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5th week Friday, 10 November 2017

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Oxford slammed for offshore fossil fuel investments PARADISE PAPERS

Tens of millions invested in “exploitative” funds

Anger at Weinstein LMH bop costume

By HONOR BROCKLEBANKFOWLER

By MIA MILLMAN Oxford University is facing fierce criticism for fossil fuel exploration investments, following the revelations in the Paradise Papers earlier this week that showed Oxford has invested tens of millions in offshore funds.

Campaigners have accused Oxford of “lying to its students, faculty, and the world”.

Students have organised a protest taking place today calling on the University to “pay your taxes!”.

The Oxford University Climate Justice Campaign have sharply criticised the University, saying: “The Paradise Papers revelation is shocking and infuriating, but it is in line – unfortunately – with the current Oxford administration’s practices of denial and obfuscation and the University’s colonial, exploitative history.

“Evidently, the University is concerned with positioning itself as a leader in sustainability, but not with actively following through on its pledges and addressing the roots of the climate crisis.”

It attacked Oxford’s investments, adding: “The ultimate result is untold quantities of untaxed dividends for Oxford, and a continuation of its legacy of exploring the planet with the intention of exploiting.”

The campaign has called for the University to take immediate action, demanding “divestment from all secret, offshore funds and transpar-

Oxbow

page 10

ency about where our endowment is invested”.

The Paradise Papers revelations findings follow pressure for both Oxford and Cambridge to divest from fossil fuel companies.

The files, released by The Guardian, reveal that the single largest investment made by offshore funds invested in by the University were in Shell. Coller International Partners V – one of the University’s two offshore funds – invested $1bn in Shell.

Xtreme Coil, one of Shell’s business partners, also received funding from Oxford. The firm specialises in “innovative and efficient drilling rigs”. Other Shell ventures that received funding are invested in “production and exploration” technologies.

Over half of Oxford’s colleges were found to have placed money in offshore funds. The full list includes All Souls, Brasenose, Christ Church, Corpus Christi, Exeter,

CONTINUED ON PAGE TWO

Students of oxford...

ANALYSIS

Is Oxford avoiding tax?

By FELIX POPE Oxford University has strongly rejected claims that its endowment fund (OUem) avoided tax on a string of offshore investments, telling Cherwell there is “no question that the British state has been deprived of taxes due”.

But The Guardian last night reiterated to Cherwell claims made in their original article, stating that the incredibly low levels of tax paid by Oxford in the US implied some level of tax avoidance.

Oxford’s statement follows revelations exposed in the Paradise Papers that OUem and over half of Oxford’s colleges

CONTINUED ON PAGE TWO

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invested money in either tax haven located funds, or US based ‘blocker’ corporations. Both of these could enable the University to avoid certain taxes.

University endowments are entirely tax exempt within the UK, and mostly tax exempt in the US. However they are still eligible to pay ‘Unrelated Business Taxable Income’ (UBTI) on profits from debt-financed vehicles, such as hedge funds.

The arrangement set up by OUem could therefore allow them to avoid paying taxes on dividends received from certain types of investments.

An LMH student has been criticised for trivialising the “lived experience of survivors” of sexual assault after attending a bop dressed as film producer Harvey Weinstein.

The student appeared as Weinstein - who in recent weeks has been the subject of multiple allegations of sexual assault and rape - for LMH’s “horror movie classics” themed party.

The student was asked to leave by other students, before later being asked to meet with the college dean to “reflect on his behavior”, according to JCR President Lana Purcell.

In a statement to JCR members, LMH Equalities Committee encouraged JCR members “to retain a sense of awareness of the implications of [their] actions when living within college”.

They added: “It is extremely saddening to have seen offensive bop costumes, which in this case parodied sexual assault. To trivialise the lived experience of survivors and position their trauma as a part to play within a narrative of ‘humour’ is unacceptable. This behaviour is rude, insensitive but most importantly extremely damaging.”

The statement was praised in an anonymous post on Oxfess, which characterised the student’s actions as “beyond disrespectful” and recounted their own experience of sexual assault.

The unnamed student said: “I was sexually assaulted by a family member when I was about 10 years old. This man has a very strong resemblance to Harvey Weinstein. Now, some people might think it’s ridiculous of me but when I keep hearing about these allegations and seeing the articles, it’s very upsetting for me…

“I am very glad that I did not go to the bop that night because I do not know what I would have said if I had seen that person. I don’t even know CONTINUED ON PAGE TWO

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2

News University funneled money through US into tax havens

Professor accused of rape takes leave of absence after student anger

CONTINUED FROM PAGE ONE

By EMILY LAWFORD OSCAR BAKER

Speaking to Cherwell, the University emphasised their position that as a charitable institution they were not liable to pay any tax whatsoever within the UK. They further claimed: “the endowment submits a US tax return and pays all taxes due. This includes tax on… UBTI where appropriate.”

They stated that they would be seeking a correction on a number of “factually incorrect” points made

by The Guardian, but when asked

$1bn invested in Royal Dutch Shell by Coller International Partners V declined to elucidate on what specifically those points would be.

A University spokesperson further declined to clarify what motivation OUem would have to invest money through ‘blocker’ corporations and in tax haven based funds if their intention was not to avoid taxes.

More questions have been raised over the lack of transparency of the University’s investments. OUem’s latest 44-page prospectus provided to investors does not mention the

Anger over bop costume CONTINUED FROM PAGE ONE who this person was but I really hope that they have learned their lesson and know not to do this again.”

As they did in following a similar incident in January 2015 in which students were criticised as “racist” after wearing towels on their their heads to an ‘Arabian nights’ themed bop, the college’s JCR emphasised that “LMH prides itself on being a healthy, inclusive and supportive environment”.

The statement further warned “any further behaviour will be directed to the senior management of college.

There will be zero tolerance for such behaviour. This is down to respecting the welfare of those you are living alongside and fostering a healthy collegiate environment”.

This follows the recent controversy of a Christ Church student attending the college’s last bop of Michaelmas Term 2016 wearing a pillowcase resembling the hood of the distinctive outfit worn by white nationalist group the Ku Klux Klan.

Although the student insisted the costume had not been intended to cause offence, and was “intended as a satirical response to the theme ‘2016’”, they were subsequently banned from all future JCR events.

word ‘offshore’ once, while a 2015 statement put out by Oxford explaining their investment policy merely stated that OUem had a 3% exposure to “the wider energy sector”. It did not mention their investments in Shell subsidiaries that research new methods of oil exploration and extraction.

Emeritus Professor of accounting at the University of Essex, Prem Sikka, told The Guardian: “All the Caymans offer is secrecy and tax avoidance. There is nothing else there. It’s not as if this is a place actively engaged in advancing science, research or human knowledge.”

Of Oxford’s investment decisions, Sikka said: “We need to know what they are doing with the cash.

There are issues of corporate social responsibility.”

There is no hard evidence that the University has either avoided or evaded any taxes.

But significant questions still remain as to why the University’s fund manager set up a complex scheme of investments stretching across multiple continents, and why the University was so unwilling to disclose any details of it.

As student campaigns ramp up over the next few weeks, we will likely begin to see the answers to some of these questions.

Cherwell takes complaints about editorial content seriously. We are

post on Tuesday evening, Ramadan stated that he “salute[s] the position taken by Oxford University since this matter first arose”.

This leave, he said, will “permit me to devote my energies to my defence while respecting students’ need for a calm academic environment.”

According to the St Antony’s college website, Mr Ramadan was appointed to the “H.H. Shaykh Hamad bin Khalifa Chair in Contemporary Islamic Thought through a magnanimous benefaction from the Qatar Foundation”.

Ghanem Nuseibeh, co-founder and former president of the Middle East students union in the UK, told Middle Eastern newspaper The National: “Funders should not be able to jeopardise the reputation of an institution they donate to.

“It sends completely the wrong message – not just about Oxford but also about academia more broadly.

“It promotes the idea that money can buy everything.”

Oxford criticised for fossil fuel investments CONTINUED FROM PAGE ONE Jesus, Lincoln, Magdalen, Merton, Nuffield, Queen’s, Somerville, St Antony’s, St Catherine’s, Trinity, University, Wolfson, and Worcester.

Two third-year students, Tom Zagoria and Lucas Bertholdi-Saad, have organised a protest in response to findings.

The protest, entitled “Oxford Uni pay your taxes! – Paradise Papers Protest”, is set to take place today outside the Oxford University Endowment Management headquarters.

Whilst the protest name refers to taxes, Zagoria and Bertholdi-Saad stress that the University’s actions are “symbolic of a system in which basic human needs and the future of our planet are cynically overlooked”.

Speaking to Cherwell, Zagoria and Bertholdi-Saad said: “It is disgraceful that the University has been pumping money into private equity partnerships based in tax havens, in order to invest in areas such as fossil fuels.

“These revelations are symptomatic of a system in which the wealthiest institutions can act without scrutiny and without regard to global inequality or the urgent need for climate justice.

CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS A photo on page two of Cherwell 3 November was used without the permission of St John’s College. We apologise for this error.

Oxford professor Tariq Ramadan has taken a leave of absence from the University this week after new allegations of improper sexual conduct were revealed.

Ramadan is alleged to have had encounters with four teenage students whilst teaching in Geneva, his hometown, in the 1980s and 1990s.

All the students were between the ages of 14 and 18 at the time. He has denied all the allegations, branding them a “campaign of lies”.

According to the Tribune de Genève, one woman, known as Sandra, was 15 when the alleged behaviour took place. She remembered Ramadan saying: “I feel close to you. You are mature. You are special. I am surrounded by many people but I feel lonely.”

One of the other former students, Lea, who was 14, commented that Ramadan “put my hand on my mouth telling me he knew I was thinking about him in the evening before falling asleep”. Agathe, 18 at the time, described the Professor’s behaviour as “an abuse of power, pure and simple.”

She told how, having had a coffee with Ramadan outside school, she had sex with the Professor that was “consented but very violent”.

Cherwell reported last week that despite existing allegations of rape

against the professor by two different women, the faculty of Oriental studies informed students in a meeting that they intended Ramadan to teach and supervise postgrads in the department as before, although students could ask to have another faculty member in the room if they wished.

However, following anger from the students at the University’s handling of the allegations, and the latest claims of misconduct,the University released a statement on Tuesday saying that “by mutual agreement, and with immediate effect,” Ramadan had taken a “leave of absence”.

The statement continued: “The University has consistently acknowledged the gravity of the allegations against Professor Ramadan, while emphasising the importance of fairness and the principles of justice and due process.”

The statement also stressed that such leave “implies no presumption or acceptance of guilt and allows Professor Ramadan to address the extremely serious allegations made against him”.

In a Facebook

committed to the codes and practices of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso). 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.

“This will only change when students and others stand up and demand transparency and democratic control.”

The report also revealed that Jesus College and Magdalen College invested in another corporation – Dover Street – which has indirectly invested in controversial retailer BrightHouse. BrightHouse has been accused of selling electrical goods to people with learning disabilities at high interest rates.

Labour city councillor and Queens College politics tutor, Daniel Iley-Williamson, responded to the recent reports, claiming they were a “shameful revelation”.

Oxford SU, along with hundreds of academics from Oxford and Cambridge, have previously called on Oxford to divest from fossil fuels.

The University released a statement in 2015 declaring their intentions to “avoid direct investments in coal and oil sands companies” and “also avoid investment in sectors with high social and environmental risks”.

In 2016, over 300 academics from Oxford and Cambridge called on both universities to adopt an “evidence-based, morally sound investment policy that serves the needs of the future”.

NEWS

Over 2000 cycling injuries in Oxford in last ten years

page 6

Colleges implicated in the Paradise Papers ALL SOULS Investment in offshore partnerships

NUFFIELD Investment in offshore partnerships

BRASENOSE Investment in offshore partnerships

QUEEN’S Investment in offshore partnerships

CHRIST CHURCH Investment in offshore partnerships

SOMERVILLE Investment in offshore partnerships

CORPUS CHRISTI Investment in offshore partnerships

ST ANTONY’S Investment offshore partnerships

EXETER Investment in offshore partnerships

ST CATHERINE’S Investment in offshore partnerships

JESUS Investment in Dover Street

TRINITY Investment in offshore partnerships

LINCOLN Investment in offshore partnerships MAGDALEN Investment in offshore partnerships and Dover Street MERTON Investment in offshore partnerships

OPINION

We need to define the grey areas in sexual advances

page 9

in

UNIVERSITY Investment in offshore partnerships WOLFSON Investment in offshore partnerships WORCESTER Investment in offshore partnerships

AT LENGTH

The difficulties of Oxford affordable housing

page 12

Cherwell | Friday, 10 November 2017

3

Oxford SU to fight University over “damaging” moot gowns

By MUSTY KAMAL Oxford SU passed a motion to lobby for a ban on the wearing of scholars’ gowns in Law Faculty moots, branding the practice “damaging”, by creating an “unconscious bias” among examiners.

The vote was passed with 38 votes in favour, with only three votes in opposition and two abstentions.

A moot is a mock law case that Law students are required to take part in to complete their degree.

The motion has mandated the Oxford SU vice president for Access and Academic Affairs to petition the Law Faculty to change their policy on wearing gowns in moots.

Many of these moots are judged by partners at corporate firms and a good performance may have the reward of a fast-tracked job application.

Several moots also carry financial rewards.

The motion was proposed by Thomas Howard, a second year Law student at Magdalen College.

According to the motion, “judges, sometimes from leading law firms and chambers, may have unconscious bias based on the gowns worn.”

In the meeting, Howard argued that it seemed unfair to differentiate between participants of a moot, as there is no direct correlation between

exam performance and oral argumentative ability.

Speaking about the unconscious bias, Howard said: “This is damaging for those in a commoners’ and can be for the scholars too since the judge may expect more of them.”

Howard also suggested that the conflation of a scholars’ gown and academic ability were not necessarily accurate as “scholars’ gowns are not solely down to academic achievement” but sometimes for choral and other musical scholarships.

Howard added: “The motion isn’t radical, it just brings moots into line with other exam regulations.”

This motion follows changes in regulations for viva examinations last year to make everyone wear commoners’ gowns. This move was to reduce the risk of prejudice in oral examinations.

Howard questioned whether, given that the financial reward and the lucrative job offers are at stake, it is right that the Faculty continue to enforce a hierarchical gown system that exists a “no other university”.

There was no opposition speech in response to the motion. A question was raised by a student from Merton about the similarity of the motion to one raised last term which called for the outright banning of scholars’ gowns pending consultation.

Scholars’ gowns are awarded after a student receives a distinction in first year examinations PHOTO: CHERWELL In response, Howard defended the motion in terms of its unique context and the fact that the views of students were not directly translatable from the consultation results.

Catherine Canning, Oxford SU vice president for Access and Academic Affairs, told Cherwell: “As with viva examinations, the fact that you are judged in person in moots means that the gown worn may have more significance or lead to unconscious bias.

“This issue should be distinguished from scholars’ gowns in written exams where examiners do not see the candidate, where student council in 1st week voted to keep them, which also reflected the views of students in the all student consultation in TT17.”

Oxford SU held a student-wide

SUBFUSC A University-wide referendum was held by OUSU (now Oxford SU) to decide whether to abolish subfusc entirely.

75% of students vote to keep subfusc.

SCHOLARS’ GOWNS A student-wide consultation was held by OUSU to decide whether to abolish scholars’ gowns. 63% of students voted to keep them.

Michaelmas 2016

VIVAS Regulations were adopted to ban scholars’ gowns in viva exams. The measures were taken to limit the risk of bias amongst examiners in oral exams.

By ISABEL MORRIS

reflective of a competitive, adversarial court system.”

One second year Law student, Haroon Zaman, told Cherwell: “It is a divisive issue because it pits tradition of Oxford against changing winds, which seems to be a perpetual fixture on campus nowadays.”

Another Law student from Pembroke said: “This seems only a natural extension of the decision to ban scholars’ gowns in viva examinations.

“Whilst there is less at stake (normally a trophy rather than a degree classification), we often cannot help but make subconscious decisions on the intelligence of someone wearing a scholars’ gown as opposed to a commoners’ gown.”

The Faculty of Law declined to comment at this time.

Trinity 2017

Trinity 2015

Chancellor condemns “fascistic” safe spaces

consultation about whether to abolish scholars’ gowns last term. Those who proposed this change criticised scholars’ gowns for creating “an academically hierarchical environment.”

The consultation last term revealed that 63% of students were in favour of keeping the current scholars’ gown system.

Speaking to Cherwell about the motion, Peter Saville, president of the Oxford Bar Society, said: “At the Bar there are advocates whose status is shown by their gowns. “‘Silks’ who wear a gown to distinguish years of experience and their ability are a reality of practice.

“To artificially level the playing field when there are scholars who have been selected on the basis of academic ability makes moots less

Oxford University Chancellor Chris Patten has condemned safe spaces and the practice of “noplatforming” at universities as “fundamentally offensive”.

In a speech to the Oxford Union last week, Lord Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong and a former Conservative party chairman, said he felt “more strongly about this issue than almost any other at the moment”.

He added: “I was in Hong Kong three or four weeks ago, talking to young men and women who face going to prison because they argue for free speech, and I come back to Britain and I find that people want universities to be full of safe

spaces where you can’t speak your mind.

“There is a huge difference between having an argument with someone and having a quarrel with them.

“It’s one of the reasons that I find safe spaces at universities or no-platforming so fundamentally offensive.

“It’s nothing to do with my view of what university should be like.

The University should be regarded as liberal, with liberal values of free speech.”

His comments come after a string of student campaigns to encourage safe spaces. Sussex University’s free speech society was recently

Michaelmas 2017

MOOTS Oxford SU have now voted in favour of lobbying the University to ban scholars’ gowns in moots. This will bring policy in line with that for vivas.

told by the student union that its inaugural guest must submit his speech in advance for vetting, in case it violates their safe space policy.

In his recent speech he described those who campaign for noplatforming, as engaging “fascistic behaviour” a n d “ deny i n g one of the most important roles of a

university in a free society”.

A first-year PPE student who attended the speaker event added: “If people want small safe spaces within the University, I think that’s fine, but the University as a whole should be kept free.”

The National Union of Students has a no-platforming policy to prevent “fascists and racists from speaking and an official no platforming list which contains six groups, including the BNP and AlMuhajiroun.

Friday, 10 November 2017 | Cherwell

4

News

You do the maths: why aren’t female mathematicians getting firsts?

Despite the department’s best efforts, the gender discrepency in results for BA Maths increased this year

By MATT ROLLER The University’s Mathematics Department has held firm in spite of an examiners’ report suggesting that changes implemented with the intention of closing the gender disparity in finals results have failed.

Just seven female Maths finalists achieved firsts in 2017, compared to 45 men. This means that only 21.2% of women graduated with first-class degrees – a decrease of 4.4% from 2016 – while that figure was 45.5% for men.

Furthermore, 15.2% of women achieved a 2.2 or below, compared to only 9.1% of male students.

The widening of the gender gap in results comes despite an increase in time allowance from 90 minutes to 105 minutes, introduced under the belief that female candidates were “more likely to be adversely affected by time pressure.”

In their report, the examiners described themselves as “concerned” by the statistics, saying: “We would like to bring this year’s very significant gender discrepancy to the attention of the department, which we know is already well aware of this issue.”

However, in a statement to Cherwell, the Mathematics Department claimed that the change had worked well: “Whilst there is

New homeless app gets the go ahead from Exeter College JCR

By ETHAN CROFT

clearly more progress to be made, the departments guardedly feel that this change was a positive one.

“We will continue with the longer papers for the foreseeable future, monitoring the exam data carefully.”

The Department highlighted the fact that the gender gap for the 2017 cohort had closed slightly from their second-year papers.

“Some improvement in per-

7 female students graduated with a first in BA Maths this year, compared to 45 men. formance might be expected as students choose options suited to their strengths, but the improvements for female students outdid the marginal improvement for male students... particularly in the reduction of 2.2s,” they said.

The disparity regarding results is much more marked in the threeyear BA Maths degree than in the four-year MMath course. In the 2017 MMath results, a slightly higher percentage of female students were awarded firsts than male students – although there Exeter College JCR has donated £300 to Greater Change, a new app aimed at helping the homeless to be trialled in Oxford.

The motion passed with 15 for and 13 against. Economics and Management graduate Alex McCallion, who founded the app, attended the meeting. He said it would ensure donations to the homeless are made “more productive”.

McCallion, who graduated from Jesus College this year and is now a reserach assistant at the Saïd Business School, created the app called

It will allow users to search through Oxford’s homeless population, read their stories, and donate accordingly.

were only 18 female candidates compared to 66 male.

A University spokesperson told Cherwell: “The University is fully committed to gender equality, including both the representation of women and the advancement of women’s careers in STEM subjects.

“This commitment includes our participation in the Athena SWAN Charter, with an institutional award and 30 departmental awards across the University. The University has committed to the revised Athena Swan Charter, which includes developing this work into humanities and social sciences departments.”

However, Oxford’s efforts to increase the number of female Maths undergraduates appear to be working better than Cambridge’s: while 37% of the Oxford offer-holders for Maths in 2017 were female, this figure was just 17% at Cambridge.

Professor Helen Byrne, the Director of Equality and Diversity within the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division suggested that Oxford’s intake reflects the gender split of secondary education.

“Students are required to have double-Maths [Maths and Further Maths] at A-level for entry… therefore we have a smaller pool of female students to draw upon,” she

Money will then be allocated by support workers.

The app aims to give people more details about where their money is going to allow people to give without having to carry cash.

McCallion told the Oxford Mail: “Greater Change is all about using technology to encourage members of the public to give directly to homeless people but with the assurance that it’s being spent to help them move away from homelessness for good.

“Too often, the money given out on the streets isn’t being used to help people break the cycle of homelessness.”

A group of Oxford students in their subfusc watch on during their graduation cer told Cherwell.

“Indeed, the gender balance of Maths undergraduates reflects the gender balance of students taking double-Maths at A-level.”

In 2015, only 29.1% of the 14,363 entrants for Further Maths ALevel were female. In the 2015/16 academic year, a slightly smaller percentage of Oxford Maths undergraduates were women, with 24.6% of that year’s intake identifying as female.

