Oxford MCCU coach Graham Charlesworth has called for clarity over the future of university cricket, after the ECB announced that it would resume its funding in 2020.
The existing scheme, taken over by the MCC in 2004, sees first-class cricket played by six ‘centres of excellence’, based at Cambridge, Cardiff, Durham, Leeds, Loughborough, and Oxford.
Details of the new scheme are yet to be announced, but Cherwell understands that white-ball cricket is likely to be at the top of the agenda.
“The MCC has been supporting university cricket for more than 10 years, so my main response is that I’m very grateful to the MCC for their extended support for us over a period of time,” Charlesworth told Cherwell.
“It’s potentially good news, but we’re not quite sure what the detail looks like. We’re not quite sure how the model’s going to change in the future, so the ECB might be talking about more extended coverage across more universities.
“But the financial side of things is still reasonably unclear – at the moment the scheme is fairly well-funded, and the ECB needs to decide what the detail is going to be, what the coverage is going to be across university cricket, and what financial investment is going to be.
“Essentially, it’s good news that the governing body is looking after this pathway for cricketers.”
Charlesworth also anticipates that the change will involve more white-ball cricket at the university level.
At the time of the change’s announcement, the ECB’s national performance manager, David Graveney, said: “With the help and advice [of universities and counties], we will be aiming to develop a new programme which continues to develop white-ball cricket as well as the red-ball game and provides greater opportunities for our most talented young women’s cricketers too.”
Charlesworth said: “The game is changing. There’s a lot more 20-over cricket these days, so the cricket landscape is much orientated towards the shorter format at the moment.
“The first-class game is still very important, but [the ECB] might want to put in more short-form cricket into the pathway. It’s another entry point for them into the game.
“They might keep a [red-ball] county game or two, but they’ll be putting much more white-ball cricket into the programme.”
“The ECB is trying to get really good plans in place for 2020, the sooner we get that information, the better.
“Hopefully towards the end of this year, things will become a lot clearer.”
The current university cricket scheme was initially set up as the University Centres of Cricketing Excellence (UCCE) by the ECB in 2000, before the MCC took over funding and administration in 2004.
The MCC has invested over £7.5million in the six MCCUs in the past 14 years, and during that time, eighteen MCCU cricketers have been selected to represent their country.
Recent England internationals to have benefitted from the system include Sam Billings, Jack Leach, Toby Roland-Jones, Tom Westley, and Monty Panesar.
The MCC’s assistant secretary, John Stephenson, said: “While it is sad that MCC’s investment will be coming to an end, the scheme is in very good shape and I hope that university cricket continues to thrive under the ECB.
The scheme’s future was cast into doubt earlier this year, after one of its major sponsors, Deloitte, withdrew its funding.
Sathnam Sanghera was born to Punjabi parents. He was brought up in Wolverhampton, and was raised as a Sikh. On his first day at school, he couldn’t speak English. Thirty years on, after graduating from Christ’s College, Cambridge with a first in English, he is one of The Times’ leading columnists, where he has worked for past ten years. Sanghera’s is a story of social mobility at its best – he was born into a poor family, and worked at a burger chain, a sewing factory, and a hospital laundry before he made his break with the Financial Times. He is, he says, “among the exceptions that prove the rule”.
It is hardly a surprise then that in the light of Oxbridge’s admissions reports in the past two weeks, Sanghera is angry. “It’s bullshit”, he tells me. “It’s ludicrous. My anger is based on the fact that there aren’t more people like me, of my kind of social background at Oxbridge.”
He is right that ‘people like him’ are up against it. According to Oxford’s admissions report, UK-domiciled Asian students made up just 4.3% of the total students admitted to study English in the years 2015-17; before even thinking about the fact he grew up on free school meals, it is clear that the system he faced in 1995 is still weighted against those from backgrounds like Sanghera’s more than twenty years later.
In its response to the report, Oxford stressed that it intended to throw money at access programmes, while vice chancellor Louise Richardson claimed: “it is a picture of progress on a great many fronts.” As much as the numbers themselves, the response has drawn immense backlash, and Sanghera tells me that the entrenched resistance to change should be a major cause for concern.
