Saturday, May 10, 2025
Blog Page 949

Art review: Unreported Worlds

Ellie Siora
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Art review: Unreported Worlds

There was something appropriately humble about the exhibition space of the Barn Gallery of St. John’s College. Its recently lacquered pine hardwood floors and quiet, off-white walls reminded me of a local parish centre whose similar walls fondly watched over many twelve year olds’ birthday parties and school discos. It seemed a rather apt modesty of a space to emphasize the framed photographs lining the walls were unquestionably worthy of someone’s complete attention.

Curated by contributing photographer Uwe Ackerman, Unreported Worlds: Seeing the Overlooked at St. John’s Barn Gallery was definitely worth undivided and meticulous attention. Meant to explore the unexplored, the exhibition ventured to depict a variety of previously unseen cultures. The six contributing photographers’ work spans the cultures of the Middle East, Eurasia, East Africa and Central America with a coherent artistic skill that simultaneously highlights the breath-taking idiosyncrasies of these cultures, yet leaves an overarching impression that we are viewing singular components of what it means to be universally human.

Ackerman himself worked to present the beautiful banalities of Haitian culture, capturing moments stumbled across during conservation work with the Seamark Trust. His curation of the rest of the exhibition includes sibling teachers Saeedeh and Saeed Kouhkan and shopkeeper Ehsan Mortazavi who—through their own amateur lens—seek to capture their community in Behbahan, Iran in an effort to cause a ripple of influence for the better. Similarly, we have the chance to view Beirut through local photography student Rami Maassarani. Although claiming to explore the consciously “foreign”, Unreported Worlds avoids being suffocatingly quintessential in its portrayal of the ‘exotic’ culture.

We see a young child, perched like a bird ready for flight on her fathers shoulders, in a full delicately rose-printed hijab (‘Girl and Veil’, Mortavazi). Next to this photograph another young girl’s face, darker with salt-stained braids and a slightly older and more quizzical expression (‘In Presque Isle’, Ackermann). Yet, these images are far too personal to merit any sort of generalisation. They are of two little girls, but they are not both of “a little girl”, rather simply “this little girl” on two separate, individual occasions. Thus, the exhibition of unreported worlds acts as a snapshot moment of the world’s kaledeioscopic plural personality that could not allow the ‘her’ of either of these images to simply be ‘the Other’.

The diversity of these images are not only commendable for their honest acknowledgment of the welcome fragmentation of the world’s identity. They are equally commendable for presenting a holistic image of a culture within itself, furthering the complexity of unknown cultures rather than their misunderstanding. These photographers cut, image to image, from the everyday ritual of Halva making—with women laying out slices of the desert on a baking-papered round tray as if they were sea shells decorating the sand—to the celebration of the Day of Ashura, whose pictorial representation speaks microcosmically of the conflict between the Sunni and the Shia Muslims (both images by Saeed Koukkan).

Bharat Patel draws out the sensations of his images—the dust that dances around feet, the hard Ethiopian sunlight that clogs the air and the sharp whipping of a slender stick cutting from sky to earth—to leave the emotional impression we must relate to in order to understand the whipping ritual of the Hamar tribe girls. It is spectacular and it is hair-raising.

Each symbol placed, on clothing, hair or skin is pivotally planned for this moment. Equally, however, Patel presents the more magically mundane moments of the same culture. A man stands alone—his stance is not symbolic, nor foreign, yet just as sensational. He simply ponders his own questions as the dry grass gently whispers around him. The photographers of Unexplored Worlds present a multi-faceted nature to the peoples they depict, crumbling any impression of stereotype and leaving only generalising similarity.

Half of the contributors are ‘subjects’ of these very same cultures. Through the lens of the Kouhkans and Mortazavi we see the ‘real’ Behbahan. Although set against the unfamiliar backdrop of the Zagros Mountains or against Imamzadeh shrines, their expressions and interactions remain familiar through the camera of an assimilated photographer.

Saeedeh Kouhkan’s depictions of the all-girls school she teaches at spoke of the same dynamics I knew and loved during my secondary education: the shared conversation between new-found female friendship caught on camera as a moment belonging to that specific situation, but still not an unfamiliar moment at that.

