Thursday 17th July 2025
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Wes Anderson’s films are nostalgic for the present

Daniel Gonsalez
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Wes Anderson’s films are nostalgic for the present

Wes Anderson returned to the big screen in April with the release of Isle of Dogs, another fine film from one of the most distinctive auteurs in modern cinema. Anderson’s style is unmistakable: his frames are symmetrical, his palette is filled with vibrant colours, and his sets are painstakingly crafted down to the tiniest details.

His stories are madcap capers, but they are presented with a striking emotional detachment, matched by the impassive movement of the camera and the monotone speech of his characters. Anderson’s stylistic virtuosity means that it’s easy to regard his films as shallow and superficial, but his unique style disguises a surprising emotional depth. Anderson’s worlds, seemingly so joyful and beautiful, are actually deeply lonely places. Almost all of his characters are repressed or incapable of connecting with the people around them.

In The Royal Tenenbaums, Margot locks herself in her bathroom and refuses to talk to anyone due to a failing marriage. The same movie sees Richie exile himself to the other side of the world, and Chas proves himself unable to come to terms with the loss of his wife. In Moonrise Kingdom, Suzy and Sam are misfits without any friends, Suzy’s parents sleep apart in a loveless marriage, and Scout Master Ward leaves his thoughts in an audio diary since he has nobody to talk to about them. In Grand Budapest Hotel, even the seemingly happy and sociable Mr. Gustave has to eat his meals alone, in a bare room every night, while Zero has lost his entire family to war. This is where Anderson’s detached style truly comes into its own. Often criticised as draining all emotion from his movies, he actually does the exact opposite, highlighting and reflecting the detachment of his characters. The long, silent, static shots of Gustave eating alone or Margot locked away in her bathtub capture their loneliness perfectly.

Despite his overly complicated plots, Anderson’s main interest is in how his characters manage to find a connection in a detached and lonely world. We may rejoice when Mr. Gustave and Zero finally prove their innocence and gain their fortune, but the emotional height of the film only comes when they are chatting with Agatha in a train car, completely at ease in a place where they truly belong. Similarly, the conflict with Social Services in Moonrise Kingdom is the centerpiece of the plot. However, the story’s narrative arc is only reached when Sam and Suzy are relaxing in Suzy’s house at the end, free from all the troubles that everyone else brings. But Anderson can never leave it at that – his endings are rarely unequivocally happy. In The Royal Tenenbaums, the narrator nonchalantly tells us that ‘Royal died of a heart attack at the age of 68’ while Chas and Royal are still laughing together on screen, following their reconciliation. In exactly the same way, the narrator of The Grand Budapest Hotel informs us that ‘in the end, they shot him’ just after the scene in which Mr. Gustave is shown happily talking to Agatha and Zero in a train car. We are then told, briefly and bluntly, that Agatha died of disease a few years later. In all of his films, Anderson is quick to remind us that all good things must come to an end. At the very beginning of The Grand Budapest Hotel, he shows us a glimpse of the future – a future in which the hotel is ruined, Zero is a lonely old man, Agatha and Mr. Gustave are probably dead. Even the setting is a reminder of how quickly things can change; we are well aware that the grand old Europe which Anderson celebrates will soon be destroyed by fascism and communism.

The ending of Moonrise Kingdom is just as bittersweet. We know Suzy and Sam will manage to live happily together for a while, but Anderson constantly reminds us that they too will grow up and become the adults they so despise. The symbol of their youth, their Moonrise Kingdom, is washed away into the past by a storm. Sam and Suzy are left with no more than memories, which Sam crystallizes in the form of a painting.

Anderson celebrates the joy and beauty that shared humanity can bring in a lonely world. But he is quick to remind us that every happy moment is half-gone before it has begun, doomed to last an instant before disappearing into the distant past. Wes Anderson is, in other words, nostalgic for the present.

Childhood’s Clarity in ‘The Ocean at the End of the Lane’

Meha Razdan
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Childhood’s Clarity in ‘The Ocean at the End of the Lane’

Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane opens with an epigraph from Maurice Sendak, the author of Where the Wild Things Are: “I remember my own childhood vividly… I knew terrible things. But I knew I mustn’t let adults know I knew. It would scare them.”

Gaiman is no stranger to adopting a child’s perspective: his novel Coraline has become a macabre modern classic in the sphere of children’s literature, and The Graveyard Book won him the Newbery Medal.

