Sunday 31st August 2025
Blog Page 85

Much ado about nothing: Oxford cafes

Hannah Tyler
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Much ado about nothing: Oxford cafes

Last weekend, a friend and I went for a coffee and a catch up on a Saturday in a packed café. We ordered our drinks, only to realise moments later that the café was completely full and every single seat was occupied. We predictably began to complain about the number of people sitting and working on their laptops (something I am definitely guilty of doing) and from there arose the question – under what conditions is it socially acceptable to work in a café?

This conversation spiralled into a full analysis of general café etiquette. I argued that if you buy a drink, you should be allowed to stay as long as you like provided there are still tables available. My friend, however, was sure that you should be allowed to stay as long as you like (even if there are no other seats free) but only if you continue to buy drinks.

This kind of “first world” problem is particularly common in Oxford, where all the cafés are constantly packed full of students hard at work. Except, one proper glance around a busy café reveals that at least half the people inside are actually just browsing Instagram, reading the latest Oxfess posts, or, a personal favourite of mine, playing GeoGuessr.  

So, having spent a ridiculous amount of time working(ish) in Oxford cafés, these are some of the top tips and tricks I have learnt about attempting to navigate Oxford café culture:

1.       Arrive early! This is much easier said than done and definitely isn’t a tip that I regularly implement. However, this is pretty much the only way to guarantee a good seat which you are more or less doomed without. A lot of cafés also enforce no laptop policies at lunch time, which means that arriving early is definitely worthwhile if you want to do more than an hour’s work.

2.      Sit near a plug. I have made the mistake of sitting miles from a plug and having to very quickly migrate to the nearest library far too many times- which is particularly painful after paying at least £3.60 for an overpriced oat latte. This tip is especially relevant if your laptop is anything like mine and dies after approximately 30 minutes of work.

3.       If you don’t think that tip number 1 is at all realistic, your best bet is  to head out of the centre. There are actually plenty of really nice cafés outside the centre of town that are generally much quieter, and as an added bonus tend to be much cheaper!! This is also a nice opportunity to get to know some different parts of the city that you wouldn’t usually come across.

4.       Bring a reusable cup. Loads of cafés around Oxford tend to have a discount if you bring a reusable cup, and if it’s a KeepCup you can even get a coffee to take into the libraries. Obviously this is more eco friendly but also any savings on coffee are surely a major bonus now that Pret have cancelled their subscription…

5.       Try to avoid weekends – especially if you are in the centre of Oxford. Not only does this mean the cafés are all going to be busy and loud, but the owners probably aren’t going to be particularly happy if you’ve been there three hours and there isn’t space for any of their other customers to sit down..

6.       Bring headphones. I feel like this really doesn’t need too much explanation, but they are definitely useful to have!

If you are new to Oxford this year, I hope these tips give you a bit of a head start in finding the perfect study spot. However, the best piece of advice I can give, and something that I am still learning myself, is that if you actually have any work to do you are probably better off bypassing the café study session and just heading straight to a real library.

Colleges’ endowments are growing; Their spending on students isn’t

Éilis Mathur and Evelyn Power
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Colleges’ endowments are growing; Their spending on students isn’t

In 2023, Oxford University’s 43 colleges boasted a total endowment of £6.4 billion. This figure is nearly four times as much as that of Oxford University itself and well over ten times larger than the endowment of all other UK universities, excluding the University of Cambridge. The sheer magnitude of Oxford’s collegiate wealth is no secret; yet the ways in which colleges use their extensive resources remain far less transparent. 

While all colleges do put aside millions of pounds for student care, this is often only a fraction of their wealth (figure one). In investigating the financial patterns of 15 of Oxford’s richest and poorest colleges, Cherwell found that the vast majority of colleges’ endowments are far more inaccessible and inflexible than we might think. 

Figure one

College Disparities

An eighth of the wealth of all Oxford colleges is held by St John’s College alone, bringing its current value to £790 million, well over 20 times the size of some of Oxford’s least wealthy colleges. This inconsistency is a familiar issue to all Oxford students; college disparities have long been a discussion of national debate, student union campaigns, and Cherwell reports. 

Yet it is perhaps surprising that these gaping disparities in resources have a relatively low direct financial impact on students. Indeed, a college’s endowment does not predict spending on students. Colleges spend enough money to cover student-related costs: staff wages, subsidising the tutorial system, rent and accommodation, and more. But once they have spent enough to allow their collegiate functions, they are left with large sums of money students never see. 

Each Oxford college’s spending on their charitable aims, namely education, varies little. Apart from All Soul’s College, whose ten students naturally generate a very high per capita expenditure, in 2023 St John’s College spent the most per student at £51,000. This contrasts the lowest expense of £13,300 per capita at St Edmund Hall. 

Yet the majority of colleges do spend roughly the same amount (graph one). The median amount spent on students in 2023 sits at £19,500, the expenditure of University College. Therefore student spending between wealthier and poorer colleges remains largely the same and nearly all colleges cap student expenditure at roughly the same point. 

While some of the richer colleges, such as Christ Church College and St John’s College, do allocate larger amounts of funds for their students than others – both spent around £34 million in 2023 – this is still not proportional to their endowment. This £34 million expenditure, for example, only accounts for approximately 4% of the total endowment held by these colleges. 

Indeed, most of the time student expenditure is only a small chunk of a college’s wealth (figure one) and on average over the last five years, the amount colleges have spent on their students has been 6% of their overall endowment.

Furthermore in 2023, The Queen’s College spent £22,800 per student, only 1.5 times more than the £16,000 spent per student by Hertford College, despite the fact that The Queen’s College endowment is five times larger.

These figures suggest that a college’s endowment is not proportional to how much money students actually receive. In fact, when colleges only spend small fractions of their funds on students, the vast majority of their endowment wealth has little interaction with their students at all. 

