Saturday, May 10, 2025
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OxFilm: Oxford International Film Festival

Calum Bradshaw
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OxFilm: Oxford International Film Festival

Last weekend marked the annual bonanza of silver-screen goodness that is the Oxford International Film Festival. Despite being only in its second year, the festival offered an impressive mixture of features, shorts, and Q and A sessions.

Jericho’s Phoenix Picturehouse played host to the action, with films screened through the long weekend of 5-7 May. Top billed was Stephen Cookson’s Stanley a Man of Variety, a surreal drama centring on Timothy Spall’s hallucinating prison inmate. Spall himself appeared on the opening night, answering questions on his character’s fantastic journey through multiple personalities and levels of sanity.

It was a weekend for short film as well, with Oscar Isaac and Ben Wishaw starring in Lightningface and One Night in Atlanta respectively. Rounded off with a strong documentary showing, including exploration of the music scene in post-Katrina New Orleans One Note at a Time, the festival was a resounding success for filmmakers and viewers alike.

Cliché of the week: “Relegation six-pointer”

Daniel Bingham
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Cliché of the week: “Relegation six-pointer”

There are no words uttered more after the 30th week of the season than ‘relegation six-pointer’.

You can often find commentators and pundits alike abusing this phrase to describe any game between sides in the bottom half.

Matches such as Burnley vs Crystal Palace probably aren’t going to pull in crowds of people, but if that is the only one that the BBC can get Radio 5Live coverage of, they have to do everything imaginable to get listeners.

At the end of the day a game between 13th and 15th isn’t really part of a scrap at the bottom of the table. A relegation six-pointer needs to seriously jeopardise either team should they lose.

Simply put, we need to get pundits to curtail their use of this phrase just because both teams aren’t mathematically safe, else it can be used for a huge number of fixtures.

Teams don’t have their fate sealed until very late on: it even took Sunderland until 34 matches to be relegated with certainty, despite their dreadful season.

If we keep on using this phrase to hype average games, we will only detract from the enormity of other games; or alternatively ‘and when everyone’s super, no-one will be’. (Syndrome et al, 2004).

Vice-Chancellor slams safe-space culture

Lucy Enderby
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Vice-Chancellor slams safe-space culture

Oxford Vice-Chancellor Louise Richardson has hit out at the “cosseted” culture of university ‘safe-spaces’ and ‘no platform’ policies.

In an interview for the Irish Times, Richardson said: “It may be that middle-class children have been too cosseted by their professional parents.

“It may be in part accentuated in social media where we tend to operate within an echo chamber of like-minded people,” she said.

This reflects comments made by the Vice-Chancellor last year, in which she called on students to engage with ideas they don’t agree with.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph after her appointment as the University’s highest-ranking executive officer in January 2016, she said: “We need to expose our students to ideas that make them uncomfortable so that they can think about why it is that they feel uncomfortable and what it is about those ideas that they object to.”

In the Irish Times interview Richardson also expressed concerns over the impact of Brexit on Oxford University. She described the University’s academic staff as “eminently poachable” as a result of Britain’s planned exit from the EU.

According to the Oxford University statement on Brexit, 18 per cent of Oxford’s staff and 16 per cent of its students are from the EU.

An Irish national, she revealed that she had applied for a British passport before the EU referendum last year.

“To be perfectly honest I started the process of applying for British citizenship in anticipation of Brexit because I thought it could be difficult if I found myself as Vice- Chancellor of Oxford without the right to remain,” she said.

Richardson’s comments come after Oxford University was deemed a “hostile environment for free speech” by the online politics magazine Spiked in February.

The magazine cited OUSU’s ban of pro-life groups and the prevention of the student magazine No Offence from being handed out at the 2015 freshers’ fair as its justification.

In a statement, the University said that it considers freedom of speech to be “the lifeblood of a university”.

In March, Universities Minister Jo Johnson wrote a letter to be disseminated to all universities outlining his desire to restrict censorship.