But where Coraline and The Graveyard Book use children to explore a twisted underbelly to the world which adults cannot see, The Ocean at the End of the Lane allows Gaiman’s narrator to straddle the perspective of the child and the adult, and then to blur the divide between them.

The narrative ‘lens’ which Gaiman employs generates a warped and fogged-up image, a series of events presented to the reader by way of the narrator relating his experiences as a child. In the novel, the nameless narrator returns to his childhood hometown for a funeral, and while he is there, he starts to remember a series of strange events that unfolded when he was a child.

The narration switches to a flashback, told by the narrator as a seven year old boy. When, at the end of the novel, the narrative returns to the present day and the narrator begins to drive away from his hometown, the memories fade away once more.

Despite its classification as a dark fantasy novel, Neil Gaiman claims the novel was inspired by events from his own childhood. The theft of the protagonist’s father’s car, for instance, is based on an incident in Gaiman’s own childhood – and thus The Ocean at the End of the Lane functions as a quasi-autobiographical work.

This basis in self-reflection manifests itself in the narrative exploration of the peculiar journey toward ignorance that comes with growing from child into adult. The climactic moment of the novel comes when the narrator sees his friend, Lettie Hempstock, sacrifice herself for him and enter a permanent, death-like trance. The young boy is then put under a spell that leads him to forget the events that have occurred and instead believes Lettie has simply moved to Australia.

When the narrator returns home years later, he slowly remembers the truth, only to forget it again upon leaving. This ebb and flow of the truth is intrinsically linked to the narrator’s proximity to and connectivity with his own childhood, a fact representative of Gaiman’s subversion of the archetype of childhood as a state of naïvité. Under Gaiman’s direction, childhood is clear and adulthood obscure. Childhood is a perspective bereft of the clouds. Without the clouds which come when we know what’s normal, childhood is the lens through which trauma, otherness, and “terrible things” can be seen clearly and examined. In short,

The Ocean at the End of the Lane allows Gaiman to demonstrate how adulthood functions as a way to forget what childhood cannot. He uses childhood to expose the real world hidden within the cracks, to tell the truths that adults have forgotten how to face.

Oxford should not accept billionaires’ vanity projects

Bertie Harrison-Broninski
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Oxford should not accept billionaires’ vanity projects

Controversy concerning the School of Government’s name has reared its head again.
In response to a piece in the Financial Times, Professor Ngair Woods has defended the record of Leonard Blavatnik, the UK’s richest man, and asserted that Oxford is “not for sale”. The original piece expressed concern that “autocrat donors” like Blavatnik will soon rush to fill the gap left by the loss of EU funding after Brexit. Defensive statements from beneficiaries of Blavatnik’s £75m will not stop the criticism. Simon Kuper’s article is only the most recent in a number of pieces since the founding of the school. In 2015, a group of academics, activists and Russian dissidents signed a public letter entitled ‘Oxford University must stop selling its reputation to Vladimir Putin’s associates’. It highlighted the Russian state-sponsored harassment of BP, under Blavatnik’s directorship of TNKBP.

Professor Bo Rothstein resigned last year from the school after Blavatnik donated $1m to Donald Trump’s inauguration. Woods states of Blavatnik: “He is not a Trump donor.” But according to Rothstein: “$1m is a sizeable amount of money. In my book by donating to the inauguration of Donald Trump you are supporting Donald Trump.” Woods states that Blavatnik also “has a history of donating to both Democrat and Republican candidates”, as if the admission that he mercenarily buys government influence is a positive message for a School of Government.

Wafic Saïd is also associated with political cronyism. Before donating £70m to the Saïd Business School, Saïd donated hundreds of thousands to the Thatcher government. Additionally, he aided Thatcher’s government with the 1985 al-Yamamah arms deal through his close connections with Saudi royals. He has been accused of employing Mark Thatcher as a back-channel to donating sums of up to £12m to his mother. Banned from political donation due to his tax residency in Monaco, Saïd’s daughter has since donated tens of thousands to the Tories. According to The Guardian, there was resistance from the academic community to the naming of the Saïd school.

The Sackler Library is similarly controversial. By massively understating OxyContin’s addictive effects, the Sacklers’ company Purdue pleaded guilty to marketing their drug “with the intent to defraud or mislead” in 2006, by massively understating its addictive
effects. In 2010 and 2011, oxycodone overdoses killed more Americans than any other drug – more than heroin.