“The most worrying thing about all of it is their instinctive defensiveness. It would make a huge difference if, when confronted with the plain facts of the situation, [Oxford and Cambridge] didn’t try to point score, defend themselves, and freak out when actually they could just say: ‘we’ve got a problem’. I don’t think we’ve even got to the stage where Oxbridge say: ‘yes, we have a problem’. Most of this data has been dragged out of them reluctantly. There’s lots of really sincere people at Oxbridge trying to change things, but the fact is that this tone reveals that there’s a lot of resistance as well – and that’s a bit depressing.”
Sanghera has been a vocal critic of Oxbridge’s diversity problem
But the solution cannot just be money, he says. “They’re spending a decent amount now! You can always spend more, but what’s the point of outreach and PR, when actually, there are more fundamental problems, like the lack of centralisation of an applications system. I think that is the main thing: if they centralised access, had one body orchestrating things, and took it out of the hands of the fellows and the colleges, then that would revolutionise things. It’s not really about money – it’s about attitude, and it’s about taking one or two really big moves.”
It is clear that Sanghera has genuine concerns about many colleges’ approaches to access. Many, he claims, do not see it as a problem that the University has a moral right to address, but something that they need to be seen to be addressing. It is all about appearance. “I’ve been talking to people,” he says. “Oxbridge colleges are very good at calling up alumni and asking for donations. I was talking to a friend of mine, who went back to his old Oxford college recently. The speech at the fundraising thing was: ‘give us money, because then, we don’t have to listen to the government’ with the subtext of that being ‘and then, we don’t have to listen to all this crap about access’.”
The focus on PR is something that has come to the fore in recent years especially. On the day of the admissions report’s release, David Lammy MP criticised the University’s use of its official Twitter account, which retweeted all of those defending the University. The account responded by retweeting an alumna who called Lammy ‘bitter’. While some laughed off the ‘bittergate’ scandal, it demonstrates Oxford’s obsession with its own image, an obsession that Sanghera thinks is the only think that will stop a larger change in Oxbridge’s structure.
“If I’m honest”, he says, “I think we’re more likely to see Oxbridge go private than taking power out of colleges’ hands. The colleges, and the relationships they have with the establishment, are so deep-seated – it would go against the way the British establishment has worked for centuries. I just can’t see [centralised admissions] happening.” But it is this PR obsession that Sanghera thinks will prevent the pair going private. “It would just be terrible PR,” he tells me. “I think the people who run them know what the right thing to do is. They’ll be kicking and screaming, but ultimately, when it comes down to it, they know, and I don’t think that will happen.
“Equally, they are so tied to the college system, I cannot see them break that. People in the establishment have so many personal connections to these colleges, so…they’re not going to give up their power without a fight. And what we’re having now is the fight, basically.”
Sanghera is keen to avoid too much focus on his own experience at Cambridge as we chat – he speaks out about the “autobiographical” nature of the discourse about admissions – but he clearly struggles to get his head around three bizarre years of his life. Students at this university often claim that their degrees have flown by, or that a term has gone too quickly, but it is not only this sense of haste that bookmarked Sanghera’s time at Christ’s, but his social confusion.
Sanghera read English at Christ’s College, Cambridge
“It’s taken me twenty years to work out what happened to me when I went [to Cambridge]”, he tells me. “I couldn’t really make sense of why I felt so weird – I’d integrated so well into my independent grammar school [which he attended on a fully-assisted place], and I was fine afterwards, too. Now I realise that the weirdness was that I arrived and everyone already seemed to know each other. And I was like: ‘oh, that’s because they all went to the same bunch of schools’. They literally knew each other – it took me 20 years to realise that.
“It was just socially weird, and that was basically because lots of people around me went to very posh schools, and were from a very upper-middle-class background. And it felt even weirder than Fleet Street, which is probably, in some ways, even posher. It was a properly strange environment if you weren’t from there.”
And Sanghera’s experience wasn’t just strange on account of public schoolboys hanging out together. I ask him about his time in Cambridge’s student media, and he tells me the story of his bizarre rejection when he applied for the editorship of Varsity, this newspaper’s Cambridge equivalent. “I don’t want to make out I was the victim of discrimination or anything. But it was typical of my experience of Cambridge in that it was just weird! I didn’t understand what had happened.
