Monday 6th October 2025
Blog Page 784

Oxford to open new sexual harassment centre

Libby Cherry
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Oxford to open new sexual harassment centre

Oxford University will open a new centre to support those who have been the victims of sexual harassment.

The policy will see help centralised, alongside more college and department based support.

Further details about the centre will be shared with the student body nearer the opening time.

A spokesperson for the University said: “We are focussing on further improving the extensive support we offer to survivors of sexual harassment and assault.

“Student representatives have been actively involved in the group developing the proposals.

“We have put students themselves at the heart of the process, allowing them to make first disclosures at a level where they are most comfortable, whether within their college, to trained student supporters or to central University staff.”

Currently, the University has more than 380 voluntary harassment advisors who are trained to help students “in understanding their options, including how to make a formal complaint, and guiding them to the range of support services Oxford offers.”

The centre will work alongside the University Counselling Service to help ease the psychological impacts of harassment.

Oxford SU’s VP for women, Katy Haigh, told Cherwell: “We welcome the University’s decision to provide a central advice centre for those reporting harassment or assault.

“A paper advocating for this centre has been circulating various University committees over the last few months; this paper was greatly informed by a working group which included many of our own student members such as ‘It Happens Here’ campaigners and the VP Women 2016-17.

“I am happy to see that the University is now ready to begin work bringing this centre to fruition and has expressed its commitment to improving the incident reporting process, and the SU looks forward to working with them to do this.”

“The work to make Oxford University a safe place for its students is far from complete, but the development of this centre is a big step in the right direction.

“We are actively engaged in tackling sexual harassment and violence in all its forms: as well as our consent workshops and first respondent training, we have a dedicated student-led campaign, ‘It Happens Here’, who advocate for survivors of sexual violence in the University, and educate students and Oxford’s local communities about consent, and we consistently lobby the university to improve its resources on tackling sexual violence on campus.”

The University intends to make the reporting and disciplinary side the focus of further work later in the year.

Cambridge University has recently made changes to this aspect of their sexual harassment policy.

Last year, Cambridge brought in a new anonymous reporting system that allows students to record instances of sexual harassment without going to the policy, or revealing the identity of themselves or their harasser.

The aim of the policy is to allow Cambridge to analyse the number of sexual harassment cases, which otherwise would go unnoticed if they had not been reported to the police.

Teddy Hall tampered with tenancy agreements

Fred Dimbleby
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Teddy Hall tampered with tenancy agreements

St Edmund Hall altered tenancy contracts after they were signed by students in order to raise accommodation prices, Cherwell can reveal.

Students have spoken about their anger at the college after they were not informed about the changes to their contracts.

The college has apologised, saying they were “sorry for the mistake.”

Students had signed the original contracts online, but they were not signed immediately by the College.

The agreements, seen by Cherwell, show that the contracts were altered by hand.

In one, the room number was added in pen after being left out of the original contract.

Teddy Hall students later found out about the changes when the contracts were delivered to pigeon holes. They have also complained that they had to push the college to disclose the completed contracts.

The contracts show that rent prices were raised by almost £100.

In Michaelmas term, prices were raised from £2,268 to £2,352 and for each of the next two terms they were raised from £1984.50 to £2,058. An almost four per cent increase.

The price of extra days spent in college accomodation was also raised.

A Teddy Hall student told Cherwell: “I strongly believe that the college should have given an explanation on why altered our contracts without consent because this would have offered us some level or reassurance.

“They should also come up with some preventative measures and rules so whatever I suffered would not be repeated for future students.”

Another post-grad student at the college, Isaac Mayne, said: “You’d have thought that when this happens the Hall would make every effort to make it up to the affected student, and from what the student told the MCR they’ve actually done more to ignore the issue than solving it.”

A spokesperson for Teddy Hall said: “There was an administrative error with one particular type of tenancy agreement at the start of this academic year – which meant a small number of graduate students would have received an agreement that had not been updated to reflect an annual increase in the cost (i.e. it had been accidentally left at the 2016-17 figures). This is the reason for the handwritten alterations.

“We are sorry for the mistake, but it was a genuine error with our billing system.