Johnson said: “The government proposes to raise the issue of freedom of speech, with a view to ensuring that a principle underscoring the importance of free speech in higher education is given due consideration.”

Labour ought not to disown Blair

Annie Simm
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Labour ought not to disown Blair

Last week marked 20 years to the day since New Labour routed the Conservatives and won the largest majority in the party’s history. With a colossal 418 seats Tony Blair and his team entered Downing Street promising a new dawn, a new chapter in the history of the UK. 20 years on, how is it possible that Blair’s 43 per cent vote share has fallen to the 29 per cent at which Corbyn currently polls? In part, this must be down to the fact that Labour are so keen to rebel against their own record, to grovel to the media and denounce New Labour, in a confusing, contradictory, and self-destructive tide of sweeping populism.

The 1997 Labour election win marked the first time in almost 20 years that the party had won power. The victory was heralded as a landslide, and New Labour went on to win a further two consecutive elections, first in 2001, and then again in 2005. At the outset, Blair’s popularity was undebatable. He represented a brand of politics that seemed to appeal to the masses: to allow economic liberalisation, globalisation, and the proliferation of business in the UK, but ensure that the less fortunate were protected, by investing heavily in schools, hospitals and other public services. Blair was also a strong advocate for gay rights. He passed bills on civil partnerships and the right to adopt, and repealed Section 28, an act that had prevented LGBT people from serving in the armed forces. As his first term began he was likeable, charismatic and seemingly sincere, handling key historical events early into his time in office, such as the death of Princess Diana, whom he memorably labelled “the People’s Princess”. New Labour seemed unstoppable. So what went so badly wrong?

To ask anybody even vaguely interested in politics this question is to hear the same answer repeated back again and again: Iraq. From the outset, let me make my viewpoint clear: the Iraq War was wrong. Apart from the fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction (as had been claimed), the fact that the UK parliament voted to go to war without the backing of the UN security council is questionable to say the least. What is perhaps even more alarming was its apparent willingness to cling to the coattails of President Bush during his reckless and devastating War on Terror.

But the increasingly widespread idea that the blame for this lies solely with the Labour party is patently wrong, and Labour are only damaging themselves by conceding on this front. Parliament voted, in an overwhelming majority, in support of the Iraq War. 412 votes for, 149 votes against, with a greater proportion of the Conservative Party voting in favour than Labour. With the benefit of hindsight people criticise the fact that Iraq was invaded on the premise that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction, given that it later turned out to be untrue. So was Parliament misled? Yes, it was. But was it intentional? No, as the Chilcot inquiry found.

Instead it was discovered that the intelligence on which Tony Blair based his argument was not accurate, which is a working possibility of all intelligence. Blair argued using the intelligence that was in his possession (which was, to the best of his his knowledge, correct), and then parliament voted.

But Iraq is not the only contentious New Labour decision. The party were further criticised for their inability to adequately regulate the banks, but this was a failure that was happening the world over, and was thus part of a picture much wider than any UK government.

The problem, therefore, is not that New Labour made mistakes; all political parties make mistakes. It’s the party’s handling of them as time passes that’s the problem, something that other parties seem to be so much better at. You wouldn’t catch Theresa May denouncing Cameron, as Miliband, McDonnell, and Corbyn have denounced Blair. Especially given that Blair received so much pubic support, even at the 2005 election that followed the invasion of Iraq.

While there are many elements of the New Labour cabinet I don’t support, I don’t think that public persecution is the way forward either, and far less do I believe in defining the current Labour cabinet as ‘not New Labour’. Surely politics is more about progression and learning from past mistakes, rather than disowning an entire era on the back of unnuanced, relatively baseless populism.

New Labour presided over one of the most transitional phases in modern history and they did so whilst still retaining dignity for the poor, and making some huge leaps forward in civil rights. Labour are too quick to forget some of these triumphs and too hasty to subscribe to their universal condemnation, a trend that will inevitably only lead to self destruction.

