Cherwell 2nd Week MT17

NEWS

Female college football players “don’t need referees”

INTERVIEW

Weinstein scandal reveals Hollywood’s institutional sexism

Louise Richardson: Brexit will lead to Oxford ranking decline Oxbow, page 2

Cherwell page 4

2nd week (2nd edition) Friday, 20 October 2017

OPINION

page 9

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Investigation launched into Oxford Union president’s alleged rule breach EXCLUSIVE

Disciplinary body to investigate Zabilowicz’s decision to allow two unelected members to join the Standing Committee

By FELIX POPE JACK HUNTER A formal investigation has been launched into the allegedly illegitimate decision by Oxford Union president Chris Zabilowicz to expand the Union’s Standing Committee.

A Senior Disciplinary Committee (SDC) – the Union’s second-highest disciplinary body – is to be convened within several weeks to investigate claims that Zabilowicz breached Union rules by allowing two unelected members to be appointed to senior committee positions.

Following changes introduced during the presidency of Michael Li, the Standing Committee was set to increase from five to seven members, with an amendment stipulating that the new rule would take effect following the Michaelmas Term 2017 elections.

After becoming President, Zabilowicz passed an interpretative ruling bringing forward the expansion to the close of Trinity Term, which allowed Kaleem Hawa and Grace Joel to be appointed to the committee, the latter of whom had previously failed in her attempt to be elected.

In an official notice issued at the

David Lammy slams Oxford for “social apartheid”

By MIA MILLMAN

time justifying the decision Zabilowicz stated: “Although the second schedule states that the first election affected will be that in Michaelmas Term 2017, it also states that the Rules change shall ‘take effect immediately’… I have therefore decided to issue a binding Ruling that this Rules change is now in effect… There should now be seven Elected members of the Standing Committee.”

A subsequent notice calling for applicants for the position was displayed on the Union board during 9th Week of Trinity for four days, before an Emergency Committee Meeting lasting just six minutes on 26 June saw Hawa and Joel appointed to the Committee by its existing members, including Zabilowicz and other senior officers.

Cherwell spoke to several influential figures within the Union who claimed that a process is now underway to assemble those eligible to sit on the SDC which will scrutinise Zabilowicz’s ruling.

As soon as a date is agreed upon, former Union officials will assemble to hear the case.

The dates on which the hearings will occur will be decided by the SDC members themselves, but constitu-

Chris Zabilowicz at a Union debate. PHOTO: OXFORD UNION/FACEBOOK tionally must take place within 28 days of the official summons.

The decision to appoint two unelected members is reportedly highly likely to be struck down, with Hawa and Joel to then be removed from the Standing Committee, according to numerous sources within the Union.

Allegedly, Zabilowicz is unlikely to face further disciplinary proceedings himself as it will be near impossible to prove that any rule breach was committed intentionally.

Under the terms of the Union rules, the SDC can elect to expand the scope

of their inquiry to consider any other possible rule breach, an option that Cherwell understands is a distinct possibility.

The Union rulebook states further that any accused party and any member of Standing Committee holds the right to appear before the SDC and present evidence, that no person is required to give evidence that might incriminate themselves, and that no person can be convicted unless “the Committee is satisfied beyond all reasonable doubt”.

Oxford Union president Chris

Zabilowicz said: “I appreciate the efforts of the Cherwell editors to amend the significant number of errors in their lead article dated Friday 20th October.

“As their now amended article highlights, a Senior Disciplinary Committee will be convened simply to consider a ruling I made in Trinity 2017, and has no bearing on my position as President.

“I hope, now, the focus can return to fulfilling the potential this term at the Oxford Union has to be a positive and engaging one.”

Oxford University has been accused of “social apartheid” by Labour MP David Lammy. The allegations come after data was released showing that nearly one in three Oxford colleges failed to admit any black British Alevel students in 2015.

The data, released under the Freedom of Information Act, is the first of its kind to be released since 2010. It shows that ten out of 32 colleges did not give a place to any black British students with A-levels in 2015.

It was also found that Oriel College

offered just one place to a black British A-level student in six years. This comes after findings from 2010 that showed that Merton failed to offer a single place to a black British student in five years.

Lammy, a former education minister, told The Guardian: “This is social apartheid and it is utterly unrepresentative of life in modern Britain.”

He continued: “Difficult questions have to be asked, including whether there is systematic bias inherent in the Oxbridge admissions process that

is working against talented young people from ethnic minority backgrounds.”

There were also findings released which showed that 82% of Oxford offers went to students from the top two socio-economic groups in 2015.

Large regional disparities were also revealed, with the north-west of England and parts of Wales underrepresented.

The data was first requested in 2016. While Cambridge released their data immediately, Oxford only

released their data now after denying an earlier request. Lammy’s attempt to have this information released sooner involved directly approaching the University’s vice chancellor.

Lammy claimed that the university’s decision to only partially release the information was “defensive” and “evasive”. He also said that he was “disappointed that the university has combined all black people together into one group”.

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Friday, 20 October 2017 | Cherwell

2

News NEWS

Scaramucci sparks protests at Oxford Union

page 5

OPINION

It’s time to bin archaic drug legislation

page 10

CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS An article from p.16 of last week’s edition of Cherwell, titled ‘Keble left red-faced after Oriel hack’ incorrectly used the term “hack” to refer to actions of the Oriel College Boat Club. This should have read “prank” and Cherwell did not intend to infer any criminal wrongdoing on behalf of OCBC. Cherwell takes complaints about editorial content seriously. We are committed to the codes and practices of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso).

Any requests for corrections or clarifications should be sent to editor@cherwell.org or by post to The Editors, Cherwell, 7 St Aldate’s, Oxford, OX1 1BS.

Strike Staff vote for walkout over pensions row

By EMILY LAWFORD The University and College Union (UCU), including thousands of university lecturers and tutors, have voted to take industrial action. 87% of members voted in favour of striking.

The pensions row chiefly involves older universities, such as Oxford.

Results of individual institutions were not released.

The furore was sparked by proposed changes to a pension scheme which could significantly reduce retirement pots. The UCU consulted about 40,000 staff members across 69 institutions.

UCU has said that any industrial action would have a disruptive effect on the education of thousands of students.

The UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said in a statement: “This result sends a clear message that UCU members are prepared to take sustained industrial action in order to protect their pensions.”

Garrick Taylor, the President of the Oxford UCU, told Cherwell: “This vote was just consultative and not a legal ballot to take industrial action and at this stage there is no intention to strike.

“It’s too early to tell whether industrial action will even be legally balloted upon, let alone happen. We will be watching the situation carefully.”

Smoking ban plan for Exeter College

By MATTHEW ROLLER Exeter College has revealed plans to ban smoking on site, leading to backlash among students.

The move comes after students failed to follow the college’s smoking protocols last year.

In a post on the JCR Facebook page, Domestic and Accommodation Officer Avanish Parmessur reached out to undergraduates looking for feedback on the initiative.

The proposal has been received angrily by Exeter students.

Grace Tully, the JCR’s Disabilities Rep, told Cherwell: “Habitual smokers are aware of the drawbacks and danger of the habit, but our community gains nothing from physically and socially ostracising those of us who do still smoke.”

They added that the move would discriminate against students from poorer backgrounds, saying: “cigarette smoking is ‘symptomatic’ of the working class...many of us who develop a smoking habit before university do indeed come from backgrounds that differ significantly from those of our more affluent peers. Banning [smoking] outright will make matters worse for all parties.”

Naomi Packer, the college’s Access and Academic Officer, told Cherwell: “I imagine what will happen is people will just stand outside college smoking rather than this move actually helping anyone to quit.”

Charig Yang, a second year student and a non-smoker, raised fire safety

concerns about the move.

“Honestly, I don’t think everyone with an urge to smoke at 2am will go out of the college to do so,” he commented on the JCR page. “Where, then, is the place you won’t get caught? Your bedroom.”

Exeter’s current smoking policy bans students from smoking on any college property – including collegeowned houses and Cohen Quad – “except when standing in designated areas outdoors.”

The fine for smoking in a nonsmoking area is £30, and students can also be fined the same amount for failing to deposit stubs in the correct bins. In November 2016, students living in the back quad were warned about smoking in a non-designated area in front of staircase 14.

Two months later, the Junior Dean for the Turl Street site, Michelle Hufschmid, emailed the undergraduate body about a “spike in inconsiderate behaviour surrounding smoking and drinking,” and mentioned that she had received “nu merous complaints” about smoking in the wrong place.

Seven colleges currently have blanket bans on smoking on-site, including St. Edmund Hall and

Mansfield.

Teddy Hall introduced their ban in 2011, and came under fire from students for their failure to consult students first.

Then-JCR president Joshua Coulson said: “some of you will be furious, and I can see why,” when addressing students on the issue.

In 2014, Mansfield’s Home Bursar identified smoke entering nonsmoking areas within the college, the “unpleasant smell of smoke for those around”, and the mess created by cigarette butts in college.

The University’s smoking policy states that “the University would be failing in its duty to promote the health, safety, and welfare of those on its premises – staff, students, and visitors alike – if it did not seek to minimise the exposure of both smokers and non-smokers to all forms of smoking by prohibiting smoking in all university buildings.”

Earlier this year, an NHS survey reported that 19 per cent of those aged 16-24 in the UK described themselves as ‘smokers’, a figure which represents a decrease of seven per cent since 2010.

Exeter College has been contacted for comment on the matter.

Oxford accused of “social apartheid” CONTINUED FROM PAGE ONE In response to these findings, a spokesperson for the University told The Guardian that fixing the problem will be “a long journey that requires huge, joined-up effort across society – including from leading universities like Oxford – to address serious inequalities”.

This new data also showed that only three Oxford colleges made at least one undergraduate offer to a black British A-level student in every year between 2010 and 2015.

JCR Equalities Rep, told Cherwell: “David Lammy’s comments are a huge reminder that our education system has a serious problem with providing equal opportunities to those socioeconomically disadvantaged.”

Having worked with University access programmes, he is aware that “steps are being taken to address this issue” but emphasises that “there’s still so much more

work to be done to ensure we make places like Oxford accessible to all regardless of background”.

This comes after data released

by Ucas earlier this year found that, of the 2,555 offers made for 2016 entry, just 45 were to black applicants.

Offers were made to 26.3% of white applicants, but only 16.8% of Asian and 16.7% of black applicants.

10 Colleges didn’t admit any black British pupils with A-levels in 2015 David Lammy is known for campaigning for racial equality and increased access to top universities and has had several disputes with Oxford. He had previously obtained data that, in 2009, only one black British student of Caribbean descent had been accepted as an undergraduate.

Lammy has also previously criticised Oxford for “unconscious bias” which he claimed systematically disadvantages applicants from ethnic minority backgrounds.

In response to Lammy’s comments, Oluwatobi Olaitan, Exeter’s

Labour MP David Lammy PHOTO: UK PARLIAMENT

Cherwell | Friday, 20 October 2017

3

Oxford’s first black graduate celebrated – but how much still needs to change?

By MUSTY KAMAL EMILY LAWFORD The story of Oxford’s first black graduate has been celebrated after a plaque for was unveiled last week at University College.

Christian Cole, who matriculated in 1873 to read Classics, left Oxford to become a seminal figure in the English courts as the first black African to practice law.

The plaque was installed thanks to the efforts of Pamela Roberts, a leading cultural heritage practitioner and the director of the project, Black Oxford: Untold Stories, which aims to promote the historic legacy of black students of Oxford.

University College has been chosen as the appropriate home for the plaque because Cole, who graduated as a non-collegiate student, became a member of the College a year later in 1877.

Christian Cole was born in Sierra Leone in 1852, when the country was still a crown colony of Britain.

The grandson of slaves, he was adopted by Reverend James Cole of Waterloo before going to Oxford at twenty-one.At university, Cole was supported by an allowance from his uncle, and by money he made from tutoring and giving music lessons alongside his studies.

EXCLUSIVE

Richardson: Oxford set for decline without reform

By CHERWELL NEWS WILL DRY

He was a well-known figure at Oxford, and his presence is documented in diaries and cartoons from the time. After his uncle died, his fellow students started an appeal to raise money to help him financially.

University College purchased his published work on the Anglo-Zulu war in 2006 for £1000. The college archivist, Dr Robin Darwall-Smith, told Cherwell: “I think that it’s very important that we remember Christian Cole, because he was a great pioneer as the first black African to get an Oxford degree.

“He had tremendous ambition: he came up to Oxford to read Classics, which was then the toughest course in the university, but got his degree nonetheless. I also think that he had a certain flair, because he spoke in the Oxford Union and attended Encaenia, and in general was something of an Oxford ‘personality’ during his time here.

I myself have long admired Cole, and am proud of his links with Univ.

I hope now that people will look at his plaque and feel inspired by his example.”

Yet 150 years on, Oxford is still facing criticism that it is institutionally biased against black students.

New figures revealed this week that 10 out of 32 Oxford colleges did not award a place to a black British

pupil with A-levels in 2015. Oriel offered just one place to a black British A-level student from 2010 to 2015.

The University has said that they hope that this this commemoration of Oxford’s first black graduate highlights the University’s inclusive stance towards applicants from all backgrounds.

Dr Rebecca Surender, Pro ViceChancellor for Equality and Diversity at Oxford, said in a statement: “Christian Cole’s place in Oxford’s history as its first black graduate is one that deserves to be recognised and celebrated. The plaque will be a reminder of how far we have pro-

gressed since Cole graduated from Oxford.

“The University has made it a priority to reflect in its iconography the full range of Oxford’s history and the experiences of its members.”

This commemoration coincides with the launch of the Oxford Black Alumni network, a platform for future generations of leading black individuals to connect and collaborate.

The Oxford Afro-Carribean society spoke to Cherwell about the

plaque’s significance.

“We at the ACS see it as important to commemorate this landmark moment in the history of diversity at Oxford and are happy that the University has recognised Cole’s importance, particularly during the week that new students were matriculating,” a spokesperson said.

“Christian Cole stands as a testament for past, current, and prospective students of what you can achieve regardless of your background.”

Oxford could lose its position as the best university if it does not reform its collegiate system, the vice chancellor Louise Richardson has said.

In a wide-ranging exclusive interview with Cherwell, Richardson said: “If you’re asking me, do I think we will be number one in 50 years’ time? In all honesty I would say no.”

It followed comments made in her Oration speech to the University’s ruling Congregation last week in which Richardson suggested University democracy “hasn’t been working well” due to a lack of engagement from academic staff.

She said reform to Oxford “sclerotic” system of governance was necessary in order to prevent terminal decline.

In the interview, Richardson, the University’s most senior ranking

official, said Oxford must embark on a wider package of reform in order to stay on top.

“I think we have to be much more creative about how we fund ourselves,” she said.

“We can do that by philanthropy, links with industry, in spinning out companies.”

Richardson said she also feared a potential loss of funding and European academics as a result of Britain’s departure from the EU. “I worry absolutely about our European academics and I worry that we will lose access to the networks of collaborators that we have across Europe and that we will lose EU funding, and of course that the number of EU students will decline.

“Being involved in these networks is absolutely critical to our number one status.”

She added: “When you’re in a

position like mine you have to constantly think about what kind of stand you take on political issues.

“My personal position is that I would love to see another referendum in which the results of this one is reversed.”

“There is such uncertainty at the moment I don’t think any of us know.

“And this is what I worry about with our European staff, who it’s not only their individual status, but it’s the status of their families they have a lack of clarity, and I’m sure it makes them consider more seriously the

many other offers they get from other universities.”

Richardson criticised the recent decision by Balliol JCR to ban Christian Union representatives from its freshers’ fair.

Speaking in regards to the decision, she told Cherwell: “I really believe that all legal speech has to be heard on campus, and all of us have a right to challenge and must have an opportunity to challenge speech we don’t like.”

Read the full interview in Oxbow.

A cartoon depicting Cole at Oxford (above) and the plaque that now bears his name on Logic Lane PHOTOS: BODLEIAN LIBRARY AND UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

Friday, 20 October 2017 | Cherwell

4

News Female college football players “don’t need referees”

By ETHAN CROFT Oxford University Association Football Club (OUAFC) prioritises referees for mens’ college football matches over womens’, a leaked email has revealed.

In an email sent to college football team captains, OUAFC’s Sabbatical Officer stated that referees will be allocated to individual games by hierarchy. Both men’s JCR and MCR games are now given automatic preference over women’s matches.

Senior association official Louise Nolan, President of the OUAFC women’s committee, has downplayed the move, saying “women’s college football doesn’t need referees.”

Speaking on the policy, Nolan told Cherwell: “We don’t play at a level where we are aggressive and dishonest; we play for enjoyment and don’t need a professional person in an unbiased position making decisions which are disputable.”

The Association currently has a pool of around ten referees to choose from every week. It has been claimed that women’s matches are a lower priority because they are often played at the

weekend, whereas men traditionally play on weekdays.

The OUAFC Sabbatical officer who sent the email, Omar Mohsen, told Cherwell: “I can only speculate as to why the current order of priority exists, but one reason for why men’s JCR matches are more likely to be assigned referees is that they are spread across the course of a week, whereas women’s matches all usually take place on Sundays.

“Encouragingly though, the weekend of the 28-29 of October will see the first time that a full division of women’s football will be professionally refereed.

“This is a step in the right direction, and hopefully a landmark moment in women’s football reaching equal status to men’s football in Oxford.”

The former captain of Worcester College women’s football club, Caitlin Kelly, said: “Luckily for us at Worcester the women’s football club is highly respected by the college community, and the mens’ teams.

“This means we are often able to find male players to voluntarily referee for us.

“However, we really should not have to rely on the goodwill of our

friends to be able to run a football match that has an equal status to a mens’ match, and self-refereeing has occasionally caused disputes in match situations.”

The Social Secretary of the Hertford-Keble women’s football club (‘Hertble’), Annie Simm, told Cherwell: “It’s unbelievable that women’s firsts come so low down

Eggseter College cracks world record

By NICK BROWN Exeter College broke a Guinness World Record last week by having the most people ever to simultaneously dip toast soldiers in eggs.

The record was cracked in the hall at Exeter at 8.30am last Friday. 183 people, including staff, fellows and some students, sat down to jointly dip more soliders in eggs than ever before.

The attempt beat a previous record of 178. All participants had two toasted soldiers, which they had to dip twice each in the soft boiled eggs before eating them.

Dr Barnaby Taylor, the college’s sub-rector, counted down to the dunking, which was overseen by officials from the Guinness Book of World Records.

The event was organised with the British Egg Industry Council to celebrate British Egg Week and World Egg day, which fell on Friday 13 October.

A representative of the BEIC told Cherwell: “We wanted to commemorate the occasion in a very British location, so where better than Oxford University.

“We selected Exeter college, in part for the stunning dining room and helpful staff who were willing to accommodate us, but also for the opportunity for another egg pun –

Eggseter!”

Exeter first-year Harry Anderton said: “It was strange how precise it had to be.”

Another Exeter student, Kate McDermott, commented: “After struggling with the Norrington for a fair few years, this is exactly the kind of formal recognition the College deserves. Floreat Eggson.”

The eggsiting event PHOTO: BRITISH EGG INDUSTRY COUNCIL

Westgate shopping centre to open next week

By LIBBY CHERRY

After over two years of construction work, the refurbished £440m Westgate shopping centre will open next week on Tuesday 24 October.

The centre has 85 confirmed brands, including Uniqlo, Bobbi Brown, Pizza Pilgrims, and a flagship John Lewis store.

With just a week to go, there is ongoing construction work is still visible from Queen

Street. While 60 out of the 125 stores will open on the official opening day, brands such as & Other Stories, Cos and the hotly anticipated Curzon Cinema have not yet released an opening date.

Many students welcomed the redevelopment. Lily MacDermott, a second-year at Corpus, said she was “really excited” and was “especially looking forward to having better restaurant options nearer to my accommodation”.

There have been concerns that the development could be harmful for smaller independent shops. Ruthi Brandt, a Green Councillor for Carfax ward, told Cherwell the development could lead to “a shift in the retail ‘centre of gravity’”.

She further claimed that shopkeepers who do not relocate to Westgate might have to accept fewer customers, “the final blow for already struggling independents.”

the pecking order for referees, and disgraceful that women’s football is generally categorised lower than the men’s.

“This is a wider issue of blatant discrimination. It’s what prevents new interest, and antiquated attitudes need to change.”

A current women’s college football team captain, who wished to

remain anonymous, said: “If this measure is simply the result of a lack of weekend referees, why was gender brought into the allocation procedure?

“Surely the process could just be benefit the teams who play in the week when refs are available, regardless of whether they are women’s or men’s teams.”

Cherwell | Friday, 20 October 2017

5

Council to demolish 30-year-old homeless shelter Council slammed for move, which will force many onto the streets this winter

By HENRY STRAUGHAN The homeless shelter Lucy Faithfull House will be demolished by the end of the year, threatening to deepen Oxford’s homelessness crisis.

The council’s decision to bulldoze the building comes despite support for the reopening of the shelter, including a petition signed over 3000 times.

Lucy Faithfull House shut in February 2016 after Oxfordshire County Council withdrew its annual £500,000 funding. The shelter provided help to those with complex needs or substance misuse issues for 30 years and had beds for 61 people.

Labour councillor Mike Rowley told Cherwell: “We looked at what could be done with Lucy Faithfull House pending demolition; it could not be made safe in time for winter and the homelessness providers in Oxford told us they do not have capacity to run it.

“We are working with seven City Centre Churches to provide extra space on rotation over the winter, which should be open every night during the winter months. This can be staffed by the existing providers as it is much more manageable.”

However, David Thomas, leader of the Green Group on Oxford City Council told Cherwell: “The decision to close Lucy Faithfull House at a time of significant underspend in homeless funding by Labour is going to force many people to be spending this winter out on the streets in sub zero temperature. It doesn’t have to be this way.

“Under Labour’s own rules [the Severe Weather Emergency Protocol] rough sleepers can spend two nights out in sub zero temperatures before being entitled to emergency accommodation.”