Rewind: Disney’s Fantasia

Bessie Yuill
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Rewind: Disney’s Fantasia

Disney’s Fantasia debuted on Wednesday 19th November, 1940: the company’s third feature-length animated film. Originally conceived as a short film of ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ to showcase Mickey, costs ballooned to such an extent that it was decided to make several animated sections based on classical music. This was wildly experimental in comparison to the fairy tales Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio, and the humorous cartoons their rivals at Warner Bros. or Metro-Goldwyn Mayer were producing. Incredibly, there was no narrative carrying through the whole film, and some parts of the film did not even have their own individual stories—instead, Disney animated abstract shapes and colours that reflected the music in a kind of kids’ film synaesthesia.

There were also shocking elements in the actual content of the film. The female centaurs in the mythological ‘Pastoral Symphony’ section were originally topless. Bacchus is clearly, if maybe unsurprisingly, drunk off godly wine, and in the incredible feat of animation ‘Night on Bald Mountain’, the villain is essentially a Satan stand-in. The element that would probably be found most scandalous today, however, is a centaur portrayed as half-young black girl and half-donkey who waits on the other white centaurs, polishing their hooves and grooming their tails. This derogatory stereotype is ‘Sunflower’, and is maybe the most egregious example of disturbing racial shorthand in Disney’s canon that has been later swept under the carpet: she was edited out of all versions past 1969, disappearing like Disney’s slavery-based family film Song of the South.

Outside of that ugliness the film succeeds as an experimental portrayal of sound, although the original plans to create a series were scrapped due to the high costs of ‘Fantasound’ technology significantly outweighing the film’s profit. It experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 60s as a psychedelic cult classic for the same subversive scene that also enjoyed Alice In Wonderland and the official drug of finding hidden meaning in children’s films, LSD. Fantasia has truthfully had fans consistently since then, but the question must be asked: how far can Fantasia be considered an abstract masterpiece when it retained such ugly racial stereotypes, and Disney has not addressed or resolved this issue? It succeeds where it challenges the boundaries of children’s films, but fails where it upholds the boundaries of race relations at that time—both regressive and ahead of its time.

Town versus gown: a view from the fence of the age-old divide

Michael Jacobs
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Town versus gown: a view from the fence of the age-old divide

Coming to Oxford was an overwhelming experience of excruciating pain, tears and much fussing around me; so much of all this that I hardly remember it. I am of course referring to my birth, as it is since then that I have lived, and later studied here. Even for a child, Oxford is an easy city to navigate, its main sites rarely straying far from the cross roads around which it revolves. A lot of students who already live here will therefore never enjoy the charm of being lost that must befall new students of larger cities. This is exacerbated by the fact that the University is such an inescapable part of the city centre.

Go abroad, and the global recognition of your hometown can be bizarre, given that it’s almost small enough to know someone every few streets. Even stranger, can be people’s impressed reactions and assumptions that merely living here should entail a pompous attitude. To an extent, familiarity with the city is an advantage in applying, potentially offsetting feelings of intimidation that others might experience when confronted with the density of medieval buildings and sneering gargoyles.

Living here can also teach you that playing the student isn’t so hard to master—a bold walk through a college door almost always gets you free entrance, while seeing students dumbly staggering the streets on a night out does wonders to eliminate the mystique around entry requirements. Yet I’m not without jealousy for those whose hometowns are so different that for them living here is ‘like living in a cake.’ As both a resident and a student, even living right in the centre is not always enveloping enough to feel like I’m studying here. Rather than seeking to escape the bubble, as so many understandably do, remaining absorbed in it is all the more important. When work finishes for the week, a torrent of student events and extra-curricular activities seems preferable to the stagnant feeling that living in college is like being on some strange residential in your own town. So long as you keep moving, you can outpace your sense of place.

Of course, different sides to the city are seen, as you start getting to know it inside out, from lakes and deer parks you didn’t know existed, to underground college bars. Studying with people who are new to the city also lends some novelty to the experience, as the religion of Burning Down the House replaces town traditions such as the Purple Turtle nativity, whereby in a cleansing and invigorating rite, the hole in the wall of PT becomes a portal through which friends are posted headfirst. Similarly, Lola Lo had never before been a place for buying drinks, only a dance space to return to after serving shots from a gin bottle hidden in the graveyard outside. Neither had I before known friends pretentious enough to commit a French pun in calling it “grave” drinking.