Warhol and the importance of social exchange

Mia Neafcy
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Warhol and the importance of social exchange

More than thirty years after his death, it is a testament to Warhol’s creative genius that he remains one of the most influential and exalted figures in contemporary art, a longevity of career almost ironic in its defiance of his self-imposed rule: “Everybody will be world-famous for fifteen minutes”.

Andy Warhol was at the inception of a brave new world of consumerism in the ‘60s. The artist redefined an era and his elevation to iconic status was the work of revisionist historians. His career presented us with possibly the largest exchange of societal values in 20th century artistic history. As an artist who rose to eminence at a point where the abstract expressionism of the ‘40s and ‘50s had almost reached its creative bankruptcy, it was a decidedly radical decision of his to use seemingly innocuous consumer products such as Coca-Cola, Brillo and Campbell’s Soup, to name but a few, as not merely the source but the very essence of his oeuvre. As one of the leading proponents of the new pop art movement, Warhol demarcated himself from his contemporaries, Lichtenstein and Rosenquist, by shifting the commercial light from fictitious depictions meant for comic entertainment, onto the stuff of everyday recognition and universal consumer use—an emphatic nod to the societal value imputed upon the post-war consumer culture. On the cusp of a decade synonymous with counterculture, consumerism, sexual liberation, and freedom, Warhol succeeded in capturing the zeitgeist of the time, injecting a realist perspective of what the American Dream entailed.

The idea that Warhol partook in an ‘exchange’ rather than a mere one-sided exhibition of societal values lies in the philosophy of anti-mimesis: a notion most succinctly described by Oscar Wilde in his 1889 essay ‘The Decay of Lying’: “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life”. This symbiotic ‘imitation’ is evident in Warhol’s seminal work ‘Campbell’s Soup Cans’ (1962): a work consisting of 32 canvases, with each painting corresponding to a different flavour, imitating the real-life Campbell’s advertisement billboards through the grid-like, repetitive, methodical aesthetic he used. His mimicking of the archetypally capitalist techniques used for advertisement puts himself in the de facto position of society’s mass producer. His silk-screening process was increasingly relied upon in his work that followed, providing us with an even more striking parallel with mass production, with this process constituting the printing of facsimiles of each illustration, making the need to individually repaint each image a redundant process. The automatism of Warhol’s printing processes quite presciently coincided with the increase in the efficacy of mass production, displaying a real-life emulation of Warhol’s work.

In a similar fashion, Warhol’s vision of a society of mass consumption became a self-fulfilling prophecy in its own right. Not only did Warhol’s ‘Campbell’s Soup Cans’ transpose itself onto the world of fashion with the advent of the new ‘Souper dress’ donned primarily by affluent New York socialites, but in rather ominous fashion, Campbell’s Soup capitalised on his success by reducing this self-same design to a crude imitation of a dress, now made from paper, being sold as part of a special offer to anyone who sent one dollar and two Campbell’s soup can labels they accrued to the company. This aggressively capitalist exploitation of Warhol’s work depicted the commercial devaluation of art in exchange for a consumer society: Warhol had given his art to society and this is what society gave to him in return.

Interestingly, Warhol found a way of usurping the idea of a capitalist stronghold on a society of consumerism, by explaining thus: “What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest”, for “you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking.” By introducing parity in the most curious set of circumstances, Warhol extolled the unexpected virtue of equality in mass production and the uniformity of consumer products.

Warhol’s foray into film also demonstrated the transient value that society placed on celebrities: the most notorious ‘superstar’ that emerged from his Factory was ‘it’ girl Edie Sedgwick, who epitomised the sad disposability and rapid diminution in value of society’s celebrities. As a socialite once bestowed with the title ‘Girl of the Year’ and believed to be for a certain time Warhol’s muse, her untimely death by drug overdose at 28 was met with Andy’s response: “Edie who?” His indifference towards his very own purpose-built superstar serves as an example of the impermanence of value that society places upon celebrities.