The Green Party also pointed out that the decision will mean a purpose built homeless hostel, which could be made available for emergency accommodation, will lie empty during the winter. This would mean that dozens of men and women would be forced to sleep in

The Mooch ignites fresh Union protests

By MUSTAFA AHMED

freezing temperatures on Oxford’s streets.

Rowley contested the claims made by the Greens, telling Cherwell: “All the beds at Lucy Faithfull House were replaced when it closed, in various locations around the City.

“There is not therefore any lack of beds - in fact we are planning to provide 167 against an assessed need of 150, plus 10 in the “sit-up” service at O’Hanlon House, 10 provided by the City Centre Churches over the winter, and emergency bad-weather provision at the existing hostel.”

Jeevan Ravindran, head of Oxford SU’s ‘On Your Doorstep’ campaign, told Cherwell: “We wish the council would engage in more open dialogue with homelessness activism groups and not simply dismiss their proposals.

“It would have been great to see Lucy Faithfull house used as a temporary shelter during the winter, or at least to have examined the possibility of this.

“It’s shocking to see how much homelessness in Oxford has increased just over the summer months, and to think of all those people sleeping on the streets in the height of winter is just devastating. Funding needs to be found somewhere to help them and increase winter provision, and only the council can do that.”

The Green Party further explained to Cherwell that, athough Labour claimed they didn’t have the money to keep the shelter open, last year the council underspent the homeless budget by £400,000.

Labour said that the underspend was a deliberate move to provide extra funding for this year to respond to the closure of Simon House which, along with another shelter Julian Housing, is set to be decommissioned in April 2018.

The Greens claim that Labour have now reneged on this promise and refused to make the £400,000 available.

The Green Party added that Oxford University and its colleges

have failed to offer up any premises for the homeless over the winter.

The council intends to replace the shelter with flats built by the Council’s own building company.

However, only 50% of the flats will be affordable housing.

Green Party representative Tim Eden told Cherwell: “Yet again this year, the Labour-led council has shown its complete distain for some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

“From slapping fi nes on piles of belongings in July, to Cllr. John Tanner (Lab. Littlemore) branding homeless people a ‘disgrace’, to PSPOs widespread across the city centre, the Council show that they just want the ‘homeless issue’ banished from Oxford.

“Recently, the council have reiterated a policy that housing will be given to all locally connected homeless persons if the temperature drops below 0°c three nights in a row.

“This is whilst reiterating that they will sell Lucy Faithfull House without any permanent plans to replace the shelter, just to expensively hire out rooms ad hoc, and presumably shipping others off to other areas with one way train tickets.”

Protesters gathered outside the Oxford Union as Donald Trump’s former communications manager, Anthony Scaramucci, arrived to speak on Monday night.

The protest, which was organised by a coalition from the Oxford Revolutionary Socialists, Oxford SU Woman’s Campaign, the Climate Justice Campaign, the LGBTQ Campaign, and the Oxford Migrant Society, amassed a crowd of around 10 protesters.

They gathered outside the Union whilst members queued up outside to listen to the talk. Among their chants were “Fuck Trump, Fuck the KKK, Fuck the Racist USA” and “Oxford Union, shame on you”.

Chants continued once the talk

had started, with protesters shouting “Get up, walk out”. Their chants could be heard from inside the Union chamber.

Scaramucci was notoriously fired from the Trump Administration only ten days after being announced as the President’s Communications Director.

Taisie Tsikas, spokesperson for the organisers of the protest said in a statement: “In regards to whether Scaramucci is himself a fascist, it barely matters.

“In fighting fascism, we must also oppose ourselves to those who ally with the forces of fascism, which Scaramucci has unambiguously done by serving in Trump’s racist and authoritarian regime”.

ANALYSIS

Shelter bulldozed to pay for budget black hole?

Oxford council faces questions over their motives for demolishing Lucy Faithfull House.

The council is apparently using its own building company to build the houses.

Yet despite using their own company, they have reduced the proportion of “affordable units” down from 100% to 50% recently.

A one bed flat in Woodin’s Way is worth approximately £450,000. Affordable means that it will be below market price – somewhere between 10%-20%.

Assuming that 50 units are being erected, this means the council could be selling these units in total for around £20,250,000.

Minus costs, which if the council’s own company were to build it, would be approximately 50%-75% of the total, the council will make around

Oliver Eagleton, studying English at Wadham and originally from Boston, was protesting outside the Union, and told Cherwell: “Scaramucci does not deserve a platform with the Union – he is an irrelevant nuisance and not a politician or experienced in political life.

“The Union is clearly doing this purely for the sake of controversy”.

Alexander Wallis, who was queuing to hear Scaramucci speak, said: “I think this protest is a bit of an exaggeration – the Union is a bastion of free speech and anyone should be able to speak.

£10,125,000 to £5,062,000.

The council budget for 2017 has a very large black hole of hitherto unaccounted -for costs – something that the budget itself acknowledged.

As the city election next May will most likely result in a Labour majority, this would indicate that the council is planning for another budget black hole.

As Green representative Tim Eden puts it: “Our current black hole has led to the council squeezing services left right and centre – auctioning off community assets and trying to sell it to the community as an upgrade (I am thinking of the East Oxford Community Centre, for example).

“What will be taken away from Oxford next once the profits from Lucy Faithfull house have been unceremoniously swallowed?”

“He does offer some political insights and I think it’s much better hear what he has to say and disagree with it, than to stop him from speaking”.

This is not the first incident of a protest against platforming outside of the Union.

In November 2016, protesters opposed the Union’s decision to allow Donald Trump’s former Campaign Manager, Corey Lewandowski to speak, on allegations of sexism, Islamophobia, and racism.

Many of the same chants were used then as on Monday night.

The Oxford Union Society refused to comment.

6

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Cherwell | Friday, 20 October 2017

7

Shark Tales

Drunk freshers meet world-class journalists.

Watch now at facebook.com/cherwellonline

St. Hugh’s to rename Aung San Suu Kyi room

By OSCAR BAKER St. Hugh’s JCR has voted to remove the name of its Junior Common Room, currently named after the controversial leader of Myanmar Aung San Suu Kyi. In a meeting last week, the JCR resolved to remove the name of their common room. According to the motion, it would be a statement of “solidarity with the persecuted and oppressed minority of Myanmar”. The motion aimed to show students of the college “condemn crimes against humanity and Aung San Suu Kyi’s stance on this issue”.

The motion also mandated the JCR Committee to petition the Principal and other college officials to write an open letter of condemnation to Aung San Suu Kyi on behalf of the college.

The vote was in the form of an anonymous online ballot. The motion passed with 115 votes in favour of the motion, 45 votes against, and 11 abstentions.

Affnafee Rahman, the second year student who proposed the motion, told Cherwell: “The fact that Aung San Suu Kyi studied in this

college… makes the Rohingya crisis far more relevant to the students of Hugh’s.”

According to Rahman, the passing of the motion means “that we, as concerned global citizens and promoters of peace have done some justice to our moral responsibility in standing up for the oppressed and those who don’t have a voice, and that for me is the most important thing”.

The motion was delayed following Sunday night’s JCR meeting.

Several students felt that the highly important nature of the resolutions should be settled in an anonymous online ballot.

Elise Page, who seconded the JCR motion, said: “the symbolism of our condemnation has more weight,” given Aung San Suu Kyi studied at the college.

Recognising the meeting’s debate on the issue, they said: “Several members of the common room have pointed out that this is a complex issue – it is. What is not complicated is deciding whether human rights offences are wrong.

“We cannot sit by idle while the suffering continues. We must work with what we have namely, the

Renting Oxford worst city for landlords A study by online estate agents Hatched has shown that Oxford is the worst city in the UK for student landlords. The analysis revealed that it would take landlords 25 years to make back the costs of renovating a house into student accommodation – with renovations in the area costing on average £97,000.

The study showed that the average house price in Oxford is £573,018, over double the UK average of £226,000. High house prices have resulted in high rents for students, with an average monthly rent of £2,352 for four people.

Coo-hen Quad Pigeons cause choas in Exeter’s Cohen Quad Students residing in Exeter’s Cohen Quad have received an email from the college warning them about the “flurry of pigeons crashing into windows at Cohen Quad.” The college told students that as the issue had only arisen recently, they “are going to monitor it for the next few weeks”. They also assured students that if pigeons continue to crash into the windows, they would hopefully “find a solution”.

Students have been encouraged to tell the college if any more pigeons or other birds crash into their windows.

Kebfess Keble Facebook page shut down for bullying Kebfess, a Keble College version of the University wide Facebook page ‘Oxfess’, was shut down this week after allegations of cyberbullying. The page, which posted anonymous contributions from Keble students, was reportedly managed by second year students from the College. Keble JCR President, Ronit Kanwar, posted on a college-wide forum that the posts on the page had made some students in the college “not feel part of the Keble community”. He added: “it is unacceptable that we have allowed members of our community to feel hurt and excluded.”

prestige of an Oxford college, and one associated with Aung San Suu Kyi at that – to help those in need as much as we can.”

Aung San Suu Kyi, the State Counsellor and de facto leader of Myanmar, studied PPE at St. Hugh’s, graduating in 1967. She has received international condemnation for the Myanmar government’s treatment of its Rohingya minority.

The decision to rename the room follows the college’s earlier removal of an Aung San Suu Kyi portrait to in September. Last week, Oxford City Council concluded that it was “no longer appropriate” for Aung San Suu Kyi to hold Freedom of the City of Oxford.

The Myanmar leader has also been criticised by fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureates including current Oxford University student, Malala Yousafzai.

This condemnation extends from the view that Aung San Suu Kyi has been perceived as inactive in actively dealing with the severe humanitarian crisis in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.

The UN described the atrocities being infl icted upon the Rohingya as a “textbook example of ethnic

Aung San Suu Kyi collecting her honorary degree from Oxford in 2012 cleansing”.

Speaking about the consequences of the ballot passing, the JCR Secretary Curtis Crowley said: “JCR Committee will be going back to the JCR to seek further arguments and evidence for both sides before petitioning the principal and other college officials”.

He stressed the need for a “strong and well-evidenced case” to be put to college authorities, who have already responded to the crisis in Myanmar.

In a previously released official statement, the college stated that it “shares the grave international concern about the persistent ethnic violence towards, and treatment of, the Rohingya community,” and they “earnestly hope that Aung San Suu Kyi will do everything within her power to stop the violence and address the underlying issues as a matter of urgency”.

The JCR Committee will now work to have the College add a letter of condemnation to this statement.

Red sun shines over Oxford Oxford’s skies turned red for a short time on Monday, bathing the streets of Oxford in eerie crimson shades.

For several hours on Monday, the sun cast a redtinged light over the skies and buildings of the city.

Similar views were seen across the country.

The red sun was caused by dust particles from the Sahara being brought in by the remnants of Hurricane Ophelia.

According to the Met Office, the dust particles scatter blue light, casuing more red light to shine through the atmosphere.

PHOTO: HERTFORD COLLEGE/ INSTAGRAM

Friday, 20 October 2017 | Cherwell

8 Independent since 1920 Vol. 282, No. 3

Cherwell

Don’t separate black history from British shame

THE UNION

An institution that’s rotten to the core

O

ur relationship with the Union is, in many respects, quite rocky.

Though we were once based out of a shed on their premises, since our move a decade ago we haven’t got on with the Oxford Union Society quite as well as we would have liked.

But, the fact remains: as far as a newspaper commited to reporting the facts can be a friend, Cherwell is a friend of the Oxford Union. We sincerely believe that the values which animated its founders – freedom of speech and the exchange of ideas – are those which enable progress and shape the world for generations to come.

When you start to notice something wrong, however, it’s your duty as a friend to speak up. And we do believe, as our front page today shows, that there is something fundamentally wrong with the Union.

When the size of the Union Standing Committee was increased from five to seven over the summer, it was dubbed a move for democracy and openness.

Designed to take effect from the Michaelmas elections onwards, as the committee minutes show, the move opened up elections that, for too long and for too many people, have seemed cliquey and opaque.

The Union president’s interpretation of this ruling does not appear to be entirely congruent with the decision made by the Standing Committee in Trinity term, and moreover it does not appear to fit with the values of the Union itself.

The price of membership is £269.86 for most applicants, and £160.68 for those in receipt of a full UK government maintenance loan. For that fee, you receive a democratic vote in the

Union’s governance – in theory.

With the possibility for the process to investigate more than just electoral malpractice, we look forward to see where our relationship with this institution goes next.

R Naomi Packer

Smoking kills You don’t really need a newspaper editorial to tell you that smoking kills. It does. Countless studies have shown significantly higher mortality rates amongst smokers, and the harm caused by second-hand smoke is equally clear.

As much as we know this, and you know this, over a fifth of people aged 18-23 are smokers. We haven’t polled the entire Cherwell staff, but amongst our senior editorial team, four out of seven light up during a day at the offices.

This may not seem like progress in beating back the biggest public health scourge of our lifetimes, but it is. Already, seven colleges ban smoking on their main sites, and revelations today that Exeter College will seek to become the eighth are reflective of just how far we’ve come in shaping public attitudes and norms regarding smoking.

For many in our society, admitting that you smoke is almost a badge of shame. But the causes of smoking are complex, and there’s an inherent risk in attaching shame to cigarettes without a full, contextualised understanding of why they’re around.

In an environment as stressful as Oxford, cigarettes are a release, and whilst that doesn’t justify keeping them around in our colleges, it does suggest that plans to ban them are given deep contemplation.

The Editorial Team Michaelmas 2017 AKSHAY BILOLIKAR and JACK HUNTER, Editors

CAT BEAN and RYAN MAMUN, Food Editors

ETHAN CROFT, FRED DIMBLEBY, SUSANNAH GOLDSBROUGH, FELIX POPE, and MATT ROLLER, Deputy Editors

DAISY CHANDLEY and ZOE HARRIS-WALLIS, Fashion Editors CHLOE DOOTSON-GRAUBE and GEMMA O’SULLIVAN, Deputy Fashion Editors

EMILY LAWFORD, MIA MILLMAN, and HENRY STRAUGHAN, News Editors JORDAN BERNSTEIN and NAOMI PACKER, Comment Editors ROSIE DUTHIE and GREG BRINKWORTH, Comment Contributing Editors GREG RITCHIE and RYAN GOULD, Investigations Editors THEODORE CORNISH, MAXIM PARR-REID, and ALEX WAYGOOD, Deputy Investigations Editors

IRTEZA ISHRAQ and JON STARK, Science Editors ELEANOR BLACKWOOD and THOMAS MUNRO, Satire Editors SHIV BHARDWAJ and THOMAS BROWNE, Sport Editors THOMAS PLAYER, Puzzles Editor CALUM BRADSHAW and KATIE COOK, Video Editors

SELMA STEARNS and ROSA THOMAS, Features Editors

JULIA ALSOP, EIMER McAULEY, and CHARLOTTE TOSTI, Blogs Editors

ABBY RIDSDILL-SMITH and JULIA ROUTLEDGE, Life Editors JAMES LAMMING, Deputy Life Editor

ELLA BENSON-EASTON, Chief Photographer

ALTAIR BRANDON-SALMON and ANOUSHKA KAVANAGH, Culture Editors LUCY ENDERBY, Books Editor BECKY COOK and JACK ALLSOP, Film Editors KATIE SAYER and IZZY SMITH, Theatre Editors CHARLES BRITTON and HENRY HATWELL, Deputy Theatre Editors THOMAS ATHEY and JOE BAVERSTOCK-POPPY, Music Editors ELEANOR BIRDSALL-SMITH and ELLIE DUNCAN, Visual Arts Editors

INDIA BARRETT, ELLIE BOURNE, POLLY HALLADAY, GEORGIE RILEY, Business Team Cherwell is published by Oxford Student Publications Ltd. Oxford Student Publications Ltd. LOUIS WALKER, Chairman REBECCA ILES, Managing Director KATIE BIRNIE, Finance Director UTSAV POPPAT, Tech Director TESS HULTON, Events Director For all advertising enquiries, please contact OSPL at advertising@ospl.org or 01865 722780, or visit www.ospl. org Printed in Great Britain by Mortons Ltd.

Black history pervades every aspect of British society

osa Parks sat at the front of the bus. Martin Luther King had a dream. Barack Obama stood up and said: “Yes We Can”.

For many, this remains the extent of their knowledge of black history. It is a narrative of persecution and vulnerability in which those of colour are presented as the victims of a largely untold story, filled with stock images and stock narratives.

The education system continues to laud our history as a tapestry of pioneers and war heroes whilst ignoring the seemingly undeniable fact that the victories of the British Empire were deeply embedded with a dark history of colonialism and slavery. In countries which have both caused and harboured similar atrocities, their historical narrative is marked by a deep and inescapable shame. They acknowledge the failings of the past, and look optimistically to the future, in the thorough knowledge that such events cannot repeat themselves.

Yet Britain’s curriculum remains in denial, and monumentally so. In my secondary school there was no option to study black history, and Black History Month was limited to a display board of the faces of Afro-Caribbean icons.

Such efforts were acknowledged as a token gesture to the small number of black faces which walked the halls, rather than an attempt to educate the largely white student body.

Black History Month holds value because the impact of black history pervades every aspect of our present society, totally inescapable no matter how much we try to disguise it.

Over the past five years there has been a 49% increase in ethnic minority long-term youth unemployment, compared with a 2% fall in white youth unemployment. The same report also found that black and Asian workers are more than twice as likely to be in insecure work.

Figures tell us that black workers with degrees on average earn 23% less than white workers with degrees. Such statistics shatter the self-congratulatory rhetoric of

‘post-racial Britain’. Perhaps the reason our country still harbours racial divisions and insensitivies is because we are yet to confront our questionable history with any sufficient vigour.

British scholars will make a conscious effort to engage disparate voices, realising necessarily that their own narrative does not tell the whole story. There are of course figures within academia who acknowledge the euro-centrism of the current system, approaching prominent intellectual figures with a certain degree of scepticism.

They understand that the position which such intellectual figures hold in the academic hierarchy has the potential to demonstrate how deeply racist ideology is rooted in our education system and an inherent colonial bias.

But this does not change the fact that the villains of Britain’s history in the large part hide in plain sight, and despite some valiant efforts, remain there, unexposed by our education system. In some cases, they are made to be the heroes.

Just last year, the History faculty took steps to correct the disparity between prizes offered for European and African history. More still needs to be done, however – and not just in Oxford.

British history is clearly full of triumphs, tales of military strength and groundbreaking innovation. But it has had more than its fair share of gross miscarriages of justice.

Part of the mark of an intelligent community is not to conceal our errors but to shove them into the light, warts and all. It is, if anything, to make British history more hollistic and accurate.

Black History Month has an important role in the British consciousness. It is affirming to those who are often overlooked, and educates those who, through no fault of their own, have been left largely oblivious to the complexity of black history. But it can be better. Instead of just championing our black heroes like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, we should take this opportunity to assess our own British villains.

Life Arts Style

by Cherwell 20 October 17

+ Style Mystery and empowerment where tarot meets fashion Culture Art, political protest, and creative ways to change the world Books Haruki Murakami, local culture, and global worries

The art of protest

Friday, 20 October 2017 | Cherwell

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EDITORIAL Art that interrogates what it means to protest

By ALTAIR BRANDON-SALMON ANOUSHKA KAVANAGH 100,000 people. That’s how many were estimated to have gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC on 21 October 1967, to protest the war in Vietnam. 35,000 people continued across the Arlington Memorial Bridge, and protested outside the Pentagon, facing down 2,500 armed marshals and soldiers.

This moment, memorialised in Norman Mailer’s non-fiction novel The Armies of the Night, symbolised the anti-war movement. It mattered.

Yet do contemporary protest movements have the same impact?

In this week’s edition of Oxbow,

our theme is ‘Protest’, exploring what it has meant and what resonance it still holds in 2017. Has it become a bourgeois affectation for students to assemble in the Radcliffe Camera square and protest President Trump?

Or is there a lasting force to protest art, which we explore in Picks of the Week?

Oxford is an intensely political institution, with a student body full of strongly-held but diverse opinions and protests bring us together. But as you’ll see in the varied discussions on protests within these pages, it can mean different things in different times. That’s why it’s still crucial to explore the shifting facets of what it is to protest.

Contents

Clockwise from top left: Oslo at the National 15, The Lion King 13, a protest wall seen by Zahra Farzanekhoo 8 , ‘On the Street’ by Zoe Harris-Wallis 7

Interview 2

Managed Decline Louise Richardson, Oxford VC, tells all

Life 4 4 4 5 5 6 6

Love Oxland Rustication and the pressure to succeed A day in the life of a thesp John Evelyn New kids (and a President’s head) on the block How to maintain dominance in the library Food dough we really need another pizza place A Life Divided by JCR meetings

Style 7 7

High Fashion more accessible than ever?

Feminist fashion with tarot

Visuals 8 9 9

Visual disobedience Hidden history celebrating misunderstood art Activism in Soul of a Nation

10

Music 12 12 12 12

Playlist protest songs Pick of the Week King Krule Crete’s mountain musician Review of the new jazz scene

Film 13 The Rise of Big Mouth 13 Rewind memes from screens 13 Not to watch protesting against films

Books 14 Miniature books 12 Exploring the poetry of the everyday world 12 Attempted assasination in the story of Bob Marley

Theatre 15 Oslo at the National Theatre 15 Confessions of shame 15 Five Minutes with the University drama officer

Satire

Culture

16

10 10

16 16

Creative protest Picks of the Week art as

dissent Rifts between public and the police

Star-signs and your Oxford career Tories caught red-handed Listicle joke about bike theft

“Do I think Oxford will be number one in 50 years’ time? No.” Interview Oxford vice chancellor Louise Richardson tells Will Dry that she won’t let tussles with media silence her on free speech

“I

’m not going to get myself... well I’ll get myself in trouble anyway.” Louise Richardson was thinking aloud in response to a question. It did not matter which question. She is not, and has never been, confined by societal limitations on what can and cannot be said. She will contravene convention by answering the question, not rewording it.

Not afraid to go on national radio and justify why she deserves her pay, or fight for free speech on unpopular issues – the right of Islamic extremists, fascists, and homophobes to speak on campus, for instance – she has faced some backlash from student and national press alike.

