Monday 6th October 2025
Blog Page 781

Laser tag players bring out Uni security

Libby Cherry
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Laser tag players bring out Uni security

Oxford University are considering banning “games with guns” from being played in University Parks after a number of “distressed” LMH students reported a laser tag group.

The group were masked and wielding what, from a distance, looked like genuine firearms. It is believed that some of the students were US visiting scholars.

The LMH students summoned the Oxford University Security Services to the Parks. The Services immediately swept the area and reviewed the Parks CCTV system, but the group
had already left.

A spokesperson for the University told Cherwell: “Further enquiries have confirmed that those involved were students engaged in a game of Laser Tag.

“They have apologised for causing any concern and recognise that in the current security climate, games like this can leave other Parks users feeling frightened.

“This was thoughtless behaviour that caused considerable concern to others.” The police were not called about the incident.

Oxford’s Crime Prevention Officer, Belinda Hopkins, said in a statement: “In light of the current UK terrorist threat level any such future sightings reported by the public directly to the Police would probably result in an armed response with potential danger to those involved, the public, and the Police.”

Chief Inspector Emma Baillie, of the Joint Armed Response Unit for Thames Valley Police and Hampshire Constabulary, said: “It is an offence to possess an imitation firearm in public, so where laser guns and similar equipment looks realistic and causes alarm to members of the public who believe them to be real, it is likely to result in a police response.

“Our officers have to make difficult fast-time decisions regarding what they see, so behaving in a way that leads people to think they are committing gun crime puts themselves, the public, and potentially our officers at risk.

“However, many manufacturers of such devices make them look like toys, thus reducing the risk of this.”

An American student Phillippa Lawford, told Cherwell: “I can totally understand these students being afraid.

“In Texas, if I saw masked people carrying openly what looked like assault weapons, I would definitely panic. I think that if people are going to engage in these kinds of games they should be more sensitive in how they present themselves.

“At the same time, I don’t know if an all-out ban on these kinds of games is necessary.

“People just need to be conscious of how they appear, particularly when you take into account the large number of international students whose culture surrounding weapons is different.”

Though not involved in this incident, the Oxford University’s Assassins Society play similar games with weaponry.

A first year member of the Assassins told Cherwell: “The rules we follow for every game prioritise safety first, so we will follow the authority of people who tell us to stop.

“Therefore I’d say we obviously have to be more careful to be obviously non-threatening and try our best to disturb the peace as little as possible.”

A member of the Oxford University Role Playing Game Society, Cameron Alsop, told Cherwell: “One of our society activities involves routinely running games in Shotover County Park with fake weapons (specially designed to be safe, and we run safety briefings every session to minimise risk).

“We also have notified the police of our activities ahead of time to prevent confusion if members of the public confuse our activities for dangerous incidents.

“Having been involved in other societies which also use “weapon” shaped toys in public, I think it would be a shame to ban such things outright, but I believe societies have a duty to inform relevant authorities ahead of time if such activities are taking place in public.

“OURPGSoc has (to my knowledge) not received any incidents with authorities due to our preemptive actions regarding weapon safety.”

Jubilee review – ‘Funny, self-referential, and visually exciting’

Bertie Harrison-Broninski
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Jubilee review – ‘Funny, self-referential, and visually exciting’

“It’s funny isn’t it? In 1977, someone shouting NO FUTURE sounded like the most extreme nihilistic punk. Forty years on, it’s a fact. It’s mainstream climate science.”

Updating Derek Jarman’s iconic 1978 film for 2018 (Queen Elizabeth’s ‘Uranium Jubilee’) is no easy task, but writer and director Chris Goode adapts it to the modern era with ease. References to ISIS, Brexit, Trump, and more are littered throughout. A monologue that ends with a statement about how the middle-class have only just realised that tower blocks are “designed for killing poor people” produces a resounding ‘hmm’ in the audience, as if confirming that they’d never considered this before.

The Lyric Hammersmith has been fashioned as a squat – some of the audience is sitting around the edge of the stage on arm chairs and sofas. To get to our seats in the stalls we have to walk on a ramp over the theatre seating and onto benches that have been constructed over the top. As we enter the theatre then, we already have a sense of the anarchic. Punk rock spits venom into the bland face of the straight world” is scrawled across the back wall.

