Lola Olufemi, the Cambridge University Student Women’s Officer, came under fire from online commentators after The Telegraph published an article discussing her efforts in leading the decolonisation of Cambridge’s curriculum. Despite The Telegraph’s later amendment and clarifications concerning the article, a plethora of abusive comments were launched at Olufemi on online platforms.
Make no mistake here – the criticisms against Olufemi are not only intellectually dishonest, but deeply damaging to the ongoing progress to empower persons of colour to speak about and share their lived experiences.
The dishonesty is evidenced on two levels. The primary charge levied at Olufemi is that her campaign insists on ‘erasing’ and ‘rewriting’ history. Firstly, the call for the inclusion of more non-white historical figures and academics on the official syllabus does not preclude the inclusion of the works of white intellectuals (syllabus extension is largely additive, not substitutive).
Moreover, white historical figures and academics tend to be over-represented in popular media, library stocks, online resources, and core textbooks for courses – it is unclear why removing a few white names from the syllabus, even if that did occur, would cause substantial erasure of white history. Instead, it should be seen as a proportionately justified reduction in the time allocated to the study of them.
Secondly, the demand for curriculum decolonisation does not equate the erasure or exclusion of periods of history – instead, it calls for the expansion of perspectives that accommodate hitherto subaltern voices. If anything, such diversification enriches and informs our understanding of the past.
Finally, this charge against Olufemi is factually inaccurate – Olufemi is not the sole member of the Curriculum Decolonisation Campaign. It is supported and led by many other individuals, and to purely associate the campaign with a woman of colour is a political ploy steeped in misogyny, designed to construct the false illusion that the well-meaning academic campaign is a racially motivated plot.
The secondary charge is that the University of Cambridge, as a ‘British’ university, ought to focus on teaching ‘British history’.
The University of Cambridge – as per any other high-quality institutions – aspires towards academic excellence across all fields and areas of specialisation within particular fields, independently of regional or political confinements. To say that Cambridge has the primary obligation to teach British history neglects its position as a globally funded, backed, and influential site of academic research and development.
Also, decolonisation does not call for a complete removal of the focus or prioritisation of British history – it merely advocates the inclusion of more options, papers, and texts on the Global South that are currently severely underrepresented in the official curriculum. Above all, it is distinctly myopic and superficial to ignore the connection between British history and global history – particularly with respect to the subjugation of ethnic minorities under colonialism and imperialism.
The refusal to recognise the importance of any viewpoint other than the ‘white perspective’ only hampers our ability to understand and fully contextualise Britain’s past in relation to its contemporaries and counterparts. One of the ways we should judge the quality of an academic community is through its ability to attempt a holistic outlook to disparate and marginalised voices, and to provide them with the platform they so clearly require.
Yet even if it were intellectually valid to critique Olufemi and her associated campaign, the vicious comments deployed against her are deeply regressive towards existing efforts to make campus spaces more welcoming and open environments for people of colour.
The inflammatory rhetoric makes it even less attractive for those with legitimate criticisms towards the status quo to speak out, by placing them under substantial psychological and social costs. The Telegraph’s singling-out of Olufemi (which could very well be unintentional, or not) put her in the negative spotlight for a decision made by a collective group constituting both students and academics.
Ensuing comments have unhelpfully labeled the campaign’s demands as ‘silencing’ academic freedom, conveniently neglecting the fact that academics and intellectuals of colour have long had their thoughts and views repressed and underrepresented in the overwhelmingly white space of British academia. Further, they failed to mention that the suggested changes do not amount to mandated changes, or that the demands have little to do with what academics can choose to research (academic freedom) – but merely the diversity of content and methods with which teaching is offered.
In many ways, Olufemi was the perfect scapegoat for reactionaries. Her ethnic background fitted neatly with the grander, race war meta-narrative of persons of colour seeking to undermine ‘white Britain’. Her unreserved fortitude could be aptly twisted into aggression that was deeply discomforting for individuals who much preferred defending the status quo. Further, her identity as a student activist associated with the Student Union morphs seamlessly into the motif of left-wing ‘social justice warriors’ and ‘snowflakes’ seeking to sabotage academic freedom.