The interview she gives to Cherwell is yet another example of her willingness to answer questions. She would be forgiven for wanting to keep her head down, to refuse to engage with the “mendacious media” she has recently lambasted. Yet she defends herself on each issue. I start with the most recent: claims that she wishes to erode the autonomy of the college – a ‘controversy’ sparked after her recent annual Oration to the congregation (the University’s governing body).

“The press the day after my talk interpreted this as an attack on colleges – it absolutely wasn’t. This is about the sharing of back office functions, so that we can improve the quality and reduce the cost of infrastructure.”

The sharing of back office functions is part of a wider package of reform: “I think we have to be much more creative about how we fund ourselves. We can do that by philanthropy, links with industry, in spinning out companies, in helping start-ups translate the knowledge that our research is generating into immediate impact on

“It’s frankly horrible when views you don the economy.”

Why is reform so urgently needed?

“If you’re asking me, do I think we will be number one in 50 years time?

In all honesty, I would say no.” This is clearly a leader who is conscious of the various global and domestic trends which pose a series of threats to Oxford’s status, and who is conscious that now is the time for action.

She is concerned that at this time of increasing global competition, Britain is embarking upon Brexit – a policy which in her opinion spells nothing but bad news for universities.

“My personal preference would be for Brexit not to occur. I would love to see another referendum in which the result of this last one is reversed.” The reason is that Brexit poses threats to two seminal parts of Richardson’s life: Oxford University, and Ireland.

“I worry absolutely about our European academics and I worry that we will lose access to the networks of collaborators that we have across Europe and that we will lose EU funding, and of course that the number of EU students will decline. Being involved in these networks is absolutely critical to our number one status.”

If the government does not pursue her preference for a second referendum, the next best option for British universities’ post-Brexit relations with Europe would be for them “to be as close as possible as the pre-Brexit relations with Europe.”

With the government declining to

Cherwell | Friday, 20 October 2017

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3

interview Richardson’s contentious remarks Homophobia on campus In September, Richardson caused upset amongst students by arguing that it “wasn’t (her) job” to tackle the homophobic views of some academic staff.

The remarks led to a fierce backlash from some students, with a petition being signed by 3185 members of the University.

Richardson later argued that her comments had been “misconstrued” and apologised for any upset caused.

“Tawdry politicians” Richardson hit back at critics of her £350,000 salary, accusing “tawdry politicians” and a “mendacious media” of attempting to undermine the higher education sector.

“Cosseted” safe space culture In May, Louise Richardson’s stance on free speech at universities came under the spotlight again, after hitting out at the “cosseted” nature of ‘safe space’ and ‘no-platform’ policies.

She 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.”

n’t hold, have never held, and are antithetical to anything you’ve ever stood for, are attributed to you.” PHOTO: OU IMAGES/JOHN CAIRNS preserve all rights of EU nationals living here, she worries about her European staff and their families.

“Anyone who is good enough to teach at Oxford is eminently poachable”, and that the government’s position “makes them consider more seriously the many other offers they get from other universities”.

This anxiety is personal as well as professional. She grew up in rural

“Children today tend to be more protected than I was” Ireland, one of seven children in Tramore, a seaside town of 3,000 people. She remembers, as a child crossing the border, being stopped by soldiers at gunpoint and searched.

Since then, Richardson says: “We’ve seen the end of a long, festering ethnic conflict, and the EU has played a hugely positive role, often behind the scenes, often providing financial support for cross-border initiatives.”

“The idea that we would go back to having a hard border… It would be an open invitation to the extremists to reconstitute themselves, it would give them a very obvious target for

their anger, and yet it is very hard to see how you can have a virtual border between the EU and a non-EU state.”

Not only was she one of three Catholics in her class at Trinity College, Dublin, she was of a completely different socio-economic background.

Her Catholic convent did not send students – let alone girls – to Trinity.

She had two jobs – as a waitress and assistant librarian – for most of her university life, and financed her university education completely by herself. She was also active in the anti-Apartheid society, and in anti-blood sports – an activity which caused great hilarity when she returned to her family in the country.

She was a regular at the marches against increasing fees, occupations of libraries and various other forms of direct action. Despite this varied set of activities, she tells me: “I wasn’t a particularly big name on campus.”

Each step forward in Richardson’s life has been one step further away from Tramore. From Trinity, to a scholarship at UCLA in America, to a PhD and academic career at Harvard, to becoming the first woman to be appointed Principal of St Andrews, and then the first to be appointed Vice Chancellor of Oxford. “It’s very important to me that I’m a woman in a very senior position and very important to me that I’m a woman from a background that’s very different. I come from a very different world from the one I currently occupy.”

In the journey to the top of academia, Richardson has received her fair share of hostility. At St Andrews, the Royal and Ancient Gold Club refused to grant her honorary membership because of her gender, and on more than one occasion, female professors noted Richardson surrounded by men waving their golf club ties in her direction. She would rather challenge these individuals than lock herself in a safe space to avoid them. Such an environment is very different to the one she sees today. “Children today – especially middle class children – tend to be more protected than certainly I was, more cosseted by their parents, so perhaps less exposed to views very different than their own, or people very different to their own.” The result is something “broader than just the safe space movement... Everyone is willing to concede free speech to people they agree with, but not nearly enough people are willing to cede speech to people they disagree with.”

She says she uses the same arguments to defend the Christian Union’s right to attend the Balliol freshers’ fair as she would to defend the right of Islamic extremists to speak on campus (as she did when challenging the government’s Prevent programme).

“I really believe that all legal speech has to be heard on campus, and all of us have a right to challenge and must have an opportunity to challenge speech we don’t like.”

Such strong feelings about free

speech certainly do not make Richardson’s life easier, quite the opposite. She describes the press, in her view, twisting her words as “the part of my job that I least like. I’ve been astounded by the frequency with which words have been put in my mouth, then I’ve been pilloried for saying them.

“It’s frankly horrible when views that you don’t hold, have never held, and are antithetical to anything you’ve ever stood for, are attributed to you.”

The recent public debate over pay is one of those issues where she feels hard done by. After a speech in London she describes how she later saw a newspaper with the headline, ‘Oxford VC Accuses Minister of Pay Lies’. “I never mentioned the minister, and I never mentioned pay lies.”

That said, she does not hold back discussing pay: “I feel absolutely convinced that it is going to be harder for British universities to recruit university leadership from overseas as a result of all this public pillorying of academics for being overpaid”.

The debate seems to be moving in a new direction. It was reported this week that vice chancellors at Russell Group universities were ‘lobbying’ for modern universities to bear the brunt of any cuts.

Richardson appears to support the line of argument: “At my university, with fees at £9,250, we just break even for home students. But some vice

chancellors have admitted to me that teaching a student only costs them £5,000.”

She tells me the reason Oxford cannot take the lead and reduce their fees is because “we subsidise every student to the tune of about £8000.

“I come from a very different world from the one I currently occupy” So yes we could charge less but it would mean the money would have to come from someplace and we would have to cut something.”

Her ideal day is with her husband and kids, and a good book nearby.

“The wonderful thing about fiction is that it takes you out of yourself, out of your world, and you occupy the mind and world of another.”

She cannot get much time for reading however, saying she starts work at 7 am and finishing at 11pm seven days a week for weeks on end. Does she get burnt out? “It’s very exhausting and hugely exhilarating”.

Only 18 months into her job, and just beginning on a set of reforms to secure Oxford’s future, one feels there will be plenty more questions given straight answers, and plenty more clashes with the media ahead.

Friday, 20 October 2017 | Cherwell

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Love Oxland “I was surprised when Fred turned on a puppy and aggressively kicked it.”

“There’s more to life than academic work: I only wish I’d realised sooner”

Izzy Agerbak and Fred Dimbleby find Róisín McCallion animal rights an obstacle to romance Izzy Agerbak Second Year, PPE Worcester

Fred Dimbleby Second Year, History Keble

Naïve young Izzy expected a wholesome afternoon in the pub, sipping on cider, with good chat flowing.

Alas, this was not the case. After a pleasant greeting and a few minutes chatting, I was taken by surprise when my date turned on a puppy and aggressively kicked it.

Obviously, I was horrified (should have called the RSPCA on reflection). After this, I started feeling a bit weird about the vibes and began downing drinks to numb the trauma. To end a nightmarish afternoon, I expelled the contents of my stomach all over my date, who had to call paramedics, although honestly I was just glad that it cut short my conversation with Mr Animal-Beater.

What was your first impression?

Smiley but a teensy bit vanilla

As I stood on the street outside the pub, smelling the acrid whiffs from many years of beer disposal, I wondered whether this was the right setting for romance. But despite some confusion about where we were meeting, I was quickly able to escape the stink. After buying beers, we went to one of the tables and rapidly broke through the strangeness of our Cherwellsponsored love lives. We chatted about our upbringings, Oxford stereotypes, and even formulated an artificial date to put in the paper.

Perhaps a more exciting date than the reality, but I am glad that we did not have to experience our fake date and instead had a lovely chat together.

What was your first impression?

I didn’t get stood up!

Personality?

He helped me concoct the above tale, so obviously pretty darn witty

Personality?

Sweet, kind, with strong humour

Any awkward moments?

Dog-kicking aside, we are very smooth, cool individuals, so really no awkwardness at all

Any awkward moments?

A sweaty mutual friend arriving at the end of the date and insisting on taking photos of us

Enjoyed Izzy’s bizarre sense of humour?

Voting now open on our Facebook page Sponsored by

discusses her experiences with rustication, mental health and the pressure to succeed at Oxford

£4.50 cocktails Monday to Thursday from 9pm.

A day in the life

Thesps

by CALLUM COGHLAN

W

hen I was told I needed to go into hospital rather than embark on my British Council placement in Germany, it felt like the rug had been pulled straight from beneath my feet – like my whole world was falling apart. I completely resisted it.

Although I could accept that I was at a point where intensive treatment had become necessary again, I didn’t really care: work was my priority, my degree was my priority – I had to go on my year abroad, no matter what that did to my health.

I had always told myself that my year abroad would make up for the linguistic skills I lacked compared to some of my peers. I’d spent so long working out the best way to do this, and settled on the British Council. It had to happen – it just had to. But it couldn’t. No one would insure me, and so the choice was hospital, or risk not being able to spend any time abroad at all.

When I finally began to accept that the placement would not be happening, I sat down to work out how I could make up the time in order to ensure that my language was up to scratch before finals.

I began to think that I might as well drop out, because that would

I

awaken to the booming tones of Sir Ian McKellen as King Lear.

An inspired choice for an alarm, I’m sure you’ll agree. I consider what to replace it with next week – maybe a bit of Anthony from Caesar?

I’m not going to lie, I am incredibly busy at the moment. For one play about a school in Wales, I’m designing a super edgy soundscape featuring actors singing over each other, nails scratching on chalkboards, and a flock of

be less humiliating than returning for fourth year with poor skills compared to my fellow students who had spent months immersed in the language and culture of a foreign country, just as I had dreamed of. I thought that would be the end of the world. I spent the weeks between making this decision and waiting for my admission

I didn’t really care about improving my quality of life date to switch in a volatile state of flux between accepting my circumstances, and planning to go ahead without insurance.

But, with the help of my family and friends, I made what I can now see was the right decision, even if sometimes it doesn’t feel like it.

I realised that I had to accept the treatment, not only for my degree but for my life, and it is the latter part of that realisation that I think is most important.

I have been in hospital on two other occasions, and my sole motivation for these admissions was to be ‘allowed’ to return to university and achieve my academic potenbleating sheep. I’m juggling this with my role as a psychopathic yet sympathetic North Korean spy, who is struggling to keep his homosexuality a secret from Kim Jong-un (it’s so relevant, you can’t miss it!) If that’s not enough, I’m also directing an experimental, naturalistic, contemporary, physical, gender-swapped Marlowe play, where everyone is naked above the waist for narrative reasons. And to sell tickets (Jesus Christ, we need to sell more tickets). I log onto

Cherwell | Friday, 20 October 2017

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life Evelyn’s diary New kids (and a President’s head) on the block

Y

our diarist notes that it has been having quite a busy week when it comes to the world of petty hacks. Whilst most fresher students this week are concerning themselves with their essays, one Magdalen student of historical namesake has been going about the game as if he has been playing it all his life. Maybe someone is advising him behind the scenes – his northern grammar school is more of a pipeline than you might think. your diarist hopes that the naivety of youth grows into a prosperous career at this place, but only time will tell.

Nasty Party playing nice

tial.

I didn’t really care about improving my quality of life, I just needed to be able to work, and succeed. I got myself through each day and each meal by telling myself that eating and engaging in treatment would make me a better student: I would write better essays, get better marks, speak the languages I studied better. But now I see that this wasn’t ‘recovering’, not really, and it most certainly contributed to my multiple relapses.

Despite a rocky start, this time treatment has felt different and I think that the main reason for this is my realisation that I am more than my academic performance.

My degree is not the most important thing in my life: I deserve to get well for me.

I have come to the conclusion that as long as you are using the idea of getting well for something specific, it’s never really going to stick.

You never know how long that thing is going to be there for, and it’s a key sign that your selfworth is still too low to care about maintaining this wellness if things start to go wrong in your ‘priority area.’

This realisation in itself also showed me just how skewed my priorities had been, not only whilst at Oxford, but since I began being

examined within the examination system. I had forgotten that life in itself is important, that your existence shouldn’t merely be framed by what is regarded as a productive and socially acceptable way of spending your time, and what you are ‘good at’.

In no way am I trying to say that academic study is not important, of course it is. We have all worked hard to get a place at Oxford, and we all want to do our best whilst there, but I think there is a fine

line between working as hard to achieve your best, and working so hard it hurts because you are scared of failing and what you would be without academic success.

Recently, I was left thinking that we could almost see the compulsive way many students at Oxford work as comparable to the way many people with an eating disorder exercise.

In both cases, the problem is not necessarily that the activity being engaged in is ‘bad’ in itself, but rather it is the sense of duty that drives the participants.

Someone with an eating disorder playing football or going for the occasional run if they are physically fit enough to do so is fine.

The problem begins when they feel they ‘have’ to do so, otherwise they are doing something ‘wrong’ and not ‘as they should be’. And similarly, work and academic study are at their most problematic when you find yourself feeling guilty for taking the slightest break, or defining ourselves completely by it. Without an identity beyond academia, what is to become of us post-graduation?

I would be lying if I said I am happy to be back in treatment. I would be lying if I said there aren’t times I feel a failure for not being actively pursuing my studies. But I would also be a liar if I said I do not believe I have made the right decision for long-term health, happiness, and success. I can say with certainty that this time, being in hospital whilst everyone else studies, and having my year abroad opportunity taken from me has really has put things in perspective. There really is more to life than simply academic work: I only wish I had realised sooner.

Facebook and encourage everyone in the play to share the event NOW. And write something cool and edgy on it like “cOmE aNd sEe tHiS pLaY i’M iN! I pRoMiSe iT’s sIcK! pLuS nUdItY!!!!!!!” Maybe just “nUdItY” actually?

Which reminds me: time to change my profile picture for the eighth time this term. The best drama hack ever is that my old profile picture gets so many more likes when I finish working on a play, and this means that I main-

tain that crucial online popularity façade. Even that guy who was an extra in the Playhouse show I did last year is now one of my BFFs. After a quick breakfast, I head straight over to the O’Reilly to rehearse for the final night of my dark re-imagining of Beatrix Potter’s classic story, The Tale of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle (the interpretative dance elements are just inspired), after which everyone will shower me with praise and affirm my amazing performance. Then I will

go for my termly pint of local craft ale with acquaintances that I only ever see when I nag them to come to my plays.

The night draws to a close with a mad one with the cast in my house in Cowley, where we’ll be sure to ad-lib our favourite tunes from Phantom of the Opera, Hamilton, and High School Musical.

I can’t wait to finish my degree – next stop RADA and then I’ll definitely be on track for a sick career in film!

I had to go on my year abroad, no matter what that did to my health

Mr B’s Boys are actually having a good week. His presidency has got off to a successful start, Port and Policy seems to have regained some of its old vigour, and the term thusfar has been free of any of the unpleasantness one might expect of the Nasty Party. However, it turns out that their comrades in arms at Oxford Brookes may not have learn from the history of its older sister.

One hears report of white-tie dinners, Tinie Tempah-esque drinking

from the wine bottle and shouting ‘pleb’ at the tops of their voices. This was perhaps unwise, even by their intellectually modest standards.

The Communist Crowd (for the moderates seem to have fled), led by the historian of colourful tones, seem to have had a crisis of consciousness. It appears that the plotting of he who is designated to next have the throne has caused a stir. His desire to work with organisations of ill-repute has lead to murmurings of mass resignation on the horizon. Maybe he should take a leaf out of his idol’s book, and realise that there is a time and a place of partisan politics.

Presid-isciplining The Union finds it itself in a state of great turmoil this week. President ZaBINowicz will soon find himself dragged before a Disciplinary Committee for his perpetuation of fake news, a theme which just last week I hoped not to see repeated. The Standing Committee slate has now been announced, and Doctor Doom has missed the boat. He must forge his own raft is he to sail off into the sunset of electoral success.

How to

Maintain dominance in the library

By PRIYA VEMPALI

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ny outsider might think that Oxford students would be professionals in the library: wandering through the dusty shelves, in their element, diligently getting their heads down to produce yet another thought-provoking tutorial essay. But I’m sorry to tell you – this is entirely untrue. Getting through life in the Oxford libraries is an art, and I’m here to show you just how it’s done.

Firstly, if you want to reach maximum impressiveness, you’re best heading down to the Radcam or the Bod: no self-respecting BNOC spends their time wandering around the Sackler. Following an embarrassingly difficult trek up the stairs (the result of your abysmal capacity for cardio), you can pretend to yawn to cover up the fact that you’re panting from climbing literally two flights of stairs.

This also has an added perk: it makes you look like you’re recovering from

a massive sesh last night, instead of snuggling you pillow watching Bake Off. Once you manage to find a seat (preferably not near that thirty year old postgrad who’s muttering to himself whilst reading), you can start your study session by getting up any lecture notes you have. Even if you’re not reading them, it makes you look a whole lot more studious whilst you swipe left on tinder under your desk.

Try not to get too put off by the rapid-fire typing of everyone around you – they’re likely writing Oxloves about that girl they chirpsed at last week’s bop. You, on the other hand, are a professional. Opening up a new document, you stare at the blank screen in front of you for approximately 10 minutes, before seeking refuge in the familiar embrace of Wikipedia, ashamed to admit that you’re too lazy to open up a book. Alas, it happens to the best of us – better luck with next week’s essay.

Friday, 20 October 2017 | Cherwell

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Life Food

Dough we really need another pizza place?

Franco Manca calls food chain creativity into question. Cat Bean reviews.

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o, Oxford appears to have landed itself a brand new chain restaurant. Given both that I am a committed foodie, and that I consider Italian cheeses to stand above nearly any other food, I should find the arrival of Franco Manca on George Street an event of interest – perhaps even excitement. This being said, we Oxonians appear to be living at a tipping point over land use in the city centre. First, Wahoo departed.

For a while, Cellar appeared to be on its way out. Upon finding out about the new restaurant, my response instead was one of trepidation. But, I opted to enter Franco Manca with an open mind, and let its food and atmosphere sway me instead.

The George Street restaurant is certainly doing a valiant job with the space given, but the shallow room was quickly overcrowded, and I found myself squeezed between a friend and a fire extinguisher, a little uncomfortable for most of the night. This said, I’m certain that on a less crowded evening the smaller restaurant size would cease to be a problem.

There was a heavy emphasis on wine on the evening we visited – the sommelier personally came to visit our table to dispense various bottles – and several were particularly highlighte as Sicilian.

One of my favourites was described as a “sourdough wine”, perfectly complementing the sourdough garlic bread that we had as part of our starter. The dryness and slight sour hint of the wine accentuated the twice-fermented sourdough pizza and garlic bread, working very well together.

Curiously, our wine was also a perfect complement to the cured

meat presented as part of the ‘Sharer Platter’, which had an unfortunately perfumed taste. All sins were atoned for when garlic bread and buffalo mozzarella arrived at our table, which was a triumph. And it wasn’t even the best dish we had.

That honour instead falls to the Burrata Pugliese, a mozzarella filled with cream. This, combined with a pesto to complement the cream and curd of the cheese, left my taste buds sated. After a trip to Florence in the summer vacation, I’ve had a yearning for a decent buffalo mozzarella on this side of the channel – this cheese alone is worth a visit to Franco Manca. The vegans on our table were also satisfied by their combination of artichokes, asparagus and other grilled vegetables, although these did arrive noticeably later than their meat counterparts.

While the starters piqued my

interest, in Franco Manca pizza is (naturally) the star of the show. A testament to their deliberate paring down of the menu, the limited selection of toppings ensured that the sourdough bread shone through our combinations of cheese, tomato sauce, herbs, and meats. If you can choose any topping, you will not be disappointed by the chorizo.

Rounding off came dessert – a tasting platter of a high performing Tiramisu, a rather bitter chocolate ice cream (which was in fact an asset, cutting through the sickliness of the other cakes), amongst other less memorable dishes. The lemon almond cake was decidedly average, for example.

At the end of the meal I found myself in two minds about the desirability of a restaurant like Franco Manca in Oxford. I should be careful not to be unfair – aside

from a tight squeeze in the seating arrangements, the meal they served us was absolutely delightful. The wine, cheese, and sourdough bread could not be faulted, and the service was cheerful. The restaurant made an effort to present an enjoyable evening, and for this it cannot be marked down.

But we do not exist in a vacuum, and a review of a chain restaurant must be accompanied by a frank look at the context in which it is placed.

In Oxford there are already several popular and high performing pizza places, serving the city centre (one doesn’t even have to look beyond George Street!) and further afield alike. While Franco Manca performs well above my experience with pizza in Jamie’s Italian, for example, I can’t help but wonder if Oxford would not be better served by something a little more unique.