Professor Byrne also highlighted the Department’s outreach work, suggesting that positive steps were being taken to address the problem at its source.

“In recent years, [the Maths Department] has been running an increasing number of outreach events targeted specifically at women; they now annually reach thousands of women, including hundreds who are pre-A-level.

“We are also developing online material in order reach an even bigger audience and to enthuse more

students in general to take Further Maths A-level.”

She also drew positives from recent data. “It indicates that, on average, the exam performance of female Maths undergraduates [at] Oxford improves during their studies,” she told Cherwell.

If this is indeed the case, then this year’s Prelims results should be reason for optimism in the Department’s attempts to close the gender gap.

While the percentage of men achieving firsts fell slightly, from 36.1% to 33.6%, 23.1% of women were awarded firsts, up from 14.9% in 2016.

A member of the University’s Mirzakhani Society, which represents Maths students identifying as female or gender non-binary, suggested that female students are more likely to experience problemsolving difficulties when around male students.

Helen Zha told Cherwell: “One thing I’ve heard and felt is that

The app has been developed in association with the local social enterprise Aspire Oxford, which aims to find employment for disadvantaged groups.

Greater Change is also raising money through the crowdfunding app OxReach.

The CEO of Aspire, Paul Roberts, said: “I think it is incredibly exciting that Greater Change allows the public to know they will be helping homeless people take that positive next step when they give through the platform.

“The feature of being able to give quickly and easily to an umbrella group of local homeless charities through the app will

also provide a vital source of funding in a time of heavy cuts.”

Cherwell | Friday, 10 November 2017

5

OXFORD UNION

University Greek society anger at Union’s use of controversial title

By JACK HUNTER The Oxford Union has been accused of “delegitimising” the concerns of Greek students after it refused their requests not to use the disputed title of the President of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

The Oxford University Greek Society says it is planning to lodge a formal complaint after the Union backtracked on a decision to publicise an event for Gjorge Ivanov as the “President of the Republic of Macedonia” instead of “the President of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” (Fyrom).

Many Greeks oppose the name of the neighbouring state, believing it to appropriate Greek identity by taking the name of a region already in Greece.

The Greek Society claim Union President Chris Zabilowicz initially ignored its repeated calls to change the name of the speaker event to Fyrom, which is accepted as the name for Macedonia by the UN, the EU, and other international bodies, although not the UK. According to the Society, the Union’s Governing Body eventually

conceded to use the Fyrom title, only to change it back two and a half hours before the event – a move they claim was prompted by interventions from the Macedonian embassy. The Union did not respond to Cherwell’s request for comment.

In a statement, the Greek Committee claimed the Union had “gravely mishandled” the visit by not using the name, a decision they claimed questioned “the politically neutral stance the Oxford Union is supposed to take.”

“We feel that the way the Oxford Union has handled the event was politically-charged, and dismissed our concerns, clearly disrespecting Greeks – especially in the region of Greek Macedonia – who feel their identity, cultural heritage, and history appropriated,” they continued.

The Union’s Governing Body had allegedly agreed at a meeting to remove use of any disputed name of the state title from the Facebook event and any further publicity, and use the Fyrom title for the event’s description and the President’s announcement at the event.

According to a Greek Society

newsletter however, the wording on the website and Facebook event was not rectified for four days, until the Union received further emails from the Greek Society.

The Society further claims that two and a half hours before the event, it received an email from Zabilowicz informing them that he “received a call from the Macedonian Ambassador” and “will be changing the title back”. Zabilowicz did not respond to Cherwell’s request for comment.

The Union had “already set a precedent” in 2011, by using the Fyrom name during the visit of Ivanov, the Society claim. Members informed Cherwell that it is lobbying its members to email the president to voice their “deep concern.”

Ever since Macedonia claimed its independence in 1991, its name has been the subject of dispute with its southern neighbour, Greece.

Many Greeks are angered that the former Yugoslav republic has tied its heritage to Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great.

Taking its name, they say, suggests territorial ambitions beyond their neighbour’s existing borders.

remony at the Sheldonian Theatre PHOTO: DOMINIC HARGREAVES/FLICKR where there are more males in the room, women will experience stereotype threat more strongly and perform worse than they would otherwise.”

“Being aware of this and talking about [it] as a widespread phenomenon as opposed to it feeling exclusively like a personal problem could be helpful.”

Another member, Jess Woods, claimed that the problem was one that needed to be addressed not by Oxford, but by the UK’s education system in general.

“We need a cultural shift. When I said I wanted to do Maths at uni, I was questioned and doubted. My male friends doing Maths were just encouraged. How can women perform as well when they spend their lives being told they shouldn’t?”

Clearly, the blame does not lie solely with the University in this instance: while Oxford could be doing more, the low number of female Further Maths A-Level students is the real cause for concern.

Gender gap on the rise

Hertford to fund students protesting at Yarl’s Wood

Hertford JCR have passed a motion to subsidise the travel of students wishing to travel to a Yarl’s Wood protest. £100 will now be set aside to cover the travel costs to the demonstration.

The motion was proposed by two second year students, Simon Neumaier and Charlotte Jackson, for the purpose of “breaking down social barriers”.

A pool of £100 has been set aside to cover the costs of travel for a mass demonstration that is to be held there on the 18 November.

Yarl’s Wood is located in Bedford, a sixty-mile coach journey from Oxford.

The motion was proposed

By SAM RICE

Percentage of Maths BA students graduating with a first in each academic year by gender

Wrap up with a College Scarf College stripes woven in wool

because of worries that the £6.80 coach prices would put people off.

In the motion, it said: “Participation in any of these events should be open and accessible to anyone, regardless of financial endowment.”

Yarl’s Wood holds just over 400 people, all awaiting immigration clearance to enter into UK society.

The demonstration is being held to protest the standards of living and abuse of its residents.

Those involved from across the University are being told to make banners, learn slogans and surround the buildings with a “wall of noise” to draw attention to the cause.

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Friday, 10 November 2017 | Cherwell

6

News Cycling crashes and bike thefts in Oxford soar, new figures reveal

By HENRY STRAUGHAN

Over 2,000 cyclists have been injured in crashes on Oxford’s roads in the last ten years.

New data from the journey planner CycleStreets has shown that city’s main roads are becoming more dangerous. Particularly hazardous areas include Botley Road, Abingdon Road, Woodstock Road and Banbury Road.

The figures revealed that there were 2,004 collisions resulting in injuries between 2005 and 2016.

These are only the reported collisions, leading to fears the real number is much higher.

Labour councillor Louise Upton told the Oxford Mail: “As many collisions go unreported, this already distressing data is likely just the tip of the iceberg. It shows the urgent need to improve Oxford’s cycling infrastructure and, in particular, the need for segregated cycle lanes.”

Josh King, a second year Mansfield student, told Cherwell: “A joyful cycle ride in Oxford continues to become more like navigating a minefield blindfolded. With unclear bus lanes, dodgy traffic stops and

lack of cycle lanes, and more traffic by the day I now feel myself pondering what it will say in my obituary every time I go to lectures.

“The council ought to do more on this issue, segregating cyclists from traffic on all major roads.”

Cyclox chairman Simon Hunt encouraged people to sign a new charter to improve safety, which was launched last night. The charter is named after Claudia Comberti, a 31-year-old geography PhD student at Oxford University who died after coming off her bike in Botley Road in May. Crashing is not the only danger cyclists have to fear. Police have told Oxford cyclists to take extra precautions to secure their bikes amid a sharp rise in thefts. According to new figures, reports of bicycles being stolen in the city have soared by 70 per cent in a year.

A total of 2,339 reports of bike theft were made to Thames Valley Police from June 2016 to June 2017, an average of six thefts a day.

King said: “I feel increasingly unsafe and uncomfortable to lock my bike up on the High Street anymore.”

Crash Hotspots BANBURY ROAD: 247 CRASHES PLAIN ROUNDABOUT: 84 CRASHES HIGHSTREET: 124 CRASHES ST GILES’: 54 CRASHES ABINGDON ROAD: 53 CRASHES BROAD STREET: 12 GEORGE STREET: 31 BIKE THEFTS: 2015/2016: 1,375 2016/2017: 2,339 2011/2012: 2,599

Scholar sues Oxford over sexual discrimination

By GREGORY HARTLEY An Oxford University scholar was reportedly the victim of discrimination after he “thwarted” unwanted sexual advances from his project supervisor, a tribunal heard on Friday.

Dr Matthew Levy, 32, claims that after he rejected the advances of Professor Peter Norreys, 57, Norreys launched a lengthy campaign of bullying and sexual discrimination.

Dr Levy is currently a Junior Research Fellow of Wolfson College.

He is suing the Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford and Professor Norreys for sexual discrimination.

He claims that following his rejection of Professor Norreys his level of supervision was increased “far beyond that which was required under the conditions”.

Dr Levy described Norreys position over him as “ultimate control of the training I took as well as over the progress of my Newton Fellowship projects”.

He said that Norreys began to micromanage Dr Levy’s work, ex-

penses and travelling.

He also pointed towards the professor’s wording in an early investigation meeting over his grievance, where Professor Norreys said he wanted to be able to “interrogate” Dr Levy about progress on his work.

Despite the University claiming Dr Levy was not covered by their appeal procedure, because as an early-career researcher he was neither a student nor a member of staff, a preliminary hearing has ruled otherwise.

Judge Andrew Gumbiti-Zimuto concluded on Friday that Dr Levy was indeed an employee of Oxford University and that a tribunal would therefore consider his claims.

The judge set a date in April 2018 for the panel to consider the case.

Dr Levy said: “Oxford University tried to deny me my fundamental right to bring a sexual harassment claim against the professor, seeking to dismiss it over a technicality surrounding my employment status.”

The University has not yet made a formal statement but says they “do not accept the allegations made by Dr Levy and a full tribunal hearing on them has yet to take place”.

Cherwell | Friday, 10 November 2017

7

Shark Tales Drunk freshers meet world-class journalists.

Watch now at facebook.com/cherwellonline

Wadham fields male Uni Challenge team despite female trials

By NICK BROWN Wadham has backtracked on its decision to enforce a gender quota for its University Challenge 201819 team.

The college initially held trials for the team over the last three weeks, but when the number of female-identifying attendees was seen to be unexpectedly low, they introduced female-only trials.

After a poor turnout, the SU committee decided in a meeting to permit an all-male team.

Verity Babbs, who attended the women’s trials, told Cherwell: “Having the women-only trials was an excellent idea on the part of the organisers, as it was noticeably a different vibe to a previous trial, where I had been the only woman.

“I think the extra trial was encouraging for women who might have felt intimated to go to previous mixed trials.”

However, as the all-female trials were poorly attended, the Wadham SU committee then considered positive discrimination to balance the gender of the team.

It was suggested in the SU meeting that a woman should be placed on the team, even if they did not perform well enough to place them

in the top four entrants – perhaps allowing women who made the top six to be in the team.

According to the minutes of the meeting, Jack Wands, president of Wadham SU, suggested that a woman should be put on the team, saying: “When we were invited to enter a team we were encouraged to represent the institution as a whole”.

However, others countered that this would not be a fair method for either male or female students.

One student said: “We should run a team on a meritocratic basis or submit no team.

“It would not be good for the welfare of the woman entrant to be there knowing she was let in to fill a quota. This is national television.”

Another added: “It would be embarrassing and maybe tokenistic, we fear, that the team was not selected on a meritocratic basis if this affects performance.”

The committee ultimately decided to leave the final decision to the discretion of the social secretaries, responsible for the selection process.

Greg Ritchie, one of the social secretaries, told Cherwell: “I think quizzing, like darts and snooker,

Pembroke College to join the tortoise race Pembroke JCR has passed a motion to support the college in getting a college tortoise. The motion, which was passed on Sunday, proposed a collegewide competition to help name the tortoise. Pembroke could thus join other colleges which have a long tradition of keeping tortoises, particularly for racing purposes. More recently, University College acquired Percy, a racing turtle, whilst Corpus Christi has a reputation for the ‘Tortoise Fair’ where college tortoises compete against one another for charity. If acquired, Pembroke will join a long list of colleges acquiring less conventional pets. Most notably, in 2011, Queen’s JCR voted to acquire a pet dagu.

Cycling Police pull over those riding without lights On Monday police lined up along Broad Street to stop cyclists who breaking the law by riding without lights. During the three hour operation 86 people were caught for cycling without lights. Those caught breaking the law were given new lights and ordered to complete an online course in cycle safety, before being allowed to ride off. The police can issue a £30 on the spot fine for travelling without lights. All cyclists riding at night, which is defined as between sunset and sunrise, must have a white light on the front of their bike and a red light on the back.

Medicine Oxford again named best university for medics For the seventh year in a row, the University of Oxford has been named as the best institution for medical students. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings, released on Tuesday, revealed that Oxford is still most highly rated for health and medical teaching. Oxford University had approximately 5,000 staff, teachers, and reserachers in the Medical Sciences Division alone. Further, 1,500 undergraduates and 1,500 graduate students study at the University. It has one of the largest biomedical research centres in Europe. The University was also noted for its connection with the local NHS trust.

tends to attract more men than women.

“It is bad when an all-male environment deters women from applying. To this end, I think we’ve done everything reasonable in our power to encourage a diverse team that reflects Wadham, such as ensuring trials were advertised on the women’s Facebook group and holding women-only trials.

“As Wadham SU agreed, putting a woman who isn’t of the necessary standard on the team is not fair on other contestants, the woman herself, or the wider movement for gender equality in University Challenge.”

Babbs told Cherwell that she did not resent the decision against positive discrimination: “I don’t think anyone would be comfortable feeling like they were on the team only to fill a quota space – I think the idea of a quota is patronising to the women who took part in the trials.”

A few weeks ago, St Hugh’s was criticised for fielding an all male team in the 2017-18 edition of the television show.

Critics of the college, including the pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Brighton, questioned why a male-only team was being

fielded by a a college that was formerly all-female.

On the programme, presenter Jeremy Paxman joked: “On the basis of tonight’s team, we could be forgiven for thinking they [men] had rather taken it over.”

The college also faced complaints related to the selection process which was believed to be unfair, as one of the team members selected had not taken part in the college’s internal competition, but was chosen because he was rumoured to be a “good quizzer”.

At the time, one female St Hugh’s

student told Cherwell: “As far as I can tell, it was quite subjectively selected on who was rumoured to be or had a reputation to be ‘good’, which I think is a bit problematic.”

One unsuccessful female applicant for the St. Hugh’s College team told Cherwell: “It feels like the ‘application process’ was irrelevant.

“As a woman who initially applied, I was pretty gutted to not even be asked about it and only found out who had been picked when they went to do the recordings.”

All-male University Challenge team of former women’s college St Hugh’s

Oxford told: ‘decolonise now’ Around 100 protesters gathered outside the Radcliffe Camera on Friday to “come together in public declaration of their support for the goal of decolonising Oxford University”.

The rally was organised

by Oxford SU Campaign for Racial Awareness and Equality, Class Act, Rhodes Must Fall (RMF) and Common Ground. Representatives from all the groups delivered speeches, as did Labour councillor and DPhil student Dan Iley-Williamson.

They were accompanied by sporadic chants of “De-, de-, decolonise!” – the shout popularised in Oxford by the RMF movement.

The demonstrators held displayed banners reading: “Decolonise Now” and “The white curriculum thinks for us so we don’t have to”.

Iley-Williamson told the crowd: “Liberating the university… is about putting an end to establishment ideology – an ideology that has done irreversible harm.”

PHOTO: JULIA HAMILTON

Friday, 10 November 2017 | Cherwell

8 Independent since 1920 Vol. 282, No. 6

Cherwell

Lowering the voting age is unnecessary and wrong

PARADISE PAPERS

Fund yo’ self

T

he Paradise Papers broke in the midst of a political scandal – triggered by the Harvey Weinstein revelations – that threatened to bring down the government.

The lead revelation – that the Queen’s private fund had around £10 million in Cayman Islands and Bermuda funds – was a direct attack on the uneasy relationship in our country between democracy and monarchy.

A parallel relationship exists within our university, and it is one that has been further highlighted by new revelations about the University’s financial affairs.

To some, Oxford is a bastion of privilege. Alongside Cambridge, our university has bred a ruling class that has produced a housing shortage, stagnating real wages, and – perhaps worst of all – British withdrawal from the solidarist and international European Union.

But to others, this university represents a rung on the ladder of social mobility and a place for great minds to come together to make the world a better place. Naturally, it is to this second vision that the University administration aspires.

Revelations about overseas funds let the University down. A global institution with global values should fulfil its local responsibilities. If it’s funded by the British people – and the University receives substantial public funds – it should be careful to ensure there’s not a glimmer of doubt about its financial dealings.

We’ve been pushing the University to be more transparent for weeks. Two weeks ago, our front page revealed the vice chancellor Louise Richardson’s total expenses. But there was more to

tell – and the University wasn’t telling us. They refused to give us a full breakdown, including of her substantial flight itinerary.

As long as there is opacity in the University’s dealings, there will be doubt amongst those who live and work in its midst. Doubt breeds mistrust, and mistrust will not bode well for the University in the years to come.

Jordan Bernstein

Sums are not just for sons The Mathematics faculty cannot be accused of not trying to close the gender gap between male and female candidates – last year, the time limit for the third year finals papers was increased from 90 minutes to 105 minutes in a bid to aid female candidates.

However, the faculty’s efforts appear not to have succeeded. The percentage of male candidates to receive first class marks this year was double the percentage of female candidates, according to new figures released by the faculty.

Some on Oxfeud have jumped on this as evidence that “on average, female candidates are less good at maths than their male counterparts.” One person suggested that perhaps women ought to have studied harder.

We think, to put it mildly, that these contributors are talking nonsense.

There is no evidence to suggest the assertion that women are naturally worse than men at maths, and moreover there is no justification for an assessment regime that does not work for all genders.

Of course, natural differences exist between humans. But there must never be any suggestion that some of us are insurmountably “less good” than any other.

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 SELMA STEARNS and ROSA THOMAS, Features Editors ABBY RIDSDILL-SMITH and JULIA ROUTLEDGE, Life Editors JAMES LAMMING, Deputy Life Editor ALTAIR BRANDON-SALMON and ANOUSHKA KAVANAGH, Culture Editors LUCY ENDERBY and TILDA COLEMAN, 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

IRTEZA ISHRAQ and JON STARK, Science and Tech 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 JULIA ALSOP and CHARLOTTE TOSTI, Blogs Editors ELLA BENSON-EASTON, Chief Photographer 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.

The truth is that young people are ill-informed

T

here were a few things that worried me about the debate on a private member’s bill to lower the voting age to 16.

It’s one of those things where, if you disagree with it, it’s hard to put into words why. My disdain for the idea was already growing before I reached 16, and meant that I was less concerned than some of my friends when I narrowly missed out on the opportunity to vote in the 2015 general election. I cared about politics, I cared about the country, and for anyone that asked about my opinion, I had something to contribute. But it just wasn’t my time.

In many ways, the concern sounds legitimate. Where there is not universal suffrage, surely our society is undemocratic? If we are excluding people from the right to vote, then it should be for good reason. And of course, the schoolchild’s favourite recourse in a debate: “what about my human rights?”

The truth of the matter is that 16-18 year olds are on average less informed than their contemporaries in other age groups – they’re likely to have had less education and less experience of life. And before I’m horrifically misquoted out of context, there are of course some 16 and 17 year olds who know their stuff, some who don’t Twitter away their days keeping up with the Kardashians or bunking off school.

Indeed, the United Kingdom Youth Parliament (itself a waste of time and an example of the ill-considered screeching without logic that we would do well to rid our politics of entirely), serves to show that those without the right to vote can be incredibly aware.

But awareness is not how we dole out the right to vote. We don’t make people, as long as they are citizens, pass a test in order to vote. What carnage would ensue then? We would be depriving those without access to education, without the time or impetus to watch the ten o’clock news and Question Time, of the opportunity to have a say in how the country is run.

Saying that awareness automatically entitles one to vote, mind, also works the other way. Why stop

at 16? Why should a genius toddler who has already obtained an A* in politics A-level be barred from his rights?

But embedded within the idea is also the more sinister undertones of identity politics. The idea that just because our politicians are not voted in by teenagers means they have no incentive to better their lives. And, of course, this is fundamentally misconceived, since not only do we see parties actively putting forward agendas for, among other things, lower tuition fees and free school meals, but we also assume that no one else is voting with them in mind.

We assume that only 16 and 17 year olds care about tuition fees, when those at university certainly care, and those beyond often do feel morally bound to vote against their own economic interest – if this weren’t true, a Labour government would be unthinkable. This is not even to mention that, through parents and guardians, a 16 or 17year old is more isolated from the effects of government policy, often still being wholly dependent and having most aspects of their life controlled.

Yet there is also a greater danger of a progression towards soundbite politics. Perhaps the most key factor in any election – the economy – is likely to be pushed aside in favour of the quick-fi x solutions that parties rightly or wrongly believe will appeal to the new and younger electorate.

Slightly older teenagers, with ideas about social inequality formed through a university applications process and widening of friendship circles, or with the feeling of pride or dismay at the idea of a certain amount of money being taken from their fi rst paycheque, will have a more considered outlook. These are the people that are more likely to make balanced decisions in an election, even if they do not always do so.

At any rate, the dividing line will always be viewed as arbitrary by some. But the solution to an allegedly unrepresentative democracy isn’t to enfranchise those who on average display poorer judgement and knowledge.

Life Arts Style

by Cherwell 10 November 17

+ Visuals A critique of John Lewis’ tired festive formula Film The highs and lows of queer romance Books In praise of Micahel Longley’s Angel Hill

smoking kills page 16

Friday, 10 November 2017 | Cherwell

2 oxbow

EDITORIAL Land is our collective pastoral memory and our urbanised future

Contents

By ALTAIR BRANDON-SALMON ANOUSHKA KAVANAGH If Blue Planet II has taught us anything, it’s that so much of the world is a watery globe, populated by species with no concept of the dry land. Yet for humans, the land, and the landscape, is one of the most powerful and unifying features in our lives. This is nowhere more true than in Britain, where our shared imagination of the ‘green and pleasant land’ is one of the great national myths which defines our collective memory. It has been burnished by the pastoral literature of Shakespeare and William Blake, and romanticised by artists such as Thomas Gainsborough and J.M.W. Turner.