Warhol’s exchange of societal values, half a century hence, has shown no signs of stopping, even posthumously: Moschino’s Autumn 2014 fashion show inspired by fast food demonstrates that the existence of consumerism in art is alive as much now as it ever has been.

The humble notes that hold great meaning

Katherine Wood
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The humble notes that hold great meaning

This week marks the 93rd anniversary of the birth of Bulat Okudzhava, one of the first and greatest of the Soviet ‘bards’. The bard genre which arose in Russia in the 1950s, saw poets putting their words to simple music and performing them for the public. Though largely ignored on an official level, the voices of the bards, including Okudzhava, Vizbor, the Nikitins, and the iconic Vladimir Vysotsky, became some of the loudest in the Soviet Union up to and beyond perestroika.

For many Westerners, the idea of ‘Soviet art’ evokes images of propaganda controlled and disseminated by the State. However, following the death of Stalin in 1953, the Khrushchev ‘thaw’ brought with it an atmosphere of relative freedom in the cultural world. Many artists were able to navigate the boundaries of what was acceptable, and in turn their work thrived. The bards were a prime example of this, being neither explicit dissidents nor allies of the regime. Their songs managed to express the realities of Soviet life without being overtly political—they provided a form of escapism without spelling out what they were escaping from. Yuri Vizbor, for example, has become known as the bard who ‘took a whole generation up into the hills and saved them’ from the lunacy of the Stagnation era with his songs about alpinism and the mountains. In one of his seminal songs, another idol of the generation, Vladimir Vysotsky, encapsulated the contrast between these Romantic images and the reality of life:

 

“To the bustle of cities and flowing of cars

We return—there’s no way out!

And we start our descent from the conquered peaks,

Leaving our hearts, leaving our hearts in the mountains.”

 

As a result of their independent, but ultimately ambiguous positions, the bards were treated with ambivalence by the Soviet authorities. They gained a cult following, and the way in which they shared their poetry — through live performances, word-of-mouth and amateur recordings—meant their success didn’t rely on the approval of the state. Moreover, their lack of interest in commercial returns served to increase their popularity and recognition. It meant that the bards’ songs could be unofficially copied through magnitizdat (homemade re-recordings) and distributed throughout the USSR. They gave Russians the words they needed to process their existence without asking anything in return, and their reward was a population who still know their songs off by heart today.

Interestingly, although it was a form of popular music, the music of the Bards was predominantly enjoyed by the Soviet intelligentsia. Knowing the words of the bards’ songs became the equivalent of being well read, and everyday speech was littered with references and citations from them—a testament not only to their relevance, but also to the precision with which they expressed the feelings of a generation. Through these songs, people could fulfil their intellectual need to communicate with the like-minded, and the music created an unspoken bond between them. Young people also began to emulate the Bards. Every year, they looked forward to annual bard music festivals, and often took part.

Nowadays, it is difficult to find a middle aged person in Russia who doesn’t know the bards, and speaking to them about their songs provokes a wave of nostalgia. Tatiana, who was a teenager during the Stagnation era, reminisces: “On holidays and weekends, we’d go to the countryside and have barbecues. We’d build a campfire and everyone would drink and sing the bards’ songs for hours. The picnic scene in the famous Soviet film Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears is taken straight out of Soviet reality: sitting around the fire, eating shashlik, playing the guitar, with the Nikitins’ and Okudzhava in the background. It was so fashionable for young people to play the guitar, and every friendship group would have a guitarist. We lived for those outings. There was really nothing else to live for—your dreams didn’t take you far. So you’d just enjoy nature, friendship and music. When people responded to music in the same way, it created unity, and those songs kept everyone going.”

However, bard music is not only a symbol of Russia’s Soviet past. It still has an active role in its musical world, with Bard music festivals taking place every year across the country. Eighties stars like Tatiana and Sergei Nikitin continue to perform new compositions and old favourites.

The following poem was written by Okudzhava in 1989, just before the collapse of the USSR. In it, the bard explains the importance of his art for the people of Russia:

 

“This century that has been so fruitless

Is the work of our bitter hands,

And only through reading music

Can this malady be cured.

