easy to see why this place has become a favourite of Oxford’s students, coffee lovers and Australians alike. Coming from Sydney myself, where café culture is the culture, it’s refreshing to find somewhere in Oxford which is devoted to making your day better in every way it knows how.

The coffee, while fruitier and less bitter than The Missing Bean or JCT is good, especially for those soy, oat and almond drinkers among us. You are going to pay more than a high-street chain, but having an actual barista behind the machine using good coffee really does make a difference. Their range of teas is equally impressive, especially their English Breakfast and Black Chai. The real hero of the menu however, is the dark Madagascan hot chocolate. It’s bitter and rich without losing its flavour or becoming giddyingly sweet. I’ve never had better. The pastries, cakes and sandwiches are fairly expensive, I’ll admit, but they are delicious.

Where Society really separates itself from the competition is its dedication to atmosphere. Free from the hustle and bustle of certain Turl Street establishments, the vibe here is predominantly calm. The staff are friendly, the interior minimalist and slightly bare, and even when it gets crowded, it’s open and light enough not to feel claustrophobic.

Their collection of stunning magazines is a real highlight. Head to the shared table at the back or downstairs to the cosy basement for a range of indulgently large mags and coffee table books.

The level of care dedicated, not only to the drinks, but to the whole café experience is rare in the UK. People often tell me that good coffee shops are pretentious, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Yes, Society is full of people that love cafés, but it’s also full of friends meeting for coffee, and students taking an hour’s shelter from the onslaught of an Oxford term. From the welcoming service and good coffee, to the thoughtfully designed interior and collection of reading material, Society is a breath of fresh air in Oxford’s café scene.

Mental health support is a question of priorities

Fin Kavanagh
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Mental health support is a question of priorities

CW: Suicide

The collegiate system offers unparalleled levels of physical and emotional support to its students. The sense of community fostered through living and working in a small and close-knit environment is central to our personal development here. Whether we are experiencing short-term stress, anxiety or low mood, or suffer from more long-term mental health issues, we have a support network of friends, peers, and academic and non-academic staff, all of whom are willing to help us. This often goes underappreciated, particularly when compared with the faceless anonymity that can come with going to large city universities. In the aftermath of the tragic recent suicides at Bristol University, where seven students have killed themselves in the past 18 months, the importance of helping those experiencing issues relating to their mental health is finally being recognised.

In response to these events, live-in mentors and student support centres are being brought into the main halls of residence, to provide more immediate welfare provision to students there. This perhaps creates a living and working environment more reflective of our own here at Oxford – one we should be proud of. The University of Oxford spends more per student on mental health services than any other UK university. However, these statistics offer little comfort to those who have spent several weeks waiting for a one-to-one appointment, or are on a waiting list for one of the various group courses offered by the central counselling service. My focus, however, is not on the quality of the support offered by the University as a whole, but rather how individual colleges, whom students often turn to first for help, are tackling issues related to mental health. When deciding on which college to apply to, our decisions are usually influenced by the architecture, location, facilities, and, arguably most importantly, the food. Welfare provisions usually do not feature on our list of criteria. And why should they? Many of us simply assume that colleges offer the same levels and range of support.

However, the reality is that each college has a unique welfare network. Most have a base level of support services available to their students. JCR held positions like welfare officers provide the vital first port of call. Similarly, peer supporters, who have taken 30 hours of training in active listening, can also be found in the smallest permanent private halls to those colleges topping the Norrington Table.The disparity lies in resources additional to these, like in-house counsellors. This is something the University Counselling Service are keen to push. As one of the welfare officers who saw my own college hire a university counsellor, I am familiar with the arguments made both for and against them. The benefits include far shorter waiting times, typically less than a week,in comparison to up to a month with the central service. There’s also in-college access, often an influential factor for those who feel overwhelmed by the lengthy counselling service application or daunted by a trip to the counselling centre. Many colleges also choose to ensure their junior deans are trained for welfare situations. Some pay for them to receive training in a skill set similar to those of peer supporters, which serve to help students out of normal working hours, or in times of crisis.

