Saturday, May 10, 2025
Blog Page 858

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.

Diamond-studded skies and carriages at 5am

Susannah Goldsbrough
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Diamond-studded skies and carriages at 5am

Last Saturday night, I think I went to heaven. Gothic towers smudged in cold blue light sliced the skyline, plates of food appeared as if by magic, and the thrum of dancing feet spread across the city. While some of the more traditionally advertised features of paradise may have been lacking (I’m talking golden gates, soft beds of clouds, and harp-strumming heavenly hosts), their places were adequately filled by slightly more modern incarnations of the divine. Puffs of steam from freshly sizzled gyoza fi lled the air, while a display of giant inflatable jellyfish glowed and swirled their tentacles in the breeze. We tend to think of heaven as an inaccessible kind of place, to be reached only through a combination of faith, good deeds, and death, but last Saturday night, all you needed to do was turn right off St Giles. It was Keble College’s Trinity Ball, and it was completely magical.

I recognise my tendency to romanticize ‘The Oxford Ball’. Many find the experience far from divine. Balls can be cold, underwhelming overpriced, and even dull, and so much of your enjoyment of the evening hinges on random and subjective factors, like how many of your friends are there, or how comfortable your shoes are. And yet, I do maintain that they are special. As a dedicated literature student, I will take this opportunity to carry out some rigorous Freudian analysis of my strange viewpoint. From the fairytale-fueled imaginings of child-hood, through the pretentious Jane Austen obsessions of my teenage years, to the Gossip Girl binge sessions of my hung-over univer-sity weekends, it feels like every phase of my life has been just so slightly touched by the dreamy vision of a ball. One of my favourite stories of all is The Twelve Dancing Princesses, a rather unorthodox fairytale in which twelve princesses sneak away from their beds to dance through the night with their lovers in magical, moonlit ballrooms. And so I think there is an intrinsic whiff of danger, or perhaps simply of thrill, about a ball. It’s the fairy lights strung through dark branches, it’s the walk home through dusky medieval streets at 5am, and it’s the moment of flinging your head back on the dance floor, and catching a glimpse of the diamond-studded sky. While the rest of the world sleeps, you move through a bubble of champagne and of rustling silk. It’s strange, it’s exotic, and it is alien.

One bit of magic I enjoyed at Keble was the illusion of ‘the free lunch’. The idea that ‘there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch’ is a central tenet to theories of free market economics (or so Wikipedia tells me—I do English, what do I know?). At £99 a pop for a ticket, Keble Ball was certainly no exception. But the time lapse between payment and consumption, the sense of distance from the bank transfer of last term, to the reality of the evening, created the powerful impression that, well, everything was free. As I swanned from food van to food van, graciously allowing the staff to fill my greedy arms with paper bags of cinnamon donuts, with plates of halloumi and pork burgers, and with tubs of G&D’s ice-cream, it seemed as though the rules of economics had been suspended for the night. How strange to demand six strawberry daiquiri shots, and an elderflower cocktail, from the barman, and be asked for nothing in return. How we eat is so defined by processes of transaction, of give and take, that for the entire night I retained a Christmas morning feeling—as though I was being given a series of gifts. Oh yes, an illusion it most certainly was, but, then, illusion is just another word for magic, right?

And of course, there’s the dressing up. In my day-to-day life, I am a firm believer in the power of casual. Faded and over-worn jeans, cable-knit sweaters, and baggy t-shirts are the staples of my Oxford wardrobe. I enjoy the simplicity, the ease and the style of my clothes. I never feel more me than when I catch sight of my skinny-legged, baggy torso-ed silhouette in a shop window. But it is not despite my normal attire, but rather because of it, that I find so much pleasure in donning a ball gown. I love the soft rushing sound the silk makes as it wraps around my hips, the sudden and delightful thrill of transformation as I catch my refl ection, the confi dence (and the blisters) that high heels give me. The me that smiles out of my Saturday night photos looks little like my ordinary self—perhaps I should start brushing my hair more than twice a week?—but that’s exactly what crystallizes the evening in my memory as something quite apart from the ordinary. I box away the night as a Cinderella moment, and return to my daily routine.