Yet as our articles this week explore, the landscape is far more complex than natural beauty. Indeed, as the examination of John Constable’s The Cornfield shows, the land is constantly changing and in flux; while Anoushka Kavanagh looks at how the land can be the site of deeply political meaning, transformed into a metaphor for mental landscapes.

For the first time in history, half of the world’s population now lives in an urban environment, meaning the land becomes mediated by art and literature in people’s understanding.

So there has never been a more pressing moment to pause and ponder on our landscapes, lining the horizons bearing down on Oxford.

Interview

Music

3

12 Playlist Songs that sum up Oxford 12 Pick of the Week Lee Gamble’s ‘Ghost’ 12 Neutral Milk Hotel In An Aeroplane over the sea 12 Review Turn out the Light

Tory moderniser Oliver Letwin talks to Will Dry

Life 4 4 4 5 5 6 6

Love Oxland Corporate hate is just students denying reality Snapshot Levon Vincent John Evelyn election fever grips Oxford How to tackle fifth week blues Food the Veggie pledge is the answer for athletes A Life Divided College bars

Visuals 7 7

John Lewis the decline of its long-standing Christmas advert Christmas commodification

Fashion 8

Cigarette chic the view from the smoking area

Culture

Clockwise from left: Smoking area chic 8, pre-dinner cocktails at Freud 6, Candide at the Oxford Playhouse 15, John Lewis Christmas advert 7

10 Art outside Sculpture parks 10 Picks of the Week Literary fantasy lands 11 Gainsborough death of an idyll 11 Poem Silent Empty Hand

Film 13 Bake Off best season yet 13 Review Call Me By Your Name 13 Ones to Watch filming locations

Books 14 14 14

Poetry Angel Hill A neglected life William Hazlitt Young adult fiction John Green’s latest

Theatre 15 Candide baffles reviewer 15 Confessions of a drama queen 15 Five minutes with chair of ouds

Satire 16 16 16

Cherwell satire editors rebel The blues friendly advice to get through fifth week Royal scandal the Paradise Papers

craft brewery taproom social justice

Tap Social Movement is a craft brewery based in central oxford, specialising in bold and flavourful keg beer. We are the first brewery to bring sour beer to Oxford, and our core range includes an exciting mixture of hoppy pales, dark, Belgian, gluten free and sour styles.

Our brewery taproom and event space is open regularly with all our beers on tap and is host to a range of community events including live music, arts and cooking performances, charity fundraisers, yoga and business conferences.

Tap Social Movement grew out of a passion for good beer and social justice. as oxford alumni and grad students With legal professional backgrounds, we were looking for ways to reduce the staggering reoffending rates caused by barriers people face when trying to get a job after prison.

The craft brewing industry, involving technical, transferrable skills and lots of innovation offered a perfect opportunity to combine our passions, whilst having wider social impact. We offer training and employment to people serving and recently released from prison sentences to help people turn their lives around.

Help break the cycle, join the Tap Social Movement. @tapsocialmovement @tapsocialbrew 27 curtis industrial estate, north hinksey lane, oxford ox2 0lx

Cherwell | Friday, 10 November 2017

oxbow 3

interview “It is very clear what the Conservative party have to do”

Interview Oliver Letwin was David Cameron’s “odd job man” but politics has changed since then. He talks to Will Dry.

O

liver Letwin was a t went y-somet h ing aide in Thatcher’s Downing Street, a believer in the mission and the missionary.

He was elected to Parliament in 1997, when, for the foreseeable future, the opposition benches were nothing more than an incubator of desperation.

He has seen it all. His book, however, is resistant to over-mine his exhaustive experiences. There are no extracts from his diaries. Instead, he has chosen to deliver a thesis on the Conservative Party: what does work and what does not work, a message to his successors.

Some of those who work and remained loyal to Thatcher until her downfall are infected with a longlasting, incurable radical zeal. Letwin is more reflective. In the book he says that Thatcher and her aides were too absorbed in the great war between market liberalism and socialism to note the severe deprivation in the country.

He connects his existentialist crisis as a backbencher in 1997 - seeking meaning through largely pointless committee work - with his failure, and the failure of the party, to appreciate the reality of the underclass. In 1997, such was his emptiness, he wrote on a Word document “What is the present purpose of the Conservative Party?”

By 2005, Letwin’s answer was being articulated by David Cameron’s leadership campaign. Himself, Osborne, Gove, Cameron - all fervent believers in market liberalism, but also in the necessity for social justice. I ask him if Cameroonism can survive Cameron’s political decline. He tells me that the recent rise of populism is a “temporary phenomenon”.

“If we hold our nerve social market liberalism can re-assert itself. The enemies of it from far left and far right will I think go back into their boxes.”

If recent electoral forces are a blip, this raises a crucial question for the Conservative party. Is it wise to be implementing, and thus owning, the largest geopolitical change in the country’s recent history - if the forces behind that geopolitical change are temporary? By 2021, analysis predicts that there will no longer be a popular mandate

for Brexit - on the basis of demographic shift alone. What about 2030?

Is the Tory party anchoring its future to a populist blip? Letwin does not agree. On the British people leaving the EU, “I do not think that is a blip.

“Anything that threatens democracy is a catastrophe” I think that was a decision made in a referendum that you can’t just do and undo every day of the week.” He considers it more important that we leave the EU because we voted for it, than whether or not we are in or out the EU. “Anything that threatens the basis of democracy would be a catastrophe”.

The thesis is more relevant to the Conservative party. He believes that, more than ever, the party needs to make a “liberal, social justice, ecologically conscious, focussed argument”. Some want to emphasise entrepreneurial activity, and are more purist about the free market.

And others think the party should be about social cohesion.

Whilst this is a conversation that needs to be had before the next election, for now, Letwin tells me “It is very clear what the Conservative party has to do - in a way that it was not in 97”. Jeremy Corbyn, in his view, “represents a polar opposite to everything that Thatcher and Blair Brown Major Cameron all stood for.

He wants to take us right back to a pre-Thatcher way of r unning

things in this country.” He requires the Conservatives to “make again the arguments that we never thought we would need to make again.”

He views Corbyn as part of the reactionary tide that he believes will prove to be temporary. One of the reasons for this is because these populist movements lack serious connections or respect for ideas. “The Labour party, for a long while, was influenced by a pretty powerful Marxist analysis, even if it did not share communist views about how to do anything. I think now, when you look at Maduro in Venezuela, or their counterparts in Bolivia, Podemos in Spain, or Corbyn here, you do not really see any serious intellectual background.”

The same holds for the populist right: when he looks at the AfD in Germany, the Freedom Party in Austria, or Trump, “you don’t really see anything by way of an intellectual underpinning.” Letwin, the son of two economists, who grew up with Hayek, Friedman, and Nozick, among others, at his parent’s kitchen table, believes in ideas.

He also believes his newfound opponents do not have any. “I do not think there are a profound new set of ideas around now that is causing the movements to far right and far left.

What you’ve got is just reaction to events, and populist movements not serious alternative ideologies”.

His most searing line, “the only serious deep analysis that is around at the moment is a free market liberal analysis”, reveals that whilst he might not quite believe like Mrs Thatcher that the facts of like are conservative, they most certainly are, in Letwin’s view, socially liberal with an ecological, social justice oriented emphasis.

If the Tories are at their most dominant when they adopt his outlook, then why did Cameron never win a large scale majority? He tells me that “it is quite unlikely that anyone will be able to get those sorts of very large scale majorities at any time in the near future. I think the electorate is much less inclined to give any party that kind of majority than it used to be”.

He tells that “There’s always an awful lot of noise around that can produce very surprising political results at any given moment.” In explaining that ideas are not sufficient - one also needs to surf and survive the “vicissitudes and serendipitous of political life”. As the Thatcherites missed the deprivation of those whose economic circumstances literally excluded them from society, I think Letwin, in speaking of “noise” and “vicissitudes”, might have missed a craving for something more than what he and Cameron offered.

The public never truly accepted the Tories either in 2010 or 2015, the vote for Brexit, the near miss of Scottish independence – the liberals failed to offer a

comprehensive vision. Letwin seems to understand this when he describes how, with immigration, the country could never be behind the policy because the right argument was never developed. “The rhetoric on things like migration - from Blair to

“Migration is intrinsically a good thing for society” Cameron - was wrong. Many of us have now learnt that its important that we change that.

“Yes, of course, we need to control migration, but we need to make the argument that migration is intrinsically a good thing for our society providing that it is sensibly controlled, rather than portraying it as an evil that needs to be kept at bay.”

However much I agree with Letwin here, and think that Cameron would have been more successful if he had openly and forcefully made the case for markets in public services, or made the positive case for immigration, it is hard not to sympathise because of the climate in which these decisions were made in.

Beyond a thesis for the Tory party, the book reveals the enigma of Oliver Letwin - a minister who’s party far exceeded that of his public profile. He self-deprecatingly describes himself as “Cameron’s odd job man”, and such a conception was understood among politicos at the time.

Letwin has the rare gift in politics to detach himself from the present. In government, this meant finding time to reform the energy market, improve the care of veterans, and to create a Blue Belt of marine protected areas around overseas territories.

Out of government, he is in the process, with like-minded MPs, of outlining the kind of ideas that he sets out in the book. He is also beginning a five year project that aims to increase Western understanding of the implications of the rise of India and China.

He tells me: “They have a much deeper understanding in India and China of the West than we currently have of them.” Unlike in the Cold War, when we had experts on the Soviet Union, he notes that we do not have the same calibre today with the rising Eastern powers. The West, in the middle of the coming century, will be “second or third fiddle”, and will need “to understand the world its living in if its going to prosper.”

I ask him if he will ever return to Downing Street, where he has worked for most of his life. He says: “Oh yes, definitely. I have had my turn - and very much enjoyed it.”

When the government is trying to implement one of the most complex policies in our modern history, Remainers and Leavers should think it’s a shame that Letwin is not being put to good use. He is one of the few brains who might be able to navigate this labyrinthine exit - or, if he reinterprets what I consider his thesis – be brave enough to realise that we have to stop it.

Friday, 10 November 2017 | Cherwell

4 oxbow

Love Oxland “She was tall, friendly and dolled up – though sadly this wasn’t for me.”

Juliet Flamank is disappointed by Jack Beadsworth’s lack of agricultural ambition Jack Beadsworth Third Year, Law Corpus Christi

Juliet Flamank Third Year, PPE Balliol From the moment that Jack arrived at the Turf, umbrella in hand (I was drenched from the rain), I knew that this was someone who had their shit together. When he revealed that he’d spent his summer in Panama volunteering at a legal access centre, I thought that was just unfair – some of us have to do banking internships, you know! Despite my initial feeling of inferiority, Jack did reveal one fault – despite living in Worcestershire (promising) he wasn’t in fact a farmer (disappointing). Luckily the evening was a good one – we bonded over sibling rivalries and sports, and managed to avoid the awkward silences which make a date feel more like a tute. In fact, I would go as far as to say that I had a better time on the date than I did trying to sum it up in this column.

What was your first impression?

The umbrella Personality?

Really lovely Any awkward moments?

Chat about the location of bathrooms in restuarants.

Prior to arriving at Turf, I had low expectations about the evening ahead.

I mean, who in their right mind goes on a blind date organised by Cherwell? Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised when greeted by Juliet: tall, friendly, and dolled up – though sadly this wasn’t for me but for a 21st she was heading to afterwards. As opposed to the stereotypical blind date, there were no awkward silences and the conversation flowed right from the start – even getting the bartender and other customers involved in a lively conversation about girls using the universal male fear of periods to manipulate them to their advantage.

The sparkling conversation then ranged from troublesome underage siblings losing our IDs to our shared desire to help the vulnerable (always a turn on): it was a lovely evening.

What was your first impression?

Too smart for a Love Oxland date Personality?

Fearless and fun Any awkward moments?

I thought for a moment she was a ruthless venture capitalist

More on the universal male fear of periods?

Voting now open on our Facebook page Sponsored by

“I’m carrying two paper bags.

One contains a croissant, the other my soul”

It’s time to stop demonising a corporate career choice and accept the rentpaying reality, writes Nicola Dwornik

Snapshot

Big beats, bigger wings

£4.50 cocktails Monday to Thursday from 9pm.

By FELIX POPE

S

hiny towers and lifts to one-hundred-andsixteen floors. Glass windows in every direction, the concentrated smell of freshly-pressed suits and over-strained orange juice. Unfulfi lled syrupy hopes and dreams are dashed into coffee shots, workwear choices are a sliding scale of monochrome shades – correlating levels of fatigue and monotony that are exhibited by their wearers. Discussions about the weather deliciously extend into ones about fi nancial spreadsheets.

After a while everyone looks like a spreadsheet.

I press a light-up button and begin the greasy climb. It’s my fi rst day at The Corporation and I’m carrying two paper bags. One contains a croissant, the other my soul. I hand over the latter to a receptionist who really knows how to use eyeliner. The precision of her eye contouring seems rather judgmental, and I immediately doubt the authenticity of her response: “Thank you, you’ll get that back in forty years.”

In return for surrendering my soul I receive a seductive starting salary and a lanyard that supposedly opens doors. In ten years’ time I will have watched four Wimbledon matches (none of them with my friends), read a disappointing number of books, and have an

I

t was at the end of my freshers’ week that I first ended up at the Bullingdon. While the rest of the year headed to Emporium for the fifth offering of interchangeable cheese and EDM that week, a group of five of us broke off for deepest Cowley, and Berlin techno.

The DJ we were going to see could not have been a more incongruous fit with the rest of the week, and with what I had come to expect of Oxford’s clubbing scene. Nick Höppner – resident at

Socially embarrassed discussions about unmatched amount of LinkedIn endorsements. I will cash in my bonus for a golden retriever, a dutiful partner and a home in Clapham.

Such is the soulless corporate world, narrated by a beautifullyuniformed humanities student. It’s a sterile and naked brand of Hades’ lair that has napping pods rather than glowing pits of fi re, and fancy hand cream dispensers littered about in bathrooms to soothe monetary burns.

Dramatics aside, hostility towards the corporate world features rather a lot in conversations I have with other fi nalists. If we’re not matching types of herbal tea to our moods or discussing dreams had whilst napping, we’re usually producing passive sighs and eyerolls whilst discussing our future careers. Someone has probably just expressed an interest in pursuing a corporate career and suggested that they might fi nd it tolerable, even enjoyable. It may even be that that someone is the one doing the eye-rolling – to soften the blow for us, who are, naturally, the ‘noncorporate intelligentsia’.

This rhetoric that prevails has prompted me to consider rewriting various dictionary defi nitions. For example: ‘Selling out’ (verb). Used

by Oxford students to describe other Oxford students who decide that there is nothing better in life than to get really loaded, exchange Berghain and former manager of their in-house record label, Osgut Ton – stands at the centre of Berlin’s dance music landscape.

A lifetime spent gaining an intuitive understanding of house and techno was on display that night as Höppner mixed seamlessly between tracks, drawing the crowd ever further into his world. Away from the reading lists, essays, and braying public schoolboys we’d been introduced to that week we drifted.

Cherwell | Friday, 10 November 2017

oxbow 5

life Evelyn’s diary A fresh outbreak of election fever

I

the weather morph deliciously into fi nancial spreadsheets. After a while, everyone looks like a dull spreadsheet. their soul for a branded highlighter, and renounce the virtuous lifetime pursuit of wholesome intellectualism.

It’s all a bit silly and smallminded. Whilst our scepticism and mocking might seem mildly amusing, it is arguably rooted in an unwillingness to acknowledge reality.

Life, for most, runs on rent and realism, rather than padded-out footnotes. And, it is often brushed over that not everyone from Oxford is presented with the same range of opportunities on graduation.

It’s very easy to lull ourselves into a false sense of homogeneity here. Together we live in a somewhat ethereal kingdom where our continued existence, regardless of our subject, largely depends on reading books or completing a tute sheet, or pretending to have done either. It is an seven-day weekly routine of sparring at pre-arranged tutorial duels and sleeping in marbled towers.

We are also taught by tutors who rarely venture outside. Rather predictably they often only concern themselves with life in the rewarding, yet expensive and volatile, realm of academia. Their words, whether they concern potential career routes or my essay plan, are often ungrounded and rather incomprehensible. It is this aura of intellectual uniformity that starts to show its cracks as gradu-

ation beckons. In our fi nal years of Oxford, the real world becomes imminent and less cloaked by stuffy gowns and the like. It becomes a lot more obvious that we are each our own individuals, with different priorities and facing different realities. Upon graduation, some people will eagerly move back home, whilst others won’t want or be able to. Whilst comparing career options, some people will always look for economic security, whilst others will be more flexible and be in the position to be more

flexible. Just as some can’t justify taking on an unpaid internship, others struggle to qualify applying for jobs in the charity sector, or those which are equally morally applauded, particularly if it means that making ends meet seem impossible or a plain struggle.

A corporate job isn’t always the answer to these insecurities, let alone the only answer. However, amidst all our hate speech I think

its important to stress that the corporate life is an informed choice, sometimes even a compromise, that many students know they’re lucky to have the privilege to make. For many, it’s the stepping stone to other careers and a foundation from which other goals are pursued. Whilst I’m arguably naïve in saying so, I feel that the drawing of such fi nite lines between people’s calculated life choices and inherent morals is rather an oversimplification. After all, we are not cut-out paper dolls, and those who choose to go down the corporate route probably do have more highly prized possessions than a logoembossed moleskin notebook.

As students, revelling in intellectual snobbery and the rhetoric of ‘selling out’ is amusing. Actually, it’s often hilarious, yet hilariously bad at providing the full picture – which I’m sure we realise, but often forget. It also serves to place those, for whom money is no problem, in a position where making the moral choice is an easier step.

After all, given that my brother does work for a bank, I’m pretty sure that some fi nanciers do have their souls intact, because he has a rather great one. I’m certain that like the aesthetic fi lter on the Paradise Papers, corporate people have shades of yellow in their lives as well as monochrome, just like all of us.

The great beauty of techno is that its 4x4 rhythm grounds and entrances the listener, pulling them into an almost hypnotic state, as all else is stripped away.

The crowd is brought together, shuffling back and forth, drawn on by the melodies that rise above the big beats below.

The night, both in name and nature, was Simple. Taking place maybe three times a term it offers nothing more than a large black room at the back of Bully, and six

hours of some of the best house and techno DJs available for booking.

Last week’s offering of Levon Vincent – perhaps best known aside from his DJing for comments made after the Bataclan attack calling for club goers to “arm themselves” against terrorists – proved no exception.

Admittedly, after the first ten minutes the night became somewhat of a blur. A mainstay of the New York club scene since the 90s,

Vincent dropped spare, minimalist beats, creating an almost industrial sound.

After several hours I stumbled out alone, only slightly disorientated, and found myself in a Cowley Kebab house.

Big wings, slathered in peri peri sauce, make an excellent chaser to big beats, I can now report. So go to Simple, go to Kebab Kid, and don’t make my mistake of living an hour-long and rainy walk from both.

Corporate hatred is rooted in an unwillingness to acknowledge reality

t seems that fifth week has taken quite a toll on the resolve of most people at this fine seat of learning.

Freshers realise the friends they have made are not all honest, bat-playing cricketers. Second years find fifth week the point at which they have overspent, and third years realise that the clock is ticking ever closer to the doldrum of wage slavery. This is the week in which elections come into full swing, providing the perfect opportunity to distract from the fact that the mechanistic products of the hack world are surprisingly samey.

There are only so many permutations of straight white men who can run these things, your diarist believes.

Oxford S-Who?

JCR elections

The Selby Man Project has gone rather better than anyone could have expected. The new cohort of committee promises (at least on nomination forms) to be one of the most diverse that the association has ever seen.

From Getting Her to the Greek, to the resurrection of yet another Kitchen like it is a BnQ clearance sale, the Tories can at least say they are not lacking in chat. However, there is always something to be said for never underestimating the future, be that Mann, woman, or Corpuscle.

The first thing coming to pass is that we have a number of elections coming up in the bread and butter of University democracy, the humble Junior Common Room. These are the elections where people fight on the basis of policy and a desire to do good.

Or they end up being a matter of factional bickering, akin to the popular youths thinking they have a right to everything and the self-professed ‘geeks’ fighting back.

It seems that we are also starting to gear up for the yearly theatricals of who is going to become the next noname President of OUSU (for I cannot bring myself to recognise the illegitimate and frankly self-indulgent rebrand). Happily, there is one candidate who is eminently qualified for such senior office. However, it seems that someone is being disCurtiouS in wanting to oppose the establishment.

There are sincere hopes for a clean fight, but life has taught your correspondent that the house always wins.

Tory Diversity?

How to

Tackle fifth week blues

By PRIYA VEMPALI

I

t’s fifth week. You’re tired, probably a little hungover, and behind on at least two essays. As the festive spectre of the Christmas vac looms, you can’t help but feel as though you simultaneously haven’t done enough work and have worked yourself into the ground. If Oxford were a battlefield, this would feel like the point of no return. But not to worry, friends – all you need is a little TLC to get you back to your younger, more sprightly self.

First of all, try to see if there are any college-based events that are aimed at alleviating your endless stresses. For example, my college, Regent’s, has an insanely cute welfare scheme called ‘Pidge Pals’, which is basically like Secret Santa but for the whole of fifth week. Yes, you’ll still feel like death warmed up and wish that you were anywhere other than an Oxford library but hey, at least you have some kitsch gifts/chocolate to cheer you up. If you’re not fortunate enough to benefit from this kind of welfare scheme, no worries – just be your own pidge pal, and treat yourself to something you’ve been wanting for ages (like a huge multipack of Tesco chocolate).

The worst aspect of fifth week blues is probably the overwhelming feeling of isolation that we can be afflicted by. To tackle this head-

on, prioritise social events with those people who you considered to be your friends in fourth week.

It might be tempting just to stay in bed and watch Stranger Things, but push yourself – leaving your room once every two days is important.