“As soon as our graduate students receive an offer, they are sent an information sheet which lays out the current accommodation charges but states clearly that a yearly increase will be applied, in August each year (and includes the approximate percentage increase).

“Over summer 2017, one of our accommodation buildings needed an extensive central heating refurbishment, which meant that it could not be occupied, and this work was completed a little later than originally anticipated.

“It was therefore necessary to move some graduate students to alternative rooms at the last minute in order to accommodate them, depending on their date of arrival (which varies from around 1 September to 10 October). In these cases, a room of the same style/price would be substituted £100 where necessary.

“Your enquiry relates to matters that took place several months ago at the start of this academic year. Where students queried anything relating to this, we responded at the time to explain the situation.”

A postgraduate student at Teddy Hall has also told Cherwell about problems with his accommodation.

He said there have been two leaks this year in his room, which is in offsite accommodation near Lady Margaret Hall College.

The most recent leak damaged his laptop and meant he lost his warranty on his laptop because of water damage.

He emailed the college and asked for a replacement of the laptop. They refused.

The IT department checked his computer and said they didn’t find any damage. However, because water had come into contact with the computer the student lost the warranty.

The student, who posted on Facebook about the problems, told Cherwell: “I thought these things were easy to solve, somebody should compensate for the damage. The college could at least say something nice.”

“College, in their replies to me, show that they just don’t have the trust in students. When I told them what happened they kept just pushing it back.

“Every time I say something or make a point, I have to later on show them photo evidence this is not supposed to be like this. It’s wasting a lot of time.”

“If I knew this was how they were going to handle the situation, I might as well just have sucked it up and not do anything and buy a new computer.”

A college spokesperson said: “We are in discussion with the student in question to resolve the situation.

“There was a leak in the room, caused by human error (another student left the shower running), which has subsequently been fixed.

“Students are advised to take out their own insurance for personal effects.”

Neither Oxford University nor Oxford SU replied to a request for comment.

“There is always more that can be done”

Abby Ridsdill-Smith
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“There is always more that can be done”

Oxford’s mental health problem is unavoidable. Whether it’s peer support posters or Oxfesses, fifth week blues or welfare teas, reminders are everywhere. Even your bod card acts as part of this ceaseless carousel; turn it over and you’ll fi nd the number for Nightline, the no judgement, no advice phone line.

Part of the landscape of Oxford life, these friendly adverts and soothing top tips are evidence of a serious issue: the exceptionally high prevalence mental health issues here at Oxford University. You need only look at the statistics to realise the terrifying scale of the issue. Oxford SU’s recent welfare survey reported that 44 per cent of Oxford students felt stressed most or all of the time, and that 58 per cent felt that they had suffered from a mental health issue in the last year. The University itself revealed a rise in students contacting counselling, with numbers increasing from 1521 in 2011, to 1940 in 2013. The number of people reporting cases of depression more than doubled between 2003 and 2013, while the students reporting anorexia nervosa nearly trebled, and those suffering from panic attacks had almost quadrupled.

The situation here is unique. A highly pressurised environment, combined with driven, competitive students creates a melting pot which exacerbates and even causes mental health problems. When I spoke to Courtney, a student suffering from anxiety here in Oxford, she told me that she had never been in an environment where she was “under so much prolonged stress… The fi rst time I thought about it was Michaelmas of my fi rst year. I spent the rest of that year in an ostrich-head-sand kind of situation, until my prelims came about… I had to actually face the fact that I have anxiety because I was having panic attacks”. Another student, Ellie, agreed. She said: “I think that the atmosphere at Oxford leads to a kind of insecurity about your identity because people here have come from a situation… where they are pretty clever. Suddenly you’re thrown into an environment where even if you were the absolute best at your school, you could easily be the worst in your class here. It’s not just academically; there are a lot of different dimensions. It can really diminish people’s self-esteem to see that you’re just a small fi sh in a big pond”.