Graph one

Inflexible endowments 

The fact that Oxford colleges spend only small fractions of their endowments on their students is not in itself a negative thing. However, analysing the expenditure patterns of 15 colleges over the last five years exposes some problems. Since 2019, there have been two significant times of need – the COVID-19 pandemic of early 2020 and the cost of living crisis of late 2021. During both crises, students were under more financial and academic stress and thus, in need of more economic support. Yet in 2020, the average amount colleges spent on their students fell. 

When asked if St Anne’s College felt times of crisis should mean increasing expenditure on students, Treasurer and Finance Director, John Ford, agreed telling Cherwell: “Yes. And we saw that during COVID.” Yet in 2020, St Anne’s College decreased student expenditure from £11.5 million in 2019 to £9.6 million in 2020. 

Moreover, Iris Burke, Bursary Manager at St John’s College told Cherwell that during the pandemic the College “minimised increases to student rents and charges and absorbed much of the inflationary pressures” in order to financially support their students at the time. However, students told Cherwell they were “charged the full rent amount each term, despite limited access to [shared] facilities.” Students further described a time “when we were told on more than one occasion, bluntly, that the college would not be considering any rent reduction.” 

While St John’s College provided additional funding “in the form of higher academic grants”, students overall expressed how they felt “as though the College was apathetic towards our concerns, with more effort placed in ensuring it maintained the income it would otherwise have collected from the student body wherever possible.” 

Increasing investment

Not only did colleges not increase their spending on students during times of economic difficulty, such as the pandemic and cost of living crisis, but they also chose to increase the amount of money they put into investments. In addition to decreasing student expenditure, for example, St Anne’s College put an additional £1.7 million of new money into their ‘other investments’ in 2020. 

As a whole, since 2019 the average net amount of money put into ‘other investments’ by 15 colleges according to their last five Charity Commission annual reports has increased (graph two). A college’s ‘other investments’ refers to investments that are usually part of their endowment. Colleges also invest in ‘property investments’ and ‘parent and subsidiary undertakings’, yet these might not always form a part of their endowment. 

Although money put into ‘other investments’ plateaued between 2020 and 2021, it was still an increase from the previous financial year of 2019 and it went on to rise again after. These investment behaviours and patterns of colleges are not reflective of the times when students needed more financial support and help. 

Graph two

Why colleges can’t spend more 

Investment is an integral way that Oxford colleges use their endowment to generate a return that can be used to fund their charitable objectives, namely education, in the long term. But this focus on future maintenance and growth must be balanced with the immediate funding and care given to colleges and their current students. Ford explained the importance of achieving this balance to Cherwell, saying “we cannot put all our income into investments, there would be nothing to fund current expenditure, similarly some funding needs may be short term and funded through current income.” 

However, this balance seems to have become skewed with investment being prioritised over students and most of the endowment being inaccessible to students. The large sums of money left unspent in endowments are an unavoidable consequence of the system as a whole. Contrary to how it may seem, endowments are not accessible pots of money that colleges can hand out to their students. 

As charities with permanent endowments, colleges are obligated by Charity Commission regulation to “keep rather than spend” this endowment. This helps to maintain colleges in the long-term, allowing them to ensure care for future students; it is by no means an inherently flawed policy. 

However, colleges have increasingly adopted protective financial policies that, for better or worse, place the possible needs of future students above the real needs of current ones. The handling of endowments does not prioritise student cost, and in many ways is entirely unrelated to and detached from current student life.  

The conservative financial approach also establishes an inevitable level of inflexibility. Colleges adhere to different investment policies to help them maintain and grow their endowment. University College, for example, chooses a policy whereby they withdraw 3.5% of the average real value of their endowment over the last three years. This proportion does, and did not, change, regardless of the performance of their investments or current student needs.

While they aim to strike a balance between spending for the students of the present and the students of the years to come, colleges favour funding the future as a result of inflexible investment policies. Their increasing prioritisation of investments to accumulate and preserve their endowments is more reminiscent of businesses with colleges attached rather than institutions of learning. Although this allows colleges and the University of Oxford as a whole to prosper and survive, it neglects those currently within its walls. 

Transparency 

It is also important to mention the lack of transparency surrounding college endowments. Although all colleges submit financial reports to the UK government’s Charity Commission, these often remain vague, especially for those without accounting literacy. Furthermore, they often explain large sums of money with ambiguous terms. In their 2023 annual finance report, for example, Magdalen College lists £6.5 million of its ‘Property Investments’ under the vague umbrella label “other”. 

Even at a more direct level, college expenditure is not made clear or properly communicated. A JCR Treasurer told Cherwell: “The College is transparent to the extent required by law, but they fail to take a proactive approach to ensure students are aware of its expenditure…This means that the formal transparency does not necessarily translate into effective scrutiny by its members.” 

Where does the money go? 

The endowment is seen as an Oxford college’s greatest asset: a vast amount of money they can use to achieve their charitable aims and serve their students. Yet in reality, their inaccessibility and inflexibility means they are, by nature, almost entirely detached from student life. The constant focus on the future means these endowments are never truly used to their fullest capability. Student expenditure is confined to only a fraction of a college’s overall wealth and colleges are rendered unable to freely respond to external issues, such as financial crises. Endowments are paralysed and inaccessible funds, both for future students as well as past. 

St Anne’s College said in response: “The Covid outbreak occurred in March 2020 affecting four months of college activity. We had very few students in college accommodation, very little on site activity, very low utility bills and, perhaps coincidentally in those numbers, a £924k reduction in our pension provision. Income also fell by around £1.9M  The £1.7M related to cash already set aside to repay capital on a loan and was quite separate. The loan was taken out to improve student accommodation. Student accommodation is subsidised and rents alone will not be sufficient to repay the capital, we therefore set up a sinking fund to help repay it. During Covid both the colleges and university dramatically stepped up their hardship support for students. This continued for several years after 2020.

“I think it is important to emphasise that spending on expenditure today, and investing today for expenditure tomorrow are essentially the same thing. Any investments we make are to create income for future student and teaching support. We are an educational charity not a fund management operation. Our endowment and investments are also some of the lowest amongst Oxford colleges.”