Top picks From left: Burger with Chicken Wings, Onion Rings and Chips from Peppers, Creativa Pizza and Lasagne from Buongiorno e Buonasera, Raspberry Wheat Beer from King’s Arms

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he barons of 1215 cleaved to Magna Carta. The Convention Parliament presented a Bill of Rights to James II in 1689.

The Victorians were propelled towards widespread suffrage by successive reform acts.

And here in Oxford, we too have our own laudable democratic marker – the JCR meeting. “But it’s a pointless forum for pointless debate which belabours pointless issues!” I hear you clamour. “The one good thing about it is the free food.”

Not so – although, admittedly, the promise of Domino’s pizza and lukewarm beer does possess an astonishing power to lure even the most anti-democratic of students to convene on a Sunday evening.

But the JCR meeting is so much more than a beacon of light for an impoverished undergraduate deprived of sustenance for a full three hours since welfare tea.

For a start, where else would you

be able to pore over such a diverse array of motions?

Into the cauldron of the JCR meeting are sprinkled liberally all the different spices of college life.

Motions range from the more serious questions about access and welfare to controversial disputes about the state of the JCR coffee machine, and one particularly memorably occasion at Merton, during which the purchase of an expensive brand of organic, ethically-sourced and vegan detergent elicited ferocious debate on both sides of the argument.

Such awe-inspiring moments are sure to go down in the annals of democracy.

The JCR meeting is a humble creature. It does not aspire to greatness and never seeks to be anything it is not, but it is always reliable and there to offer refuge – and on a bleak winter’s evening, that might be exactly what you want.

A life divided

JCR meetings

Julia Routledge and Abby Ridsdill-Smith go head to head

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t’s the Facebook posts which reel you in: repeated demands for quorum on the college noticeboard, desperate offers of increasingly extravagant free snacks and the latest hundred motions for the night to come.

Filled with a mysterious combination of fatigue, hunger and intrigue, you hit the JCR – and immediately realise the enormity of your mistake.

It’s the smell which hits you first.

There’s something unique about it: an unusual pairing of hot pizza, the occasionally cheeky beverage and that almost imperceptible undertone, the hidden fragrance of despair.

Emanating from the hollow-eyed committee members responsible for half these motions, it is only added to by the anguish which various thesps bring, as they continue to try to bolster drama funding.

If this experience could be worsened any further, you’re crammed

in the JCR with every other person who’s decided that tonight is the night for a wild one (at the JCR meeting) while stuck to a slightly old and peeling chair.

Most likely, your phone’s out of charge and you’re metres from the nearest available exit – that’s just how it works.

As for the motions themselves, do I need to tell you how boring they are?

By the time we’ve discussed the pros, cons, intricacies, constitutional amendments, images and best way to present the motion in the minutes (should colour be used? Comic Sans or Times New Roman?) then we’re already two hours into the meeting, with another 15 motions left.

It’s times like this when I really wish I hadn’t checked my Facebook: democracy is all well and good, but evenings of stale chat and pedantry don’t present it in its best form.

Cherwell | Friday, 20 October 2017

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7

style Is high fashion more accessible than ever?

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By CHLOE DOOTSON-GRAUBE

s it is said, fashion weeks come and fashion weeks go, but LFW SS18 was marked by a certain revelation; Burberry produced its second ever collection to deliver the product straight from the runway to the consumer, with clothing seen on the models available to the regular buyer instantly, in-store and online.

When this scheme was launched it was predicted that it would cause a shake-up within haute couture, as the fashion industry is a delicate equilibrium sustained through its seasonal schedule and demand-supply based enterprise.

As SS18 didn’t end in flaming carnage run through with mobs of the masses, one can only assume that these fears were misplaced. Together with the rise of livestreamed shows and collections becoming viewable online, could this signify a movement to a fashion industry that is less elitist in its approach to both its creators and buyers?

The fashion editors decided to take ourselves out of the office to investigate. After a couple of weeks of planning, we arrived at Covent Garden

Tarot adds witchcraft and mystery to feminist fashion

By VIVEKA HERZUM

On the street

Original photography by Zoe Harris-Wallis

bedecked in fashion week appropriate attire (read: looking very extra). We entitled this venture ‘Budget Fashion Week’, as it turns out the likes of Burberry, Shrimps and their other reasonably large compatriots aren’t willing to dole out tickets to student journalists with a week’s notice.

This is fine, and indeed the question is already partly answered: no, haute couture is not particularly accessible to student journalists, not even such illustrious ones as ourselves. We decided that Christopher Kane probably did not issue an invitation on account of some bitterness towards Cherwell Fashion’s recent Croc exposé. As we have said, this is fine. Haute couture hates student journalism, but it is fine.

So we find ourselves at Fashion Scout at Covent Garden’s Freemason’s Hall to watch Leaf XIA and Irynvigre.

Fashion Scout, to the uninitiated, is a venue that seeks to showcase lesser known and upcoming designers, and is subsequently one of the most accessible spots in London Fashion Week.

For Leaf XIA, we were ushered to a standing spot in the back, which provided an optimal view of the the audience; for Irynvigre we were landed with whopping second row seats.

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or many, fashion is a game of self-expression and of power – power over ourselves, power over others’ perceptions, and power over social norms. Recently, tarot and playing cards have acted as both aesthetic and conceptual inspiration for designers who wish to draw on their associations with power dynamics and with a more modern interpretation of femininity, witchcraft, and political agency.

Just like fashion, card games are all about power shifts. Their language is deeply ingrained in our idioms; keeping your cards close to your chest, putting your cards on the table, or, like the Dolce & Gabbana Spring 2018 runway, being a queen of hearts. Their recent Queen of Hearts collection was a show all about love and feminine power. It was a way of paying homage to the brand’s aesthetic and cultural history while

In terms of looks, Leaf XIA seemed to encapsulate the term ‘kawaii’ with lurid fabrics and dolly shapes.

MIA played in the background.

For a moment, I was truly happy.

Irynvigre was certainly a brand, as it was termed, ‘for rich bitches’ – floaty and sheer garments glided down the runway on ephereal models.

Never in my life, I remarked, had I ever seen anyone nearly as tall as the barefoot models on that runway.

Sizing of models and subsequently, collections remains a staple criticism in the accessibility debate, and with good reason, too, as neither of us could physically invisage ourselves in these clothes without looking like some kind of textile based art installation.

However, Fashion Week is just as

much about fashion as a culture as it is about the clothing, and despite the various efforts to livestream and show collections remotely, something is lost in translation. You won’t be told about the various orgies that have occurred in the venue and the conspiracy theories of its founder by means of livestream.

Notable front rowers across the event included someone who was wearing an inflatable costume who is apparently semi-famous, members of what could equally be a cult or a Russian boyband wearing matching jackets emblazoned with the logo ‘the Fourth Kingdom,’ somebody who we thought was in JLS but was probably not, and many other gorgeous people. Fashion Scout, we conferred, is truly the promised land.

We even spotted Molly Goddard, dresser to Rihanna, in a very puffy creation of her own design. I think it is therefore fair to say that Fashion Week is therefore a place where the fantastical is realized. That which only exists in the collective unconscious, and by extension, Instagram is projected onto the streets before us.

In this respect, we certainly got the fashion week experience, budget or not. While we certainly weren’t doing bumps of coke off Mr Burberry’s Chest (the true fashion week experience?) the fact that we had the oppurtunity to take a seat at the showcasing of new British talent is a compelling argument for the idea that high fasion is finally becoming accessible to a new audience.

celebrating the classic, dynamic D&G girl; she is strong, sensual, and, most importantly, in control. As it was for Dolce & Gabbana, the use of tarot imagery in Maria Grazia Chiuri’s Dior Resort 2018 collection was a choice rooted in history and in the creator’s own beliefs. The collection, shown in the mystic Santa Monica mountains, is both a nod to his fascination with tarot and a statement on the future of the brand. A recent Vogue article

by Nicole Phelps explains how the designer used specific tarot imagery to communicate the significance of the project; the death card, associated with renewal and transformation, and the Tower card, indicative of change, were reflective of a new beginning since the end of Chiuri’s three decade long collaboration with Pierpaolo Piccioli.

The imagery on the Dior runway belonged to the Motherpeace Tarot,

designed in the late ‘70s to introduce more inclusive tarot representations, and was used in collaboration with its creators, Karen Vogel and Vicki Noble.

The deck, drawing on the female god-

slogans of Spring 2017, have presented collections influenced by tarot and witchcraft.

And lest they leave their runway of queens without counterparts, the D&G’s Spring 2018 Men’s collection featured suits printed with images of playing cards and modified tarot prints.

Many attribute this growing fascination with card games and modern witchcraft to an increase in young, politically active women discovering these cultures online.

Through its associations with witchcraft, mystery and sexual liberation, tarot has come to symbolise an awe and fear of feminine power.

Modern witchcraft, and its representation in fashion, is a statement, a way for young women to reassert their political and personal agency in a Trumpian climate of hypermasculinity.

Just like fashion, card games are all about power shifts desses of indigenous peoples around the world, was innovative in its focus on matriarchal figures and on a more inclusive perception of tarot imagery.

Dior’s use of it was a clear signal that times are changing.

Other designers, such as Clio Peppiatt, Alexander McQueen, and Gucci, with their evening gowns embellished with hearts pierced by daggers and recurring “FUTURE”

8 oxbow

Visual disobedience

Since humans first found reasons to protest or disobey, art has been one of the key means of resistance, from murals anonymously attacking autocratic governments to banners colourfully and powerfully promoting a cause.

Clockwise from left: Jessie Evans from the Collective Knitting Project, a banner at the Women’s March, an Auckland wall painting curiously done by the advertising company that owned the wall (centre), Ellie Goames from the Biennale in Venice, and a protest wall seen by Zahra Farzanekhoo

Friday, 20 October 2017 | Cherwell

Cherwell | Friday, 20 October 2017

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visuals A film that celebrates an artistic history Soul of a too long hidden, too long misunderstood Nation

Izzy Smith finds a lot to learn in the Tate’s exhibition

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By GAZELLE MBA

n 2010, the artist Lynn Hersham released her first film !Women Art Revolution.

In its exploration of artists such as Nancy Spero, Judy Chicago, Ana Mendieta and Howardena Pindell, the film gifts its viewers a seemingly endless array of archival footage, interviews and video art. Each image, every word spoken, fashions and recreates a history so long hidden, so long misunderstood. !Women Art Revolution painstakingly and movingly records how, in the 70s and 80s, feminist artists created work with the aim of fusing the worlds of politics and art. Their work speaks not only to the political movements of their times, but also to the burgeoning and now all-encompassing politicization of identity and experience.

Perhaps the most poignant moment in the film, one which presents the necessity of the films existence so clearly, is when ordinary New Yorkers are asked about their favourite female artists, and most can only name Frida Kahlo.

Today, Frida Kahlo’s name is to be found in headlines once again, not in essays dedicated to her political commitments or her artistic abilities, but in the ways she has been reduced and commodified, a bracelet shackled to the wrist of prime minister Theresa May. Much has been made of the intractable differences which separate Kahlo from May. Kahlo, a lifelong communist Mexican artist left disabled by a bus crash in her youth, incongruously and strangely attached to the body of May, whose allegiance to capitalism and the various oppressions it yields are obvious, and under whose leader-

These bodies are delicious and entertaining spectacles ship the government’s record on disability rights has been called a “human catastrophe” by the UN. While the Prime Minister’s jewelry can be dismissed as simply an ‘aesthetic choice’, its meaning calls out for analysis and exploration. Writing in the London Review of Books, Paul Clinton notes that Margaret Lindauer has argued that we have in a sense “obscured the specific political and geographic context of Kahlo’s work. Her transformation into a role model, as much as into a commodity used to sell t-shirts, films or, indeed, bracelets, has reduced the artist to her image and biography.” Yet, Kahlo’s commercialisation does not simply demonstrate the reduction of the artist

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to “her image and biography”, as Clinton and Lindauer state, rather it is emblematic of the ways in which neo-liberal and conservative discourse harness the power and resonance of identity politics, in ways that warp, distort and reduce the socialist and revolutionary politics of its purveyors, so as to nullify the challenge and opposition they present to the dominant and powerful. Frida Kahlo and the artists of !Women Art Revolution animate sites of intellectual and political contention, found in struggles against class, racial and gendered oppression. West evinces the “complicated relationship” the Chicano and queer activists who adopted and championed Kahlo’s image had “with the left wing in the 1980s, which saw identity politics as individualistic rather than concerned with collective struggle, linked to the self-interested culture of the Reagan and Thatcher era.” Her later work invokes Judith Butler’s argument that Marxists had too often portrayed struggles over identity as “merely cultural rather than concerned with questions of material production.” However, I would argue that our flawed conceptions and understandings of Frida Kahlo and her ilk, lie not in our failure to see identity politics as concerned with material production. Instead, it is in the way identity politics creates icons and role models whose thorniness, revolutionary instincts and ideas are dulled and eroded, so they can stand for anything and all things, be all things and as a result be nothing. It also leads to the politicisation and radicalisation of individuals whose work and activism is simply representational, who are themselves reflections, but not mirrors which incite re-examination and as a result, tangible and material change.

Nowhere is this more prevalent and pernicious, than in the critical

and public reception of black women artists. Take the wildly similar yet dissimilar depictions of blackness by the artists Kara Walker and Tschabalala Self. Succeeding her groundbreaking 2014 installation “a subtlety”, Kara Walker returns to the two dimensional images of brutality and fear of which she was made both famous and infamous in her show: SIKKEMA JENKINS AND CO. IS COMPELLED TO PRESENT THE MOST ASTOUNDING AND IMPORTANT PAINTING SHOW OF THE FALL ART SHOW VIEWING SEASON! Her paintbrush expertly and viscerally renders scenes which investigate the nature or meaning of race, gender, sexuality and violence. Meanwhile in her first UK solo exhibition, at Pilas Corrias gallery in London the artist Tschabalala Self, explores through a variety of media: painting, print and sculpture the commodification and hyper-sexualisation of the black body, using the New York Bodega as a the physical or geographical site of these happenings.

The political potential of Walker’s work is evident, she denies and rejects any notion that she is a role model, a portrayer of triumphant and invincible blackness. The pain and fear in her work cannot be so easily compartmentalised and sentimentalised. She resists categorisation both biographically and in her art, a categorisation which would otherwise limit and stifle the radical and critical aspects of her work. Kara Walker is not supposed to paint or depict what she does, yet she offers it to us time and time again. She offers new political possibilities through her defiance. On the other hand, in Tschabalala Self’s handling of the black female body and its accompanying sexualities, view the representational as inherently political. Self herself has stated that “the bodies that my work is talking

about are constantly politicised, so it’d be impossible for the work not the politicised.” But to what politics does she allude to? What do these figures have to offer beyond the mere fact of themselves? Perhaps the shortcomings of Self’s work are best revealed by the language critics have used to denote the black female she represents. The Guardian calls them “raunchy” and “hedonistic”, W Magazine lauds these “self-constructed women” who “exuded confidence and cool” in “unapologetically sexual positions.” As shown by these terms and epithets, in her desire to subvert and take ownership or possession of that which has been declared shameful and abject, there is nevertheless a contradictory reestablishment of structures which originally rendered her subject matter shameful and abject.

Their sexuality is rid of complexity, reduced to the feelings and perceptions it arouses in others. It is divorced from the insidious and structural transactions of power, which give it its meaning in the first instance. These bodies are delicious and entertaining spectacles, but not a spectacle which draws and call attentions to their darker political contexts, in ways that illuminate and elaborate our understanding of them.

It becomes worthwhile to focus on the specific rather than the general, the meaning of a particular work rather than the overarching implication of this artist’s entrance into the mainstream or the public acceptance of their work. We must go back, in order to excavate and rediscover the ideas and critical thought which stimulate and energise their artistic and creative resistance. Our need to constantly equate the representational with the radical, is to lose too much, to silence what else there is to say and call into question.

ost notably The Tate’s Soul of a Nation firmly grounds the art in its historical context.

Before even entering, we are shown speeches from four prominent black activists of the period (1963-1983 USA), seemingly arranged in progression towards a Black Power stance, from Martin Luther King through Malcolm X to Stokely Carmichael and Angela Davis. Therefore, our first insight into the tensions and contrasts between different black activists are presented in their own words.

This illustrates the shift in focus from nonviolence and integrationism that typified Black Power while also providing a clear sense of how white supremacy shaped the way black art had to be produced and exhibited, However, what is particularly notable is the variety in how directly the artists choose to address their past and present oppression. We are shown for example Chicago’s polyphonous mural ‘The Wall of Respect’, incorporating images of the joy and hardship of black American life, as well as the formation of black artists’ collectives.

Additionally, The Black Panther newspaper is a clear example of the importance of visual art in the transmission of the movement’s messages. It is made clear how these sharp and visceral cartoons were presented in direct protest to police brutality, encouraging self defence.

Allusions are also made to the deadly middle passage of the transatlantic slave trade, the broken promise of forty acres and a mule, and fugitive slaves being advertised like escaped livestock. Charles White for instance poignantly replaces the southern compass point with a bloody handprint in his painting ‘Mississippi’.

However, the exhibition manages to avoid an atmosphere of dense oppression.

The Chicago-based Collective AfriCOBRA successfully expresses a shared black sensibility during a viciously racist period, but the work is intriguingly joyous.

Wadsworth Jarrel’s art particularly is deliciously celebratory, vibrant and fizzing with colour even when dealing with serious political concepts. His use of tin foil in ‘Liberation Soldiers’ makes the surface literally shine, and the Black Panther members’ Afro hairstyles seem like haloes. Soul of a Nation does not exclusively focus on protest, however.

Particularly engrossing are images from The Black Photographer’s Annual, which aims to represent “everyday black life in all its fulness.” We see men in crisp suits, nonchalantly smoking, and a pregnant woman bathing tranquilly in a river, showcasing moments of peace and joy. Most importantly, Soul of an Nation is a uniquely educational experience. To bring this kind of historical art into such a popular venue is an invaluable act for a country which fails to educate its white children on the horrific acts of the past, which they themselves benefit from.

Friday, 20 October 2017 | Cherwell

10 oxbow

A little creativity can change a lot about the way we protest Anoushka Kavanagh reports on the art-activist collective creating playful new forms of direct action

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reuzberg, Berlin, 1 May 2012. The tension is tangible as 15,000 protesters defiantly face 7,000 menacing police, heavily armed and shielded. The protesters have been warned that a new water cannon, with a 10,000-litre capacity, will be tested on them today. But they remain unarmed. That is, until several inflatable foil cobblestones float into the crowd.

Security forces, only minutes ago ferociously formidable, are thrown into disarray as the drifting decoys are blithely bounced through the throngs of marchers. A scene of comic confusion quickly unfolds.

Troopers scratch their heads before sprinting after the strange shapes, and taking a stab at them. The shiny surfaces are slippery though, and they struggle to deflate the spectacle. As the sun sets, the stones are still gliding through the crowds, glistening in the twilight. The squad of riot cops has been defeated by a bunch of balloons.

The objects in question were created for the demonstration by the art-activist collective ‘Eclectic Electric Collective’ (e.e.c) – and are effectively what it says on the tin: five feet tall inflatable silver sculptures, mimicking conventional cobblestones. A reinterpretation of an age-old weapon of antiauthoritarian struggle, these tools of intervention were intended to do

Picks of the week

Art as a weapon of protest

what the collective does best: innovate enduring protest strategies.

Cobblestones have long been tools of protest. In both the Paris Commune of 1871 and the 1968 demonstrations, paving was used as weapon. Not only is it an easily accessible medium, but it’s also symbolic of dissent: by removing part of a city’s pavement, you are refusing to consent to the authorities. Yet where real cobblestones cause casualties, the inflatables are harmless. Instead, they are simultaneously playful and protective: while designer

Transportable tools are effective in uniting protesters globally Artur Van Balen (now a member of the artivist collective, Tools for Action) has labelled them “weapons of tactical frivolity” – making protest an interactive, engaging experience for opposing participants – the inflatables also act as a physical fence to police batons.

This interactive element was key to the cobblestone’s conception – for the objects necessitate consideration in a way that more traditional weapons do not. Van Balen says that the shapes truly reach their full

potential when they succeed in creating a situation in which “your opponent needs to decide what to do”.

The opponent, in this case the cops, must now engage with the rioter in order to quell the disobedience.

Security forces cannot simply open fire or whip out batons, because brutally battering a harmless floating sculpture is somewhat challenging, not to mention ineffective. The comic nature of the situation then strips the authorities of much of their power, in much the same way as protest theatre. As such, these artivists are attempting to close the rift between police and protesters, via playful visual language.

While the cobbles were initially deployed individually at marches, in more recent years they have been compiled collectively into sculptures, that further challenge the nature of protest. The units are arranged into linear or grid formations, then secured by Velcro to one another, so that they resemble walls.

Together, they hinder movement in much the same way traditional barricades would. Again, this plays on another historic device of discontent.

Barricades are now almost a cliché of civil unrest, thanks in part to Les Misérables’ iconic scenes. But their origins lie in the religious conflicts of 16th century south-west France.

By the 19th century, the structures were indeed highly visible at major riots across Paris, including the Left: A Question of Silence (1982), director: Marleen Gorris This Dutch feminist film has an absurdist premise, with three ordinary women uniting to murder an irritating male shop assistant as a result of unanimous pent up frustration towards men, after living for so long under the patriarchy. It remains an unapologetic statement against the accepted sexism of everyday life.

Right: Chris Ofili’s No Woman, No Cry

By ELEANOR BIRDSALL-SMITH ALTAIR BRANDON-SALMON

Named after the Bob Marley song, it’s a defiant response to the failed murder investigation into the racial killing of Stephen Lawrence, which shook Britain and exposed the institutionalised racism of the police force

PHOTO: ARTUR VAN BALEN July Days and the 1848 revolution.

Typically, barricades were fashioned from hollow barrels, stuffed and secured by stones: arduous to construct, immoveable, and relatively permanent.

