Saturday 11th October 2025
Blog Page 823

John’s votes against new officer to defend freedom of speech

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St John’s have dropped plans to introduce a ‘religions & beliefs’ officer to protect students’ freedom of speech.

The original motion argued that those who hold certain religions or beliefs are “at risk of unjust discrimination, yet have no liberation position in the JCR”. It said the role was necessary after a series of incidents of alleged “religious discrimination” at Oxford.

The motion passed narrowly at its first reading two weeks ago, but failed to pass at a JCR meeting on Sunday. Students instead passed a motion to endorse the college’s freedom of speech policy.

The original said: “students are entitled to hold personal beliefs and participate in open discussion about those beliefs without fear of being banned from college/ JCR events, being discriminated against, or having their events hijacked by protesters.”

The motion called for the creation of a Religions and Beliefs Officer, who was to have a budget of £300, with the responsibility of “representing all the religions and beliefs held by students in the JCR”. A separate ‘Religions & Beliefs sub-committee’, consisting of five to ten people, would be set up to “represent the range of beliefs held by students in the JCR.”

At the meeting two weeks ago, JCR members questioned whether the religions and beliefs officer could adequately represent the faiths of all College students.

Concerns were also raised about the religions & beliefs subcommittee potentially becoming dominated by Christians, the most common faith in the College, and therefore not representing the beliefs of other students.

“One individual would not be able to represent all the religions and beliefs that the students hold,” one student said.

Another said: “As the dominant belief in the college is Christianity, and many other beliefs have far fewer students, how would you ensure that there is representation on the sub-committee from these other groups.”

Despite opposition, the motion narrowly passed in a secret ballot, with 26 votes in favour, 24 against, and eight abstentions.

This Sunday, the religions and beliefs motion was put to a vote again, as it was constitutionally mandated to pass twice. However, at its second reading, the motion failed, with 34 votes for, 44 against and seven abstentions.

Instead, an amended freedom of belief motion, noting: “there has been some controversy recently within the JCR concerning what is acceptable as freedom of speech” and resolving to “endorse the College freedom of speech policy”, passed almost unanimously, with 81 votes in favour, one vote against, and two abstentions.

The initial two-part freedom of belief motion noted concerns about specific incidents on campus which had been “interpreted by some as religious discrimination”.

The motion highlighted the Balliol JCR committee banning representatives of the Christian Union from its freshers’ fair in early October, over concerns their presence could lead to “alienation or micro-aggression” for new students.

The decision was condemned by a JCR motion which accused the JCR of “barring the participation of specific faith-based organisations” and describing the step as “a violation of free speech [and] a violation of religious freedom”. St John’s JCR committee declined to comment on the motions.

University trawled sensitive data to drive donations

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Oxford University employed private investigators to examine the financial backgrounds of individuals who donated to the University following the death of Cecil the Lion, Cherwell can disclose.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has now begun an investigation into revelations that British universities breached data protection laws by passing the details of donors on to private investigators.

Following Cecil’s death, 11,000 individuals donated a total of over £750,000 to an Oxford campaign in support of the University’s wildlife conservation unit, which had previously been tracking the lion. Oxford then passed donor details onto the private scheme ‘WealthPoint’ in order that they could identify individuals wealthy enough that might donate again.

According to a freedom of information (FOI) request, seen by Cherwell, the University had employed Blackbaud Inc – who run the service – since 2013, but has now ended its subscription. When contacted for a comment on this, a spokesperson declined to provide any further information.

An FOI request made by the Daily Mail revealed this week that Oxford has also been using privately employed investigators to examine the financial status of former students. Data gathered included information about the present job, position, and wealth band of alumni.

The records of almost 200,000 Oxford alumni have been inspected since August 2007. Three private companies have been used by the University to collect and analyse this data, including a company called Prospecting for Gold and another named Wealth Engine. These assessments can be used to find out the likelihood that individuals will donate in future, or even write Oxford into their will.

In November and December 2014 private firm ‘Wealth Engine’ was provided the details of 3,669 individuals in preparation for a telethon.

The FOI request showed that 24 Russell Group Universities have been using similar data screening methods, some of which have been running since 1997. £1 billion was donated to UK universities last year, with the majority going to Russell Group institutions.

Information Commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, said: “Personal data belongs to the individual. That means telling people what it’s going to be used for and who it’s going to be shared with. This is what the law required.

“We will look carefully at the evidence provided by the Daily Mail to see if and where any rules have been broken.”

In 2017, the ICO fined eleven charities a total of £138,000 after they breached data protection law. If an institution failed to gain consent from individuals to screen them, or their reasonable expectation that their data would be stored, they may have broken the law.

An Oxford University spokesperson told Cherwell: “We have used wealth screening firms to support our efforts to raise money for our research and teaching objectives, but it is a tiny part of our fundraising activity and the vast majority of the screening happened at least eight years ago.