“I applied with my friend [Dan Roan], who’s now sports editor of the BBC, and we were told by the people interviewing us that they didn’t believe a word we had said. It was just odd. It ended up being a great thing, because we just spent all our time doing work experience elsewhere, and we ended up in journalism, straight away. I just didn’t understand! At my school, I was head boy, and I was quite socially active. At Cambridge, I just couldn’t get my head around anything socially at all. I think the culture is that of a few very dominant private schools that control things – and if you don’t know the code or the way of speaking, forget it. Real life isn’t like that – it just doesn’t work like that.”
A few weeks after the release of the access data, plenty of students at this university appear to be fed up with the discussion about it. There are four major responses, as far as I can tell, that try to claim this is a problem we shouldn’t be talking about: that discussion only reinforces the idea that Oxford is not for people of certain backgrounds; that the University’s access problem is symptomatic of wider issues with Britain’s education system; that there is an irony that those whose lives have benefitted from ‘the system’ – like Sanghera and Lammy, who attended Harvard – are the ones leading the fight; and that focusing on two top universities misses the point that things are just as bad at other leading UK universities. They are all intriguing responses in their own right, but it is clear that the key campaigners see them as distractions, as excuses made by those wishing to ignore the problem.
“It’s going to be a really slow cultural change,” Sanghera says. “It’s small, really basic things like put up some pictures of like, some working-class, or black and Asian alumni! You walk around Oxbridge, and all the pictures are white. Why are they so reluctant? It’s because history is the point of Oxbridge – the point is that it’s unchanging, and it goes back hundreds of years. But you can keep that, and recognise that in the last two decades, there’s been a different kind of person going. If you reflect that, you might help dispel the image.
“But the image is a real problem. It’s true: the more people like me bang on about it, the more you put people off. But I think we need to go through this. There’s no choice, is there? We can’t say: I’m not going to say anything negative about Oxbridge because then I’ll put people off. There’s some people who argue that – they’re like, ‘why do you keep going on about this: you’re putting people off!’ But, like, what’s the alternative? Just ignore it, and put up with it? I think we’ve got to go through this painful process, but it’s going to take decades, if not longer. If it ever happens!”
Similarly, Sanghera is critical of the fact that any discourse about admissions has to go back to the individual. It should not, he says, detract from an argument that the person who is making it went to a particular university. “I’ve heard a lot of: ‘oh, David Lammy didn’t get into Oxbridge, so he’s just bitter’. He went to Harvard, man! I feel really grateful for it – I want more people to have this experience. Everyone should have equal chance, and to focus on the individual biographies of campaigners is insane. It’s not the point; it’s not my point. It’s not that I’m ungrateful, we just have to rise beyond this insane biographical thing and look at the data. And the plain fact is, if you’re working-class, or if you’re from the north, or if you’re of colour, you’re going to struggle to get in.”
The discourse of an elite clinging onto their status is one that Sanghera uses throughout my time speaking to him. He believes there is an entrenched resistance to change, and that ‘people like him’ will always be disadvantaged by an unequal and unfair admissions system. It is hard for me to disagree: the University’s response has been pitiful, but more than that, the excuses made by fellow students are disheartening.
“This focus on lowering grades is ludicrous,” Sanghera says. “People use that as saying: ‘oh, you want us to lower standards!’ The moment you say ‘let’s have ABB rather than AAA’, people will freak out and say you’re lowering standards. It’s just a way for the elite to hold onto power,” he says.
Sanghera is one of many voices fighting this battle. But it is a battle of tedium and attrition: every time his side starts to make progress, their words are spun into something negative, and somehow turning against him. He is determined to ensure that there is a turning point, but I can sense a resignation in his voice. This is a problem that cannot be solved overnight, but more than that – it is a problem that he feels may never be addressed. Unless Oxbridge comes to accept that it has a myriad of deep-rooted issues with its admissions processes, then people like Sathnam Sanghera will continue to feel that for ‘people like them’, it will never really feel anything like home.
Director Rosa Garland describes No Man Ever as a play about a “messy love square”. Landing Light Production’s upcoming play concerns entangled relationships between four people in the lead up and aftermath of a wedding.