So yes, I am syrupy and sentimental. Yes, my account of Keble is not just tinted, but thickly painted, with roses. And yes, I should probably widen my reading material a little, if only for the sake of my degree. But I think, as students, we are at a cynical age, in a cynical time. Our default is sarcasm, our go-to humour, satire. And I have absolutely no problem with that. But I cannot help the delight of escaping it, even just for the night. Princess dresses and ice-cream tubs are the most refreshing antidotes to my usual student sarkiness. Whilst 21st century Britain is extraordinary in so many ways, it does not bear much resemblance to fairyland. So I am grateful for Oxford’s bizarreness, for those moonlit hours in May, and for the power of illusion.

Beware the Russians under the bed

Felix Pope
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Beware the Russians under the bed

In the early evening on Friday 5 May—one of the final days of campaigning in the French election, and just hours before the domestic media blackout that would begin on the weekend of the vote—a file named ‘EMLEAKES’ appeared on pastebin.com. This vast document was in fact nine gigabytes of data hacked from the Macron campaign, which over the coming hours and days would be spewed out onto the internet and picked over by journalists and alt-right agitators alike.

Initially little regard was paid to the leak. Then, as it was posted first to the anarchic hard right online message board /pol/, then shared on twitter by Canadian ‘journalist’ Jack Posobiec, shared again by WikiLeaks (who notably declined to verify the documents in their totality), and then boosted by an army of bots, the attention directed towards the content of the files intensified.

This development was not entirely unexpected. For months rumours had swirled that Macron, an ex-Rothschild investment banker and slick representative of France’s incestuous political and economic elite, owned an off shore account and avoided taxes. But in reality the leak was disappointing, to say the least. Endless reels of mundane emails between friends and colleagues. Birthday felicitations, meeting arrangements, routine campaign details. Not exactly Watergate. No, the only scandal here was the source, rather than the content, of the leak, and its relation to a running debate over the impact of Russian interference upon Western democracy.

It is now widely accepted—including by US intelligence agencies—that Kremlin agents with the delightfully innocent code names ‘Fancy Bear’ and ‘Cozy Bear’ hacked into Democratic National Committee servers and the private email account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chief John Podesta.

But increasingly what evidence there is for Russian attempts to subvert democracy has been blown up out of all proportion. Russian leaks are treated by many Clinton acolytes and supporters as the overwhelming cause of her defeat. Trump is portrayed as a scheming Manchurian candidate, coordinating with Putin to seize victory through underhand tactics. Never mind that Trump struggles to coordinate with himself most days, this narrative is ever more widely accepted amoung the anti-Trump ‘Resistance’. Further afield, dirty Russian tricks become the cause of Britain’s vote to leave the EU. Ben Bradshaw, a Labour MP and former deputy leadership candidate, declares in Parliament without a shred of evidence that it’s “highly probable” that Russia interfered in Brexit. Every populist victory, left or right, across Europe becomes another Russian psy-op, another victorious propaganda campaign for the Kremlin.

On Twitter a rolling, amorphous kangaroo court has sprung up to prosecute and condemn anyone remotely connected with Russia as a Kremlin agent. Louise Mensch, formerly (somehow) a Conservative MP, now stands at the vanguard of this campaign, making bolder and bolder claims as her sanity wanes and prominence rises in inverse proportion. Not content with denouncing Russia Today journalists as propagandists and White House staffers as double agents, she recently ludicrously claimed (like Bradshaw, without a shred of evidence) that Black Lives Matters protesters in Ferguson were funded by Russia. For these efforts the Russians have (according to her) installed a spy in a florist’s van outside her New York apartment.