The focus on genderqueer issues is the theme that really sets the play in 2018. These are handled intelligently and with complexity. The play starts with Amyl Nitrate, played brilliantly by transgender actor Travis Alabanza, doing a catwalk, in an opening that tempts the audience into thinking the play will be a celebration of the non-heteronormative. It is, but it is also deeply critical of the current commercialisation of LGBTQ+ culture. In an effort to combat the “leeches”, our troop of anti-heroes set out to kill Lounge Lizard, a pop star being marketed “to tweenies as some kind of genderqueer icon”, but we are left wondering why they haven’t set out to combat the marketers. It is perhaps a nod to the atmosphere of celebrity blame-and-shame that we live in.

Later, we are shown a piece of performance art that may or may not be a parody – the audience doesn’t know whether or not to take it seriously. Just after we have a scene in which police murder a gay couple. It is both a nod to police trigger-happiness in America and a reminder that this kind of misconduct, as well as institutional prejudice, is still present in the U.K. too. It is also one of many scenes that makes us question the importance of art. Is this play just another piece of pretentious performance art doing nothing to stop the oppression of minorities, or does it have value? Early on there is a line about how they’re using council arts funding to promote incest. Should art be moral?

By the end of the play, the audience is a bit drained. Amyl tells us they’re not presenting “a pessimistic viewpoint” but it’s hard to agree. We’re not given a lot to be hopeful about. This alone is not necessarily a criticism – sentimentality would undermine the play’s message – but combined with an inconsistency of pacing the play lacks narrative direction. Skits with Elizabeth I and John Dee haven’t been integrated as well as in Jarman’s original and feel a bit forced, despite being an interesting idea. Amyl addresses this, in typically self-conscious style: “I’d cut out some of that Lizzy sh*t”. This time, I can agree.

Lizzy, Mad, and Amyl all seem to be battling for the job of narrator, but it is always Alabanza’s Amyl that commands the stage and audience. Amyl’s monologues are moving, thought provoking and also very funny. Mad’s character seems a bit of a missed opportunity – her symbolic trait is that of a revolutionary, but she feels no more revolutionary than the other lead characters, and lacks a really poignant scene of her own.

Some of the singing and dancing is excellent; the young Yandass Ndlovu’s number is a highlight. At other times, however, a bit more integration with the story could have helped: having one or two characters on stage to sing at random points feels a bit like they’re just giving the others a costume change.

Despite this, Jubilee is good fun to watch. This aspect of it should not be understated. While giving us plenty of opportunities to question its message, the play rejoices in its unconstrained entertainment. Funny, self-referential, and visually exciting, if not stunning, Amyl probably summarises it better than I can. It’s “an iconic film most of you have never even heard of, adapted by an Oxbridge tw*t for a dying medium, spoiled by millennials, ruined by diversity, and constantly threatening to go all interactive”. I’m sure Jarman would be proud.

Ishtar preview -‘Nothing if not entrancing’

Haroun Hameed
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Ishtar preview -‘Nothing if not entrancing’

‘Welcome to the house of no return.’ These are the words that greet the audience of the stunning new production Ishtar upon entering the theatre, which has been transformed into Irkalla, the odd, dreary underworld of Mesopotamian myth. Luckily, as the actors weave into a drone-like procession and begin to hum eerie ancient rites, we are quickly too immersed to think of leaving. Nothing if not entrancing, this new devised piece from the makers of the sold-out production Lady in the Sheets narrates the descent of Ishtar, Goddess of Love (Leela Jadhav), into ‘the place where dust quenches your thirst and the only food is clay.’

Without subtracting its solemn power, the directors and cast of Ishtar have turned the Babylonian underworld – a place that is neither punishment nor reward, simply a dustier and more tedious cousin of earth, not dissimilar to the Gladstone Link on a summer afternoon – into something spirited and fun. Partly, this is because Ishtar is a group-devised piece. Co-director Zad el Bacha informs me that her actors have been subjected to a series of gruelling martial arts-inspired bonding exercises, and their mysterious enjoyment of this process shines through in their performances. Namtar, vizier of Irkalla, becomes a mischievous puppeteer in the hands of El Portner, who skirts about the stage and occasionally plucks a few dark, stormy notes on a cello. Asushunamir, a ‘fearless demon born out of the time of love’ takes on a curious and affable persona when acted by Kitty Low.