Colleges like St. Hugh’s, where they have not received this training, sees the burden of responsibility fall on welfare officers and peer supporters, who despite their dedication to their roles, are still students with other commitments. What should be noted is the seeming lack of correlation between college wealth and these additional mental health provisions. It appears that if a college believes these additional resources are necessary, they will provide them – regardless of the extra cost. In a term where the widening disparity of college endowments has been questioned, perhaps we should not necessarily be asking how much money colleges have but rather what they are spending their wealth on. Moreover, we should ask whether it is being used to benefit those the college is principally meant to serve: the student body. Somerville, Keble, and St. Cross may not be the wealthiest of colleges but they recognise there is more to student satisfaction than portraits, grants, and perfectly kept quads. They have taken the steps to provide additional welfare resources, both in and out of normal working hours. It may be hard to quantify the success of these additional efforts in statistics.

However, the reassurance and peace of mind offered through the mere presence of a counsellor and welfare-trained junior deans, is surely worth the additional spending. We should berate these inequalities in mental health provisions between colleges in the same way we would criticise pay gap inequality or inadequate outreach efforts. All too frequently, colleges only make changes when provoked into action by their students. They should recognise that it is their duty of responsibility to ensure students have access to the support they require before they realise the need for it, especially at one of the country’s most demanding universities. All the more shame on those that can comfortably afford these resources, yet still fail to deliver them.

If you are having thoughts of suicide, you can speak to someone immediately by calling the Samaritans at 116-123.

Medea Review – ‘vengeful, manipulative, and captivating’

Oluchi Ezeh
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Medea Review – ‘vengeful, manipulative, and captivating’

It’s not often that I’m ready to compare anyone or anything to Beyoncé. In fact, it’s not
often that any comparison is warranted, but watching this performance, I couldn’t help but
think of her visual album, Lemonade, and the feeling that I had watching it. It was more than an album, it was a film, it was a poetry anthology, it was a message of hope and healing; it was a movement.

In the same way, Medea is more than a play. It incorporates poetry, dance, and choral
music, celebrates BAME talent, and results in something much more powerful and
captivating than anything I have ever seen on an Oxford stage. It tells the classic story of
Medea, wife of Jason, who abandons her and their children in favour of a more rewarding
match between himself and the King’s daughter. Medea must go on a journey to come to
terms with this betrayal just like Beyonce did on her phenomenal album, and I have to say,
just as it was with Beyonce, it was a privilege that this production company invited us to go
on this journey.

That being said, Medea, played beautifully by Charithra Chandran, is not Beyonce. She’s not the heroine whose side you want to be on. She is dark, vengeful, manipulative – and entirely captivating. What stops her from being simply the angry ex-wife – the label other characters jump to put on her – is how well she navigates her conflicting emotions. There is a complexity to the performance that cannot be understated – anger, sadness and frustration all feed off each other in every movement and become the sign of a truly talented actress.

The rest of the cast – made entirely of BAME performers – is also wonderful, and their ability to react to each other emotionally is what makes the performance so strong. The joy of seeing so much BAME talent celebrated is indescribable, as Oxford stages have not
historically been too accommodating to BAME talent, both in cast and crew. This problem extends to national stages outside of Oxford and more widely in the entertainment. The very choice of director, Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, to put this play on stage is a revolt against the lack of diversity we have been used to seeing for too long, and I don’t think it’s an overreaction to say that this play will do a lot for BAME performers in Oxford by encouraging them to continue to make beautiful art.

This leads me onto the highlight of the performance for me: the chorus. The play takes the Greek chorus of classical plays, which functioned to explain and comment on the action, and reimagines it as a group of talented singers that many gospel choirs would be jealous of. The transitions between music and poetry are effortless, and guide us through the story beautifully – I have to take a moment to appreciate the spoken word artists who devised
pieces specifically for the play because it is partly this that allows the work to become truly transcendental: Serena Arthur, Zad El Bacha, Theophina Gabriel and Simran Uppal were all able to encapsulate not only the characters’ thoughts but the changing mood of the play through their striking words.