Clearly, there’s more to it than this. Alan Percy, head of counselling, pointed out a series of other reasons for the increasing mental health problem at Oxford: “Some of these reasons are positive, such as increased awareness of mental health problems, a reduction in stigma for such things as depression and anxiety and greater awareness of the types of support in terms of mental health available to students… However, there are a number of factors, often cultural or sociological that have negatively impacted on young adults. For example, there [are] strong indications that social media increases bullying, disrupts sleeping patterns and can create unhealthy comparison and perfectionism in all kinds of ways, such as body image, personal and academic achievements. Secondary education has changed and is far more results focussed and evidence shows that this can lead to an unhealthy persecutory perfectionist way of thinking, which can stop self-compassion and hinders the development for more flexible thinking to negotiate the challenges of life. It also makes the transition from secondary education to higher education much harder. Perfectionism is a key driver behind many mental health problems such as being unable to work or be motivated, depression, anxiety, self-harm and eating disorders.”

How can a university go about tackling a problem which is as big and variant as this one? An ever-evolving issue, the challenges of mental health change with every generation of students, while the demands and expectations of counselling increase with growing awareness and education. Percy himself acknowledged that, when it comes to the counselling service, “there is always more that can be done”.

At its most basic, Oxford advises a two-pronged approach: at a university level, students can access counselling, gaining advice and guidance from a professional; within college, students should speak to “tutors, personal tutors, chaplains, deans, graduate advisors, junior deans, JCR or MCR welfare offi cers as well as college doctors and nurses”, according to the Mental Health Policy. We are also able to access peer support programmes, individual to each college.

Clearly, counselling is central to the experience of many students with mental health problems. It is surprising, therefore, that it is the subject of so much of Courtney and Ellie’s derision: “I believe the problem is they try to fix people on a very short scale,” Courtney tells me. “I went in and had one counselling session and was advised that most people are out in three sessions. For serious mental health problems, three hours of chatting with someone isn’t going to fix it. At that time, I felt really pressured that I had to be fixed in three sessions and there was something wrong with me if there wasn’t. [The therapist] was saying to me it’s ‘cause we’re really overbooked and what with me having anxiety I’m not a direct suicide threat… my needs were kind of downplayed”. Ellie agreed: “I think the biggest problem is the way in which things are seen as specific short-term cases, and that after a certain number of sessions there is some kind of assumption that you will be better or that the role of the counselling service is over.”

Indeed, the counselling service prides itself on being able to run 51 per cent of students through its system in three sessions or less. The beautifully arranged 2016 counselling video draws our attention to this, as a highlight, so to speak: the video pauses on a long list of statistics which breaks students down into the number of sessions they took before they left the counselling service. Percy seemed to echo this sentiment, explaining, ‘The average number of sessions for one-to-one counselling at Oxford is just between three and four sessions, which is roughly the average number of session for university counselling services in the UK HE [Higher Education] sector and also for university counselling services across the USA. This is because university counselling services are set up to offer relatively quick support for a wide variety of emotional and mental health problems to help students in terms of their academic a n d personal development… we try to address the wide spectrum of mental health problems from the majority of students coming to the service with mild to moderate problems and those who have more long term and serious problems.”

Of course, there are many people who would find three or four sessions adequate, even excessive. However, with the heightened rates of mental health problems at Oxford, we can’t consider national averages a good judge of adequacy. Moreover, for those suffering from severe mental health issues, this focus on efficacy can be detrimental to student’s health. Courtney explained: “I think that the current support system really isn’t helpful; personally, I am now going to outside sources.”

From day to day, we often see mental health support embodied as welfare and peer support. Each college has a welfare scheme, which might endeavour to support others through drop-in sessions, welfare teas and fifth week events. Peer support provides a new support system, and one which avoids the stigma often attached to counselling within the Western cultural consciousness. As Ellie argued, “I think that having a varied support network is always a good thing and… peer supporters can play an important role in that there are some things that you may not need to talk to a counsellor about or… that peers may be better informed about”. Percy agrees: “Peer support is one of many ways to promote good student mental wellbeing and also create a ‘whole institution approach’ to supporting students with mental health difficulties.  The most recent report from Universities UK on promoting student mental health saw peer support initiatives as crucial, and charities such as Student Minds similarly emphasise this approach.” However, while peer support is a good idea, it falls short in many ways; Courtney “would never go talk to a peer supporter about my problems, purely because they are somebody I know around college and I really don’t want them to know… it’s going up to someone that you don’t know and spilling all of your closest mental problems; that’s something I don’t even tell my friends about.” Ellie also acknowledges that peer supporters “will never have the same level of training as counsellors”. Even with 30 hours of training under their belts, peer supporters may still be underprepared for some of the greater challenges they encounter in their role.