Christ Church College said in response: “Christ Church relies as to 54% of its income on the annual ‘take’ from the endowment. This is calculated as 3.25% of the 5-year historic average value of the endowment. We believe that this spending rule represents an appropriate forecast of the excess endowment return over inflation which we can expect over the medium term, so that we will maintain the purchasing power of the endowment. This will support our ability to maintain the wide range of activities which Christ Church undertakes including of course significant support for its students.”

St John’s College said in response: “The College’s endowment is used for both revenue and investments in capital projects in order to improve facilities and enhance the student experience. We have a significant capital programme underway to provide more graduate accommodation and to refurbish existing accommodation for undergraduates and postgraduates. In recent years returns of the endowment were used to fund the new Study Centre and refurbish the existing Library, which students derive direct benefit from.

“The College only charged rent to those students that remained in College during the Covid lockdowns. We also provided grants to those students that needed support with accommodation and food costs if they were in residence at the time.”

The grey area

Amy Seal
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The grey area

Dear diary,

Last saturday was the college ball. And oh my God. 

It is a funny thing to become a statistic. It all seems so binary before it happens to you. Are you the zero, or the one? Two distinct states of being, two entirely opposite sides. The “me” and the “not-me”. But what is unclear, is the wide expanse between – the grey area. The rose-tinted glasses, the nights spent crying over “nothing at all”, the times you felt like you never left that room where it happened. For those of you who find yourselves consumed by the “grey” – whether you perceive it to be an off-white or a charcoal grey, know that you are not alone. 

They encourage me to text him, which I wasn’t going to do as he ignored me in Atik and  Bridge in 7th + 8th weeks, and made out with another girl infront of me in 8th week Bridge. But still, I don’t think I was completely done with him as I wouldn’t have done it. So I call him, and he texts me, and I invite him over and he actually comes. 

It is also a strange thing to be so vulnerable in front of an audience of strangers. To tell you all a story that has previously just been known, in this detail, between me and him (and a few close friends, naturally). It feels strange to let you into my first year bedroom, to show you all this scene of the both of us on that single bed, a scene I now know by heart. It makes me feel vulnerable. My favourite teacher, Miss Oxlade, used to teach me Drama. She always said she could never imagine singing in front of a crowd – acting is different, you are playing someone else entirely, but singing is you. I used to like drama a lot, I never minded the crowd. In a lot of ways I feel more comfortable like that. Under the bright theatre lights where you can barely see the audience but you know they are there. It is nice to feel listened to. It is nice to have some distance. 

I take X to my room + we lie on my bed and cuddle and talk. I’m still in my dress and so drunk which he knows cuz I keep telling him he has 4 eyes and the first thing he said to me was “how drunk are you right now?” 

… Anyways, we are in my room, talking. I learn his actual name, X is just a nickname. He sprained his wrist in a boat crash and he has 6 meals a day (I keep trying to feed him breadsticks). He’s in my room from 2am-5am…

Whenever I play this scene back, which I often do, there are three of us in the room. It feels a lot like acting and less like singing, because that girl is not me. In the room, is him, the girl in the green dress, and there is me, the observer. I think about how lovely she looked that night. I envy her sweetness; the way she tried to feed him, to understand him, to show kindness in a way I haven’t quite been able to manage to since. But most of all I pity her, because no matter how many times I replay the scene I cannot save her. I still wear her pretty green dress though. After all, it wasn’t the dress’s fault. 

We start making out (I initiate). He keeps asking if I’m ok with it. Then he takes off his shirt and asks again  “are you ok with it?” and I’m confused + literally think “Oh I guess we are having sex now” which I did want. But maybe not then. I only initiated cuz he seemed like he was going to leave and I didn’t want him to. I never took off my dress – I think I was insecure about my body.

This is probably the time to say if you are a family member or a future employer  – I would prefer it if you clicked off. I want to be able to tell this story, I want to get the words out and as far away from me as possible, and I can’t do that if I feel certain people are reading this. It will be easier for me if my audience is hordes of faceless strangers. Once, I sang a solo in school, in front of a crowd of my friends, in a room with too many windows. It was too bright, it was awkward, and it has been burned into some deep recess of my memory. All I ask is that you are a courteous reader and you don’t make me feel 8 years old again, singing “Hallelujah”. 

After, he cleaned himself up and  then almost looked like he wasn’t going to lie down again. But he did. He also gave me a hickey at one point which now means I am reminded of this bullshit whenever I look at myself. My mum only just noticed it today. She asked “what have you done to your neck?”. I don’t know if she knows what it is or not – probably does. I replied “I don’t know”. But I do. I know what happened and why I did it; that doesn’t make it any better that it happened.

I watched Bridget Jones’ Diary for the first time a few days ago – a super weird way to start this paragraph I know. But I felt so seen by the way that she felt noticed by someone for like 5 seconds and immediately imagined their entire future together. Not to say that I really saw a future with the boy I have been describing, but for a short time before this night he was undeniably important to me. He made me feel noticed, seen, desirable – in a way I hadn’t felt before. I suppose that’s part of why I thought for a long time that it was my fault, because he meant so much to me, because he came when I called. But this still does not excuse his behaviour – my crush did not force him to take advantage of me, my little obsession did not cause him to forget his decency. 

After, he got changed and asked if he was the only guy I’d got with this term. I said something like “why are you asking?”. He tells me we aren’t going to become a “thing” as in a serious thing and that I shouldn’t text him sober. If I drunk texted him, I asked, would he reply? He said “I might” with a smile. So if I want to be used for my body I know who to call. 

When he said to not sober text him I said “why would I do that?” because I never have, and I never will and HE IS THE ONE that came over sober when I was so drunk and took advantage of me in every possible way. But he did ask and I did say yes so maybe I’m so repulsed by him to hide how repulsed I am in myself that I agreed, that I even called him, that I decided, somehow, at some point, that it would be better to be disrespected and used than to be alone. 