“We have not tried to hide this – every email sent to alumni has a link to our data protection statement, which clarifies that our development and alumni relations system may be used for fundraising and hold donor status and wealth assessment information.

“For many years, all alumni have been able to opt out if they do not wish their data to be used in this way, and we would never sell their data to external partners.

“We are committed to transparency in the use of our data and we will continue to review our data protection statement to see if we can make it clearer.

“We are proud of the results of our successful fundraising campaign – it has funded thousands of students from all backgrounds to study at Oxford, and research which has transformed the lives of people around the world.”

Cherwell has seen emails that have been sent to alumni in which a data protection statement has been attached. The link is usually placed at the very bottom of emails and leads to a website that lays out the policies of the University’s Development and Alumni Relations System.

Public schoolboys dominate Union election

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The Oxford Union’s elections are still dominated by the privately educated and men.

21 of the 30 officers running in Friday’s elections attended fee-paying schools, Cherwell analysis has found.

Just one of the twelve candidates for senior positions – defined as Standing Committee and above – attended a state comprehensive school, according to social media profiles. 70% of those running are male. There are only four female candidates for senior positions, three of whom attended private schools.

According to the most recent data that the University has made available, 59% of offers Oxford made to students studying in the UK went to state school applicants. Under 7% of secondary school students in the country attend independent schools.

But the Union is set to continue as a private school-dominated society, with students who attended fee-paying schools running uncontested for the roles of President and Librarian.

Only one position, Treasurer, is guaranteed to be won by a state educated member: it is being contested by Redha Rubaie and Daniel Wilkinson, both of whom attended grammar schools.

The imbalance of backgrounds is even more apparent in junior roles, which tend to be contested mainly by first-year students. Of the 17 candidates for Secretary’s Committee, 14 attended private schools, including St. Paul’s Boys, Abingdon, and Sevenoaks.

The news comes after a recent Cherwell investigation found that 76% of elected officials on this term’s committee attended independent schools. 52% of JCR presidents went to fee-paying schools, the Cherwell investigation found, as well as half of senior editorial staff across Cherwell and The Oxford Student.

In 2010, following a similar investigation, a Union source told Cherwell they had been encouraged to use contacts they had met at public school to win votes.

“When I ran for the Union, I was encouraged by members of my slate to make use of the number of Oxford undergrads from my old school and to contact them for votes,” they said.

The gender imbalance amongst those running for election follows criticism of a male-dominated term card. Just twelve of the 61 speakers scheduled to speak at the Union this term were female.

At the time, the St. Hilda’s Women’s Rep said: “The Oxford Union’s term card proves that success and intelligence at Oxford are continuously and persistently equated with whiteness and masculinity.”

Rachel Collett, the Women’s Officer for both Class Act and Oxford University Labour Club, said the Union was “dominated by private school boys.”

Union president Chris Zabilowicz, stressed his commitment to widening access to the society.

“Anyone who knows me will support me when I say I very much care about diversity, as the first openly gay President of the Oxford Union and an access member myself,” Zabilowicz said.

Polling in this term’s Union elections is open today, and the results are expected to be announced on Saturday.

This article originally stated that all women elected to senior roles were privately educated. It has been amended to reflect that in fact only three out of four were.

‘Twelfth Night’ review – ‘The Luscombe effect strikes again’

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The RSC’s latest reinterpretation of Twelfth Night, from director Christopher Luscombe, transports the kingdom of Illyria to the decadent world of London in the 1890s, and the bold decision to update the location to this luxuriant, opulent setting pays off. The sense we get of indulgence suffuses all aspects of the performance.

Luscombe’s directorial history at the RSC has been coloured by simi- larly innovate reworkings of classic texts – from his Love’s Labour’s Lost, which was set in 1910, to his Much Ado About Nothing set just after WWI – and the updating of Twelfth Night, while slightly less coherent in places, is similarly effective. From the minor Fabian being recast as the vivacious scullery maid Fabia, played with zeal by Sarah Twomey, to Feste being reset as Olivia’s munshi rather than her servant, some of the updates work incredibly effectively, establishing a tone that is colonialist while still reeking of aestheticism.

It is against this intriguing backdrop that the comedy plays out, and the decadent 1890s setting plays into the text well. The slight culture clash between empiricism and aestheticism, which is accentuated by the very Wildean division of the settings into “town” and “country”, contributes nicely to the tonal dissonance – of all Shakespeare’s comedies, this is the one that has perhaps the sharpest aftertaste.

The taunting of Malvolio, often exaggerated to hyperbolic comic levels, is here executed in a way that shies away from excess. And what starts off with some incredible moments of physical comedy involving statues and letters quickly devolves into quite a depraved manipulation, with the tormented Malvolio expertly played by Adrian Edmondson.

