Wednesday, May 7, 2025
Blog Page 854

Cyber experts encouraged to “redouble their efforts” following attacks

Felix Clarke
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Cyber experts encouraged to “redouble their efforts” following attacks

After a wave of cyber attacks that struck the world this week, Oxford experts have called on governments and computer users to take cybersecurity seriously.

The attack, which started on Friday and affected businesses and public bodies across the globe, including NHS hospitals and GP surgeries in Oxfordshire, has left victims and experts wondering who was responsible for the failure to stop the breach.

Responding to the cyber threats, Peter Knight, chief information and digital officer at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said that security measures were in place to protect systems: “Our strong security measures are holding solid.

“We continue to closely monitor the situation and have asked staff to be vigilant. Protecting patient information is our top priority. “We understand that NHS Digital has set up a dedicated incident line, and suppliers are working to find solutions to this ransomware outbreak,” he said.

Dr Ravishankar Borgaonkar, Research Fellow at the Department of Computer Science, told Cherwell: “The whole incident shed light on the speed with which we are making our society digital and spending less on making them secure”, blaming the attacks on the “poor management of networks”.

Andrew Martin, Professor of Systems Security at Kellogg College urged onlookers not to “blame the people who click”, arguing that rather than blaming the unscrupulous individual who clicks on a malicious email attachment, society should respond to such attacks by improving its security programming.

As well as this, he discussed how modern systems must not be vulnerable to attacks that exploit one individual’s momentary inattention.

Speaking to Cherwell this week, Professor Martin said: “Security experts have been anticipating things like this for years”. He called on the rest of society finally to take expert warnings seriously.

However, striking a tone of mutual responsibility, Professor Martin also conceded that it was up to experts like him to “redouble their efforts”. He argued that the excessive expectations of many experts had contributed to warnings being ignored.

Professor Martin warned of increasingly dire consequences, if the issues continue to be neglected. Appliances from ovens to medical equipment are increasingly being connected to the internet, forming what is known as ‘the internet of things’.

This trend means that cyberattacks will increasingly be able to cause damage that is physical rather than just informational, Professor Martin warned.

“Internet of things devices are potentially dangerous in a way that our old-fashioned information systems and file servers are not. What if all the dashboards on the M25 suddenly demanded a $300 payment?”

Not only are such devices capable of more harm if hacked, they are also more vulnerable to attack than conventional devices: “We’re rapidly deploying millions of new devices whose typical security characteristics are rather worse than those of a PC 15 years ago.”

No breaches of the Oxford University network have been reported.

Professor Martin praised the cybersecurity of the University, listing up-to-date systems and an enviable number of excellent staff among the system’s strengths: “Many organisations would be jealous of our numbers”.

The professor of Systems Security went on to counsel against complacency, however, and recommended that students should not be afraid to ask difficult questions about how their data is handled.

Colleges have reminded students to remain vigilant and to make sure that their devices are equipped with the latest anti-virus software and that their operating systems are also kept up to date with the latest protection software.

The weekend’s attack on the NHS was not exclusive to the UK. FedEx were also targeted, as were Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s rail network.

Security software manufacturers Avast say they have seen 57,000 infections in 99 countries.

“The play-text should never have been selected for performance”

Will Austin
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“The play-text should never have been selected for performance”

As we process from a drizzly English evening into the Michael Pilch Studio, we enter a charming new world. Director Catherine Dimitroff hands us a programme which is designed to resemble an invitation to the wedding of Tracey Marlowe and Scott McClure. They’re a winning Tennessee twosome (she works for Pepsi you know), and it’s the summer of 1993. An elegant and detailed bedroom set (designed by Mira Liu) will house the action, which never directly features the happy couple—instead the focus is upon five young bridesmaids, who’ve managed to escape the festivities, and who differ greatly in their outlooks upon life. They are linked by only two things: a dislike of the bride, and a common experience of sex and attention from one Tommy Valentine (who also doesn’t feature). In a comedy of pinball movements between bed and vanity, vanity and window, the five women reveal, conceal and dispute their vulnerabilities to create, according to co-director Lara Marks, “a strong sense of female solidarity”.