Their metallic barricade acts as a literal mirror held up to the alt-right The inflatables by contrast, can be folded compactly and transported

transnationally. Significantly, the lightweight shapes facilitate rapid creation and elimination. During the 2015 UN Climate Summit in Paris, Tools for Action sent packages to activist groups as far afield as New York, Portland, and London. Inside, were instructions describing “how to block a street in 20 seconds and just as easily disappear again”. Not only does that suggest the cobblestones enable greater spontaneity, but it indicates the transportable tools are effective in uniting protesters globally, through shared spectacles.

Drawing from these instructions and inspirations, inflatable blockades have been employed in Portland, outside the US Forest SerOfili highlights the shit state of affairs with actual pieces of elephant dung. This proudly references the kinds of art often discriminated against, and the aspersions of cannabis use often filed against innocent black victims.

Right: Ghost Town by The Specials This 2-tone 80s hit from the height of the English riots, chants distressing truths about the state of the cities against the backtrack of an eerily calm melody. It hits on issues of urban decay and the sense of “impending doom” which dominated the cities.

While we are no longer in Thatcher’s Britain inner city depravity is far from solved with gentrification closing up much of London.

Cherwell | Friday, 20 October 2017

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culture demonstrators and artists created together, the project sought not merely to change ideas about strategies of protest, but to change ideas about the matters at the heart of the protest themselves.

The protest for which the programme prepared was a reactionary demonstration, against a forthcoming neo-Nazi march in Dortmund, June 2016. In the preceding months, the collective worked within schools

Security forces are thrown into disarray

vice offices in protest of logging; in Westchester, New York, in protest of fracking; and in Lausitz, Germany, at the Welzow Sud Lignite Coal Mine, in protest of the continued burning of the dirtiest form of coal.

The latter protest had a particularly international dimension to it, as 60 inflatables – made in the Netherlands, UK, France, Denmark, and Sweden – were amalgamated outside the mine.

These collected cobblestones were the product of the ‘training for trainers’ programme, launched in 2016 by Tools for Action and the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination. Under this initiative, activists came together to learn about organisational tactics and

creative direction, before heading home to instruct a new generation of activists.

But this was not the first time that the artivist collective had expanded their horizons into creative education: in 2015, the ‘inflatable barricade training’ project was established in Paris, educating climate activists in new methods of demonstration in the run up to the COP21 Conference. Nor was it the last.

Recently, Tools for Action teamed up with Respekt Buro to launch their most ambitious, comprehensive programme to date, using the floating foil cobblestones: ‘Barricade Ballet’. Named after the unique demonstration choreography which

to create open, inclusive environments in which to address the issues facing the city. High-schools are thought to be a common recruiting ground for neo-Nazis in Germany, so project organisers believed it important for discussions to be held about xenophobia, discrimination, and Neo-Nazi ideology here. Of course concurrently, students were given the opportunity to engage in artistic forms of direct action – creating the cobblestones to be brought to the forthcoming protests, and constructing barricade choreography.

4 June 2016, Dortmund, Germany.

900 neo-Nazis flood onto the city’s streets for their “A Day of the German Future” rally. 5,000 counterdemonstrators are also rallying.

They connect their cobblestones and construct the barricades. At BlockaDO, the demonstration against the alt-right is confined by police, as neo-Nazis approach.

Unrest unfolds, and the foil inflatables protect protesters from police as planned. Unlike in Berlin though, the cops in Dortmund are better prepared: they cut the sculptures to shreds. But before they can do this, the counter-demonstrators are able to realise the full potential of their plan: their metallic barricade acts as a literal mirror held up to the alt-right, forcing marchers to reflect upon the city’s society.

Germany may not yet have won the fight against the alt-right, but it appears pioneering paths in direct action are helping to tackle problems peacefully and playfully.

Instead of alienating, Tools for Action are engaging. Entertainment and aesthetics can replace animosity and aggression. A little creativity can change a lot about the way we protest.

“Protests widen the rift between public and police”

By WILLIAM HOSIE

T

he only protest I’ve ever been caught up in happened three summers ago, one Saturday in August, when pro-Palestine rioters took over Edgware Road.

My confused and slightly worried 15-year-old self tried making his way through the crowd and in the process, ended up contributing five pounds to the Palestinian cause and receiving a free bracelet. I didn’t really know what I’d contributed five pounds to, but it felt like I’d done something good – until the protest turned violent, with a group of men choosing to boycott the local MacDonald’s. I’m still not really sure how that was effective.

Although the vast majority of the people protesting in August 2014 were of Arab ethnicity and thus directly linked to the cause they were defending, it seems a lot has changed in the past three years.

What was previously a political statement has become a wider cultural trend. Protests have become a mainstream part of our day-to-day lives. Protesting is hip, it’s edgy, it’s fashionable. You post your photo on Instagram to show the world you went to an anti-Trump rally, holding up a banner with a message about combatting fake news or something.

Last summer’s women’s marches are probably the most legitimate of recent protests. Yet at most protests nowadays, people don’t protest because they support the political cause being defended, but rather because protests are thrilling experiences. If people want to make a political statement, all they have to do is go online and launch a petition on change.org. If they’re joining protests, disruptive marches, and riots, it’s because these have become exhilarating spectacles. Who can design the best poster? Which brilliant mind has come up with the best slogan? Riots are euphoric events, disguised as political activism.

One can explain this unsettling new trend by the change in the political climate over the past few years. Not only have politics and showbiz never been as intertwined as they are today (the Glastonbury chants of “Oh Jeremy Corbyn” epitomise this), but political discourse

Right: ‘Sign ‘O’ the Times’ (1987)

by Prince

Left: Duck Soup (1933), director: Leo McCarey

This was the eponymous lead single from the 1987 album, the first from Prince since splitting with his band The Revolution.

The song deals with the ravages of 1980s’ America, from AIDS to the Challenger disaster, gang violence and poverty. Using sparse, electronic instrumentation, employing stock sounds from a sampling synthesizer, Prince melancholically sings; “You turn on the telly and every other story/Is tellin; you somebody died,” taking a subversive view of the yuppie’s decade, and exposing the dark underbelly to the feel-good pop music culture of that era.

The Marx Brothers were irascible comedians who had conquered Broadway in the 1920s, and were brought to Hollywood by Paramount where they unleashed their brand of anarchic madness on cinema, ridiculing elite colleges, high society, and bourgeois morality. Yet their most challenging comedy, which flopped on release, was Duck Soup (1933).

Behind its non sequitur of a title lies a satirical farce ridiculing strongmen dictators like Mussolini (who banned it) and the armaments industry which encouraged internecine wars, social protest mixed up with slapstick comedy in truly Marxian fashion.

in the past years has also turned nasty. The debate of measured arguments has become a sour exchange of insults. The reawakening of the hard-left through Corbyn, and the intensified voices of the hard-right in post-Brexit Britain, has created a populist and volatile backdrop where opinions are more extreme.

The gap between the right and left extremities of the spectrum continues to widen, causing riots.

The increase in protests is only one symptom of the anger that typifies our current political landscape.

Journalist Cosmo Landesman argues that protests, particularly in America, are no longer about the battle of ideas, but about the battle against the police. That the police behave in a discriminatory way towards minorities is a fact. And yet the current level of confidence and trust in the police is higher in metropolitan areas than it has been for a while.

Landesman deplores the systematic targeting of the police in the States, explaining that this tendency only overshadows other, arguably more pressing problems, like gang culture and black-onblack crime, both of which cause more deaths than the rarer (though non-negligible) shooting of black youths by policemen.

Gang crime is not just an issue which anti-police and anti-establishment protests unwittingly overshadow: it’s something they make more easily possible. Tom Gash, author of Criminal: The Truth About Why People Do Bad Things, analyses the ways in which legitimate protests are being used as a cover for a very small minority of people, out to cause trouble.

Rather than being a particularly vocal expression of democracy and free speech, riots mark the end of democracy. Rather than helping protestors achieve legitimate responses to their grievances, protests widen the rift between the public and police, representatives of an establishment keen to close ranks and cancel public enquiries.

So don’t indulge in protests. They have become a young adult fad with little, if no, effect. If you want to let your hair down in public with a mob of cool youths, just wait for Notting Hill Carnival.

Friday, 20 October 2017 | Cherwell

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music

cherwellmusic listen to our latest playlists

Playlist

Protesting through music

P

rotesting is an act that seeks to draw attention to a pressing issue, one that may be unrecognised by its audience. The struggles since the 20th century have been depicted through song by both

the oppressed and the oppressor. The most evocative works always come from the oppressed, whose desperation and struggle produces inspired works Music is an evocative way of pulling interest to a particular cause.

Antonis Xylouris, whose stage name is Psarantonis, performing in Greece. (PHOTO: NEIL JENKINS/FLICKR)

Crete’s mountain musician of mystery

I

By JONATHAN EGID

Billie Holiday ‘Strange Fruit’

The Specials ‘Nelson Mandela’

Holiday introduced this song to the US at the height of Jim Crow racism.

Her bone-chilling vocals express sadness and frustration.

A Wadham bop favourite, ‘Nelson Mandela’ is arguably the most famous protest song ever, pointing audiences to the apartheid struggle.

The Clash ‘Washington Bullets’

M.I.A.

This reggae influenced song challenges the American imperialism rife in Reagan’s America, name checking the Bay of Pigs and Tibet.

A Tamil refugee herself, M.I.A., full name Mathangi Arulpragasam, wrote ‘Borders’ to bring attention to the devastating refugee crisis in 2015.

‘Borders’

Review The ‘new’ jazz must be seen, as well as heard

Pick of the week

King Krule ‘Logos’

saw Psarantonis play only once, at the Amari Valley music festival almost a year ago, in a tiny mountain village on the isle of Crete surrounded by the peaks of Kedros and the towering Psiloritis. He arrived late, staggeringly drunk, glaring out at the crowd and his fellow musicians from beneath a shaggy expanse of hair and beard.

Sitting hunched over like a gnarled olive tree in the middle of the stage with his lyra – a graceful three stringed, bowed instrument, not to be confused with the harplike lyre of ancient Greece – he began slowly to play a traditional ritizika song, a slow historical narrative about the deeds of the mighty dead, tales which his native island has in abundance.

In between berating his fellow musicians and violently bashing his lyra, the septuagenarian growled ferociously into the microphone in his thick Cretan dialect, roaring ‘my roots are eagles, I will have the light of the heavens’, as the bagpipes droned on and the thundering drums struggled to keep apace. There is truly no experience in music quite like a Psarantonis performance.

King Krule’s latest album The OOZ contains all manner of moods and styles, ranging from chilled ballads to energetic punk. ‘Logos’ however is a relaxing jazz track the stands out.

Krule’s cooly delivered spoken word is accompanied with cathartic saxaphone solos, soothing guitars, and a chilled samba beat.

The latest offering from the ‘new’ Jazz scene is a innovative sucess, writes Harriet Jones Ezra Collective Juan Pablo : The Philosopher

7/10

His appearance of a mountain man is no deceit, Psarantonis is a native of Anogeia (literally “highground”) a large village on the northern slopes of Crete’s tallest mountain; razed to the ground by Nazi forces during the occupation for harbouring mountain rebels and British spies.

There is truly no experience quite like a Psaratonis performance Indeed “mountain rebels” is the title of one of his most intriguing works. This evokes the defiance of Crete’s heroic wartime resistance (the Cretans were the only civilian population to engage in armed resistance against the Nazis without an army) a struggle often overlooked in histories of the war.

But it also refrences the island’s seven-century long struggle against foreign oppression at the hands of the Ottomans and the Venetians.

In the song most representative of his style, the spectacular ‘Dias’, Psarantonis masterfully builds up scratchy, almost dissonant layers

L

ondon-based Ezra Collective’s second album Juan Pablo: The Philosopher was hotly anticipated by the group’s fans. With a sound that resists definition, the band’s influences range from jazz, hip hop, grime and afrobeat to reggae. Ezra Collective is made up of key members from London’s ‘new’ jazz scene, and features brothers TJ and Femi Koleoso on bass and drums respectively, Joe Armon-Jones on piano, Dylan Jones on trumpet and James Mollison on tenor sax.

Punchy afrobeat track ‘Juan Pablo’ wouldn’t be out of place in the depths of a basement club in London. The Philosopher showcases the Ezra Collective musicians by incorporating stop-chorus sections, enabling soloists to showcase their fresh improvising skills over breaks.

Preceded by a spacey, lilting trumpet interlude played by Dylan Jones, aptly named ‘Dylan’s Dilemma’, the introspective ‘People in Trouble’ is a

of lyra melodies into a tempestuous, frenzied wall of sound. As the song reaches its wildest and most unrestrained, a voice begins to emerge from the vortex of sound, clambering out like Zeus himself from the Diktean cave.

This voice is inexpressibly rough. If some speak with a gravellike voice, Psarantonis’ is a cliff of sheer limestone. It is a voice of a parched shepherd, the war-cry of an ancient warrior, a man bellowing at God. In a place where people are constitutionally mistrustful of politicians and intellectuals, Psarantonis is something of a legend.

The religious, historical, and mythological subject matter of his songs, the connection to deep musical traditions and his undeniable authenticity are hugely appealing to generations of Cretans who have begun to lose touch with the way of life practised on that island since the times of the Minoans.

In the eyes of many he already sits in the pantheon of Crete’s greatest sons, rivalling the great Nikos Kazantzakis and Doménikos Theotokópoulos (known to the western world as El Greco) as an artistic titan. Considering that Cretans can number Zeus, Ariadne, and king Minos amongst their number, this is no mean feat. step away from the usual upbeat vibes of Ezra Collective. To begin, echoing strings accompany the trumpet and the band enters gradually. Later, a driving bassline starts and creates an infectious groove alongside the drums and piano. Joe Armon-Jones bursts into a burning jazz piano solo, which is a highlight of the album.

To finish the EP, James Mollison launches into a sax interlude ‘James Speaks to the Galaxy’, which leads into ‘Space Is the Place’; an innovative, radical take on Sun Ra’s composition. With cosmic leanings and spiritual jazz influences, this track is a high contender for the star piece of the album.

Juan Pablo: The Philosopher places Ezra Collective as one of the most exciting bands on the current UK jazz scene, and points towards a sparkling future of genre-bending, new generation music. As with most jazz acts: best listened to live, this band should be seen, as well as heard.

Cherwell | Friday, 20 October 2017

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film Big Mouth and those other, more awkward, holes Jonnie Barrow finds heart and humour in Netflix’s Big Mouth

T

he new Netflix Original, Big Mouth, has generated online flak of such vitriol and wilful ignorance that it’s almost breathtak-

ing.

How can a show whose trailer currently has 20, 000 dislikes on Youtube compared to 5000 likes, and has been labelled as “thinly veiled paedophilia” by some Youtube commentators also be (if the critics, and yours truly, are to be believed) one of the most brilliant and original pieces of programming the streaming service has ever made?

The answer is quite simple: the raw elements of the show, when removed from their context, look pretty offensive.

It’s an adult-oriented animated show about 12-year-old kids on the cusp of puberty, graphically grappling with hormones, body changes, and other sex-related social difficulties of growing up.

By graphically, examples include hormonal urges and behaviours physically manifesting themselves as a Hormone Monster/Monstress

Rewind

TV memes for deadline -drowning teens

By BECKY COOK

(a kind of horny, moody, disruptive fairy-godmother archetype), and very frank discussions between a child and a monster (who has a dick for a nose) about masturbation.

Also at one point in the trailer, a teenage girl has a friendly conversation with her anthropomorphic vagina, who is voiced by Kristen Wiig.

One of the show’s key creatives and voice actors is Nick Kroll, a man whose appearances in films are so numerous that you are sure to find a show or movie you’ve liked him in, and his propensity to shock clearly runs through Big Mouth.

But while Big Mouth is just as funny as other animated gems for grown-ups like Rick and Morty or Archer, it has a far larger heart and inclusive message than the profanity and shock humour would initially suggest.

The message of the show is

essentially that growing up is rubbish, messy and difficult, but it affects all of us so don’t worry too much, and while we’re here, we may as well laugh about it. The writing is equally sympathetic to boys and girls, highlighting the potential horrors of periods just as well as the difficulties of premature ejaculations.

Big Mouth isn’t afraid to show how icky it can feel to grow up, but it’s quick to find comedy in the pathos that also manages to celebrate bodily change, and every individual who faces the unknown with courage.

There’s one episode which features a boy and his sexual relationship with an anthropomorphic pillow in a storyline which is nothing short of inspired.

And that’s the genius of this show: it normalises puberty in a sympathetic way, while also making gasp-inducing bawdy jokes

with wit and style that’s funny through sheer juxtaposition.

It’s like a sex-positive, vaguely educational riff on the best of Judd Apatow’s early movies, curiously

The Lion King

The Great Gatsby

2001:Space Odyssey

Now considered a classic, this animated adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet surprisingly did not go down well with its core demographic.

Themes of fratricide and betrayal left many parents aghast, as did the violent stampede wildebeest scene at the beginning. So when Mufasa exited stage-left, so did mums, dads, and their allegedly traumatised tots.

Before Baz Luhrman applied his characteristic kitsch to Fitzgerald’s classic, the story received its first Hollywood panning a year after the book’s release. The author wasn’t happy, and left the screening before the credits.

The New York Times was left equally as aghast. Its reviewer remarked how none of ‘the players have succeeded in developing the characters’. Oh dear.

Although considered today to be one of Kubrick’s finest films, , the reception of Space Odyssey when it was released was lukewarm at best: 241 viewers reportedly walked out of the cinema at the first screening. When Rock Hudson passed down the aisle on his way out he allegedly said, ‘Will somebody tell me what the hell this is about?’

A teenage girl has a friendly chat with her anthromorphic vagina combining fourth-wall breaks and dick jokes with an underlying sweetness to intoxicating effect.

It’s probably the most unique show to come out this year, and it’s certainly fun to justify to your friends.

Get ahead of the crowd and binge-watch Big Mouth before

Not to watch

The films that caused audiences to walk out

For the most part, memes have the lifespan of a housefly. They have come to rule our virtual reality, and their casual browsing occupies a hefty chunk of essay procrastination.

While many are spawned from the news, or dead gorillas, others look to the world of film and TV for memeworthy matter. The outlandish and expressive animation of Spongebob Squarepants, for example, has created a range of resilient memes, from Mr Krabs spinning in a whirl of doom, to Spongebob’s forefather Primitive Sponge, who has come to represent various primal fears.

These memes allow audiences to squeeze even more laughter and emotional significance from shows, regardless of whether they were axed decades ago or are still onscreen today. Dormant fanbases, such as the Friends followers, have been revived and ensure the charm never wanes.

Their status as inside jokes relies on the exclusivity of the references; in order to fully understand our resident Facebook page ‘Oxford Uni Peep Show Quotes’, you really have to have seen Peep Show.

This differs from the ‘you had to be there’ nature of an inside joke, because there is suddenly a clear way of moving from someone on the outside looking in to someone in on the joke. ‘You had to be there’ becomes ‘you have to see this’. The ‘Etcetera’ and ‘Patricia’ memes from Split made more people watch the film. Similarly, a huge component of the unparalleled popularity of Love Island this year was the meme pages it bred. Online, the show was virtually inescapable; everyone was talking about it or tagging people in memes about it. Little did Chris Hughes know that a shot of him looking morose in bed was going to become the image of the summer.

The latent power of memes to influence the popularity of a TV show or a film has been discovered. Our desire to understand the meme makes us want to seek out the media being referenced. Fervent fanbases have adopted memes as a way to reinforce their love for shows, as well as foster affinity with other fans. This has spawned memes focusing on increasingly obscure reference points, which in turn narrows the circle of enthusiasts and solidifies their loyalty.

Studios have begun to recognise the power of meme culture. The viral marketing campaign in the run up to the release of Straight Outta Compton affected the film’s box office success.

The #StraightOutta meme-generator let fans alter the film’s logo. This canny form of free marketing won a Shorty Award, as 9 million memes were generated and the film raked in $60 million more than anticipated upon opening.Humour and the internet have proven powerful enough to unite existing fans and infuse new life into sleeping art. They are our cultural movement, upholding the film and TV we love most.

Friday, 20 October 2017 | Cherwell

14 oxbow

books Meet Woolf’s doll house inspiration

By ALEX JACOBS

A

miniaturised book, no larger than a thumb, written

by Vita Sackville-West, is to be published early next week.

Originally written in 1922, the tiny volume was kept in the Queen Mary’s Doll’s House, a 1:12 scale replica of an Edwardian house, along with works by other eminent authors such as Thomas Hardy, J.M. Barrie and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Entitled A Note of Explanation, the novel was written exclusively for the project, and has never before been published.

Vita Sackville-West, a close friend and possible lover of Virginia Woolf, was said to have inspired Woolf’s parody-biographical novel Orlando.

Elements of the gender-shifting protagonist were mirrored in Sackville-West’s own life and behaviour – she was known to cross-dress and had multiple male alter egos, the most well-known of which was Julian.

Woolf even went so far as to dedicate the novel to her.

A Note of Explanation is a charming tale of a sprite who inhabits the Queen Mary’s Doll’s House, unobserved by the guests and Queen Mary.

She fulfils a similar role to Woolf’s Orlando character, time-travelling through fairy tale history, and observing many of the major moments, such as Cinderella’s Ball, the creation of Aladdin’s palace and the kiss that awakens Sleeping Beauty. She has made a home for herself in this miniature palace, and the novel follows her delightful antics.

The new edition of A Note of Explanation will be a more easily readable 25cm x 17.5cm, featuring an afterword by Sackville-West’s biographer, Matthew Dennison.

The Queen Mary’s Doll’s House collection is held at Windsor Castle, and available for visitators.

The book, according to the Royal Collection Trust, “reveals that Vita came up with a similar conception at least four years before Woolf began Orlando.”

Exploring the poetry of the everyday world Quiet, mysterious Haruki Murakami fuses local culture with global emotions, writes Lucy Enderby

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any of his fans have long tipped Murakami for the Nobel Prize in Literature, with his cult-like followers packing the ceremony as they do his signings and readings. When he missed out to Kazuo Ishiguro this year, his ‘Harukists’ as they have been dubbed, were disappointed once again.