Oxford spends the most money, per head, on mental health of any university in the UK. It provides for countless students every year. As Percy has said, “it would be impossible to satisfy or meet the expectations of everyone using the service.” But we must strive for better: more counselling appointments, better training for peer supporters and more information for tutors about the pressures faced by students. At a university that can afford to spend over £50,000 on the vice chancellor’s air travel, it’s not a question of money or resources: it’s a question of willing. And the University should be willing to prioritise its students.

Interviewees’ names have been changed.

Iraq is not a twentieth century Crusade

Barney Pite
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Iraq is not a twentieth century Crusade

In September 2001, President George W Bush declared that ‘This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while.’ Since then it has become common to refer to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as crusades and to frame the war on terror in religious terms.
Crusading rhetoric permeates political discourse and lends a veneer of historicism to discussions of the ongoing conflicts in the middle East. But are these parallels justified on historical grounds?
Christopher Tyerman, Professor of the History of the Crusades at Oxford, argues that the parallels drawn between the war on terror and the crusades are largely spurious and indicative of intellectual laziness.
His speech consisted of a non-stop barrage of defense of the war on terror with little moderation. Tyerman’s speech came from a one sided perspective with little time given to the other side.
While many would have qualms with such onesidedness, the fact is that such attacks on interventionism are the norm. Allowing Tyerman to make his case may be the only way to hear the case at all.
According to him, the Crusades have little “relevance, comfort, insight or instruction” for historians, commentators or policy-makers studying the web of conflicts that have emerged since 9/11.
For a start, the war on terror was not justified to the public on religious grounds. Nor were American citizens encouraged to sign up to the military in return for indulgences that absolved them of their sins.
Admittedly, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq did have a religious inflection. Memos sent to George Bush by Donald Rumsfeld were titled with verses from the Bible, Osama bin Laden referred to the Americans as ‘crusaders’, and addresses to US troops were often framed in biblical terms. But, for Tyerman, they were not holy wars in any substantive sense. Even the physical parallels between the war on terror and the crusades are shaky – the crusaders never even came close to Iraq or Afghanistan.
David Hume described the crusades as as ‘the most signal and most durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation.’ The same, too, might be said of the war in Iraq. But there is no reason to regard the war on terror as anything more than superficially similar to the crusades.
The crusading ideal did linger on after the ninth crusade. As late as 1481, Pope Sixtus IV called for a crusade against the Turks and Leibniz urged Louis XIV to launch a crusade in Egypt in 1672. However, the aftershocks of the crusading idea had petered out by the nineteenthcentury and modern-day conflicts are little more than distant echoes.
According to Tyerman, the false parallels drawn between the crusades and modern conflicts are partly a result of taking intellectual short cuts. By framing the war on terror as a modern crusade, one can reduce it to a simple us-and-them narrative, a modern-day clash of civilizations.
However, this sort of simplification risks caricaturing all those fighting the US and US-backed forces as alien extremists driven only by religion, obscuring the political dimensions of the ongoing conflicts in the middle East and the complexity of the situation on the ground.
As such, those who draw parallels with the crusades only make the situation in the middle East harder to understand. Indeed, Tyerman goes so far as to accuse them of perpetrating a “meretricious confidence trick” – strong words, perhaps, but with the ring of truth.

The Shape of Water – an odd romance makes perfect sense

Jonnie Barrow
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The Shape of Water – an odd romance makes perfect sense