The problem is with the foundation on which that solidarity is built—it is startlingly out of date. A large majority of the conversation centres upon the characters’ experiences with men, and the companionship which they build throughout the play is based upon a shared oppositional stance and little else. The trouble with this is that it necessarily complicates any attempt to individuate the women, and its result is an unhappy stereotyping that is unfortunately evident in this production. The actors all teeter on the edge of melodrama as they steer their characters around the stage, blending exaggerated gestures with weak southern accents and struggling to convince anyone that they are forming genuine emotional connections. The comic timing switch is stuck resolutely in the ‘off’ position, meaning that the cast generate fewer laughs than the ostensibly funny play-text caters for.

It is to be noted, however, that this was an opening night, and each individual performance improves as time progresses. During the interval the cast remain on stage in silent conversation, a directorial innovation which is effective in maintaining the play’s unity of time and establishing continuity between acts. The second act features the emergence of Mindy, played with real nuance by Lucia Proctor-Bonbright, the strongest performer by some distance (and deserving of a larger role). Things also become decidedly more serious, as a revelation is made which brings the play onto a discussion of more topical matters.

The point I have been approaching is this: most of the problems with this production reside in the play-text itself, which should never have been selected for performance. The female identity which it celebrates is crude, caricatured and, most troublingly, based upon assumptions which border upon being prescriptive, and would seem only to entrench the divides which the play laments. Contemporary feminism is certainly not problem-free, (nor does it comprise only one outlook), but it is not prescriptivist, and most consider this its strength. This play, sadly, never really leaves the past in which it is set.

Music without Borders: Welsh national music

Theo Davies-Lewis
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Music without Borders: Welsh national music

Wales is a musical nation. Only last week we saw Welsh schoolgirl choir Angelicus Celtis win the hearts of the nation on Britain’s Got Talent. It was not only their voices that captured our attention, but their performance, their passion and their story. Fundamentally that’s what Welsh music is all about: telling a moving story.

Traditionally, music in Wales was associated with chapel-goers, those who participated in cultural events such as the Eisteddfod, and large, predominately male choirs, that had power and depth in their singing. The folk related music of Wales can, of course, be associated with the Celtic past of other countries such as Scotland and Ireland too. However, Wales has distinctive instrumentation and song types, and is often heard at a twmpath (folk dance session), gwyl werin (folk festival) or noson lawen (a traditional party similar to the Gaelic “Céilidh”).

Of course, Wales has its own distinctive choirs too. We have seen the national and international success of these choirs over the last few decades, and the advent of talent shows such as Britain’s Got Talent is one way to ensure that this aspect of Welsh music is still heard today. Male voice choirs in particular are synonymous in Wales, such as the Morriston Orpheus Choir and Treorchy Male Voice Choir. Choirs often have a role in sporting events ever since the national anthem, ‘Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau’, was sung for the first time at a rugby game in 1905.

But, perhaps we shouldn’t get too caught up in this historic aspect of Welsh music. Of course, its allowed singers to express our past, our language, and our culture. Yet, Welsh music has also had an influential role in the modern era.

Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey and Shakin’ Stevens are just a few names which come to mind when thinking of modern Welsh pop sensations. We’re not all about the choirs and folk music, as these pop and rock bands have been huge sensations across the world.

Intriguingly, Wales is perhaps one of the only countries that can have a mixture of traditional, folk, pop, rock and choirs succeeding in the modern era. Perhaps the reason that Welsh music continues today is the fact that there is so much support and investment in Welsh music: BBC Wales, BBC Cymru, S4C, and The Pop Factory have all been ways for audiences to see the up-and-coming artists of the day.

