Tuesday 7th October 2025
Blog Page 754

Café circuit: Taylor’s

Ticiana Alencar
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Café circuit: Taylor’s

Picture this– you’re in the library; your eyes are struggling to stay open; you’re craving some comfort food; it’s probably raining outside (or snowing #March2018).

There is only one thing that can save me from this reoccurring nightmare and that is Taylor’s. Any Oxford student well-acquainted with the local eateries is no stranger to this independent, family-owned sandwich and deli company.

With six branches across Oxford, Taylor’s is practically the cafe-equivalent of the dreaming spires – an iconic feature of the city landscape.

Not only are their sandwiches delicious – whether you choose a ready made flatbread or you build your own – but their branches even give you the option of building your own salad box if you fancy a lighter option.

They always have a mouth-watering range of desserts on display, often triggering a swift reversal of the half-hearted attempt to be healthy with ‘only a salad box.’

The best branches of Taylor’s, however, are the ones that include Fasta Pasta and their Covered Market shop is a personal favourite for this. You can choose whether you prefer penne or fusilli and then choose the sauce that you want to go with it– from pesto to arrabbiata to bolognaise.

Ask for them to add (lots of) cheese, and soon you’ll have a warm takeaway pot of your personalised pasta. The absolutely perfect way to cheer you up during those essay crises or out-of-season snowstorms.

Yet what really keeps me coming back to Taylor’s is buying a hot drink after 14.00, any day of the week. If you’re as addicted to coffee as I am, this is the perfect way to get a quick caffeine top-up to return to the library– mostly because it is from this time that you get a free cookie to go with it. If you’re lucky enough to coincide with a warm cookie, you will experience the truly best kind of library break to cheer you up from any stressful moment in your Oxford career.

St Antony’s ‘eugenics’ debate cancelled amid backlash

Emily Lawford and Isabel Morris
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St Antony’s ‘eugenics’ debate cancelled amid backlash

St Antony’s Debate Society cancelled their first debate under heavy criticism from Facebook users over their proposed debate topic: “this house believes eugenics is the way forward.”

Society members cancelled the event, which was scheduled for Thursday night, six hours after posting about it on the Graduates’ Common Room Facebook page. They apologised for any offence that the suggested topic had caused, saying that it was “obviously poorly thought through and worded” and that any potential offence was “not at all the intention of the debate.”

The original event post was subsequently deleted.

An angry comment on the society’s post read: “As a long-term debater, I can say that a topic like this is not normal and is being utilized to mask obviously problematic realities in pseudo-intellectualism.

“I’m a carrier of genetic diseases that I would love to get rid of, and have a host of disabilities. Eugenics is defined as ‘the science of improving a population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics.’

“Fuck off with your controlled breeding.”

Another comment read: “If you really want to host an open and honest dialogue about this subject, at the very least, I would think you would introduce it as a topic later in term, rather than at the first meeting of the society.

“As it is, it just seems like some kind of promotional stunt designed to draw publicity through controversy, rather than an earnest attempt to discuss this topic.”

The society originally defended their choice of topic, responding to early complaints with comments such as: “We, at the Debate Society, believe in a certain type of freedom of speech which would allow you to take on this question seriously or not!”

“It’s a very uncomfortable topic, but that’s what clubs do – it’s standard practice to have to take on a position that you don’t necessarily agree (at all) with and argue it. It’s not like Antony’s is stating an official position based on the outcome or anything, it’s just a tool for people to sharpen their debate skills on.”

In response, other comments read: “The first meeting should really be on freedoms of speech since y’all clearly don’t have a grasp on the history of its oppressive and violent use, as well as nuance.

“An Oxford crowd that doesn’t know the difference between genetic engineering (literal, genes) and eugenics (really just genocide and ethnic cleansing apologism) is on a slippery slope for people using science as justification for their barbarism.

“But carry on for what looks, at best, like a dick measuring contest for entitled ‘intellectuals’.”

The Pitt Rivers must face its dark past

Bertie Harrison-Broninski
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The Pitt Rivers must face its dark past

As a student or tourist in Oxford, you are likely to visit the famous Pitt Rivers Museum. You will be awed by the ‘period atmosphere’ as you enter the court. Almost cathedral-like, it is stunning, while also slightly intimidating. As you wander round, you will notice that the artefacts are sorted under labels such as ‘The Human Figure in Art’ or ‘Charms for Animals’. This is a signature feature of the museum: curation by ‘type’ rather than geographical, historical or cultural context. It dates back to the founder’s desire to demonstrate “connection of form” in “the arts and implements of modern savages”. You might notice children congregating and gawking at the famous tsantsas (shrunken heads). You might wonder at the hand-written labels for certain objects – some dating back as far as the 1890s. You might, at the end of all this, be left with questions.

Sorting by type is interesting, but it deprives the museum displays of much contextual information. When they do have themed displays, the signs often lack any postcolonial narrative – there’s one about opium in China without mention of British involvement or the Opium Wars. A sign by a large Blunderbuss says the “East India Company had a considerable need for arms… its valuable goods needed protecting”. The emphasis on ‘need’ assumes the righteousness of the British. There is an implication that British goods were under threat of being stolen by Indians, when arguably the Blunderbusses were used for quite the opposite.

More importantly, there’s the question of whether colonially-acquired and sometimes culturally sensitive items should even be on display. World famous, with the largest collection of archaeological and anthropological items in the country, what message about Empire does the museum project to children, students, tourists from all around the world?
Oxford is undergoing a day of reckoning with its colonial heritage and public perception in this way. Recent years have seen the birth and growth of campaigns such as ‘Rhodes Must Fall’, and ‘Why is my curriculum white?’. There is now an active conversation around decolonising physical spaces and syllabi at Oxford – the Pitt Rivers is one of the most obvious of such spaces.