 

“When the people are crying in grief

And staring with horror-filled eyes,

Those humble notes on the page

Aren’t many but hold great meaning.”

The comeback kids keep ‘lad rock’ alive

Matthew Roller
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The comeback kids keep ‘lad rock’ alive

It is easy to see why so many critics want to hate Kasabian. They are an uncomplicated, unapologetically ‘laddish’ rock band, with a pint-drinking, football shirt-clad, pill-taking fanbase.

Their five previous albums have all enjoyed immense chart success, despite their repetitive nature. Throw into the mix the fact that their occasionally nonsensical lyrics and references to themselves as “the saviours of rock ‘n’ roll”, and it is clear why the self-proclaimed musical intellectual would want to pick holes in the unashamedly working-class band and their newest release, For Crying Out Loud.

But if this agenda is cast aside, the brilliance of both the album and the band can be properly appreciated. Kasabian know what they are, and play up to it superbly.

Yes, they come across as arrogant and testosterone-fuelled, but they are remorseless about it: they know what they are good at, and have continued to do just that ever since ‘Club Foot’ became a student union anthem in 2004.

Thankfully, unlike so many 21st century rock bands, Pizzorno and co. are yet to release some kind of a ‘reinvention’ album. Their fans want simple choruses, big guitar riffs, and occasional eccentricity: the idea of watching a Kasabian set containing anything else is alien and unsettling.

And therein lies the beauty of For Crying Out Loud: without being exactly the same as any of their previous LPs, it provides fans with new material to lap up, and varies the setlist for their festival appearances this summer, which include headline slots at Benicassim, Sziget, and Reading & Leeds.

The band fell foul of the now commonplace phenomenon of releasing some of the main singles weeks before the album’s release date, but ‘You’re In Love With A Psycho’ and ‘Comeback Kid’ both whetted the appetite. The former, which brings to mind their 2009 track ‘Where Did All The Love Go?’, seems like a track you’ve been listening to for five years the first time you hear it and the latter’s headbanging chorus is accompanied by some appropriately bizarre lyrics (“Sasquatch in a binbag/It’s no surprise”).

And the opening track, ‘Ill Ray (The King)’ packs an almighty punch, providing reassurance that this will be the roaring LP that fans were after—you can almost hear the festival speakers suffer through the immense sound they create. ‘Wasted’ is described by NME as a “romantic banger”, and shows that despite their relentless machismo, Kasabian are more than capable of a softer emotional discourse in their lyrics, and ‘Put Your Life On It’ is a rare love song. There are some tracks that seem like filler—‘Twentyfourseven’ and ‘The Party Never Ends’ both pass by unnoticed—but the tracklist is so well ordered that it seems not to matter.

The three best songs—the two already released singles and ‘Bless This Acid House’, which is arguably the band’s best release yet—are tracks two, six, and eleven out of twelve, meaning that there is no respite, and there is scarcely time for the underwhelming album tracks to disappoint. The deluxe version of the album features a recording of their set at the King Power Stadium following their hometown club Leicester City’s Premier League success last May, as if to rub it into those who view them so snootily: the working-class heroes are back with an album as good as ever, and they couldn’t care less about what their doubters might think.

Culture is a prop used to please the privileged

Kir West-Hunter
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Culture is a prop used to please the privileged

When I was five-years-old, unsurprisingly, I got my first case of ‘the nits’. This isn’t a particularly dramatic or surprising childhood experience, but when it your mum already spends an average of 2 hours a day combing your hair with a ‘fat-tooth-comb’, nit combs were clearly going to be impossible. Cainrows were the solution my mother settled on: tight and thin plaits that went across my head, somewhat resembling rows of corn or cain (hence the name). They would expose my surprisingly white scalp, making hair searches particularly efficient for when my mum had received yet another letter about my school’s latest infestation.