Oxycontin has been at the forefront of a prescription opioid crisis that had, by 2016, caused around 200,000 deaths. A recent Cherwell article quoted medical students and SU representatives at Oxford opposed to accepting this blood money from the Sacklers.
And so the tradition continues. Despite these three buildings being founded in the past 25 years, the rich have always used Oxford as a means to sanctify their image in times of unpopularity.

During the Rhodes Must Fall debate, rhetoric suggested that Rhodes and Codrington are only criticised in 21st century dialogue, and were universally admired in their own eras.
While I want to be very clear in not equating white supremacy or slavery with the acts of Blavatnik, Saïd or the Sacklers, they were met with similar controversy in their time. Codrington’s donation followed a number of scandals, in which he was taken to court for abusing his power as governor, and his reputation as a soldier was heavily damaged. Oriel’s own website describes opposition to the Rhodes statue as early as 1906, quoting one alumnus who stated: “I am not in love with the ‘Imperial’ spirit.” The RMF campaign didn’t succeed in removing Rhodes, but it would perhaps be even more successful if it prevented the Rhodes statues of the future.

There will be those that argue such donations are worth the research that can be funded and those that claim it does not matter whose name is on a building. But donations only substituted 6% of the university’s funding in 2016 and symbolically, supporting these figures does matter. It promotes a message of money over morals that puts conscientious potential applicants off applying. It glorifies cronyism, arms dealing, tax evasion and more for students that will become many of the next generation of leading world figures, and for students of the future.

In a hundred years Oxford’s opposition to his vanity project will be forgotten, but Blavatnik’s bad name will still be immortalised.

Top Five Must-See ‘Coming of Age’ Films

Zahra Farzanekhoo
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Top Five Must-See ‘Coming of Age’ Films

What is a coming-of-age film? This genre is frequently billed as teen drama: an insulting description which suggests these films are shallow and restricted. But a conflicted protagonist and classic issues of love and education make for films that are far from shallow. Instead, they are enriched by the vantage point of their teen or young adult protagonist.

Coming-of-age films offer a unique perspective on how we grow up, and how circumstances affect this process. The possibilities for these films are endless, making this an open-ended genre. So, as someone whose Tinder bio states that I have seen every coming-of-age film since 1995, I feel I am a worthy guide for any coming-of-age novice. Here are my top five recommendations:

Boyhood

Richard Linklater follows the life of the protagonist, Mason (El- lar Coltrane), from childhood to university. The beauty of this film is nothing really happens. It is a compilation of the misfortunes of a mother attempting to raise her two young children, intertwined with Mason’s experience as a child with no solid father figure to guide him. Linklater makes ordinary life into something gripping. Filmed over twelve years, it is also interesting to spot the cultural and political references.

We Need to Talk About Kevin

Some might question if this is truly a coming of age film, following the life of a mother, after her son Kevin commits a school shooting. But it also explores the events in Kevin’s childhood and the months leading up to the atrocity, as the mother tries to reconcile her memories with the reality of what happened. This is a topic that is rarely touched upon in the media and, while it is a relatively difficult film to watch, it is also an important perspective to explore.

Fishtank

A British film, with a 91% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Fishtank follows the life of Mia Williams (Katie Jarvis), a teenager struggling to deal with her mother’s new boyfriend (Michael Fassbender), while she attempts to pursue her passion for dance.

Mean Creek

Starring Rory Culkin, brother of Macaulay Culkin, this is an independent psychological drama that explores bullying and peer pressure. It also features Josh Peck, of Drake and Josh fame, and is available on Netflix. Go forth and binge!

Thirteen

This film stars Nikki Reed and Evan-Rachel Wood and arguably launched the careers of both actresses. The film deals with all the classic plot points of the ‘coming of age’ genre: crime, drug abuse, sexual awakening, and self-harm, making for unmissable viewing.

Five very different films, each centred on the trials of teenage years. ‘Coming of age’ isn’t just an umbrella term for drippy films caught up in teenage drama. Instead, these films bombard the viewer with adversity, angst, and nostalgia.

The Taste of Success

Julia Alsop
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The Taste of Success

It has been a week since the MasterChef final aired, and runner-up Nawamin Pinpathomrat is already back to the grind, attending an immunology conference in Oxford. In person, he is just as he seems on the show – articulate, friendly, and incredibly humble about his talents and achievements. “It was absolutely bonkers,” he says, “I didn’t expect to get that far – and you have to be so organised to do a PhD full- time and finish within three or four years, but I was away for a full week in Peru [the MasterChef finalists faced three culinary challenges there].” It is no small feat to be a competitor on a prestigious national cooking show, while also working on a PhD, developing a vaccination for tuberculosis.