Go pub golfing, visit that cute café you’ve been meaning to go to, do whatever it is that makes Oxford feel like less of an intellectual prison to you. Fall in love with the city again, head down to Uni Parks or Port Meadow and try your absolute hardest to forget the impending doom of deadlines that awaits you on your return to college.

Another fail-safe method for tackling those all-too-familiar blues is to let your foodie side run free. Treat yourself to pancakes at Combibos, pizza at Franco Manca or ice cream at G&D’s, and enjoy all of the wonderful eateries Oxford has to offer. If you really want to relax, head down to the Jericho Wine Café for some seriously indulgent TLC (I mean, really, where else can you justifiably drink wine at 4pm on a Tuesday?)

If all else fails, try to comfort yourself with the knowledge that you’re not alone: everywhere around you are students who are probably feeling the exact same way, and if they can get through it, so can you. That is pretty much what the Oxford experience is, after all – suffering in solidarity.

Friday, 10 November 2017 | Cherwell

6 oxbow

Life Food

The Veggie Pledge could give athletes a run for their money

Say sayonara to steak – treat yourself to some tofu

E

at, sleep, run, repeat. Eat, sleep, run, repeat. Protein, creatine, casein, carbs. Eat, sleep, run, repeat. It’s a neverending cycle, and one with which all athletes will be intimately familiar. Nobody questions the rugby player shovelling down a plate of spaghetti bolognese the size of their face, nobody bats an eyelash at the power-lifter single-handedly demolishing a flock of chickens – it’s merely accepted as a necessary aspect of sports nutrition. Rarely are the ethical and environmental ramifications of such copious consumption considered, and as such, viable alternatives get forgotten.

The most common reason athletes produce when asked why they refuse to cut their meat consumption is a need for protein. Protein is the building block of muscle, and without muscle, no athlete can hope to excel. Understandably, when returning from a difficult session at the track, pitch, or pool the last thing an athlete wants to do is begin preparing a complicated meal. Falling face first into a massive bowl of pasta is far more appealing.

Unfortunately, as every athlete knows, post-training nutrition is vitally important, and pasta alone won’t satisfy nutritional needs.

Having spent hours shredding their muscles, post-training is the time to properly refuel and rebuild.

The issue arises when athletes view this rebuilding as being inherently and unavoidably tethered to meat consumption.

What most omnivorous athletes don’t realise is that a normal 100g serving of regular pasta is 10g of protein. Throw on 100g of Quorn chicken, and you’re already at 24g protein. Since optimal protein in-

take post training is approximately 20g, this is more than adequate.

In other words, eat pasta, recover faster.

Balancing work, training, and adequate nutrition can be difficult, but there’s no reason that abstaining from animal products should make this any harder. If anything, it comes out cheaper and more nutritious. Vegetarian ‘beef’ mince is far lower in fat than its cow equivalent, containing 2.5g less fat per 100g. This may seem small initially, but considering no athlete eats only 100g of meat (one fifth of a standard container), it quickly adds up.

Add to this the fact that we haven’t even considered the catastrophic environmental ramifications of meat consumption: animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the combined exhaust fumes

from all transportation. Surely we therefore have a motive from both a health and environmental perspective to reduce meat consumption. Combine this with the fact that meat alternatives like Quorn, tofu, tempeh, or absolutely anything by Linda McCartney are becoming increasingly abundant, and that there are veggie and vegan alternatives to basically any meat product, and going veggie presents a compelling argument.

Meat alternatives cut cooking time in half since there’s no waiting for the meat to cook through, meaning athletes can prepare their food quicker and consume their protein within the optimal posttraining refuel window. There has been no better time to consider trying schemes such as the Veggie Pledge: it’s a chance to enjoy meals one might not usually consume whilst simultaneously embracing a

more ethical and healthy approach to nutrition.

Holland and Barret stock edamame pasta (45g protein per 100g serving at £2 for 200g) which has the same protein content as an 8oz steak – minus all the fat, cholesterol, and nature-destroying contribution to industrial agriculture.

It’s also half the price, and less money spent on meat means more money saved up for drinks.

Guilt-free, ethical protein has never been so accessible. Next time you finish a brutal training session, consider refuelling your body with something that can provide optimal nutrients with minimal environmental damage.

Why not try doing one meat-free day a week for veggie pledge and take a step to cut down your own meat consumption? Your wallet, the environment, and your body will thank you.

Top picks From left: Chicken katsu curry and Matcha ice cream with lychee from Corpus Christi College formal, Rum & Coke and Raspberry Russian, Moscow Mule and Evening Delight from Freud

M

aybe your college bar is genuinely nice enough to pass for an actual pub, like Queen’s. Maybe your college drink has a legendary reputation, like the ‘Cross Keys’ of St Peter’s or the ‘Power Pint’ of Merton. Maybe it closely resembles a spaceship’s cafeteria, like my own beloved Keble. But college bars provide the ideal spot for an evening when you’re feeling lazy but still determined to exercise your right as a student to mid-week drinking.

Not everybody is equally committed to the demands and vagaries of the sesh, and that’s perfectly natural! It’s understandable that not all of us want to make a holy pilgrimage just to offer ourselves to the sesh gods at Park End. That’s where college bars come in – they’re here for us when we just can’t muster the energy for a proper night out.

If you’re a second or third year, you probably also want a place

where you can drink while still dressed in the clothes you ate, slept, and cried in after yet another traumatising essay crisis. There’s no chance of running into anybody you’re chirpsing here, since you’ve already either got with or given up on any potentials from your own college.

Therefore the college bar is the perfect half-way spot for being social: you don’t have to actually put any effort in, but you also don’t feel as ashamed as you would getting paralytic in your room by yourself (like you did last week).

The proximity of a college bar also provides a crucial health benefit. There is no way for you to be distracted by a kebab van on your way home if you’ve stayed in college: the siren’s call of late night cheesy chips will go unheeded.

So in a way, getting so drunk at your college bar that you can’t make it out is the healthiest lifestyle choice you’ll ever make.

A life divided

College bars

Bessie Yuill and Joanna Lonergan debate with no holds barred

C

ollege bars vary hugely between colleges – Balliol’s watering hole is famously good. The ‘Pango’ at Hertford has the potential to anaesthetise a medium-sized whale, while St John’s disappoints with the unimaginatively named ‘The St John’s College’. Someone obviously put a lot of thought into that.

But even if you can overlook the standard 70s decor, make your way around the sticky bits of the floor, find a seat that doesn’t have a suspicious stain on it and be done by 11pm, you’ll still be in for what can only be described as a fairly average night.

Want to meet someone new? You won’t find them in your college bar. The college bar reinforces the divide between ‘town’ and ‘gown’.

We’ll confine ourselves to this dimly lit room, and they’ll keep to their Oxford pubs – no eye contact has to be made, and certainly no mixing.

It’s this exclusivity which is detracting from local business. There are over 23,000 students at Oxford – that’s a lot of potential business for the city’s locals, and much of this is being snatched by the college bars. Why would you hide yourself away in a dingy basement horribly close to the library, when you could break free and explore the many pubs and cocktail bars that Oxford has to offer?

Yes, the college bars are subsidised. Great. The ease of simply scanning your bod card means that even when you run out of cash you can keep drinking!

But uh-oh, what’s this extra £60 on your ballot? You could have sworn you didn’t drink that much, but then again, you can’t really remember…

All things considered, the college bar is an affront to Oxford’s wonderful pub scene: treat yourself and have a pint poured by someone who knows what they’re doing.

Cherwell | Friday, 10 November 2017

oxbow 7

visuals A festive formula: I’m dreaming of a (John Lewis) Christmas

In between Halloween and Oxmas, Maya Little muses over the artistic merits and deteriorating quality of the ‘iconic’ John Lewis Christmas advertisements

I

t’s strange how quickly the John Lewis advert has become a ubiquitous part of the Christmas tradition.

It’s only been around since 2007, just long enough ago for me to not distinctly remember its absence.

There are plenty of other well made, perfectly orchestrated Christmas adverts out there, but the John Lewis advert is heralded, as a quick Google search will reveal, as the start of Christmas.

It’s not surprising, really, how quickly we’ve taken to the relatively new tradition of Christmas.

It comes just late enough in the year for summer to have well and truly died, leaving a grand opening for a time of growing extravagance and mayhem to fill its hole, which Christmas certainly supplies.

The Black Friday sales, the ease of access to international Christmas treats like Stollen (I’m not complaining), and intoxicatingly

They will give you all the Christmas whimsy you could wish for sugary festive coffees, all seem to have sprung up to fulfil our hunger for Christmas.

It can be hard to tell whether these new traditions are helping to keep Christmas fresh, or simply diluting the excitement.

It is hard to understand what Christmas actually is – but the annual John Lewis advert seems to give it a go.

The earliest John Lewis adverts are a little less sentimental than we’re now used to. The charm is still there, but not the plot. Marathoning through them all on YouTube, I

was a little surprised by the lack of cute animals, and refreshed by the slightly more abstract style.

The 2007 advert sees a pile of gifts (starting with a lamp bizarrely reminiscent of the Pixar logo) gradually added to, and which form a shadow on the wall behind that looks like a girl with her foot on a sledge, looing off into the distance.

This is actually a very good example of what all the John Lewis adverts try to show: from their wares, you can construct a sort of yearned for Christmas Past.

The items used aren’t wrapped up – no pretty bows adorn them. But if you buy these gifts, the advert says, if you put them together just right, they’ll give you all the whimsy you could wish for.

The 2009 advert continues to cling onto this idea of the perfect Christmas from ages past. It is here that we start to see a change from the less personal (and perhaps, slightly more intelligent) ideas and into fully realised stories in miniature.

Various children open the sort of presents adults would get (coffee makers, too-big-slippers, etc.) but with all the extravagant, totally real glee with which I opened my presents when I was four (there’s video evidence – not to be watched if you have sensitive ears).

Again, it’s a simple message, but nicely executed: the excitement of Christmas should not be exclusive to children (and John Lewis can, of course, help with that).

One of the compelling things about these adverts is their lack of dialogue, aside from the final slogans.

The early John Lewis adverts have appreciably witty slogans – the shadow-girl gazing off into the distance is accompanied by ‘Whoever you’re looking for this Christmas’ – words sparse enough to be a pleasant refreshment from

the more usual shove-those-jinglebells-down-your-throat attitude.

As time goes on, however, they devolve into patterns. ‘Give a little more love this Christmas’, ‘Give someone a Christmas they’ll never forget’ – they still manage to pun on the content of whatever advert they follow, but, out of context, they start to read like saccharine

Buy from us and you can have the perfect Christmas clichés.

I’ll pick up on the slippery slide towards cliché later, but I think the repeated theme of giving is worth mentioning.

Aside from nostalgia, it’s perhaps the key theme which recurs throughout the adverts, and one that becomes increasingly prominent as time goes on.

John Lewis don’t care about what you buy, but about how you give.

This is reinforced by the decreasing product prominence: after 2010, the adverts cease to display John Lewis’ Christmas range, and focus on character.

2010 cleverly explores a child’s extreme anticipation in the run up to Christmas. When the day arrives, he runs past his own stocking to take his parents their Christmas present. A simple but effective subversion of expectations.

In fact, the John Lewis advert in 2013, being entirely animated and thus lacking in any product placement from the department store, seems to suggest that it is not products, but company ethos, that is now being advertised.

There’s something interesting in the Christmas ideal that’s being manufactured here. From 2014 on-

wards, there’s a definite emphasis on the family home, the perfect children, and the insistence that giving is good. It’s a nice image.

The cosy half-remembered past you might yearn for with the heart of the 2007 sledging shadow-child.

And perhaps this focus on giving is not an attempt to de-emphasise the act of buying, but to purify it; buy a telescope for the man on the moon, and you can combat loneliness in the elderly!

Further – buy from us, and you can have a perfect Christmas. Our Christmas. Look how beautiful it is.

Ignore how hard it is.

You might want to ‘give’ John Lewis the benefit of the doubt. The adverts are sweet, and probably harmless. Fine. Even so, I have another issue with them – the quality is simply not as good as it used to be.

To return to the slogans, things are becoming increasingly repetitive. The interesting thing about these adverts was that they broke the formula.

For example, 2008 saw simple images of people’s faces, fairly expressionless, interspliced with images of their preferred gifts.

The Christmas ideal is being manufactured here No reactions, no ‘this is why this product is great’, just people and the things they liked. Now, there’s a slew of animals (every year since 2013), children, and sweet, but highly unrealistic (and worse, unbelievable) story lines.

I can only hope that this year, finally, I get a pleasant surprise for my (John Lewis) Christmas.

Build your own Christmas

By ELLIE DUNCAN

T

here are a number of things which signal that Christmas is just around the corner.

The ‘house with all the lights!’ – a house in the middle of my town that seems to physically grow each festive season, spawning more dazzling decoration each year. The crib service at my local church, which I used to visit with my nan. The Santa’s sleigh that chugs around the neighbourhood, eerily audible from streets away as it creeps closer to my road, before appearing in all its neon red splendour. These are spectacles associated firmly with childhood memory, yet which reappear each year as if in a pocket of time removed.

Christmas time can feel like another kind of reality, comfortingly exact in its yearly reproduction. The visual appearance of Christmas is a reliable mix of religious, commercial, seasonal, edible iconographies that, as a non-religious person, I probably consume pretty indiscriminately.

Rather than knowing much about the traditions behind each Christmas tableau, I vaguely assign each of these familiar sights to the label ‘Christmas’ and get on with helping myself to some chocolate log whilst desperately trying to be cheerful.

The transmutation of traditionally ‘Christian’ Christmas values into a commonplace for all things Christmas has long been seen as a welcome expansion of Christmas’s ‘true meaning’ or a bleak commodification, turning us all into little greedy present-hunters. What seems clear is that Christmas is above all a visual event to watch and participate in, like the dazed countdown to Christmas in Love Actually, tweaked as it might be to each individual living in this commercialised world. A Christmas advertisement aired in 2014 aimed to revise this perceived move towards a make-your-own Christmas, pursuing the same aim of participation, but presenting a modern couple with their baby as gradually transforming into the biblical Mary and Joseph.

The tag line read ‘the power of love.’

Incidentally, the ad was banned from cinemas for being too religious, while a Mulberry advert showing a handbag in the nativity scene was celebrated for its light mockery of consumerism, while others said it was blasphemous.

Perhaps we have come to the point when we can revel in the ruin of Christmas. The point when an outrageously unnecessary £500 diamond cracker from Harrods becomes as much a visual symbol of Christmas as a bed of straw. The other Christmas scenes that are created each year are the window displays of large department stores, at turns extravagant and homely. In one online article, Harry Rosehill suggests that “they paint a picture of what Christmas should be and reminds us all why we go through the same struggle each year.” Perhaps they crystallise the way we now consume Christmas: isolated stragglers gazing at an idealised version of what we are missing – a Mulberry handbag,

Friday, 10 November 2017 | Cherwell

8 oxbow

Smoking area chic With the debate over smoking around Oxford heating up, Chloe Dootson-Graube pays tribute to one fashion institution caught in the crossfire

I

n the past couple of weeks, Cherwell has been the site of a great debate: to smoke or not to smoke?

As Exeter College plans to ban smoking in its quads, student journalists have taken to soapboxes, answering in the positive and the negative.

And naturally, the first question that comes into anyone’s minds, is what relevance at all does this have to fashion? Allow me to weigh in on this business about ciggies.

The fashion of smoking areas has a long and storied history. The cigarette, since its inception, has always been an integral accessory.

Where would the flapper, the Parisian flaneur, Kate Moss, and the other chain-smokers of haute couture be without a fag in hand?

The obvious answer is, evidently, exponentially more healthy, but let’s put aside the deadly impact and look at the real point.

Smoking is a key accessory and the smoking area is the arena into which fashion is thrown to battle it out.

For example, I will wear moon boots to Cellar this evening to assert my dominance. This is how it works.

This is the thought process of the fashionably minded upon entering the club.

The smoking area, I argue, is a central place in the development of fashion. It is the runway of the club, if you will.

Taking a somewhat more upmarket example, look at how

much attention the pictures from the previous Met Ball of the rich and famous, tall and beautiful models smoking in the bathroom received.

The clothes were just as much talked about as the smoking.

Is smoking therefore something of a social currency in fashion? Well, it is a widely known social fact that unless thou art well adjusted and confirmed in thyself to the point of happiness, smoking makes you look cool, especially when paired with say, a cool hat and some funky shoes.

Smoking is certainly a problematic activity, both in terms of its catastrophic health effects and its elitist role as a status symbol.

Furthermore, it can certainly be argued that if we were to look at the world in microcosm (the smoking area), smoking itself isn’t actually relevant or necessary to fashion at all.

The smoking area is a utopia: one does not have to smoke to enjoy the cool night air (or, indeed, the pleasantly heated sprinklers that perch on the ceiling of the top floor of my hometown club).

If one does smoke, then it is a veritable promised land with an edenic supply of smoking paraphernalia, but far more importantly, compliments on your outfit and top tips from the style icons around.

Whatever you do, my final advice is this: always bring a lighter.

There’s nothing more timeless than being a hero.

Styled by: Daisy C Zoe Harris-Wallis, Dootson-Graube

Photography: Ell Easton

Models: Holly Fai Hambleton and Ch Smart

Assisted by: Gem

Cherwell | Friday, 10 November 2017

Chandley, , and Chloe

la Benson

irgrieve, Isobel hristopher

mma O’Sullivan

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STYLE

Friday, 10 November 2017 | Cherwell

10 oxbow

How galleries without walls offer a new way to explore modern art Artists have harnessed the land to challenge the way we engage with art – but what’s next?

Anoushka Kavanagh explores.

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estled amongst picturesque pine woods and perched atop the lolling hill named Colline des Gardettes in South-Eastern France, sits Joan Miró’s Labyrinth.

Comprising of an assortment of architectural configurations and his characteristic conceptual creatures – from a goddess with tortoise-shell to a cosmic egg – this momentous outdoors creation belongs to the Foundation Maeght, and forms part of one of the world’s most prestigious sculpture parks.

The founders of this French modern art museum, Marguerite and Aimé Maeght, developed a close friendship with the Catalan artist, whom was consequentially deeply involved in the Collection’s establishment in 1964. They met in Paris, after the war, when Miró was working on a series of lithographs – and as their bond strengthened (and Miró donated a multitude of sculptures, ceramics, and paintings to the couple), they offered him the opportunity to create a permanent installation in the rural landscape of the Foundation’s grounds. The resulting Labyrinth would later be joined by works from the likes of Alexander Calder, Georges Braque,

Picks of the week

Literary fantasy lands

and Alberto Giacometti.

Though attention-grabbing, the Carrara-marble casts Lunar Bird (1945) and Solar Bird (1966) seem somewhat out of place here, overlooking the scenic medieval village of Saint-Paul-de-Vence.

Their clunky, abstract forms are starkly juxtaposed with the tranquil turrets of the fairytale dwellings,

The modernists’ sculptures appear at home in the open air ruining the rural idyll of Romantic literature. The contrast between the serene scenery and audacious artworks could perhaps even be said to detract from our appreciation of their form, as they are not given the breathing space of the bright white-cube galleries that we are so accustomed to when it comes to the contemporary.

Yet in other respects, the modernists’ sculptures appear more than at home here in the open air, and not just because of neighbouring

Saint-Paul’s reputation amongst cultural A-listers (Pablo Picasso, Jean-Paul Satre, and Yves Montand all frequented the town, whilst Marc Chagall resided there for a brief period). The rural French landscape within which they are situated seems almost to enhance their charm, by dissipating much of the mystique surrounding modern art and making the sculptures more accessible.

No longer are we left alone with our thoughts in a bare room, desperately fumbling in the metaphorical dark for some clue as to what the assortment of geometric lumps before us is meant to signify. The natural landscape of the sculpture park instead brings us automatically closer to the artists’ vision, providing us with some semblance of context that facilitates a better comprehension of their intents.

Miró’s Labyrinth was, after all, created with the surrounding scenery in mind: art and nature were considered to complement each other, rather than act as collocated yet unrelated elements. The finished product was a projection of his own dream-world, onto the French hills.

He guides his visitors through his mind with weaving walls emblazoned with guiding white stripes, Left: Wonderland, Alice in Wonderland Strange things happen in Carroll’s dreamland, where peculiar creatures roam the woods. “We’re all mad here” grins the Cheshire cat, before its pink fur dissipates into thin air again.

Then emerges a hookah-smoking caterpillar, prompting Alice to question her very existence. Unsurprisingly, Wonderland’s psychedelic qualities are commonly thought to represent a hazy LSD-fuelled world.

Right: Oz, The Wizard of Oz L. Frank Baum was influenced by Carroll’s Wonderland when imagining up his own fairytale land of Oz. Just as Alice finds herself tumbling into a fantasy world through a rabbit tunnel,

Clockwise from top left: Babies by David Černý, Foundation Maeght, Hanging Trees by Andy Goldsw

whilst the landscape in the background hints at the bigger picture.

At the same time, the open-air encourages visitors to get closer to – and engage with – the art, in a way we might feel hesitant to do indoors.

The sculptures lose some of their near sacrilegious mystique when

Satirical statues are immersed in the city’s historic streets and parks the sensory element is promoted outside. One can walk through the

concrete Grand Arche, and run your fingers through its folk-like carvings, without fearing a gallery attendant will apprehend you. Positing art in galleries ‘without walls’ – in a more natural landscape – facilitates interaction and understanding.

This is not solely the case for Miró’s works at the Maeght: modern sculptures situated outdoors all over the world similarly change the way we think about art. For when art interacts with its landscape, it’s brought down off an intellectual pedestal to become more accessible.

In Prague for instance, David Černý’s satirical statues are immersed in the city’s historic streets and parks: by positing his art amid the political landscape he seeks to address, Černý promotes social commentary.

Dorothy is whisked up to Oz in a hurricane.

Oz is as weird and wonderful as Wonderland: here the people are green as well as the buildings. Witches, wizards, talking tins, and munchkins join Dorothy on her journey as she attempts to find herself, and her way home.

Right: Neverland, Peter Pan Barrie’s fantasy island renders time irrelevant, as children cease to age there. In Neverland, they say that the hour can only be gaged from the Crocodile’s ticking clock. The island is often read as a metaphor for eternal childhood or escapism – somewhere to hide from the unpleasantries of adult life.