There’s something special about being a northerner at Oxford. It’s an extraordinary yet alarming experience. Recently released statistics show that the University of Oxford takes more students from the Home Counties (the few counties surrounding London) than the whole region of the North, and David Lammy MP’s ongoing battle with Oxbridge admissions has highlighted how intakes are “utterly unrepresentative of life in modern Britain.”
As a geography student from Manchester, the impact of these statistics resonated deeply. This issue is one in danger of being appropriated by southerners, so I consider it necessary to express my thoughts on poor northern intake to elite universities and how this affects my daily life as an Oxford student. There might be humorous sides to my northern identity, but perhaps this simply makes it more difficult to illuminate what are serious and systematic disadvantages rooted in the country’s economic North/South Divide. As one friend has pointed out, being northern becomes, to a certain extent, your identity at Oxford. Whilst people obviously define themselves in other ways too, a casual summary description of a northern (or Welsh, Scottish, American or international) student would always include their place of origin in a way which doesn’t apply to southerners.
The fact that we are in the minority makes us distinct from those who might be considered ‘normal’, and makes regional cultural differences obvious in our interactions with other students. This is a sentiment which is probably even more applicable to students of colour – and whilst this should not diminish the struggles of northerners – racial and ethnic minorities are undoubtedly subject to another dimension of alienation, something which was highlighted by David Lammy’s research.
Nevertheless, ‘The North’ seems to be unchartered territory for southerners. Not only have few of my university friends ever visited anywhere other than the Lake District or occasionally York, there is also a basic lack of knowledge about the region which makes it seem like it’s irrelevant to many. I find myself trying not to tell new people that I’m from a village between Bury and Bolton – “near Manchester” is the standard reply to the age-old conversation opener, “Where are you from?”. Literature and the media have painted a picture of the North as an industrial wasteland with constant rain and an impoverished populace, such that southerners maintain negative associations with what are now thriving and developing places. My subconscious response is therefore to identify myself with a city I live forty-five minutes away from, if only to avoid the inevitable groan when southerners hear the word ‘Bolton’ or the blank expression from the word ‘Bury’.
There’s no point in denying that being a northerner here can be hilarious – there are certain personal features, often language or accent-based, which distinguish you from the majority of your friends, and which often become a topic of conversation. I know several people who consistently repeat what I’ve just said back to me in my own Bolton accent, completely unconsciously – it becomes a source of embarrassment when I then point it out to them, but is nonetheless a clear subconscious acknowledgement of difference between us.
Dealing tactfully with southerners’ heinous attempts at northern accents is a challenge in itself, but it’s quite disarming to hear my sentence again without having said anything I consider to be worth imitating. The fact that people never seem to be able to differentiate between, for example, Manchester and Yorkshire accents is also slightly insulting; it’s all in the spirit of joke, but it does highlight a general ignorance about the North and an underlying assumption that ‘it’s all the same up there’.
On a more practical level, the vacations present a challenge. Invariably, visiting university friends will involve the investment of considerable amounts of time and money. London is always the hub, owing to its transport links as well as the fact that it’s the home of most of the people I’m visiting, but being stuck up North often entails disproportionate effort just to spend a couple of nights with friends. southerners have the monopoly in every way. I become unjustifiably excited when I meet a single other person who lives within a two-hour drive from my home town. I didn’t realise how different the situation was for northerners until I saw that my London based friends can’t identify with each other if they don’t live under three tube stops apart.
Whilst the community that northern students at Oxford belong to includes those from Liverpool, Manchester, Yorkshire, Newcastle, Cumbria and further, Londoners differentiate between themselves when they live even in separate areas of the same city.
It’s true that these experiences are shared among the few northerners in my college – a friend’s date telling her that “a northern accent is a very interesting novelty” is probably one of the more blatant ways that a southerner has acknowledged the differences between ‘them’ and ‘us’. But on a deeper level, someone’s voice being novel in the same country is worrying – there is a fundamental divide between northern and southern students here that is constantly highlighted in the everyday context.