The darker moments of the comedy were also greatly aided by the strong musical accompaniment. Nigel Hess’ excellent compositions, played live by a team of musicians, accentuate the moments of poignance and tension and often capture our feelings far better than the actors, while also playing into the moments of comedy, with a number of more humorous songs designed to invoke the tradition of the Victorian music hall.

Aside from the indulgent creative aspects of the production, it is the cast who bring the play to life, and most roles are very well-cast. Kara Tointon, possibly most recognisable to our generation for winning Strictly Come Dancing in 2010, puts in an excellent turn as Olivia, with a defiant stage presence that supersedes her physical slightness. The comic duo of Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek are also played with strong panache by John Hodgkinson and Michael Cochrane respectively. The decision to cast a slightly older actor as Aguecheek is definitely one that pays off – Cochrane’s performance is in equal parts witty and endearing, and complements Hodgkinson’s Sir Toby Belch well.

The supporting cast are also very strong, with all of Olivia’s household staff giving particularly good performances. Aside from Sarah Twomey, special credit must go to Vivien Parry, whose performance of housekeeper Maria as a gossiping Welsh matron brings some of the most heartfelt laughs of the evening.

Luscombe’s interpretation of Twelfth Night is imaginative without ever verging into excessive, and is opulent without being overly indulgent. The cast are strong, the musical accompaniment is stronger, and the running time of two hours forty minutes is sure to fly by.

It will be broadcast live in cinemas on Valentine’s Day 2018, and while the romantic subplots might not bode well for a date, for two and a half hours of something slightly different, you can’t go too far wrong with this witty reimagination of Shakespeare’s most deceptively subtle tragicomedy.

To paraphrase the play’s most famous line: if theatre be the food of love, book your tickets now.

Twelfth Night runs until 24 February, 2018, and will be broadcast live in cinemas on Valentine’s Day

The marriages Brexit can’t break

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As the complicated divorce that is Brexit continues, I have begun to look at the marriages it has disturbed. My own family was arguably made possible because of Britain’s membership of the European Union. Though my father’s parents were Italian immigrants, he was brought up in Britain. Back in the ‘90s, after finishing his degree, he decided to move to his parent’s holiday home in Italy to improve his knowledge of the language. With a little bit of pidgin Italian that sounded more like French, and armed with a British music collection that outshone much of what one could find in Italy at the time, my father managed to woo my Italian mother. A few years into their relationship, after I was born, my parents decided it was best to bring me up in the UK, given the dubious economic future for Italy with the corrupt media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi taking its helm once again in 2001. Despite initially being horrified at the apparently overwhelming mass of velour tracksuit-clad teens in the UK (my Mum is a fashion designer, and so cares quite a lot about clothes) and missing Aperol Spritzes and olives before dinner, and her job in the fashion capital of Milan, my mother settled in very well. She learnt English quickly, so much so that she appears to whatsapp my British friends more than I do myself.

Since then, our family has expanded to include three more children. At least once a year, thanks to budget airlines and the EU, we go back to Italy to visit our family there, and the way we all behave somehow re-adapts itself to an Italian climate. I often return from Italy, making hand gestures as I speak, pronouncing the occasional ‘No’ more like the abrupt ‘Nó’ and struggling to maintain a Mediterranean diet. Inconvenient as it is, I think this is the beauty of being in a family that has a culture that is ultimately ‘Europeanised’. Yes, I would rather not drink a cappuccino in the late afternoon, but no way would I ever dance to Reggaeton (which I despise) with the same enthusiasm as Italian people tend to. There are many families in Britain like my own made possible by virtue of our European Community. But since Brexit, there will be fewer and fewer. I spoke to two mothers from Oxford, my own, Monia, and her friend Agnieszka, about how they feel as EU nationals who started a family with a British partner, after it was decided that Britain was to leave the European Union.

***

I asked Monia how she felt after the result of the referendum. She explained that she was pretty shocked as was everyone else, but more shocked by the floods of messages she was receiving from British colleagues and my British friends apologising for the result, and worrying about what was going to happen to her. “It felt like all of a sudden, I had to wear the ‘immigrant’ badge, one that I never felt I had to wear before.”.

We talk about betrayal. How does it feel to work hard to integrate oneself in a foreign country and then be rejected from it? Agnieszka remarks how she “felt unhappy with the referendum. Yes I think voting Brexit was in a way racist, but I don’t personally feel betrayed. I think those who are betrayed are those who weren’t informed well when they voted to leave.”. Monia nods in agreement, “I don’t feel betrayed because nationality isn’t important to me. I don’t feel like an immigrant and I have never suffered from racism in England. I actually come from a very racist country so when I first came here I thought it was such a beautiful place to live […] especially London because of its multicultural nature. But I did happen to pass by an EDL rally once in a small town. They made me feel really uncomfortable, and that’s when sometimes I feel like people don’t want me here.”.