After having seen a preview, I think it only fair to say the play concerns four people, rather than four characters: the naturalism of both the acting and the text is superbly nuanced, lending the production a very human feel. This is no doubt facilitated by Jonny Wiles’ mature script which specifies the roles as only “A”, “B”, “C”, and “D”. Creating a web of complex relationships which leaves deliberate spaces (such as names, ages, genders), allows both the actors and the audience to project themselves into the drama with startling ease. As I watched the scenes I could not help but feel like I was watching something already quite familiar. This may be explained by Wiles’s process which involved recording one-liners overheard in Pret or on the train; the text is unerringly believable to the point of feeling like reportage. The result promises to be honest, intimate, and incredibly beautiful.
Actor Marcus Knight-Adams, who plays “C”, explains how Garland encouraged all the cast to find ways to access emotions in the play with reference to their own experiences and past relationships. From the scenes that I saw, the result is incredibly promising: balancing specificity against universality. I was especially impressed with “A”, played by Callum Coghlan, whose understated resignation at a failing relationship was heartbreaking. Moreover, the result is a show that is quietly radical: the cast were selected based on characteristics and personality above all else, and as such the gender expression and sexual identities of the characters emerged naturally as a result of the plot and the selected actors. Queer relationships appear respectfully on stage, normalising the representation of non-heterosexual relationships.
Wiles’ script apparently specifies: “there need be no set, props, or mimes”, a challenge which Garland has embraced. The production is stripped of many stagecraft conventions (the actors wear their own clothes as costumes, there are no lighting changes etc.) to create work that is wholly and intensely focused on human interaction and language. Garland and her cast have set themselves a difficult challenge with this sparseness. This suits Garland’s directing style which draws from her own experience as an actor. Any tendency towards overacting has the potential to compromise this delicate effect, but the scenes I witnessed gave me confidence in Garland and her team. This is a production which boldly embraces limitations and is unafraid to tackle the difficult, small, and vital moments which make us human.
No Man Everis on at the Old Fire Station on Tuesday 12th June at 7.30pm.
At the start of May, the Dubai Government Media Office issued a press release regarding the opening of the “Mohammed bin Rashid Center [sic] for Future Research” at Oxford University.
But Cherwell can exclusively reveal that the centre does not exist.
Cherwell understands that the centre has not even been formally proposed to the University, and that the images of its supposed opening were photoshopped.
According to the media release – which was also covered by outlets including The Gulf Today, Zawya, and Gulf News – the centre opened during a ceremony attended by Minister of Cabinet Affairs and the Future, Mohammed Al Gergawi, and the Minister for Artificial Intelligence, Omar bin Sultan Al Olama.
The Mohammed bin Rashid Future Design Center at Oxford University in the UK has opened during a ceremony attended by Mohammed Al Gergawi Minister of Cabinet Affairs and the Future & @OmarSAlolama Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence. #Dubai#UAEpic.twitter.com/VIeMkMo2y1
— Dubai Media Office (@DXBMediaOffice) May 2, 2018
The fake release also claimed that the ‘ceremony’ was attended by “a number of representatives of Oxford University”. Cherwell understands that these ‘representatives’ were, in fact, a fellow of Magdalen College, Alexy Karenowksa, and an honorary fellow of Trinity College Roger Michel.
Michel, a Trinity alumnus, who recently became an honorary fellow of the College, already has several links with the United Arab Emirates.
In February, Trinity President, Dame Hilary Boulding, attended the World Government summit in Dubai at Michel’s invitation along with two students.
Michel has since endowed a scholarship in honour of Al Gergawi that “will enable Trinity students to attend future summits in Dubai”.
Karenowska, a Physics tutor at Magdalen, told Cherwell: “I’m quite upset about it actually. What has happened here, as unbelievable as it sounds, is that picture was photoshopped, so the centre doesn’t exist.
“It’s not even a proposal, it’s more of a request for a proposal, so that request is outside of the University. [The Emirati officials] were in town for a visit in connection with something completely separate, and at a lab facility outside Oxford, those photographs were taken, but as bizarre as it sounds, it doesn’t exist. There’s a request for a proposal, but no money whatsoever has been received, and it certainly hasn’t opened, and the University of Oxford was photoshopped onto those photographs. I was in the photographs, but the text was photoshopped on.