The real horror here is not that a woman recently described by an American intelligence officer as “batshit crazy” can vent unhinged conspiracy theories on Twitter (that is, after all, pretty much the reason for its existence), but that the American liberal establishment can take her so seriously. Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe has lauded Mensch as “impressive” and “incomparable”, while the New York Times granted her a much coveted op ed spot.

Clearly there is some truth at the core of this, some degree of Russian involvement that genuinely did occur, and it is of the imperative that this must be uncovered, most likely through a congressional investigation. But the whole affair has now become wrapped up in so much hysteria that a return to sanity seems nigh on impossible.

These claims have not, therefore, been lept upon due to their veracity, and certainly not due to any moral imperative felt by the American establishment to prevent democracies from being subverted, especially given America has been doing the same itself for decades.

No, the real motivation for this 21st century red scare, where Putin-backed nationalists replace Commies as the ever present shadowy threat to American society, is a need to insulate the American establishment from any and all critique.

In this fantasy world Clinton lost not because of her ties to Wall Street, not because of the Democratic party’s systematic neglect of their working class and rustbelt voters, not due to her dependence on corporate donors, and certainly not because the woman has never yet come across a conflict she thinks might not be improved by a few thousand pounds of American munitions.

No, she lost because of the damn Ruskies and their dastardly tricks. Never mind that they could only leak evidence of, say, the Democratic establishment conspiring against Sanders in favour of Clinton if the Democratic party had actually conspired against Sanders in the first place. And equally in the UK, Brexit happened not because millions of people across Britain realised that they actually kind of valued democracy, and wanted their country to be able to set its own laws and control its own borders, but instead merely because Putin’s cyber warriors hacked, uh, something. Maybe the voter rolls.

So the Democratic Party rolls on, ignoring the interests of its historic voter base yet expecting their loyal support. Any truth that might exist at the bottom of this is drowned out, and any critical reflection from the left is lost in the face of conspiratorial delusions.

A future made with 3D printing

Ryan Sephton
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A future made with 3D printing

In the rapidly expanding playground of gadgets, gizmos, and all things tech, it’s sometimes hard to believe that some of the latest breakthroughs aren’t from the mind of an eccentric Hollywood director. We find ourselves in an age of self-driving cars and levitating trains—so why do so many care about printing flimsy toy models and fancy keyrings?

In my ten-month placement at a leading British engineering company, I saw the research and design that went into evolving 3D printing from plastic polymers to metals through direct metal laser sintering—the formal name given to the process of blasting metal with an extremely powerful laser to make structures, also know as metal 3D printing.

The inner workings are extraordinarily complicated: in essence, metal 3D printing works through a powder chute that dispenses a set amount of powdered metal beads, and a wiper blade not dissimilar to a car windscreen wiper that spreads the powder over the ‘bed’—a flat metal sheet. A programmable laser (or even multiple lasers nowadays) blast certain areas of the powder, selectively ‘welding’ parts of the current layer to the layer below. After this the bed drops down and a new layer is spread on top, and the process repeats.

Other than re-creating battle scenes from Star Wars, there are actually some extremely profound consequences of this method. In building the structure layer by layer, complexity in design comes with almost no extra time cost.

This is where the remarkable promise of metal 3D printing comes to hand—it turns out that nature itself has already put in a few million years’ worth of research and development for the industry, through the design of lattice structures—the idea of interweaving and convoluting thinner support structures to maximise strength whilst minimising the weight.

Think of a spider’s web: a dinner plate style web with no gaps would just as efficiently capture a fly, however this would cost the spider dearly in extra time and materials to spin such a dense web. Instead, the spider intuitively picks a low energy, low resource, and sparse design that’s just as functional in doing the job.

This is also applicable with metal 3D printing as these spacious and ‘low-cost’ designs check all the boxes of what we need in a good metal 3D printing design—they distribute the energy evenly, use less metal powder, and tend not to have as many ‘sharp edges’ or overhangs.