I hope for anyone that reads this and sees themselves in my words that you come to a resolution. I hope the endless ways you make it your fault fade away. I hope you see that your story does not have to be air tight – you are not in a court of law, you do not have to cross examine yourself. In truth, it doesn’t matter what you did. If you are in the grey area, then something has happened to you that you know is not what you wanted. That someone has hurt you, properly hurt you – and I hope you see that hurting yourself with these sharp words will not make it better. 

That’s not to say it doesn’t take time to realise this, and you have to realise it for yourself. No matter how you choose to deal with it – spending an entire term in your bedroom because that’s where it feels safest, closing yourself off from anything difficult, and listening to the same songs on repeat, being irredeemably and uncontrollably angry that this happened. If that makes you feel better for a time then that is what must be done. But I hope you will see, eventually, that this fixation will not get you anywhere. That when you spend too much time lying down your joints seize up. That when you stop seeing your friends it makes you more miserable than before. That you have to live your life for you. 

And, with time, you can reconcile yourself with the person this happened to. You can become you. In time, I hope, you will come to be proud of yourself and the way you acted. You will learn to love that person you try so hard to pretend isn’t you. For me, I am proud of the way I tried to show him kindness, I am proud of the way I tried to humble him and ask why I would even think to call him sober. And, ultimately, I am proud of the way I froze up, because it was me trying to protect myself in that impossible situation, and so I am proud of myself for having my own back.

So this article, for me, is what I hope to be the final words in a chapter of my life I would like to move away from. It will always remain a part of my story, and it will certainly affect the way I behave from now on, but I cannot linger here forever. If there is one thing I have learnt from this whole experience it is that I deserve better. 

And a final message to you. You who has read this and thought this sounds oddly similar to a strange night you had in Hilary of your first year. Yes, you. You cannot imagine how many times I have thought over what I would say to you directly, if I could. But really it all boils down to this. I was drunk out of my mind and you were completely sober. I wasn’t, however, drunk enough to forget. While I know you have only ever met me drunk and ditsy, you don’t know the other side.

Because I remember exactly what happened. And I am not afraid. 

Hertford Principal to leave for new role as UN humanitarian chief

Euan Elliott
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Hertford Principal to leave for new role as UN humanitarian chief

Hertford College Principal Professor Tom Fletcher announced he will be leaving his role for a new appointment as Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Relief and Emergency Relief Coordinator at the United Nations, leading the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). His last day will be 18th November.

In an email to Hertford, Fletcher recalled how his experience at Hertford “changed his life” in the years he’s been “blessed to see Hertford from every angle”: as a student of Modern History, a night porter, a barman, a JCR president, a summer school guide, an alumnus, an honorary fellow, and the principal. 

After graduation Fletcher served as a UK diplomat in Nairobi and Paris, the foreign policy and Northern Ireland advisor to Prime Ministers Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, and David Cameron, and the British Ambassador to Lebanon. Upon returning to Hertford as an honorary fellow, Fletcher was elected as the youngest ever principal in 2020.

He wrote: “On Monday, the UN Secretary General asked me to take [the OCHA role] on. Millions are in dire need of protection and support, including in regions I know and love. I hope you’ll understand why I must go.”

Through two stories, Fletcher emphasised his commitment to accessibility at Hertford during his tenure. A first-generation university student who got the highest mark in Oxford and is now on the frontline of tackling the climate crisis told him last week that “Hertford is base camp.” Another masters student from Syria who got funding from an alumni due to Fletcher’s efforts told him that Hertford is her “sliding door moment.”

Fletcher continued: “There is a student, born today, who will come to us in 2042. They will have had every reason not to make it. But, somehow, they will. And we will be ready for them. And they will change the world.”

During his tenure as Principal, Fletcher oversaw the establishment of the Asseily Scholarship for a student displaced by conflict, persecution, or deprivation, as well as the Sibusiso Scholarship for five African graduate students.

Fletcher was commended by the UN for possessing “strong experience of leading and transforming organisations” and “an understanding of diplomacy at the highest levels”, as well as previous colleague Gordon Brown for his “creativity and resilience”.

As Martin Griffith’s successor, Fletcher will be the sixth successive British head of OCHA. Prior to his selection, over 60 diplomats and humanitarians wrote an open letter to UN Secretary General António Guterres calling for equal consideration of nationals of all member states in deliberation for the role.

Oxford University clarifies policy for student protests

Jacob Newby
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Oxford University clarifies policy for student protests

Oxford University clarified rules for student protests, encouraging them in an email to “make Oxford a welcoming and inclusive place” and to keep demonstrations “within the limits of the law.” Oxford Action for Palestine (OA4P) argues that some rules have changed to suppress protest.

The rules prohibit protesters from interruption of teaching, occupation of University property, disobeying a reasonable instruction from Proctors, or failing to identify oneself to any University staff. Breaching any provisions may incur punishments such as warnings, fines, or suspension.

Previously, the same rules were only found in Statute XI on University discipline, but now they have been copied to the Guidance on Demonstrations or Protests page.

The University also published a Code of Practice on Freedom of Speech, which supersedes the Code of Practice on Meetings and Events. Previously events required a seven-day notification period, which has now lengthened to 20 days. The new code added that an event may be refused permission if speakers can be reasonably believed to express views “contrary to law” or “highly controversial” – language not found in the older code.

A University spokesperson told Cherwell that the change in language is only for clarification, so policies “remain unchanged and will be enforced”.

The spokesperson said: “The University has set out existing policies that govern how demonstrations and protests within our community should be carried out. This will ensure any protest can be conducted safely and within University rules. When protesters have breached our statutes the Proctors have taken, and will take, disciplinary action.”

When the University put several Statute XI amendments to a Congregation vote in June, students circulated a brief that criticised the new rules as “illiberal, vague, and impractical” while academics submitted a resolution opposing the amendments. The University then withdrew the proposed amendments and are in the process of proposing new ones. 