Common Ground, a movement “protesting the structural legacy of Empire at the University of Oxford” have been major players in the decolonisation discussion. Museum representatives spoke at their panel on Rhodes and decolonisation last year, and they are partnering with the museum on a project called ‘Oxford and Colonialism’. Common Ground told Cherwell: “The Pitt Rivers Museum is an imperial institution, as a matter of historical as well as contemporary fact. It was set up to archive artefacts gathered under imperial conditions. We do not think enough has been done to highlight to visitors where the placement of objects is objectionable to Indigenous and other colonised peoples. Inaccuracies in descriptions remain uncorrected. Many of the displays jumble together objects from very different locations and periods. It is therefore hard to say that the Museum serves a positive educational purpose. We welcome long overdue repatriation efforts. But a fuller reckoning with objects on display, how they are arranged, and how they are described remains urgent.”

Common Ground are right in asserting that little has been done in highlighting these issues within the collection, a by-product, perhaps, of its traditional atmosphere. Unlike the aims of ‘Rhodes Must Fall’, however, this statement doesn’t advocate removal or closure. The idea that “not enough has been done” and the need for a “fuller reckoning” suggest the possibility of a positive role for the Museum. I spoke with Dr. Laura Van Broekhoven, the museum’s director, to hear about how the museum is reckoning with its space and history. Can it be decolonised?

Pitt Rivers museum. Photographed by Isaac Pockney

Dr. Van Broekhoven says she started her directorship “with an agenda of decolonising”, when “Rhodes Must Fall was still at its height, and the museum had been tweeted about as ‘One of the most violent spaces in Oxford’”. New to Oxford, she was surprised that the University “did not always seem sure of how to engage with the conversation”, despite decolonisation movements going on in many parts of Europe and the US at the time.

It’s true that Oxford hasn’t handled engagement with colonialism well in the past few years. Professor Nigel Biggar recently received criticism for writing an article in The Times entitled ‘Don’t feel guilty about our colonial history’ and then announcing a five-year project at the McDonald Centre called ‘Ethics and Empire’, exploring in part “the positive case for colonialism”. A letter in opposition was signed by 58 Oxford academics.

Oxford as an institution is often at odds with the majority of its own academic community. If so many scholars of empire discredit Biggar’s views, why is he spearheading this project, housed at Christ Church? A chief concern expressed in the letter was that Biggar’s work risks “being misconstrued as representative of Oxford scholarship”.

A sign upon entrance to the Pitt Rivers states “The museum may look old, but its staff are doing some very up-to-date things with the collections!”. For visitors though, this “very-up-to-date” work is not what represents the institution. I ask Dr. Van Broekhoven about her priorities, in terms of work done within the public museum space and behind-the-scenes research and projects. She says “The museum has been doing some very exciting cutting-edge work at the back-end side working with Indigenous Peoples, LGBTQ+, Refugee and other stakeholder communities. Our teaching and publications are highly critical and incorporate post-colonial thinking.” Just like the ‘Ethics and Empire’ case, it seems there is an imbalance: progressive academic work in the background, with the public getting a different picture. Translating this work into the main galleries, the director says, “is our main challenge currently.”

In terms of the curation style, or “jumbling together of objects from very different locations and periods”, Dr. Van Broekhoven says: “I have not had people complain about objects being arranged by type. People generally seem to be glad they are not just confined to adhered geographical or chronological identities.

“In some cases, like with the Ka’apor, who I worked with when I was still in the Netherlands, they see the objects we had on display as ambassadors, that speak to people across the globe of their existence. They felt that here at least they were not being silenced, erased. Here they were represented.”

It seems as thought this curative style is popular with the public too. At the time of writing this, on TripAdvisor, the museum is rated as the seventh best thing to do in Oxford, with 94% of reviews having four or five stars. One reviewer (from the UK, as most of the reviewers are) states that there is “lots of spooky stuff to look at”. Is the museum popular for the right reasons, or does it promote a circus-like fascination with the ‘spooky’, with otherness? Is the museum’s messaging still trapped within its 19th century origins? I refer back to General Pitt-Rivers’ original intentions with the collection and ask Dr. Van Broekhoven if she thinks the curation risks homogenising non-European cultures as those of ‘savages’:

“The objectives of the collection as described at end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century were highly problematic and I cannot but stress this enough. It is a misconception though, that the museum has not changed, and that it excludes European cultures. Approximately 90,000 objects are from Europe (a fifth of the collection) of which nearly 50,000 from the UK.

“We need to do more research into our (unconscious) messaging. I notice people, at times, don’t even see the nuances we bring into the displays (such as corsets, breast implants, braces) but focus on the things they expect to see as exotic in the very same case: Chinese shoes, neck-rings, etc. We need to carefully consider how we represent, how we avoid cognitive dissonance. We consciously do not try to homogenise, we want to present the different solutions people have found to solve common problems. The question is, do we succeed? For some, we do. Others seem to find the displays proof of otherness.”

Whether the displays do encourage this view, or people just look to confirm preconceptions, this affirmation of otherness needs combatting by the museum. Modernising their public image as well as the collection is important: if people expect to see ‘spooky’, they will. Many likely see the Pitt Rivers as a strange colonial-era museum in elitist, antiquated Oxford. Even if these reputations are undeserving, Oxford and the museum should proactively attempt to improve them.

Dr. Van Broekhoven says “Part of our strategic plan is to do an ethical review of the museum displays and we need to be more explicit in how we talk about colonial violence.

“We have made a list of the cases we feel need urgent attention and will be working with critical friends and stakeholders to think with us along these lines. Some cases we are conscious of ourselves: those with looted objects, with human remains on display. Others include objects considered sacred or secret by Indigenous Peoples for example.”