Lattices structures also avoid a ‘thermal gradient’ from arising. Think about trying to bake a cake using only a small Bunsen burner: the cake should come out semi-presentable providing you distribute the heat evenly and don’t heat any overhanging parts, or else they’ll sag and deform the cake.

Given that the laser is ignorant to the order of how you want to heat things, a spacious and spread-out structure would keep the thermal gradient at bay by distributing the energy evenly across the bed, whereas something like a block of metal would turn out horrendously, causing warps and deformation almost instantly.

So why can’t lattices be used in normal manufacturing outside of 3D printing? Theoretically they can: there just isn’t a machine yet that’s capable of building anything to that level of precision or complexity, bar 3D printers. But these lattice designs and 3D printing have unlimited potential in changing our world.

During my internship, the 3D printing division was contracted to print the steering wheel for the Bloodhound SSC, a car attempting to beat the world land-speed record with a projected top speed of 1000 miles per hour. The steering wheel was designed in-house and printed as a bespoke fit for the driver’s hands, something of phenomenal importance when every square inch of cockpit bites into your room for fuel.

With rising profit margins, we are getting ever closer to a future where a 3D printed titanium lattice structure could be inserted onto someone’s skull to reconstruct it after an accident—a future where weight minimisation yields phenomenal profit though fuel savings, from reducing the weight of seats, door hinges to maybe someday fuselages—all without losing any structural strength! It would be a radically different world: one defined by 3D printing.

C+: Student testimonials on free speech in Oxford

Cat Bean
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C+: Student testimonials on free speech in Oxford

Comments verged wildly between polar op­posite opinions. Many views criticised the left in Oxford for dominating popular opinion, an observation that aligned with our findings that students identifying as right wing, or centre-right, were more likely to be concerned about a loss of freedom of speech in Oxford.

On the Union, and student protest, one student, identifying as centre-right, said that “some people don’t seem to realise the irony of their position: how can you stand for tolerance and equality yet violently protest speakers from expressing their views? If views are challenging to some, they can be shot down legitimately in debate, not barred from conversation. Branding and labelling have become far too important due to snippet news on social media, which makes it easier to propagate myths about some speakers and their views without engaging in their thought”.

Comments from those on the right also accused the left of suppressing conversations that disagreed with a left-wing point of view.

One right-wing student said: “Since the left won the culture war, there are certain things that it has become taboo to stand up for, and that incur ridicule or ostracism when said. Praising traditional family structures, being proud of British history, saying that perhaps who you want to be should not need to impact who I want to be: these are all things that on campus see one branded as a radical, as a sex­ist, as a racist.”

Some accusations were levelled at OUSU, and student-run groups like Rhodes Must Fall, for stifling opinions that were not perceived as left wing.

One student, identifying as a centrist, argued that “OUSU is motivated to oppose free speech, mitigated only by the fact that nobody takes them seriously”.

This wasn’t just a concern from the right-wing contingent of the student body. One left-wing commenter argued that “the left-wing is becoming what it has fought against for so long. I am about as liberal as you can possibly get, and I don’t think we should shut down Germaine Greer or Katie Hopkins or Corey Lewandowski or Marine Le Pen. Their right to speak their mind must not be banned—instead, their ideas should be allowed to rot and die from the arguments of those who opposite them.

“And yes, I do believe disinviting a speaker from a university is banning a right, even though universities are not parts of the government. This is because I think of univer­sities as beacons of free expression and free speech. Once you remove that, the destruction of expression follows easily.

“At Oxford, I feel like my college is par­ticularly toxic when it comes to this. Nobody would even ever publicly consider inviting someone who might not be an ultra-liberal. Nobody would ever speak out against a ridicu­lous, authoritarian, yet left-wing JCR motion because they would get eviscerated, both verbally and socially. So we just let everything pass. Well, it seems to me the left-wing is be­coming what it once fought against. We have students keeping silent pre-emptively so they don’t happen to say the wrong thing, offend someone, and end up being ostracised.”