The play also clearly draws influence from elsewhere in its writing: Jordan Peele’s 2016 film Get Out. Anyone who has watched the film as often as I have will appreciate the many references to it littered throughout Medea’s masterful writing; it is no easy feat to recreate the feeling of the Sunken Place, let alone in a theatre but this production manages it well through its use of staging, disembodied voices and echoes – just one of many arresting moments in the play. From the moment the audience sat down, the performance was fascinating and no-one was even on stage yet. The set, populated with bare trees in mounds of dirt and lit harshly, immediately draws your attention and reminds you that this story is a tragic one – what happy endings we gain from it are entirely up to us. Do we take the chorus’ words to be disparaging of Medea’s actions, or do we take them to be a message of female empowerment, of a woman who took back the control that was taken from her?

There is something to be said for how the play taps into the very nature of what it has meant to be a woman: to give pieces of yourself away, to be slowly broken and to silently suffer in the name of a man. But here stands Medea, refusing this expectation and asking us go on the strange, tragic journey with her as she does.

Ultimately, this is the kind of play that makes you remember why you go to the theatre. As activist and theatre-enthusiast, Akala, has said, if we don’t feel something when we go to the theatre – if we don’t want to cry or laugh or have sex or get revenge – what was the point of what we watched? Watching Medea was an exploration of many emotions. It was tense. It was funny. It was beautiful. It reminded me why I go to the theatre.

St Hilda’s adopts new divestment recommendations

Isabel Morris
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St Hilda’s adopts new divestment recommendations

The Governing Body of St Hilda’s College has recently approved changes to the College’s investment policy, aimed at aligning the college’s investments with the challenge of climate change.

The approved changes, which were initially recommended by the St Hilda’s JCR Divestment Working Group, ensure that the business plans of companies in which the college (indirectly) invests are compatible with efforts to tackle climate change in line with the Paris Climate Agreement. The companies must be “fully cognisant” of the impacts of the associated carbon emissions reduction targets on their businesses.

After a period of engagement, companies which remain incompatible with this criteria will be divested from, as will be companies with more than 5% exposure to coal and tar sands.

A statement released by St Hilda’s on Tuesday read: “Progress towards these targets will have major impacts not only on fossil-fuel exploration and production companies, but also on primary users of these fuels, such as power generation and distribution, transportation, and others.

“These impacts will inevitably include the potential for reduced financial returns to investors and so the College has not only a moral interest but also a fiduciary interest in encouraging these companies to recognise the critical importance for society of the emissions targets and the need for realistic plans to meet them and to address the consequences for their businesses.

“The College believes that this active ownership approach will ensure it is doing what it can to support the aims of the Paris Agreement while at the same time protecting the College’s long-term financial interests.”

The policy change will consist in the redirection of the college’s long-term investment funds into the Climate Active Endowment Fund. The Fund is overseen by an independent expert advisory panel and bases its policy of active engagement on the Oxford Martin Principles for Climate-Conscious Investment.

St Hilda’s College Environment & Ethics Officer and leader of St Hilda’s Divestment Campaign, Rupert Stuart-Smith, told Cherwell: “We are delighted that the College has accepted our proposals to redesign its investment policy to take on the challenge of climate change.

“This policy extends to all companies, rather than the fossil fuel industry alone, which is the usual target of divestment campaigns, and follows discussions with the Governing Body Investment Committee since Michaelmas 2015.

“We believe that our approach is a more powerful tool than traditional divestment. In exerting its influence on the business practices of all companies in which it invests, St Hilda’s is aligning its investments with its values and applying meaningful pressure on firms who must change their business practices if we are to avoid the devastation that climate change threatens.

“While I was delighted by the enthusiasm with which this proposal was ultimately accepted, passing unanimously in Investment Committee, our focus going forward will be to ensure that this policy is adhered to and that the college continues to critically assess the performance of the fund manager in assessing firms’ compatibility with the policy, engaging with targeted companies, and divesting from those that continue to fall short of our requirements.”

St Hilda’s action preceded that of Oriel College JCR, which voted this week to support the college’s divestment from fossil fuels. The motion passed unanimously, with one abstention.