Cherwell | Friday, 10 November 2017

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culture Numerous works have been created in direct response to the surrounding moorland, including Andy Goldsworthy’s Hanging Trees (2007) and David Nash’s SeventyOne Steps (2010). These site-specific sculptures utilise Miró’s earlier ideas about giving context to the abstract. When the audience can visualise the artist’s inspiration or intentions, their works become significantly clearer. A tree semi-

They hope to break down the barriers between the public and art

worthy, Norton Museum, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Labyrinth by Miró, centre: Cosmic Egg, by Miró

Two mechanical men urinate on a map of the Czech Republic outside the Franz Kafka Museum, in ‘Piss’.

By their side is a phone number – to which you can text a personal message for them to spell out in piss – encouraging us to spell out what’s wrong. In connecting this small district in Prague with the country at large, the artist invites us to share his displeasure with post-revolution democracy.

Less politically motivated, though still humorously altering how we engage with modern art, are three giant, crawling, bronzed babies, with faces replaced by slot-machinelike cavities, outside the Kampa Museum. Depending on your agility, the audience can once again clamber over these figures. And when sitting

atop the oversized babies’ backs, the art is no longer on a pedestal above you, but rather on the same plain as its audience.

Britain’s leading sculpture park – Yorkshire Sculpture Park – recognise the importance of this sensory element, more readily available outdoors, in “break[ing] down the barriers that often exist between contemporary art and the public,” according to Senior Curator Helen Pheby. Housing works by internationally acclaimed artists, such as Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, and Antony Gormley, YSP hopes to increase understanding of complex artworks by leaving behind the narrow focus on “intellectual engagement” propagated in galleries “with walls”.

submerged and suspended in a brick cage would likely evoke rolled-eyes and bemused sighs within a whitecube: in the Bretton Estate though, Goldsworthy’s message about the gradual destruction of nature is infinitely more apparent.

Drawing on these ideas about how modern art’s surrounding landscape can alter our perceptions of it, Florida’s Norton Museum of Art released plans last week for a radical transformation.

Through a development project led by British architecture firm Foster + Partners, the gallery will become a “museum in a garden” by early 2019.

The construction of three pavilions and a series of “garden-rooms” has been proposed, to house an impressive collection of modern sculpture, by Keith Haring, George Rickey, and Mark di Suvero, amongst others.

Norton hope that this renewal will raise the West Palm Beach museum’s profile both nationally and internationally, simultaneously creating a space for the local community.

By inviting locals in to engage with the art, they hope too to break down the perceived barriers between the public and contemporary art.

Intriguingly, these garden rooms’ boundaries are to be defined only by hedges, making them truly ‘wallless’. Showcasing modern art within a more organic landscape like this can only enhance our enjoyment and ease. Remove the galleries’ physical walls, and the intellectual barricades may come tumbling down too.

The strange death of Gainsborough’s rural idyll

By DANIEL ANTONIO VILLAR

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e often look to the British countryside as a place of solace. In a forever changing world, the countryside is a place where things remain still – where hardworking men with calloused hands labour from the cock’s morning crow until the sun’s western farewell, where the problems of modern Britain seem distant.

Urbanites might even remark that some patch of the countryside resembles the paintings of Gainsborough or Constable. Yet a passing glimpse of one of those paintings will show us how wrong we are to imagine that the land in rural England has remained constant. Look at John Constable’s The Cornfield, and you will see a landscape unlike any that survives in Britain today.

The Cornfield is a particularly apt painting for discussing the changes in the British countryside since the advent of the industrial revolution.

It depicts a boy leading sheep down a dirt path, stopping for a moment to take a drink from neighbouring stream. Above him tower mighty elms, and on the other side of the dirt path there is a hedgerow which demarcates the end of a field out of frame.

In the background is a farmer with his plow, working in the titular cornfield. The whole scene is the picture of unchanging rural idyll. And yet today no such landscape exists. Look at a modern British landscape, and you will see no elms, and rarely a hedgerow. Even the shape and structure of the cornfield will be radically different.

Let’s begin with the elms. Most British landscape paintings from before 1900 feature a treescape dominated by elms. Far more than the beech, ash, and oak with which we associate our rural woodland today, elm was the British tree. Yet today you hardly see any elms. Indeed in Britain, elms are a conservation priority. Over 90% of all elm trees in Britain died in the span of only a few decades, due to one invasive fungus from China.

This fungus causes Dutch elm disease, which blocks the xylem from moving nutrients up the elm, killing it. In elms’ place, trees which are more familiar to us – such as oaks – have grown, and your average British countryman would likely be unable to

Silent empty hand

By NICK KENNY

The warm and salty wind is roaring on The rocks and trees it fondles round the shore.

But this caressing breath blows not upon My love, for whom my joy is now no more.

Love’s passions, ‘wakened, do not quickly fade, Night fails to kill the daylight’s golden glow.

Love’s iron claws are not so weakly made That – Look! Across the bay alone he rows, A meek outline in the creeping dark.

He whistles to himself a simple tune, As in the sea his oars each leave their mark.

The soft light hums from the silver moon.

His tune grows faint, his lonely way he weaves; The stillness of bemusing night he leaves.

point out his nearest elm.

Hedgerows are often seen as being a quintessential part of the British countryside. These strips of hedge have delineated fields from each other for millennia, and in that time have evolved a unique ecosystem. Many birds and butterflies have evolved to be obligate on hedgerows, unable to live anywhere save this artificially constructed environment. The last half-century has seen a dramatic decrease in the amount of hedgerows found in Britain, and with it a decline in those species which rely on hedgerows.

This change in the landscape is a byproduct of the Green Revolution, when farming became properly industrial. Farms grew in size, and with that growth came the removal of the hedgerows separating fields. But more devastating for the hedgerows was the growth of fencing. Aided by government subsidies to modernise British farming, and driven by a new industrial profit driven mode of production, hedgerows across Britain have been torn down to make way for more efficient, but less ecologically useful, fences.

Farming itself has changed more in the past 50 years than in the previous 10,000, a product of the Green Revolution and the widespread use of scientific methods in agriculture.

Of course, in the early 20th century, the sort of hand-driven plough that we see in The Cornfield had long disappeared, but the principles of farming hadn’t changed. The growth of synthetic fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides, as well as scientific breeding, has changed all that.

Our crops are more uniform than they would have been in Constable’s day. Our corn grows in straighter lines, and requires less tilling, meaning that we are getting more food for less manpower. Even the structure of the soil has changed with industrial agriculture, killing off native communities of micro-arthropods, earthworms, and fungi in favour of bacterial monocultures.

Look at The Cornfield again. Is it still that unchanging rural idyll that you see as you drive between Oxford and London? Or is it a bygone era, with a flora and a fauna unlike any which we see in modern Britain? Less than two centuries separate us from The Cornfield, yet it is unlike any cornfield you will see in Great Britain today.

Friday, 10 November 2017 | Cherwell

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music

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Playlist

Songs that sum up Oxford

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or an institution that is so well represented in British life and culture, there is a noticeable lack of musical references to either the city or the University.

Where is the musical equivalent of

Brideshead Revisited or Inspector Morse? Naturally songs about class and elitism are easy to find, but it turns out few Oxonians have been inspired to directly wax lyrical about their time here.

“It’s experimental, and weird, and difficult to exorcise from the mind”

By BARNEY PITE

Bob Dylan ‘Oxford Town’

The Jam ‘The Eton Rifles’

About a different Oxford, Dylan’s classic about the struggles of black students in Mississippi is eerily relevant to today’s student politics.

The long association between Eton and Oxford makes Weller’s biting classic a critique of both, whatever David Cameron thinks.

Pulp ‘Common People’

The Libertines

It doesn’t matter if it’s being sung ironically or not, Pulp here perfectly sum up the class barriers created by selective education.

It wouldn’t surprise me much if many Oxford students actively attempt to commit as many sins as possible, and here that feeling of reckless abandon is perfectly captured.

‘Seven Deadly Sins’

Review “Rawness and painstaking detail”

Pick of the week

Lee Gamble ‘Ghost’

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ext year marks the twentieth anniversary of one of the most influential works of indie rock ever produced. Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over The Sea was first released in 1998 by Jeff Mangum, an independent musician from Athens, Georgia, with a passion for psychedelia and the circus, and since then Aeroplane has become something of a meme. Frequently cresting ‘top 10’ lists on /mu/, the music section of the infamous 4chan and a source of worryingly heated discussion for every musicophile with a top-knot, no matter your take on Aeroplane, you’ve got to admit it’s got something.

The first and most obvious thing to note about In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is that by any typical musical definitions, it’s really weird.

Threnodic dirges rub shoulders with gruesome bagpipe lines, stomping out paeans which lead somehow into rasping ballads. The lyrical journey soaring and rising like the eponymous plane, all of it surprising and musically interesting but at the same time – and this, in my mind, is one of the really important things about this album – graphic in visceral and disturbing ways. According the mythology that surrounds

Lee Gamble has been operating in the ambiguous territory between dance music and experimental electronica for years now and his latest album shows.

‘Ghost’ features a driving breakbeat throughout the track contrasted with nebulous ambient pads. Gamble has found his own personal niche with this synthesis of genres.

Julien Baker exposes the harsh realities of her struggles, writes Ollie Braddy Turn Out the Lights Julien Baker

8/10

this album, Aeroplane is about Anne Frank. Songs titles like ‘Holland, 1945’, and lyrics like ‘and she was born in a bottle-rocket, 1929’ support the idea, and while Aeroplane isn’t really about any one thing, the story of Anne Frank certainly serves as a consistent motif.

To condense Aeroplane down into one word is difficult, but one that comes to mind is ‘dreamlike’. The alternative hip-hop producer Boom Bip described Aeroplane as “the clos-

“The closest anyone has ever come to putting my dreams into music” est anyone has ever come to putting my dreams into music,” and this aspect of Aeroplane is acknowledged

by Mangum in a 1997 Pitchfork interview, in which he said “a lot of the songs are influenced by my dreams.”

To give an example, one of the most memorable lines in the album is “She will feed you tomatoes and radio wires /and retire to sheets safe and clean.” Something clashes in the line; tomatoes, soft and natural, and soft, clean bedsheets – indica-

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ulien Baker’s self-proclaimed “overture” for Turn Out the Lights, titled ‘Over’, shifts between major and minor keys, setting the scene for the next 40 minutes. It’s a beautiful exploration of the highs and lows that define her relationships: with loved ones, her faith, and her own mental health. The album’s narrative, almost entirely autobiographical, exposes us to the harshest realities of living with anxiety and depression but introduces Baker’s newfound optimism that such burdens don’t necessarily eliminate all joy.

It’s been two years since Baker’s first album Sprained Ankle was released, and whilst the production has got slicker and the backing more embellished, with string and woodwind accompaniments present on over half of the eleven tracks, the influence of Sprained Ankle’s success hasn’t detracted from the rawness and painstaking detail of Turn Out the Lights. Standout tracks ‘Appoint-

tive of childish innocence – are juxtaposed with radio wires, in all their metallic brutality. This conference of contradictory and disjointing images – which we sometimes see in dreams – represents in microcosm the way Magnum depicts the human experience.

Since Aeroplane’s release in 1998, Mangum has largely disappeared from the public eye, and rumours of a nervous breakdown persist.

It’s difficult to come away from Aeroplane not at least slightly doubting the author’s sanity. In the long tradition of American artists who’ve disappeared – think Salinger or Pynchon – Mangum has been reluctant to speak much about this album, and he said in an email to a journalist in 2003 that he “just wants to be left alone.”

It’s important that we respect this right, and allow him to have his peace. But 20 years on, Aeroplane hasn’t lost what originally drove the hype. It’s experimental, and weird, and most of all, difficult to exorcise from the mind or forget. Just as nonclassicists should read the Iliad, or humanities students need to know about the laws of physics, non-fans of indie rock people should give Aeroplane a listen. It’s just under 40 minutes and free on YouTube. What more do you need to know. ments’ and ‘Televangelist’ highlight Baker’s unique clarity and really bring us to the heart of what it is to live life with mental health issues. Lines flow into each other, both musically and lyrically, alluding to a manic fluidity of her thoughts, yet they’re contained within an exquisitely peaceful sonic arena of melodic piano/guitar and sweeping vocals.

Throughout the album, we see Baker struggling to reconcile turbulent opposites. On the brooding ‘Sour Breath’ we hear the repeating observation “the harder I swim, the faster I sink” and in ‘Shadowboxing’ we’re told “You’re everything I want, and I’m all that you dread” all of which echo her attempts to reconcile her mental health issues with her ability to be happy. However, in the album’s tremendous finale, ‘Claws in Your Back’, Baker proclaims, “I think I can love the sickness you made, I want it to stay” – a heartfelt statement about the peace she has now found.

Cherwell | Friday, 10 November 2017

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film No soggy bottoms, as Channel Four puts the icing on the cake Miranda Gleaves and Patrick Naylor are impressed with the Bake Off reboot

By ANGELICA DE VIDO

D PHOTO: CHANNEL 4/LOVE PRODUCTIONS

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choes of “for God’s sake, Prue” reverberated through living rooms up and down the country as the nation (or 7.3 million of us, at least) sat down to watch the finale of the 2017 Great British Bake Off. For many, the accidental reveal of the winner on Twitter ten hours before the episode aired ruined its suspense, but the series itself was not undermined by this one slip: it was a triumph from start to finish.

Like so many of the bakes this year, Bake Off is the victory of style over substance, and should be celebrated as such. From Liam’s “Sunday Dinner Pie”, and Noel’s recipe book of shirts, to the weekly saga of Yan’s slowly fading scooter scar, and even the comforting obviousness of everything the contestants say – for instance the classic, “I just hope I don’t drop it!” – this series was a full-scale assault of heart-warming gaffes and middle-England charm, and no Prue Leith tweet can ruin that.

The move to Channel 4 hasn’t taken away any of Bake Off ’s charm, though it has diminished

Adolescent queer love in Call Me By Your Name

its following with half of its viewers lost (the last BBC finale claimed an audience of 14 million). We can’t see why. The same narrative arcs have played out in this series, just as in all previous offerings: the rise and fall of heroes (Steven), the witty baker in the corner who cuts through the tears with comic relief (Yan), and the person you love to hate (Julia). Admittedly, however, Liam has captured the nation’s heart in a way that not even Selasi, Tamal, or Glenn managed.

The only noticeable downgrade is the adverts, although in the majority of episodes this has led to the death of the “History Section”, which can only be a good thing.

Having seen Mel and Sue traipse through France in search of macaroons one too many times, it was a relief that Noel and Sandy were largely confined to The Tent.

When Bake Off made the move there was national mourning over the loss of Mel, Sue, and Mary, as it seemed as though we might never

recover. However, Noel, Sandy, and Prue have risen to HollywoodHandshake level glory.

In the light of Prue Leith’s sharp tongue, Mary Berry’s unfailingly kind commentary, irrespective of the quality of the bake, now seems to have a sickly-sweet aftertaste.

Prue Leith has spoken her mind throughout the series, providing a refreshingly cheerful foil to Paul’s steely-eyed criticism instead of simply patting the contestants’ bruised egos.

Noel and Sandy, too, have acquitted themselves admirably.

We started the series with very different views on the pair (one of us a fan of both, and the other far from convinced) and ended the series’ final episode delighted that the pair had ‘proved’ themselves without ‘kneading’ too much time.

Applications for the next series are already open, but what will it entail? More of the same, or, given the successful face lift of this series, will the producers be bolder?

Could we expect new judges each series: perhaps a guest judge appearance from Nigella or Nigel Slater? How about a wacky new location? Stonehenge perhaps, or floating on Loch Ness, or even on the cobbles outside our very own Radcliffe Camera.

We think not. We like the tent

where it is, and long may Prue rule over Tuesday prime-time.

Just as the clocks change, the crisping leaves turn reddy-brown, and fall with the conkers, Bake Off defines this time of the year, coming to a close as the nights draw in. This has been a series just like every other. Thank goodness.

Morocco

Andalucía

Oxford

A favourite for producers in search of a Middle-Eastern location, Morocco has stood in for Somalia (Black Hawk Down) and Iraq (American Snipper).

Morocco has also proved versatile, impersonating the Roman in The Gladiator, the Shakespearean in Orson Welles’s 1952 screen-adaptation of Othello, and the Westerosi in Game of Thrones.

When Sergio Leone and Carlo Simi headed to Costa de Sol in the 60s, they had no intention of living out their days as bronzed, pot-bellied expats – they had come to film Spaghetti Westerns. The sand dunes and ravines of Andalucía served as the backdrop for the classics: A Few Dollars More, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, and Once upon a Time in the West.

As any self-respecting Oxford tour guide will tell you, Christ Church is the ‘Harry Potter’ college, whilst Endeavour is shot regularly on Merton Street. In the last year, an up-andcoming television adaptation of Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials was based in Exeter College. It’s a shame that Cambridge’s cinematic CV isn’t nearly as impressive.

It’s an assault of heart-warming gaffes and middleEnglish charm

Ones to watch

Iconic filming locations

uring the summer of 1983, 17 year old Elio (Timothée Chalamet) spends his days writing music, swimming, and lounging around the Italian countryside with his friends. However, his life is changed forever when graduate student Oliver (Armie Hammer) arrives to work with Elio’s father.

The Italian landscape has provided a luscious setting for romance narratives, and Luca Guadagnino’s adaptation of André Aciman’s novel assuredly asserts its place in this canon. The film opens, ambiguously, ‘somewhere in Northern Italy’ and this indeterminate location immediately establishes the queer sensibilities of the film.

Oliver is an immediately arresting presence in the film as Hammer’s striking athletic physique dominates the screen – especially in contrast to Elio’s angular, adolescent frame.

Oliver’s body is fetishised by the camera, which lingers on his curved muscles and bronze skin. Presented as a real-life Michelangelo’s David, Guadagnino overtly conflates his muscular body with those of the statues Oliver researches. This further underscores the queer eroticism of the film with the inherent homoeroticism of the classical statues mirroring Elio and Oliver’s own sexual desires.

As the summer goes on, so too does their attraction. One of the most masterful elements of the direction is the slow, smouldering development of erotic tension towards the first sexual encounter.

Even minor gestures become imbued with erotic significance and intensity – from shared glances, to fingers brushing against each other as they pass in the street.

In a similar style to Blue is the Warmest Colour, Guadagnino emphasises the erotic overtones of eating to signify the pair’s sexual desires. He also exploits the colourful sensuality and textures of the Italian landscape to underscore the blossoming intensity of first love.

The film addresses 1980s homosexuality, right in the middle of the Aids epidemic, where so much was communicated through code.

Oliver asks Elio, “Are you saying what I think you’re saying? We can’t talk about those kinds of things,” since they do not have a ‘permitted’ language to express their emotions outside of a heterosexual framework. Guadagnino uses these unspoken gestures of queer love as moments of incredible emotional poignancy, most beautifully demonstrated as Oliver and Elio hold hands and spin through an abandoned Italian street together whilst the film’s dizzying piano score builds, signifying how their love can only able be celebrated in private. It is as exhilarating and intense an experience as any of cinema’s great love stories.

Friday, 10 November 2017 | Cherwell

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books Not Forgetting William Hazlitt

By LUCY ENDERBY

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orn into an age of political and industrial revolution, William Hazlitt’s rise in the nineteenth century coincided with that of Romanticism. First a philosopher, Hazlitt was then a journalist, essayist, art critic, lecturer, and political commentator.

Standing at the centre of the new culture which shaped his world, Hazlitt was personally acquainted with the likes of Keats, Lamb, Wordsworth and Coleridge. It was as a critic that he was able to establish acclaim, and is still considered one of the greatest critics of his age, contributing drama, literary and political criticism to a new mass audience shaped by the invention of the steam press.

In On The Pleasure of Hating, Hazlitt posits the timeless idea that humans in fact love to hate, writing: “Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust: hatred alone is immortal”, contextualising this desire as an important component of humanity.

A committed political liberal, he is reported to have wept when Napoleon abdicated. In his 1819 Political Essays, he wrote in hope of democracy and reform. It is perhaps of no surprise that he was mercilessly condemned by all the Tory journals of his time.

His writing style is unpretentious, and many of his ideas seem to reflect modern, and simply human concerns.

Duncan Wu describes Hazlitt as the first modern man, and writes that Hazlitt “speaks to us of ourselves — of the culture and world we now inhabit.”

Review

Angel Hill may be simple, but it isn’t empty Michael Longley’s Forward Prize short-listed collection is elegant and timeless, writes Barney Pite

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n the world of contemporary poetry, Michael Longley is often overshadowed by Seamus Heaney, his literary compatriot and friend. But underrating Longley is a mistake, as his most recent Forward prize nominated collection Angel Hill shows.

Longley isn’t concerned with the political or social complexities of the modern world, he’s concerned with the natural, historical, and personal fabric of the world itself.

There’s something refreshing about the unashamed and uninvolved observance of Longley’s work, and, as his editor puts it, in these poems the “imaginations of poet and painter intermingle”. Precious little of Longley’s is even remotely political.

In 60 pages of often short and rarely structurally complex poems, Longley explores the world around him as he grows older. Split between his own home in Carrigskeewaun,

Turtles All The Way Down fails to impress

By BARNEY PITE

and Lochalsh, in the Highlands, Longley’s verse is both a series of observations of his world as he ages within it, and an excavation of its history. He writes about his father who fought at Passchendaele, the children whose parents died in the troubles, the early years of his marriage.

The real strength of Angel Hill is

Longely is not concerned with political or social complexities the sense of controlled universality that Longley evokes without ever seeming overblown or exaggerated.

Angel Hill encapsulates, in rich and powerful verse, everything that it is to be Michael Longley.

Almost all of the poems in the

J

ohn Green is a big name in the lucrative world of young adult fiction. With four novels and two Hollywood fi lms under his belt, and supported by a fan-base of millions, the release of Turtles All The Way Down, his most recent novel, was a certified big deal.

Turtles All The Way Down is about a girl called Aza who struggles with OCD. It’s also about a billionaire who goes missing, his son, a tuatara, and the White River, which runs through the city of Indianapolis. But above all that,

It’s messy, cliched and at points pretentious.