OA4P, which set up an encampment and organised months of protest last year, believes that some rules have changed with the new wording.

An OA4P spokesperson told Cherwell: “The University has now unilaterally implemented restrictions which were rejected by students, faculty, and staff – many of which are even stricter than those attempted in June. By ignoring community input, the Administration has failed its obligation to meaningfully engage with the University community and instead seeks to police student and staff freedoms of expression.

“Protest is a vital and historically effective way to enact change. It alarms us that the University would seek to suppress this central avenue for students to make themselves heard.”

The University’s email came amid further protest by Oxford Action For Palestine (OA4P) during the September Open Day, during which demonstrators held Palestinian flags during seminars for prospective students and demanded that the University “sever all ties with Israeli genocide”.

Meanwhile, the University has launched a new scheme for Palestinian students in support of “the advancement of learning and rebuilding of higher education in Gaza and the West Bank”. The Palestine Crisis Scholarship Scheme would see graduate students with an offer to study a one-year full time Master’s degree supported by a full scholarship, including a grant for living costs. The University has also extended access to the Bodleian libraries and University Press assets to scholars in the region.

Going out without flunking out: How to write your essay when the room’s still spinning

Madelina Gordon
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Going out without flunking out: How to write your essay when the room’s still spinning

We’ve all been there. The perfect opportunity for a night out, potentially foiled by the un-attempted essay due tomorrow at 4pm. An age-old Oxford conundrum.

I think there are three breeds of people at this University. The first – those who go out, have a blast, and wake up only to send an email asking for an extension. The second – the responsible, soon-to-be-running-a-magic-circle-firm-or-top-tier-consultancy student who stays in, throwing all plans out the window. Then, the third – the social butterfly slash academic weapon who will go out, enjoy their night, and will still get that essay done by 4pm. There is, admittedly, a fourth breed of student who just never gets in this situation, but that’s far less exciting.

The type-three-er is the paragon of Oxford studenthood. They occupy another dimension, whilst the rest of us walk among men. The question on my mind is: how? To edge us all along the trajectory of becoming student 3.0, I’ve done my research into what the perfectly seamless night out to essay crunch-time transition really is.

The suggestions, remedies and advice up for sale are their own kind of weird, and are usually not wonderful. They are all from students who, in moments, have caught a glimpse of the mountain top – a glimmer of the glory that the third breed of Oxford student typically basks in.

Student A, let’s call her, sets her alarm every two hours, and drinks half a bottle of water each time it goes off. An interrupted sleep in exchange for the vital subduing of a hangover. A pretty small price to pay, really.

Student B opts for instantaneous relief. A greasy, fried full English Breakfast; the greasier the better. Yet opting to soak up last night’s remnants in one fell swoop is often too good to be true. Though he’s able to get on the grind once the eggs and beans are down the hatch, B’s skin, stomach, and breath won’t be thanking him two hours later when the queasiness sets in.  

Student C is a diehard green juice slash innocent-smoothie-er. Call it a placebo effect, say it’s psychological all you want, but once you’re halfway through the bottle, you’re already feeling lightbulbs turning on. Student C is incomplete without her best mate D, whose beverage of choice is caffeine, rather than anything natural. No food and three shots of espresso are bound to get you over any deadline you need to meet.

I wasn’t sure this was even a strategy, but according to Goop.com and Student E, bananas are pure gold for nausea and stomach aches. High in electrolyte potassium, they’re meant to subside the concoction of Hussein’s and alcohol sludging up your stomach from the night before.

The next revitaliser is probably the hardest to execute. Student F swears by the power of the mind, claiming that hangovers are an issue of ‘mind over matter’. A hangover is just a mentality – if you say you’re fine, you’re fine. Self-affirmations, manifestations and grit are Student F’s friends.

Along the same wavelength of rather brutal mental tactics, is Student G’s taste for bribery. Nothing good happens until that essay is done. This means, as soon as G is awake, they’re on the grind. In bed, pyjamas on, phone on silent, water only – they’re making things as unpleasant as possible until they can say their essay is done and dusted. G suffers no fools.

I’ve framed this article as a how-to guide, but on reflection, not one of these students really offers a flawless method for transitioning from play-hard to work-hard. These are more ‘bottoms-up bootcamp’ strategies for achieving what really should not be humanly possible. Perhaps I’m wrong and there is a healthy way to meet a deadline after having a brilliant night before. I certainly have not found it yet.

The helliday

Noa Devey
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The helliday

Picture Bali and you might conjure up images of white sand beaches, cliff-top temples and jungles inhabited with monkeys. Combine that with its legendary party culture, abundance of tourist hostels, and affordable dining scene, and it presents itself as a paradise for young travellers hoping to see a far corner of the world while never straying far from home comforts.

 For the first week, the experience lived up to every expectation. We hiked the famous volcano, Mount Batur, to watch a breathtaking sunrise, learned to surf, and I even felt adventurous enough to try the local food. The local food then decided to try me. My friends and I had approached the trip with the motto ‘catch flights, not feelings’, and it appears we completely forgot to add ‘or parasitic infections’ to that list. A week in, I found myself completely caught out. 

There was nothing to be done. After 5 days of refusing to eat or leave my bed (with the regular exception of a visit to the porcelain throne), my friends and I decided it was high time I fought back against the war waging in my stomach. It was time to visit… Nusa Medica.

The clinic was an oasis of air conditioning and while-tiled floors in the middle of the sweltering jungle. Stepping inside removed me temporarily from my suffering as I felt overwhelmingly reminded of the SSL – with the marked difference being that everyone around me had an intact will to live; this being a hospital. I’m also not sure any Bodleian library would have approved the blasting of Bees Gees’s ’Stayin’ Alive’ over a bluetooth speaker, but my friends are nothing if not top motivators. 