Yet did they not feel they had a right to vote in the referendum? Agnieszka is a public sector employee and works as a teaching assistant at a local primary school, yet had no right in a decision that could compromise the future of her job. Monia had no right to vote in a referendum in a country where she has lived and paid tax for almost twenty years and yet still receives postal voting slips for Italian elections and referenda. They agree that as UK taxpayers, this is a more valid reason to be able to vote on a decision of direct relevance to them than simply being born somewhere where you might not even live anymore. Monia thinks it is ridiculous that the Italian consulate sends her postal voting slips when she feels she has no right to make those decisions because she lives here. On the other hand, she argues that she had a right, as a mother of British children and a UK taxpayer, to make a choice over Brexit, and that right was denied.

We discuss the characterisation of immigrants from the EU in Britain. The school where Agnieszka works used to be my own primary school, and is currently attended by my siblings and her children. I recall my friends who went there complaining a few years ago about how ‘Polish’ it had become and gawping about how the Polish headmistress at the time occasionally spoke Polish to Polish pupils. A part of Agnieszka’s role is to assist children of Polish origin whose parents might not be so familiar with the English language with their literacy skills. She doesn’t understand why there is so much aversion to the Polish community within the school when they are trying to integrate, and many of them encourage studiousness in their children. Monia added that a lot of the children from the primary school who managed to get into a grammar school were of Polish origin, which in her views challenges the argument that schools go downhill when they have an increasing proportion of Eastern European students. Agnieszka suggests that the ‘Polonisation’ of the school is exaggerated. The school is a Catholic primary, and being from a very Catholic country, many Polish parents would prefer to send their children to a faith school, thus explaining the ‘high’ number of pupils. People forget that before Polish immigrants arrived, Catholic schools were hardly ever dominated by English pupils, but were largely filled with pupils of Irish, Italian and Iberian descent.

Both Monia and Agnieszka have settled in Britain reasonably well, yet what about other EU nationals who are finding it more difficult to integrate? Monia admits that she has not received poor treatment as an immigrant, but admits that she was an immigrant with a degree and from a highly professional background. For others who leave their country to come here it is much more difficult. Monia talks about the children of some of her Italian friends who have recently migrated to the UK for work, given the high youth and graduate unemployment rate in Italy. She stresses that they are not ‘stealing’ jobs, they are just doing whatever jobs they can get. These jobs are low pay and are usually unwanted jobs such as in care for the elderly or in busy restaurants; often with dubious contracts or none at all. “These people live in much worse situations than a lot of those who voted to make them leave! Where does all this envy come from?”. They both note how they are lucky as EU nationals who have children with British nationals. They will not be made to leave, but others will not have the same luxury, even when they have only just taken the big step of leaving their own country behind, only to be asked to turn back again.

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I remember speaking to my mother the day after the referendum, when she joked that she was going to have to pack a suitcase to go back to Italy. My twin brothers who were five at the time locked her in their arms between them, chanting, “We won’t let Mummy go back to Italy!”.

I asked her what she would say to those who voted to leave the EU, expecting a fervent gush of anger. But instead she replied calmly, “It doesn’t matter what happens to me anymore. What matters is what will happen to you. I hope they will help us pick up the pieces for your generation because of the mess they have made. They’ve created uncertainty and that is completely wrong.”. She looks down at my brothers’ glossy heads and caresses them lovingly, “You should not put children into this world to throw them into the sea- you should give them a stable environment, one that stretches beyond the borders of this country.”

***

What Agnieszka and Monias’ experiences reveal is that there is no ‘them’ and ‘us’. The only divisions between EU citizens living in Britain and British people exist in the newspaper headlines. This country may be divorcing itself from the EU, but it cannot break the human relationships made possible by the European project.

‘Volpone’ review – “Overdone accents but an otherwise fantastic production”

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Set in 1981, Seeing Hand Productions present Ben Jonson’s Volpone with an updated, and decidedly Northern, twist.

The action takes place in Blackpool, accentuated by the Kitsch and gaudy set that conveys an air of faded splendour. An ostentatious chandelier, tacky carpet, and neon lit sign capture the essence of a 1980s casino or bingo hall. Seeing Hand’s design team should be commended on a consistently excellent aesthetic, one that successfully situates the drama in director Sam Luker Brown’s nuanced choice of the 80s.

This striking aesthetic is reflected in the inventive lighting use throughout the performance. A use of blue and red tones marry well with the vibrant colours of the costume, and the use of more ambitious lighting, to signify split scenes, is a risk that comes off well.

The use of a live band within the performances, despite being perhaps a little loud at times, was a well thought-out decision, adding to the overall jovial ambiance of the performance. Milo Saville deserves credit for his delightfully befitting new compositions.