Both college-based divestment developments follow the Oxford Climate Justice Campaign’s (OCJC) meeting with vice chancellor Louise Richardson earlier this week, where OCJC members delivered Richardson 169 letters demanding fossil fuel divestment.

OCJC member Julia Peck told Cherwell last week: “What we’re imagining [as a campaign] is a wave of thirty colleges making decisions to divest based on the overwhelming student opinion, and then the University seeing that all of the parts under it are making the right choice in terms of climate justice. This would put the University alone on the top, in an antiquated position.

“I think students make up colleges in a way we don’t think we make up the University. The structures of the University are vaguer, they’re much less transparent and accessible to us as students, whereas colleges feel like your home.

“Students have a special leverage in colleges, where they’re able to sit down with their bursars and have a frank conversation about what they want their community to look like and about how we match our investment practices with our values.”

Repeal the 8th should not politicise our JCRs

Michael Dolan
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Repeal the 8th should not politicise our JCRs

Last week, Christ Church JCR held an Emergency General Meeting on a motion relating to the upcoming abortion referendum in Ireland. The motion, which called for the JCR to support Repeal the Eighth, a campaign advocating a ‘Yes’ vote, would also have mandated the Gender Equalities Officer to propose a further motion, establishing a fund to subsidise the travel expenses of those wishing to travel home to vote.

I am one of two Irish members of Christ Church JCR, and the motion raised some troubling questions. Would it be appropriate for a JCR to become so publicly politicised, especially with respect to the democracy of another sovereign state? If college JCRs are supposed to represent and further the interests of all their members, how can taking sides in contentious political issues be helpful and inclusive?

The recent events at Christ Church are a case in point as to why the politicisation of college JCRs would be a grave step in the wrong direction, and how attempts to do so can be both inconsiderate and ham-fisted. One area of concern in relation to this motion was the proposers’ patronising tone compounded with their lack of engagement with the two Irish members of the JCR.

The overarching implication of the motion was that Irish voters were unable to adequately inform themselves ahead of the vote or, indeed, decide how to vote without a gentle nudge in the right direction from Christ Church. Mandating the Gender Equalities Officer “to provide information to our members about how they can get involved in Oxford’s campaign to repeal the eighth amendment” was an insult to the intelligence of those same members who surely didn’t need the intervention of their JCR to become engaged with one of the most prominent political issues in their country for the last several years.

Given the infamous complexity of Ireland’s historical relationship with Britain, this kind of dogmatic exposition by a JCR at a university which has historically rested at the heart of the British establishment would have been highly inappropriate. This issue could equally arise in the case of any other former British colony and shows the peril of allowing college JCRs to venture into the minefield of politics.

I am the only Irish member who is actually able to vote in the referendum; the other, incidentally the only female member, has an out-of-date passport, meaning that the motion would only have affected one member who did not wish to accept the £50 grant. The motion focused heavily on the democratic rights of Irish voters at Christ Church yet failed to elucidate that only two such members exist.

The result was that the motion, which would have had no practical effect, unnecessarily brought controversial, divisive and potentially upsetting issues to the surface in a wholly inappropriate setting.

A Sinn Fein-organised rally for the Repeal the Eighth campaign

This is another danger of setting a precedent for college JCRs to take positions on political issues. When motions such as this are insensitively bundled together to make a political point without consulting the members whom they claim to benefit, the risk is that they are reduced to little more than virtue-signalling.

As an Irish person, I am more aware than anyone of the issues surrounding the Eighth Amendment to Bunreacht na Éireann. However, for those issues to be raised in a foreign country and for a college JCR to claim to know best is something the vast majority of Irish people would likely find repugnant.

Pegging the establishment of the travel fund to the passage of a motion supporting the ‘Yes’ side was equally problematic. A motion supporting Repeal the Eighth under which a fund to travel home to vote would be set up would have carried with it a sense of obligation to vote accordingly in the referendum. It would have been very troubling from a democratic perspective that a motion purporting to further democratic principles could have placed voters in a compromised position. What if either of the two Irish voters had wished to vote ‘No’? More broadly, were a college JCR to take a side, on any issue, it would be to the neglect of the diversity of opinion, which might often be founded on religion and other social factors, and cause many members of the JCR to feel marginalised and unrepresented.