I spent the night there with two other sorry looking folks. Together, we resembled a collaboration between Britts on Tour and 24 hours in A&E (the Balinese version). On the right side of my privacy-curtain was an elderly Geordie named John, who appeared to be in perfectly good health, other than the fact he was in hospital. Meanwhile, on my left side, there lay the unfortunate victim of what appeared to be a werewolf attack; he didn’t speak much, bled a lot, and had an alarming chunk of human flesh (yes, really) perched ominously on his sideboard. Despite his condition, he managed to win me over by sparing the odd sympathetic glance every time I walked past to answer the call of nature, clinging to my IV drip post like Gandalf with a bad back. Owing to the fact that this was a twice-an-hour occurrence, I found myself growing fond of him and rather missed him when he perished in the night. Kidding – he was moved to the Island’s main hospital. Mysterious bleeding man, if you’re out there reading this, I wish you all the best.

My hospital stint remained only a stint as, the very next day, my two friends burst into the clinic to break me out. Our flight was to depart that night at 9pm and they were determined that I was to be on it. Haggling is a large part of Indonesian market culture, but it was rather uncomfortable to see my health treated in the very same way.. The nurses –  rays of sunshine – prophesied my demise at each turn and remained bewildered as my friends spoke at length of my vibrant energy and good health. I lay there watching the drip-drip of my IV, and wishing John wasn’t spending so long in our shared bathroom. At this point, due credit must be issued to our tutorial teaching system. With not a drop of medical knowledge between them, my friends waffled their way into persuading the healthcare officers to issue my release from Nusa Medica within the half-hour. Watch out, Downing Street.

 Some friends offer a shoulder to cry on, other friends make you laugh. Some friends bundle you out of hospital into a cab, through security, onto a fight, onto another flight, and then onto a train home from Heathrow. A small, mature part of me recognises that difficult experiences teach us lasting life lessons, and I can safely say I now realise the importance of travelling with good company. Other departing wisdom includes taking out solid health insurance and listening to the advice of other travellers regarding which food is safe to eat. Also avoiding werewolves in the Uluwatu area of Bali.

The Oxford-Cambridge Arc is too good an opportunity to ignore

Laurence Cooke
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The Oxford-Cambridge Arc is too good an opportunity to ignore

Now is not a good time to be a nimby. With the return of compulsory housebuilding targets, it is the new government’s ambition to build 1.5 million homes by the end of the next parliament. These new developments must be complemented by infrastructure systems, local services, and a sense of place. 

That’s where the Oxford-Cambridge arc comes in. Labour’s new houses have to go somewhere, and the arc that spans Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, and Cambridge is a good bet. Oxford and Cambridge are powerhouses of innovation in the UK, playing host to the two best universities in the world. Milton Keynes is the largest new town in the UK. There is an international airport at Luton. The arc contains six science parks, 17 research and technology zones, and 10 universities. Most towns have rail links to London in under an hour. 

To not have a direct link between these economic assets is madness. East West Rail would reduce the Oxford-Cambridge journey to 1 hour 30 minutes, nearly halving typical journey times which require two changes in the capital. A new motorway wasn’t the answer, and the expressway was rightly cancelled. But an electrified railway, alongside a commitment to sustainable and sensible housing developments, such as on brownfield sites, continued local consultation, and funding for rewilding, can only be a positive. Investment in growth must be spread throughout the country, but this opportunity is simply too good to miss.

James O’Brien on Brexit, Boris Johnson, and making radio go viral

Hassan Akram
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James O’Brien on Brexit, Boris Johnson, and making radio go viral

Journalist, broadcaster and bestselling author of three books, James O’Brien has been leading Britain’s conversation for 20 years. His signature qualities – clarity, wit, intellectual honesty and a masterly style of interrogation – have earned him 1.4 million weekly listeners and the title of “conscience of liberal Britain.” I spoke to him at the studio at LBC:

Cherwell: We’ll start with a few quick getting-to-know-you questions. Three favourite meals?

O’Brien: So, fish and chips with mushy peas. A really good souvlaki, in Greece, the full-on pita Kalamaki wrap. And then probably a Sunday roast.  

Cherwell: Three favourite novels? 

O’Brien: The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and… any of the CJ Sansom books about Matthew Shardlake.  

Cherwell: Three favourite films? 

O’Brien: If, the Lindsay Anderson Film. The Wizard of Oz. And Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. 

Cherwell: Looking at your early life, what stands out to you in light of your later career? 

O’Brien: The fact that my father was a newspaper journalist is probably the most significant element. Our relationship with the news was almost constant. We’d always have the radio on in the car, it would always be the news, on the drive to school it was the Today programme was on with Brian Redhead. On television, in the days when we only had one screen in the house, the nine o’clock or ten o’clock news was always on. Before the internet my dad would only establish the next day’s task by watching that day’s task.  

Cherwell: When did you know that that was what you wanted to do?  

O’Brien: Looking back, I think I just wanted to be like my dad, as all sons who are lucky enough to have amazing dads do. I wanted to be either an actor, a journalist or a politician, pretty much as long as I can remember. It was only when I got onto Fleet Street that I discovered I wasn’t cut out for being the kind of tireless news reporter my dad was. He was fearless in the pursuit of a story whereas I was crippled with anxiety in the pursuit of almost anything.  

Cherwell: Did journalism appeal to you even in your schooldays? 

O’Brien: Yes. At prep school, aged 7 to 13, I set up my first newspaper which was called The Winterfell Times, which indicates how early these ambitions set in. At public school I set up a magazine called The Grapevine – with Bill Cash’s son, actually, so it was a broad political spectrum. It was all about newspapers for me until later I accidentally fell into broadcasting. I was serious about acting by the time I got to LSE. I wanted to go to drama school but part of the deal I struck with my mum – because I got expelled from school, unfortunately, and my parents had spent all this money on my education – was that I’d get an LSE degree, and if I still wanted to be an actor they’d help me through drama school. But halfway through the LSE I saw Michael Sheen in a play called When She Danced, opposite Vanessa Redgrave, and I think he’d been plucked from his final year of drama school to play that part. I remember saying to my girlfriend at the time, ‘There’s no way I’m going to be an actor’, because I watched his performance and thought, if he’s top of the premier league, I’m going to be tenth division if I’m lucky. I’ll never be that good in a billion years, I thought, he’s got something magical. I wanted to find something I could be really, really good at. And getting expelled from school was not the best preparation for a career in politics, although I’d never have been one of those kids who go straight from university to the party, in a research role and then a safe seat. I was detached as a student, all my mates were in London, and I stepped back a bit from the student life. If I’d been immersed in student life at somewhere like Oxford, I think I’d have ended up even more unbearable, I’d have got heavily involved in the Union. 