Working with Indigenous Peoples and underrepresented communities is key to making the museum an inclusive space going forward – the director says it’s unacceptable that the museum “does not feel like a welcoming space for some”. She gives numerous examples of communities they are in (or have had) dialogue with, and states that “we have several requests for repatriation that we are working on.” The “urgent attention” sounds promising but I am not given any concrete time-scales. While agreeing with Common Ground that repatriation requests are “long overdue”, Dr. Van Broekhoven stresses that “Each one is complex, time-consuming and we need to consider very carefully what to do.”

The First Peoples’ Collective is a collective of former and current Indigenous students in Oxford. I spoke to two of their members. Sarah Bourke (DPhil student in Anthropology, St John’s) says that more work is needed:

“The museum needs to work towards reducing the power imbalance between themselves and source communities. This is one of the most important steps in decolonising these kinds of spaces. At the moment they are deciding what the conversation is, and how it is taking place at the museum. More needs to be done to give communities decision-making power over what happens to objects and the conversations taking place at the museum.”

Jessyca Hutchens (DPhil student in Art Theory, Balliol) acknowledges “promising actions such as the recent acquisition of Christian Thompson’s work” but similarly states that “much deeper structural changes are needed, beyond contextualisation and artistic response, that are centred around far more proactive engagement with all source communities to determine how and whether objects should be displayed, cared for, or kept by the museum at all.”

Hutchens also argues for “much more critical contextualisation of the collections”, and not just the signs in the museum – but online too. “To take an obvious example, at present there is next to nothing that reflects upon colonial histories or power asymmetries on the introductory pages of the museum website.”

I ask Dr. Van Broekhoven about the concept of Mahnmal, (monuments of shame and warn- ing against colonial violence), mentioned by Professor Dan Hicks at Common Ground’s panel last year. Should the museum become a Mahnmal?

She says that while certain cases “might very well be re-shaped into Mahnmals”, the museum itself should not be reduced to just “a product of colonial violence. It would not do justice to its past or present, wouldn’t help reinterpret it, and would erase the agency of many individuals on both sides of the story.

“I would like to learn from the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the National Museum of the American Indian on how we can be spaces for redress, learning and re-shaping relations. “We have much work cut out for us.”

Earlier this very month the Pitt Rivers held a conference on museum decolonisation, attended by over 100 practitioners, academics, artists, and students. Organiser Faye Belsey says that the two days of presentations revolved around having “more honest and open dialogue with our audiences about the troubled and complex histories of museum spaces and collections. The conference provided a very thought provoking and stimulating discussion and contributed greatly to enabling and further- ing the decolonisation process in Oxford and beyond.”

With museum directors, academics, advocacy groups and students all agreeing in principle, decolonisation seems more a matter of execution than persuasion at this stage. This is promising. The Pitt Rivers now needs to follow other museums in making it a reality. Dr. Van Broekhoven reiterates that decolonisation’s a long process, not a single action. She says that Wayne Modest, a friend and colleague from the Netherlands, compared museums to elephants: “To change an elephant’s course, huge effort is required, nudging, pulling, and still change may never come. “Maybe Oxford is like an elephant too…”

Perhaps its course has changed, and we are just yet to see it. Until then though, let’s all keep pulling.

‘Black Men Walking’ – Review

Franklin Nelson
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‘Black Men Walking’ – Review

“Revolution Mix is about doing, not talking. When the subject of ‘Diversity’ comes up, people gather in rooms and talk. If you sit in that room, you will hear more reasons why things can’t change, than why the can. But there is no question that there is an appetite for change. Revolution Mix is what we are all going to do.” These are the words of Dawn Walton, Artistic Director of Eclipse Theatre. Revolution Mix is a three-year theatre project seeking to bring to the fore new stories about Black British experience, ones that go beyond stereotypical narratives of slavery, immigration and youth violent crime, written and performed by black writers and actors. Black Men Walking, written by the rapper Testament, is the first such play to be commissioned as part of the project, taking inspiration from a real-life black men’s walking group in Yorkshire.

In Black Men Walking, we encounter three black men, whose life experiences collide to make for comic, and sometimes tense, exchanges. Thomas, Richard and Matthew, played by Tyrone Higgins, Tonderai Munyevu and Trevor Laird respectively, form a dynamic trio, joshing each other but, at crucial points, taking care of one another too. Laird is convincing as a man torn between two ways of thinking in relation to race. We understand that, though in love with his wife, the Matthew struggles to reconcile her view of the continued discussion of race as an obstacle to social progress with his own lived experience of blackness.

Munyevu provides frequent comic relief, interspersed with personal reflections on life and loss. Higgins’s portrayal of an initially defeated man is compelling, whilst Dorcas Sebuyange shines as Ayeesha, a teenager who aspires to be a rapper, whose perspective on life comes into conflict, with those of the other characters. The most vivid scenes are those in which all four are onstage, in which physical theatre and vocal power combine to produce captivating drama. Testament’s deft handling of prose and rap complement these scenes. Ayeesha’s two monologues particularly linger in the mind, both delivered with flair. Besides this, the playwright deserves credit for mining the richness of Black British and diasporic history, casting his characters, indeed spectators, as the inheritors of an enduring contribution to the social, political, economic and cultural landscapes of this country.

Beyond the arresting power of words, Testament alludes to more serious and sombre themes: the under-discussed issue of mental health in society at large, but especially in ethnic minority communities – what it means to be a man, our complex attachments to people and to places, and the ever-increasing role of technology in our lives. Such complex fault lines in our identities are arguably visible in Simon Kenny’s and Lee Curran’s set and light design.