But for all its drawbacks and questionable consequences, my experience of studying in the town I live in has shown me that the town and gown divide generally seems to exist more as a consequence of the fact that the lives of students are inevitably structured differently to those at school or with jobs, than out of any mutual hostility or snobbery. Yet the difference is still there, and when leaving the city centre after the end of term I’m always a little surprised to see that Oxford exists, even when the student bubble has burst.

Grappling with graffiti

Jorge Lopez Llorente
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Grappling with graffiti

Our eyes take reality for granted, because a street tends to be just a street, a wall just a wall and so on. We know where things are meant to be, and orient ourselves accordingly. Sometimes, however, we shouldn’t be so sure. Art, even if it’s in the corner of our eye, beckons with mindblowing colours and perspectives, especially when artists play with optical illusions, bending limitations.

Artists have been questioning not only our thoughts but also our sight with optical illusions for a long time, although contemporary artists are experimenting with them like never before. These techniques can be classed as Op-Art (an obvious play on Pop Art), in which Victor Vasarely’s straightforward and stylish illusions stand out. They can also be called 3D illusions or, if you want to be ambiguous and sophisticated, trompe l’œil effects or even magical realism. The question artists working in this medium ask is why just reflect when you can refract? Why categorise when you can twist or blur or blend?

Playing with kaleidoscopes is seen as something that only children do (the exception being parents playing with their little ones), but the visual ‘magic’ it creates is highly sophisticated: it ought to be for everyone. Far beyond the funny but banal kaleidoscopic camera eff ect on tablets or phones that we have, optical illusions (the most powerful form of this ‘magic’), give artists the power to create something visually arresting. Hans Holbein the Younger already showed some optical acrobatics in ‘The Ambassadors’ (1533) by painting what seems an awkwardly deformed bone that can only be identified better as a skull from a certain angle or, ideally, from its reflection on a spoon.

Modern artists don’t mix angles or twist reality and illusion with spoons anymore (fun as that may be). A master in drugging our sight for us to see blurry psychedelia clearly and colourfully is Rob Gonsalves. In his painting, ‘Monks’, for example, your eyes rest on clear lines and soft distinct colours as your sight wanders across the painting. But then you bump into some strange figure, an ethereal monk where before there were and should still be clouds seen through a gap between arches. Is it one or the other? Perhaps both! There is no clear-cut reality. You don’t simply look at Gonsalves’ paintings as if they were flat screens: you peep into the paintings’ gaps, which are usually boring negative space that painters just ‘fill in’ after painting the important bits. They become a lens through which we can see varied patterns and details. Gonsalves’ art, as good as fairy tales, makes you return to the dreaminess of playing with kaleidoscopes and becoming a bit dizzy after using them for too long.

Others, like Patrick Hughes, still makes paintings you can hang on a wall, but craft 3D illusions in them. Hughes calls them ‘reversepectives’, reversing the normal perspective by painting objects in the distance on the parts which stick out more, closer to us.

Artistic optical illusions also fly from the museums to the streets. Graffiti is hardly startling for us now, of course, from the lowliest examples in alleys to Banksy’s art (which has recently been exhibited in Rome like traditional paintings). Instead of the usual graffiti on walls, optical illusions in streetart have jumped right off the pavement.

Julian Beever draws optical illusions on pavements with chalk and other artists like Edgar Mueller create similar effects with paint. Lakes, cliffs, even superheroes. It’s a breach of fantasy in our familiar reality, like Gonsalves’, which taps into our collective imagination with references to pop culture, as in Beever’s ‘Batman and Robin’.

Any passer-by can interact with the picture, stepping into it and then probably having a photo taken to post on Facebook, like the artists themselves do. In fact, they recommend it: the illusion works best from the right angle on a camera or phone. Beever and others use anamorphosis, the same trick Holbein the Younger applied, passing from a painting about noblemen to the ground under your feet.

If Oxford has the ‘dreaming spires’, Julian Beever has the ‘dreaming pavements’.

Politics has changed, now the left need to adapt in order to keep up

Fred Dimbleby
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Politics has changed, now the left need to adapt in order to keep up

If 2016 has shown anything, it is that politics is no longer about academics, policy or rationality but sentiment. It is no longer about what you are saying but how you say it.