This marks the beginning of my hair story, which has defined my relationship with fashion, race and my peers for most of my life thus far. From the age of five my hair was subject to the Sunday ritual: sitting in front of my mum, watching either Roots or the EastEnders omnibus, I tried not to flinch, but inevitably teared up as my mum intricately plaited my hair. If you’ve never had cainrows let me tell you this: it bloody hurts. But, at the time it was the most manageable way of dealing with my natural hair. I would go to school from Monday to Friday with my plaits greased and neat thanks to my nifty little doorag, then on Saturday it would be my special treat to let my hair out, wild, free and remarkably frizzy. Although practical, and very common within the black community, cainrows at this point had yet to attain their modern status as ‘urban’ and ‘cool’ through appropriation by the likes of Kylie Jenner.

They would be described as ‘greasy’, ‘worms’ and I felt like they made me look very alien-esque. In a sense they were ‘alien’—separate and distinct from the white beauty standards that dominate fashion and the media. At the time I didn’t really mind—nine-year-old me was fine being weird and ‘unattractive’—and it was only when my Caucasian friends went on holiday and came back with their tight ‘plaits’ from the beaches of Spain or the Caribbean, that I began to notice the double standard. Confused, I started to wonder why anyone would choose to have cainrows: clear evidence that even I was beginning to distinguish between acceptable white beauty ideals and my own hair. My friend’s plaits were complimented as ‘summery’ and ‘exotic’, whilst mine made me less attractive and less feminine.

Yet I didn’t object, it felt normal to conform. I stared at black celebrities like Beyoncé and dreamed of weaves and straight blonde locks—black activism had not yet become a capitalist tool. So when I moved to secondary school I made a stand by saying “Mum, I want to straighten my hair”. My dad was particularly upset, having loved my curls and not understanding the social pressure to conform to a predominantly white society, which he was still very much a part of. My mum had a confusing response, partly hurt by the rejection of my ‘blackness’, but also understanding, being herself a black woman who, in truth, had had it a lot worse than me in terms of racist experiences and social pressure. For my part, well I just wanted to be ‘pretty’.

My adolescence became characterised by the smell of burnt hair, relaxer and using plastic bags to shield my singed locks from the rain. From the ages of 11 to 16 I had my first kiss, my first boyfriend and even began to feel a little attractive. Yet, whilst I started conforming to the beauty ideals presented by the likes of Teen Vogue, Barbie and Tumblr, the rest of the world was becoming obsessed with black culture. Celebrities like Ke$ha, Cheryl Cole and Kim Kardashian all began to wear their hair in the same cainrow style that had caused me so much strife as a child. Yet people loved it—these celebrities weren’t ‘alien’ or ‘other’, but were rather simply making a fashion statement: a statement which ‘normalised’ and ‘celebrated’ this traditionally black hair style.

Forgive me for not being particularly grateful. White people making black culture palatable does nothing for people of colour; it does not stop black women being viewed as ‘undateable’ or ‘unattractive’ when exposing their natural hair. Appropriation simply uses our culture as a prop to be used when it pleases the privileged—whilst Kim can take out her cainrows after the summer, we cannot simply remove our blackness when the fad passes. Some, usually privileged and unaffected Caucasians, refer to those who protest against cultural appropriation in fashion as ‘lefty snowflakes’ who are overreacting.

Yet, what recent activities show is that the appropriation of culture as a fashion statement inevitably leads to the seizure of that culture’s political movements. I do not find it surprising that Kendall Jenner, the sister of well-known appropriator Kylie Jenner, was a part of the profoundly racist Pepsi advert, which was clearly based around the Black Lives Matter protests. When the privileged feel that they can use your culture as a tool for attaining the title of ‘Best Dressed at Coachella’, what is to stop corporations from stealing your cultural politics to earn more money whilst being praised as ‘liberal’?