Some students even reported being afraid to express their opinions, arguing that this constituted a lack of freedom of speech in Oxford.

One student, identifying as a centrist, said that “There is no longer free speech in Oxford, no debate can be had unless it supports a left-wing agenda. If it does not it is shut down by the minority who state that it is in all our interests that no other viewpoint is accept­able except their own.”

Some comments were careful to draw the line between a loss of freedom of speech, and a bias against certain viewpoints. One centre-left student commented: “I feel as though the censorship I have faced has been much more passive and coercive than an outright ‘ban’ on saying things. I wouldn’t feel comfortable expressing some of my views at university be­cause of the culture that has been created, but this does not necessarily mean that I am not free to say them, rather that I would choose not to in this context.”

Opinions on the left generally disagreed that freedom of speech was under threat in Oxford, and had strong opinions on no-platforming and student protest.

Some respondents were of the opinion that popular media outside of the university has a bias against right wing opinions. One left-wing student stated that “the idea that free speech is under threat in UK universities rests on a complete miscomprehension of the concept and a media commentariat willing to spin anything into yet another caricature of the student left (along with an audience that’s been made to believe this is a real issue and will accordingly eat up such stories).”

Similarly, another left-wing student said: “Most people who complain about lack of freedom of speech don’t seem to understand what freedom of speech is”.

Others disagreed with the assertion that freedom of speech could be infringed upon by students, the University or OUSU.

One left-wing student argued that “freedom of speech can only be infringed by the govern­ment”.

Some even disagreed with the premise that freedom of speech should be a high priority for students, another commenter going as far to argue that “free speech is the most over- hyped principle of our generation”.

Overall, the statements we received embodied the tension between the left and right view on freedom of speech, dividing our sample of the student body along ideological and political lines.

Victories for Keble and All Saints in Rugby Cuppers

Fraser Macdonald-Lister and Lucy Fenwick
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Victories for Keble and All Saints in Rugby Cuppers

Keble and All Saints emerged victorious on Rugby Cuppers Finals Day, winning the Men’s and Women’s competitions respectively.

This was the third Men’s Cuppers final between Keble and Teddy Hall in five years, and Keble entered the tie as slight favourites after an unbeaten season. Despite a strong start from The Hall, Keble appeared the more threatening side. The set-pieces saw strong attacking ball retention, with Keble’s Oxbridge U23 James Calderwood facing Teddy Hall’s Oxford Blue Ed Hart in the front row.

The home side capitalised on this first—a dominant scrum saw Keble awarded the penalty try. As the first 40 minutes drew to a close, Teddy Hall made a fierce comeback. With brutal phase play dictated by scrum-half Seb Haddock, and cutting lines from centre Dan Barley, the Hall used long stints of possession to drive lock Charlie Allen over to score. Tom Dyer failed to convert: 7-5.

The Hall were notably energised by their score. Keble rucked ferociously to provide Oxford Blue Alex Hogg with quick ball, and lightning handling through centres Tommy Siman and Cameron Sellers saw winger Jake Cunningham sprint home to his fourth score against the Hall this season.

Leading 12-5, Keble built momentum, running hard against the Hall defence. A series of pick-and-go’s drove substitute Harry Donald over in the corner.

At 17-5, pressure mounted on the Hall. Keble shortly forced a penalty, and Will Wilson’s kick for goal sailed between the uprights. Teddy Hall made a valiant effort to recover, but despite Allen’s second try, the result was never in doubt: a 20-10 win meant Scott Geelan and Tom Hamilton lifted the cup and plaque respectively to the ecastic cheers of a raucous crowd.

The women’s final was an intensely fought match between All Saints and CLOMP. The first try was scored in the first half by All Saints captain, Jenny Smith, who risked getting concussion before her finals to play one last game at Oxford. She rose to the occasion of her last match to score her first try following Katarina Martinovic’s perfectly timed offload.