The author himself however, notoriously shies away from the glare of the media. On his blog ‘Mr Murakami’s Place’, he spoke of his annoyance at the annual fuss surrounding the Nobel Prize, telling a fan “This is not a horse race.” Indeed, despite having book sales to rival those of J.K Rowling and Dan Brown, he maintains a relatively low profile, rarely giving interviews and refusing to comment on most public affairs. This quiet, mysterious aspect of his character no doubt fuels his cult like following.

He started writing his first novel, Hear the Wind Sing at the age of 29, after a passing thought while sat watching a baseball game. He owned a jazz bar in Waseda for nearly 10 years with his

Retrospective

Assasination attempts and the violence that tore Kingston apart

By JACOB CHELI

wife, and has said in an interview with Context magazine how he was “deeply influenced by this kind of music- the rhythm, the improvisation, the sound, the style”.

Indeed, like jazz, his books often seem to have been shaped by a fusion of cultures. Although he was born of two Japanese literature teachers, his work is influenced most notably by Western authors, from Dostoevsky to Vonnegut.

Growing up in a post-war era, the influence American culture had

Like jazz, his books often seem to have been shaped by a fusion of cultures on his work is clear, often incorporating these clearly into his work. His 1987 nostalgic love story Norwegian Wood takes its name from the Beatles song, whilst he has translated into Japanese the works of authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Raymond Chandler.

“When you fall in love, the

J

amaican author Marlon James’ 2015 Man Booker Prize winning novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings, is an epic in the truest sense of the word. The first book by a Jamaican author to win the prize, it spans three decades of Jamaican history and legend. It tells the story of the attempted assassination of Bob Marley and the gang-related violence tearing Kingston apart, even as the CIA moved in for fear of the Island falling to communist powers, in the wake of an influx of guns and an increase and escalation of violence that is both political and gratuitous.

This book took me two years, on and off, to finish. It is a complex, twisted spiral and haemorrhage of places, characters, accents and deaths and simply trying to keep track of who hates who, who fucks who and who eventually kills who is exhausting.

Each chapter is written from a certain character’s perspective, and James has an uncanny ability to throw you deep into the heart of whichever character’s turn it is to tell the story. His command of language is simply unparalleled in comparison to anything I have read before or since; he manages purely through language and dialect, not just in speech but in prose as well,

natural thing to do is give yourself to it. That’s what I think. It’s just a form of sincerity”, as the pages of Norwegian Wood proclaim.

The author is known for his pensive, surreal novels that dip into the metaphysical realm, but which centre around contemporary emotions with magically ordinary characters. He has spoken of aiming to fuse a poetic version of the everyday world with a fantastic, supernatural realm in his work.

Imperfect, unfulfilled, and passive characters who feel deeply populate his novels.

His latest book, Men Without Women, is a collection of short stories about men who find

themselves alone. Like Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage, he touches once more on the concern of loneliness.

In an interview with The Guardian, he said “I’m an outcast of the Japanese literary world”, with the country’s top literary critics dismissing his lack of traditionalism and awareness of language as a fictive construct.

Despite this, his novels seem to gravitate back towards Japan, but addressing subjects of love, introspection and surrealism which have a truly transnational appeal.

Jay Rubin notes that “You don’t go to Murakami for views of society but of the human brain.”

to tell you everything about the characters that present themselves.

With countless levels of Jamaican patois, you can determine a character’s intelligence, education, social position and aggression, before the story seamlessly turns to an American CIA agent, equally wellrepresented, or a British ghost, or a gay hitman from New York, taking breaks from screwing up his contract with his lover in a tenement block.

Kei Miller wrote in a review for The Guardian that “this is a novel that explores…the aesthetics of violence”, and this seems true of a book compared many times to the

work of Quentin Tarantino. It is an unashamedly violent book.

It does not shy away from confronting anything, and the hyperreal descriptions of violence, sex, drugs and murder are painfully vivid. It’s a book you have to put down every now and then just to get a break from James’ twisted and detailed reimagining of a series of events so shrouded in secrecy that they became myth, or to refamiliarise yourself with one of the 75 characters presented in a list at the beginning. The ambition and scope of this book is astonishing, pick it up if you have lots of time and few

Cherwell | Friday, 20 October 2017

oxbow 15

theatre Confessions of a Drama Queen

A gripping political thriller straight off Broadway

Harry Hatwell reviews the Tony-winning Lincoln Center production of Oslo on its UK press night on London’s South Bank

★★★★★ Oslo Lyttleton, National Theatre 18th September, 7.30pm

O

n paper, J.T. Rogers’ Oslo sounds like the most bizarre of plays for the commercial stage. Centring on the Israeli-Arab conflict and the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords signed by Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, I thought it would be slow, and political in the worst of senses.

I was wrong. Bartlett Sher has directed the most fantastically attention-grapping production I have seen at the National Theatre in a long deal.

Those seeking a detailed exposition of the intricacies of the Peace Process and the contents of the Accords will be sourly disappointed.

Rogers’ presents a deeply personal story set against the backdrop of

Five minutes with

Charlotte Vickers, University drama officer

the tale of two peoples - but it is only a backdrop.

The two protagonists are the relatively unknown sociologists from deepest Norway, who thought they had a new way to broker peace between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. From a castle in Oslo, Terje Rod-Larsen and Mona Juul – both played exquisitely by Toby Stephens and Lydia Leonard – set about trying to bring together representatives from the Israeli government and the PLO, to sit face-to-face and negotiate.

At the time, it was the first time that any Israeli official had negotiated with members of the PLO. Negotiating with the terrorist organisation was illegal.

This element of the historical fabric of the play adds an extra layer of excitement and drama to Oslo. The intimate set, designed Michael Yeargan, really makes the audience feel involved in the secret talks.

Even though the script is somewhat confused by some lines directed straight to the audience, I still felt as if I was both watch-

T

his week, we chat to Charlotte Vickers, the University drama officer, about how she got to where she is today, and why she wouldn’t stage her favourite play at Oxford.

How did you get involved with drama at Oxford?

I came to Oxford knowing that I wanted to go into theatre professionally after I left, so I already knew that I wanted to get involved. I was at Pembroke, so I was lucky enough that there was a college musical every year – I added the director on Facebook had (what was then a very intimidating!) coffee with him, and joined as Assistant Director.

I messaged as many people as Facebook would let me find, and then roped in all my friends to help me on the first play I directed: April Di Angelis’ Playhouse Creatures at the BT Studio. It all kind of snowballed from there.

The shame continues

By KATIE SAYER

B

ing and participating in the Oslo discussions.

Despite the high diplomacy and the political intrigue, Oslo offers a number of moments of great comedy. Sitting somewhere between Yes, Prime Minister and House of Cards, Geraldine Alexander, as the housekeeper and cook at the Oslo residence, offers great comic relief.

The unique approach of Larsen and Juul forced the parties to approach each other as equals and friends when they were not at the negotiating table.

These scenes are full of jokes and gags, allowing us multidimensional views of Philips Arditti’s Uri Savir (Director-General of the Israeli foreign ministry) and Peter Polycarpou’s Ahmed Qurie (PLO Finance Minister).

The multi-faceted set – an almost palatial room with plain walls – features stunning projections from 59 Productions.

When Lydia Leonard’s character brings the audience up to date with current events in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, she is surrounded by images of the incidences as they unfold.

The effect is a theatrical experience which is truly immersive.

The play begins with the Jerusalem skyline projected across the stage; Oslo does not just transport us from London’s South Bank to a castle outside Oslo, but also to

Israel, and eventually the White House. As can be expected from a play of such complexity, and one which tries to err on the side of political caution, I found myself leaving the theatre with more questions than answers.

I can’t help but question Rogers’ motives in writing Larsen and Juul’s story. The end of the play

How did you get into your current job?

The week before my finals this May, I was freaking out about the future and the UDO application deadline was looming. One night I got back home from the library after a long day of revision, and just decided to send off an application so I’d feel like I’d achieved something that day! After my finals were done, I was considering my options, and it seemed like a great way to make a difference to the system that had helped me so much.

And now here we are.

the Pilch), in rehearsals, and we had one rehearsal in which we finally had a break-through with the central scene. Everything around it fell into place, it was pretty magical!

What’s your happiest memory of drama at Oxford?

That’s a tough one.

There was a really special moment on The Last Five Years (which I directed at

The most fantastically attention-grabbing production I’ve seen at the National Theatre sees the characters tell us where they are now, in 2017: Larsen seems to be defending his actions as the only effective way to beginning the peace process, while Juul appears to criticise this.

Everyone in the audience knew of the terrorist attack in July on Israeli border guards on the Temple Mount and the ensuing crisis; in light of this development, it felt uneasy for Stephens’ character to be so gushing in his self-praise.

Oslo chronicles a process started in 1992. Peace is not forthcoming.

Oslo is at the Harold Pinter Theatre from 2 October until 30 December.

What’s your favourite play?

My absolute favourite play is Tony Kushner’s Angels In America.

How would you want to stage it if you had to put it on at Oxford?

Actually, I wouldn’t. It’s too huge and would be too expensive. I think someone put on Millennium Approaches a few years ago, and it lost a ridiculous amount of money. If I had another chance to put something on as a student at Oxford, I’d do The Winter’s Tale

y some divine miracle, I appear to be still alive and writing this column, having not died of shame after the OUDS Freshers Welcome Drinks, an event that I had feared was altogether too possible.

I have to say, when I was imagining what life would be like at Oxford, this is not quite what I had envisaged. I pictured wholesome intellectual discussions in front of the Rad Cam, romantic punts down the river Cherwell, perhaps a scandalous love affair with the future Prime Minister.

I did not picture myself throwing up a bottle and a half of Chardonnay on to the deer park at Magdalen, or being told by the head of OUDS that “yes, we’ve thought of having gender blind auditions for Macbeth, and the reason you didn’t get the part had more to do with your abysmal stage presence than your genitalia”.

I have therefore decided to infiltrate the drama scene another way, by involving myself with theatre reviewing.

I can think of no better outlet for my bitterness and jealousy than by writing a 500-word summary of a play that will air briefly online and be read by no-one.

I am thinking of applying to The Oxford Student, widely considered to be the university’s superior paper, because apparently the Cherwell hasn’t published a negative theatre review in over six months, and the theatre editors seem to be completely useless.

I have noticed that The Oxford Student seems to be begging people to write for it, and that its front page isn’t quite symmetrical, so I am hopeful that this endeavour will succeed.

Plus, I have loads of experience in writing - I actually used to write Twilight fanfiction on the internet, so I don’t think the Ox Stu will be much of a step up in terms of intellectual challenge. Wish me luck with this new venture! Adieu, fair readers.

at the Keble O’Reilly, with something of a Star Wars twist. Perhaps it’s best that I won’t get that chance.

Who’s your inspiration?

So many people! I love Emma Rice, I think her attitude and unflinching optimism are incredible, particularly given how difficult a time she’s had recently.

My favourite director is Marianne Elliott, whose shows all push boundaries and make me think about how weird it is to be human.

Closer to home, friends who inspire me are Lucy Hayes (current OUDS president), Ellie Keele (ex-University drama officer), and Helena Jackson (ex-OUDS president). They push me to be a better artist and a better person.

Do you have any advice for freshers who might want to get involved in the Oxford drama scene?

Go watch things! And follow the cast and crew to the pub afterwards.

Satire HOROSCOPES

Your star sign can tell you a lot about your time at Oxford Aries – It’ll all be going so well, until your tutor lets slip that your admission was a mistake.

Libra – Private school? Completed it. Oxford? Smashed it. Bring on mid-level consulting!

Taurus – You’ll end up editing the satire section of Cherwell as a distraction from your impending finals, but nothing can fill the void in your heart.

Scorpio – Nobody will ever write an Oxlove about you. Get over it.

Cancer – You’ll find that reinventing yourself as ‘the Pussyman’ over the summer before uni isn’t very popular at Wadham.

Leo – Honestly, no-one but you thinks it’s ok to wear a gilet to Bridge.

Virgo – You drop out to find yourself in Asia, but get trapped in an underground fight club in Bangkok, never to return to England.

More Tory vandalism discovered

Sagittarius – You’re an accomplished athlete and actor, but all anyone remembers you for is that one episode of Shark Tales.

Capricorn – You’ll sleep with your college spouse in your first term, and spend the next three years unable to make eye-contact with them.

Aquarius – You’ll get through to the end of your time in Oxford alive, only to be killed at graduation by taking a mortar-board to the eye.

Pisces – You’ll turn up to a tutorial still drunk from the night before, and while you now have to meet with the dean of welfare weekly to discuss your alcholism, at least your tute partner thinks you’re a legend.

Cherwell can today reveal the fi rst images of more religious vandalism in Oxford.

Discovered just a short way from the building on St Giles, where a papal flag was torn down last term by a drunk OUCA official, were these SHOCKING images of Mother Theresa May. The culprit remains unidentified, but Cherwell hopes this Banskyimitating bandit is brought to

Seven Ways to Stop Your Bike Being Stolen Chain your bike to a policeman It’s important to remember that law enforcement professionals are here to prevent crime. If you can’t find a suitable location to lock down your bike, find your nearest bobby or PCSO, and lock your bike to them with a sturdy D-lock.

Superglue your bike to a wall Would-be criminals will find it pretty difficult to steal your bike if every single moving part has been attached to a brick wall with industrial strength adhesive.

Disguise your bike as a horse - The decline of the horse as a means of transportation means that horse theft is now viewed as less profitable by organised crime. So stick a mane and a tail on your bike, and fool the hoodlums.

Get your bike put into witness protection - If your bike testifies in the kidnapping of one of its fellow velocipedes, the full weight of the law will protect it. A 24-hour guard and a safe house is just the beginning, until your bike can take the stand.

Never dismount from your bike - If you never leave your bike out of your sight, and ride it while eating, sleeping, and everything else, then it’ll be totally invulnerable.

Enchant your bike - A simple hex which kills anyone other than you who tries to ride your bike is a surefire deterrent for criminals. Just remember not to lend it to your friend without removing the curse.

Don’t own a bike - Joke’s on you, bike thieves!

justice swiftly.

Cherwell’s very own resident art historian, Magenta Hopkins-Turner has provided her interpretation of the latest images: “In style and in content, the anonymous artist engages in a Banksyesque paradigm, interpreting the most extreme version of post-contemporary Warholist nuance to fit his own political ends.”

It’s clear the artist intends a

statement on the relationship of the Conservative Party and the Roman Catholic Church. The colours of Mother Teresa’s habit, blue and white, are also those of the Scottish saltire, a coded reference to the Union” In sum, the artist’s aim is to reconcile the two organisations through street art, a medium to which both are historically susceptible.”

QUIZZES

WEATHER

Social media has reacted with shock and anger at the announcement that the St Hugh’s University Challenge team will be entirely made up of men, because there will be no women for anonymous males to lust over.

Twitter user @B1gman42 told Cherwell of his “utter disgust” that St Hughs wasn’t providing him with “television totty” and urged them to be more careful in team selection next time.

The cause of the apocalyptic red skies over parts of England on Monday has finally been reveiled,

by Meterologists, to be Hurricane Ophelia.

The storm is reportedly on her way to Denmark to confront her old flame for not responding to her texts.

Angry about his plans for revenge against his uncle, she has taken to the skies to make him deliver a reassuring soliloquy.

Outrage over St. Hugh’s UC team

Hurricane Ophelia to confront Hamlet

by Rebecca Marks @missmarksart

Rearrange the shaded letters to give the title of a book released

QUIZ

this week (some of the answers in the grid may be hints...) __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

Name the work of fiction in which these brands appear.

ACROSS

BEER

NEWSPAPERS

1 Dharma Initiative 2 Löbrau 3 Monkeyshine 4 Barliman’s Best

1 Daily Planet 2 The Daily Prophet 3 The Borchester Echo 4 The Walford Gazette

BURGERS

SHOPS

1 Krusty Burger 2 Big Kahuna Burger 3 Paunch Burger 4 Krabby Patty

1 Raj’s Newsagents 2 Al’s Toy Barn 3 Kwik-E-Mart 4 Borgin and Burkes

CIGARETTES

RESTAURANTS

1 El Dorado 2 Victory Cigarettes 3 Laramie 4 Red Apple

1 Frosty Palace 2 The Whistle Stop Cafe 3 Central Perk 4 Cafe Nervosa

6 Vibrate (5) 7 Roman goddess of dawn (6) 9 On land (6) 10 Malevolent spirits (6) 13 Vessel (3) 14 Norwegian archipelago (8) 16 Vow (4) 17 Position of nobility (4) 18 Withstand (4) 20 A piece of evidence (4) 22 Covered, protected (8) 24 Large ship (3) 26 Soft white calcium sulphate mineral (6) 27 Natural symbols having spiritual significance (6) 29 Leather lace-up shoe (6) 30 Final Greek letter (5)

DOWN

1 Discern, observe furtively (3) 2 Hit with a smashed bottle or cup (5) 3 Pistol 8) 4 Vast treeless Arctic region (6) 5 Naval rank between captain and rear admiral (9) 8 Alleviates, corrects (5) 11 Situated in the north (8) 12 Nuanced feature of an argument (8) 15 Leaves (6,3) 19 Negatively charged particle (8) 21 Unswept (5) 23 Recollection (6) 25 Honey-yellow (5) 28 Toilet bowl (3)

Last week’s crossword: Did you spot all of the STEPHEN KING novels hidden in the grid?

ACROSS 1 It 8 Finders 9 Keepers 11 Dome 13 Things 15 Bat 16 Roe 18 Fan 19 Under 21 The 22 Um 23 Mae 25 Land 27 Rose 29 And 31 LA 32 Bra 33 Green 34 Bed 36 Cat 38 Joy 39 Misery 41 Tops 43 Revival 44 Shining 47 Oi DOWN 1 If 2 Ti 3 Adder 4 Brat 5 Wedge 6 Ape 7 Dream 10 Firestarter 12 Obama 14 Nor 17 Cher 18 Full 20 Need 21 Ta 23 Mile 24 Dead 26 Dark 28 Sleep 30 Na 33 Gas 35 Tower 36 Cigar 37 Stand 40 Yoho 42 Pit 45 No 46 GI QUIZ: BEER 1 Lost 2 Futurama 3 Friends 4 The Lord of the Rings BURGERS 1 The Simpsons 2 Pulp Fiction (and other Quentin Tarantino films) 3 Parks and Recreation 4 SpongeBob SquarePants CIGARETTES 1 Family Guy 2 1984 3 The Simpsons 4 Again, Pulp Fiction and other Tarantino films NEWSPAPERRS 1 Superman 2 Harry Potter 3 The Archers 4 EastEnders SHOPS 1 David Walliams’ novels 2 Toy Story 2 3 The Simpsons 4 Harry Potter RESTAURANTS 1 Grease 2 Fried Green Tomatoes 2 3 Friends 4 Frasier

Gemini – They all laughed at you when you said you’d be Oxford Union President. They’re not laughing now.

EXCLUSIVE

Cherwell | Friday, 20 October 2017

9

Opinion

The Harvey Weinstein scandal has shone the spotlight on Hollywood’s institutional sexism

Shivani Ananth

Misogyny and oppression run through the veins of Hollywood

T

he story of a millionaire movie mogul at the apex of Hollywood’s hierarchy, using his power to demean, demoralise, and degrade budding actresses is a plot too disturbing for even the most sordid horror fi lm. It’s a tale which exposes the deep-running misogyny, exploitation, and oppression which runs through the veins of Hollywood. A tale which fundamentally undermines and destabilises an industry which is meant to be a beacon of progressivism and tolerance.

Since The New York Times broke their investigation exposing years of sexual harassment and abuse cases perpetrated by Harvey Weinstein, many actresses have bravely spoken out about their experiences of the former fi lm titan.

The hashtag ‘#MeToo’ has been trending on social media plaforms – an overt, powerful expression of solidarity, courage and defiance against such predators.

The story has led to an outpouring of women (and men) speaking out against the patriarchy and the frequent cases of sexism in the fi lm industry, as well as opening a much-needed dialogue about the dangerous power structures which exist in Hollywood.

However, whilst I applaud the heated debate and discussion this exposé has generated, as well as how it has galvanised and empowered women across every industry

to share their stories, I can’t help but feel slightly desensitised by it all.

It feels like a narrative too frequently reworked and retold.

The fi lm industry has been tainted by scandals such as this, whether through Roman Polanski being charged for having sexual relations with a 13-year-old girl in 1977 or accusations of Woody Allen molesting his adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn. Whilst many have of course condemned both fi lm-makers, they have also been commended by the industry, with Polanski even receiving an Oscar for his 2003 fi lm ‘The Pianist’. The scandals appear to live exclusively within short-term memory.

This is an industry that is becoming more politicised each day, turning into a platform where high-profi le stars use their fame and influence to push for social and political change. That’s perhaps why seeing their occasional acceptance, indifference and compliance towards this type of behaviour feels worthy of scrutiny.

The glossy and polished George Clooney voiced his disgust at Weinstein’s actions, but admitted that it was a widely known fact that “Harvey’s a dog”. That, in itself, is part of the problem that has enabled men like Weinstein to brazenly and unapologetically mistreat women without having to suffer any consequences. To accept misogyny as being a type of banter, as “Harvey just being Harvey” not

only validates their behaviour – giving them a sense of invincibility and immunity – but is also why so many women are petrified to speak out against such misconduct, for fear their accounts would be ignored and dismissed.

It creates a culture of shame and inv a lidat ion for victims, and allows an environment of intimidation to fester under the surface.

The industry has displayed a universal disbelief regarding Weinstein – a response that can’t help but feel tinged with insincerity, especially when looking at how many used the whispers of Weinstein’s indecent behaviour as a punchline for their monologues. Seth McFarlane once said in an award show that “you fi ve ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein”. Whilst acclaimed series 30 Rock made light of the situation, with Jane Krakowski’s character Jenna Maroney remarking how she “turned down intercourse with Harvey Weinstein on no less than three occasions”.