Other members of the cast are quick to remind me of the difference between their real-life personalities and the characters they embody. Ereshkigal (Shreya Lakhani), the Dark Mourning Goddess of the Underworld, is really quite a cheery individual who, by her own admission, ‘finds it hard to keep a straight face.’ But when seated at her imperial throne, fanning an Indian harmonium with one hand, she takes on a look of such intense, repressed ire that any passing ox-driver would stop flagellating his beasts and turn the whip against himself. Kei Patrick, meanwhile, becomes a morose gatekeeper with a passion for rule-enforcing when she enters the underworld, despite being, she insists, a free-spirited 21st-century bohemian in this realm. Maryam Rimi brings intensely watchable pathos to the voyeuristic Ea, the Sky God.

The devisors of Ishtar have done an excellent job of glossing this 5,500-year-old myth with socio-political valences that will interest contemporary audiences, while resisting the temptation to be heavy-handed. Irkalla is a place of surveillance and heartlessness, a no-man’s-land that suggests the violence of contemporary borders and the horrors of cold bureaucracy. The stripping of Ishtar’s ‘dignity’ resembles the draconian exams immigrants must pass to gain sanctuary in a country they may find colourless and hard to navigate, much like this cryptic nether-world. Asushunamir, the fearless creature who can zip across metaphysical boundaries, is also ‘genderless.’ We might wonder what Nebuchadnezzar II, most proud and indomitable of the Babylonian kings, would have made of this skilfully reimagined myth of Ishtar. He probably would not have enjoyed it. But we must add that, given his reputation as a megalomaniacal ‘destroyer-of-nations’ with a perilously unstable sense of his own masculinity, this is probably a good thing.

Crocodile preview – ‘This is going to be properly funny’

Isaac Pockney
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Crocodile preview – ‘This is going to be properly funny’

This is going to be properly funny. Adapted from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s 19865 short story, Tom Basden’s stage adaptation follows a jobbing actor, Ivan, who only starts to achieve the fame he feels he is due after being swallowed whole by the titular beast in a St. Petersburg zoo. Every bit as absurd as it sounds, this comedy sets out to satirise the cult of fame, over-pompous prevention and apathetic self-absorption while delivering an important message about the corruptibility of friendship in adverse circumstances.

Put on by actors, about actors, for an audience that, lets face it, will probably have its fair share of actors, this play has bursts with witty, self-referential gags at the fustian, thespian archetype we know all-too-well. Refreshingly witty, its easy to see that the script comes from one of the writers for Peep Show and Fresh Meat.

The team’s passion for comedy is contagious. Director Alex Rugman makes it clear that he went for this play specifically because of its hilarious potential and the scope it gives, what he believes is the best comic cast in Oxford, the chance to make it funnier still. From what I saw he’s right on all counts. Given how heavily comedy riles on the energy of a packed auditorium, it says something that the performance had its audience of one (namely me) laughing hard.

Too often the best Oxford drama has to offer is dominated by serious tragedy. When comedy is performed its generally taken less seriously and suffers as a result. From Wednesday to Saturday of 7th week, Director, cast and crew are out to show that, when they take ‘silly’ seriously, students can perform comedy as well as well as tragedy, if not better. Their aim, and my expectation, is to give Oxford a dose of laughter they won’t forget soon.

Despite his motivation to leave the audience in stitches, Alex recognises this play is, as he puts it, a comedy with a heart. In particular its message about the testing of friendship under unusual circumstances and the power of fame in our modern era ring throughout this production.

The cast looks set to deliver this satire to a very high standard. With Dominic Wetherby and Luke Winter playing best friends Ivan and Zack respectively and Julia Pilkington, Jon Berry and El Blackwood multi-roleing throughout, the on stage chemistry should be a great to witness.

If you’ve been much student theatre this term you’re likely familiar with the comedic talent of Jon Berry, who’s back in yet another role set to showcase his masterful delivery in a number of parts. His performance as the pencil-pushing administrator responsible for retrieving Ivan, every bit as unhelpful and infuriating as you’d expect, oozes the physical comedy and timing that have made him a  favourite in Oxford’s comedy scene so far.

Likewise, Julia Pilkington combines tenacity and the absurd as the tinsel brandishing guardian of the crocodile in what is sure to be a stellar performance.