Organisations that support the Welsh language, such as Mentrau Iaith Cymru, The National Eisteddfod and BBC Radio Cymru have had their national ‘Battle of the Bands,’ where Welsh bands can compete for £1000, and were given the opportunity to perform at one of the most prolific Welsh music festivals: Maes B.

Of course, there are issues with funding too. Dafydd Iwan, a Welsh rock singer, once said that there were “no stars in Wales” due to the lack of financial reward and the poor music venues. That has arguably changed since Iwan’s prime in the 1970s and 80s. The Millennium Centre and Principality Stadium are some of the most beautiful venues in the world, and there has been more funding for Welsh music production in recent years.

More could be done—such as developing new shows on television and radio to encourage Welsh music, and breaking down the stereotype that Wales is simply full of choirs that only perform when there is a rugby game being played.

Clearly, Welsh music has an important role in the culture-history of our nation. It binds us together in chapel, unites us as one in sporting events, and allows us to enjoy pop, rock and modern music genres with friends. Not many countries can boast that about their music.

 

“Guitar legends of the Sahara”

Ellen Peirson-Hagger
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“Guitar legends of the Sahara”

My first thought is that the O2 Academy is a boring venue for a band with a sound as warm and story as unique as Tinariwen. These men are guitar legends of the Sahara and former members of Muammar al-Gadaffi’s guerrilla training camps. They are, as NPR have dubbed them, “music’s true rebels”. An O2 Academy is the opposite of rebellious.

This room is usually stifling hot. Tonight, a seriously strong air-conditioning blast suddenly hits halfway through Tinariwen’s set. My friend suggests it’s the desert wind. Next, he says, there’ll be a sand storm.

For Tinariwen (itself a Tamasheq word meaning ‘deserts’) are very much at home in the sand dunes of the Sahara. These musicians grew up as part of the Tuareg rebel community, in nomad camps in the far north-east of Mali, and later in refugee camps in Algeria. Witness to rebel movements and violent attacks, the band was formed as a collective in the late 1970s. Founding member Ibrahim Ag Alhabib first made his own guitar with a tin can, a stick and bicycle brake wire. Now Tinariwen count Thom Yorke, Chris Martin and Brian Eno among their fans and have seven studio albums and a 2012 Grammy tucked under their belts.

The music they play has even been named ‘desert music’, but that doesn’t bear the brunt of it. Tinariwen are influenced by Algerian pop rai, classical Egyptian pop, and Moroccan protest songs, alongside western pop and rock artists, folk and the blues. During the early days of the collective’s existence, Tinariwen’s members got their hands on bootlegged copies of western albums including Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix. It’s not hard to see how music became their driving force for a political resistance.

This insistence on music as their saviour is evident onstage. Tinariwen sing in their native Tamasheq language about ongoing troubles in Mali, a changing homeland and the beauty of the desert, and they wear traditional flowing robes and turban-veils. They dance with an otherworldly passion for what they are playing, their insistence on its danceable capabilities as encouraging as the audience who cheers back at them.

There is no need to translate Tinariwen’s incessant rhythmic groove. Layered guitar riffs take centre stage, the intricacy in the finger-picking marking these players out as seriously talented musicians. This guitar shredding works best when strung along at odds with the vocal lines, as the band’s call and response vocals resound in gloriously sustained harmony. There is a wonderful complexity to the texture, too, when the tindé drum is played at odds with Eyadou Ag Leche’s limber, and undeniably funky, bass, as it kicks along on tracks such as ‘Imdiwanin ahi Tifhamam’.

The set ends in ‘Chaghaybou’, from the 2013 album Emmaar, a perfect example of the rhythmic restlessness with which Tinariwen play. The track’s final lyrical image is of Chaghaybou, the song’s addressee, being taught the Tifinagh alphabet by his mother in the sand. “In the sand”—the crucial environmental detail wholeheartedly missing from this gig which is otherwise so full of the sincerity, graciousness and musical finesse Tinariwen take with them no matter how far from the Sahara they wander.