This is precisely the opposite of what JCRs are supposed to achieve and shows why they should steer clear of politics. Politics is inherently divisive and best confined to our world-famous debating chamber.

In the end, the motion was amended, removing the clause necessitating public support for Repeal the Eighth, leaving only the voting fund, showing the reluctance of the Christ Church JCR to make inroads into politics. The amended motion passed. Yes, it may have been poorly handled and far from a shining example of how a JCR might approach political issues, but it is enough to show why they should not even attempt to do so in the first place.

By all means allocate funds to help students travel to their home countries, but do not purport to know better than them or tell them how they should vote.

Grime4Corbyn: How a genre changed an election

Isaac Pockney
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Grime4Corbyn: How a genre changed an election

We’re still on the bus back to Saskilla’s flat and introductory chat has already gotten political: “I get this feeling sometimes that maybe Theresa May, her regime or that type of politics has to be on the way out. The problem is, I don’t see anywhere in the world right now that has gotten it right”.

Riding out past Woolwich, Saskilla, formally known as Hassan Matthews, explains that, along with so many of the grime stars who have taken the genre all the way from pirate radio to global recognition, he grew up around here in East London. “As a young kid, getting gripped up against walls and searched all the time we didn’t know there was any quota or any target being met by the Met Police, we were just feeling the brunt of it.”
Back at his flat, this disparate experience of the government making decisions and the governed “bearing the brunt” becomes a common thread: “the majority of the time you know where the oppression is coming from, its coming from people making the decisions who don’t live the same life as you, so you can’t really blame them for their foresight.”

A day later, sitting in a quiet office in King’s College London’s Bush House, that memory of being unable to positively influence politics is shared by Adam Elliot-Cooper, a Grime4Corbyn community organiser and researcher into urban gentrification. “Like most people, I’d only ever experienced Blair and the Tories in my life, so I’d never experienced a situation where there’s any kind of excitement… the idea that there was a discernible choice between either of the major parties was something I’d never been able to experience before either. So I guess my resounding memory of politics is just being disillusioned and not being that bothered by party politics. My family all voted Labour, but simply because that’s what Caribbean people do. It’s more out of habit than out of passion for the Labour Party.”

It’s against this backdrop of feeling that politics belonged to a different class that the seeds of Corbyn’s success found fertile ground in grime.

The post-Windrush, Grenfell-haunted “dark-ages” era of politics that Hassan referred to on the bus caused many to believe “there’s no politics and humanity. The two things don’t go together. You can’t be human and a politician, whereas Corbyn’s saying, there’s nobody saying you have to be a monster to be a politician”.

“Jeremy Corbyn was fighting for apartheid in [1984]. Getting arrested by the British government for what? Fighting for the fact that people shouldn’t be separated by races, that we shouldn’t have bigotry and racism and fascism. He was on the right side of history.” Adam’s story is remarkably similar: “I guess I became aware of Corbyn when people started sending messages around on WhatsApp and they were of that famous image of him being arrested at anti-apartheid protest…Seeing him getting arrested, not just making a speech, but seeing him getting nicked at a protest saying ‘down with apartheid’ and the pictures black and white it’s like ‘right, this guy isn’t just on a fad.’ He was doing it when this was unpopular, so unpopular that you got arrested.”

Hassan explains: “This is why I really grew to love him, because I was like ‘wow, you’re fighting for things that normal people should have, everyone should have the safety that the government should at least find them somewhere to live, should be able to start a family’.” This understanding of the everyday experience of ordinary people, is not, he tells me, universal in British politics: “[Corbyn’s] aware, the guy’s aware. When they first paid attention to a statement that I said was the Lidl statement.” Appearing on the BBC just after the General Election last year, Saskilla told Victoria Derbyshire: “if she can tell me what Lidl looks like from the inside, I’ll listen to what Theresa May’s got to say.”