It is simply not possible to see this play in the same light given the recent scandal over the rights of those who came to Britain as part of the “Windrush Generation” to remain in this country. Thomas’ question sums up the scandal perfectly: “How long do we have to be here to be English?”. Not only do affirmations such as “this land is ours” and “our history [is] worked into the earth” resonate even more so now that we know how terribly some British citizens have been treated, they also imbue the act of walking with fresh, and political, charge.

An exuberant meditation on nature, belonging and blackness, Black Men Walking is a great success. Dawn Walton, her cast and crew should be commended for their efforts. From the Yorkshire Moors, where will “Revolution Mix” take us next?

Lysistrata Review – ‘some over-directing vitiates a few performances’

Katie Sayer
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Lysistrata Review – ‘some over-directing vitiates a few performances’

Lysistrata, Aristophanes’ ancient comedy, is a glorious celebration of female power based on an unusual premise – the women of Athens, in protest against the ongoing Peloponnesian War, withhold sexual privileges from their husbands until peace is declared. Infused with gender politics and phallic jokes, in the right hands, Lysistrata can be hilarious. It is a shame that some opportunities are missed in Oriel Classics Society’s version.

There are many aspects of the production that are outstanding, and these should not be understated. The set design is beautiful and intricate, especially for a garden play, consisting of a graffiti board infusing mosaic, glitter, and a drawing that is both vaginal and phallic in a way that I have never before seen. It is brought to life by the character of Oriel’s third quad, and the atmosphere is created by some beautiful original music, for which Henry Deacy, Callista McLaughlin and Lauren Hill should be praised. The use of a chorus, singing in the original Ancient Greek, is also an inspired decision – the beauty of the language, and the tone set by the choral interludes, greatly complements the story, and goes some way to transport us back to the original style of the comedy (originally performed in 411BC).

However, the performance of the play itself was disappointing. Comedy, according to performance psychologists, lies in the gap between expectation and reality. In Aristophanes’ script, this is manifest in the continual use of innuendo, with abundant phallic imagery. The comedy is that the sexual references are explicit, but still function as double entendres – the conversation can still be between two statesmen, completely sincere in their diplomatic discussion, but continually alluding to sexual frustration. Here, almost every innuendo is accompanied by the thrusting of a giant colourful strap-on, which every male character sports. The props themselves are at first amusing, but soon grow old when used as the accent for nearly every phallic reference. There are only so many times that thrusting a dildo can be funny. It is a shame that this detracts from the comedy of the script, but some excellent comic performances do redeem it in places. Jonny Adams is especially good as Myrrhine, nailing the coy and ostensible naievete in the scene where she taunts her sexually frustrated husband with the promise of intercourse. Similarly, Phoebe Mallinson is convincingly earnest as Lysistrata, the title character, who rallies the other women to victory. Indeed, the cast are clearly incredibly talented, but some over-directing vitiates a few performances, which are too exaggerated in unnecessary places. Comedy is more often in understatement than in superlation.

Although the atmosphere was aesthetically very inviting, we had to wait 15 minutes before the play began, and even then, thanks to some abridgement, it was over within half an hour. Admittedly, it is a very short play, but given that, one wonders why any abridgement at all was necessary.The opening scene, in which Lysistrata convinces the other women to abjure sexual relations, is completely removed, beginning instead with their vow of chastity, for a reason that is completely unclear to me. If it is to try and give the play a more feminist stance, there are other ways this can have been achieved without cutting nearly 20% of it.

I went in with very high hopes for Lysistrata, a hilarious play, looking to be in experienced hands. Some aspects of the production were excellent – especially the set design and the original music, which was beautifully played. Indeed, some elements of the play, especially the more explicitly classical ones, were really something special – the chorus of singers performing in Ancient Greek was outstanding. In substance, though, the play was disappointing. The comedy of the script was ruined by exaggeration, and it should not have been the case that one of the loudest laughs came from ABBA being played at the end.

Oxford students to sue University over strikes

Oscar Baker
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Oxford students to sue University over strikes

Oxford students are among a group taking substantial collective legal action suing UK universities for financial compensation after teaching time was lost due to recent UCU strike action.

Cherwell understands that 17 current Oxford students will make up part of the class action, which has the support of over 1,000 students from universities across the UK.

The law firm leading the litigation, Asserson, has claimed universities could pay up to £10m each in compensation over the UCU staff strike.

Oxford SU has criticised the action for its “consumer rights” approach.

One postgraduate student, who is taking part in the action, said they felt financial loss “particularly acutely”, in addition to “the loss of education and instructional time.”

The student, who is on a one year Masters programme, told Cherwell: “I took out a tremendous loan to attend Oxford this year…this was my one chance to receive the teaching of the experts from whom I came here to learn.

“As a result of the strike, I lost three of eight lectures for two courses. Feedback on assignments done during the term was delayed which then affected my progress on the the final paper.”

They added: “I understand why the professors decided to strike and I support their ability to stand up for their rights.”

A spokesperson for Oxford SU told Cherwell: “We appreciate the frustrations raised by students, due to strikes forced by UUK and university management.

“We believe, however, in the right to a free and accessible education, in accordance with SU policy, rather than the “consumer rights” approach on which this case predicates itself.”

Former Oxford University Labour Club Co-Chair and undergraduate finalist, Hannah Taylor, told Cherwell: “The marketisation of education is damaging to us all. Seeking compensation is thus not the most helpful thing to be doing to combat it.

“Our lecturers have lost pay by going on strike don’t forget, so we need to continue our support for their cause.

“Staff were out on the marches with us when we called for free education and students were out on their picket lines during the UCU strikes.

“Solidarity is key and should be central to any form of action. We are stronger united than we are divided.”