On the whole, there was not a weak link in the cast, with all performers tackling Jonson’s complex language with aplomb. Kate Weir, who played the eponymous Volpone, gave a very strong performance, signalling from the onset with her comically brilliant entrance that the play would be a witty farce.

The dynamic between Weir and Joe Peden, who portrayed Volpone’s parasitic sidekick Mosca, was excellent, carrying the play forward with a clear energy. A special mention should go to Daisy Hayes, who brilliantly characterised the elderly Corbaccio and was received by the audience with much hilarity.

To reflect the updated Blackpool setting, the cast adopted an array of Northern accents in an attempt to capture the Lancashire twang. Although in the majority of cases this was tolerable, in others, accents were hyperbolic to the point of becoming over-done and slightly irritating.

Despite the production’s many merits, Luker-Brown’s choice of a traverse staging was perhaps a hindrance, causing the cast to fall into a habit of unnecessarily pacing across the stage.

However, this is not to distract from the fact that Seeing Hand Production’s Volpone is an exceptionally well presented performance that director Luker-Brown should be very proud of. This performance of Volpone is a must see.

A life on the streets of Oxford

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It was outside the History faculty, opposite the Odeon on George Street, that I saw him. Sitting stiffly in his one change of clothes, his sleeping bag beside him, was someone in circumstances it’s fair to say are unlikely to be experienced by the students who occasionally file past. I stopped for a moment while he sat there reading his book, then approached him. Once I’d introduced myself it wasn’t long before he (Chad) began speaking about life on the street and how he had come to be in this position. Learning of his time here since his arrival from Dublin 14 months ago on the promise of a job that never materialised, I asked if he minded dictating a short diary over the next three days for a student newspaper. He agreed.

Yet instead of producing three neat diary entries as planned, the ensuing evening meetings became more a discussion of the vicissitudes of homelessness itself. What struck me about his account was that rather than regaling me with a series of stories and complaints to win my sympathy, as can so often – and understandably – happen, Chad spoke openly about things that could easily have done the reverse: crime, drink, and drugs, as well as his preference for being on the street rather than in hostels and shelters, which anyone here will know are usually what money is most cried out for on the streets. Here are Chad’s dictated diary entries and some conversations that followed:

Monday 16, October

‘Got £5. Bought two strips of chicken and 4 cans of £2 Sainsbury’s cider. Stayed here. People asking me what drug deals I seen about. Most of the night people bought me food. Don’t go to sleep till about 5 o’clock in the morning. A friend’s dog was limping so got him some antibiotics. Slept for not long, not properly. Through the week nights are quite quiet. Had to get methadone for old heroine addiction down Cowley road.’

Tuesday 17 October

‘Reading my book today. Bought some new socks from Primark because my feet are really sore. Saw my friend at the Gatehouse (a homeless shelter). Saw my friend Sharron. Just been wondering round, checking after my friends.’

At this point his friend Sharron arrives with a dog, which after a lot of coaxing finally sits down. She makes some complaints about how tired she is, not seeming to notice me on the steps next to Chad. When she does she immediately asks for change, as if by reflex, and Chad hurriedly explains why I’m there. She apologises profusely, saying she had no idea, and then reverts to talking about how tired she is. “Its like having needles stuck in my eyes” she says, pointing at them imploringly to Chad, “you know what I mean?”

Sharron, who has known Chad since he arrived and even suggested he try living on the very spot we’re talking on, chips in as Chad talks about the uncertainty of homeless life, the importance of trying to keep your begging spot clear of drug deals to maintain its good standing with the police, and of coming across a certain way to other people on the streets, who can be as predatory as they can be supportive. “It’s dog-eat-dog out here,” he says. Speaking almost to sky, Sharron despairingly throws up her arms, “it’s like living in a fish tank.”

“As soon as they see something’s the matter with you,” Chad continues, “they do something. You can’t show too much.”

“That’s what I mean,” Sharron says,”That’s why I’m here like this. Chad’s one of the only people I can cry in front of.”

“I want to cry all the time” he says, “but you can’t.”

There’s a lull in the conversation before a couple of police cars squawk past. “That’s right, get them out of town” he says, grinning.

They then talk about footwear. She mentions how she had once been without shoes for 5 months out of principled revulsion of damp shoes, picking up a lot of cuts until a friend of hers started crying and pleading for her to wear shoes. “That’s what it took.”

Then, despite Sharron’s protests, Chad shows me the red raw soles of his sodden feet. I promise him some anti-septic tomorrow and Sharron asks what kind it is. I say I’m not sure exactly, but that its a spray-on. Suddenly, and for the first time, she lights up with genuine joy on his behalf, “Spray-on! That’s your favourite Chad!”

Wednesday 18 October

‘Had some appointments about benefits. An outreach person approached me, they give me some forms to fill in for benefits, saying they might have accommodation. I been out here too long and winter’s coming. Appointment for my prescription. Spent the day here.’