Dominic Weatherby looks set to steal the show in his Oxford debut, bringing fire and to his part of the over-zealous, under-talented actor. In a neat case of life mimicking art, I think Dominic will draw plenty of the audiences attention from his time in The Crocodile, much as his character, Ivan, does during the play.

Given the passion of the cast and crew, the biting satire of the script and the promise of the acting, Nitrous Cow Production’s The Crocodile, should be a seriously good evening out.

If you can’t handle spice, get out of the kitchen

Aine Kennedy
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If you can’t handle spice, get out of the kitchen

In this day and age, it is often hard to escape headlines touting the disadvantages of globalisation: damage to the environment, cultural homogenisation, depressed wages. But the experts at Davos always seem to forget the most dangerous development of all: the rise of the well-intentioned, middle class individual who labours under the delusion that liking non-Western food counts as a personality trait.

It started with Sriracha. Oh Sriracha, you sexy, practical little chilli-based beauty, always ready to give a Thai seafood dish or a bowl of pho a good kick up the arse. What did you do to deserve being tattooed onto the hairy, jiggling limbs of every Trevor, Corey, and Kayleigh from Florida to Missouri?

It’s hard not to draw a line between the decline of the US on the world stage, and the number of its citizens for whom the ability to eat hot sauce is apparently such a major achievement. Yes, Kevin, I know you used to cry when your mom put mustard in the Kraft Mac ’n’ Cheese, and you must be very proud that you only had to drink four glasses of water after accidentally eating a wasabi blob, but frankly there are more important things in life. This stuff can salvage bland food, but not your bland personality.

The sriracha ends have a kind of endearing oafishness, at least they’re sort of like primary school children who still take pride in making macaroni necklaces, despite the fact that the rest of the class has moved on to basic literacy.

Far worse are the self-anointed foodie gurus who you scroll past daily on Facebook and Instagram. Often decked out with septum rings, fishtail braids, and other reasons why old people think millienials can’t buy houses, these people pout and pantomime at you like actors in a silent movie, brandishing the newest ‘it’ food in one hand while tapping on it frantically with the other. And they’re all employed by companies whose entire marketing strategy consists of attaching a random grammar particle to a noun or verb. Foodist. Cookist. Foodily. None of these are real words. Perhaps audiences are supposed to infer that their dedication to the culinary arts is such that they just didn’t have time to learn English.

‘This’, the screen ashes in friendly orange lettering, ‘is a JACKFRUIT!’ Cut to their reporter in the eld, shaking said article up and down while looking bewildered and a little afraid, despite the fact that it’s literally the national food of Bangladesh and supports most of South-East Asia. If you’re lucky, there are a few seconds of the food actually being prepared, but this is just the calm before the psychological storm that is the sight of the reporter eating the result. It’s a little known fact that by law, at least half of any social media food video has to be footage of someone eating while making ridiculous faces. I sometimes wonder how the reporters’ parents can watch these videos, given that they can verge on extremely unerotic, softcore por- nography. Watch them utter their eyelids at the steaming plate, like extras in Gone With The Wind; watch them break out the hand gestures that are meant to suggest excitement, but which really look like some kind of seizure; and Christ, if you have the strength, watch as they gulp down the first forkful, bugging out their eyes, thrashing their heads back and forth, smacking their lips, and looking for all the world as though they’ve just shot a massive load of skag.

At best, this behaviour is fetishising; at worst, there’s a clear twinkle of self-congratulation in the eye of whoever’s just managed to choke down a spiky, ossified fruit that smells like “pig shit, turpentine, and onions, garnished with a gym sock” before it’s cooked, in the words of Richard Sterling.

Appreciating international cuisine is great, but sometimes it can seem like now that the colonies have been returned and the natives liberated, food has become the final frontier.

In place of Francis Drake and Roald Amundsen, today’s self-styled intrepids expect to be admired for their culinary exploration, when in fact people have been eating this stuff for generations without making a fuss.

There’s nothing wrong with getting to grips with another culture, but if your preferred method of doing so necessitates a song-and-dance celebration of this ‘achievement’ then stick to the mayonnaise next time, Deborah.