However, one of the Oxford students who has signed up, told Cherwell: “I honestly think the action might positively affect the student-staff solidarity.

“Throughout the strike, my fellow students were encouraged by striking professors to reach out to the administration regarding concerns such as the loss of tuition value/teaching time as a way of pressuring the administration to return to negotiations.”

More than 100,000 students across the country have already signed petitions protesting against the loss of lectures and other classes they have paid for through tuition fees.

Achieving 1,000 sign-ups means the collection action now has a sufficient number of students to apply for a Group Litigation Order. Asserson have confirmed that the University of Kent has the most students signed up overall to the action, making up 13% of those signing up to sue.

Students from Cambridge, Manchester, Bristol and Nottingham have also joined the action. 27% of sign-ups are “overseas students.”

Asserson also founded a website for students interested in reclaiming part of their tuition fees. Asserson aim to have actin committees in universities to inform people about the class claim.

A senior solicitor at Asserson, Shimon Goldwater, told Cherwell:: “You quickly realise there’s millions of pounds of damage here potentially, and universities won’t pay out millions of pounds on the basis of a few petitions, or letters, or dare I say even sit-ins and protests and all the other means by which students normally try to change their University’s view about something.”

Goldwater also said: “No other service provider would get away with charging for 25 weeks of a service and cutting that to 22 with no price reduction.

“There is no question that universities owe students fair compensation.”

He added: “With the UCU estimating in March that strike action affected a million students, with the loss of 575,000 teaching hours that will not be rescheduled, we’re expecting a surge of sign ups over the coming weeks.

“This is already one of the largest student group legal actions ever to have been launched in the UK.”

“If the class action is accepted, universities would pay out millions of pounds. Over 20,000 undergraduates attend each large UK university. Paying approximately £500 compensation each to 20,000 students would cost £10 million.”

Lawyers for those seeking compensation also claimed that universities have saved millions of pounds by withholding salaries for striking staff, and that no university has offered to pay any saved money directly to students affected by the strikes.

“Many students do not view this as acceptable,” they argued.

A spokesperson for the University of Oxford told Cherwell: “The University will not benefit from any monies accrued through this strike action.

“Any deductions from striking staff will be put to use for the benefit of students.”

The University did not clarify whether compensation for students has been discussed or suggested among university bosses.

Acting President of Oxford UCU, Terry Hoad, told Cherwell: “It is entirely understandable that the commodification of education represented by the tuition fees regime should have led to this kind of response to the recent strike action.

“We are grateful that students have supported our action in defence of decent pensions for university staff, and know that they share our view that the long-term effects for our universities if staff salaries and pensions are allowed to deteriorate will be even more damaging than the immediate impact the strikes will have had on students’ work.

“We are at one with students in wanting to secure the best circumstances for all who are engaged in and contributing to the processes of learning and research in our own outstanding university and in the country’s Higher Education system as a whole.”

Cherwell understands that the class action claim would likely be for a breach of contract. While some universities exclude liability for loss caused by strike action in their agreements with students, Asserson considers that these exclusion clauses could be voided under the Consumer Rights Act (2015).

Asserson will also consider a complaint to the Independent Adjudicator, as well as seeking to add several thousand more students to the group action.

By signing up on the dedicated website, students are instructing Asserson to act for them. Any decisions regarding the settlement of claims will be taken by the whole group attending the relevant university, the law firm says.

The Union’s celebration of diversity hides our true divides

Alexander Curtis
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The Union’s celebration of diversity hides our true divides

Trinity term cards are typically difficult to put together at the Oxford Union. The Easter vac doesn’t provide much time to recruit big name speakers, and the summer months are often amongst the busiest for speakers. This Trinity attention has focused on the record percentage of ‘International’ speakers.

However, when we look through the content of Union press releases and begin to think about the merits of a particularly ‘International’ offering, it is clear that criticism should be given. Last week, Union President, Gui Cavalcanti told Cherwell that since the founding of the society in 1823 our world has become, “substantially more interconnected, closing the gaps between us at an unprecedented rate”. The number of connections has undoubtedly increased, yes, but for whom? Aviation, television, and social media have all been utilised less by the world’s poor.

Aside from accessibility, we should consider the impacts of technology too. Are we all now closer together than ever before due to technological development? I am unconvinced. The world is more divided now than it has been at any time since the end of the Cold War. Rifts between countries are significant, yes, but divisions within countries is probably even more so – one only has to look at the UK or US to see this.

Obsession over the material has probably never been higher at a global level. New technology has made people closer to others to a far lesser extent than it has made people closer to objects.

Representations of other cultures and peoples within media are often significantly distorted in order to provoke particular emotional responses, often for commercial ends. New technology has allowed for a worryingly rapid dissemination of such representations, giving many a false sense of understanding of the world around them. The gaps between us are clearly not being closed. Despite the fact that, thanks to the capitalism of the last century, our world is now wealthier and more productive than at any point before in its history, inequalities of both income and wealth have perhaps never been greater. What many have termed the increased inter-connectedness of the modern world in many ways represents increased division within it.

This is in spite of the ability of multi-national corporations and new technology to seemingly homogenise our world. Cultural diversity is celebrated by the inventors of social media, even though their technology is in many ways destroying it.

However, levels of division (and feelings that promote it) are greater than they have been for a long time, and if recent years provide anything of a precedent, are only set to increase further.

In summary, the Union’s celebration of the number of non-UK speakers this term is somewhat misguided. Increased inter-connectedness amongst the world’s privileged classes must not be interpreted as increased inter-connectedness amongst us all.

‘Reversed’: An interview with Lois Letchford

Kurien Parel
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‘Reversed’: An interview with Lois Letchford

Lois Letchford’s memoir ‘Reversed’ follows her son Nicholas’ struggles with learning disabilities and the education system.