We have seen it in the 2015 General Election when the Conservatives managed to convince the voters that Ed Miliband and Labour were in some way responsible for the international financial crisis. We saw it in the Brexit debate with the slogan “take back control”. We saw it in Trump’s winning ambition to “make America great again”.

The right has monopolised sloganised and demagogic politics and the left is being left behind. This is greatly regrettable as the right use this sloganised politics to inspire hatred and division, but the left needs to learn that this is the new game and need to adapt their manner of communication to ensure they take back the conversation and give hope to those who are not presently talked to and who tend to be manipulated by right wing leaders.

I know this is an irritatingly cynical and uninspiring message, but I see no other way for the left to gain power again. Sentiment and rhetoric are important. People need to feel that a political idea is going to work for them and they need an emotional appeal. They need a phrase that they can chant with thousands of others and will push them to spread the word about their candidate.

Maybe it is simply an innate problem with the nuances of left wing politics and its focus on solving problems rather than whipping up storms. It is very difficult to make a popular appeal for the introduction of Kenyesian economics, greater nationalisation or a diplomatic approach to an international disaster or terrorist attack when you come up against the easy and false solutions from the right of simply cutting tax, banning immigration or the invasion and bombing of a country.

The problem is that the left has forgotten how to communicate highly academic ideas to a public and voter group that does not have the time or energy to learn about them and to a press who prefers a catchy headline to a real debate. This is the new politics, the right is defining the debate, and if the left doesn’t catch up with them then they will continue unopposed and that is just a terrifying idea. The politics of policy is simply an ideal, long lost in our political system. The left needs to abandon its academic elitism and needs to bring its message to an audience that feel left behind.

Catchphrases, media characterisation of the opposition and the move away from simple factbased policy is the way forward for the left. This is a terrifying conclusion to come to as it questions the usefulness of politics in modern society. However, if the left wants to limit the hegemony of right wing leaders, then adapting their game is vital.

Where does America go from here?

Zoe Fannon
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Where does America go from here?

In the aftermath of this election, my thoughts are occupied by two questions. First, how did it happen; and second, what happens next.

We first must ask, how did Trump win? This is not the same as asking how the polls got the result ‘wrong’ – which is something of a red herring when most gave a sizeable approximately 20 per cent chance of a Trump victory. Instead, we want to know what the key factors that contributed to his win are. We are still waiting for a lot of the data that can answer this, but preliminary evidence suggests there are three important groups of voters to think about. First, the hardcore Trump supporters – people who are suffering economically and misidentify the causes and viable solutions, and the people who are just plain racist and take pleasure in the idea of kicking large groups out of the country.

But Trump’s low favorability ratings suggest that those who fully agree with him cannot entirely explain the result. We must consider a second group, the people who held their noses and voted for Trump. This is a diverse set of voters. It includes those who feel economically left behind, who do not support many of Trump’s racist or sexist views but are desperate for someone, anyone to take seriously their fears about their disappearing manufacturing and mining jobs. There are those who hold strong religious or moral convictions and couldn’t bear the idea of a liberal Supreme Court; and those who feel that everything they know is being swept away by a cosmopolitan, globalist, multicultural tidal wave and that while they don’t want to deport all the Muslims per se, they do not want to lose the white privilege they have held for so long.

A third and final group to consider is those who didn’t vote: those (hopefully not too numerous) who wouldn’t vote for Hillary because she was not progressive enough; those at the political centre who felt she was too left-wing (or too female…) but couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Trump either; and those who couldn’t vote because the time cost of voting is too high. This is a broad swathe of people with very different motivations, with no silver bullet alteration that would have led all of them to change their behaviour.

The second question is, what happens next? How much damage can be done by a President Trump and a Republican congress? My biggest concerns relate to climate change, the ideological direction of the USA, and the globalization project more broadly. It is alarming that the stated position of the incoming leader of one of the world’s largest energy consumers and greenhouse gas emitters is that climate change is a fabrication, or at the very most a wildly exaggerated phenomenon that we don’t really need to worry about. The pace of political development to combat climate change is already too slow relative to the environmental changes we are seeing, and we do not have the time to delay any action by four years (at least).