Unsurprisingly, Nawamin does not often have the time or resources to develop the ornate dishes he presented on MasterChef. However, he does “always [make] Thai food”. He insists that, while making a curry from scratch seems very technical, it is quite easy, and even saves time, particularly if you make curry in a big pot, so you have plenty of leftovers.

On MasterChef, he was known for his amazing twists on Thai cuisine. “If you want a chance in the final,” he tells me, “you have to take a risk and do something different”. His ‘reversed pork satay’ was particularly special: in this dish, he took a whole piece of bamboo and laid the pork inside, and created profiteroles with peanut sauce inside rather than on top of a toast. “Why not?” he asks, “It paid off.”

Of course, it’s a high-pressure environment. The smallest error or misjudged risk can ruin a dish and take a competitor out of the running. But Nawamin explains that there was always a good atmosphere and the competitors were friends rather than rivals – “this year we are all so different and cook in our own ways. I’d be thinking, I want to know what Kenny and David will come up with today, rather than that I want to fight against them.”

He tells me that the finalists still use a WhatsApp group to share tips. “We’ll ask each other what we’re cooking each day, and share recipes. They’ll ask me tips on how to make a green curry, or how to make their rice fluffy.”

He explains that John and Gregg also helped to ease the pressure. “John knows everything about food, so actually he did help me a lot. And Gregg is very funny, although he often made British jokes that I didn’t understand, but I’d often just laugh anyway. When you’ve got that kind of pressure, you need someone to distract you so you’re not trying to focus too much and then make a mistake.” Crediting John for his knowledge of Asian cuisine, he admits that that he thinks the controversy surrounding the crispy rendang got “a bit crazy with the internet”, noting that ultimately when it comes to the competition, the best contestants on the day go through.

Overall, Nawamin tells me that it was an incredible experience. In particular, he remembers how his “jaw dropped” when he heard he was going to have the opportunity to work with Tommy Banks, who he had watched make it through to the banquet on the Great British Menu twice. Nawamin still says he can’t believe that he has gone from making curry in his kitchen one month, to cooking piranha in Central Restaurante the next.

Since moving to the UK, he has developed a soft spot for the noble chip butty. “I ordered fish and chips once and they gave me two pieces of white toast and butter, and I said what is this for? What is it?” Nawaman says, eyes glowing, “And then I tried it: the toast filled with chips, butter, and ketchup, and it’s just exquisite.”

There’s no doubt that Nawamin has a big choice to make – whether to pursue his love of cooking or to carry on with his current goal of developing an effective vaccination for tuberculosis. And when it comes down to it, he admits that it’ll eventually be a difficult choice between pursuing cooking or science.

“I have been thinking about this – and cooking is my real passion. I’d love to be a chef, but ten million people become newly infected with TB each year. And if I can successfully make a good vaccine, I can save around two million people from dying from TB each year.

“If I had to choose between them, I’d probably have to keep doing what I’m doing – being a scientist and making a vaccine. Nobody will die if I don’t open a restaurant.”

Staff-student relationships are a question of consent

Julia Alsop
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Staff-student relationships are a question of consent

Writing for The Pool in October, Oxford graduate Mel McGrath named the man who allegedly did “a Weinstein” on her during her university days. She described how David Robertson, an academic at Oxford, and her personal tutor made her feel uncomfortable when he would reportedly open the door to her tutorials half-dressed, and make comments on her appearance or personal life. She felt that those in charge ignored his alleged misconduct.

She’s not the only person who has opened up about being in uncomfortable situations with staff at universities in the UK. In a recent article for The Guardian, an anonymous academic shared her experience of being invited to coffee by a lecturer during her days as a student. She felt obliged to go because he would be marking her work.

The line between what is acceptable between teaching staff and students has long been debated, particularly in the light of #MeToo. Yet, many people remain reluctant to recognise that it’s a consent issue. Just like Weinstein’s victims, students’ career prospects could be gravely affected if they were to refuse the advances of academics. It is therefore hard to consider something as consent between two adults when there is a power dynamic that compromises the student’s freedom to resist.

Even if you are of the belief that a student and member of staff are two consenting adults, the point stands that this could offer unfair consequences.

Biases in grading work may disadvantage other students. It would be impossible to distinguish whether an impressive grade were down to a genuinely diligent, capable student, or due to generous marking from a member of staff who had a personal romantic relationship with them. I can’t help but feel that you would feel uncomfortable and suspicious if you knew your tutor was seeing another student and, despite your hard work, they got a particularly good mark.