As horrifying as this whole episode has been, this was one component of the story that I simply could not comprehend. For

Dismissing such actions as ‘banter’ makes these men seem invincible

an industry to make light of sexual abuse and predatory behaviour, and for those jokes to remain unnoticed and unchallenged is a shocking reminder of how far we still need to go in terms of gender equality. The passivity and in some cases silence displayed by Hollywood, reflects a common attitude in other spheres of life, in which to avoid confrontation and to avoid awkwardness we allow ourselves to become unconscious enablers of such behaviour.

The Harvey Weinstein scandal is indicative of a much bigger problem, a problem that permeates through most of society. But despite the sheer volume of cases similar to his — whether they be instances of misogyny when waiting in a Bridge queue, or damning recordings from the President of the United States — it seems that the tide is beginning to turn.

We are able to use the tools at our disposal. We can debate on Twitter and, yes, we can write articles, to illuminate an endemic issue and fi nally take action to cleanse a system that has been infected with years of mistreatment and abuse.

Whilst there is a collective feeling of sadness regarding recent events, there is also one of rage, a rage that I know can be channelled into stamping out such reprehensible behaviour and inspiring people across every walk of life to probe, challenge and fundamentally change the way women are treated in society.

Friday, 20 October 2017 | Cherwell

10

Opinion Prohibition kills. Why no progress on drugs policy?

Michael O’Connor

Drugs policy is failing society’s most vulnerable – we must demand more from our politicians, writes Joshua Harvey

A

cross the world, there are encouraging signs of reform when it comes to drugs policy and public health.

Some initiatives, such as the Portuguese model of blanket decriminalisation, have been running for decades, while others are still viewed as ‘experiments’. Many were born not from decrees passed down from high courts or the imagination of maverick ministers, but through the passionate campaigning of citizens.

Mexico especially has suffered bitterly at the hands of criminals and cartels, whose enterprises flourished under prohibition. Despite this, the country has seen a dramatic shift from a hard-line ‘just say no’ attitude, to one which instead prioritises patient health. In Argentina, a group of 136 families lobbied the Government for the right to treat their children with cannabis, and won.

Back in Europe, Germany also gained its medical weed card this year, with unanimous cross-party support.

Not so in Britain. The most recent piece of drugs legislation enacted in the UK, the Psychoactive Substances Act (PSA), has been described by the Government’s own former chief advisor on drugs as “the worst assault on personal freedom since the 1559 Supremacy Act decreed that the practice of Catholic beliefs was illegal.”

The Act criminalises the buying and selling of absolutely anything that gets you high, regardless of how harmful it is or isn’t, unless it’s one of a few exceptions: alcohol and tobacco (which by any measure are two of the most deadly and harmful substances), caffeine and, thankfully, food. This nonsensical legislation, rushed through to appease the tabloids without any consideration of scientific or medical advice, has been an unmitigated failure.

The majority of arrests made under the Act were for the possession and selling of nitrous oxide – the ‘laughing gas’ enjoyed unproblematically

by the British aristocracy for over 200 years, and with a risk profile so safe it is routinely given to women in labour. When use started ballooning amongst young people in search for a hangover-free buzz, something had to be done, and fake news around nitrous oxide was a primary motivator for the PSA. But barely a year after the Act’s Royal Assent, two cases of possession with intent to supply have been thrown out of court, with the main target of the Act found to be exempt: a humiliating defeat for the Government that could be grounds for overturning numerous convictions.

Spice, on the other hand, is no laughing matter. The vague street name for synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists, Spice has been destroying lives and communities since it first hit the streets the 2000s.

This is not simply a synthetic version of cannabis – a drug so physically safe that noone has ever overdosed on it – but a highly addictive, physically destructive, and unpredictable cocktail of compounds soaked into plant matter, more often likened to heroin.

The PSA did succeed in closing down high-street head shops, where ‘legal highs’ were previously sold in at least a partially-regulated and accountable way, diverting the supply chain to criminal gangs, who tend to care far less about customer welfare. Surging prices have plunged dependent users into increasingly desperate situations, with researchers estimating a prevalence of up to 90-95% amongst some homeless populations.

Debates on whether to decriminalise or regulate drugs often distil down to whether drugs are harmful or not, and unfortunately human interest

Britain is lagging far behind its European partners on drugs policy

stories of addiction or adolescent deaths continue to dominate over the admittedly dry statistics. Still, this would be a useful exercise had we the power to decide if these drugs existed in the world, but we cannot even keep them out of maximum-security prisons.

If we care about the people who use drugs, which includes all classes, races, ages, and genders – so, all of us, really – we must instead be asking what is the best way to reduce the harms of drugs.

This may not be equivalent to reducing use.

The Government’s boast of falling usage rates, at the same time as record-high drug-related deaths, sounds as hollow as their bragging of high employment rates at a time of increasing in-work poverty and food bank use. Currently, a third of all European overdose deaths occur in Britain; each death a scandal that could be prevented with supervised drug consumption rooms.

There are promising signs from the periphery, with some local police forces either scaling back operations against personal use, or supporting harm-reduction groups such as the Loop, who provide drug safety testing at music festivals.

But for anyone other than selfproclaimed, VICE-reading ‘humans of the sesh’, drugs just aren’t a political priority, with neither of the two main parties having anything new to say. Perhaps this is simply British politeness – it’s fine that we have one of the most drug-taking cultures in Europe, but let’s not talk about it.

This may be polite but it is also cowardly, and fails the most vulnerable in our society. If we really care, it’s high time we demand more from our politics – more rationality, more progress, and more humanity.

Joshua Harvey is the co-founder of the Oxford Psychedelic Scoiety

May’s boast of failing usage rates sounds hollow

The Tories have ignored racial divides before – they may do so again

May’s racial disparity audit is a token gesture of little substance

T

he government’s race disparity audit contains many numbers, few words and no recommendations. Its thoroughness is laudable. The amount of new information it purports is questionable. In essence it simply collects all the existing data on the subject together in one place and clearly demonstrates the continuing existence of racial inequality in the UK. A number of recent reports by think tanks and parliamentary committees have drawn attention to racial disparities in British society. The McGregor-Smith review highlighted the extent of racial discrimination at work and a recent report by David Lammy drew attention to inequalities in the Criminal Justice system. Similarly, the Runnymede trust has published a series of studies exposing racial gaps in educational attainment.

Thus, we already have plenty of evidence that racial divides exist.

The racial disparity audit doesn’t contain any ground-breaking new discoveries on this front. It simply collects the data that we already have and puts it in one place. If the audit stimulates the Government to do something about racial disparities, then the audit will have served a useful purpose. If not, then it should be regarded as what it is: a waste of time and effort.

The race disparity audit does have some value. The audit’s data is easily accessible online. Previously, the data on racial inequality was scattered across the internet or buried in Whitehall fi ling cabinets. Now it is all in the open.

This is a victory for government transparency, if only a minor one.

As Theresa May noted, the government doesn’t have “anywhere to hide”. It can’t plead ignorance any longer. Racial divides exist, and the government has to do something about them. But, despite this, the government has put forward few specific proposals.

However, the audit itself doesn’t contain any concrete policy recommendations. It’s quite possible that the government will make a few token gestures and then let the matter rest, satisfied that it has burnished its progressive credentials. Perhaps this seems too cynical – but previous Conservative governments have been reluctant to implement the recommendations of parliamentary committees and independent commissions tasked with addressing racial inequality.

The Conservative Party has turned a blind eye to racial divides before and it may do so again.

Hopefully, the audit will encourage debate and lead to the development of a concrete policy programme designed to address the issue of racial inequality. But it may well sink without trace – and I suspect that it will. I hope that I will be proved wrong. But I am willing to bet that I won’t.

Cherwell | Friday, 20 October 2017

11

Shape the conversation Oxford’s debate continues around the clock.

Get your voice heard at cherwell.org

There’s more to freshers’ week than drinking and clubbing

F Maya Little

reshers’ week: towering heights of inebriation and never-before-seen forms of debauchery, right? Well, as a nondrinker, my week consisted of copious amounts of free orange juice, and going to bed early before a Friday collection. In fact, the wildest thing to happen to me in freshers’ week was having trifle poured onto my face (purportedly, into my mouth) as part of a bizarre pub quiz. It’s one way to make an impression.

Not really being interested in the clubbing scene (Park End might as well be mythical for all I’ve seen of it) has meant that I missed out on some of the socialising. In fact, a fellow fresher was today bemused to discover that I wasn’t actually a

third year, but I like to think that’s because I tend to cook, rather than retreating to the safe haven of hall.

By cook, I mean I’ve managed to concoct things slightly above the level of pesto pasta. (Side note: is there anything more depressing than eating pasta straight out of the pan? I don’t care how much washing up it saves, it’s just wrong).

Just one example of the fact that, in the madhouse that was freshers’ week, a lack of drinking wasn’t the end of the world.

Making it to the end of 0th week meant two things: the Christian Union were offering free pancakes, which we ate merrily to the soundtrack of the fi re alarm, and it was time to go food shopping.

Google told me that Aldi was a mere 15-minute cycle from college,

but failed to warn me that the route is an interesting mix of on road, off road, and oh-god-I’m-in-a-buslane. Nevertheless, I got my 70p frozen peas.

Matriculation felt simultaneously momentous and meaningless – again, I didn’t have the excitement of wandering around town clutching bottles of wine at 10am.

The gowns and the Sheldonian gave everything a sense of ritual, but a ritual left uncompleted.

When I mentioned my lack of plans for the evening to a third year, they pointed out: “You don’t even have to mention you don’t drink any more, you can just tell people you have work to do.”

This seems to express something quite central to the Oxford philosophy which is both sad and consoling: forgoing socialising for reading is utterly unremarkable, but at least that means you’ll fi nd someone to stare at the Rad Cam ceiling with.

I’ve basically accepted that I’ll be up to my neck in work constantly – the challenge is not so much keeping my head, but my nostrils, above water. The lectures are interesting when they’re not incomprehensible (either due to the lecturer, or the orchestra of coughing) and the tutorials are like climbing particularly interesting mountains with strange handholds.

Anyway, I’ll fi nish here – I’ve got work to do.

CONTESTED

Is the college system the best way to run Oxford?

Yes

Maxim Parr-Reid

T

he threat of feeling insignificant in Oxford is eased by the college system.

Identification with colleges is arguably stronger than with the university itself. Colleges are like cosy, more intimate versions of the university. Colleges were created centuries ago by monks searching for universal truth. Now you can buy college mugs and keyrings, scarves and anything that can be mass-produced and sold. The sense of identity, which colleges foster is profound.

Colleges allow you to live a simple life in Oxford, a concept the Danish call Hygge. Before coming to Oxford, I knew no-one here.

Before arriving at Trinity, my fi rst interactions with people here were on offer-holder groups – I look back on those times with curled toes.

College made me feel like I belong.

Imposter syndrome felt so strong that even as I write this I’m shuddering. You’re at the best university in the country, but so are 20,000 other people. Colleges were always the chief selling point for me. Even the endless barrage of the blue-and-white university logo seems distant and impersonal when compared with the sense of community with which colleges

instill you. Oxford can’t afford to lose this.

The colleges and the university work in concert. From matriculation to graduation, the role of the university is clear, but between these grand ceremonies, the colleges are key. Oxford is strengthened by the relationship between the colleges and the university. Life is arranged around college, whichever one of the 38 of them you go to. College is one of the less intimidating parts of Oxford as a student.

It’s true you have the Boat Race, but college rowing is what people are always talking about. What else could possess people to get up at the crack of dawn, if not bringing glory to your college, and the fear of an ignominious defeat at the hands of another?

The great American universities – Harvard, Stanford, Yale et cetera, don’t have collegiate systems in the way we do. They may be higher ranked, wealthier even, but I wouldn’t trade the collegiate system for those things.

Oxford’s college system is a masterful parceling out of what can be a daunting experience. It was my fi rst and only way to make sense of this university, especially given its role in such things as college families and trashing post-exams.

Only the familiarity of the college system has prompted my feeling of contentment in second year.

Homely and supportive, the college system is the most wonderful thing about Oxford.

V

A college was my first and only way to make sense of Oxford

ice chancellor Richardson said in her Oration earlier this month that “we organise ourselves in [a] sclerotic way”. She continued to ask “How much better would we be if we made decisions faster, if we were to build more trust between us so that we could make decisions more expeditiously?” At a couple other points in her misleadingly reported speech, she nods in the direction of university centralisation, a sensitive subject in Oxford.

But we would do well to consider Richardson’s proposals, which seem both sensible and innocuous.

It may surprise many to learn that Oxford operates at a severe financial deficit relative to other universities in its weight class. It has a fifth of Harvard’s endowment, a quarter of Yale’s, a third of Princeton and Stanford’s.

When it comes to hiring, Oxford can be out-bought. When it comes to new research initiatives, Oxford must be warier. There is of course a difference in alumni culture.

But in addition to the quality of fundraising varying across colleges, this only increases the pressure on the University to make good use of its resources: not, as Richardson laments, employ the equivalent of 30 full-time employees to process expense claims.

It is also the case that the collegiate

What Richardson proposes is sensible and innocuous

PHOTO: JESSICA VOICU

No Daniel Kodsi structure is the source of much that is extraordinary about university. And there is a real question about how far Oxford can go in the direction of unity without becoming, an ultimately different institution. In the words of Jerry Cohen: “in addition to the consideration of what good we might do…there is also the consideration of what we are, of our identity, and we may legitimately have regard to our desire to preserve that identity”. Cohen observes that a university with a “central, organising self-conception”; even if it has the opportunity to make things better, it may still have good reason not to change. But to make some changes is not to change everything, and the journey towards centralisation does not strike me as a slippery slope, at least until some far-away endpoint.

In a recent survey, Oxford academics expressed greater satisfaction with their university’s administration than those of any other UK university.

This should not be lost sight of in the push for international competitiveness. The way the situation appears to students is surely different from the way it strikes those more intimately involved; indeed, it cannot be ruled out that students have access only to the most superficial level of a problem that runs much deeper.

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Friday, 20 October 2017 | Cherwell

At length the white male hero encountering ‘savage’ lands and peoples. Home has always been the perceived place for women in every sense of the word. Looking to history, female travellers stand out because of their abnormality.

Finding national identity at the corner shop

Hints for female travellers

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After an eye-opening voyage across Europe, Kathleen Farmilo notes the modern dangers facing female backpackers and how little has changed since the days of ruthless pirate queens.

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ne month, eight cities, four girls – and countless accounts of being physically harassed by men.

When you put it in numbers, I’m not sure if it sounds shocking. What the numbers show, however, is that being a female traveller in 2017 is not massively different to being one in 1917. In fact, it might be even less safe.

When I initially started writing this piece, I was in a nice AirBnb in Brussels – the second stop on a month long interrailing adventure. I thought about how, as a female traveller in 2017, it’s standard to feel safe. My parents’ main piece of advice before I left

was “don’t go anywhere alone,” and at the time I thought it was a little outdated. Now, on the train to Budapest (the eighth city on our list) I’ve been forced to change my tune.

Travelling is the norm nowadays. The Gap Yah’s, the Contiki tourists, the volunteers, the finding-themselves-in-Asiawhile-engaging-in-mild-culturalappropriation backpackers, the international glitter-covered festivals goers – we all recognise them, we all probably identify with a few of the archetypes.

Travel, once reserved for a tiny subsection of society, has become the norm for a vast range of people, including women. In fact, it

I

see these women as heroes, and I think it’s hard not to. Jeanne Baret was the first woman to circumnavigate the world, between 1766 and 1769. In a time when women were firmly established as lesser beings, Baret’s determination to see a world previously limited to a constricting sphere of domesticity is incredibly admirable. As is to be expected from the eighteenth century, the French navy had banned women from their ships. Baret did her journey dressed as a man.

This is a persistent theme in both history and fiction. Young women see the Mulans of the world, the Elizabeth Swans, the Jeanne Barets, and we learn a few things. We learn that the world is no place for a woman unless they adopt a necessary masculinity.

There’s something thrilling about that, isn’t there? The thought of sneaking onto a pirate ship, or into the Emperor of China’s army, and no one knowing. But right now, at stop five, I have a few more things to consider.

Instead of exhilaration and thrill, unfortunately I relate more to Jeanne Baret’s fear and apprehension. I wonder if she lay awake, paralysed, dreading what would happen to her if her cabin mates discovered who she really was.

As well as binding her chest, she carried pistols with her for safety, and I can relate to this sense of unease. If this trip has taught me anything, it is that the sexualised nature of female travellers has not changed in the last 300 years.

has been the expectation for a long time. We’ve all heard our mums’ backpacking stories, and we’ve all read the Cosmopolitan Snapchat articles about why every woman should travel alone before she’s 30.

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ut the female traveller has more than just an extraordinarily heavy backpack. She also carries the stories of thousands of women, a rich and vibrant history. In a world before Airbnb and Uber, what was travelling like for a woman? The great ages of exploration between the seventeenth and nineteenth century were dominated by white men. The narrative of Western adventure and exploration has always been one of

n this trip, we have been catcalled in every European language at every possible location, which will likely not come as a shock to any woman who has left her house. This culture is indescribably demeaning – being reduced to a sexual object, based entirely on a perfectionist and westernised ideal of attractiveness.

Yet, it’s insidious because it’s normal. There is still a perception amongst men, however tenuous, that catcalling is a compliment. Every woman I know has experienced it at some point, to the point where we see it as an annoyance rather than what it actually is. Namely, it’s a power move.

On our first night in Europe, being catcalled at a tube stop didn’t seem like a big deal.

Now, it speaks to me of a larger web of inherent misogyny and unwanted sexualisation that women must face.

Another historical pioneer I relate to is Annie Cohen Kopchovsky, a Latvian immigrant in Boston in 1894. Supposedly on a bet with two wealthy clubmen of Boston, she endeavoured to circle the globe in 15 months on a Columbia bicycle.

Female travellers carry more than just a heavy backpack

Partly an effort to win $10000 and partly a symbolic destruction of Victorian ideals of female frailty and incapability, Kopchovsky achieved both: she finished her trip two weeks before the fifteen months was up.

I am inspired by both Kopchovsky’s bike and her adventure, as they represent symbols of freedom and independence.

This is what being a female traveller should be, and for the most part, is. Travel is intrinsically tied to liberation, both in being able to explore the world, and having the right to feel safe while doing so. In this sense, there is a juxtaposition.

Travelling is one of the most liberating things that I have ever done. yet the process of existing in the eyes of men, and always being conscious of that, is frankly exhausting.

Cherwell | Friday, 20 October 2017

13

The author (second from right) and her travel companions

Original photography by Kathleen Farmilo, Olivia Webster and Luke Scott

I

n 1889, Lillias Campbell Davidson wrote Hints To Lady Travellers, a handbook for female tourists. It was the Victorian era that saw the first active female travellers because of the development of new, accessible, high-speed forms of transport.

These were women whose legacies I couldn’t help but consider as I journeyed on trams across Europe.

It is shocking that the independent female traveller has existed since the 19th century, yet today I still do not feel entirely safe.

One senses that the women of the Victorian age may have been safer than those today, or maybe they were simply wiser.

The Victorian era woman knew she was regarded as a lesser being than men, while today’s woman assumes she is seen as an equal until proven otherwise.

This might sound melodramatic, but in America, we have a president who is actively campaigning to take away women’s healthcare rights, who is moving to scrap on campus sexual assault resources, and who thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to grab women by the pussy. It is this attitude on the large scale that enables, and encourages, the aggression that women feel everyday.

I

n Amsterdam, one of us was on the phone to her dad when a man cycled past and smacked her on the bum. As things go, it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. As her mum put, it’s “something that happens to everyone”, which in itself speaks volumes.

But the visceral fear of being smacked, hard, while walking along in broad daylight, and

having no idea who did it, leaves a mark. There’s a lack of accountability there. For someone like Jeanne Baret, desperate to see the world but under constant threat of far worse, I can hardly imagine what travelling was like.

Travellers like Jeanne Baret had to actively compromise their femininity.

However, there is another brand of unapologetically female travellers. Ching Shih, a notorious 19th century pirate, ruled the China Sea. She led an empire of 300 junks containing 20,000 to 40,000 fellow pirates. With good reason, she is widely seen as the most successful pirate in history.

But looking back now, I feel like there’s no way she could have reached that point unscathed. She was able to be female because she was feared. Her femininity became second to her ruthlessness.

Another thing I’ve discovered about being a female traveller is that people aren’t scared of girls, really.

A thirty-year-old man in a business suit was not afraid to grope one of my friends in a club. Another was not afraid to pull my friend’s hair on a subway escalator, and follow us out of the tube station.

A sixty-yearold man was not afraid to stare at me and smirk on the metro, and when I moved, to follow me and sit down opposite me again.

It’s acceptable and it’s normal, and it does not involve any fear of repercussion.

Travelling has taught me to have a mental escape route, to be aware of other groups of women or people who look vulnerable to harassment.

That’s not to say that I’m scared to be a female traveller. It’s rather that, given our history, there’s something intrinsically fearless about being one. I just don’t think

Her femininity came second to her ruthlessness

.

we should have to be fearless.

I can’t imagine being Jean Baret, or Ching Shih, alone and surrounded by men, relying on my ruthlessness or my ability to hide and blend in. Yet, while it’s hard to identify with their specific circumstances, there is a common thread among all of our experiences. That is of being a lone woman in an unapologetically masculine world.

F

emale travellers of the past stand out to be not only because of their abnormality, but because of their loneliness.

According to a 2016 report by the George Washington University School of Business, nearly twothirds of travellers are women.

According to the US Travel Association, eleven percent of adults travelling for leisure are women by themselves. Evidently, being a lone female traveller is not abnormal.

Rather, it’s a trend.

However, the vulnerability of being a woman by herself is still paramount. This suggests a dichotomy. The idea that women should only travel with men is outdated and ridiculous.

Yet, there is still the pervasive notion that I would be safer if accompanied by men. At one point in the trip, a male friend joined us for two stops. And while a part of me wishes this wasn’t the case, it’s true that I did feel safer when he was there.