Ideologically, it has felt in recent years that the USA was on a path to becoming a society that could embrace and encourage true diversity. We have seen more women in the upper echelons of power structures, from the Federal Reserve to the Supreme Court and even the presidential race. The voices of people of colour have become louder, demanding that the country take note of the structural racism that they continue to struggle against on a daily basis. Gay couples finally won the right to marry. And yet today it seems that, for far more of the population than any of us had wanted to believe, this is not the direction they want to see the USA going. Even if not all of those who voted for Trump are as racist and sexist as he is, they were insufficiently repulsed by him to withdraw their support. For those who are members of the minority groups he has threatened, this is a cause for genuine fear.

The movement away from globalization is also a serious concern for me. The economic benefits of trade are clear, although it is equally clear that not enough has been done to ensure they are shared. But beyond that, I had hoped that increasing interconnectedness would over time bring about a more global sense of identity and a sense of shared responsibility and mutual obligation to citizens of other countries. The “my country first” mentality that Trump directly endorsed in his acceptance speech makes this a more distant dream.

But what happens next is not only about what Trump does; it is about what other Americans and I do in response. Increased political engagement is vital – we must vote in the midterm elections, and put pressure on our congressional representatives (Republican and Democratic) and state and local governments. We can also continue to vote with our wallets and feet. Concern about climate change and global responsibility can be manifested through conscious consumerism as well as giving support in the form of either money or time to relevant action groups. We must also stand up and be counted in the defence of those for whom Trump’s victory is a direct threat to their right to live in the USA free of persecution. Democracy – the rule of the people – is about more than ticking a box once every four years, and now more than ever we must step up to that responsibility.

America’s values will survive President Trump

Alastair Pearson
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America’s values will survive President Trump

I am proudly American. My country’s fundamental values including individual freedom, equality of opportunity, and respect for underlying constitutional order have molded me as they have molded the half-billion or so people to have ever been American. Like my compatriots I am the product of a collective national struggle that has transformed our polity from a tiny confederation of 3.9 million newly liberated colonies to a sprawling republic of 319 million citizens and permanent residents spread over 50 states, 16 territories, and a federal capital district. Our principles are bound up equally with the thousands of American soldiers serving abroad, and the millions of expats like me scattered across the globe. The progress for which we remain grateful in advancing egalitarian prosperity, democracy, and civil rights has come at a high cost, but it has always proceeded in step with these basic norms and laws. These fundamentally liberal ideals are as real and tangible to the vast majority of us as the booths we enter to cast our votes.

My country, its Constitution, and the progress that that document has made possible will endure Donald J. Trump. Our laws may be bent, our norms pushed to the edge, but it is my firm conviction that the republic will not break. That is because no matter where they are, Americans remain inextricably linked by the same basic principles enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and the worldview that respect for those living documents produces. The bonds that enjoin us remain indissoluble as long as the Constitution survives, and its unity as a guiding star is the basis for our unity as a people.

Our shared legal and political fate over more than two centuries has also cultivated shared cultural characteristics – from Guam to the San Francisco Bay to the Great Lakes, we are boisterous, friendly, stoic, and we strive to be committed to our families. We are punctual, hardworking, and optimistic. Again, this unity is real – our system influences who we are as people. I don’t think it is naive to say that I am who I am, and most Americans are who they are, because of a living Constitution that enshrines our right to live our lives as we choose and which defends that right with the unflappable force of law. It is because of my – our – commitment to our Constitution that I know the republic must and will outlast a Trump presidency.

As a people, we obey the rule of law, and expect our government to do likewise; we respect a plurality of views and enshrine this respect in inflexible protections for the press and the free exercise of religion; we nurse a healthy skepticism for centralized authority that we nonetheless expect to reflect some element of our political spectrum as determined by a democratic process. As his brutal, disrespectful campaign makes clear, Donald Trump may be authoritarian, arbitrary, xenophobic and ill-informed, but he is not stronger than our constitutional order, nor our collective expectation that he be held within its limits.  

The Constitution provides for men like President-Elect Trump, soon to be our executive and commander-in-chief. It denies him absolute veto power. It prevents him from enacting legislation. Without funding and authorization from Congress, he cannot wage protracted war. His numerous thoughtless, dangerous proposals will have to face an internally divided Republican Congress that has no clear consensus on Ukraine, Syria, NATO, the Muslim ban, press censorship, or numerous of the other ways in which he could threaten our national security and basic way of life. While Republicans can likely push through their agenda on the Affordable Care Act and taxes, the Democrats retained enough Senate seats to filibuster non budgetary matters. Trump’s ability to enact tariffs of 35 percent on Mexico and 45 percent on China, which could trigger a global recession, will require a congressional vote unlikely to succeed. With Democratic obstruction, Republican intransigence, and his own demonstrated tendency to change course and pander, he will not fund his Deportation Force, he will not build a towering wall, he will not ban Muslims, and he will not renegotiate our debt. Our Constitution places a break on lunacy.