The opening narration of The Shape of Water, voiced by Richard Jenkins over ethereal shots of a submerged 1960s inner-city apartment, paints the ensuing story as a fairy tale of a reigning prince, a “princess without voice”, and “the monster who tried to destroy it all”. The line seems to be written solely to raise a wry smile from long-time viewers of Guillermo Del Toro’s films; after films such as The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth, and Crimson Peak, it’s a well-established Del Toro trope that human antagonists tend to be far more monstrous than the bizarre creatures that, in the hands of any other filmmaker, would be the automatic villains of the piece.
But what bizarre creatures could possibly await in a film so beloved that it’s already garnered a leading 13 Oscar nominations?
When Guillermo told his regular collaborator Doug Jones (the insanely talented actor behind Abe Sapien in Hellboy, and basically anything weird in Pan’s Labyrinth) that he’d be playing the romantic lead in his latest film, he must have wondered how on earth would that end up looking?
The answer is: far more sweet and romantic than it may appear on paper. Amidst the Cold War paranoia and the Space Race of the early 1960s, Sally Hawkins plays Eliza, a mute cleaning lady in a government-run laboratory. When the scientists capture a truly extraordinary amphibious creature (Jones) from the Amazon river, Eliza bonds with the creature and soon decides to break him out of the laboratory and return him to his home.
The film doesn’t need to add sinister government forces for you to draw parallels with films like E.T., but Michael Shannon’s brusquely sinister Colonel Strickland is a towering ‘monster’ for our heroes to come up against.
Within this gang of heroes, there’s hardly a false note to be found. Octavia Spencer, playing Eliza’s colleague (and often her voice), is wonderfully endearing as Zelda. Richard Jenkins, as her cat-owning artist neighbour Giles, is truly delightful.
Each of the main players is in some way at a socio-cultural disadvantage – Eliza is mute, Giles is gay, Zelda is an African-American woman. The film clearly enjoys pitting society’s outcasts against the traditional patriarchal and American values embodied by the unabashedly villainous Strickland, alongside drawing unexpected parallels between these characters and Jones’ creature.
The creature himself is an incredible feat of design. He has to look suitably monstrous, and wild enough for you to believe he’s a river creature, but also with enough anthropomorphic features that you understand why Eliza would feel an affinity for and, ultimately, an attraction to him.
Yes, you read that right – it’s no secret by now that The Shape of Water is a truly bizarre-on-paper love story between a woman and a fish. Yes, they fall in love. Yes, they have sex. No, you don’t get to see them do it, you perverts. But that’s not the point – the point is that when the two of them do fall in love, it makes perfect sense within the film’s internal logic, and you end up as swept away with their romance as you would be in any other love story.
You see, Guillermo Del Toro has always been a not-so-secret romantic, and his films absolutely reflect that innate romantic sensibility. Pacific Rim is nothing if not a huge love letter to giant robots and kaiju monsters, Crimson Peak is just about the most romantic gothic ghost tale imaginable, and The Shape of Water takes Del Toro’s love of cinema to new heights.
His traditionally lavish production design and cinematography are finally used to capture and frame an actual blossoming romance.
The film is filled with camera compositions that are so gorgeous you could fall in love with them in complete isolation to the rest of the film itself, while Alexandre Desplat’s whistle-filled score sweeps the film away on a wave of pathos.
Like many of this year’s Oscar nominees, the period setting often belies surprisingly timely political commentary – if an audience member chooses to draw parallels to Trump’s America or the #MeToo movement, it’s certainly possible.
But the story itself is painted in frustratingly binary shades – Shannon is certainly a menacing antagonist, but his motivations are textureless and bland, and that feels like a missed opportunity. When the film is taking such big swings in having the two central lovers be a fish and a woman, more moral complexity in the details would surely have enhanced the main narrative.
The film’s central balancing act of creating a world which is both nostalgic for a romantic past, yet often vicious and hard-hitting, is so perfectly executed that it couldn’t be easier to give yourself over to the film’s unique brand of oddness.
It’s strange, it’s unabashedly romantic, it’s probably the most unique thing you’ll see in cinemas this year, and it could only have come from the mind of the legend himself: Guillermo Del Toro.

Withnail and I was a buddy comedy unlike any other

Joe Baverstock-Poppy
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Withnail and I was a buddy comedy unlike any other

“We’ve gone on holiday by mistake” is just one of the many highly quotable lines in Withnail and I. It also summarises the nature of my trip to Cowley’s Picture Palace – more a happy accident, however, than a mistake. In sun-soaked Cowley, on a Sunday afternoon, I was willingly roped into seeing this cult classic that I had never heard of before. What I found was a buddy comedy unlike any other.