“Basically, that’s what my day consisted of,” he concludes, almost with disdain at its monotony. “It’s mostly the same thing, because for most of us… its a very lonely life.”

In acknowledgement of the sheer number of times he has had to get up to tip people off on the whereabouts of drug dealers, he mentions how as a homeless person it’s nearly impossible to stay clear of drugs altogether. ‘This life is not all about sitting here begging.’

Drugs are obviously a large part of it. He talks about the strength of a heroine addiction, speaking quietly under the confident, clipped voices of passers by. “You need heroin because if you don’t have heroin you’re ill, you’re very ill. And you have to pick up money each day to get heroin. And you have to get on a methadone programme, and that’s what I’m on. So I don’t have to go looking for it every day.” He warns that the drug has gone so downhill over the years “its actually no longer worth doing.” The impurities its now mixed with are evident in its colour he adds, “heroin’s actually not far from quite a white creamy colour, and they’re all sat there smoking and injecting a brown substance.”

Crime is another, sometimes unavoidable, part of living on the streets. A lot of people on the streets have been in prison he says, including himself. “I’ve done 15 years of prison. Obviously I was in prison recently, I haven’t been out that long, only a few months.” We don’t go into what this was for, but with some strain he admits that he’s burgled in the past, “not in houses, not in houses, nothing like that… shops, shops, cigarette boxes, you know what I mean.” I say at least that’s not malicious, but he looks down and says its still a crime. Yet the distinction between stealing from a home and from a business is nevertheless important to him, “something like taking a kids play station, that’s something I couldn’t do.”

Why has he not been able to find a place? The answer to this is a familiar combination of personal tragedy and inadequate services. A cruel succession of deaths, beginning with his wife and ending with his next partner dying of pneumonia, left him in a depression that shattered not only his work life, but his whole reality. How have the authorities helped? “The probation service and the prison service, they’re no help at all — its alright giving us methadone and medication, but they’re not rehabilitating us. No one’s even spoken to me about my friend dying. No one. And they all know, they all know, but not one of them’s said ‘do you want to talk about it Chad?’… No counsellor, no bereavement officer, no nothing. And these are the people that are supposed to be looking after me. I’ve lost my friend, my partner, my home.”

Yet there’s still hope. The other week he he spoke to a doctor, who out of his own kindness wrote up a report on his mental health which was passed on to housing authorities to improve Chad’s bid for a place. And – at Christmas – his parents are coming over from Ireland, about which he is as happy as he is apprehensive. The meeting will come as a big shock to them since for the last 5 years he has been too ashamed to explain his real situation. A middle-aged man with children, he has so far been too embarrassed to ask for help, but struggling with the thought of another winter, of again joining the ranks of human lumps slumped outside shop doorways on freezing Christmas nights, he is finally finding the courage to be honest with his family.

He’s keen to fight the stereotype of homeless people as idlers who decided to sleep on the street: “when we were 18 and left home… they think we have nothing going for us. But I’ve had a good life, do you know what I mean, I’ve had a great life.”

“I don’t want nothing now, because every time I get something, it gets taken away from me. And its scary that, you know what I mean.”

What sort of place would he like to live in? He immediately dismisses the idea of a shelter or hostel for the homeless, saying he can’t deal with them. “They’re all full of drink and drugs, and I want to try and get away from that. That’s why I stay out here on the streets, I stay away from that. And they’re not going to give me my own place because you have to earn that, you have to go to hospitals and that.”

At least here you meet a wider variety of people? “Yes, yes, yeah exactly that. I’ve met some great people out on the streets, I’ve met some brilliant people, some silly people, some very very rich people, some famous people.” He mentions some people from Hollyoaks he’s seen, “though not very very famous.”

What can we do? With renewed passion, he says that better than giving money to homeless charities, people should talk more to homeless people and buy them things directly. His dislike of charities is partly based on personal experience. One time for instance, he recalls discovering a photograph of himself in the Oxford mail which had been taken (without permission) of him sleeping on the street, in order to front a campaign for Crisis. When he approached the charity itself for shelter however, he was turned away. At the same time, he is also uncomfortable with the general attitudes of charities toward the homeless. Campaigns such as ‘Your kindness could kill’ and ‘Don’t fund the Habit fund the Charities,’ while well-intentioned, have done much, he feels, to damage the kind of caring attitude we should be encouraging in public life, instead dehumanising all who beg as merely self-made drug addicts. But, he nonetheless stresses, “don’t give until you know where the money goes.” He believes that more positive interactions between the homeless and the public, along with a government that takes proper responsibility for its citizens, will be the way forward. As evident from the deep appreciation of so many on the streets just for being acknowledged, it is clearly not just proper homes these people need, but a proper society.