Taking up Tupac’s “thug poet” mantle

Jonathan Egid
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Taking up Tupac’s “thug poet” mantle

In a genre so fixated on authenticity—on being ‘real’—as hip-hop, leaps in stylistic or personal development can seem forced, a selling out for mass appeal or street credibility. Freddie Gibbs however, has pulled off the feat of a major artistic rebirth with the release of his eagerly anticipated new project You Only Live 2wice. The Renaissance inspired album art represents this metamorphosis, with a robed Gibbs hovering serenely in the air, seemingly ascending above a foreground depicting emblems of the grim realities of his former life.

This transformation was occasioned by two life-altering events. Shortly after the release of Piñata, his ground-breaking collaboration with Madlib, Gibbs was targeted outside a record signing event in New York by two gunmen who narrowly missed him, instead injuring members of his entourage.

Two years later, after enjoying international acclaim for the first time in his long and troubled career, Gibbs was extradited from France to Austria on sexual assault charges, spending months in jail before being acquitted on all counts. Facing the prospect of ten years in prison in a foreign country for a crime he did not commit, Gibbs underwent what he calls a ‘conversion’ and vowed to turn his back on his old life—the drugs, fickle friends and, if necessary, his music itself.

In the moving outro to the album, Gibbs describes the anxiety of being surrounded by an unfamiliar language, hoping only for a book he could understand. He began furiously writing the project inside the cell he shared with a swastika-tattooed inmate, as a means of passing the time and of distracting himself from the thought that that he might not see his young daughter grow up.

Frustration and regret have always been elements of Gibbs’ work, apparent in the menacing yet vulnerable tone of his delivery as much as in his lyrics. The feelings of remorse about his life as a drug dealer in Gary, Indiana, one of America’s most violent cities, has always been one of the more intriguing sides to his gritty street tales, but these occasional reflective moments come to the fore as a major theme of the new album.

On stand out track ‘Alexys’, co-produced by the seemingly omnipresent Kaytranada and BADBADNOTGOOD, Gibbs remembers his early exposure to drugs “I first taste cocaine in tenth grade” and reflects on the ultimately empty nature of his former work: “Feds lookin’ because I peddled pain to these poor folks / The realest n****s that I know ain’t never sold dope”.

On ‘Crushed Glass’ Gibbs is at his angriest and most determined, fusing his desire for personal transformation—“The future started yesterday / every minute feeling different, I am not the same”—with bitter reflections on the injustices he and his people have suffered: “‘Round the world, jail system like a slave trade / Got the recipe for dope, my reparations paid”. As always, Gibbs is able to propel a track singlehandedly with the force of his visceral imagery. Even when the production and lyrical content tail off towards the end of the tape, his sheer versatility keeps the listener rapt with an urgency few can match. With his last few projects, Gibbs has solidified his status as the true successor to his idol Tupac’s mantle of the ‘thug poet’. If the emphasis up until now has been on the first part of that title, one hopes that his newfound direction will allow him to more fully explore his poetry.

“A tense and deeply disturbing piece”

Emily Lawford
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“A tense and deeply disturbing piece”

“One girl, against the happiness of the whole village. Can you not see it has to be done?”

Matt Grinter’s play Orca, which won the Papatango prize last year, is set in a bleak, tightly-knit fishing village which fears the orcas that inhabit the nearby seas.  Every year, they elect a Daughter to sail with the Father and the fishing boats to keep the community safe, as a ritualistic re-enactment of an old tale of a young girl who gave her life to save her father and the village.

But the present-day ritual contains a dark secret, and the chosen Daughter, who is first wreathed in flower crowns and made to dance with the Father, is no less of a sacrificial victim than her mythical forbearer.  Yet for a small family, outcast from the community, their youngest girl becoming the Daughter is their only chance at reintegration.  Her older sister Maggie, the Daughter of a few years ago, is determined that her sister must not go out with the Father and the boats, yet it is her violent insistence that causes the family to be ostracised from the village.