As a resident of North Oxford, Cowley seems like a distant land, filled with lively bars and eateries, compared to the suffocating suburbia of Summertown. The Picture Palace itself is a novelty giving an exciting glimpse into cinemas of old. Tickets are paid for in a booth outside. Once through the front door you are immediately in the picture room, no reception, no corridor. A tiny concession stand offers roughly a pint of ale at £4. The Sunday crowd was surprisingly old and unpretentious. One criticism would be the acoustics, with lines of dialogue occasionally being lost. Ironically this added to our post-show discussion as we attempted to stitch our knowledge of the plot together.

Withnail and I itself is slow to start, beginning with a series of awkwardly connected vignettes. The film follows the misfortunes of the eccentric Withnail and his anonymous friend credited as ‘I’. However, as the second act begins, the film finds its footing with the pace both comedic and dramatic. Much of Withnail’s humour is drawn out through its embellished characters as opposed to conventional jokes or set-up and payoff action. Its characters are so striking that one can see its influence in all sorts of British comedy. Spaced, Bottom, The Mighty Boosh and Peep Show all have similarly deprived dysfunctional duos.

One way in which Withnail and I has aged poorly, however, is in its treatment of gay people. While Richard Griffith’s role as Monty, an eccentric homosexual, who aggressively comes onto ‘I’, could be viewed as simply a one of a kind humourous character, one can’t help feel that Withnail is playing off of a negative gay stereotype.

The stereotype of forceful gay men has been used to shame gay people and was sinisterly employed by Kevin Spacey to excuse his behaviour towards a young actor. There is some degree of sympathetic portrayal for Monty, especially in his subtly solemn farewell note. However, the depiction of Monty’s treatment of ‘I’, a young actor himself, should be criticised for its danger in cementing a damaging stereotype, which is a little too close to home.

The film is beautifully shot, deftly using camera work to both enhance certain jokes and produce visual gags of its own. Striking landscapes of Cumbria and London are employed not with any particular shoehorning but as a general backdrop for the action on screen, giving it an additional degree of wonder.

“We are 91 days from the end of this decade and there’s gonna be a lot of refugees” is another one of Withnail’s great aphorisms. This film is in part about the end of an era – set in 1969 it depicts the slow and painful death of the hippie. While some move on to greater things, for instance ‘I’ landing a big acting role and cutting his hair, others stay stuck in the past, slipping into oblivion. As Withnail departs in the final scene, a park fence turns into a row of prison bars. Withnail and hippies like him are reduced from free spirits to imprisoned addicts.

Written by Bruce Robinson, Withnail and I is an autographical film to some degree. Robinson’s experience of the ’60s is clearly portrayed by the aforementioned depiction of its death. However, the true heart of this film comes from its depiction of these two friends.

What makes Withnail and I stand out from other buddy comedies is how it depicts the disintegration of a friendship. There is no reconciliation or sentimentality at the end of the film, instead we are left with an unspoken but lasting disagreement. It is an experience all too relevant and common for the Oxford student, whose social life moves at a lightning pace – we meet a new friend, take delight in who they are, and then slowly realise they are not all they are cracked up to be.

That moment of realisation is followed by a cold, unspoken uncoupling. Here, Withnail clearly hasn’t fully accepted or realised that ‘I’ is leaving not just their apartment but leaving Withnail himself. Although Withnail undeniably treated ‘I’ with contempt, attempting to pawn him off to his uncle for a cottage, no one leaves this film totally in the right. ‘I’ heads to the station in the final scenes, speaking to Withnail as if he were a mere acquaintance and refusing to allow him to accompany him further. Withnail and I perfectly depicts the moral ambiguity of a failed friendship, balancing the wrongs of the bad friend and the one who jumped ship.

Recipe corner: cheese

Ticiana Alencar
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Recipe corner: cheese

In order to be interested in this article, you must love cheese – even just one type of cheese. Cheese is, undoubtedly, one of the most delicious things. Whilst I do not necessarily agree, I can understand that the taste of strong cheeses, or even the idea of blue cheese, might be too much for some people. However, you don’t have to like that – just always have a stash of your favourite grated cheese is sufficient if that’s what you like. For around £2 at basically any supermarket, you can buy a packet of either one of these and instantly improve any of your meals. I love mozzarella, but simple cheddar can also transform meals immeasurably.