Nicholas Letchford completed his Doctorate in mathematics last year from Oxford University having been diagnosed with severe learning disabilities as a child.

To delve deeper into the issues raised by the book, Kurien Parel interviewed Lois, speaking to her about why she decided to write the book, and how she thinks the education system could be reformed to help students with learning difficulties.

KP: I spoke to Nicholas a few days ago and he told me he has only read bits of the book. He said he didn’t want to read it all because he was afraid it would bring back some painful memories.

LL: His comment to me was ‘I don’t want to read it, I lived it’.

KP: I understand Nicholas still has some difficulties. What exactly is his disorder?

LL: Today, they would call it Developmental Language Disorder. Nicholas was very slow with processing information. By the time he worked out that the teacher had spoken and has given an instruction, he was lost. Because people judge others on how they speak, the implications in the classroom are horrendous. People would think he is dumb. To me he is  now very articulate; yes, he is still slow with listening and he takes time to respond. But when he was a child, if he didn’t hear the first word or second word in a sentence, he would withdraw, and it would look like he was dumb.      

KP: So he takes time to understand what people are saying. He also mentioned he had dyslexia and some difficulty with writing. 

LL: Yes, it affected his listening and processing of information, and subsequently reading, writing and interaction with other children. It’s like dyslexia, only worse. Nicholas said he expected every word to represent a picture and only one picture. When you think like that, reading becomes very difficult because reading doesn’t work like that at all. 

KP:   Why did you write this book?

LL: Nicholas’ story should always have been told. Even if it was just a story of him going from non-reading to reading, it would have been a great story. Then he went from non-reading to the top of the school. That was a better story. And it goes on. He gets two honours degrees, and then he got a PhD from Oxford University. The story just got better and better. I wanted to tell this story, one because it was a good story, but also because it is a Helen Keller story. We must teach these children to read because we don’t know what is in their brains. 

KP: In the book you talk about a few of your students, in the USA. You lament how despite being in school for several years they can barely read a few words. Obviously, something is wrong.  What do you think is the problem with the education system and what should be done to reform the system?

LL: Do you know what I am finding? A lot of the problem is with the teacher’s mindset. Some say, ‘That child is just dumb. I tried this and that and the student couldn’t do it.” Some of them never say, ‘What do I, as a teacher, have to do to engage this child?’ 

Teachers often do not have enough knowledge of reading education – how to teach reading – partly because majority of children learn to read with ease. You only need this knowledge when you come across children who struggle. When a child struggles, it is easier to blame the child than to work out what the teacher could do differently. 

However, instead of pointing out the teacher is not doing their job, the question for principals and educators should be, ‘What can we do to support the teacher so the child can learn to read?’. Make it more collaborative and less accusatory. I don’t want to use the word accountable. I want to say when children are failing, let us have a discussion. Let’s work out what we as a school have to do to help this child rather than write him or her off.  See what we can do in a supportive environment for everyone. If we say you are accountable, it is almost saying you haven’t done the job. We want to keep teachers on our side, so they gain greater knowledge and teach more children to read. 

There are simple questions to ask: is the child being taught in a small group or in a big class?  How often is the child being seen by a teacher? And if the child is still not making progress, they should ask what else can be done. My feeling is that if we can teach more effectively the child at the bottom, we will teach everyone more effectively. It’s not a strategy that works just for one child out of a hundred but a strategy that affects everyone. 

When I first taught Nicholas in Oxford, I tore my hair out. I was crying and I was blaming Nicholas. It was horrendous for both of us. When I changed the teaching, teaching became so exciting- finding ways around the problem. One thing I had in Oxford was time. I had time to reflect, write and think what else will I could do. We need to give teachers time. 

KP: When your family went to Oxford for 6 months when Nicholas was in 2nd grade, you home-schooled him.  You mention this 6 months as a key episode in Nicholas’ story. Why?

LL: If you take out that first 6 months in Oxford, I would not have seen Nicholas in the light that I saw him. I would have agreed with the school that the kid can’t do anything. I would have said I know he is really dumb. I needed that time to see him blossom, so I could come back to school and say you are wrong and we are going to teach him to read.

KP: And then when you came back to Australia, the school retested him and said his reading had become worse. That must have been a shock. How did you deal with that?

LL: Well that was a fascinating day. It was 24 hours that changed my life. The morning I walked into that diagnostician, I was excited. I was so pleased with what Nicholas and I had achieved in Oxford. Nicholas’ thinking was coming out. All that time Nicholas was excited about learning. I had turned teaching around–from him hating learning to loving it. And then the diagnostician comes out and says, ‘he is the worst child I’ve seen in 20 years of teaching’.  She devasted me. I went home and thought about it. I decided I didn’t care what she called him, and that he is going to learn to read. 

Then, that afternoon the teacher sent him home with those sight words, ‘I saw a cat climb up a tree’, and Nicholas is cutting the cat in half. I recognised the problem was with the teaching. Nicholas only looks for the concrete meaning in each word, and he took the word ‘saw’ to mean ‘to cut’. The teacher hasn’t recognised the difficulty he has with words with more than one meaning and is using the same exercises to teach him that she uses with everyone else. He gets confused and they say he is dumb.  

KP: Why do you think Nicholas scored lower on the tests after you home-schooled him?

LL: They would have measured him before he left Australia. They would have been teaching and testing letters and sounds as well as sight words. I had not focused on the test. I focused on the teaching. What was important for me was that these letters and sounds and the words stick. When he came back 6 months later and was given the same test, he scored lower, but what he learnt with me was glued to his inside and he was never going to forget it. I was teaching him about the world and learning. They were teaching him to the test. 