The scorer of the CLOMP try was Heather McDade who had an exceptional debut match. As neither try was converted, full-time brought a 5-5 tie and a sudden death finish.

An All Saints turnover saw their number nine, Isa Cooper, power through five CLOMP defenders to score an absolutely brilliant try: she justly won player of the match, and earned her side the trophy.

Trinity triumph in Handball Cuppers final

Moritz F. Adam
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Trinity triumph in Handball Cuppers final

Trinity College left victorious from Sunday’s five-way handball final, having trounced their top four rivals.

Handball, a sport in which two teams attempt to score by throwing a ball into the opponents’ goal, is an Olympic discipline, which since 2012 has enjoyed growing popularity in Britain.

The sport has also grown exponentially in Oxford, with the University team reaching the national cup semi-final this year. Hence it was not surprising that this year’s Cuppers competition had the highest turnout in the history of the Handball Club, OUHaC.

During the preliminary matches especially, Trinity and Harris Manchester Colleges performed well. Trinity won three of their four matches, scoring seventeen goals while conceding only four, and Harris Manchester impressed with a particularly physical style of play. In the final match of the group stage, in which these two teams faced each other, Trinity took a 2-1 lead before Harris Manchester scored the equaliser 20 seconds before the end of the match.

These two sides qualified for the semi-finals in first and second position, with St. John’s and their unorthodox style of play pipping Oriel to third place, despite some misfortune with penalties. St. Hilda’s, perhaps nursing their post-college ball hangovers, did not proceed to the semi-finals, but put in some strong performances. Notably, they lost to Harris Manchester in harsh fashion, with a late goal resulting in a 2-1 defeat.

In the following round, Oriel surprised Trinity, and held the lead for long parts of the first semi-final. However, a rousing comeback saw Trinity win 4-3, despite trailing for long stretches. The second match was mostly dominated by Harris Manchester, who defeated St. John’s by a 3-1 margin, but in truth the scoreline flattered John’s—but for a host of missed chances, it could have been five or six.

Ultimately, the two strongest teams deservedly re-encountered each other in the final match, which showed, despite the fact that a majority of the players were beginners at handball, a high level of technical and tactical skill.

The match was a very tight affair, in which Trinity, after appealing a refereeing decision which saw an unusual Harris Manchester goal ruled out, prevailed 3-2 to deservedly win the competition.

They were awarded the Handball Cuppers Trophy by the president of the Oxford University Handball Club, Ciaran Hayes.

Reject the Tory attempt to build a surveillance state

Michael Shao
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Reject the Tory attempt to build a surveillance state

The most extreme surveillance law passed in the history of history of western democracy, in the history of democracy in general, is about to get exponentially worse. Which beautiful nation has the pride to be the beholder of such a law? None other than the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland itself, where God evidently saves both the Queen and your browser history.

A draft of proposed new surveillance powers leaked last week hopes to push new conditions into the Investigatory Powers Act brought into law last year. The government is asking for Internet providers to introduce a backdoor on their networks to allow intelligence agencies to read private communications. The security issues regarding backdoors have already been debated to death and the conclusion is that they provide severe security issues and a complete end to guaranteed privacy. Apple CEO Tim Cook commented on this last year, warning of the “dire consequences” of backdoors. All communications companies, including phone networks and ISPs, will be required to provide real-time access to the full content of any single individual within one working day, as well as ambiguously phrased “secondary data” relating to that person.