This doesn’t mean that we can’t have good relationships with those who teach us. After all, we share interests in specific academic areas with them and may even consider some of them colleagues in the future.The case stands that even if a member of staff weren’t actively teaching the student, or involved with marking their work, it still changes the dynamic of the entire college, or faculty. Do we really want the uncertainties of romantic relationships to seep into our academic environment, an environment that influences our futures and careers, and has capacity to be manipulated to the advantage or disadvantage of others?

Ultimately, accepting staff-student relationships only makes it harder for students to come forward if they feel uncomfortable or harassed for fear of the implications of rejecting someone responsible for their teaching or marks. If #MeToo has taught us anything, it’s that we need to be making sure that ambition can thrive without a fear of compromising our ability to consent in the process.

Upcoming Trinity Theatre – a guide

Cherwell Stage
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Upcoming Trinity Theatre – a guide

After careful research – namely an investigation of Caroline Flack’s Twitter and recalling when ‘exam lifestyle’ (read: McCoys and reality television) began last year –  it appears that Love Island will not return until early June. This leaves an intimidating stretch of empty time to fill, so Cherwell Theatre has selected the productions which will drag you from the edge of despair. Refreshing new comedy, drama in translation, the return of the garden play: here is the most promising theatre of the first half of Trinity.

Week 1: Death By Murder at the Michael Pilch Studio

First week sees the debut production of new comedy troupe The House of Improv, whose show Death By Murder: An Improvised Murder Mystery is proposing a different, narrative based approach to the more traditional sketches favoured by the Oxford Imps. The idea is that an entire narrative is improvised on the spot. The audience will be asked to provide details, so this is not a production to attend if you want to sneak in a nap in the shadows of the Pilch. There may be something disconcerting in entering a production that you are being asked to craft, but the more open to participation the audience is, the better the night will be.

Week 2: The House of Bernarda Alba at the Michael Pilch Studio (performed in English)/Travesties at the Playhouse

Oxford is having a Lorca moment, with this production following Hilary’s ‘Blood Wedding’. If you have Spanish A Level, no doubt the Lorca hallmarks of sexual repression, stifling social conservatism, unashamedly obvious symbolism will be familiar to you. Hopefully, this performance of Ted Hughes’ translation will leave you feeling grateful that we live in a society capable of producing Love Island.

This week also sees Stoppard’s ‘Travesties’ at the Playhouse. The year is 1917 and James Joyce, the Dadaist poet Tristan Tzara, and Vladimir Lenin are all staying in Zürich. Stoppard envisages a meeting between the trio, with a former British diplomat recalling the events that unfold. The show does sound intellectually demanding, but, particularly if you’re an English student questioning your life choices, the satisfaction of seeing the importance of the arts in informing political movements will be enough to justify handing over £11.50 for a student ticket.

Week 3: Dogfight, The Pichette Auditorium, Pembroke College

This is a musical set in the USA in the sixties, with the main character having served in Vietnam. Beginning with a group of marines who compete to find the ugliest possible dates, the narrative rather predictably morphs into a love story. The underlying theme: a youth movement railing against poor decisions made on their behalf by an antiquated political class, which makes this production more angsty and timely than your classic Andrew Lloyd Webber. Pembroke have may be investing in wings for their auditorium for this production – a pull factor in itself?

Week 4: The White Devil, Jesus College Hall (Candlelit Show)/Company, The Nun’s Garden, Queen’s College

To experience a Revenge tragedy performed in the manner originally envisaged by Webster will bring out the full ghoulishness of The White Devil. It is also an alternative to The Duchess of Malfi and Tis Pity She’s A Whore, both Webster works that have perhaps received too much audience attention over the decades.

Queen’s College, is offering the antithesis of revenge tragedy: a musical, in a GARDEN. This Sondheim show presents the life of a thirty-something commitment-phobe. This production offers the option to lounge in the sun and have an internal boogie to Sondheim, which, in Oxford, would be an attraction for more students than you think.

Oxford’s controversial donors revealed

Tobi Thomas
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Oxford’s controversial donors revealed

Two of Oxford University’s top donors have been accused of facilitating climate change denial in public debate and enabling money laundering, Cherwell can reveal.

Multinational fossil fuel corporation ExxonMobil and Italian banking group Intesa Sanpaolo both donated between £1 million and £4.99 million to the University in 2016-17, a Freedom of Information request shows.