We can start with the obvious – pasta. I struggle to understand the point of eating pasta without cheese, especially if it is of a tomato-based sauce. It is a sad reality when you buy a pasta bake, which supposedly ‘comes with grated cheese’, only to find out that this is only a very limited amount. The great thing is that, if you have your own packet to hand, you can add huge amounts without hesitation. It is even better if you melt mozzarella over the garlic bread or doughballs you happen to have bought to eat with your pasta.

At this time of the year, I love buying soup to melt cheese into. I highly recommend either tomato basil soup or French onion soup for this endeavour. Heat up your soup and throw in your cheese and, if your JCR is kind enough to offer you free toast, dip some in to accompany your meal.

If that doesn’t appeal to you, then surely the thought of cheesy potatoes will. If Hassan doesn’t add enough cheese to go with your chips, or if you wish McDonald’s provided you with this option, then clearly having your own packet can solve these issues. Alternatively, you can add some to the mash or jacket potatoes you might be making for dinner.

I don’t mean to be cheesy, but cheese is an incomparably wonderful food product that can improve pretty much any meal, one bag at a time.

@tici_alencar

New community hub for Wadham House

Libby Cherry
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New community hub for Wadham House

A vacant building owned by Wadham College will be turned into a community hub.

Aristotle House will be re-purposed by Makespace Oxford into a venue for charities, workers’ cooperatives and social enterprises.

The workspace will house a community events space, meeting rooms, an edible garden, a community café, and workshop space.

It aims to involve marginalised and vulnerable communities through training and employment opportunities.

Makespace Oxford hope that the new workspace will “leverage Oxford’s empty and under-used space for community benefit and raise awareness of new and creative uses for urban space.”

Founding director of Makespace Oxford, Andy Edwards, told Cherwell: “Makespace Oxford is an approach to empty and underused space which could be applied anywhere in Oxford and is not limited to one building in Jericho.

“[We have] been developing very positive discussions with Oxford University Estates department regarding optimising the use of their space, with the potential to use any existing buildings they have for meanwhile workspace and these conversations are ongoing.”

However, he continued: “I would like to see the University work with colleges to publish better data on empty and underused spaces.

“Makespace Oxford hopes to develop a successful working example of what is possible when a college, the council and the community work together.

“But there is a hesitance from the University to release information and this is hampering the opportunity.”

Wadham College had originally scheduled the building to be re-developed into offices and apartments. They have delayed progressing the construction work, citing concerns over “potential traffic and care for the trees”.

They are expected to re-consider developing the building after Makespace’s lease elapses in 2020.

A spokesperson for Wadham College said: “We do not want to leave the building unused, and have agreed a tenancy with Makespace Oxford under which they will manage and make the building available to variety of social enterprises, charities and other small businesses.

“Wadham believes the activities will make a very positive contribution to the local community.”

Makespace Oxford aim to continue the acquisition of college property around the city: “Over the last three years we’ve been developing a model for working with land owners who are looking to convert their empty premises into hives of activity for local social enterprises.

“We’re in an ongoing process of seeking empty and underused spaces capable of incubating exciting new ventures whilst they await redevelopment.”

The University did not respond to Cherwell’s request for comment.

Hedda: “the story of a woman who demands a better life”

Katie Sayer
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Hedda: “the story of a woman who demands a better life”

Hedda, Lucy Kirkwood’s adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s classic, is being staged at the Oxford Playhouse this week by Perepeteia Productions. Part of the Vote season, celebrating 100 years of female suffrage, and directly following Charlotte Vickers’s Breaking the Fifth Wall festival, a week-long extravaganza celebrating women in theatre, Hedda’s feminist message couldn’t find a better time be put on stage. We chatted to the female members of the cast and crew about what Hedda means to them – here’s what they had to say:

India Opzoomer – plays Hedda Gabler

“There aren’t many roles like Hedda. She’s an actor’s dream. I feel so grateful to have been given the opportunity be part of such a wonderful production and take on such a beautifully complicated character. She may be despairing, but I’ve never been so happy”

Georgie Murphy – plays Thea Eldridge

“Hedda is a snapshot of six people searching for something worthwhile in their lives, and their different ways of trying to get it, and coping without it. They’re restless, frustrated, at times elated, and their lives intersect at a point where their energies destroy and create. All six of them feel so close to us today – I think that’s what makes them so challenging, but equally, all the more vulnerable, relatable and special”

Christina Hill – Stage Manager

“Hedda is the story of a woman who demands a better life for herself. She refuses to take up the domestic role offered to her by the men in her life because she measures her life by different standards from everyone else. No matter how much power she exerts over the people in her life, her isolation ultimately destroys her, and at the centre of her tragedy we find a frustration to control the uncontrollable which is only too human.”