John Green’s new novel is about John Green.

Of course, all novelists incorporate insights from their own personal lives into their work – that’s part of the writing process. Yet, in the case of Turtles All The Way Down, John Green’s confessional account of his own experiences with mental illness seems to come before all else. The plot is a messy cliche, with the characters merely

collection focus in some way on both the flora and the fauna of Longley’s world.

Corncrakes, a rare and elusive bird found sporadically across the Highlands, swallows, nosegays and larks’ nests all feature. A veteran bird watcher and naturalist, much like Heaney, Longley consistently roots himself in nature. Trees, birds, flowers and mountains serve as reference points by which he defi nes his life. In ‘Age’, Longley writes “I have been writing about this townland/ for fifty years, watching on their hummock / autumn’s lady tresses come and go.”

His life is defi ned, not by his work, but by the natural world with which he has framed his life.

Longley is 78 this year, and his age plays a vocal and important role in this collection. His grandchildren feature throughout, and, once more, Longley envisages himself within the natural environment.

In the poem ‘Granddaughters’ he writes “You have buried me up to

my shins / in autumn leaves. I am taking root.” He becomes, through his offspring, a part of the natural backdrop. Angel Hill is certainly

serving as voices in a contrived and at points deeply pretentious fauxplatonic dialogue.

There are three supporting characters in Turtles, who are all predictable and two dimensional.

The manic and extroverted sidekick Daisy, who’s a foil for the protagonist’s withdrawn introversion, the poetically nerdy but angsty boyfriend Davis, (recycled from his previous books), and the mother, who’s well-meaning but unsure about how to deal with her daughter’s condition.

Maybe Green is trying to highlight the everyday truths about living with mental illness, or trying to depict ordinary day-to-day relationships when someone’s really struggling. The best sections of Turtles are the bits which deal with OCD. But everything else in the novel feels either superfluous or formulaic.

We’ve seen it all before – both Paper Towns and Turtles have the motif of a missing character as a narrative centrepiece, whilst the conversations about love and poetry are recognisable from every one of Green’s books, as is the well-worn romantic progression between the two protagonists.

Indeed, you could be forgiven for thinking that John Green or his

publicist has found a formula and is sticking with it.

Perhaps the most grating thing about Turtles All The Way Down is that it’s so messy. The best plots are often the simplest, but this one is sprawling, bringing in the Tuatara, for instance. Not only is it messy, but it’s also secondary to what John

He sees in nature something worth versifying in part a peaceful meditation on death – both his own, and that of his friends, including Heaney.

Although Longley isn’t much read, he should be. His poetry has peace to it, a sense of contentment.

He looks at the world around him, at his own life and he sees in the trees and in the birds something appreciable, something worth versifying.

It’s simple, but it isn’t empty. It has all the craft and meaning of someone who’s been writing poetry for fifty years. It is, at its best, timeless.

John Green or his publicist has found a formula and is sticking with it.

Green really wants to write about: his OCD. I was more disappointed than frustrated by Turtles. I love John Green, and have been watching Vlogbrothers (John and his brother Hank’s Youtube channel) for five years. Indeed, John Green is fun to read, at points, and it’s great that teenage fiction is really engaging with mental health issues, but the hype that Turtles All The Way Down is getting seems a little unjustified.

It’s messy, cliched, and at points it’s pretentious. Read something else.

Cherwell | Friday, 10 November 2017

oxbow 15

theatre Confessions of a Drama Queen

Things can only get better

The right production, but the wrong play

The production is imaginative but the choice of play is inappropriate and bizarre, writes Susannah Goldsbrough

★★★ Candide Burton Taylor Studio

I

8 November, 7.30pm

am baffled by Candide. There is so much that is excellent about Jonny Danciger’s production – the acting talent, the staging, the moments when the direction mocked its own musical theatricality – but there is so much that is wrong with the play itself.

After weeks of sordid revelations about the way powerful men sexually manipulate their juniors, there is nothing funny about something that cake-ices sexual exploitation with the bells and smells of musical theatre, and makes rape the punch line of a very tired joke about sexually predatory women. The defence that it is a satire – that it condemns the repulsive world it presents – feels unconvincing when you find yourself laughing at the show’s victims as much as at its

Five minutes with

Lucy Hayes, chair of Oxford University Dramatic Society

villains. It is a huge shame that such a melting pot of Oxford theatrical talent got it so wrong with their choice of musical.

David Garrick is a real talent: as the double-breasted suit wearing, drivel-spewing philosopher Pangloss he gave us plummy toned and lecherous buffoonery that fractured into a kind of pathetic vulnerability. Amelia Gabriel proved her impressive range as Old Woman in a part that could not have been further from her passionate Anna Karenina last Hilary. All cocked hips and devastating winks, she squeezed every juicy drop out of the grand old theatrical trope of leery old women, blending a comic physicality with her gorgeous voice.

Freddie Crowley also deserves a mention for his master class in pink satin self-obsession as Maximilian.

The textiness of the set, designed by Christina Hill, which included blocks covered in type print and tree made of paper, seemed like an enjoyable nod to the verboseness of the characters.

Danciger also did a fantastic job with the chorus movement and staging, creating some very convincing ships with only six people, some rope, and

T

his week, we chat to Lucy Hayes, the chair of the Oxford University Dramatic Society (Ouds) and manager of Perepeteia Productions, about her experience with Oxford drama, her real-life heroes, and her latest exciting project.

Could you tell us a bit about how you got involved with drama at Oxford?

I was trying to convince my friend to produce a play for me, so I took her to an Ouds producing workshop. From that, I was asked to produce a show at the Playhouse. I had no idea what a producer really did, but I knew I’d be stupid not to.

What’s your happiest memory of Oxford drama?

They’ve all been pretty happy! I actually don’t think I have any bad memories of doing drama at Oxford at all.

Have you ever had any complete

By KATIE SAYER

F

steering wheel. The performance was a little beset by sound trouble – Crowley’s microphone wasn’t on in the first scene, and at points the words of Voltaire (played by Gavin Fleming) were drowned out by the music – which was unfortunate in the professional setting of the Playhouse. With a running time of nearly three hours that left the audience flagging through the final scenes, it could also have done with a more ruthless edit. But these are technical points, and should not detract from the undeniable creativity of cast and crew and the slick production they have created.

But in the end, I just couldn’t bring myself to like it. It’s true that whenever you revive an older work, you are faced with bridging a historical gap.

The case of Candide is also particularly challenging – a director must tease a contemporary interpretation out of something that is engaged with the concerns and expectations of both an eighteenth-century readership (Voltaire’s original novella) and a twentieth-century audience (Leonard Bernstein and Hugh Wheeler’s musical adaptation). Relevance is not the issue: in its exposition of the exploitation of the common man, Voltaire’s biting social satire would have something to say in any period of history. The problem is one of tone.

Obviously the impact of satirical drama relies on making the audience laugh at something repulsive. You

laugh, you question, you criticise – comedy gives the diesel to a political engine. But when you’re dealing with very sensitive material, the question that should always be asked is, who are we being directed to laugh at? One particularly troubling song, ‘Glitter and be Gay’, attempts to create some psychological complexity around Cunegonde’s (played by Laura Coppinger) horrifying situation as the sex slave of two men. But Richard Wilbur’s lyrics do not do any kind of justice to the seriousness of the subject matter: “The dreadful, dreadful shame I feel” is a shabby gesture towards a representation of a rape victim’s psyche, and the overall message of the song – that jewels and luxury are some compensation for her treatment – makes light of the repulsive subject matter. The production made a decent attempt at injecting seriousness into the flippancy: Coppinger turned the repeated ‘ha, ha’ lyric into maniacal laughter, and ended the song by smearing red lipstick across her face, with disturbing effect, but even that could not overcome the overall insensitivity.

We cannot judge Voltaire by our modern moralities with 250 years of history between us, but in my opinion, Barricade Arts misjudged their material and picked a play that does little justice to the talent of the cast or the crew.

Candide runs from 8-11 November.

production nightmares?

I did turn up to the get-in of my first show at the Burton Taylor Studio thinking that I could, with no experience, rig, focus, and program all of the lights myself, and very quickly realised I was out of my depth. Luckily, we managed to get someone else in within an hour who actually knew what they were doing so it was all fine.

a theatre from scratch which is now a really successful and incredibly unique venue. He’s a bit of a maverick, and he never takes no for an answer. The council tried to shut him down on his opening night, and he told them they should come back in the morning, because there wasn’t any way they were stopping him from opening his show. He’s taught me most of what I know about theatre, and I aspire to be that audacious one day.

What’s your favourite play?

I’m very indecisive, but maybe Michael Frayn’s Noises Off. Or maybe King Lear.

How would you want to stage it in Oxford?

I don’t think I could ever stage either of them! I feel they should stay sacred.

Who is your hero in the theatre world?

Probably my dad: he built

Do you have any advice for freshers who might want to get involved with drama?

If you’re an actor, just keep auditioning, and if you do, you will get cast in something.

If you want to be involved but aren’t sure how,

inally, the god of the arts has staged a divine intervention in my favour! After five long weeks of suffering, it seems that things are actually looking up for my university drama career.

This unexpected miracle occurred completely randomly. I was contentedly strolling down Cornmarket Street, holding my Pret like any middle-class humanities student at this university, when lo and behold, I was stopped by an agent!

Naturally, I always knew I would be model-scouted one day, but I hadn’t anticipated it being at 9.30am on a Tuesday, while I was wearing only leggings and a Law Society hoodie. I have never actually been to any Law Society events, and have no interest in law, but I want people to think I’m studious and intellectual. Apparently, LinkedIn is the new Match.com.

Anyway, the casting agent said she had spied my face across the crowd, and realised in that very second that mine was exactly the kind of visage she was looking to cast in her upcoming production of a musical. It’s called like, The Horror Shop or something, I hadn’t heard of it. Apparently, I have the perfect looks and physicality for this character called “Audrey II”? I asked her a bit about my character, what she looked like, what her motivation was etc, and I thought she said the word “triffid”, but I must have misheard her. It must have been “terrific.”

She’s said rehearsals are to begin next Saturday, and has asked me to dress all in green. I can’t think why. I’ve also just realised that she’s not actually sent me a script yet, but I’m sure it will be fine – I’m certain my character will have lines, and lots of them.

I will let you know in due course how I fare with my big break.

Adieu, fair reader!

try anything! Respond to a TAFF call, or email the producer of a project you like the sound of. It’s scary, but people love it when people but themselves out there, and it will get you far.

Are you working on any exciting projects at the moment?

I’m directing my last show, Hedda, at the Oxford Playhouse in 6th week of Hilary term. It’s a modern adaptation of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler by Lucy Kirkwood, stripping the play of the polite society of Victorian bourgeoisie and plunging it into to a world of crisis and Oxford academics.

Next year is the centenary of female suffrage, so it’s the perfect time to stage it – the question of how far society has truly come in creating space for women is more important than ever! We are really excited to be part of the Playhouse’s VOTE season, celebrating female-driven narratives for this anniversary.

Satire HUMAN RIGHTS

Satire editors vote to secede from the Cherwell team Editor Jack Hunter, known as ‘The Butcher’ for his brutal editorial style, made the following statement: “I have decided to make free and legal appointments to restore the editorial freedom that has been eliminated by the decisions of the Satire editors. We never, ever wanted to get to this situation.

Nor do we wish to prolong this exceptional state of affairs. But as we have always said, this is not about suspending freedom of press but restoring it.”

No international observers have recognised the independence of the satire section, though other obscure break-away journalistic projects, like the Oxford Review of Books have expressed a willingness to support the Satire section’s bid for editorial freedom.

As we went to press, Akshay Bilolikar had declared direct rule over the section, and both section editors had fled to Belgium with Cherwell enforcers in hot pursuit.

WELFARE

Six Ways to prevent Fifth Week Blues It’s that wonderful time of the term again. The time when your neighbour’s stifled tears just about become audible while you sit in the throes of a workinduced breakdown in your room! But don’t worry, Cherwell Satire is here to help you stave off those Fifth Week Blues.

1) Take up a new hobby Competitive wailing, staggering through Oxford late at night, and screaming obscenities at tourists are some potential fifth-week activities.

2) Drown your sorrows Excessive alcohol consumption might not help you write your essay, but it will make you forget about it.

3) Do something fun with friends A trip to the pub or the cinema will allow you to offload some of your mid-term anxieties onto your closest friends 4) Leave Oxford Just go. Get on the next bus to London and the cheapest plane out of

the country. Never look back. Never regret. Never return.

5) Surrender to the life of the mind Just let the world of academia wash over you and let go of your old identity. You are Oxford and Oxford is you.

6) Comfort Eat When you’ve ballooned to twice the size you were at the start of term, you’ll feel a lot better about life at Oxford. Plus you’ll always be warmer as the winter draws near.

WORLD POLITICS

PATRIOTISM

Promising a peaceful resolution to the conflict, Donald Trump yesterday arrived in South Korea to encourage compromise. Wellknown for his balanced personality, and rhetorical sensitivity, the US president is expected to calm the conflict.

The world looks on with hope, in the certainty that his visit to the conflict zone won’t provoke the equally balanced, sensible, and reasonable Kin Jong-Un.

Sources have confirmed that Dave Tristram, a self-described ‘radical male anarcho-feminist’ who is superior to you in every way, has taken his virtue-signalling to a new level by wearing a white poppy instead of a red one.

“I don’t believe that I went far enough last year in just not wearing a poppy,” said Tristram.

“I need to express my nonconformity in a more visible and deliberately provocative way.”

War with North Korea averted

White poppy wearer “better than you”

by Rebecca Marks @missmarksart

ACROSS

6 Blue (8) 8 Meat or vegetables in a spicy sauce (5) 10 Blue (6) 11 Hair between forehead and eyes (7) 12 ___ blue (4) 13 Blue (9) 14 Sport (at school) (2) 15 Military land force (4) 17 Blue (4) 18 One of the “boys in blue” (2) 20 ___ blue (9) 21 Sauce base made from flour and butter (4) 22 Flower (7) 23 Blue, for example (traditionally) (6) 24 God of the underworld, planetary body (5) 25 Blue (8)

DOWN

1 Provide with a reason to do something (8) 2 ___ blue (4) 3 Endeavour (7) 4 Channel island (8) 5 Made by fermentarion (6) 7 Crazy (5) 9 Relating to opposites (prefix) (6) 15 Omnipotent (8) 16 Relating to the sea (6) 18 ___ blue (8) 19 Move forwards (7) 20 Blue (6) 21 ___ blue (5) 23 Make a hole, cause to be disinterested (4)

QUIZ Name the college: 1 Main, Arlosh 2 Front, Mob, Fellow’s, St Alban’s 3 Old Buildings, New Buildings, Holywell 4 Main, Radcliffe 5 Front, Durham, Garden, Library 6 New, Old, Deer Park

7 Liddon, Pusey, Hayward, De Breyne 8 Main, Dorothy Hodgkin 9 Tom, Peckwater 10 Front, Second, Third 11 Lankester, McAlpine 12 Linton, Mulberry, Hannington, Chavasse

QUIZ Names of Oxford college quads 1 Harris Manchester 2 Merton 3 Hertford 4 University 5 Trinity 6 Brasenose 7 Keble 8 Somerville 9 Christ Church 10 Jesus 11 Green Templeton 12 St Peter’s Last week’s crossword Song lyrics round edge: Do you ever feel like a plastic bag from Firework by Katy Perry ACROSS 7 Giggled 8 Accuser 9 Aunts 10 Rainproof 11 Belongs to 14 Dance 15 Crust 17 Obsolesce 19 Islanders 21 Sisal 23 Traffic 24 Figural DOWN 1 Organ 2 Yeltsin 3 Order 4 Unanimous 5 Escaped 6 Viscounts 12 Ljubljana 13 Shower cap 16 Tuneful 18 Lasagne 20 Sofia 22 Shrek

Declaring themselves free of the shackles of editorial oppression, the Cherwell Satire team has decided to secede from the paper as a whole, as a result of continued infringement on their autonomy.

At a controversial meeting of the Satire assembly last Thursday both section editors were reprimanded for their continued reckless provocations and mentions of Freddos in their articles.

Opposition satirists walked out in disgust at the constant meta-jokes that only other Cherwell staff find funny.

“Cherwell Satire is now the only section in the paper that has been denied the editorial freedom its contributors voted for, and the editors they elected” said President Blackwood. “Today, the leaders of this satirical project stand accused of rebellion and face the severest punishment possible under the Cherwell penal code – a five hour InDesign course and a paper delivery by yourself.”

Queen responds to tax rumours with new mixtape “One don’t give a damn ‘bout chu”

Cherwell | Friday, 10 November 2017

9

Opinion

One awkward conversation is worth a thousand misjudged sexual advances Susannah Goldsbrough

The grey areas are the hardest to know how to respond to

“I

t’s going to drip, drip, drip out.” The words of Labour MP Jess Philips on BBC Radio 4 Today last Friday may have been specifically referring to the allegations surrounding former defence secretary Michael Fallon, but they could equally apply to the way in which a wave of sexual misconduct revelations has slowly enveloped Westminster over the last week.

Every day we wake up to another prominent name splashed across the front page. A cabinet minister has resigned, two Labour MPs have been suspended, and many more on both sides of the House are the subject of internal party inquiries.

“He brushed her knee.” “She had to buy his wife sex toys.” “They didn’t believe her when she said she’d been raped.” We’ve heard the snippets of news bulletins, glanced at the front page headlines, read the angry tweets. Our minds are awash with allegations: some ridiculous, some uncomfortable, some criminal.

And so the drips begin to lose their individual outlines. As they fall, they blend together, to form one great, rushing torrent. That torrent has proved vital − horrible, ice-cold, and profoundly disturbing, it has shaken our comfortable feminist complacencies, and made us question what conception of normal governs our workplaces. That torrent has been entirely necessary.

But now it’s time to start separating

out the drips again – and hold those responsible to account.

The worst cases have at least the advantage of clarity. Sexual assault is a crime, and demands a legal response. We can hope that one effect of the public revelations will be to give more victims the courage to report crimes, reducing the number of cases like Bex Bailey, who spokeout about not going to the police after being raped at a Labour Party event in 2011, because she feared she would not be believed.

But it’s not the worst cases that are the most difficult to know how to respond to. It’s the greyer areas − the knee brushes, the text messages, the unwanted gazes − that are more difficult to categorise. The media has swept every sordid story into a helpfully vague pile labeled ‘sexual misconduct’.

To some, these incidents are disturbing. To others, they are nothing. To a few, they are flattering. But the time has come to reach some kind of consensus. Difficult and context-dependent as it may be, the parameters of acceptable behaviour need to be established, to put an end to the public punishment of people who do not know what crimes they have committed.

People are always going to get it wrong when it comes to sex. So much of sexual communication is conducted in innuendo and implication that moments of awkwardness and misunderstanding are just inevitable. Everyone will have experienced that cringing, bone-

aching embarrassment that means someone has misread your signals.

The occasional unwanted advance or humiliating rejection are simply the inevitable consequences of the fact that we’re not very good at communicating who we fancy. And that’s okay, most of the time. An advance is made and rebuffed – the moment is uncomfortable, but swiftly dealt with and swifter forgotten.

Problems start to arise when those initial, tentative advances cross a line from a little embarrassing to deeply uncomfortable or upsetting. So what constitutes a reasonable first statement of sexual attraction? For me, a touch on the arm is perfectly fine, a brush of the knee might well be acceptable, and a hand on the bum is an absolute no-no. But that’s just me. You might be different, and this is where it becomes so difficult to establish rules that everyone should adhere to.

The best solution might be a set of loose guidelines rather than cast-iron instructions. For instance: use verbal indicators to, as far as possible, establish that your advances are welcome before making a physical move. Or maybe that kills sex appeal, I don’t know. But it’s these kinds of slightly awkward and

We must all define what we are comfortable with

fairly boring conversations that we need to start having over the next few weeks, so that eventually the number of women in pubs and bars, in nightclubs and at bus stops, in Hollywood and Westminster and everywhere in between, who find themselves heading home after a day at work or a night out with that slightly stomach-sick feeling that means something that happened to them today should not have happened, begins to reduce.

“You’re equating a silly text message or a grope with rape, and that belittles rape.” Petronella Wyatt this time, former deputy editor of The Spectator, also speaking on Today this week. Initially, her words sent me into an incoherent rant at my radio, but the more I think about it, the more I think she may have a point.

The torrent of revelations that hit the press last week was long overdue, and served a vital purpose as a shock-impact, forcing society out of its complacent stupor on sexual harassment in the workplace. But if we don’t start to acknowledge that the definition of what constitutes acceptable behaviour has never really been properly and publicly updated, we risk doing a disservice to the sufferings of the victims of crime.

Women need to start defining what they are comfortable with when it comes to sexual advances, and everyone needs to accept that awkward encounters are an inevitable part of sex.

Friday, 10 November 2017 | Cherwell

10

Opinion Trump is using Twitter to dictate to the media

Pro-life students have a right to speak out at Oxford Becky Cook

I was shouted down by Oxford SU campaigners. It sets a worrying precedent, writes Anna Branford

R

espectful, open discussion is vital to freedom of speech. Everyone should have the opportunity to make their views heard, and everyone’s voice should be valued in the discussion of contentious social issues. These were all points I raised to the 40 attendees of last Wednesday’s ‘Abortion in Ireland’ event hosted by Oxford Students for Life.

Despite this, what happened next was an affront to all of the principles established before the talk took place. Less than one minute into Breda O’Brien’s presentation, a group of protestors jumped to their feet with such ferocity that it was impossible for us to have any form of meaningful enagagement with them.

I was particularly taken aback that fellow students, organised and spearheaded by Oxford SU’s WomCam no less, could employ such a form of protest given how hard we had worked to ensure that any prochoice attendees would feel like they had the freedom to speak and challenge our guests.

It was a clear affront to the principles that we had so clearly emphasised were invaluable to the discussion. So unprecedented was such a protest, and so blatant was the attempt to deny our speaker her right to freedom of speech, that it was unclear how we should respond.