Their donations were directed to the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine and the Saïd Business School respectively.

The University classifies its donations in three bands: “£10 million and above”, “£5 million to £9.9 million”, and “£1 million to £4.9 million”.

ExxonMobil, the world’s largest publically traded oil and gas company with assets over $348.7 billion and 69,000 employees, helps to fund scholarships linked to the Global Health department.

Funding is available for candidates domiciled in developing countries who study the MSc International Health and Tropical Medicine, which focuses on the archetypal health impact of climate change.

The company has been involved in an ongoing climate change controversy dating as early as the 1970s. ExxonMobil is alleged to have engaged in research and lobbying with the purpose of delaying widespread acceptance and action on global warming.

From the 1980s to the mid 2000s, the company, which was headed by former US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson between 2006 and 2017, was a leader in climate change denial. It consistently opposed regulations to curtail global warming.

In February 2017, a lawsuit was filed by former ExxonMobil employees, claiming that the company deceived them by making misleading and false statements regarding the financial risks of climate change.

In July 2017, three communities in California sued 37 oil, coal, and gas companies, including ExxonMobil, for contributing to sea level rises while engaging in a “coordinated, multi-front effort to conceal and deny their own knowledge of those threats”.

In August 2017, a report was published by researchers at Harvard University claiming that ExxonMobil had mislead the public on the effects of climate change.

They found that between 1977 and 2014, 80% of ExxonMobil’s statements to the public expressed doubt about climate change, despite 80% of the company’s research acknowledging the validity of climate change and its cause in human activity.

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“Our findings are clear: ExxonMobil misled the public about the state of climate science and its implications. Available documents show a systematic, quantifiable discrepancy between what ExxonMobil’s scientists and executives discussed about climate change in private and in academic circles, and what it presented to the general public,” Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes, Harvard academics and authors of the study, wrote in The New York Times.

Supran told Cherwell: “By accepting millions of pounds from ExxonMobil, Oxford is helping legitimise a company that has worked for decades to confuse the public, undermine policy, slander scientists (including me), and sabotage science.”

Just last month, ExxonMobil were accused of continuing in their pursuit of an oil deal with Liberia despite concerns of corruption.

Under the leadership of Tillerson, who was fired via Twitter by Donald Trump in March of this year, ExxonMobil signed a $120 million deal with Broadway Consolidated/Peppercoast (BCP), despite an allegation of corruption by the transparency organisation Global Witness. BCP engages in oil and gas exploration and production in the West Africa region.

The investigation by Global Witness showed that Exxon executives were aware that the purchased oil was partly owned by former politicians who had taken ownership of the block through illegal means.

An ExxonMobil spokesperson told Cherwell: “ExxonMobil’s funding to Oxford is for a range of programmes that deliver benefits in the areas of health, women’s empowerment and energy studies. The programme you have referenced is for scholarships that foster the next generation of leaders to tackle malaria and other diseases around the world.

“Since 2011, the ExxonMobil Global Health Scholars programme has provided 38 outstanding young doctors, researchers and health professionals from Cameroon, China, India, Liberia, Mexico, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Russia, South Africa and Tanzania the opportunity to learn about the global burden of disease, epidemiological principles and how to apply classroom lessons to the real world.

“Students have pursued global health-focused Master’s degrees at Oxford University, and then taken the skills and knowledge they have learned back to their home countries to continue to fight health issues.”

Should students be doing more to protest Oxford’s controversial donors?

Write for Cherwell and have your say – send a 150-word pitch to our comment editors.

Meanwhile, Intensa Sanpaolo, Italy’s largest bank, were fined $235 million by New York’s financial regulators for violating anti-money laundering and bank secrecy laws, as reported by the Financial Times in December 2016.

The report also said that between 2002 and 2006, Intensa Sanpaolo has conducted over 2,700 clearing transactions, which amounted to more than $11 billion on behalf of clients subject to US economic sanctions.

Intensa Sanpaolo have total assets amounting to over €725 billion and has over 96,000 employees.

In March of this year, Carlo Messina, CEO of Intensa Sanpaolo, and Vice-Chancellor Louise Richardson formally recognised their “strategic partnership”.

This partnership includes the funding of the first Intensa Sanpaolo Research Fellow, Dr Rita Mora, based at the Said Business School.

A University spokesperson said the ExxonMobil donation “enables students from low and middle income countries to study an MSc at Oxford’s Centre for Tropical Medicine & Global Health.”