And people are trying. Just as I get up to say good bye a girl comes along with a copy of Dubliners which she had promised to buy to remind him of home, along with some earl grey tea, which she said she wanted to introduce him to when she heard he had never tried it. He cautiously takes a sip. “Right,” he says impressed, “it does taste like something special.”

‘Volpone’ preview – “a very potent type of dramatic humour”

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Intruding on the preparations for Volpone, showing at the Keble O’Reilly this week, the most noticeable thing was the sheer warmth of the rehearsal room. I am not referring to Univ’s central-heating system (although this also perhaps warrants some column-inches of praise) but rather the smiles, laughs, and creative energy which fizzled before, after, and between the scenes I was shown. The team behind this show clearly get on and the relish with which they brought Ben Jonson’s tricky farce to life before my eyes was infectious. It seems this is exactly the kind of production that cold Oxford students need in the throes of end-of-term blues.

To summarise a very complex plot, Volpone is a satire of human greed and lust. One of Jonson’s most-performed plays, it follows one conman who attempts to ensnare a handful of different characters by adopting various guises. As the details of their different schemes grow increasingly fraught, each plan begins to collapse before our eyes. It is a hectic, mad-cap farce and looks to be a whole lot of fun.

As director Sam Luker-Brown told me after the preview I saw, this sense of fun was at the centre of his artistic vision from the start. “That’s the key: fun”, he tells me. “It’s a macabre fun and its twisted and it says something” he adds (perhaps preempting the condescending judgement of Oxford students cynical about anything that wears its entertainment value so unabashedly on its sleeve) “but in a word that’s it.” And so it should be. Whilst Jonson always has points to make about the nature of city-capitalism, he does so in a way which seems to evade any definitive moral analysis. His work provides the model for a very specific authorial ambivalence and for a very potent type of dramatic humour, one which Luker-Brown and his team are certainly successful at recreating.

Indeed, one of the most exciting things about putting on a show of this sort is playing with the idea of theatricality. These are a set of characters that are constantly acting up, changing face, shapeshifting. In the scenes I had the chance to watch, for instance, lead-actress Kate Weir did just that. Weir, who has only just finished performing in another O’Reilly play, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, is already a remarkably versatile performer and watching her move up and down the promenade stage, slowly transitioning into the sickly old man Volpone pretends to be, provided an excellent opportunity for her to display the extent of these talents. As Luker-Brown describes, she has a “plastic face” capable of pulling off all sorts of dramatic or comedic tricks. To use his words, Weir has an “incredible virtuosity” and it was this faculty alone, he tells me, that led to the casting of a female Volpone. Whilst the team accept that this decision “immediately raises a lot of questions” which they have found interesting to explore, they maintain that Weir was first and foremost “the best person in the room”.

Alongside Weir is Peden, another established actor in Oxford who maintains the charisma evident in previous performances. Together he and Weir strut about in a hilarious double-act, commanding all our attention and evidently in control of fairly difficult material. They seem more than ready for show-week, far ahead of schedule by Oxford-standards.

Whilst cautious about drawing clichéd connections to current affairs, it is clear that Luker-Brown also believes in the political provocations the show might make, particularly with its updated setting of 1980s Blackpool. This he says is “show town”, full of “glitz and glamour” but also full of “melancholy”. The period, known for the birth of the free-market system that he sees reaping havoc today, automatically draws attention to “our capacity for self-deception”, the common motif of the play, and “the North”, I am reminded, “is a particularly good place to think about Thatcher”.

Luker-Brown jokes about calling it a “Brexit Volpone” but really his imagining is far more interesting than that. He uses a 17th century text to tell us about the present day but rather than setting it in the here and now transports us to the late 20th century to see where the world as we know it really started taking shape. I’m not certain that all of this will register with audiences but it’s certainly an original take.

After an hour spent with the Volpone team, I ask Luker-Brown one last question. Is there anything he would like me to include in the preview? He leans down to my laptop which I’m using to record our discussion and murmurs “Please come to this play”. Going back out into a cold, late-capitalist, winter-night I am left feeling like there are few things-on in 7th week that I’d like to do more.

Nancy Drew – feminist icon or tired corporate creation?

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“Spend time at the gym to build upper body strength. Detective work may require fending off a vicious hair pulling.” So advises Nancy Drew in The Thirteenth Pearl, foreseeing that state of affairs most particularly dangerous to the female sleuth. Constantly developing accurate ‘hunches’ and pre-empting obstacles, seeing (and solving) crime everywhere, Nancy Drew – the “titian-haired blonde” – has been a paradigm of the female literary detective for over 80 years.

Nancy Drew is as familiar a name as Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot, another character we can chart the proliferations of through contemporary culture. Nancy Drew might be up there amongst the most prolific of all, featuring in over 200 books written by a variety of ghost-writers from 1930 to the present, as well as appearing in films, television series, and video game manifestations. Clearly, Nancy Drew is a formula that sells. Originally conceived as a female counterpart for The Hardy Boys mystery series by the publisher Edward Stratemeyer, distinctive writing style or originality has always been secondary to character, and it is the vision of Nancy herself that has given the franchise unity over the decades.