Yet even I am privileged: my mixed-race skin tone has made me more acceptable to the white eye than my fellow black peers. My curls will never be judged as harshly as my mum’s coarser afro, and when men say they can’t see themselves dating a “black girl” I
am usually excluded from the category. Perhaps this is why throughout most of my teen years I didn’t mind conforming. At least I could conform. I have always wondered whether Beyoncé has felt similarly—growing up she was my beauty idol. Now, she is a reminder that I must always check my privilege. Many would crucify me for criticising Queen B, but she is a prime example of the capitalist appropriation of black activism. In ‘Formation’ she sings “I like my baby hair, with baby hair and afros” yet her attempt to validate hair like mine comes a little too late after all those years in primary school when I literally thought she was blonde.

I cannot shake the feeling that Beyoncé herself has fallen into the ‘its-cool-to-be-ablack-activist-trope’. This particularly hit home when I realised that Beyoncé herself has been a perpetrator of black face in the French fashion magazine L’Officiel Paris; a reminder that black on black oppression is real. Yet, whilst I am critical of Beyoncé, ultimately I cannot blame her. I cannot blame any black, mixed or otherwise ethnic woman from falling victim to the white beauty standards that are so embedded in society.

I can only hope that collectively we begin to appreciate our beauty without feeling the need to conform. Fashion and music, like most other industries in the world, are not post-racial. Skin lightening creams continue to be sold and adored by many of Africa and Asia’s female population. Doorags continue to be associated with thugs and gangsters when worn by black men, but are fashionable when worn by Kylie Jenner. It is still seen as normal for white women to get hair extensions, but ‘ghetto’ when a black girl gets a weave.

Most industries continue to downplay the subtle but prevailing racism that can be seen in these forms of cultural appropriation. The concept that we live in a ‘world without race’ is continually pushed, but frankly far from true. We are all victims of beauty standards, but what is significantly different about cultural appropriation, is that our ethnicity and culture is not something we can change.

As for me, particularly in Oxford, I still fall victim to the pressure to conform. Despite continuing to wear my hair in its natural kinky glory, it is still rare that I will go to a ball or a formal interview without it being straightened. I have refused to wear my hair in cainrows since my childhood and I only ever wear my doorag to bed, despite having days where my hair could really use some protection from the elements.

Yet when I look in the mirror I no longer cringe at my curls and wish I had the hair of my white friends. I am sure that movements like #blackgirlmagic and the active effort of BME celebrities such as Zendaya, Zoe Kravitz and even Beyonce (despite her questionable motives) have definitely aided my own, and others, acceptance of their natural beauty.

However the fight is far from over: we must not allow our cultural image to become a trend of the past, whilst the struggles of ethnic minorities continue in silence.

C+: Who has been protested at the Oxford Union, and why?

Maxim Parr-Reid
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C+: Who has been protested at the Oxford Union, and why?

Many comments recieved as part of the online survey were of the view that protesting against Union speakers constituted an infringement of the freedom of speech of the speakers. One anonymous comment said that “protesting speakers at the Ox­ford Union just because they do not share your opinions is one step short of censorship”.

In November 2010, the news that Nick Clegg had to cancel his proposed visit to Oxford was met with strong reactions from many students. He had been scheduled to speak at the Oxford Union on Wednesday 17 November. The Liberal Democrat leader faced criticism for breaking his pre-election pledge to “vote against any increase in fees in the next parliament”. Clegg’s postponement was viewed by many students as a means to avoid the hostility he may have met in Oxford.

An Oxford Union talk by George Galloway, former MP, was protested in October 2012. The protesters disputed his comments on rape. Particular offence was caused by his comment that sex with a sleeping partner does not always constitute rape, but is simply “bad sexual etiquette”. The protesters, mainly members of the Oxford Feminist Network, protested the ar­rival of George Galloway, who was giving a talk entitled ‘A World At War’. They displayed ban­ners and posters with slogans including “My Assault is Not My Fault”, “Wake Up George” and “George, No Means No.”

Only three months later, in January 2013, an invite to Julian Assange to address the Union via web-link led to a protest that attracted over 100 attendees. Protesters included Tom Rut­land, the then President-Elect of OUSU, Joe Mor­ris, Treasurer of Oxford University Labour Club, and Sarah Pine, the former OUSU Women’s Officer. Pine told Cherwell that the Union had committed itself to “further treating the experiences of rape survivors with contempt”.