Being ‘the northerner in the group’ may confer special status and an exemption from all posh jokes regardless of my private-school background, but I do think it has more sinister implications.
I realised the scale of the problem when faced with the stats: it’s particularly shocking that about three-quarters of the UK population live outside London and the South East, yet this region contributes to nearly half of the population of Oxford students. According to the BBC, only 15% of Oxford offer holders came from the North West, the North East, Yorkshire, and the Humber combined between 2010-2015. In contrast, 48% came from London and South-East England.
Whilst well-meaning southerners are indignant on behalf of their northern counterparts, and angry at the obvious prejudice, it’s northerners themselves that should be explaining this issue. It’s not just about Oxford tutors being subconsciously discriminatory against northern accents, although this may contribute. A 2014 survey of British adults by ComRes found that northern accents (categorised as Manchester, Liverpool, and Newcastle) were consistently rated as perceived to be the least intelligent.
This is, however, an issue that goes beyond the university. The geographical disparities in admissions to top universities are a symptom of the country’s North/South Divide. I don’t mean to justify the appalling statistics, but rather I wish to explain them in their wider economic context.
It is true that in London and the South East, a higher proportion of pupils achieve the standard AAA A-level requirement to realistically apply to Oxford or Cambridge. Whilst around 15,700 pupils from the South and East of the country get three As every year (according to figures from Oxford), this number falls to 6,000 in the North and 3,700 in the Midlands. The divide in educational attainment is obvious, and demonstrative of the regional geography at play: the lottery of where you’re born determines where you’re going to end up.
In general, incomes are significantly lower in the North of England – Londoners on average have twice the economic value of people in the North of England, claims The Financial Times. The connection between family income and educational attainment is well-established, with a higher concentration of well-off families in the South producing a bigger pool of high-achieving students in this half of the country. Whilst there are, of course, exceptions to the rule, the lower grades that northern students get is partly down to lack of ambition, something which is emphasised much more in middle-class families with what Frank Ferudi (author and professor of sociology at the University of Kent) has labelled ‘intensive parenting’.
Then there’s the vicious economic circle: less money in the North means that professionals and those seeking higher incomes move to the South, taking their money with them to only exacerbate the problem. This is something I’m considering myself: with a new base in Oxford, and friends around the country, returning to Manchester to work and earn a significantly lower salary than could be found in London is not especially appealing. London, alongside cities such as Bristol, is sucking in graduates due to its generous salary offers and exciting career prospects: The Guardian reported last year that the North sees a net loss of around 75,000 graduates per decade to the south. This creates a ‘brain-drain’ from the North, which denies that region the money it needs to develop economically. Not only that, but this exacerbates the divide in education, as graduates are typically those who will raise children who also become graduates.
This is something that the government is currently failing to address. George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse Partnership project has struggled so far to provide the transformational transport links the region so desperately needs. In the foreword to a recent NPP report, Osborne despairingly described northern areas of specific expertise as “in pockets across the region, separated by traditional geographic boundaries with proud local identities.” As a northerner and a geographer, I don’t see how differing local identities are insurmountable barriers to economic progress: the former Chancellor is almost painting northerners like tribes that can’t communicate with each other.
Therefore, there is simply less money in the north to create a solid educational infrastructure. The high proportion of prestigious independent schools in the South, particularly in London, act as ‘feeder schools’ into Oxbridge. The Sutton Trust found that between 2002-2006, 15% of admissions to Oxbridge could be traced to just 30 schools across the country. Private education, which is likely to provide better teaching and resources to equip students with promising applications, is less affordable and therefore less popular in the North.
Even those that do get that opportunity seem to be disadvantaged, given that private schools in regions including Yorkshire, Humber, the East Midlands, and the North East send half as many students to Oxbridge as the national average. As southern private schools continue to send more students to top universities (such as Westminster School and St Paul’s Girls’ School, each of which sent almost half of their university applicants to Oxbridge over a five year period, as the Sutton Trust found), they learn what works. Whilst Oxbridge claims that they assess the potential of prospective students, it is worth asking whether this is possible: are they seeing the raw potential of a candidate, or a finished product? The statistics would suggest the latter, with so many of my university friends describing their southern schools as ‘Oxbridge machines’ that are able to mass-produce successful applications through the devotion of time and resources to high-achieving students. The sheer number of people that I’ve met who attended London private schools is staggering: too many conversations involve me listening mutely as people discover or discuss their mutual friends from neighbouring schools.