Protest as performance – Suffragettes take the limelight

Tony Wilkes
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Protest as performance – Suffragettes take the limelight

On 6 February, Home Secretary Amber Rudd announced details of a £2.5 million investment to celebrate 100 years of (some) women gaining the vote. Cities will be honoured and processions will be funded. A statue of prominent suffragist Millicent Fawcett will be unveiled in Parliament Square later this year. “If I can give every woman in the UK a message today”, Rudd told the House of Commons, “it is to be immensely proud of what we have achieved and continue to achieve.” These achievements are being honoured by Oxford’s ‘Breaking the Fifth Wall’ festival, designed to celebrate and encourage women in theatre.

‘Looking Back – Suffragette Drama’, which was held at Worcester College on 16th February, was the first of two events designed to “crossover the academic and practical sides of women in theatre.” Dr Sos Eltis, Fellow in English at Brasenose College, and Kitty Gurnos-Davis gave lectures discussing the use of the theatre in the suffragettes’ campaign for political power. A piece of suffrage drama – ‘Miss Appleyard’s Awakening’ – was then performed, directed by Lucy Miles, with a cast of Laura Child, Emma Howlett and Jiaying Tu.

“Theatre”, says Dr Eltis, “was at the centre of the suffragette campaign”. Most people’s first thought of the suffragette movement is testament to this fact – the posters, the banners, the marches. But it wasn’t just visually theatrical – the very make up of these events was performative. Women’s bodies were grouped by profession designed to re-configure how women were traditionally seen.

Actresses stood at the fore-front of suffrage campaigning as figures of economic power. Actor Ellen Ternan’s earnings were second only to the Queen in the 1880s. The message was this: if women are not only working, but reaping the benefits on their own terms, they deserve the vote.

This performance is an example of suffragette drama’s wider campaign to change perceptions made, quite literally, with stone throwing – countering the idea that their tactics were simple ‘hissy-fits’.The stones were inscribed with messages, to provide motives for their actions. This isn’t madness, stone says, but pre-meditated performance. Like the windows, false conceptions of the suffrage movement could be smashed to pieces.
Through this re-structuring and re-inscribing, Dr Eltis explains, suffrage drama set out to change the way people see.

One way of doing so was to attack modes of representation, as when Mary Richardson took a knife to Diego Velázquez’s Venus at her Mirror (1647-51) in March 1914. It depicts a naked Venus draped on a bed facing away from us into a mirror. She is, as Dr Eltis aptly observes, “all arse”.

The canvas’ open wounds were invested with meaning. Releasing a statement Richardson explained her actions as “a protest against the Government for destroying Mrs Pankhurst” – the leader of the suffragette movement who was imprisoned at the time. By defiling what she called “the most beautiful woman in mythological history”, Richardson exposed the hidden, invisible debasement of not only Emmeline Pankhurst, but women generally.
Suffragette performance for the stage sought to both expose this defilement, while re-creating women’s social presence through new narratives and productions. The 1880s and 1890s saw what Dr Eltis calls the nineteenth century #MeToo campaign – a response to the sexual subjection of female actors who were forced to stay silent.

The nature of the industry created the stigma that women could not act and remain virtuous, stimulating production of radical narratives by women. Hedda Gabler was produced by the actress, writer and playwright Elizabeth Robins in 1891. The play will open at the Oxford Playhouse on Wednesday 21 February as part of the festival.
The very first suffragette play, Votes for Women (1907), sought to make its audience see things anew. The play suggests that the punishment of fallen women is a social construction made by men. The play argues that it is women, and only women, that can judge the acts of other women.

This technique of reversing female stereotypes continues in Evelyn Glover’s later play A Chat with Mrs Chicky (1913) – Mrs Chicky subverts female working-class stereotypes through having her educate her middle class mistress on female suffrage movement.
The awful irony being, as Dr Eltis points out, that “these stupid middle class” are the ones to get enfranchised in 1918. Women like Mrs Chicky do not.

This is only a small part of the discussion of suffrage drama. Kitty Gurnos-Davis gave an fascinating talk on how the home served as a site for suffragette activity, when “the home and the political becomes blurred.” The rich discussion left the one overwhelming question: why don’t we know more about suffragette drama?

A question from the audience offers a way of rectifying this: ‘How do we get hold of these plays?’ Dr Eltis explains that there are around three anthologies, one being Naomi Paxton’s The Methuen Drama Book of Suffrage Plays.