Attempts were made to vaguely mitigate the circumstances in which we found ourselves. Some of the pro-life women held up signs at the suggestion of Georgia Clarke, our Secretary, proclaiming “I’m a woman, where’s my right to speak?” and “Is this what dialogue looks like?” Breda tried to communicate by writing a message to the protestors on the projector screen, but even this form of speech was ignored as protestors blocked the projector and relentlessly continued their chanting from the front.

Freedom of speech is not just some abstract, nebulous concept to be discussed by political philosophers in their ivory towers.

Rather, it is a necessary protection, a fundamental right enshrined in law and international obligations such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Such legal protection is essential for enabling the existence of groups like Oxford Students for Life. We exist to create a space in which questions about the beginning and end of life can be discussed in a respectful and open environment.

We come at the issues from a prolife perspective, and aim to foster dialogue and share views which are often unheard. Safeguarded by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we have every right to “impart information and ideas” and that is exactly what we hoped to do on Wednesday evening.

Our beliefs may be considered radical, but so have many beliefs at some time that we now consider normal. Repealing Section 28 was seen as radical. Votes for women, a concept which is now assumed by all as a fundamental right was one of the most divisive debates of the 20th century. The idea of freedom of speech can sometimes be reduced to empty rhetoric due to overuse, but it is vital to democracy and progressive movements. The belief that human life should be protected from conception to natural death may currently be considered radical, but that doesn’t mean it has any less of a right to be heard.

Despite the portrayal of the prolife movement as extreme and out of touch with public opinion, a recent ComRes Poll shows that among 1824 year olds, 59% would like to see

All movements begin with a challenge to the status quo

the 24-week limit reduced, while only one percent would wish to see it extended to birth. Such statistics would imply that there is still much discussion to be had on the question of abortion and that the debate is by no means over.

Moreover, the upcoming referendum in Ireland and the current push for decriminalisation in the UK means that it is as important as ever that the right to free speech on issues such as abortion is not infringed.

WomCam says the question “is not up for debate”, but if our MPs are to debate the matter in Parliament, then the right of citizens to discuss it must be upheld. To suggest otherwise would be to set a dangerous and worrying precedent, where the established view would become unquestioned. History tells us that for progress to be made, the opposite must be done with increased fervour.

Given the protesters’ flagrant disregard for freedom of speech, the committee and I were astonished and deeply disturbed when the Oxford SU put out a statement the next day endorsing the protest.

In their statement following the protest, the SU wrote: “Oxford SU is an organisation dedicated to representing the interests of Oxford students.” Yet the SU attempted to deny the right to free speech to the very students they claimed to represent, and this paradoxical sentiment should be viewed with a highly critical eye.

WomCam of course have a right to freedom of expression and protest.

But all would do well to remember that a right to freedom of speech does not mean the right to prevent other people from speaking.

Anna Branford is Co-President of OSFL (Oxford Students for Life)

Freedom of speech is not an abstract concept, it’s a right

280 characters cannot explain the intricacies of a policy

F

or a handful of minutes last Thursday night, those who searched for Donald Trump’s Twitter account were greeted with an uncharacteristically apologetic message: “Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!” It was a sharp contrast to the typical slew of damaging assertions and outbursts that occupy his feed. Despite Twitter’s claim that this was due to a system error, it was soon revealed that a rogue employee had actually deleted the President’s personal account on his last day at the company.

Once Trump’s virtual lifeline was back up and running, he told his 42 million followers that it was clear his Twitter was “having an impact.” Trump’s boast is hardly out of character and he is open about his fondness for the social media tool, telling Fox News in a recent interview that, “When somebody says something about me, I am able to go bing, bing, bing and I take care of it.”

However, his prolific and vociferous use of the medium has arguably caused him as many headaches as self-styled PR victories. His consistent keyboard courage led to the public demanding he be ousted from the platform (if not the Oval Office itself) before he sparks a nuclear war with Kim Jong-un, who saw Trump’s declaration that he “won’t be around much longer” as a declaration of war.

More importantly Trump has proved that digital insults and slander don’t need to be a last resort for campaigners. He understands Twitter as a platform where users benefit from saying the outrageous and controversial as it helps to disseminate what is being said, sparking conversation.

Trump has noted the importance of Twitter particularly as a means to bypass what he has infamously dubbed the “fake news” media.

Social media is Trump’s preferred way of directly conveying his message, it appeals to those who want information quickly, without the airs and graces. It seems his Twitter not only skirts the media, but can somewhat dictate it.

A clear phenomenon has arisen whereby a tweet consisting of a few choice sentences can wholly besiege the news agenda. Trump can thus inadvertently exercise a modicum of control over the reporters he denigrates.

Past presidents have carefully drafted speeches for weeks, while a tweet is written in a matter of moments and when it comes to Trump they seem to demand an immediate reaction.

Twitter is a superb tool for brief announcements and facile feuding, but a medium with a 280-character limit is hardly apt for explaining the intricacies of Trump’s various policies. The deletion of his Twitter highlights the integral role which his social media continues to play in his presidency, and may serve as an indicator of who, and what, the American people will adapt to and embrace in the future.

Cherwell | Friday, 10 November 2017

11

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

Get your voice heard at cherwell.org

Oxford’s reputation taints student activism

I

f you didn’t know anyone taking part in LOST last week, you probably do now. Be it the donation pleas, excessive photo albums or the conspicuously garish event t-shirt, it’s hard for this charity hitch-hike race to have passed you by. I say this because I can count myself among its participants. As for any irritating over-sharing on my part? Guilty as charged.

But I’m going to ask you to think about some of the potentially more damaging implications of LOST. It is, in its essence, a dramatisation of the ‘town vs gown’ dichotomy.

It quite literally dumps students en masse in the middle of nowhere, and asks them to interact with the real world. If LOST is a charity challenge, then the challenge eleRoddy Howland Jackson ment might be described as learn-

ing to survive outside the Oxford bubble before rushing back to it as quickly as possible.

Or at least this is how it appears to the public. In a media climate where Oxford’s elitism is stigmatised and berated more than ever, there is an uneasy chord struck by the idea of petitioning Joe Public for favours, often monetary ones.

Hitch-hiking and coach-hopping are awkward at the best of times: explaining that it was simply an exercise in not spending travel money – that, in truth, teams had access to – did little to help.

Participants in LOST are branded with bright t-shirts, often accompanying fancy dress, marking them as ‘apart’ from their surroundings – the vestiary aspect of ‘town vs gown’ is renewed here in

microcosm. Some teams treat this demarcation as a carte blanche, as if their status as clever people doing a vaguely good thing should entitle them to unlimited generosity. I cite a team of two freshers who expressed outrage at the fact that their suits and ties hadn’t been rewarded with unconditional trust from a National Express driver.

Implicit in the challenge booklet assigned to participants is Oxford’s ascendancy: while ‘getting a free haircut’ seems reasonable for a charity event, both ‘attending’ and ‘giving’ lectures at another university are less defensible to say the very least.

Under the mantle of charity and superiority, these tasks encouraged disruption that could easily be construed as patronising.

This is perhaps representative of the wider issue at stake in Oxford’s LOST event.

It is nonsense to suggest any ill will in the event – enthusiasm abounded on the day, with over £10,000 raised for excellent charities across the world.

Participants were friendly, cheerful, and doggedly determined to make the most out of a surreal day. But at a conceptual level, this is irrelevant.

The persistent myth of Oxford’s ‘other’ status is not undone by LOST, but indulged by it, however charitable its intentions.

CONTESTED

Are spaces like Plush only for LGBTQ+ students?

Anonymous

T

Yes

his is not an attack on straight people. Sexuality is, after all, just one aspect of your character. It’s always difficult to write a piece like this without coming across as divisive – but this is not an “us” and “them” issue. We’re all human, we’re all on the same team, and we can all relate on some level. That being said, there’s a discrepancy between us when it comes to queer spaces, an issue which only queer people are really in a position to fully appreciate.

The problem here is not necessarily allies, or people who are questioning their heterosexuality and looking for answers. The problem is straight people who are just here for the party. It’s a lot harder to be queer around straight people than it is waround other queer people. Other queer people understand, to an extent, what you’ve been through, what you’re feeling, what it’s like to be queer in a straight society. Straight people do not.

Before I came to Oxford, I was outed to total strangers by some of my closest friends. It was scary and upsetting, but I knew they didn’t mean any harm by it: they just had no way of appreciating what a mas-

sive deal it was to me. Even after I explained, they didn’t understand why I was hurt: it’s 2017, everyone is cool with the gays now. Even if that were true, it couldn’t take away the fear that it might change how people thought of you once they knew that you were different.

It’s hard to understand if you haven’t experienced it, and we realise that. Just take my word for it: it’s so much easier to feel accepted when you know that you’re in a place designed for people like you, by people like you, with people like you.

Of course, there’s no practical way to enforce it. It’s not like our sexuality is printed on our ID cards. However good you think your ‘gaydar’ is, there’s no reliable way to tell who’s queer and who isn’t (much to the relief of many of our queer ancestors, I’m sure). All we can really do is ask nicely.

Please: don’t come to queer events if you’re nothing to do with the LGBTQ+ community. If your idea of allyship is not being actively homophobic, you don’t really deserve to attend. And if you must, don’t act like you’re the saviour of the gays for attending.

Don’t use it to broadcast how wonderfully progressive you are. Don’t act disgusted because someone of the same gender hits on you.

There are plenty of parties and plenty of clubs – if you come to the queer ones, I’m afraid you’re going to have to accept that this time, it’s not about you.

T Straight people change the community dynamic

he commodification of various queer events have understandably lead many to try to protect queer spaces with an increased fervour.

For those who identify as LGBTQ+, these spaces provide an integral purpose within the queer community.

They provide safety for those who wish to express their identity and are affirming to those who are rarely surrounded by those similar to them.

But they are most vital for those who are taking the first tentative steps towards accepting who they are. It is for this reason that the presence of allies within spaces like Plush should be debated with a certain degree of care.

It’s easy for those who have already established a network of friends who identify as LGBTQ+ at university to argue that these spaces should be exclusively queer. But to do so appears potentially selfish – it is to deny those questioning their identity the chance to explore it in the presence of a safe group of friends. It is to suggest that those well-meaning allies are not valued – when in fact the opposite is true. Of course, we should all be troubled when queer spaces are almost fetishised by the straight community. Spaces like Plush and events like Queerfest are not to be

To remove allies is to remove valued support

No Naomi Packer used as a break from the monotony of Bridge and Cellar. These spaces, and the people who occupy them are not an exciting ‘other’ and should not be used or viewed as such.

But there is a deeper problem within complaints of straight, cisgendered people occupying queer spaces. It is mistaken to presume that we can immediately ascertain someone’s gender or sexuality by merely looking at them. We may assume we see a straight person in a queer space, but to assume such is problematic.

Biphobia is an issue which the LGBTQ+ community is yet to adequately combat. Bisexual people are the largest group within the queer community, and yet they are consistently overlooked and undermined by the movement.

So long as straight people remain exceptions to the rule, their presence shouldn’t be deemed inherently problematic. Allies are an integral part of the LGBTQ+ movement, and to reject them from queer spaces is, occasionallwy, to reject their support.

Most appreciate that they may don the glitter and bask in the glory of Haute Mess but in the firm knowledge that in this space they are a guest, not a host.

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Friday, 10 November 2017 | Cherwell

At length Affordable development around Oxford is not a simple path

PHOTO: SELMA STEARNS

Colleges own swathes of Oxford’s green belt, pitting local residents against the growing need to build more homes. Libby Cherry investigates the growing divide.

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hen walking through Oxford on a Saturday afternoon, it is impossible not to feel the sheer physical size of the University in its labyrinthine sprawl of colleges, libraries, and laboratories. Streets appear created without design, instead falling haphazardly as narrow alleyways and chasms between looming battlements and languishing quads. Whilst telltale signs of modernity have crept into central Oxford, the “dreaming spires” have not yet relinquished their spatial supremacy.

But it is sometimes easy to forget the level of land ownership that extends outside of the city walls.

According to WhoOwnsEngland. org, in 2015 all the colleges were recorded to have an enormous £1.3 billion invested in property and in 1989, with 127,690 acres owned in total. The number of acres in 2017 fell due to sales, but Oxford University’s landholdings today are still considerable, to say the least. Such mass holdings are fairly anomalous

nowadays, anachronistic remnants of England’s feudal past.

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either do the colleges act like normal landlords. My paternal family are Oxfordshire based farmers, and have rented land from Exeter College since 1945. Since the beginning, the relationship has been less one of landlord and tenant, more of friendly association, one that is only ever mentioned with pride. It has been defined by tradition and stability rather than change, and, unlike the uncertainty that many domestic tenants feel, the agreement has always been defined by security.

Living in a college-owned village, my aunt said, was to feel that someone clever was in control.

Yet transposing this archaic relationship into the 21st century has proven difficult. While in the past, housing developments on collegeowned land would never have been considered particularly newsworthy, the current climate has transformed the colleges’ land transactions from routine agreements to moral arbitrations.

Colleges have come under increas-

ing pressure to develop their land, not only from their budgets in the face of declining government funding, but also from Oxford City Council, who are constantly struggling to find suitable sites for new homes. Oxfordshire is one of the least affordable counties in the UK, with the city of Oxford in particular having a house price to income ratio of 11.56, according to West Oxfordshire’s most recent Local Plan.

Colleges’ land transactions have become moral affairs

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his dearth of affordable housing in Oxford has become increasingly impossible to ignore. Recently, the local lack of affordable housing has been cited as the cause of Westgate finding it difficult to recruit, as potential workers have been priced out of Oxford’s commuter zones. The University themselves have also felt the pres-

sure of Oxford’s housing shortage, with many dons finding it difficult to find their bearings in a highly competitive housing market.

My first encounter with the immense power Oxford colleges can wield was in the village of Lower Heyford, whose surrounding land is partially owned by Corpus Christi.

For a village so near to Oxford – just 15 minutes on the train – it is surprisingly sleepy, with a mere 160 houses running alongside the canal path. As a consequence, this nondescript village was considered ideal for expansion.

The proposal put forward by Corpus Christi and the developer Bonnar Allan was posited as being part of the solution to Oxford’s housing crisis. A third of the proposed houses would have been termed “affordable”, that is for sale or rent at 80% of the market value. But the sheer scale of the village’s growth was completely unprecedented. 5000 houses were proposed to be built, a self-contained ‘settlement’ appended onto the village with its own school, doctor’s surgery and transport links. Over 100 members of the public turned out to reject the plans at a parish council meeting, an act of outcry perhaps not usually associated with balding retirees, but one which left Corpus powerless to follow through with its plans.

The arguments of the villagers that led the campaign against Corpus had more than a whiff of Nimbyism, the overriding message of this meeting apparently being ‘you are not wanted here’, according to the council minutes of the event. Such language could easily be construed as a middle-class fear of the riff-raff rather than any legitimate concerns about the integrity of village life.

However, it is difficult to contend with the claim that the proposed change was clearly a move of gross insensitivity. The plans themselves were presented with an almost comical tone of false naïvety that grated with many of Heyford’s residents.

Some burst into laughter when developers tried to convince them that the additional homes “would not add significantly to traffic flows”, the implication being that everyone would only use the improved train service.

A

lthough the proposed demographic changes to the village could perhaps be considered inevitable, the speed at which such a change was put forward is rather alien to the ideals of co-operation and compromise. Even Corpus Christi, in their attempt to try and pitch the development, described Bonnar Allan as a “new and different kind of benign developer”, an unwitting Freudian confirmation of the villagers’ fears that some developers were acting like cancers, destroying the countryside under a concrete proliferation of identical homes.

Similar struggles between residents and colleges are alarmingly common, and a perceived aggressiveness on the part of the colleges is becoming more and more widely reported.

The Parish of Fyfield and Tubney has been historically linked with St John’s College since its founding in the 16th century, being part of the college’s original endowment. For centuries, the village has been a refuge for St John’s scholars during times of tension in the city, and Fyfield’s small church is lined with

Green B areas Engla

Art by Rosa Thomas

commemorations of past fellows.

Yet development plans for the tiny parish have caused animosity against the college to reach a fever pitch. Some residents have reportedly wanted to sever all visible ties with St John’s, to the point of advocating the renaming of local cul-de-sac St John’s Close.

For despite the land around the parish being judged by the local authority as “unsuitable” for development, due to its lack of infrastructure and the land’s current greenfield status, St John’s College has continued to push through planning proposals, with the intention of adding 700 homes to the 185-home parish.

Development plans have caused animosity against the college

T

im Dougall, a representative of Fyfield Local Action Group (Flag), whose purpose is to prevent what they consider the pernicious impacts of the development, as their website read, “because someone has to”, said that it is primarily the college’s attitude towards the development that has stoked so much local anger. St John’s

Cherwell | Friday, 10 November 2017

13

Belt s in and

PHOTO: LIBBY CHERRY

reportedly continued to insist that the residents’ reception of the planning proposal had been “favourable” despite their clear concern. Dougall also showed Cherwell documents that exhibited the college’s constant evasion of engagement with the local community. Instead of opening up discussion, the President of St John’s urged the campaigners to “liaise and communicate your concerns directly with Lioncourt and the local planning authority”, adopting an approach that has become symptomatic of the shift in St John’s and Fyfield’s relationship.

M

uch of St John’s planning agenda has been formulated with the help of the public relations company SP Broadway.

Martin Harris, an ex-postgraduate researcher in Oxford and a member of the Oxford Green Belt Network, an organisation that campaigns to preserve and prevent the development of Oxford’s Green Belt, has criticised the colleges’ use of such companies at other sites.

Harris said these firms present a “biased case for building over on this important natural capital, denying that this is anti-social vandalism, and claiming that it is necessary to help more people in Oxford find homes nearer to their work.

“That is simply not true, nor is it justified by any objective evidence that I have seen; the motive is finan-

cial gain.”

Dougall was also quick to point out what he considers St John’s lack of integrity in promoting the development so forcefully. The college, the wealthiest in Oxford, would stand to make £85 million if the development application is successful, a huge sum that he felt highlighted the paltriness of St John’s spending on bursaries and outreach.

St John’s was becoming “a property and investment company with a sideline in education,” he said.

Building on the Green Belt can cause problems

D

ougall is not the only one to publicly criticise the colleges.

This January, the Oxfordshire Campaign to Protect Rural England announced that “Colleges’ greed puts Green Belt and city at risk”, raising concern over the 17,000 houses that are proposed to be built on Oxford’s Green Belt by 2031. Unlike the land at Heyford and Fyfield, this is land that is protected from development by law, despite the housing shortage in Britain. Christ Church, Magdalen, Brasenose, and Exeter have all come forward with plans to build directly onto these prime Green Belt sites.

Whilst outlying projects in Heyford and Fyfield could be seen as slightly marginal, the green belt, with its proximity to the city centre, is financially secure. Within the green belt, each hectare of farmland is approximately worth £12,000, but the asset value increases enormously if permission to build on the land is granted, rising to £2,000,000 per hectare. Successful planning permission thus massively increases the colleges’ rental income from these sites, with relatively little effort on their behalf – though it is worth noting that the land is only so expensive because of the scarcity of good housing near the city centre.

However, Martin Harris condemned the Colleges’ participation in the development of the green belt as “socially irresponsible”, particularly in regard to its effects on city dwellers’ physical and mental health.

By building on the green belt, he explained, problems associated with congestion and air pollution can only be exacerbated.

Harris also explained that the University could even be disadvantaging itself as an institution in the long term by indirectly contributing to Oxford’s environmental decline – though he failed to note the perhaps much greater risk that the housing shortage would jeopardise the University’s ability to recruit the best minds.

“The campuses of many other universities in the UK, in the EU and in North America confidently offer excellent physical environments for study and learning, which are superior to that now found in central Oxford… this may become an important factor which unfortunately steers away talented but discerning people away from coming to Oxford,” he said.

B

ut where does this leave affordable housing? Whilst the belief that houses need to be built is almost unanimously agreed upon, it is the location that is thus the crux of the issue. Bob Price, Labour city councillor, told Cherwell that he welcomed the colleges’ “growing interest in supporting the growth of new settlements.” He believes that the green belt, far from vivifying, is in fact “throttling” the city, and that by not building on it Oxford would be powerless to find a solution to the burgeoning crisis.

However, there is some question as to whether the developments are really providing the houses for the people who need them. The cost of enforcing below market prices means that building affordable housing is less than attractive from a profit perspective. Although Oxford City Council enforces a rule that 50% of all new developments must be ‘affordable’, this agreement is not binding on developers. As Ryan Hunt of South Oxfordshire District Council told to Cherwell, this figure is in fact fairly nominal and subject to change.

“This is a starting point for discussions between the developer and the council and the number can fall if the said number is considered not viable,” Hunt said.

What Hunt is referring to is the Viability Assessment, which Steve Akehurst in the New Statesman called a “trick” used by developers after a site has been secured as an excuse for building fewer affordable homes.

After planning permission has been secured, developers often utilise the Assessment to claim that, due to ‘unforeseen’ circumstances, such as lower housing prices or increased building costs, their profit model no longer supports the original number of affordable homes.

According to Charlie Fisher, the problem is even worse on Green Belt sites because there is so much competition for the land, meaning vast amounts of money are required to secure bids.

He explained to Cherwell that last year an unexpectedly large sum was offered for a University site by developers. Charlie explained that the prospect for affordable housing therefore was discouraging – though he didn’t note the massively inflationary impact of the green belt itself on house prices near Oxford.

“It’s challenging to see how they could afford to pay so much for land AND provide the 50% affordable homes the city requires,” he said.

Fisher is a member of Oxfordshire Community Land Trust, and has been working with Homes for Oxford to provide not only permanently affordable homes in the city, but houses that are energy efficient and looked after by community members themselves.

One of their recent projects has been to bid for the brownfield Wolvercote Paper Mill site in May 2016, which is owned by the University.

They planned to build 190 mixedtenure homes with a GP surgery and a lagoon. However, in the end their bid was unsuccessful.

“The problem is that the lawyers interpret charity law as meaning charity land disposals must go to [the] highest bidder,” said Fisher.

Nevertheless, he asserted that Oxford University has a “moral duty” to support affordable housing in Oxford, and should seek to give priority to those bidders that are committed to creative hou si n g strategies.