Max Reynolds and Vicky Robinson have set this play on a traverse stage in the Chapel in Pembroke College, and this dramatic setting, with an altar and a painting of Christ looming in the background, brings to mind the themes of sacrifice and redemption so prevalent in the play.  The lighting is stark and haunting, as are the violins which play simple tunes during the scene breaks.  The traverse stage also allows us a more intimate and intrusive look as we surround the family from both sides, almost like the watchful eyes of the village itself.  However, especially at the start of the play, when the action takes place entirely at one end of the space, the audibility unfortunately suffers and lines and meaning are lost.

Bella Soames is excellent as Fan, the young girl wishing to be the new Daughter: sweetly enthusiastic and very believably young.  Sofia Blanchard as Maggie is tense and agonised throughout and extremely powerful at the end of the play: however, earlier on her performance was at times a little too subtle which somewhat detracted from the mounting tension of the piece.  Chris Dodsworth’s booming voice and menacing presence are apt for the Father, and he manages to convey a real sense of hidden threat.  John Livesey is extremely watchable as Joshua, Maggie and Fan’s real father, showing his love for his children and desire to protect them, while conflicted by his desire to be respected in the village.  Alexa Mackie is also effective as Gretchen, the Daughter chosen the previous year who has a terrible secret of her own.

The play, perhaps, would have benefited from one more dress rehearsal: especially at the beginning, the actors seemed slightly unsure and it was difficult to grasp what was going on.  But as it progressed, it swelled to become a tense and deeply disturbing piece about the evil that can go unpunished in a small and scared society, leaving audience members stunned and shaken.

Dispatches: A meeting of minds, memories, and bad wine

Jem Bosatta
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Dispatches: A meeting of minds, memories, and bad wine

My Canadian co-workers Davi and Amir had been farmhopping for some time and they said that their awful experiences with awful people are what makes them know what a good experience is. That sounds wise. Perhaps you might add that nowhere is perfect—and I assure you, that place was anything but. You take it all in then you decide, on the balance.

For all the farm’s flaws, the food was good. And you can get good food at a restaurant, but you can’t get an experience like that, and the whole experience is poured into the meal: the unrefrigerated apéro, the shouting match between the landlady and her lodger, the subtle layer of grease on each item of cutlery, the constant threat of kittens nosing at your plate, the flypaper that swings over the dining table like a candelabra, the stench of piss on the saucepan shelves…

Even that’s not quite all. The afternoon of shovelling dirt adds a sweet tinge of hunger to each forkful. Those flea bites, ram chases, goat games, lamb placentas and horse whinnies ramp up the flavour. The tension of the day’s petty politics adds a heavy grind of salt to each dish. And when I finally take a mouthful, the rabbit stew reminds me of home. You can’t repeat the past, but you can taste it (ask Proust).

The landlady’s boyfriend—former policeman now taking on unemployment bottle in hand— insists on his voice being the only voice, until he has recounted everything he knows about preparing the eaux-de-vie of different fruits, and once he’s finished he leaves the room. Every sentence of mine that he cuts off, I replace with something from the cheese board: notes of frustration. To be fair to him I learn a lot, and the next morning I find the moonshine in the garage. The leathery scent of fermenting figs creeps through the must of hay and dog shit, and makes me think of him. You see, memory does its best work through your nose.

Similarly, there’s no use discarding a good memory because you were drinking bad wine. Picture how I saw the place when I first arrived: a woman reclines miserably on a sofa, stubs out a cigarette and promptly lights another. At her feet and her side, dog after cat after mangy dog flick their tails half-heartedly at the blanket of flies. The television in the corner emits tinny screams, the colours of a low-budget horror movie flickering and warping on the screen. At the other end of the room a turtle paddles furiously at the glass of his tiny, opaque-green home.