Yet the biggest contributor to this admissions pattern, in my view, is a result of the social implications of economic inequality. Oxford simply isn’t attractive to many northern students. As Professor Danny Dorling explained in this year’s Access Lecture at University College, only 15-25% of straight-A students from the North and Wales applied to Oxford, compared to 30-35% in the South, even after adjusting for geographical differences in population and attainment.
Many northern students think that they won’t fit in at Oxbridge. The general atmosphere of the South is tangibly different to our home towns. My sister, visiting a few days ago, notably echoed my exact first thought I had on arriving for an open day before applying: she remarked that people dress so much better in Oxford.
This might seem like a throwaway comment, but on closer examination it reveals the greater presence of the middle classes, who can afford expensive clothing through increased disposable income. There is a middleclass feel which permeates Oxford, and which may be intimidating to northern students who haven’t encountered this before and feel that it may not suit them: perhaps this explains why so many of the northern Oxford students I know in fact come from the pockets of affluence which pepper the region. It’s worth acknowledging that university students do tend to choose institutions closer to home (the £50, four-hour train journey home sometimes makes me wish I’d done the same), and the vast majority of my home friends do attend northern universities.
Not only do the aforementioned factors contribute to this, but I would say that we were conditioned at school to apply to these institutions partly through the precedent set by previous years. I was the only student from my school to go to Oxbridge that year, in contrast to the hordes sent from some southern schools.
It would therefore seem that many northern students don’t find Oxford accessible as a result of the monopoly of middle-class, private school-educated students – it’s a self-perpetuating cycle. Oxford life suits me well, and the differences I find myself remarking upon are ultimately all in a jokey way, but there are times when being singled out as regionally foreign can be alienating – we’ve got to work against that if these statistics are going to improve any time soon.
Reports of bullying and harassment have risen sharply since the University updated harassment policy and procedures three years ago.
Data released in response to a freedom of information request by Cherwell show that the number of harassment and bullying complaints received by the University more than doubled between the 2013-14 and 2016-17 academic years.
University policy was rewritten in 2014 with input from Oxford SU and other groups. The update, which came into effect in Hilary 2015, was designed to simplify the processing of harassment cases.
Changes included a clearer procedure for students to raise complaints against other students and guidance for staff handling sexual violence-related cases.
A University spokesperson told Cherwell: “The revisions put the students themselves at the centre of the process, allowing them to make first disclosures at a level where they are most comfortable.
“We see the number of students now coming forward to disclose or report incidents as reflecting the progress made. Students can be clear on where to go for support and confident that they will be listened to.”
The number of staff-on-staff incidents rose from four in 2013-14 to twelve in 2015-16, the first full year that the policy and procedure updates were in place. The number of student-on-student incidents went from one to sixteen in the same period.
While the University pointed to policy revisions as the reason for increased reporting, others have suggested that different factors could be responsible for the rise, including an increase in the actual number of harassment incidents happening on campus.
Oxford SU VP for Welfare and Equal Opportunities Farheen Ahmed told Cherwell: “All students should have the right to not be harassed or discriminated against at university. There are many reasons as to why the spike has occurred, some could be due to general increases in incidents post-Brexit or increased confidence in accessing harassment procedures.
“The University has a no-tolerance policy to harassment or discrimination (in any form), and students should feel comfortable in being able to report such incidents, wherever the need arises.
“Oxford SU is representing students in improving these process in university committees and in making sure students know how to access the reporting process”
2016-17 also saw three complaints of student-on-staff harassment, the first such incidents since 2010. Action was taken against nine staff members and three students who were accused of harassment.
The University noted that the number of reported incidents is relatively small. A spokesperson commented: “While we take bullying harassment extremely seriously, these numbers suggest that it is incredibly rare in a University with more than 23,000 students and 13,000 staff.”