The event, then, not only enabled us to ‘Look Back’, but to look back differently – to see women’s achievements anew.

I, Tonya sorely misjudges portraying a serious subject

Angelica De Vido
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I, Tonya sorely misjudges portraying a serious subject

I, Tonya follows the career of American figure skating legend, Tonya Harding, from childhood to the infamous attack on rival skater Nancy Kerrigan she may have had a hand in. The film features tremendous performances from Margot Robbie (Tonya) and Alison Janney (as her monstrous mother, LeVona). However, director Craig Gillespie makes some major missteps along the way.

The story is, at its core, a searing indictment of prejudices in American class structures. From an early age, Tonya’s impoverished background proves to be a major hindrance to her career. She is told she stands out not due to her technical prowess, but because she “looks like she chops wood every morning.” When she’s not training, she works part-time as a waitress to fund her career. Her frizzy hair, hand-made costumes, and acrylic nails are repeatedly contrasted with the sleek hair and fur coats of the other skaters. One of the judges even tells her “you’re not the image we want to portray”. However, these situations are moments where Tonya’s strength and resilience are illuminated, as she vows to “never apologise for growing up poor, or being […] what I am.” These moments hint towards opportunities for in-depth, poignant explorations of class/poverty-based discrimination in sport, but the film – unforgivably – mines Tonya’s ‘uncouth’ manner for comedic purposes.

Arguably the greatest misstep in the film is the comedic presentation of domestic violence. From an early age, Tonya is a victim of physical and mental abuse from her mother. This assault continues at the hands of her husband, Jeff (Sebastian Stan), who repeatedly and violently attacks her. Rather than exploring the effect of this violence on Tonya’s life and career, Gillespie instead trivialises it, using violence as a source of comedy throughout the film. Indeed, Tonya quips that she doesn’t understand the furore surrounding Kerrigan’s attack, since Nancy was “only hit once”, whereas Tonya has been a victim of violence throughout her life. This ‘joke’, followed by a montage of Tonya being assaulted by Jeff, marks a shift from comedy to drama that proves extremely disjunctive, leading to the apparent use of domestic violence as a comedic device in the narrative. The soundtrack of upbeat 80s pop music further trivialises scenes of violence, as scenes become more like Tom and Jerry than realistic portrayals of domestic abuse.

Overall, whilst the film features superb central performances, it’s a missed opportunity for a poignant representation and exploration of experiences at the intersection of class and gender-based victimisation. Rather than exploring the complex forces that shaped Tonya’s life, and the hurdles she overcame to become a record-breaking athlete, this lm instead chooses to skate over the surface of Tonya’s life, creating a broad comedic narrative that offers ‘cheap’ laughs at the expense of critical, serious exploration.

Blind Date: “I found out I was unintentionally sharking”

Alberico Santiano and Kitty Horsfall
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Blind Date: “I found out I was unintentionally sharking”

Kitty Horsfall First Year, English Merton College

We were both very prompt arriving at the Queen’s Lane Coffee House, and were soon perusing the extensive menu. We breezed through the standard chat of tutor horror stories, extracurricular activities (Ultimate Frisbee for him, Cellar for me), and hometown tales. For a man battling through after a night in Fever (where apparently the man playing the bongos next to the DJ isn’t a regular feature???), Alby was surprisingly chirpy to begin with. However, this dwindled as the date went on and towards the end, conversation became a bit strained – this was not helped by the waiter taking our picture turning out to be a photography enthusiast. Overall, it was a pleasant brunch, but I couldn’t help feeling his heart wasn’t fully in it, much like his appetite wasn’t feeling the Full English.

First impression?

Very fresh-faced.

Quality of the chat?

6.7/10.

Most awkward moment?

One of the first songs he’d ever heard was by Iggy Azealia.

Kiss or miss?

Miss.

 

Alberico Santiano Third Year, Engineering Wadham

We met for brunch at Queen’s Lane Coffee House at 11am, unfortunately I’d overdone it slightly with the Crofters and VKs the night before and was definitely feeling it. Kitty’s opening line of ‘did you go out last night?’, was perhaps an indication I wasn’t disguising my hangover as well as I thought I was. Luckily, Kitty was fairly talkative and helped steer the conversation to avoid too many awkward silences, the only major one being after she professed her love for Cellar. Despite the date going fairly well overall, I think we had very different reasons for signing up; one of my friends kindly ‘volunteered’ me for the date owing to my “lack of dating experience”, whatever that means. I had quite a good time, but unfortunately there wasn’t enough of a connection to warrant a second date.