KP: It becomes quite apparent in the book that the memoir is as much about you as it is about Nicholas. You see yourself in his struggles, since you too had learning difficulties. Do you see yourself in some sense living vicariously through Nicholas?

LL: I think Nicholas’ achievements blow me away. He has just got better and better and I am proud of him. But I look at my life, and I see today students from low socioeconomic circumstances subjected to poor teaching, and we don’t do anything about it. I see Nicholas as very privileged to get where he is.  I am feeling for every child that is not privileged. What are we doing for them? Their parents are busy putting food on the table, like my parents were. The parents aren’t reading to them.  Well, the parents are surviving. The school has to do it. The school is responsible for education. I don’t think I am living through Nicholas. But I want to use his story to say privilege should not be a prerequisite to learning to read. 

KP: One of the key points the book made was the level of abuse children with learning disabilities endure from teachers and others. One striking example was Nicholas’ math teacher that ripped up his work and humiliated him, basically implying he was too stupid to take her class. What is your advice to parents and schools to prevent this? 

LL: I don’t think we can protect them from the rest of the world. This is another reason why Nicholas’ story is so important because I think people learn from stories. Let’s open people’s minds. Our family met in Australia in 2016 and I read this part of the story to Nicholas, and he was still affected by it, 13 years after it happened. How do we protect them? I don’t know. It was true Nicholas went into this brand-new school, into junior-high. He didn’t know a soul. It was period one, day one, when that happened.

KP: In your book you talk about teaching struggling students, who sometimes could be difficult. For instance one of your students, Amy, would at times act out. What’s your advice to teachers who work with such students?

LL: Amy was 5th or 6th grade when I picked her up. Her father was illiterate. I could see Amy as this little girl who had been just left out of the system. She was really quite articulate. This goes back to our attitude. Do we see a difficult child or a child that cannot read and is trying to cover her difficulties?  She was quite stubborn. I recognise often when students act out it is because they are frustrated. I give them a break.  It’s hard in the classroom. I was teaching in the ideal circumstances. I was teaching one on two, five days week, an hour a day. Saying that, that’s what they deserved and what they needed.  

KP: What are the aspects of reading these children struggle with which teachers often may not be aware? 

LL: There is a disconnect between the oral language and the written language. We expect if a child can speak it that they can read it, but they sometimes don’t. People who are highly literate don’t understand the level of difficulty children who struggle with language have. A researcher in Oxford in late 1980s pointed out that children have problems with pronouns, particularly children in the bottom half of the class. We are now in 2018 and teachers are not aware of this research. Teachers sometimes say, ‘look this is so easy, why don’t you get it’, and that makes it so much worse. For example, many children struggle with the word ‘it’ for which they don’t have a picture. If you ask some children what is ‘it’, they will answer ‘it is nothing’. Another disconnect is between reading and comprehension. Reading is thinking, not just reading the words, and that was the problem I had growing up. Because I had struggled with reading growing up, I am more attuned as to what is going wrong with reading, as opposed to someone who has flown through it.

KP: Going back to Nicholas, were you worried when he was pursuing his doctorate in Oxford? What’s your advice to parents of similar children when they go to University?

LL: One of the best things we did was we had his documentation up to date. So, when he had trouble passing his first year viva, we could get support from the disability office. That was huge. We are in a world where we can’t ask everyone around us to change. What we can do is to be as supportive as possible and to remind him he can do it. Keep believing in your child. Since Nicholas had difficulty remembering academic discussions, his elder brother advised him to record everything, take pictures of the board and to use modern technology so he can get back to it. This is now out of my hands. I am just a mother now. All I can be is a shoulder to cry on. 

KP: What is your advice to parents with children with learning disabilities?

LL: Believe in them. Follow their interests and advocate for them. Accept they may have a problem but insist on them learning to read. Don’t let teachers write off your children. Parents should ask their teachers, ‘what else do I have to do at home, to help?’ Audio books made the difference to Nicholas and helped him go from the bottom to the top, through the exposure to language. Now we have computers at every home. Use the technology to help them read and get back to grade level. Read my book, and get in touch with me!

Lois Letchford currently lives in Upstate New York and holds a Master’s Degree in literacy, specialising in teaching students with reading difficulties.

Fatal attraction: why we smoke

Fin Kavanagh
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Fatal attraction: why we smoke

I am not going to start by patronising you about the various dangers of smoking. Nor am I going to fearmonger you with a cheerful assortment of cancer statistics. As both non-smokers and smokers alike know (the latter thanks to the rest of us persistently reminding them), smoking is in fact bad for you. It makes your throat both look and feel like a half-used tin of Tate & Lyle Black Treacle. It makes your breath smell like your grandad’s unwashed curtains. And it leaves your breathing like an asthmatic pug.

I acknowledge all of this as a smoker of over three years. So why did it take me so long to quit? The honest, yet often unpalatable, truth is for many of us smoking can be a lot of fun. Before you gasp in horror, write a letter of complaint to the editor-in-chief, or go full Mumsnet in the comments section, let me offer an explanation.

I started smoking for the same reason almost all smokers do- to fit in. I was working a minimum wage job waiting on tables, alongside six Italian people, two Polish people and a Lithuanian person, all of whom smoked. Smoking can unite people.  It transcends class, cultural differences and language barriers. As anyone who has seen “The One Where Rachel Smokes” will know, smoke breaks also used to count for a lot in the working world. They were often where the best chats happen, where the best gossip was shared and where a lot of decisions were unofficially made- sadly for the service industry this is still a reality.

Why do we feel the need to smoke outside of the workplace then? One answer is we think it makes us look attractive. Truth be told, to many people it does. No number of NHS public health warnings can make the image of James Dean lighting up a Camel Blue not look cool. Smoking is still very much associated with the music industry, rebellion and our intellectual and artistic heroes.