The data also shows that an increasing number of university staff have been sent to counseling services after reporting bullying or harassment. 30 staff members were referred to harassment-related counseling in 2016-17, compared to ten in 2012-13.
Referrals have risen year-on-year since 2012-13. There were sixteen student-on-student harassment complaints in 2015-16, and eight in 2016-17. By means of comparison, there were twelve staff-on-staff complaints in 2015-16, and five in 2016-17.
In addition to offering counseling services to staff, the university maintains a network of 370 harassment advisors across departments and faculties. Advisors are charged with supporting victims of bullying and harassment as they seek official action.
“My dear, I’m not sure that I’ll have time to write to you tomorrow morning, so I’m writing at night. It’s bad. Very bad. The food issue is terrifying. Hunger is at the gates. Something’s going to happen.
And so it would be good to be able to work.” Anatoly Lunacharsky, the Marxist revolutionary and newly appointed People’s Commisssars for Education posted from Petrograd on 27 October 1917.
Meanwhile, Nicholas II, seemingly unalarmed, tweeted from the Governor’s Mansion in Tobolsk, “It has already been two months that we have lived in this house. It was a wonderful sunny day and it passed as usual.”
As 2017 marks the centenary of the Russian Revolutions, Project 1917 is providing a unique way of experiencing the events of 1917. Mock social media accounts update posts giving a voice to more than 300 historical figures from Lenin to Alfred Knox, and even a simple peasant: Alexander Zamanaev.
Driven by a team of young historians, writers and journalists, Project 1917 is the brainchild of journalist and documentary maker Mikhail Zygar, who founded Russia’s only independent news TV channel Dozhd. The organisers write, “Our main aim is to make history popular – to bring a multitude of voices from a diverse array of historically significant figures to as wide an audience as possible.
“That is why we do not always observe all those standards which are normally considered inviolable in serious scholarship”. Drawing on some previously unpublished primary sources; diary entries, poems, letters and telegrams, the website presents an innovative, immersive way of reading about the revolution as if events were unfolding today.
Whilst it would be easy for the project to slip into becoming too ideological, or even ahistorical, instead it seems to provide a new and engaging way of looking at a range of first-hand accounts side by side.
In the Russia of 2017, the Kremlin is refusing to officially acknowledge the anniversary of the revolution. At this year’s Valdai speech, Putin said of the Russian Revolution of 1917: “Let’s ask: was it not possible to follow an evolutionary path rather than go through a revolution? “Could we not have evolved by way of gradual and consistent forward movement rather than at the cost of destroying our statehood?”.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Zygar expressed his desire to provide a new way of looking at history, and said: “Access to the original sources is a kind of value system in itself. It shows you that society makes its own choices and is the master of its own fate.”
As well as way of looking at the key events of the revolution, the site also draws upon the daily minutiae and banal details of the world at war. The profile page of Joseph Stalin provides an interesting juxtaposition.
On 26 October, Stalin updated his status: “Power to the Soviets means a thorough cleansing of any and all governmental agencies, from back to front and top to bottom.”
The previous update had been his wife tagging him in her post ten days earlier: “Stalin somehow fell asleep with the pipe in his hand still smoking. When he woke up, the room was already filled with smoke: his blanket was smoldering with flames from the pipe. “It’s not the first time this has happened,” Stalin explained exasperatedly, “No matter how hard I concentrate, I still drift off.”
The Russian media of this age seem largely to be cherry-picking pieces of both imperial and Soviet history to patch together a history of the 1917 revolutions to service their own ideological concerns.
After a 5-2 win in their first game of the season against Oriel, Brasenose’s Men’s Firsts went into their JCR Third Division clash against Univ quietly optimistic.
Their opponents had lost their previous game to Corpus/Linacre in the first round of Cuppers, and were facing an availability crisis, with a number of first and second team players missing due to academic commitments.
However, the scale of the mismatch between the sides could not have been foreseen.
“We thought it might be our day,” Brasenose’s Tom Steer told Cherwell, “when we scored with our seventeenth attack.”
Indeed, the visitors were dominant from the first whistle to the last, battering Univ’s limited team and playing a free-flowing brand of attacking football.