The woman tells me I’m sleeping in the other building. I pick up my backpack and boots and trudge over. There is a wall hanging of the Joker with a maniacal grin, and beneath his leer the room heaves with shelves and counters. Everything down to the ancient baguette in the cupboard is encrusted with months of deep brown dirt. I slump on the sofa, filled with dread. Twenty-four hours later and it’s sea, sun and sand. Germanic holidaymakers bare their gloriously reddened morphoid bodies upwind. My harmonica is out of tune. The wine is cheap and metallic, and the brim of the throwaway cup is slightly sandy. And, as I am soon to find out, the month to come is going to be very unpleasant. But in that moment, on the balance of things, that was pretty good.

Charles and Camilla surprise public with trip to Oxford

Theo Davies-Lewis
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Charles and Camilla surprise public with trip to Oxford

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall surprised crowds last Tuesday in Oxford by taking a whirlwind trip of the city.

One of the highlights for the public was when Charles and Camilla visited a variety of stalls and shops in the Covered Market, including the Colombia Coffee shop, Brown’s Café and The Garden florist outlet.

When asked for her views on the Covered Market, Camilla exclusively told Cherwell that she thought it was “pretty nice”.

She added: “I haven’t been here for a long time. My son was a student so I used to come when he was here”.

Paul Birtles, owner of The Garden, told The Oxford Mail that it was the “most exciting thing to happen” in his life, while Agostinho Freitas, co-owner of Brown’s Café, said “it was a dream” to meet the future king.

The visit was well-attended by hundreds of tourists, students and town-dwellers, to see the heir to the throne and his consort make their way through the city’s historic market.

The Prince of Wales visited the city in order to officially open the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OCIS)—32 years after its establishment, but only five years since the OCIS was granted a royal charter to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee.

According to the OCIS website, it was established “to encourage the scholarly study of Islam and the Islamic world”, with Prince Charles as the Patron of the Centre.

In a speech addressed on the opening of the OCIS, Charles encouraged the audience to “explore what unites rather than divides us.”

He went on: “There has perhaps never been a greater need for cultural connectivity. In the world in which we now live, with fears about ‘The Other’… rather than promote it, there is an urgent need for calm reflection and a genuinely sustained, empathetic and open dialogue across boundaries of faith, ethnicity and culture.”

However, some academics and religious leaders have expressed their concern over the funding and ethical stance of OCIS in regards to guests invited to the Centre, embroiling the heir to the throne in some controversy.

In response to the announcement that Indonesia’s Vice-President, Jusuf Kalla, has been invited to speak at OCIS on May 18, Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice, said that “the Patron, Director and Fellows of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies are giving a platform to a hypocrite and a fraud”.

Vice-President Kalla was recently implicated in the persecution of a Christian politician.

St Catz student praised for “heroic” behaviour in police chase

Jordan Bernstein
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St Catz student praised for “heroic” behaviour in police chase

St Catherine’s College student Jake Quinn has been praised as “heroic” for his efforts in tackling one of the fleeing men after a high speed police chase yesterday which ended on Merton College sports ground.

Two men were arrested in the immediate aftermath of the chase, just after 11.45am, with a third man arrested later.

Speaking to Cherwell, Quinn, a third year biologist, said: “I saw a car turning really quickly into Manor Road and I thought: ‘Wow, that’s pretty fast.’

“I saw a police car turning in very quickly after that and I thought, ‘there could be something interesting here’, so I turned around and followed them.”

Quinn added: “Police chases have occurred there before—there was one last year—and I basically sprint-cycled down the road.

“I kind of presumed that they’d go into Merton-Mansfield [sports ground] because it is behind Catz, with a road accessing it.” Quinn said he saw the fleeing men jump from their car once it hit a dead end.

He described how he “jumped off [his] bike, sprinted down and basically rugby tackled him into the ground.”