A spokesperson for O x f o r d Universit y said: “The Universit y believes that respon sible development of housing and employment sites within the green belt can, subject to independent review of their impact, provide for the sustainable growth of Oxford.”

Development plans have caused animosity against the college

T

he University’s part in development is thus a complex one, and lined with politically-toxic pitfalls. As an institution, Oxford is always going to be under close attention. If they continue to develop in this more aggressive manner, not only will their reputation with local residents falter, but its actions could also be detrimental to its status internationally.

But if they don’t continue to develop land, the British housing crisis will only get worse. There is not enough brownfield land in Britain to fix the housing crisis – at some point, parts of the Green Belt is likely to have to go.

At a time when the University most requires the support of others, it surely does not seem sensible to alienate those very people who have sustained it for centuries. But the University’s interests are fundamentally linked to a good supply of housing and good access to property.

Local residents naturally have a right to protect their communities, but their wishes need to be balanced.

Friday, 10 November 2017 | Cherwell

14

Science+Tech PHYSICS

The orthodoxy of dark matter takes a wobble

“Galactic wobbling” is changing the way we think about dark matter. Natasha Oughton reports

O

n 31 October, people gathered around the world to celebrate the hunt for a dark and mysterious unobservable substance.

They weren’t hunting for ghouls and ghosts though – the 31 October this year was the very first Dark Matter Day. Appropriately, just a few days beforehand, a team of international researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope found that dark matter may behave even more weirdly than we thought.

Dark matter is an invisible substance that scientists think makes up approximately 85% of the matter in the universe. It acts as a kind of cosmic scaffolding, and is thought to explain the fact that galaxies can spin so fast without becoming unravelled – much faster than their masses should allow.

Until now, researchers have thought that the most likely nature of dark matter is “cold dark matter”, or CDM: “cold” since the particles making up dark matter move slowly relative to the speed of light, and “dark” since the particles interact only slightly with normal matter and electromagnetic radiation. Dark matter is observed only through the

effect that its mass has on other bodies.

Invisible haloes of dark matter surround galaxies and clusters of galaxies – huge collections of hundreds of galaxies and hot intergalactic gas with very dense cores. Each of these massive galaxy clusters contains a vast galaxy at their centre that is brighter than all of the others, known as the “brightest cluster galaxy” (BCG).

The clusters are formed through violent collisions in which smaller clusters smash against each other and merge to form larger clusters.

According to the CDM theory, once a galaxy cluster has “relaxed” again after a turbulent merging event, the BCG doesn’t move from the cluster’s centre: it is held still relative to the centre of mass of the cluster by the gravitational force of the dark matter.

However, a team of astronomers analysing ten galaxies using the Nasa/ESA Hubble Space Telescope found that the BCGs are not actually fixed. In fact, they continue to “wobble” around the centre of the dark matter haloes long after the cluster has relaxed.

This “wobbling” means that the distance between the centre of the

visible matter in a galaxy cluster and the centre of the total mass of the galaxy cluster – which takes into account the mass of the dark matter halo – can be up to 40,000 light years.

David Harvey, the lead author of the paper, suggests that the results indicate that “rather than a dense region in the centre of the galaxy cluster, as predicted by the cold dark matter model, there is a much shallower central density. This is a striking signal of exotic forms of dark

matter right at the heart of galaxy clusters.”

If this wobbling is a result of the behaviour of dark matter, rather than an effect of previously unseen astronomical behaviour, potentially radically new physics might be needed to shed some light on the mystery of dark matter.

Frederic Courbin, one of the professors at EPFL, said: “We’re looking forward to larger surveys – such as the Euclid survey – that will extend

our data set. Then we can determine whether the wobbling of BGCs is the result of a novel astrophysical phenomenon or new fundamental physics. Both of which would be exciting!”

The Euclid mission aims to launch in 2020 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

And finally, a reminder for those tackling fifth week blues – it’s ok to have a bit of a wobble after stressful events. Even the cores of massive galaxies do it.

Making it rain: the bizarre world of artificial weather control

By JONATHAN STARK

T

he climate is one of the biggest factors that controls our survival and so it’s no surprise that humans have always tried to take the reins. Throughout history, religion and ritual have dictated how we can supposedly change the weather – but now we have a modern toolbox based around a chemical method known as cloud seeding. These techniques have been applied to break droughts, divert hurricanes and clear the skies for Paul McCartney concerts, but it’s often hard to predict the results.

Cloud seeding relies on the fact that pretty much all of the atmosphere has some amount of evaporated water in, even when there are not actual clouds. Cloud seeders take advantage of this by dispersing particles into the air, usually silver iodide, which attract the water vapour and causes it to form droplets.

If there are no clouds in the sky, clouds will form wherever the particles are dumped, and if the particles are dumped into clouds, the droplets will clump together and become heavy enough that they fall as rain, making the clouds disappear. In this way, the same method is used to both create and remove clouds from the sky.

As futuristic as it may sound to control the weather, cloud seeding is old hat to the seasoned pilots who do it – the process was invented by

chemist Vincent Schaefer back in 1946, and hasn’t changed very much since then. Many cloud seeders just use a bucket and shovel to throw cloud seeding chemicals into the air from their planes.

Since its invention, the technology has found many uses, ranging from the functional to the frivolous. The most obvious one is easing droughts and dry seasons, something which some countries have attempted repeatedly. In the summer of 2015 the Indian state of Maharashtra, which has some 110 million inhabitants and relies heavily on agriculture, chose to spend four and a half million dollars on cloud seeding projects across the state, hoping to bring an end to its third drought in three years.

China’s efforts to assist farmers by creating clouds over Beijing back in 2009 notoriously went wrong as an unexpected cold front came in and turned the man-made raindrops to turn into ice and snow, causing an uncharacteristic heavy snowstorm that severely blocked up transport.

Another alley that has been pursued ambitiously by weather manipulators is preventing storms instead of creating them. The USA’s experimental ‘Project Stormfury’ consisted of trials from the 1960s to the early 1980s, all of which attempted to use cloud seeding methods to weaken hurricanes – a goal which, if achieved, could save many lives and livelihoods in the US. The idea was to boost the outer

walls of the hurricane’s eye by adding clouds and making them as large as possible. This would sap energy from the very centre of the storm, and lessen the impact since the same amount of energy corresponds to a much slower speed of rotation in the outer walls compared to the inner walls.

The initial trials proved promising and the government pushed forward with the project for two decades before it became fully clear that their efforts had been futile. Comparison with unmodified hurricanes showed eventually that the initial positive results had simply been a mistake – observers had seen dispersion of the hurricanes, but failed to realise that there was no real difference between the man-made effects and the normal behaviour of hurricanes left on their own. Further analysis showed that the seeding particles had made no difference because the storms had a high content of ice crystals rather than water vapour.

The usefulness of cloud seeding is, in general, always under debate, especially due to the confusion over when it can be expected to work and when it cannot. This does not stop entrepreneurs from using it to turn a profit, however. Luxury holiday provider Oliver’s Travels offer a guaranteed rain-free wedding, using planes to disperse all incoming clouds before the day – for the small fee of £100,000.

Russia has a long-running tradition of clearing clouds before national holidays, and Beijing did the same thing for the 2008 Olympic opening ceremony, using rockets full of silver iodide rather than planes to prevent a world-class washout.

And then there are those who create weather phenomena just to appreciate their beauty. Cloud artist Berndnaut Smilde creates ephemeral sculptures by spawning perfect miniature clouds in indoor spaces, either photographing them or just letting them sit for a few seconds so that he and his audience can enjoy their pres-

ence.

The wonderful world of weather wizardry is one with many different turns and possibilities, where even the experts can get lost – accidentally sending a freak blizzard instead of lifesaving showers, or spending decades pursuing pipe dreams that could save entire cities or just fizz into nothingness.

Some seek to control the skies for noble goals, some for convenience, and some for art, and no matter what you’re trying to do, it seems you can never be entirely sure how the clouds are going to respond.

Cherwell | Friday, 10 November 2017

15

Sport FOOTBALL

Could Man City become the new ‘Invincibles’?

By TJ FITZGERALD In the 2003-04 season, Arsenal completed their Premier League campaign as champions without a single defeat to earn the team the nickname ‘the Invincibles’, based on the name given to the Preston North End team that went unbeaten in the first ever Football League season. Arsène Wenger’s side, built around the mercurial talents of Robert Pires and Thierry Henry dominated English football that season, and is widely considered – alongside José Mourinho’s Chelsea side in 2004-05 – to be one of the best sides in the Premier League’s history.

Fast-forward fourteen years and Manchester City look set to challenge that consensus. Following their return to the Premier League in the 2000s, and the club’s acquisition by the Abu Dhabi United Group, City have become one of the wealthiest clubs in the world. This has led to huge spending – over £210m went on last summer’s transfers – and the ability to attract Pep Guardiola as manager. City are also blessed with world-class players such as Kevin de Bruyne, highly promising young talents like Raheem Sterling and Leroy Sané, and – at a time when all clubs want a ‘twenty-goal-a-season’ striker – they have two in Sergio Aguero and Gabriel Jesus. Surely, they have everything they need to be the new ‘Invincibles’?

At the moment yes, but we are only eleven games in. City are a great side, and have plenty going for them, but they aren’t perfect yet. You can get at them, as an average West

Brom side demonstrated at the end of October, when the mid-table team managed to bag two goals against City’s less-than-convincing defence.

So while they have not been defeated so far this season, having won some impressive games (last week’s Champions League victory against Napoli 4-2 springs to mind), they are by no means ‘invincible’.

City are a great attacking side, but their style does leave them exposed at the back. Indeed, a squad that relies on Nicolas Otamendi and John Stones at centre-back will always be vulnerable, and whereas Wenger’s Arsenal ground out results up when they were up against it thanks to the rock-hard spine of Patrick Vieira, Gilberto Silva, Sol Campbell and Kolo Toure,

City lack the same bite and winning mentality when they have an off-day.

While it is too early to say for sure, it seems inevitable that Guardiola’s side will fall short of becoming the new ‘Invincibles’: despite the fact they may well win the title, the strain of a European campaign and a lack of leaders at the back means that a City defeat is inevitable at some stage.

Athletics Tabs edge Freshers Varsity

Rugby Union Blues lose out to Exeter

Netball Oxford seal Loughborough win

Football Women’s Blues score 22

Cambridge won this year’s Fresher’s Varsity Match 191-187 on Sunday.

The day, which represents a first opportunity for many first years to compete in Blue, involved 19 different events.

Oxford won the Men’s match 10583, but were defeated 108-81 in the Women’s to lose narrowly overall.

The Women’s Blues good form was halted by Exeter on Wednesday. Despite tries from Sophie Trott and the in-form Johanna Dombrowski, Oxford were powerless to halt their opponents running in for six scores, and dropped to fourth in the Bucs Premier South, where they have finished for three of the past five seasons.

The Women’s Blues defeat Loughborough Seconds 48-36 on Wednesday to ease their relegation concerns. After winning the Bucs Midlands 2A last season, Oxford endured a mixed start to their 17/18 campaign, losing two of their first three, but a strong performance, inspired by Isabelle Cooper, sealed a second win of the campaign.

Oxford romped to a 22-0 victory over Nottingham Trent 4ths in the first round of the Midlands Conference Cup. Their opponents had conceded 36 goals in their past three games, and fared no better on Wednesday as the Blues stormed to victory. Oxford will play either UEA Seconds or BCU Firsts in the round of 16.

CUPPERS MCR Round Two Results OUP 0-3 Mansfield Road Exeter 0-3 Wolfson/St Cross ChCh 6-6 Magdalen/Jesus (4-5 Pens) Lincoln 3-0 Pembroke/Queen’s

JCR Round Two Results Oriel 3-4 St Hilda’s Exeter 1-0 Somerville (AET) Corpus/Linacre 0-5 Jesus Worcester 1-1 Teddy Hall (3-1 Pens) Merton/Mansfield 1-3 St Hugh’s New 4-1 Christ Church

Wadham 3-2 Brasenose St John’s vs St Catz to be played on 11 November Quarter-final Draw: Worcester vs Jesus, Exeter vs St Hilda’s, St Hugh’s vs New, Wadham vs St John’s/St Catz

Women’s Round Two Results Worcester 9-2 Jesus Wadham/GTC 9-2 Osler House St Catz 3-0 St Hugh’s Queen’s 4-0 New Merton/Mansfield 4-2 Saints Foxes 6-0 Christ Church/Oriel

Men’s JCR Football Premier Div

Women’s Football Midlands 2B

Bucs Men’s Hockey South B

Bucs Women’s Hockey South A

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Kevin de Bruyne swings in a free-kick during City’s 3-0 pre-season win over Tottenham Hotspur in Nashville

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L

Pt

W

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1

Balliol

4

1

0

13

1

Oxford 1

3

1

0

10

1

Oxford 1

4

0

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12

1

Exeter 1

3

2

0

11

2

St. John’s

2

1

1

7

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Lincoln 1

2

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6

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Cambridge 1

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9

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Oxford 1

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Exeter

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Warwick 1

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Exeter 2

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Bath 1

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Worcester

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St. Catz

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4

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East Anglia 1

0

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Cardiff 1

1

1

2

4

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Cardiff 1

2

0

3

6

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Wadham

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Bedfordshire 1

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1

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Bath 2

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Bristol 1

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Queen’s

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Northampton 1

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Canterbury CC 1

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Cambridge 1

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Comeback kids

By SECRET COLLEGE FOOTBALLER Sat in your tute, your mind is on other things and your eyes are on the clock. The agonising ticking towards the hour mark is almost as painful as the awkward atmosphere as your tutor fruitlessly probes for some degree of engagement with the topic. Mentally, you’re already across town at your college playing fields, alongside your teammates in the crucial cuppers fixture that was cruelly rescheduled to clash with your tute. No sooner are you put out of your misery than you are out the door, taking the steps three at a time, dashing across the quad and outside onto your bike. You can feel your phone vibrating against your leg as you pedal furiously. Your teammates are clearly anxious, and so are you, thankful that at least you’ve only missed the first half.

But in that first half, your team certainly missed you. You’re greeted with horror stories of defensive disasters and freak set pieces as your teammates try to give you the lowdown on the situation, and it’s certainly dire. Three goals down, it looks as though your college’s cuppers dreams are over. You barely have time to change into your kit before the ref signals the start of the second half.

What is there to do in such a situation? The answer: everything. You’ve got the fresh legs, so use them. Put their defence through their paces right from the whistle and see if the cracks begin to show. If they think they’re sitting pretty, the opposition might try to mix their admirable football with their questionable chat, but it’s important not to get drawn in. Some colleges just seem to breed this sort of lacklustre ‘banter’, but if they’re concentrating on that more than on the game itself, then you can easily turn the tables. Perhaps try to ruffle a few feathers yourself.

There’s nothing more disconcerting than having that false sense of security whipped out from beneath you, and pulling one back early on will certainly cause tension in the opposition backline. Once the momentum is in your favour, the important thing is that you capitalise on it. If they can score three, then so can you. If you can score three, then why not one more?

“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs...”

Rudyard Kipling never went to Oxford, save for one visit to watch a college football match that inspired his famous poem, and it is no less relevant today than when he wrote it.

The same sort of scenes inspired Steven Gerrard as he hauled his side to a comeback victory in Istanbul. The Liverpool legend has never hidden his admiration for the Oxford College football league, and would be proud to watch you seal victory in the dying seconds. Your winger squeezes a cross into the corridor of uncertainty, missed by two of your teammates and three opponents, reaching the back post, where you stretch to poke the ball home. The euphoria, that’s what college footballers live for. Few ever get the chance to experience it, fewer still take it, but for those who do, there is no better feeling.

Cherwell | Friday, 10 November 2017

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After a blistering start to the season, TJ Fitzgerald asks whether Manchester City can go unbeaten

FOOTBALL

Stop pissing in Uni Parks says OUAFC

In-form Blues put six past Northumbria

By MATT ROLLER

sitting at the top of the Bucs Super League, and with only one defeat – a 53-50 thriller against the University of Exeter – this season, it was no surprise that they brought a high pace and intensity to the match with a desire to play attacking rugby.

Following a strong opening few minutes with clever tactical kicking from the Oxford half-backs, captain Conor Kearns slotted an early three points to give the home side a lead that they never relinquished.

Then, a try in the corner for winger Stileman, and a fantastic attacking move from Rob Quinlan, took the score to 15-0. Even though the visitors were missing some key players, the Blues could not have expected such a strong start.

A final three points before half time took the score going into the break to 18-0 with the home team

looking comfortably in the lead despite some missed chances.

At the start of the second half, Stileman, who scored four in the win against Bristol RFC, managed to grab two more tries after some powerful carries down both the midfield and the wing.

The visitors scored in the far corner midway through the second half, eventually managing to break through a strong defensive backline led by Kearns and centre Alex Hogg, who barely missed a tackle between them.

And despite that score, the Blues turned the screw and were able to punish the Northumbrians in the scrum.

The first pushover try was dotted down by flanker Roberto Talotti, part of an exceptional Oxford back row which also contained former England U20 Sevens skipper Will Wilson, and ex-Saracens man

Andy Saull.

The trio were outstanding at the breakdown all evening, and it is vital that they remain fit and firing for the rest of the Blues’ season.

Only a few minutes later, a penalty try was awarded, and Kearns slotted home the conversion to complete the scoring.

The match finished with a resounding scoreline of 40-7, a menacing show of intent from the Blues for the rest of the season.

Indeed, with the Varsity Match looming, it seems as though the Dark Blues are in pole position for Twickenham glory. Their opponents, Cambridge, only recorded their first win of the 2017/18 campaign last Wednesday, scraping past Moseley 27-24.

While Varsity fixtures are rarely one-sided, the signs are positive for Oxford, especially after another confidence-boosting win.

OUAFC has told college footballers to stop relieving themselves outdoors in University Parks, or their team will face a ban from the premises.

The club’s sabbatical officer, Omar Mohsen, asked college captains to discourage their teams from public urination following complaints by the pitches’ groundsmen and the University’s Director of Sport.

“It feels slightly surreal to be writing this email, but I have been told to tell everyone not to relieve themselves in the relatively open spaces of Uni Parks, and instead use the toilets provided,” Mohsen wrote in an email leaked to Cherwell.

“Apparently, if the wrong people see you doing it and report you, colleges can be banned from the premises, and football in general may be threatened with not being allowed to use the facilities of the Parks.”

While the prospect of whole college football teams being banned may seem unlikely, there is a recent precedent for it. After anti-social behaviour during the club’s ‘Welcome Drinks’ event, Durham University’s Castle AFC were banned from participating in the rest of the 2017/18 college football season. Complaints were made after players exposed themselves to members of the public after stopping a car at a zebra crossing, and made inappropriate comments to two female students in a college bar.

University Parks plays host to several games a week, with Teddy Hall and Regent’s Park both considering it their home ground, and the University third team, the Colts, often playing there.

Passing on Mohsen’s message, Corpus Christi captain Jack Counsell reminded players at his college in an email that “only bears shit in the woods, and only dogs piss in the park.”

Exeter Reserves captain, James Sharples, told Cherwell that he planned to “explain the rights and wrongs of public urination” to his side ahead of their next fixture at the venue.

OUAFC did not reply to Cherwell’s request for comment.

It was an ugly win for the great hope of British boxing, but Anthony Joshua successfully defended his International Boxing Federation and World Boxing Association heavyweight titles against Carlos Takam in Cardiff last Saturday. For someone renowned for his speed, precision and growing efficacy in the later rounds, at times he looked rather static. For that reason, two main heavyweight rivals were quick to disparage his winning performance.

Joshua’s next fight is likely to be with World Boxing Organisation champion Joseph Parker, if he isn’t made to mandatorily defend his WBA belt. The fight has been on the cards for a while, and the omnipresent Eddie Hearn hinted at it hours after Joshua had forced a tenth-round referee stoppage against Takam. The French

fighter had proved to be dogged and tenacious, especially considering he had just ten days notice and a reduced camp before the fight.

Parker, who could face Joshua as soon as February, called him “robotic”, whilst the Brit’s greatest rival, the notorious World Boxing Council champion Deontay Wilder, criticised the 28-year-old as a over-muscled weightlifter who struggles in later rounds. Until now, Joshua’s quick feet had allowed him to avoid all such criticism, but it seems as if the rest of the world want to challenge him toe-to-toe.

Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that the British boxing star, now 20-0 in his career, all by K.O., and having pledged to unify the heavyweight division next year, has given us little reason for doubt. All his rivals –

Parker, Wilder and even Fury – will be fancied as underdogs to the younger and faster Olympian.

Next year Joshua will do battle with the two other undefeated belt holders and potentially the return of the undefeated Tyson Fury, who is still waiting for a final ruling from UK Anti-Doping on a suspended drugs ban after the hearing was adjourned in July.

Fury had been seen as the greatest rival to Joshua, but with his intermittent boxing and extreme weight fluctuations, his body is unlikely to ever be in the shape it was to face Wladimir Klitschko, so the fight that everybody craved may never quite be what we wanted.

In truth, I think Joshua will establish dominance in the coming era of heavyweight boxing. He is quicker and younger than the lumbering Wilder, and stronger than Parker.

However, Lennox Lewis, who openly praised Joshua as “composed and controlled,” will always be the benchmark for heavyweight boxers from this country. To be a true great, you have to prove yourself against great boxers, and that might not be something Joshua ever gets a chance to do.

Oxford (playing in white) were dominant in the scrum, in their six-try win against Northumbria Univeristy PHOTO: ANDREW BUNTING/OURFC

Men’s Blues

40

Northumbria

7

By THOMAS BROWNE Tom Stileman took his try-scoring tally to eight in three games as his hat-trick helped the Men’s Blues to seal a comprehensive victory over Northumbria University.

The table-topping BUCS team had endured the long journey down from the north on a chilly Monday night, but the opening encounters were lightening quick with flowing and expansive rugby aplenty.

After an unbeaten run at Iffley Road, the hosts were determined to continue their impressive run of form, having lost only one game so far all season.

The visitors went into the clash

BOXING

Anthony Joshua marches on

By ROWAN JANJUAH