Going into half-time, BNC were ten goals to the good, and it would have been easy for them to take their foot off the gas somewhat.
But the 2016 Cuppers winners did not ease off their opponents. Indeed, with one eye on their goal difference at the end of the season, Brasenose were just as ruthless in the second half, bagging another ten goals to seal a 20-0 win.
Steer and captain Calum Flintoff both hit the back of the net four times, with Oli Hanson, Johannes Fuest, Sunny Huang, and Tom Hurleston all grabbing braces. Nimrod Nehushtan, Ed Shorland, Sean Cuddihy, and Joey Fisher rounded off the scoring.
Univ skipper Misha Jones cited the scheduling of the game as a major reason for his side’s defeat. “It was good to give several members of our team their debuts for Univ football,” he told Cherwell. “But also a shame that their first match had to be such a heavy loss.”
As if to prove the old adage that a week is a long time in football, Univ bounced back to hold Trinity to a 2-2 draw in their next league game, but still languish at the foot of the bottom JCR division.
Brasenose, meanwhile, won their next fixture, beating St. Anne’s 6-3 in Cuppers, but have failed to turn their goal glut into any meaningful momentum, and are now three games without a win following Saturday’s Cuppers defeat at Wadham.
Fresher Will Stone was hardly glowing in his assessment of Brasenose’s performance in their victory: “we were fairly clinical,” he told Cherwell.
Flintoff, however, was more optimistic, suggesting that the winning margin proved Brasenose were on their way back “to the highest echelons of the college game.”
“Sights have now transitioned to Cuppers. Next year’s Cuppers.”
After five seasons in the Italian top flight, three in the European Challenge Cup and one in the Heineken Cup, Roberto Talotti called time on professional rugby career at the age of just 23. The flanker had struggled for game time in the 2008/9 season at the club he had joined as a fresh-faced 18-year-old, and made the “very tough” call to return to full-time education in South Africa. A rugby fanatic, Talotti did not take the decision likely, but his affinity for management and business outweighed his desperation for another chance to play at the top level.
Eight years on, Talotti has the opportunity to play in the second oldest regular fixture in the game – only England vs Scotland has been played for longer – after beginning his study for an MBA. “The term ‘excited’ is an understatement,” he told Cherwell. “I can remember watching the Varsity Match as a youngster and being in complete awe of the occasion. To be a part of such a historic fixture would be an honour and a privilege.”
While the South African-born flanker admits that he wonders what might have happened if he had continued playing professionally, he is clearly delighted with how things have turned out for him.
“I was fortunate enough to have played professionally for five years, learnt Italian, and travelled all over Europe,” he continued.
Indeed, in a five-year career, Talotti played in the U19 and U21 World Cups and Six Nations, winning the Coppa Italia and challenged himself against European giants Saracens, Harlequins and Biarritz – where he faced his “toughest opponent” in French back row Imanol Harinordoquy – in knockout competitions: for a man scouted at school and thrown into the first-team set-up one month into his trial, it was a dream foray into the professional game.
Furthermore, his working career is by no means a backup. His enthusiasm for business is clear, and he describes his Oxford experience to date as “intense, diverse [and] inspiring.”
“I have always wanted to study for an MBA,” he told Cherwell, “and Oxford was on top of my list. An MBA is important in advancing one’s career within an organisation… [it] will provide me with invaluable skills, allowing me to develop my business acumen. I am loving every minute, and I cannot believe that I have been here two months already.”
Moreover, Talotti’s Blues career has got off to a flying start. After coming off the bench to score the decisive try against Bucs Super Rugby champions Hartpury College, the flanker made his full debut two weeks ago in the clash against Trinity College, Dublin. Again Talotti impressed, making himself a nuisance at the breakdown and thwarting the Dubliners with some crunching tackles, before his second-half try in the corner sealed a 21-17 win for the Blues.
“It was massively important to get off to a good start,” he said. “It was a brilliant team effort by the boys, and we showed great determination and tenacity to get the wins.”