However, the Constitution’s primary role in deterring Trump and preserving the America I love comes not from roadblocks but from its protections for a democratic and Democratic resistance. Article One schedules midterm elections for 2018. The First Amendment protects the right to protest, to report, and to join groups like the American Civil Liberties Union. Republicans were not powerless when they took Obamacare to the Supreme Court and won religious exemptions, and we will not be powerless if Trump attempts to reinstitute torture, implement mass deportation, weaken libel laws or criminalize abortion.

We can donate, volunteer, protest, and come 2018 and 2020 we will vote. My party faces a great internal reckoning on how to regain the trust of a white working class that has to be integrated into a respectful liberal social agenda, without changing our principles on LGBTQ rights or the rights of other endangered minorities. But after we reflect and come up with a path forward, it is incumbent upon us to act. If you have the time and you care about liberalism with a small “l,” start planning for how to get Democratic House members and senators elected in your district and state. That work will lay the foundation for evicting Trump in four years. And if for reasons of principle you cannot vote for a Democratic candidate, cast every vote between now and Trump’s last day in office with the knowledge of your obligation to restrain his ability to victimize the weakest among us. Our Constitution, the document that makes us American, buys us the time to resist the worst of this man, but it cannot defeat him. That enormous moral responsibility falls to each and every one of us.

Was Tuesday night really such an upset?

Bernard Stanford
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Was Tuesday night really such an upset?

As the results began pouring in to decide who would occupy the office that Americans like to style “leader of the free world,” my country collectively held its breath (except, presumably, those prognosticators who had assigned Hillary a greater than 99% chance of victory; they must have had better things to do than follow the actual results). By the end of the evening, they had all believed they had witnessed the most stunning upset of modern political history. But had they?

I should think not. To begin with, there are two ways to think about a politician doing better in a race than is expected. The first is as the candidate winning an upset, but the second is as the polls having a miss, and this latter interpretation is much closer to reality. Trump did not especially overperform, but actually received fewer votes than any Republican as far back as George W. Bush’s first run in 2000, which is especially pitiful considering that the pool of eligible voters grew by twenty million over the intervening span.

Rather, Trump’s victory came decidedly from Hillary Clinton’s weaknesses, which evidently were not sufficiently understood prior to the election. Perhaps some of the blame for this nearly nationwide myopia can be assigned to the prevailing model of political punditry, which seeks to explain polls with electoral factors, rather than using electoral factors to predict results. In other words, even many of our savviest talking heads tried to explain what was shaping the race by starting with the conclusion that Clinton was winning by several points, and working backwards from there to try and figure out why. Investigations into the minds of voters, the trends on the ground, and the actual issues at stake in the race all took second billing to running horse-race backup. Is it any wonder that they got it so wrong?

Having been disabused (rather suddenly and rudely) of the notion that Clinton had a secure lead, we can now more easily see the factors that led to the race being so competitive. They are not so mysterious; major warning signs presaged them and were ignored, including by myself personally.

One of the most obvious warning signs was Clinton’s ability to blow huge leads in Clinton in both the 2008 and 2016 Democratic primaries. Both times, she lost due to a lack of personal magnetism and an inability to capture the “change” vote. Perhaps we forgot at some point this cycle, but all one needs to do to realize the charisma gap between her and the last two winning Democrats, Obama and Bill Clinton, is watches clips of their speeches side by side. And Clinton’s being closely tied to the political establishment in the primaries presaged how many would feel about her in the general. Ironically, all her greatest strengths–mass support from politicians, financiers, and the media–merely served to emphasize that losing attribute.

Another warning sign was the shifts that white, less educated midwestern states had already undergone. Obama won Wisconsin in a landslide in 2008, but his margin fell by about 7 points in 2012, and Clinton’s margin fell by almost exactly the same amount four years later, handing Trump a narrow lead in the state. The same trajectory of improving Republican margins can be mapped out, if not quite as accurately, in Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. In the lower-turnout midterm elections of 2010 and 2014, Republicans won 16 of 21 of the senatorial and gubernatorial races in those states, an impressive three-quarters.