First impression?

Her lopsided hoodie suggested this was only a brief break from the library.

Quality of the chat?

Not as dry as the crofters.

Most awkward moment?

When I found out I was unintentionally sharking.

Kiss or miss?

Miss.

How Oxford culture is dominated by the most privileged

Joe Baverstock-Poppy
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How Oxford culture is dominated by the most privileged

For years now, students have been fighting to make the institutions of Oxford more accessible to people of every background. Political societies such as OUCA are placed under  a heavy eye of scrutiny, but in doing so we neglect the accessibility of Oxford’s cultural scene. While the inspection of Cultural institutions has been far less rigorous, there seems to be just as much inaccessibility to the top positions in culture as in political societies.

To many, OUCA or the Oxford Union is so reprehensible and exclusive that it doesn’t matter whether it is accessible to them. Culture, on the other hand, matters to everyone. We all seek to gain from culture as audience or creator. Whether it be playing in a band, running a club night, or acting in a play, participation satisfies that universal itch to create.

Perhaps the most overwhelmingly popular and student organised cultural scene in Oxford is its theatre. Every Oxford term week is host to at least two plays created by students. Despite the seeming accessibility, with a menagerie of opportunities, this scene is surprisingly lacking. Of student-run plays in Michaelmas 2017, 60 per cent of directors came from private schools. Considering the similarly unrepresentative admission statistic 44.3 per cent private schoolers in Oxford, being a play director in Oxford seems to be disproportionally for the university’s privately educated.

This figure is only of the top end of one particular Oxford scene, however you can bet your bottom dollar that the same private school dominance exists in other areas. Whether in the clubbing scene, classical music, or jazz bands anecdotal evidence pervades of a similar degree of inaccessibility for students of more moderate backgrounds.

This issue is not a simplistic problem of discrimination. Private school students aren’t barring state school students from positions in productions for their education. The barriers faced by state schoolers are more subtle and pervasive than a simple matter of selection bias.

Neither is it a case of incompetent private schoolers occupying these positions. Those who have reached the top of Oxford culture are still talented individuals, having all gone through a selective process to reach where they are. The lack of comprehensively educated students participating in culture is the result of those students often being denied the resources necessary for developing creative skills throughout their upbringing. The problem is not too many untalented privately educated thesps, but not enough opportunity for talented comprehensive thesps to hone their craft.

Attending a private school is often the result of wealth, and being raised in a stable and encouraging household. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule. There are privately educated families lacking educational support at home and plenty of state-educated families with enthusiastic and supportive approaches to learning. Yet we cannot ignore the fact that even in households where parents care less about their child’s education, money can buy books, extra tuition and exciting school trips. This home-life can help kickstart a creative career – buying a child an instrument (or, increasingly, a pair of decks) costing hundreds of pounds is something only well-to-do children can experience. Of all those children who could never afford the resources for a cultural education, their creative abilities were stifled and remain unexpressed even at university. When I hear about all the acting or painting classes my better off friends took during the summers before university, I wonder how much more burgeoning the arts scene in Oxford would be were all students offered similar levels of support.

The enhanced cultural education enjoyed by private schoolers is not only seen at home but also in the schools they attend. With greater curricular independence and comfortable finances, independent schools can invest more in cultural education. Pupils enjoy greater costumes and staging for drama classes, better teachers and more instruments for orchestras. The effect of cohorts is significant too. Home-lives bereft of cultural encouragement will produce comprehensive pupils lacking enthusiasm. An enthusiastic student will soon find themselves disillusioned with the idea of directing plays when trying and failing to work with their colleagues in a drama class.

More distinct and perhaps frustrating is the social capital that a private education confers upon its alumni upon their admission into Oxford. Students emerging out of a private school feeding Oxford with 30-40 students will have a pre-existing web of connections which will serve them well in navigating the cultural landscape of Oxford, comprehensive students do not have this luxury. The web of connections from private education, ‘inherited BNOC-hood’ if you will, helps students in applying to positions in productions, hearing about auditions before others and finding themselves benefitted by the unconscious biases of ‘knowing a guy’.