On a personal level, it was vital for the 31-year-old to come through his first couple of games for Oxford unscathed. After all, only seven months previously, he had undergone a serious operation to his shoulder, and these were his first appearances since: “I was quite relieved to get through them intact,” he admitted.
After those two wins, and a 41-24 thrashing of Championship side Bristol’s Academy, Oxford have won three home games on the spin, and look well placed ahead of December’s clash with the Light Blues at Twickenham, with Cambridge currently three games without a win. And if they are to come out victorious in the season’s biggest fixture, you can bet that Roberto Talotti will have more than something to do with it.
The south end of Cornmarket was taken over by a radical animal rights protest today.
The group, Anonymous for the Voiceless, gathered back-to-back on Cornmarket, outside the McDonald’s fast food restaurant.
The protesters, who wore signature ‘Guy Fawkes’ masks, played videos of animal cruelty on their tablets and laptops. The footage included livestock slaughter, batch fishing, and the milking of cows. They were momentarily interrupted by a fire engine passing through Cornmarket.
The back-to-back protest was nicknamed a ‘cube of truth’ by organisers. The Oxford branch is one of 29 UK based ‘cubes’ expected to rally today for the cause of animal rights.
Though the protest took place outside McDonald’s, organisers denied that it was aimed at the fast food chain alone. They aimed to persuade passersby to swear off meat and dairy products.
Veteran animal rights activist, ‘Jane’, told Cherwell: “It is important to bring awareness to more people who don’t realise the cruelty included in meat and dairy production. The idea of humane killing is a total myth.
“Everyone has a responsibility to know what they’re buying. You’re paying murderers.”
‘Maze’, one of the ‘cube of truth’ organisers, said: “Today is the fifth of November, and we’re using anonymous masks in cubes of truth all over the world at the same time.
“This all comes from an international non-profit organisation started in Australia, Anonymous for the Voiceless.”
Today’s protest was the second ‘cube of truth’ attended by an Oxford Brookes University student, who chose to remain anonymous. He told Cherwell: “It’s a really good way to reach people because we’re not going up to people. They have to show the interest first.”
FIXR is set to purchase the Oxford founded app Cashew – and end its peer-to-peer (P2P) payment service.
Students are encouraged to withdraw their funds immediately, as the service will cease on 6 November. Users will then have six months to withdraw any money remaining on the app.
Cashew had already refocused its activity away from P2P payment and towards student ticketing, a move that will likely be accelerated by FIXR – the UK’s fastest growing events platform.
Cashew, which launched last year, at one point boasted over 60% of Oxford students as users. It later expanded to several other UK universities. FIXR will be buying the Cashew app, along with its ball ticketing business and associated technology. They plan to focus exclusively on ticketing.
The cost of the purchase has not been disclosed. Cashew former co-founder Jamie Cox, a third year at St Hugh’s, denied the purchase was related to previous rumours of financial difficulty.
Speaking to Cherwell about the motivation behind the sale, Cox said: “Cashew has made the decision to sell because the app was already beginning to move towards the ticketing market which proved to be a more sustainable model.
“Rather than going head-to-head with FIXR, the Cashew Team decided that it would be best to work alongside them to build something which benefits everyone.”
St Hilda’s is set to buy £160 worth of medically certified light boxes to help combat seasonal affective disorder (SAD).
The motion was passed at a JCR meeting on Sunday. It stated that “SAD is a type of major depressive disorder that disproportionally affects people living in areas further from the equator, such as England.”
The JCR resolved to buy “medically certified light boxes” in order to make light therapy more accessible to those students suffering from the symptoms of SAD, including “depression, lethargy, anxiety, trouble waking up in the mornings, and withdrawal from social situations”.
The motion was passed unanimously, with one amendment made. Originally, the proposal requested four boxes with a budget of up to £300, but the JCR settled on buying two boxes worth £160 altogether, with the possibility of buying more boxes if demand increases. No timeline has yet been set for the introduction of the light boxes.
Bora Guloglu, the student who proposed the motion, told Cherwell: “Unfortunately, SAD is often not recognised as a big problem, since many people suffer from mild symptoms. Only for a smaller subset of people do the symptoms become unmanageable, and so many people tend to think that it is just ‘winter blues’.”