Easily cast as a witty, off-the-cuff one-liner emblematic of grime as a genre, the sentiment behind it was far from a joke. “His son contacted my phone and said: ‘Yeah, Dad does shop in Lidl, I want to tell you.’ I was like ‘wow this is Corbyn’s son, and he shops in Lidl’, so I wasn’t lying. I know that I wasn’t lying.” It’s precisely this feeling that Corbyn is so aware of the experiences of “the average Joe” (as Hassan describes people like himself) which has won the trust of so many in the grime scene. “His views are not the views of a person that wants to win, they’re the views of a normal man”.

“I think what’s important is that what our campaign does” Adam explains about Grime4Corbyn, “is get those people who are already sympathetic to the kinds of things that Jeremy Corbyn is saying to actually vote.

Artwork: Reuben Dangoor

“They may come from families where people vote Labour, but just don’t bother to vote, because a lot of people don’t. So it’s about mobilising people to come out and vote on the day, as well as engaging them on the policies and ideas and actions that have been taking place over the last few years”.

He explains grime’s power to do this: “combining [politics] with cultural phenomena like music can be a way of making it more relatable, more engaging, more interesting and more accessible. So I think that culture generally is a really important political tool. How much can grime sway an election? I think it’s impossible to say. These things are very difficult to quantify”.

He’s right. Measuring the weight of grime’s thumb on the general elections’s scale is hard, but at least one study (State of Play: Grime) by Ticketmaster, based on 2000 survey responses has tried: of the 58% of grime fans who voted Labour in 2017, 24% reported that Grime4Corbyn influenced their vote.

“The reason why grime and Corbyn works and connected,” Hassan tells me, “is because the one thing Theresa May didn’t know is that grime, as a culture, not even just the music, has brought up Britain for the last 15 years. [Children have] access to YouTube, their favourite stars, their favourite artists or on social media, they’re able to follow them 24/7, they know what they’re eating, they know what they’re buying, they know what trainers they’ve got…people are so connected to their artist, their artist holds weight in their life with what he says and what he believes.

“This is why we need movements like Grime4Corbyn, that are legitimate, that raise awareness to the good things, because there’s so many fake things going on and we need something to trust, so when people are saying Grime4Corbyn influenced my vote, it’s mainly because it was something trustable, it was a reliable source.”

That public trust, the holy grail for every politician, stemmed from both authenticity and the relatable message on the minds of many. “The thing with the Grime4Corbyn movement is that a lot of people are thinking this stuff, – it’s just that grime has said it, and because we said it in a movement, the youth thought: ‘For real though, why is it that these lot are going to win?’ because we don’t vote. Not because we want them to win but because we don’t vote. So literally getting people to vote was a danger in itself”.

“We didn’t care about the outside world, the outside world ended up caring for us. We didn’t know CNN was gonna come. We didn’t know that ITV News was gonna sneak in there secretly with reporters and all that stuff. This is what was happening. We had Al Jazeera in! I didn’t know Al Jazeera knew about Grime-for-bloody-Corbyn or even grime for that matter but because they saw it as something politically different, something they’d never seen before, like the weirdest merger of politics of politics and a music genre they thought ‘how did this happen?’”

Hassan classifies the 2017 campaign as a definitive success, and Adam agrees. “Everyone expected him to be decimated. The newspapers, everyone in parliament expected it to be a complete, landslide victory for the Conservative Party and what we did was took away the Conservative Party majority, which is fundamentally important because it shows that the Conservative Party are not as powerful when they’re facing Jeremy Corbyn as they were when they were facing Ed Milliband”.

Adam is quick to emphasise that Grime4Corbyn doesn’t want to tell people exactly how or what they should be campaigning for, but says: “The kind of stuff that we’ve felt that has been important, is, of course, our support for the people of Grenfell. We partnered with some young people in the Lancaster West estate following the fire to help to run Grime4Grenfell and support it – a lot of the people that are in Grime4Corbyn work on housing struggles”. As much as the campaign can do, “it’s up to ordinary people to get in there and put pressure on councillors, and vote in these kinds of local elections to help to oust these Blairites who are socially cleaning urban areas and refusing to build the vital council housing that we need”.