Cherwell: Yeah, you don’t want to go near there. So, when journalism was the only option left, what was your first break? 

O’Brien: It didn’t happen for me. My father was made redundant by the Telegraph in my final year of school, and it was five years later that I was trying to enter the field, so he didn’t really have any contacts left. I hadn’t had any experience, I’d been too busy acting, doing things like the Edinburgh Festival. But in my final year at LSE, Charles Moore, then editor of the Sunday Telegraph visited the university. And he used to shadow my dad in Birmingham. I buttonholed him, reminded him of his association with my father, and asked for some work experience – very naively and arrogantly thinking that that would be it, I’d get some experience at the Telegraph and never leave. But at the end of the two weeks it was thank you very much and goodbye. So my student job became my job job, and I was selling suits in Regent Street. I actually loved it: working in retail is 80% colleagues. I worked with a great bunch of lads, and we also had some prominent customers.  

Cherwell: You mentioned a story about a Lady once on the radio.  

O’Brien: Yeah, that was grim. She brought her son’s pyjamas back to exchange them and let’s just say when I took them out of the bag it was very clear they’d been worn very enthusiastically… One day, I got sent Downing Street because John Major wanted to buy a suit. He was very charming and he bought three suits, one white. Now, John Major was portrayed in the UK media as grey – in Spitting Image his skin was grey – so the idea he bought a white suit, I knew that was a story. The Daily Express offered me some money for the story. I said, Can I have two shifts instead? And they said Yes. And that was my foot in the door. It was a nightmare in some ways, some bits of the job I was appalling at. But from there I got onto the Evening Standard and the Daily Telegraph and after 18 months, I was able to live on journalism. 

Cherwell: How did you get into LBC? 

O’Brien: I became a roving showbiz reporter and would get invited onto TV programmes to comment on showbiz stories. It was exciting, more than working on newspapers. I might not know much about the topic that week but – spoiler alert – nobody does. These days you watch some of these weird new TV channels and it’s as if they’ve just found someone in the canteen and called them a ‘political commentator’. I became Showbiz Editor at the Express – the money was extraordinarily good compared to what your generation can expect, and invitations to all the good parties – and started talking about other topics as well. I started getting positions on TV shows. One day I was in the ITN building on Grays Inn Road and there was an emergency replacement for the other panelist, a woman called Sandy Warr who presented a show on this radio station called LBC. She told me her holiday cover had just cancelled and that I should phone the programme controller. I said I’d never done anything like that in my life. She said all I had to do was talk when the light came on. So I did. And I haven’t left yet. 

Cherwell: When did you get your own show? 

O’Brien: I got a slot at 10PM Sunday nights. I did that for six months, listening figures came in and they gave me a breakfast show. I did that for six months, listening figures came in and they gave me a weekday show. 

Cherwell: The format of your show was different then to what it is now, though? 

O’Brien: Was it? How do you know? You weren’t born! 

Cherwell: That’s what I’ve heard.  

O’Brien: The format was more traditional but what I loved most was talking to the microphone as if it were one person. If I’m in the bath or the car or the bed with you, there is one person I’m talking to, in the office, in your ear – after I realised that everything fell into place. It was my job to get people to ring in or keep listening. I realised I shouldn’t be booking guests to do that, I should be able to do that myself. The more people I spoke to, the more political I got. 

Cherwell: And it was a big political guest in 2014 who made the show go viral. 

O’Brien: This is Nigel Farage [pronounced Farridge]. That was very weird. Until then, if I did something brilliant on the radio, you’d never know unless you listened to it; the notion of the viral clip was utterly alien. Quite a convoluted story about how Farage ended up in the studio, but he thought he was coming in to have his tummy tickled or to somehow get the better of this bloke on the radio. It didn’t work out like that. He completely soiled himself in the studio. I helped him, obviously, but I couldn’t have done it without him. That was the first time a clip went on YouTube and got halfway round the world. 

Cherwell: I’d definitely recommend everyone reading this to give that clip a watch. What happened next?

O’Brien: The Newsnight Deputy Editor rang the producer thinking that the producer had been in my ear giving me the lines. They had a meeting and established that it was me they were interested in, and I went to see them, and occasionally presented Newsnight for a while. Meanwhile LBC was going from strength to strength and when the choice came, I chose radio over TV, and carried on building what I’d spent the previous 10 years building. 

Cherwell: 2016 with Brexit was when the show really took off, wasn’t it? 

O’Brien: Yes, there were so few places in the British media where reality Remained – to use a pun. People would ring me and repeat the lines Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage or David Davis had said, I’d ask one or two questions, and they’d fall apart. It went truly bonkers. It wasn’t happening anywhere else. Almost every paper had encouraged its readers to vote for this insanity. The slim chance of damage control disappeared the minute Nick Timothy told Theresa May to appease the racists by abolishing free movement, which meant the end of the single market and the customs union. I still don’t know how much of it they understood, and with every year you realise how little genuine intelligence there was in most of these rooms. It became a rare place in the UK media, and my show was the only place where you had to back up rhetoric with facts. If you told me we had to leave the EU to make our own laws, I’d ask what laws you wanted to make or don’t like having to obey at the moment. It went mad to the point where the New York Times ran a piece on the man who made radio go viral. There used to be snobbery attached to this format. People would say ‘Oh, it’s just some thicko from Dagenham who can’t string a sentence together, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel’, but that’s offensive and deeply patronising, because the Jacob Rees-Moggs and Nigel Farages of this world have no more answers. 