Bora has recently been diagnosed with SAD herself, and hopes the investment in light boxes will “make life for students dealing with SAD easier”.
The new light boxes would allow for an extra tier of support for students in addition to the light therapy already provided by the Disability Advisory Service (DAS). Many of the students who voted in favour of the motion felt the waiting period during registration to the disabilities service justified the proposal.
Antara Jaidev, who seconded the motion, said: “It seemed counterintuitive to spend the whole of Michaelmas term, the time when symptoms are likely heightened, attempting to cut through the red tape of the university’s service.”
This sentiment was shared by Mikey Ahearn, one of the welfare officers at St Hilda’s: “This will simply ensure that students can continue to function as fully as possible between the fi rst steps of diagnosis, right up until, and following, the DAS’s choice to grant individual support.”
Ahearn also raised the issue of “the profile of SAD as a mental disorder”. He hopes that the proposal will help raise awareness of this form of depression, which is often not taken seriously due to the seasonality of its symptoms.
Other measures are already being put in place at St Hilda’s to further increase the support for students with a mental illness. Jaidev described one such development: “The officers of the JCR in charge of such policies are in the process of changing their official titles from Disability and Health Conditions Officers to Disability, Health Conditions, and Neurodiversity Officers.”
In this way St Hilda’s hopes to make their health services as inclusive as possible for a variety of health issues, including SAD.
The university has spent thousands of pounds conferring honorary degrees on the wealthy and famous, new figures obtained by Cherwell reveal.
Following last week’s revelations over the vice chancellor’s expenses, Cherwell can reveal Oxford spent £143,562 on exclusive events for university VIPs and the university’s chief benefactors – a fee significantly higher than other UK universities. It includes £37,701 spent on a single lunch for the Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi at St Hugh’s after she collected her honorary degree in 2012.
Overall, £4,000 has been spent on trumpeters, £6,950 on choirs and £2,662 on gown hire since 2012. £41,844 has been spent paying for international flights and travel expenses for the honorands.
Last year, the University spent £23,846 organising the events, the highest amount in three years. The price included £5,387 on an honorands’ lunch and £9,795 on honorands’ travel expenses.
The figures were obtained by a freedom of information request.
The expenditure was criticised by Oxford SU president Kate Cole, who told Cherwell: “In a time of increasing pressures on budgets of student services we would want to see as much money as possible being spent on developing the student experience and the quality of education.
“We would question whether spending the equivalent of four undergraduates’ tuition fees for the year on a single lunch was value for money”
The Encaenia celebrations involve a number of lunches and garden parties. Photo: Karen Carey/Twitter.
The Encaenia ceremony, which was first held in the eighteenth century, occurs in ninth week of Trinity term each year. It involves closing off the Bodleian Library for a ceremony in which the chancellor confers honours on distinguished figures.
After the ceremony, the honorands are invited to a lavish lunch held in All Souls College, before finishing their day at the annual garden party for benefactors and VIPs. In recent years the ceremony has been viewed by some as a publicity stunt, with mounting costs spent on security barriers.
Attendance is limited to senior university figures, including the proctors, the professor of poetry and the public orator.
The figures come at a time of increasing attention on extravagant spending by senior university figures. Last week, Cherwell revealed that vice chancellor Louise Richardson spent £38,339 on expenses last year alone, with £56,522 spent on air travel since she took her position in January 2016.
Figures awarded honorary degrees in recent years include Shirley Williams, Hillary Mantel, and Tom Stoppard.
Speaking to Cherwell, president of the Oxford University and Colleges Union (UCU), Garrick Taylor, said: “Oxford UCU recognises the importance of Encaenia and understands that, like any international event with highly distinguished individuals, the cost will run into thousands.
“We do have concerns about how much money was spent on a single lunch in 2012 and feel that the University should further explain and justify this, especially at a time when pay was being restrained and pension benefits cut.”
A University spokesperson told Cherwell: “Oxford and many other universities around the world believe honorary degrees are an important and appropriate way to publicly recognise and celebrate excellence and achievement across all walks of life.”