One of the most controversial figures to speak at the Union in recent years was Marine Le Pen, the then leader of France’s far-right Front National, in February 2015. The protest drew a crowd of some 300 demonstrators, and was covered by major news outlets such as the BBC and The Guardian. Her talk was delayed by more than an hour, and security guards were forced to close the doors to the University’s de­bating society. Protesters came close to scaling the walls from the street outside.

In November of 2015, a protest took place in the Oxford Union debate chamber against the appearance of Germaine Greer and her views on trans issues as part of a Union debate. A similar event occurred at Cardiff University in the weeks prior, leading to a petition signed by thousands of students opposing her talk. Peter Hitchens was also part of the debate, and was labelled “deeply racist” by the small group of protesters. A flyer handed out condemned the Union, saying it “thrives off controversy”—an accusation which the Union is no stranger to. The Union closed the gallery for the debate for fear of objects and liquids being thrown down on the speakers.

Finally, and most recently, protesters gath­ered outside the Oxford Union in November 2016 to demonstrate against Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. The protest, which was organized by Oxford Migrant Solidarity and OUSU LGBTQ Campaign, amassed a crowd of more than 60 protesters. While student protest is frequently a lively part of student life in Oxford, few of the protests re­sulted in a cancellation of a speaker or event. Furthermore, only 7.1 per cent of the respondants to our survey stated that they had been involved in a Union protest.

Less affluent countries are more committed to wildlife conservation

Jacob Cheli
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Less affluent countries are more committed to wildlife conservation

An Oxford University research collaboration has found that poorer nations tend to take a more active approach to conservation than richer countries.

Researchers from Oxford’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) partnered with Panthera, the only organisation dedicated to protecting wild cats, to assess the level of commitment of individual countries to protecting the world’s wildlife.

The team created a Mega-Fauna Conservation Index (MCI) of 152 countries to assess their conservation footprint and created a benchmarking system which evaluated the proportion of the country occupied by each species, the proportion protected and the money spent on conservation relative to GDP.

African countries were found to top the list, with Botswana, Namibia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe leading, whereas the United States came in at 19th place and a quarter of countries in Asia and Europe were classed as significantly underperforming.

Leader of the collaboration and Panthera researcher Dr Peter Lindsey, told Cherwell: “This is the first attempt to try to compare the conservation efforts of different countries. We need to be able to compare efforts to create a floating benchmark so that the average effort is pulled up, especially as megafauna populations are dropping.”

On the need to monitor megafauna in particular, he added: “Megafauna act as a proxy for conservation efforts in general, hopefully in the future the study might be expanded to monitor marine conservation efforts.”

Professor David Macdonald, Director of WildCRU, said: “Every country should strive to do more to protect its wildlife. Our index provides a measure of how well each country is doing, and sets a benchmark for nations that are performing below the average level, to understand the kind of contributions they need to make as a minimum.”

The study also explains the reasons for this disparity in contributions to conservation. Mega-fauna are valuable assets and to many less affluent countries their existence provides both a national identity and an economic lifeline in the form of tourism, which provides a high proportion of the GDP of some African nations: for example in 2014 tourism contributed 17% of Tanzania’s GDP.

Dr Dawn Burnham, also of WildCRU, told Cherwell: “What really matters is the idea we have developed, rather than the detail: countries can be ranked in their commitment to conservation, and each country can and should strive to climb the rankings – the details of how the rank is calculated can surely be refined in future, but the idea of the ranking will endure”.

Speaking about the future of the project, Dr Lindsey said: “We will be generally improving the study and making it as fair as possible. Our goal is to have an index that is published annually and the performance of countries regularly assessed.”

At the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, developed nations promised to allocate at least $2 billion (USD) per year towards conservation in developing nations. However, current contributions from developed nations are just half of the proposed amount, $1.1 billion (USD) per year.

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