As an American, such actions would at least create some semblance of uproar. Notably, following the SOPA and PIPA bills, stiff resistance from privacy advocacy groups, numbers of congressmen and senators, and huge pressure from individual citizens stopped the bill in its tracks and struck down the legislation. In the UK, crickets chirp. It does seem like there are notable differences in culture that at least contribute to the passivity of the British public. Throughout my time in the United Kingdom, both in London and Oxford, and even the suburbs, the number of CCTV cameras, everywhere, has been disturbing, and this is a notable stereotype in the United States regarding Britain. It is unheard of for such condensed university living spaces, such as individual colleges, in the United States, to have as many live camera feeds constantly operated by porters, as they do here in Oxford. In this regard, the failure of the American populous to embrace state-sponsored CCTV the way the United Kingdom has is admirable. None of this is to of course, downplay or ignore the attacks on Internet privacy that continue to happen in the United States. To that extent, I am marginally glad that Ron Paul exists, as I unfortunately fail to see a British equivalent.

I felt genuinely uncomfortable during the first few weeks, when a splattering of CCTV cameras covered places far away from generally monitored areas like entrances and exits, in St. Edmund Hall, my college. In fact, one of the cameras has a wide pan of all of the windows of one of the large residential areas in college: we are literally being recorded as we sleep. I was furthermore astounded that the sheer capacity of it happening is not disturbing to anyone here, and that my observations were met by pure indifference. “Just close the curtains, man.” This does scale up with a more general state of surveillance in the UK, such as the proliferation of traffic cameras, the existing widespread censorship of various websites, all met by little opposition from both the public and government (the lack of opposition from government, likely being due to the passivity of their constituents).

I don’t feel like it’s necessary to even waste time arguing the “if you’re not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about” or the “nobody cares about what you’re doing” condition, because I believe that if you’ve already stooped that low, that hope is lost. I’m also not going to bother citing more specific metaphors or comparisons to Orwellian works, because those too seem to be lost in translation, given the massive acceptance of public CCTV surveillance and the sad irony of Orwell’s English citizenship. The issue is not the success of surveillance in given sugar-laced instances, such as the role that surveillance played in allowing Special Forces to catch a man outside Westminster carrying a bag of knives (which, arguably, is no more of a crime than driving a car outside of Westminster). The issue is that if the threshold of abandoning all privacy rights is knife attacks, then you might want to reassess your outlook on life. Unless, of course, we include assault forks in the threshold as well. Then I’d happily let the IPA go into action.

There are also, of course, fundamental conflicts in the nature of public opinion on Internet privacy. In the name of supposedly preventing terrorism, many individuals are willing to give up the undying individual freedoms that they so cherish, or at least, claim to cherish. My synthesis of the commentary on Internet privacy issues from British politicians is a teaching to fear the boogeyman far more than to yearn for human rights and privacy, and to even promote the idea of a “British-specific notion of human rights”. There is a conditioning to truly make British citizens believe that terrorists will be caught in their droves, audio streams implanted wont be used for snooping, that the data they willingly and potentially, legally hand over to the surveillance state wont be sold, or hacked, or worse, due to the infinitely benevolent nature of the government.

Unfortunately, it’s not surprising that the incumbent government is pushing through as much controversial policy as possible while they retain such a high majority in parliament. Recently, sentiments surrounding the results of the French presidential election have been surrounded with optimism, on the positive state of affairs and the possibility of an avoidance of the previously cited domino effect: the “domino defect” of Brexit. I, am optimistic about their optimism, but not with increasing pessimism that this progress seems to be limited, for the time being, to Europe, the UK no longer being a part of it. The likely future of an even more powerful conservative majority following the general election, a full completion of Brexit conditions, and therefore an abandonment of CJEU rulings on Internet privacy, and even a possible leave from the EHCR, is depressing beyond belief. For this, I do not have much to say. I don’t know, instead of the Tory’s, give Tor a try?