Cherwell: What’s your technique and aim with these callers? 

O’Brien: I used to be a bruiser, I’d like a fight and that worked for a while. Subsequently, partly because I had therapy and stopped living life with my fists up, I just asked people calmly to explain themselves. We lived during this period of extraordinarily strong opinions built on nothing, as if the louder you shouted, or the more robustly you accused someone of being a traitor to the country, the less scrutiny there was of what you were actually saying. The customers of the snake-oil salesmen would turn up, I’d ask them to prove their points, and they couldn’t. And I just wouldn’t let up, I’d keep them on the phone for 20 minutes at times. You rarely hear that absurd inflated confidence being properly deflated, because usually they’ll move on or change the subject. I don’t like doing that. These people have robbed my children of freedom of movement, they’ve robbed my countrypeople of economic stability – and they’ve done it on a stupid poster or a racist lie. 

Cherwell: Have you considered the value of the show as social documents? It gives a better picture of society after 2016 than a lot of other outlets. 

O’Brien: I hadn’t thought of that. I hope it’s not conceited to say that, now you’ve pointed it out, I acknowledge and am quite proud of that. I came to write a book that is essentially a document of that period, very much drawing on what I’ve learnt from conducting phone-ins. If you want to know how we ended up with Boris Johnson or Liz Truss as prime minister, you couldn’t have had a better job for twenty years than speaking to the people who believed their nonsense. The archive, to use a pompous word, will provide insights into how people ended up defending such epic corruption. 

Cherwell: I’m glad you brought up your books as well. It’s three books – How to Be Right, How Not to be Wrong, How They Broke Britain. Did you feel a drive to write rather than speak? 

O’Brien: I mean, they’re very different books. The first is a digest of my radio hits. The second was written after I’d had therapy to deal with a family crisis, and I learnt so much about being wrong, holding and arguing toxic opinions; it was so revelatory I wanted to write about it. The latest one was murderously difficult to write. It was like being at college, proper hard work, loads of references and research. But I wanted to prove these ten people were culpable and I had to dig very deep. It was hugely enjoyable and at moments it was like flying a kite, but at other times I couldn’t get up on Sunday mornings to write. That killed any temptation to shift towards writing as a career path. 

Cherwell: Any other potential book ideas? 

O’Brien: I’ve got a novel set in a boarding-school that’s been bubbling away in the back of my brain for a very long time. But I don’t know if I’ve got the talent or levels of application for it. I don’t have more plans for non-fiction, unless I have an idea as appealing to me as How They Britain. If I do write more, then I have to sit down at the desk again for six hours. 

Cherwell: Who is your biggest influence as a journalist? 

O’Brien: Ooh… I don’t have one. The journalists and presenters I admire the most are Michelle Hussein, Emily Maitlis, Victoria Derbyshire, Eddie Mair. The journalists who do what I try to do: tell stories in a way that people find illuminating and engaging. Eddie had that ability to connect with somebody. Jonathan Ross, we used to plan car journeys according to when he was on air. That’s what I aspire to, to have that communication with the listener which is so personal. 

Cherwell: Final question: looking to the future, any other things to tick on the bucket list?  

O’Brien: I mentioned a novel. A tiny bit of unfinished business: I’d take the right TV project if it came along, because I had to leave Newsnight when I didn’t really want to. But I’ve never felt at home on telly as I do on the radio. So, I know it sounds weird for a 52-year-old, but not really anything more on the bucket list. When I was 42, I’d have told you resentfully about all the things I wanted to do which hadn’t happened, but oddly, since 2016, they pretty much have. 

James O’Brien’s latest book, How They Broke Britain, is out now in paperback. You can find my review of it here.

JSoc and ISoc host antisemitism, Islamophobia trainings across college Freshers’ Weeks

Jacob Newby
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JSoc and ISoc host antisemitism, Islamophobia trainings across college Freshers’ Weeks

Jewish Society (JSoc) and Islamic Society (ISoc) will organise antisemitism and Islamophobia training sessions at over a dozen colleges this Freshers’ Week. Several colleges accepted one society’s offer but not the other’s.

Over summer, JSoc reached out to all JCRs and MCRs over summer, offering to send a representative to deliver a presentation “on the Jewish community, the history of antisemitism, how to identify it, and how to report it,” according to the society’s email.

JSoc president Kai Ogden told Cherwell that to date, twelve common rooms have shown interest, with most of them confirmed. Most colleges that declined cite timetabling issues, so JSoc is also working on ways to support these colleges to make them a safe and inclusive space for Jewish students.

Similarly, ISoc contacted 30 colleges, 16 of which have arranged workshops with their freshers. While the remaining colleges are still considering, some JCRs have been unresponsive or declined the workshops, according to ISoc president Aman Sultan.

At least four colleges only accepted one society’s workshop but not the other. It is unclear which colleges and why.

Oriel College, who declined the workshops, told Cherwell that “it is customary to only include induction events organised by Oriel College or its JCR”. Oriel did not comment on whether alternative inclusivity training would take place. Corpus Christi College also declined, while Christ Church College did not respond, according to ISoc.

ISoc is working with Oxford University’s EDI (equality, diversity, inclusion) team to receive support for its workshops “designed to educate students on recognising and addressing bias within Oxford, unpacking the negative media and political perceptions, and discussing specific challenges faced by Muslim students in this environment,” Sultan told Cherwell.

The society is also providing information to the EDI team for a University staff briefing. This comes amid the University’s calls to “make Oxford a welcoming and inclusive place” in an email to all students.

Sultan continued: “Islamophobia has indeed become a more pressing concern within the University over the past year. We believe that a lack of education on the topic for both staff and students has allowed the issue to persist. Many Muslim students have personally faced Islamaphobic comments, discrimination, and even harassment within the university and city, which highlights the need for proactive measures to address this growing concern.”

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