Tracey Mwaniki – Assistant Production Manager

“Hedda to me is a new way of storytelling. It constructs a narrative and builds a unique strong female character but grants her the privilege of nuance, something I think all creative people could learn from”

Julia Denby-Jones – Marketing Assistant

“Hedda is timeless. She’s been the fascination of the world stage for over 100 years. She’s frustrating, revered, despised, adored. Each new interpretation breathes life into her, yet she remains utterly elusive. It’s a role that continues to evolve in the most magical way.”

Hedda is playing at the Oxford Playhouse from February 21st to 24th.

A round-up of a dominant season for Oxford’s men’s and women’s fencers

TJ Fitzgerald
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A round-up of a dominant season for Oxford’s men’s and women’s fencers

Another successful season for Oxford’s fencing teams leaves them comfortably in second place in terms of Bucs points contributions to the University, having accumulated only six points fewer than Oxford’s hockey teams. Off the back of being named the Oxford University Sports Team of the Year for 2017, the fencers have pushed on to produce some impressive performances, and results, in the first few weeks of 2018.

The women’s Blues have won nine out of their ten matches, accruing 27 points and a hits for/hits against score of 260 along the way, taking them to the top of the Premier South division.

Their closest rivals are Imperial, with six wins, 18 points, and a hits for/hits against score of 43. With characteristic dominance, Oxford won the league following an undefeated quinte, a number of matches fenced over the same weekend, in late January.

Although the women’s 2nd team, the Assassins, lost out to a couple of very strong teams in the form of Loughborough 1st and Birmingham 1st, they also managed to notch up wins against Warwick 1st and Nottingham 2nd in their last quinte of the season on 11 February.

Chiara McDermott, the women’s Blues captain, who spoke to Cherwell about these successes for both women’s teams, said: “Our year has got off to a fantastic start, with the women’s Blues smashing both Bucs quintes to finish top of the Premier South league and gaining a bye to the quarter-finals of the Bucs championships.”

Looking to the future, McDermott went on to say “I am excited to continue our success by beating Cambridge again at our 2018 Varsity Match in March, and am confident we will surpass last year’s achievements for which we were recognised at the 2017 Oxford University Sports Awards, where we won Team of the Year.”

However, success has not been limited to the women’s teams this season. The Assassins sealed their triumph in the Midlands 2B division over the course of a home quinte against Birmingham 2nd, Anglia Ruskin 1st and Oxford Brookes 1st.

Perhaps understandably given the high stakes, the Blues began nervously against Anglia Ruskin, who had clearly strengthened since they were well beaten by the Assassins last year. Anglia Ruskin piled on the pressure until the last set of matches in foil, but this proved to be the strongest weapon for the Assassins, as it had been all season, and they eventually ran out 135-113 winners.

The Assassins won the next game against Birmingham much more comfortably, by a margin of 135 points to 52. Meanwhile, other fixtures played out favourably for them, with Brookes losing to Warwick.

This ensured that, having already beaten every other team in the league this season, the Assassins would be certain of clinching the league title if they won at least one of the matches in their final game, a local derby against Oxford Brookes. Despite losing with both foil and épée weapons, the sabre team put in a determined display to hold off a Brookes upset. They secured victory in the match by 123 to 112 and, more importantly, in the league as a whole.

Three days later, the Assassins added insult to injury for their vanquished Brookes opponents by beating them in the Bucs Midlands Conference Cup, this time in all three weapon categories.

This was a successful start to their title defence, having narrowly won last year’s final against Aston University. This latest in a series of victories saw the Assassins through to the semi-finals of the cup, and from there they will be confident of repeating last year’s feat.

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