Empty voices speak freely but not responsibly

Ethan Croft
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Empty voices speak freely but not responsibly

When Bill Buckley met Gore Vidal in the summer of 1968, America’s conservative establishment came face-to-face with the counter culture. Over their many hours of courteous, if slightly heated, discussions, the exception was that moment when Buckley’s Cheshire cat grin gave way to an angry scowl and he threatened to punch Vidal in the face live on air. The point of the debates, well documented in the recent film Best of Enemies, was to take to two competing world views in late 1960s America and give them some breathing spaced through calm, televised conversation. But today, it seems the exception has become the rule. TV debates are now the realm of media provocateurs, whose aim is to provoke rather than consider. Yet, the presence of a mediator, who might point out a logical fallacy, or simply maintain some level of decency between the two ‘personalities’, is still too much for some. In short, speaking freely is more important than speaking responsibly.

Was there ever a better medium for the irresponsible voice than Twitter? Free from the constraints of moderation, 140 characters is the perfect platform for glib generalisations about something or someone we take a disliking to. It is defended regularly as the modern bastion of free speech. This is not the sophisticated freedom of expression, protecting the writer from censorship, or the protester from harm. It is rather the freedom to share misattributed quotations from presidential candidates, or the freedom to instigate hate campaigns against Hollywood actresses who have too much to say for themselves. It is no surprise that the King, or in his own words the Nero, of all irresponsible voices, Milo Yiannopoulos, was so outraged at his banning from the website. And he has now substituted the approval of a hundred thousand cheering egg profiles with a physical re-enactment of the Twitter dynamic, trotting around university campuses with a series of pre-prepared riffs on the usual topics (evil feminists, ‘social justice warriors’, and the new president) to the thunderous applause of his paying fans, who shout down any opposition. Only on campuses such as Berkeley, outside of cyberspace, can we appreciate the ugliness of much of Twitter, where people throw sticks and stones in place of the words that might have hurt online.

Twitter is often inaccurately termed an ‘echo chamber’. Though the institution of the retweet facilitates the bandying about of a single idea without nuance, there is still a palpable atmosphere of argument in the comments below many a viral tweet. In shrill rage, people talk over rather than with each other.

The problem, perhaps, lies in the fact that Twitter was not conceived as a forum for serious discussion. In his documentary, How Videogames Changed the World, Charlie Brooker called the website one of the most innovative games of our time, but a game all the same. If we take Brooker’s analysis further, it seems that Twitter is incompatible with meaningful discussion. Not so much because of the character limit, which can be evaded with threaded tweets, but rather due to the system of reward on which the entire medium is predicated. All users are engaged in a search for likes, retweets, and followers. This is particularly the case for those journalists and commentators who understand the advantage of a high Twitter following now brings to any job application, especially at publications with an increasing reliance on digital clicks. Generating content for an eagerly awaiting, but ultimately fickle, group of followers takes precedence over thoughtful analysis.

In one of its many infamous front page splashes, a few years ago the Daily Mail ran a headline titled ‘The Man Who Hates Britain’, in reference to the then Leader of the Opposition’s late father Ralph Miliband. The piece, which claimed the eminent Marxist writer opposed British values, was based on a diary extract from a 17 year old Miliband, where he angrily raged against English nationalism. Further to this, he thoughtlessly wished that Britain might lose the Second World War to the far more nationalist Axis powers. The fact that this misguided comment from an angry teenager might have done acute damage to his son’s career decades later is a testament to the power of the irresponsible voice. Many of us have said things that we would rather forget, and cringed at the memory of a past faux pas. Yet it was only by chance that the Mail stumbled across Miliband’s juvenile polemic. Now, the Twitter user actively records all of their fatuous comments and half-baked reactions in an easily navigable online database, often from a much earlier age than 17.

There doesn’t seem to be much chance of Twitter going away any time soon, and it seems likely that we will grow more accustomed to, and even involved in, the online shrieking contests that masquerade as debate. And it will soon become necessary to decide whether digging through the Twitter feeds of political candidates really passes as investigative journalism. If we choose to say yes, then we could possibly be faced in the next few decades with the most dull and sterile governing class ever. Or we can choose to accept the role of irresponsible online voices as an ever-growing part of our earliest engagements with discourse.

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