The spokeperson added: “The ExxonMobil Foundation also supports the Worldwide Antimalarial Resistance Network (WWARN)”.

The spokesperson said: “The University is grateful to both donors for supporting these substantial academic projects which all address challenging issues of global concern.

“Oxford University has a robust and rigorous donor scrutiny process. All major prospective donors are carefully considered by the Committee to Review Donations under the University’s guidelines for acceptance.  High profile companies and organisations may well have been the subject of individual controversies over the years.

“The Committee will consider such controversies in the wider context of the respective institutions’ overall reputation and standards of good governance. Donors to the University have no influence over the content of academic programmes, how academics carry out their research or the conclusions they reach.”

The hidden costs of trashing revealed

Matthew Roller
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The hidden costs of trashing revealed

Post-exam trashings cost the University £25,000 a year, Cherwell can reveal.

Security staff were paid £20,000 in overtime in 2017 to control celebrations, while a further £1,881 was spent on hiring barriers to manage pedestrian flow.

A further £3,500 was reimbursed to Oxford City Council, who clean Merton Street following trashings.

A University spokesperson told Cherwell: “inconsiderate, entitled behaviour passed off as ‘trashing’ can damage Oxford students in the minds of the community and the wider public.

“Getting through examinations is a milestone but we urge our students to find ways to mark this which are far less damaging, costly and – frankly – annoying to community neighbours, the City Council and fellow members of the University.”

The University also reiterated that participating in trashing can lead to fines and disciplinary action.

Several colleges have attacked the tradition. Mansfield labelled it “stupid…damaging to the environment, and wasteful”, while Corpus Christi said trashing was “just not classy”.

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According to the University’s code of conduct, trashing is banned. Section 3.3, Part 1 of the regulations states: “No student member shall, in any place or thoroughfare to which members of the general public have access within six miles of Carfax, throw, pour, spray, apply or use any thing or substance in a way which is intended, or is likely, (a) to cause injury to any person, or (b) to cause damage to, or defacement or destruction of, any property, or (c) to cause litter.”

Similarly, it is officially an offence even to be “in possession of any thing or substance with intention to [trash]”, and to “gather without the prior permission of the Proctors in a public thoroughfare within 300 metres” of a place where an exam is being held around the time of its completion.

The University also confirmed that it informs Thames Valley Police of locations that trashing is expected to take place.

While most reports about trashings suggest that it started in the mid-1990s, Cherwell can reveal that it dates back to the 1970s.

Reports from alumni suggest that the tradition caused logjams on the High Street several times a term, and regularly led to fines from proctors.

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Cherwell has reported on disciplinary offences related to trashings since the 1980s. A news piece in the final edition of Trinity term 1986 said that all students had been sent an official letter from the Proctors “threatening arrest for those who persisted in holding post-Finals celebrations on the High Street”, after the Thames Valley Police said that charges of obstruction and littering would be brought against them.

The then-Junior Proctor, Dr Paul Slack, said: “Twenty years ago, when I was a student, none of this went on. We used to retire quietly to our rooms to drink champagne. The whole matter has got out of hand.”

Similarly, archive photographs show that students have been using silly string and fizzy wine for over 30 years, although the use of shaving foam is more recent.

The word “trashing” has been used since the early 1990s, and in 1996, the proctors described the concept as a “perennial problem”. They said: “it can be offensive and dangerous, and it does the University’s name no good. [The problem is] exacerbated nowadays by the example set by Formula One racing drivers and by television slapstick.”

In 2007, OUSU President Martin McCluskey urged students to tighten their privacy settings on Facebook, after it emerged that proctors had been using social media to identify who had been involved in trashings.

That year, the proctors fined students over £10,000 in trashing-related offences, more than five times the total that had been raised in all fines in the previous proctorial year.

The following year, Oxford pubs banned trashed students from entering the premises, while the Kings Arms banned any student wearing a gown during exam season.

In 2011, the proctors sent an email to all students reminding them that certain substances were “a disgrace, and potentially dangerous”. They said: “No flour, no eggs, no beans, ketchup, let alone rotting food or worse. Rotting food, vomit, broken glass and other items causing litter are simply not what any of us wants to see. They are a disgrace and potentially dangerous.”

The same year, one student was fined £80 for throwing a trifle at a finalist.

Are trashings worth the 25k cost? 

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In 2012, there were allegations that two members of staff were assaulted outside of Examination Schools by a celebrating finalist, although Thames Valley Police claimed the men “were not injured”.