The grime scene’s support of Corbyn led to the creation of several memes

Hassan agrees that change is possible between election days: “The Home Secretary just got sacked, so I’m sure there’s a lot that people can be doing. The Home Secretary just got sacked and we’re not at an election, she got sacked in between. So we can change regimes in between, we can force the Prime Minister to resign in between. All these things are possible.”

A common theme of Adam’s political passion is grassroots, community-centred activity. Having been involved with campaigns relating to the misuse of police power and been a youth worker, he makes it clear that, even with a new face in Downing Street, progress in communities will still be made more from the bottom than from the top: “There are so many things that people are fighting for, whether it be austerity, or police misuse of power or migrant solidarity, there are so many issues that people are facing and people are involved in and I think that, If Labour win the next election, having Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister won’t be the golden key to solving all of these problems but it will provide grassroots organisations with the space and the resources and the time and the support to try to make those changes happen.”

When asked if the success of the last election will inspire young voters to shift the tide in the next, Hassan immediately exclaims: “Oh ten fold! Ten fold! The best thing that the Tory Party can hope for is that Corbyn just dies before the next election. That his ticker just knocks out or something, because if his ticker doesn’t knock out, how are you beating him?” Referring to the Grenfell fire and the Windrush scandal, he explains: “you’ve given Jeremy Corbyn so much ammo to use against you negatively, he would be the crappest politician to lose.”

Both Adam and Hassan are clear on the fact that Grime4Corbyn will try to expand its appeal in the next general election. Encouraged by the continuing commercial success of grime and reception of Grime4Corbyn at the last election, Hassan suggests: “Next time we need a lot more targeted campaigning. Going into areas that are not known for grime. Going into areas that are not known for our way of thinking and basically showing people that everybody is the same.”

Adam reinforces the point: “The first Grime4Corbyn event was in Tottenham, and we certainly want to do the next event in somewhere that isn’t a safe Labour area, somewhere like Croydon, somewhere like Kensington”.

While grime has gone from pirate radio to international success on the back of people like Hassan and the communities he’s come from, the parts of East London where grime developed have seemingly suffered the brunt of austerity, the withdrawal of funding, and the closure of community centres.

Neither Adam or Saskilla expect Corbyn to solve these problems alone. “It’s not that Jeremy Corbyn is the saviour or the Messiah or perfect or will have the golden key to open up our political freedom,” Adam says, “it’s about what he can do in order to make us great, and our organisations great and our movements great again”.

University to overhaul online systems

Cherwell News
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University to overhaul online systems

Oxford University is set to carry out a major overhaul of its online systems, following student feedback.

Nexus will be updated and OxCORT will be replaced by another system, Tutorial Management System (TMS), in time for Michaelmas 2019.

The technology behind OxCORT is a decade old, and is “no longer being actively developed and requires replacement”,  according to a University statement.

The University sent out a survey on 8 May asking students questions about their use of OxCORT, including how often students use the systems and how they access it.

According to the spokesperson, the survey was sent to all Senior tutors “for dissemination in their colleges”.

The spokesperson told Cherwell: “OxCORT’s replacement provides an opportunity for improvement, and the project team is keen to hear from both students and tutors to understand what features they would like to see.”

The spokesperson confirmed that the new system “will have the same general functionalities.”

They continued: “The project is working with colleges and departments to identify how best the new system could support them, including investigating possibilities for streamlining manual aspects of the tutorial reporting and payment process.”

The IT Services website also notes that in working with a wide range of students and staff, the TMS project may result in a more powerful and versatile system than OxCORT.

“Development of a replacement system may also present an opportunity for additional departments to engage with online reporting of undergraduate teaching which is not currently recorded in OxCORT.

“Solutions are therefore being considered for both an improved system which mirrors the current OxCORT, as well as a wider system supporting additional departments.”

The survey is open until Thursday, 24 May.

SOLO has also undergone changes, including a new user interface, which is in BETA currently.

According to a page on the new SOLO site, IT personnel responded to several complaints about the system from students.

Among other new features, SOLO now has ‘Search Everything’ as the default, and simplified some search functions.

According to the page, personnel are working on a feature that will allow SOLO to remember users’ most-searched libraries.

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