“As bizarre as it seems, I don’t think it’s that much of a big deal. Obviously I’m quite upset about it, and the suggestion of a connection with the University is upsetting. But I think that it’s one of those situations where probably the person involved hadn’t appreciated how that would be interpreted.”
Bin Rashid, the vice president and prime minister of the UAE, already has links with the University, after he made a donation towards a graduate scholarship last year.
Bin Rashid has previously been accused of multiple human rights abuses.
In September 2006, he was accused of encouraging the abduction and enslavement of thousands of boys for use as jockeys in camel races. A class-action suit was filed against him in the US state of Florida, but the suit was dismissed in July 2007.
In July 2013, following international pressure, Bin Rashid pardoned Marte Dalelv, who, after she reported being raped, was convicted of extramarital sex and alcohol consumption.
In October 2013, The Telegraph reported that “Sheikh Mohammed [was] again cast as a victim of employee malpractice” after reports that toxic and dangerous steroids, anaesthetics, and anti-inflammatory drugs had been shipped into the UAE, labelled as “horse tack”.
In March 2018, allegations of grave abuse towards multiple of his daughters surfaced via a video recorded by Princess Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum, in which she reported being incarcerated in a family-owned compound for more than three years.
After attempting to contact her sister, presumed to also be detained by Bin Rashid and flee to Oman, she was further incarcerated and tortured. She has not been heard from since 4th March and the Dubai authorities have refused to comment about her alleged claims and attempt to seek political asylum in the US.
The University did not address Bin Rashid’s controversial history when approached for comment. A spokesperson said: “A donation towards graduate scholarships from the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation was approved after going through the University of Oxford’s Committee to Review Donations.”
According to the release, “the [future design centre] aims to incentivise future-oriented research and innovations in various scientific fields, such as 3D technology, physics, and other advanced sciences, in addition to the development of medicines and other future-oriented applications that present solutions to the challenges imposed by the exponential changes in today’s world.”
Al Gergawi said: “The center [sic] reflects Mohammed bin Rashid’s vision to develop future solutions and tools.”
An Oxford student has lost her bid to appeal a suspended sentence for stabbing her boyfriend.
The Court of Appeal ruled that Lavinia Woodward, 25, could not successfully challenge her 10 month sentence, which was suspended for eighteen months.
Woodward pleaded guilty to a charge of unlawful wounding at Oxford Crown Court last year following the December 2016 attack, which took place in Christ Church.
Woodward, a medical student, stabbed her then boyfriend in the lower leg with a breadknife, also injuring two fingers. Oxford Crown Court heard last year that she had become angry at his contacting her mother on Skype, after discovering that she had been drinking.
Court of Appeal Judge Johannah Cutts rejected her appeal, stating that the Crown Court judge had taken exceptional steps by suspending her jail term. His sentence was “constructive and compassionate”, according to the judge.
Oxford Crown Court judge Ian Pringle QC stated that a suspended sentence was an opportunity for Woodward to prove she no longer had an addiction to drugs and alcohol.
Pringle noted at sentencing that Woodward was “an an extraordinarily able young lady”. He deferred the sentence as he also believed sending her to prison would damage her career hopes of becoming a surgeon.
This move triggered a debate surrounding inequality in the criminal justice system.
Woodward has voluntarily suspended her studies at the University of Oxford. Cherwell understands Woodward would face disciplinary procedures if she were to return.
An Oxford Union speaker has accused the society of censorship, after the Union refused to publicise a video of last term’s whistleblowing panel online.
Heather Marsh, who spoke on the panel, claimed that the society’s staff had been “comically obfuscating” since the event, and claimed in a letter dated 25th April that failing to upload the footage to YouTube was both a departure from usual practice and a breach of her contract to speak. The Union have denied Marsh’s allegations.
At the panel, Marsh, a journalist and former administrator of a WikiLeaks site, strongly criticised fellow panellist David Shedd. Shedd is a former CIA operative, and later became US Deputy Director of National Intelligence under Barack Obama’s administration.
Marsh told Cherwell that the Union’s bursar, Lindsay Warne, informed her that Shedd had pressured for the video to be withheld. Marsh’s letter quotes Warne saying that “it was ironic that we were censoring a whistleblowing panel!”