In 2014, a now-defunct website called trashing.me for trashing supplies was set up. A member of the team said: “[Trashing] is a unique thing about Oxford which makes it particularly special: I do not know of any other universities where people come to see their friends when they finish their exams. Trashing marks the end of your degree, and the beginning of summer and real life – and as such, is a symbolic and integral part of Oxford life.

Last summer, Christ Church Meadow was shut in order to prevent students from trashing each other there. A notice on the gates of the main entrance said: “For the next six weeks, while examinations take place, Merton Gate and Rose Lane Gate will be closed for three hours or so twice a day to prevent undergraduates from ‘trashing’ in Christ Church Meadow, which creates an appalling mess.

“Students have also been causing a nuisance and putting the safety of members of public at risk, hence we are taking this measure to ensure that the Meadow remains a quiet place for people to enjoy.

“We are also liaising with security services of the University of Oxford and the proctor’s office. We apologise for the inconvenience this temporary gate closure will cause members of the public.”

There is still power in a union – but it erodes with our apathy

Greg Ritchie
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There is still power in a union – but it erodes with our apathy

After weeks of chanting on Broad Street, picket lines outside libraries, and countless missed lectures, the strikes are at last over. UCU members have voted ‘Yes’ to the creation of a “joint expert panel”, with the stated aim of sorting out this whole mess. And in good time, too, what with exams around the corner. Hurrah for worker solidarity!

Or perhaps too soon. For this ballot has divided a union, and the deal it produced may still unravel. As is often the case, the left and dispossessed scream a lot louder at branch meetings (and on Twitter) than the silent majority. In these arenas, support for a ‘No’ vote was sometimes deafening, with over 20 union branches and countless hashtags calling on members to reject the deal.

The fact that they were emphatically defeated in the ballot has led to outrage similar to that of the ‘45%’ in Scotland, or the ‘Remoaners’ over Brexit – made all the more venomous by the UCU leadership’s undisguised campaigning for a ‘Yes’ vote. For some militant members of the ‘No’ caucus, this was class betrayal – comfortable, older academics selling out the young workers whom these reforms will hit hardest. This is almost certainly unfair. Both sides of the ballot had clear flaws. But if, as many speculate, the universities possessed the foresight to push for a ballot in order to divide their striking staff, then their strategy looks to be paying off.

Wider divides within the higher education section, and in particular between management and rank-and-file academics, have also become apparent. In Oxford, both the University and six of its colleges pushed for changes to the pension pot, without proper consultation of the staff it would affect. Here, and across the country, it has taken months to expose the details of how an agenda for change was pushed through under the radar by closed committees, hand-picked working groups, and flawed surveys. By this stage, despite the theatric efforts of our Congregation members, much of the damage had already been done.

And, of course, there is the student-staff divide. While picket lines were well-attended by student activists, anyone who actually goes here knows that they are an oft-derided minority. Far more have reacted to the strikes with annoyance at the inconvenience ladened on them. More still have met them only with apathy. It is these divides, and this apathy, which threatens the power of a union in modern society – especially at a time when the government is making it far harder to unionise effectively in the first place.

This isn’t just bad news for our striking lecturers. Even if, like me, you don’t plan to go into academia, the conclusions of this dispute will have far wider impacts. The Universities Superannuation Scheme is the largest private pension pot in the UK. It is just one of a number of large British pension schemes that has undergone, is undergoing, or will almost certainly undergo holistic reforms aimed at ensuring ‘less risk’.

All of this is happening at the same time as the shift towards hyper-competitive workplaces, where co-workers are compared and chastised by highly questionable ‘quality metrics’. At same time as the normalisation of toxic work cultures, which sacrifice any semblance of a work-life balance for round-the-clock stress and a box flat in Hackney. And, of course, all of this at the same time as the swift march towards automation, and with it – if not managed appropriately – the accompanying decimation of people’s working lives.

In short, the results that will come out of this dispute are part of a wider narrative. Yes, it’s about universities, and of course it’s about pensions. But it’s also about the future of work – a burden our generation will have to carry. 

Not that I should need to appeal to enlightened self-interest to compel continued support for our lecturers. Frankly, if university staff – whom we talk to, work alongside, and brush shoulders with on a daily basis – feel that their livelihood is being put at stake, then plain human decency should be enough to provoke empathy. But sometimes it’s worth reminding ourselves that, even if we’re not on the chopping block ourselves, the chances are we will be sooner or later. And who will stand with us then?

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