Smokers themselves are often viewed as having an aloof, devil-may-care attitude towards life. For those who have grown up in households with curfews and bedtimes (not to mention strict warnings about the very dangers of smoking), this can seem new, rebellious and sexy. Hence why we want to try it for ourselves.

So what about those who neither smoke in the workplace, nor care about the image? Those left largely start off as social smokers. To them smoking offers a means of escape. It’s a way to excuse themselves from the wider company, to break from the main conversation and have a more intimate discussion. Smokers can bond over their bad habit. They know full well that those in their company cannot judge them or tell them what they already know. There’s a reason that the Bridge smoking area is almost as big as the club, people enjoy this form of socialising. The cigarette itself is often secondary to the smoking experience.

All of this might make it look like I’m a lobbyist for Big Tobacco– trust me, I’m not. None of the reasons I’ve outlined mean smoking good for us. Nearly a year on from being a regular smoker and I can still feel some of the impacts on my health, to the point at which I would never take up the habit again. If we are open about why we smoke however, we are more open to being convinced not to.

For every casual smoker comes a point when they realise it’s not just for pleasure, but it’s an addiction. To use another Friends analogy, you stop being the cautious, naïve Rachel and start to feel like the veteran Chandler. The novelty and thrill that it once brought you are lost. It becomes as mundane as doing the washing up or taking out the rubbish, just another commitment to fit into your already hectic day.

From here onwards you begin to see the act of smoking differently. You stop feeling like Mick Jagger or David Bowie and more like Deidre Barlow from Coronation Street. Social inclusion turns into social isolation. Smoking stops being an opportunity to leave the room and starts to be the reason why you leave the room. Your non-smoker friends tolerate it, but you can sense their disapproval and mild discomfort when you come back inside with breath stinking of fags. The self-confidence it once gave you is replaced with self-consciousness.

This is about the time the physical impacts also begin to emerge. Cue the trademark chesty cough and croaky voice. Run for the bus? No thanks, I’ll wait for the next one and save on the embarrassing wheezing and panting. You may not notice that your clothes and bedsheets carry the smell of the stale smoke, but everyone else does— and this smell with never, ever be sexy.

This point is a crossroads for any smoker. They either attempt to quit and undo the damage done or accept the rather uncomfortable truth that (probably for the first time in their lives) they are addicted to a substance. The reality is it’s often a lot easier to accept the latter than to commit to quitting.

To quit smoking, you must actively expose yourself to both physical and emotional pain. You willingly strip yourself of the source of comfort, stress relief and that feeling of completeness you now depend on cigarettes for. You have to deal with discomfort of your throat repairing itself, the mood swings from nicotine withdrawal and the overeating to compensate for the void left.  You have to force yourself to stay inside, while others go out for a smoke, and never know what they spoke about. You must accept the loss of what inadvertently became a part of your identity.

Life becomes healthier, though ultimately more boring. This is why we still smoke.

Review: The Da Vinci Code

Michael OConnor
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Review: The Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code begins with a glimpse of a painting. It is shown for only a moment before the camera shifts to Jacques Saunière and then tracks back to a blurry shot of his pursuer. We see Saunière desperately trying to pull ‘The Virgin of the Rocks’ off the wall. His pursuer catches up with him and shoots him from a few metres away. The next day Saunière is found dead, his arms and legs splayed out in imitation of Da Vinci’s Vitruvian man, and a message in blood scrawled on the floor. Jacques Saunière’s spectacular death sparks off a series of events, which result in Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of Symbology, discovering a worldwide conspiracy. Simply put, the idea is that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’s wife, that the Catholic church knows this, and that it is willing to kill in order to prevent this fact from becoming known.

Unsurprisingly, The Da Vinci Code was critically panned on release and vigorously denounced by religious groups for its historically unverifiable assertions. Yet it made $758 million at the box office and a survey commissioned by the Catholic church suggested that people were twice as likely to believe that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’s wife after viewing it. What exactly was so attractive about this semi-coherent, deliberately controversial thriller? One of our best-developed skills is the ability to recognize patterns then re-arrange them into narratives that fit all the facts together into a common frame. The Da Vinci Code satisfies this narrative fallacy by linking together Da Vinci, the Catholic Church and Mary Magdalene in a conspiracy that stretches across thousands of years.

Even if we don’t believe The Da Vinci Code, it still appeals to this basic impulse to find patterns and construct stories. The theory at the centre of The Da Vinci Code consists of a sequence of non-sequiturs. Its central piece of evidence for Mary Magdalene’s marriage to Jesus is the contention that the figure beside Jesus in Da Vinci’s famous last supper is really Mary Magdalene. Apparently, the use of a word that may mean lover in an obscure apocryphal gospel also supports this theory. The figure isn’t Mary Magdalene and the word is entirely innocent of any sexual connotations. Yet the theory that the Catholic church has been hiding a potentially destructive secret for a thousand years and almost believable at first.

I am reminded of a book that my grandma sent me for Christmas called 1421: The Year China Discovered America. Its argument is roughly as follows. Chinese maps show America. Chinese sailors could have sailed to the New World. Some Chinese sailors sailed very far from China. Therefore, China discovered the Americas. Put like this, it’s very clear that the book is based on a flawed argument. But there’s something very persuasive about the way that the author constructs a complex narrative from a couple of maps.

The Da Vinci Code’s plot is entirely nonsensical and its premise is absurd. But the conspiracy theory at its heart is still oddly exciting and thrilling. The sheer amount of time it takes to explain the theory itself drowns out anything else in the film. There’s no time for character development or meaningful dialogue. Nonetheless, it still exerts an odd, guilty appeal.

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