No-one shouted at us on the way back from a night out, or followed us down the street. Coincidentally, these were the two stops where we went clubbing the most, and one night out involved a fifty-minute walk back (if you go to Amsterdam, avoid Techno Tuesday).

Having done that walk as four girls would’ve been an entirely different ball game. Threatening women – scaring them – is a game.

It’s harder to play that game in the presence of someone that actually feels like a threat.

One day in Bratislava, and we were shouted at by men outside a tram stop. While walking away from them, an old man patted my bum. It’s demeaning in a way that words can’t really describe.

It’s unsettling knowing that the casual harassment of women is a joke. If I had male friends with me, would it still have happened?

Probably not.

T

ravelling and adventure have always been predominantly a man’s world. Being singled out as an outsider because of one’s gender is unsettling, and makes one feel vulnerable. A German friend of mine worked for a year in London.

When she described her experience of the city, she said she’d never felt less safe. So maybe this is less about travel, and more about the distinct sense of being an outsider.

I’ve done the walk home alone from Bridge at 2am and felt safer than I did on a train at 8pm in Prague. This idea of being an outsider is something that surpasses just womanhood.

As a lesbian, gay clubs have always felt far more comfortable to me. For people that identify as transgender, gender non-conforming, or even present as especially effeminate, there is a constant sense of threat that I can barely begin to comprehend.

My point in all of this is not to dissuade women from traveling. In fact, it’s the opposite.

We should be celebrating the achievements of historical female travellers, as much as, if not more than, their male counterparts. I’d much rather see a statue celebrating Jeanne Baret or Annie Cohen Kopchovsky, than one celebrating Christopher Columbus. But more than that, it’s a comment.

The world we live in is not so different from the one Jeanne Baret traversed. The male image of woman and vulnerable people – as sport, as objects, as fetishes – is as striking as it has always been.

The world of travel has evolved.

The men who inhabit it have not.

I don’t think female travellers should have to be fearless

Friday, 20 October 2017 | Cherwell

14

Science+Tech ZERO EMISSION ZONE

Should Oxford really ban polluting vehicles?

Oxford has an air pollution crisis, and decisive action must be taken to protect people’s health, writes Irteza Ishraq

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ast week, Oxford City Council announced pl ans to enact the world’s fi rst “zero-emission zone” (ZEZ) around Oxford city centre by 2020, hoping to further extend the region in coming years.

The proposals come as a response to the illegally high levels of toxic NO2 found in many of the UK’s most populated cities. Oxfordshire Air Quality (OAQ) highlights that “twice as many people currently suffer from asthma today, compared with 30 years ago,” with a Public Health England study also estimating that illegal levels of NO2 have contributed to 5.3% of all deaths for over-25s in the UK. The Committee of the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants clarifies that “it is not plausible to think of the figure of ‘attributable’ deaths as enumerating an actual group of people whose death is attributable to air pollution alone i.e. the victims of outdoor air pollution” – rather a contribution that accelerates existing illness as well as affecting a much larger demographic through generally reducing wellness and increasing susceptibility.

Continued inhalation of NO2 can cause inflammation in the lining of the lungs, leaving one susceptible to an array of respiratory diseases and eventually wearing down the lungs’ function.

NO2 is formed once the nitrogen and oxygen in the air react under the high temperature inside an internal combustion engine. NO2 can decompose to NO, more commonly known as “laughing gas”, once it leaves the engine and interacts with sunlight.

The European Union set a legal limit for emissions each – levels

must not exceed 40 micrograms per cubic meter of air (µg/m3) of NO2 at on average. As of June 2017, of the 70 locations where Oxford City Council monitor levels of air pollution, 17 lie over the EU’s legal limit.

High Street, the area targeted for the first stages of the ZEZ plans, had an average of 47 µg/m3. St Clements Street was the worst offender with NO2 levels at 61 µg/m3, though this was a decrease from 85 µg/m3 just five years ago.

Oxford’s council have said that the ZEZ would ban “petrol and diesel cars, taxis, light commercial vehicles and busses”, with hopes to “cut the nitrogen dioxide level in Oxford city centre’s most polluted street, George Street, by 74% by 2035.”

Levels of NO2 have been steadily declining due to the development of better catalytic converters, and the steady rise of electric cars – with levels about a quarter of what they were in 1970. However, many urban areas in the UK still lie far above the 40 µg/m3 limit.

In 2016, government monitoring stations found that about 40% of local authorities breached the legal limit. This prompted the government to introduce an immediate implementation fund worth £255 million “to address poor air quality in the shortest time possible.” This implementation fund is also partly responsible for funding Oxford City Council’s efforts.

Oxford’s zero emissions zone will set an example for other cities

The proposed zero emissions zone for 2020, with planned future expansions. PHOTO: OXFORD CITY COUNCIL The introduction of a zero-emission zone in Oxford is a bold initiative that serves as an example to other cities. On balance, Oxford has the resources and geography to enact a ZEZ with the least amount of significant adverse effects.

Air quality affects us every day.

Hopefully, taking quick and decisive steps to combat air pollution can lead the way to tackle similar issues such as global warming, whose effects are considered less immediate and seem far removed from our everyday experience.

What is nitrogen dioxide?

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Nitrogen dioxide, or NO2, is an engine byproduct that turns to acid inside the lungs

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In the UK, NO2 exposure contributed to 5.3% of all deaths of over-25s in 2016

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High Street and St Clements Street both currently have average NO2 levels well above the legal limit

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The council expects their new measures to cut NO2 levels by 74% in Oxford’s most polluted streets

Newly discovered synthetic antibody tackles 99% of HIV strands

By JONATHAN STARK

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recent experiment performed by the US National Institutes of Health and pharmaceutical company Sanofi could have just given the human race its best weapon yet in the fight against HIV. By combining three natural HIV-fighting antibodies, the researchers created a new treatment that tackles 99% of the virus’ different strains. This kind of broad attack is essential for combating the virus, since it takes many forms and is known to mutate very quickly. In tests on monkeys, the new treatment prevented infection in all of 24 subjects that were injected with HIV. The researchers published their results in Science on the 20 September.

The Science paper reports that HIV-attacking antibodies have

been isolated before, having been extracted from patients whose bodies are fighting the virus. These broadly neutralising antibodies, referred to as bnAbs, have shown an impressive ability to combat HIV in multiple different forms and different levels of strength, and since 2010 many of them have been taken to the clinical trial stage.

However, they are not ideal. Every HIV patient has a different combination of strains, and the antibodies extracted will only be equipped to deal with a certain number of them.

Even with the best natural antibodies, which combat up to 90% of current strains, most patients will have some form of the virus which resists treatment.

What makes the situation worse is that HIV is one of the fastest evolving

entities in the world, due to its high rate of mutation. New varieties of the virus are constantly arising, and treating a patient with antibodies that only tackle some strains can speed up the evolutionary process by promoting those strains which are resistant. This means that a patient who is given natural antibodies could end up developing an even worse case of HIV than they had before.

In this new study, the researchers experimented by combining the abilities of two, then three different natural antibod-

36.7 million people were found to be living with HIV last year

ies into one. The resulting “trispecific antibodies” were able to block the process of infection at three different places, covering an incredible 99% of strains, according to Dr Gary Nabel, the chief scientific officer at Sanofi.

This means that the treatment is much more likely to prevent infection in a given patient than any currently known natural antibody, and this fact is reflected in the researchers’ successful tests on primates. The first human trials are scheduled for next year.

Responses from health organisations have ranged from intrigue to wild excitement, especially over the prospect of seeing clinical trials so soon. The president of the International Aids Society, Professor Linda-Gail Bekker, told the BBC that the research is “an exciting

breakthrough”, and that there is an “urgency to confirm these findings in humans as soon as possible”, since the virus currently takes so many lives around the world.

HIV is one of the most persistent health problems across the world, since it has proved very difficult to treat and it attacks the body’s immune system, making sufferers very vulnerable to other diseases including cancers. According to the CDC, 36.7 million people were found to be living with HIV last year, and 1 million people died from illnesses related to AIDS, the most advanced stage of HIV. This means that advances like the NIH’s and Sanofi’s new antibody, if they prove successful in next year’s trials, could save hundreds of thousands of lives.

Cherwell | Friday, 20 October 2017

15

Sport BASKETBALL

Cavs look to end Warriors’ dominance

By DANIEL CAMPBELL

By SECRET COLLEGE FOOTBALLER

After one of the most exciting off-seasons in recent years, the NBA has returned, and the sense of excitement is palpable amongst basketball fans. After many of the top players in the league moved to the Western Conference this summer, there is now a distinct possibility that the Golden State Warriors’ dominance may fi nally be broken.

In a weakened Eastern Conference, play-off places are up for grabs, and despite their opening-night defeat, the new-look Boston Celtics roster will provide a stern test for LeBron James’ Cleveland Cavaliers.

The Golden State Warriors remain favourites to win the NBA Championship for the second season in a row. The formidable small-forward Kevin Durant, and mercurial pointguard Steph Curry are undisputedly amongst the top five players in the league, and they are supported by sharp shooter Klay Thompson and last season’s defensive player of the year Draymond Green. While other teams acquired new talent this summer, Golden State succeeded purely by keeping their squad together, and will aim to start building a basketball dynasty comparable to the 90s Chicago Bulls team.

After trading for superstars Paul George and Carmelo Anthony, OKC Thunder have emerged as a serious threat to the dominance of the Warriors. Alongside last-seasons MVP Russell Westbrook, OKC boasts one of the most potent offenses in the league, and will be an exciting side to watch this season. The Minnesota Timberwolves also surprised everyone by acquiring Jimmy Butler from the Bulls as well as reliable point-

guard Jeff Teague. Adding these to a line-up which already boasts the exciting young duo of Karl-Anthony Towns and Anthony Wiggins means this roster has emerged as genuine play-off contenders, and are many pundits’ dark horses this season.

The dynamic duo of Chris Paul and James Harden at the Houston Rockets will also be intriguing to watch.

By contrast, the Eastern Conference already looks to be a twohorse race between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Boston Celtics.

After star point-guard Kyrie Irving made the unexpected swap from

the Cavs to the Celtics, tensions ran high on the opening night when the two sides faced off. The Celtics look shaky in defence and may well rue sending Avery Bradley to the Pistons, and will be concerned by Gordon Hayward’s horrific openingnight injury.

By contrast, the Cleveland Cavaliers have assembled a roster which would’ve been nigh-on unstoppable in 2011. Today, LeBron James stands out as the only world-class player in the team, and last year’s fi nals prove that even the world’s best player can’t do it all by himself.

If point-guard Derrick Rose can regain some of the form that won him the MVP in 2011, and LeBron and Dwayne Wade can reignite the partnership that saw them win three championships together at the Miami Heat, there remains a chance that the NBA Championship will be returning to Cleveland for a second time.

With more and more superstars teaming up in the hope of winning a championship and cementing their spot in basketball folklore, this season promises to be one of the most exciting in recent memory.

Rugby Union Women’s Blues start with a win

Cuppers Hassan’s launches new knockout competition

Two early tries were enough for Oxford’s women’s rugby players to seal a hard-fought win in their opening BUCS game of the season.

Fresher Vivian Leong, a former Surrey player, scored following a rolling maul after twenty minutes, before centre Jo Dombrowski – back after an ACL surgery – broke away off an interception to give the Blues a ten-point lead. Bristol got a try back before half-time, but Oxford clung on for a 10-7 win.

Broad Street’s famous and most esteemed kebab establishment has ventured into the world of college football this season, sponsoring a competition for JCR football teams who make an early and ignominous exit from Cuppers. College sides that are knocked out in the first or second rounds of the competition will enter the self-styled Hassan’s Cup, after a deal was struck with the fast-food outlet by OUAFC last week.

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Football OUAFC pair sign for non-league German outfit

Men’s JCR Football Premier Div

BUCS Women’s Football Midlands 2B

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College football mind-games

Four-time NBA MVP LeBron James is the star in a Cleveland Cavaliers squad full of big names

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Points put past Oxford Rugby Club by the University’s Men’s third team in their County Shield clash

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Minutes remaining in Men’s Blues’ opening BUCS game of the football season when Jake Duxbury scored the only goal against Nottingham

BUCS Women’s Hockey South A

BUCS Men’s Hockey South B

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University footballers Josh Sambrook and Adam Rhaiti have signed for Hamburg-based nonleague side VfL Hammonia. The third-year students, who study Modern Languages at Wadham and Queen’s respectively, are on their years abroad in Germany. The side, who play in the 5. Kreisliga, a regional league in the North of the country, sit second in the table after winning eleven of their first twelve fixtures.

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As any elite-level athlete will tell you, preparation is of paramount importance. Naturally, this is no different in the case of college football.

Indeed, with their hectic academic, extra-curricular and social schedules crammed into Oxford’s eight-week terms, players are under immense pressure to ensure that they are in the best possible condition for every game. Managers in the so-called ‘professional’ game always complain about fixture saturation, yet they have never had to organise their week to accommodate a game, essay deadline, tute and bop. The ability of college footballers to integrate their pre-match preparation into an already busy schedule is a testament to their own professionalism.

Obviously, it is absolutely vital for players to keep their bodies in peak condition, so that even when matches are brought forward last minute, they will always be able to rely on their fitness. It is something of a trade secret that one of the most effective ways to prepare the body for 90 minutes of high-intensity sporting excellence is to oversleep on the morning of the game. If the lie-in is long enough, not only does it aid recovery from the inevitable visit to Park End the night before, it also ensures that the journey to the sports fields is less of a walk and more of a slightly exasperated-looking jog.

This provides players with a warm-up before they even reach the ground, giving them an initial physical edge and a subsequent psychological one, as their less conscientious opponents become disheartened by their evident preparation. To the uninitiated, this tactic might seem suspect due to the risk of missing the team warm-up, but the ‘en route’ warm-up has one clear advantage: it does not take place in full view of the opposition. Why persevere through a meticulous training programme just to let the other team know what you’re all about straight away? Some of the greatest success stories of college football have been built on a minimalist attitude to training.

With so much to think about, mental preparation is just as important as physical. Despite the intellectual rigours of the tutorial system, preparing for a title decider is the toughest mental challenge that college footballers will face during their time in Oxford.

It is important for players to maintain a high level of mental fitness for such occasions, and this can be achieved by performing certain exercises, such as thinking about college football at every opportunity. Any captain worth his salt will integrate these exercises into his daily routine, so that they hardly seem like exercise at all. Sitting in the library, apparently pouring over a problem sheet, their mind will in fact be occupied by thoughts on the next game. Or perhaps stuck at the back of a lecture, they might sketch out a couple of potential formations.

To 4-3-3 or not to 4-3-3?

Beneath Oxford’s spires, the old adage that a game is won before the teams even step onto the pitch, certainly rings true.

Cherwell | Friday, 20 October 2017

NBA preview

Sport

After an off-season full of big moves, Daniel Campbell talks you through the season ahead

FOOTBALL

What has happened to the north-west derby?

Blues edge out battling Dubliners

By TJ FITZGERALD

prevented an exhibition in fluid, running rugby. Trinity looked to move the ball quickly, but were thwarted by either the expectant Blues defence or their own handling ability. Despite this, Oxford were never really able to get on top, let down by their line-outs and just about kept in the battle for the scrum by the repeated infringements of the powerful Trinity pack. Blues skipper Conor Kearns – playing against his old university – held his nerve towards the conclusion of the first half, making a shot at goal to put Oxford one point clear as both teams went into the shed.

The teams returned, with Trinity once again the first team to respond to the whistle: outside centre Courtney driving over the line from short range after two minutes of near faultless play from the Irishmen. A relatively difficult conversion for the Trinity fly-half wasn’t made, preventing them from immediately building on their 12-8 lead. Oxford were able to regain the lead ten minutes later, sustaining pressure throughout the phases resulting in an unconverted try for winger Tom Stileman to put the Blues one

point ahead.

The momentum was now with Oxford, forcing Trinity back into their own half with an excellent return punt from the kick-off, which developed into a penalty from the scrum, causing anger amongst the travelling technical staff and delight for the increasingly vocal Iffley crowd. This momentum helped the powerful Oxford openside flanker Roberto Talotti, who had been excellent throughout in both defence and attack, to dive in at the corner by the pavilion to conclude an equally patient and relentless passage of play for Oxford, extending the lead to six points.

Sensing that there was still no way through the middle for them, the Trinity scrum-half Angus Lloyd looked to put pressure on the Oxford back three with a number of well weighted kicks that had been utilised in the first half with no reward. An excellent chip into the Oxford 22 wasn’t properly dealt with, allowing winger Billy O’Hora to put the men in white back into the game as he touched down with 10 minutes to go. Captain Kearns, however, was able to punish the ill-discipline of the Trinity defen-

sive line, putting three points on the board following a penalty for offside at the breakdown.

This set up an exciting final few minutes of rugby, with the Trinity attack testing the nerve of the Oxford line-up until five minutes past the 80, before a fumble in the midfield dropped gratefully into the hand of substitute Charlie Pozniak who punted the ball away to bring an explosive clash to its conclusion.

The Blues took many positives from this game, exhibiting patience in both defence and attack, soaking up the crashing midfield runs of the Trinity backs and recycling the ball consistently. Whilst conditions weren’t flattering to the ability of the Trinity players, Oxford should be prepared to face teams who are able to keep hold of the ball for longer, as it was often through unforced errors that the efforts of the Irishmen were thwarted.

Those from The Other Place were comprehensively beaten

by Trinity earlier this month, which, with some improvement in Oxford’s set piece and response to the high ball, bodes well in the hunt for glory at Twickenham.

The media circus was as strong as ever. Two titans of English football, Liverpool and Manchester United, were set to clash in the weekend’s biggest fi xture. It was a match-up between two clubs steeped in history, and one of the biggest rivalries in the world game.

However, the last four encounters have been draws, two of them goalless. Since 2016, there have been six games and only seven goals.

Like most great rivalries, there is more to this than just the success of the two clubs. The proximity of the two major cities they represent, together with their historic economic and industrial rivalry stretching back to the nineteenth century, adds another dimension to this match, on top of their success and support. Both of them can claim historical supremacy over the other, with United achieving more league titles, but Liverpool more often the champions of Europe.

However, the clash has not been much of a spectacle for a while – especially since Mourinho took over at United. His team came to Anfield, sat deep, and took the point. The visitors defended well as a team, and when Liverpool did threaten, David de Gea made some great saves. Liverpool came across as the more dominant side, and did well to take Romelu Lukaku out of the game, who completed fewer passes than even Liverpool’s goalkeeper Simon Mignolet.

Admittedly, neither side was at full strength, with several key players missing. But while Liverpool dominated for the most part and probably performed better, the game went Mourinho’s way. Fans want to see an electric, end-to-end game between these two clubs, but this is never going to happen when games keep going this way. But this reflects the harsh realities of the Premier League. In a division where clubs must scrap for every point, is Mourinho not right to set up as he always has in big games? What is for certain is that unless the ex-Chelsea boss departs anytime soon, it will be some time before the fi xture’s magic is rekindled.

When the International Cricket Council’s decision to experiment with four-day Test matches was announced, it was unsurprising to see it met with a hostile reaction, despite their insistence that it is just a trial.

The Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) were quick to condemn the move, as was South Africa’s current Test captain Francois du Plessis, whose side will be coming up against Zimbabwe in what will be the fi rst-ever four-day Test.

The change comes at a transition period in the sport, but it is one which is certainly much needed. In the winter of 2015, Australia and New Zealand contested the fi rst day-night Test match in an effort to allow fans to join the evening session after work, in a successful trial

that has now been replicated in the UAE and England.

Then, last week, a new Test Championship system was proposed, which will add some much-needed context to the game: for casual fans especially, endless bilateral Test series are only so relevant.

Whilst to a traditionalist like myself these changes might seem overbearing, unfortunately I feel there was no other choice, for the sport needs modernising.

Even in countries such as India where support for the game has been unrivalled, attendances at Test matches has been on the decline. Moreover, many Test matches these days are now heavily one sided and there is a clear gulf in quality among the Test sides –

India, England, South Africa and Australia tend to dominate the rest, and series wins away from home are increasingly rare.

Some would, of course, put this down to the unfair revenue distribution system which is still no nearer to being adapted. The disparity between funds available to the ‘Big Three’ Test nations and those at the bottom of the pecking order is vast, but this is a problem without a short-term solution: the ICC is right to focus on something that it can materially change instantly. The statistics show that fewer Test matches go to the fi fth day than ever before – only two of England’s seven home Tests this summer made it that far – and even then they are often a formality that is played out on a weekday in front

of a sparse crowd.

I would suggest this is again due to the gap in quality between sides and also the rise of twenty-over franchise cricket hindering the game’s ability to produce batsmen who can apply themselves for long periods.

Gone are the days where you would make your name in Test cricket, only to see if you could apply yourself in the shorter formats.

And while Test cricket might be the oldest and most ‘traditional’ format of the game, it is not as though its form has never changed: we have seen experimentation with timeless Tests, six-day Tests, five-day Tests, and Tests with rest days. It pains me to say it, but fans across the world need to come together and give this trial a fair run.

The Men’s Blues managed to cling onto a narrow lead against Trinity College, Dublin at Iffley on Tuesday night PHOTO: PETER WOODCOCK/CHERWELL

By PETER WOODCOCK Oxford managed to hold their nerve in a bruising Tuesday night encounter down the Iffley Road, edging Trinity College Dublin 21-17.

After last week’s victory over BUCS Super Rugby champions Hartpury College, an expectant crowd hoped that the Blues could make things easier for themselves against the travelling Irish side.

Trinity were the better of the two sides from the kick-off, converting early pressure at the scrum into the first try of the game. Blindside flanker Dave St Leger bundled the ball over the line by the fringes of the ruck, before fly-half Tommy Whittle slotted the conversion with ease to put the men in white seven points ahead within the first five minutes. Oxford, however, were quick to respond, winning a penalty on the Trinity 22-metre line which was quickly taken, allowing winger Ed David to score in the corner a few phases later following some direct running from full-back Sam Edgerley.

Both teams settled into the game, tightening their defences as the increasingly heavily drizzle

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