So the question could have been framed as, “will 2016 have turnout that’s higher or lower than usual?” The sheer negativity of the race helped settle that. With both candidates less popular than any since polling began, two-party turnout dropped dramatically, to 51%. It had been 57% in 2012 and 59% in 2008. With low turnout, Trump carried all of the previously mentioned 6, except Minnesota, where he lost narrowly.

The final warning sign was the enthusiasm gap in the Democratic and Republican primaries. Democratic turnout fell by a third from 2008, the last year there was a competitive primary. Republican turnout increased by half. In a bruising, dirty election with depressed turnout, it should have been clear that Republicans would be likely to stick around to vote at a higher rate.

But these are trends, not absolutes, and one would be mistaken to read them that way. At best, someone reading these trends properly should have deemed the race merely competitive, a toss-up. Predicting a Trump victory would have required getting the final tallies almost exactly right.

For Trump’s victory was incredibly slight. His “tipping point” state that won him the presidency was Pennsylvania, which he carried by only a 1.24% margin. In other words, had just two thirds of one percent of voters switched from Trump to Clinton nationally, she would have won, and all the analysis about what this election says about America would have been different. The winner-take-all nature of the presidency, then, really creates a false binary: only Trump advances to take office, but America remains cleaved very nearly in two, when it comes to the ballot box. There is likely truth–but not absolute truth–to many of the various claims and counterclaims: racial resentments drove buoyed Trump, as did economic grievance, and anger at liberal condescension. The Democratic claim to the progressive majority majority of the future also seems supported by Hillary’s slight popular vote victory, as well as improved showings in states like Arizona, Georgia, and Texas. There is no reason why these cannot all be true to a significant degree, each driving their own share of the final tally.

America, after all, contains multitudes, and though the Republican Party will start 2017 controlling the country more thoroughly than any party has in decades, it would do well to remember that.

Pembroke, Balliol and St John’s condemn High Education reforms

Lizzie Diggins
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Pembroke, Balliol and St John’s condemn High Education reforms

Pembroke, Balliol and St John’s students voted to condemn current government reform to Higher Education policy at their General Meetings last Sunday. All motions criticise the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), currently in its second year. Pembroke also crticised the Higher Education and Research Bill, currently progressing through the House of Lords.

According to a recent press release, the TEF involves the assessment of the quality of university teaching through “core metrics such as student satisfaction, non-continuation rates and employment data. It will also look at additional evidence submitted by providers”. Based on this assessment it will rank universities and award them with a rating of Gold, Silver or Bronze. From its third year, TEF rankings will affect student fees, with fees rising for universities ranked highly by the framework.

The government argues that the TEF assessments will aid student choice. According to Les Ebdon, director of the Office for Fair Access commented, “For disadvantaged students fair access is not just about getting in to higher education, it is about getting on too. TEF will ensure that higher education providers have to carefully consider about how to provide excellent teaching for all their students, whatever their background.”

Yet the Balliol motion denounced the University’s decision to participate in the framework “on the basis that it is a poor measure of teaching quality, and that differentiated tuition fees are detrimental to access”. It also condemned “the decision to raise tuition fees for on-course students”.

Pembroke students elected to donate £100 towards coaches for an upcoming demonstration on November 19, organised by the NUS and the University and College Union. Students will protest against both the TEF and the pending Higher Education and Research Bill. They will attack the government decision to allow universities “to increase their fees based on dubious assessments of teaching excellence”. The motion also criticises the Higher Education and Research Bill’s proposal of an “Office for Students”, which it argues would not include student representation.

According to the government summary, the Office for Students will supplant existing regulators “replacing the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the Office for Fair Access”. It will also have “an explicit legal duty to promote choice and consider the student, employer and taxpayer interest in all its regulatory and funding decisions. The OfS will be a non-departmental public body which will operate at arms length from Ministers”.

Iris Kaye-Smith, the Pembroke student who proposed the motion, said, “This bill, if passed, would give the government an unprecedented and undemocratic degree of control over academic institutions in the UK, and effectively close off higher education for thousands of students from backgrounds that are already underrepresented at universities, especially at Oxford.