The effect of ‘inherited BNOChood’ is that, a comprehensive student, who – after experiencing a poorer cultural education both at home and at school – still finds motivation for participation and creation, will find barriers surrounding them – feeling a stranger in a university full of connections. A motivated student may try organising their own production or running their own clubnight. However, the lack of connections still come into play here. While a private school student can call upon their army of home friends to promote and attend their night or play, covering the costs of venue hire, a comprehensive student may lack these means.

The lack of participation in Oxford culture from state-educated students represents a failure that harms everyone. By failing to give state-school students adequate representation, Oxford culture lacks a perspective that needs greater expression and observance. Imagine how much richer and fuller Oxford culture could be if every comprehensive student felt the same passion and drive for participating in the scene.

Oxford announces crews for the Boat Races

Matthew Roller
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Oxford announces crews for the Boat Races

Oxford University Boat Club (OUBC) and Women’s Boat Club (OUWBC) announced their crews for next month’s Boat Races at City Hall this morning.

Cambridge go into the women’s race with a crew 18.4 kg heavier than their opponents, while their men’s boat is 34.7 kg heavier than Oxford’s.

In the women’s boat, Alice Roberts, a Physics and Philosophy student at St Edmund Hall, is the only returning member of last year’s crew. Roberts will row in seat four this year, after occupying the second seat in 2017.

For the men, Joshua Bugajski (Keble) and Vassilis Ragoussis (Linacre) are the two remaining members of last year’s victorious crew. Bugajski has moved from seat four to seat six, while Ragoussis remains Oxford’s stroke.

There is also a place for Keble’s Will Geffen. A Boat Race winner in 2015, Geffen has had to make do with a spot in the reserve boat for the past two years, but is back in the first boat this year.

Bugajski is the heaviest rower in Oxford’s men’s boat at 100.5 kg, but Cambridge’s James Letten will weighed in the highest out of any competitor, at 106.5 kg. At 6ft 10in, Letten is the tallest competitor in the history of the Boat Races.

Christ Church student Sarah Kushma is the heaviest rower in the women’s boat, at 73.5 kg, but five of the Cambridge crew weigh more than her.

The Dark Blues won the men’s race last year, but were beaten comprehensively in the women’s race, as Cambridge romped home in a record time.

Bookmaker William Hill makes Cambridge 4/9 favourites in the men’s race, but is not yet offering odds for the women’s race.

In their most recent outings, which both took place on Saturday, Oxford’s women saw off rivals Brookes in a close race, while the men’s boat were defeated by the same opposition.

The Boat Races take place on 24 March, with the women’s race starting at 4.31pm and the men’s at 5.32pm.

Cambridge will retain their leads in the overall results regardless of what happens this year: they have a 42-30 advantage in the women’s race, and lead by 82 wins to 80 in the men’s race.

Oxford Boat Race Crews:

Women:
Bow: Renée Koolschijn (Keble, 73.4 kg)
2: Katherine Erickson (Wolfson, 69.6 kg)
3: Juliette Perry (Somerville, 73.4 kg)
4: Alice Roberts* (St Edmund Hall, 67.0 kg)
5: Morgan McGovern (St Catherine’s, 72.1 kg)
6: Sara Kushma (Christ Church, 73.5 kg)
7: Abigail Killen (St Cross, 70.4 kg)
Stroke: Beth Bridgman (St Hugh’s, 67.8 kg)
Cox: Jessica Buck (Green Templeton, 53.5 kg)

Men:
Bow: Iain Mandale (St Edmund Hall, 75.1 kg)
2: Felix Drinkhall (Lady Margaret Hall, 83.8 kg)
3: Will Cahill (Chris Church, 84.3 kg)
4: Anders Weiss (St Hugh’s, 91.5 kg)
5: Will Geffen* (Keble, 87.2 kg)
6: Joshua Bugajski* (Keble, 100.5 kg)
7: Claas Mertens (Christ Church, 73.9 kg)
Stroke: Vassilis Ragoussis* (Linacre, 88.2 kg)
Cox: Zachary Thomas Johnson (Wolfson, 54.7 kg)

* denotes returning blue.

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