However, Union president Gui Cavalcanti told Cherwell that the society was under “no obligation to upload it to our YouTube channel or to publicise the event to third parties or the media”. They said they were “in no breach of contract” given the contract to which Marsh alludes was actually a ‘participant’s consent form.’
Warne also told Cherwell that she “made absolutely no mention of David Shedd or any other panellist” and that she gave Marsh “a general explanation, which was that we can only upload events when all the speakers involved have signed the consent form.” She notes that her comment was actually that “it’s ironic if the whistleblowing panel don’t want it published.”
In a later statement to Cherwell, Marsh claimed that, as a result of its actions, the Union’s ‘last bastion of free speech’ slogan applied only to “those in power.”
Marsh argued the society did not tolerate opinions which “show any diversity from those of a totalitarian state.”
The letter read: “If you did want to censor a part of the panel, to accommodate the pettiness and fragility of another panelist, it is perfectly easy to remove his audio track and blur his image.
“Other panelists have no standing to censor the parts where I am speaking. Does a petulant loser have the right to censor the entire debate?”
Referring to a visit to the Union on 20th April to pick up expense reimbursement, Marsh writes: “I asked, again, when the video of the event would be posted. I was told by your bursar, Lindsey Warne, that ‘A great many people are asking, but that video is not ever going up.’”
The letter added: “She also said ‘We have had many meetings about this.’ Both of these statements are in direct contradiction to repeated statements… regarding the video over the last two months.”
Marsh continued: “Whether or not Oxford Union owes any consideration to journalists, who usually work extremely hard, at frequent great risk, in an increasingly impossible job, is a matter, I suppose, between the Oxford Union and the British public. I believe, however, (and my lawyers agree) that [Ms. Warne] is very mistaken regarding the consideration and obligation owed to speakers, in terms of both respect and legality.”
The letter also quoted part of the Union’s invitation offer.
The offer said: “‘All our events can be professional filmed for our YouTube channel, which has received over 40 million views since it was relaunched last year. It goes without saying, though, that the level of media coverage would be entirely at your discretion.’”
But Marsh wrote that the opportunity for such publicity “is especially dependent on the committee and staff of the Oxford Union not treating journalists with utter disrespect and leading them on for two months with a bureaucratic run-around of contradictory falsehoods.”
The letter also read: “You are in breach of contract. The loss I have suffered include…loss of professional opportunity resulting from a timely release of the video; professional or personal reputational loss due to your conduct in censoring my work with no proffered explanation to the public and your disrespect to interested journalists.
“In the event that you continue dealing in bad faith regarding this matter, I reserve the right to commence legal proceedings against you without further notice.”
Cavalcanti told Cherwell: “We are in no breach of contract, nor is it ‘departure from common practice’ for our events not to be uploaded to our YouTube channel – just this academic year, we’ve had multiple events not uploaded, ranging from JJ Abrams to Sir Patrick Stewart.”
Part of this ‘Participant’s Consent Form’ states that by agreeing for a contribution to be recorded, Marsh had agreed to “assign to Oxford Union Limited the copyright and all other rights…in your Contribution for use in all media now known or which may be developed in the future.”
The agreement states that: “You agree that we may edit your Contribution and you agree to waive, and not in the future seek to exercise, any ‘moral rights’ you have in respect of any uses of you Contribution.”
Cherwell understands that Marsh began her comments at the panel event by stating: “My focus has always been human rights and horizontal governance. Of the human rights atrocities I have worked to expose, a very large number are associated with David Shedd and the organisations and allies he represents. David Shedd belonged to the most powerful, well-funded, weaponised, international, organised crime syndicate the world has ever seen.
“Not even counting the other organisations he is affiliated with or those he calls his allies – just looking at the CIA by itself – they are in the business of assassinations, they manage black sites for torture, they work with local mafias, cartels and militias all over the world, they run operations trafficking weapons, drugs and people all over the world.
“So, when these men talk about whistleblowers threatening national security, we need to ask three obvious questions: what is security to them, who is their nation, and who are the whistleblowers?”
Referring to Marsh’s accusations, Oxford Union Society Bursar, Lindsay Warne, told Cherwell: “I am sorry that my conversation with Ms Marsh has not been remembered at all accurately.