Taken at a glance, Nancy’s hairpulling quote seems like it could have come straight out of Legally Blonde, films that gloriously reclaim a ‘girlygirl’ image while simultaneously gently satirising it – in particular the socioeconomic background of their heroines. By contrast, Nancy sadly seems to lack the ironising streak that might give her gleaming façade nuance, imperfection, or even a bit of humour.

Nancy can be easily contained in an uncomplicated package of adjectives and nouns, prepared for anything – at once talented sportsman, dignified hostess, and resourceful detective. Her female sidekicks, cousins George and Bess, represent two ends of a spectrum of stereotyped girl, mythically united by Nancy. In The Mystery of the 99 Steps, George the ‘tomboy’ with her “close-cropped, dark hair” is the “exact opposite of her slightly plump cousin”. Dimpled Bess, meanwhile, displays qualities of hesitation and shyness that Nancy is at pains to discourage. In Nancy Drew, everything is done in earnest, everything for a ‘greater good’ that is only vaguely defined.

The ‘mythical’ quality of Nancy Drew is inseparable from her background. Criticism of her impact on popular culture has frequently noted her Wasp status and certainly every appearance of Nancy takes place in a removed, romantic world beyond education or a need to make a living. Many Nancy fans venerate her independence, hard work, and refusal to submit to an authority she does not respect. Certainly there are elements of Nancy’s characterisation, particularly in the earlier titles, that powerfully contradict expectations of women in the social sphere she emerges from. All this coalesces in Nancy’s blue convertible car, the icon of radical female freedom.

Although Nancy does appear in different ways, the formula is essentially unchanging: variations on the same theme, to use a cliché in the vein of the franchise itself. In a world where everyone around Nancy is seemingly one part of her consummate characterisation, Nancy herself is pitted constantly against an ‘other’. In The Mystery at Lilac Inn, Nancy identifies a girl as a thief because she is black and wandering around an upmarket shop. The implicit frame of comparison here is obviously to herself.

For Laura Barton, writing in The Guardian in 2007 upon the release of a new Nancy Drew film, the enduring formula shows that “there is a strength in being unconventional, in being your own kind o’ gal”. Yet Nancy has never really been her own girl. A corporate invention from the beginning – envisioned by a man who later worried that his ghost-writers were giving the articulate Nancy too much ‘flip’ – Nancy Drew became a kind of touchstone for developing styles and tastes, reflected in the book covers for example, as well as becoming markedly more stereotypically feminine.

Nancy is expressive of a highly romanticised, narrowly defined, white American stereotype. As Bobbie Ann Mason puts it, “adventure is the superstructure, domesticity the bedrock”. A voyage into the unknown in the blue convertible will always lead back to the same crystallised vision of carefully tempered, inherently and damagingly qualified ‘achievable’ femininity.

A Day In The Life: JCR President

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The life of a JCR President isn’t as glamorous as it seems. This is most evident when you find yourself single-handedly cleaning up loo roll and broken glass strewn decoratively across the quad from the night before, or waking up to the realisation that you have to sit on the Health and Safety Sub-Committee that morning.

It’s also probably safe to say that by the end of my stint, I had developed a genuine phobia of checking my emails. Despite this, the role is very much a rewarding one. On a day-to-day basis, I managed the running of the JCR and acted as the student representative to college, whether that meant sitting on College committees or lobbying college to effect some (much-needed) change, such as the installation of air freshener in the toilets.

Perhaps the best thing about the position is the people you get to know – whether it’s those who you didn’t know before or those who you got to know better by virtue of working with them. And the satisfaction derived from having to defend (hopefully successfully) a proposal put to college definitely offsets the time spent leafing through stacks of agenda papers.

It can prove quite difficult, however, to strike a work-life balance when you have to be on hand to deal with any issues that may arise. I found that organisation really is the key to success. My mornings usually began with a salvo of emails, accompanied by industrial amounts of coffee and biscuits, but the day tended to be punctuated with meetings, events and JCR-related admin, with my degree and social life fitting round everything else.

I would often receive emails or phone calls from college staff with problems that would demand my immediate attention. Sometimes these were frustratingly trivial – “Natalie, it would be great if you could sort out the mess in the pidge room as soon as possible” – and, at other times, horribly ominous – “Please could we arrange a meeting at your earliest convenience to discuss X…”

Whilst busy, the life of a JCR President is a lot of fun thanks to the people in the JCR who you get to know so much better and for whom you develop a vested and emotional interest in representing. It’s a serious position, with fairly weighty responsibilities, but an incredibly fulfilling one too.