“These proposals are not reforms, but dogmatic attempts to marketise education by forcing universities to put profits before students and competition before intellectual freedom. I think it’s our duty as current students to fight for the right of future generations to enjoy the same opportunities as we have.”

While it was not a unanimous decision, Kaye-Smith states that there was “broad” support for the motion. She also states that at the start of term, three-quarters of Pembroke students opposed fee rises, which is a key element of the government’s TEF framework.

The St John’s motion stated, “The proposed metrics for the TEF do not measure teaching experience and are therefore not fit for purpose”. It resolved to oppose the University’s adoption of the TEF and further increases to tuition fees.

On the information page about the planned demonstration against Higher Education reform, on UCU Left’s website, they mark “three key asks” . These are “to invest in our FE colleges and sixth forms and stop college mergers”. as well as “to write off student debt and stop private education companies profiting from student fees” and “to scrap the HE Bill, halt the rise in tuition fees and bring back maintenance grants”.

UCU Left added, “Free, good quality education is a right for all, regardless of ability to pay and more than at any time before we have to fight for that.

“FE colleges have been cut to the core, with huge job losses and course closures, and a desperate need for investment that simply isn’t being provided. In HE, tuition fees are rising and the government is forcing universities to run like businesses. Students are facing higher debt than ever before with maintenance grants and NHS bursaries scrapped, student loan terms changed and tuition fees set to reach £12,000 by 2026.”

NUS President Malia Bouattia commented, “The government is running at pace with a deeply risky ideologically-led market experiment in further and higher education, and students and lecturers, who will suffer most as a result, are clear that this can’t be allowed to happen.”

Motions are to be proposed in other JCRs, in conjunction with OUSU.

Students condemn failure to launch Orgreave inquiry

Katherine Pye
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Students condemn failure to launch Orgreave inquiry

Wadham College, OUSU and OULC have condemned Amber Rudd’s rejection of a public inquiry into the events at Orgreave in 1984.

The Wadham Student Union motion, passed on Sunday, was proposed by Pete Morgan. It resolved to “write to the Home Secretary – simply and concisely – condemning her decision to reject any form of public inquiry into the actions of police at the Orgreave coking plant on the June 18 1984 during the miners’ strike of 1984-5 and calling for her to reconsider.”

It continued, “Regardless of what the Home Secretary says, a judicial investigation into the military style policing used on that day is now long overdue and only a full public enquiry can adequately investigate this.”

The Orgreave clashes took place between pickets and police at a miner’s strike near Sheffield in which campaigners say thev officers drafted in to police the picketing used excessive violence. There have also been allegations of fabrication by the authorities during subsequent investigation.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd has claimed she is willing to appoint a lawyer next month to assess material relating to the violent clashes outside the Orgreave coking plant, but according to the times she does not want to push ahead with “something that could drag on for years”.

OUSU have also passed a motion in their fortnightly OUSU council meeting on Wednesday to, “write a letter to the Home Secretary condemning her decision to reject a public inquiry into the actions of the police at the Orgreave coking plant.”

Similarly, Oxford University Labour Club have passed a motion on condemning Amber Rudd’s refusal to launch an enquiry.

This news comes after the conclusion of the two-year Hillsborough inquests which ruled in favour of the victims’ families. This has caused calls for an offi cial investigation at Orgreave to gain momentum.

There were dozens of arrests and injuries at the trial but when 95 miners were prosecuted, their trials collapsed due to concerns over police evidence. Thousands of miners massed outside the Orgreave plant, met by around 6,000 police pulled from across the country.

Lucas Bertholdi-Saad, president of Wadham Student Union told Cherwell, “I think Wadham students recognise the historic solidarity that exists between the students’ and trade union movements; it is very obvious in the police responseswherever we try and organise or demonstrate.

“I am proud we passed this motion and I think it is timely with the home secretary’s rejection of an inquiry despite the 2015 IPCC report revealing evidence of major injustice.”

However, Altair Brandon-Salmon, a Wadham undergraduate told Cherwell, “Setting aside the merits of having a judicidal inquiry into Orgreave, the passage of this motion exemplifi es the worst traits of the Wadham SU, indulging in the kind of left-wing virtue signalling and self-aggrandisement which has made it notorious across the unviersity, when its chief priority should be undergraduates’ welfare.”

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