“I made absolutely no mention of David Shedd or any other panellist – in fact, as I am not involved with loading recordings etc, when Ms Marsh came to the General Office demanding why the event was not uploaded I gave her what I believed the true and general explanation which was that we can only upload events when all the speakers involved have signed the consent form, and that as I had no idea whether consent had been signed or not, I could not comment further.
“Ms Marsh is totally mistaken in her comment that I had said we had ‘had many meetings’ as to this day I haven’t attended one on this subject, nor have any been held to my knowledge.”
She added: “Some speakers prefer not to have their events uploaded but just wish to address the members in person, so don’t sign the forms. Also, the consents give us the rights over the content, not the obligation to publicise.”
Marsh told Cherwell: “The Oxford Union should make clear to potential speakers that it is only the ‘last bastion of free speech’ for those in power and change its slogan to reflect that – I suggest ‘the last bastion for punching down.’”
Marsh also said: “The incoherence, unprofessionalism and fear of being associated with the action (of not posting the video) indicates that they also know it is indefensible.”
In her letter, she writes that prior to meetings with Warne, “it was initially very difficult to get any kind of honest communication out of the committee members or staff – I lost count of the ridiculous and contradictory stories about this video.”
Marsh maintains that it took a legal letter to receive confirmation from the Union’s Committee that they were not going to post the video. She said that the Oxford Union staff and committee have been “comically obfuscating” since the panel event.
She noted that the only subsequent correspondence since the 25th April letter was current President Gui Cavalcanti “replying to my letter before action, on the last day legally mandated (9th May)” to inform her that the decision taken under [then-President] Laali Vadlamani’s tenure not to post the YouTube video would be upheld.”
David Shedd did not respond to Cherwell’s request for comment.
A presidential candidate in today’s Oxford Union elections was alleged to have brought the society into disrepute, with a potential speaker slamming him for “financial carelessness and duplicity”.
Daniel Wilkinson, presidential candidate for the ‘Progress’ slate, found himself under fire following the invite of Professor Judith Buchanan. She claims he informed her that a debate she had been confirmed to speak on had been cancelled when it had, in fact, not.
Wilkinson himself spoke in the debate, taking her potential slot. Buchanan went on to complain about Wilkinson’s behaviour to both the Union and his college.
The society was later forced to pay out £202.90 on her pre-booked travel expenses.
When approached by Cherwell, Wilkinson said that there was a miscommunication between Buchanan’s PA and himself, hence the confusion, and that a panel of the returning officer and their assistants had found that he had not brought disrepute to the Union.
He added: “For the record, I was always in favour of reimbursement and honesty with the speaker, but as you may know the power to authorise such a decision resides only with the President. I informed the speaker, as instructed, that there was no longer a place for her in the debate; this had the unfortunate consequence that she misunderstood, believed me to have lied, and was therefore frustrated.”
“I acted in accordance with my duties and received the brunt of the speaker’s anger for doing so, and to imply that my actions were autonomous and internally aimed at causing a situation such as this with a potential speaker is a fundamental misunderstanding of the facts.”
Cherwell can also reveal that a candidate running on the ‘Refresh’ slate, Musty Kamal, has twice faced allegations of electoral malpractice while running in student societies. In the Union’s Michaelmas elections, Kamal was found guilty of electoral malpractice and stripped of his position on the Secretary’s Committee.
Kamal – who received the most votes in the election – was found to have breached Rule 33(a)(i) by making an “illicit statement” – one that is “untrue or misleading” and is intended to influence the course of the election.
A spokesperson confirmed to Cherwell that the statement in question was Kamal’s claim he was running as an “independent” candidate. Kamal told Cherwell: “I think it is important to remember that in their first term of Oxford not everyone is familiar with the Union rules and, to my mind, I misidentified the definition of the word ‘independent’.
“As such, my naivety led me to believe that my manifesto could incorporate the word. Nevertheless, I have learnt from my technical mistake and if elected look forward to creating a more engaged and inclusive union.”
In addition to this, Kamal was embroiled in further scandal while standing for election as general secretary at the London School of Economics (LSE) student union. In a story making the front page of LSE student newspaper The Beaver, Kamal is accused of breaking electoral rules by beginning his campaign before the official start date.