Following the assistance that Quinn gave to the police, which included holding the man while he was being handcuffed, he said that attention turned to “another man [who] was largely on the loose—he ran off into another direction, towards the [river] Cherwell in the forest. Then, they got a chopper out and they got more units in there—there were about seven units by the end of it and they got the dogs and about 15-20 minutes later they managed to get the other man.”

Of his instinct to assist the police in this situation, Quinn said: “I do like watching Police Interceptors so this is quite a fulfilling thing for me.”

Chris Rawlings, a second year Economics and Management student at Catz, told Cherwell: “It was just a little intense with a police helicopter, seven cars, and dog teams who had been deployed to hunt the third guy that had escaped.”

Another Catz student, geographer Alex Curtis, said: “I saw a couple of men running away from police officers on the field in front of my window, who were quickly apprehended. The whole event was rather exciting to watch.”

Thames Valley Police have been contacted for comment.

JCRs vote for compulsory £1 donations to homeless charities

Henry Straughan
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JCRs vote for compulsory £1 donations to homeless charities

Pembroke JCR have joined a growing movement across colleges to take action in support of the Oxford homeless community.

It follows a motion by St Anne’s JCR to add a compulsory £1 donation to battels each term for Oxford homelessness charities.

A number of Oxford balls will also see an additional £1 added to support the homeless, in support of the ‘What’s a pound?’ campaign.

Pembroke JCR resolved to support a scheme enabling students to voluntarily donate the price of a meal when paying at the Pembroke Farthings Café. The proceeds from the scheme will go to Porch, a charity which, according to the JCR, “seeks to tackle homelessness at its roots by providing crucial services to society’s most vulnerable populations.”

The JCR noted that “homelessness soared 50 per cent in Oxford from 2015 to 2016, and it continues to rise. At the same time, the homeless’ access to resources is dwindling. Two of Oxford’s largest Homeless shelters, Simon House Hostel and Julian Housing are facing closure, and there is due to be an additional £1.5 million in council funding cuts to related welfare provisions over the next three years.

The JCR expressed the expectation that with the support of the student body the scheme would be able to “help the members of Oxford’s homeless community rebuild their lives.” It is hoped that increased aid to the homeless will continue among Oxford colleges.

First year Materials Science student Josh King told Cherwell: “I think it’s sad to see how bad the situation seems to be getting.

“I’ve seen people on the streets tearful because their services are being cut, and I don’t believe it would take that much effort to change things. It’s a small amount to us, but small amounts of human compassion add up.”

St Hugh’s and St Catherine’s colleges students also voted to pass the motion to support the ‘What’s a pound?’ campaign. The scheme seeks to add £1 to Ball tickets, with the money raised going to a charity of the Ball Committee’s choosing.

The President of this year’s Corpus Christi Ball Committee, Molly Willett, has also pledged to give £1 from any remaining tickets sold to charity.

St Hugh’s JCR expressed their belief that: “Despite our luxuries, such as college balls, we shouldn’t forget the inequality that surrounds us every day” and that “students in a financial position to spend £100 are in a position where spending one more pound would not be problematic to them”.

The President of Law Society, Tom Fadden, has also pledged to add £1 to each ticket sold to their Trinity Term Ball, for a charity voted for by its committee.

The OUSU homelessness campaign, On Your Doorstep, praised the move, telling Cherwell: “It is encouraging to see JCR responses to our drive to introduce a charity battels donation directly to homelessness charities.

“We believe that the University has enough power in Oxford to make a visible difference, and in light of the recent cuts to homelessness services, students’ help is needed now more than ever.

“We would urge everyone who has the means to donate, and we are hoping to take this even further by reaching out to Oxford alumni.”

Homelessness is viewed as one of the biggest issues facing Oxford and the UK as a whole, with many viewing the cost of living in the area too high.

A Cherwell investigation last term showed that the median house price in Oxford increased by 133 per cent from 2001 to 2015 (£150,000—£350,100).

Meanwhile, the investigation also showed that Oxford’s median earnings only increased by 42 per cent in the same period (£21,960—£31,271).

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