When approached by Cherwell, Kamal did not address the allegations from his time at LSE.
Oxford vice chancellor Louise Richardson claimed stays in five star hotels and private car hire for on campus trips on expenses, Cherwell can reveal.
The data shows that Richardson, who has a salary of £350,000 a year, claimed £1,262 for a stay in the luxury Mandarin Oriental hotel in Hong Kong. She also claimed £145 for a trip to Wimbledon to watch the tennis championships.
The new revelations come after a successful review of a freedom of information (FOI) request sent by Cherwell, which showed that Richardson had claimed £69,000 in expenses since taking up her position in 2016.
The vice chancellor used a private car to travel within Oxford eight times during the period covered by the FOI, which extends to January 2016. In total, she claimed £1,287 for on-campus travel, including one trip in late July around Oxford and then on to London which cost £485.
The new data also shows that the vice chancellor claimed a total of £5,088.19 in hotel accommodation. These included stays in the five star Kerry Hotel in Beijing, China, and the luxury Grand Hotel Karel V in Utrecht, Netherlands.
A University spokesperson told Cherwell: “Professor Richardson instructed that her office change the practice of First Class rail travel shortly after taking office in 2016. The vice chancellor travels in Standard Class and not First Class. The vice chancellor also declined
provision of a University vehicle, which was sold.
“Professor Richardson now travels in private hire vehicles when business requires it. The cost of providing and maintaining a University vehicle greatly exceeds her office’s expenditure on private hire transport for business.
“The vice chancellor always flies economy on short-haul flights to Europe and within the US. Hotels booked for Professor Richardson are usually the venue for the business meeting she is attending and are always the most practical and appropriate option if the vice
chancellor is to meet her scheduled commitments and fulfil her business engagements.”
The FOI was originally sent in September 2017 but Cherwell called for a review of the request after Oxford released far less extensive figures than other universities.
Despite the information office aiming to send a response to the review within 20 working days, the latest figures come almost eight months after the original review was submitted.
Nearly half of undergraduate colleges fail to offer halal food in hall for Muslim students, according to new data released by the University’s Islamic Society (ISoc).
14 of Oxford’s 30 undergraduate colleges (46.7%) – including Balliol, Hertford, and Merton – do not have any provision for halal food, the society claims.
A further three colleges – Magdalen, St John’s, and Univ – only offer halal food at formal hall.
The Islamic Society’s vice president Supti Akhtar told Cherwell: “Eating together with fellow students in Hall is a big part of the Oxford experience, and it’s a shame if anyone feels excluded from that.
“So providing halal food is a simple – but important – way of creating an inclusive environment for Muslim students…it is perfectly feasible for any college to cater for halal.”
Akhtar said that the Society is trying to work with bursars and catering staff to provide clarity as to what food is actually halal.
“Sometimes colleges just don’t declare it,” she told Cherwell.
“We have also found problems around certain colleges not knowing that alcohol is forbidden, and thus students are often not told when alcohol is used within desserts or main meals.
“We hope to resolve these issues in an attempt to make college life that much more inclusive for all our members.”
Baroness Deech argued claims of discrimination are not supported by the figures, since the number of black and minority ethnic (BME) students who received offers was proportional to the BME population.
She argued, “the problem is uneven distribution” among prestigious universities, colleges and subjects.
She told Parliament: “There are colleges in London where white students are in the minority. Is anyone going to complain there are too many students of one race or religion?”
She continued: “Impressive, expensive outreach work is damaged by the impression they discriminate against black students.
“In no other country would a senior politician speak like this about a top university, thereby undermining its reputation.”
While not naming David Lammy MP – who has spearheaded a campaign attacking Oxford’s record on access – in her speech, she did observe “how misguided most of that conversation was”.
Responding to her comments, a government spokesperson said the the Office for Students will challenge more selective institutions to make progress in broadening their admissions.
He said the government “shares the concerns” expressed by Baroness Deech that recent media coverage of Oxbridge admissions will undermine their outreach work.
Last year, Baroness Deech faced widespread criticism after describing vegetarians who eat “fake meat” as “transgender vegetarians”.
