“Oxford University’s new independent newspaper | A new voice for a new decade | Est. 2020”
Editor’s
Postgrad Panic: Identity Crisis of a Working-Class Oxford Graduate
Tiktok and the Death of the Attention Span
Team Spirit: Why You Should Join a Team Sport
My Experience as a High Class Student Escort in Oxford
EXCLUSIVE: Christ Church Professor Arrested Over Scandal of Stolen Papyrus
Diaries of a Rusticated Student: Scared of the Dark
by Isabel Valovin, Eric Balonwu, and Louis Treasure by Mia
Hollingsworth-Smith
by Jui Zaveri by Olivia Allen by Anonymous by Lois Heslop by Alice Brooker by Flora Prideaux by Alice Garnett by Maddy Ross by Lily Shanagher
Editor’s Note
Founded in 2020, by Lois Heslop and Phoebe Hennell, The Oxford Blue’s mission was to open up journalism to all Oxford students. They aimed to create an independent, friendly, student paper that was a “disruptive new voice” with “accessibility and inclusivity at the heart of [its] mission”. Five years on, we’re a little less new but our heart remains the same. We want to be a place for anyone who wants to get involved in journalism but does not know where to start. The Blue is for those who feel like they do not ‘fit in’ at other publications, or for those who want to shake up the Oxford journalism scene by doing something new. Our aim is to make The Blue a place for you. These values have been what has shaped us since day one, and this term we’re committed to upholding them.
With both Editors-in-Chief coming from Mansfield, the college with the highest proportion of state-educated students in Oxford, accessibility is not just a buzzword: it’s something that we’ve seen is possible in Oxford. We have always believed that student journalism should not be only reserved for a privileged elite. Given Oxford’s oversized role in British society, access to student journalism has to be democratised.
For us, that begins by cultivating a diverse range of sections, championing writers’ voices, and designing opportunities open to all regardless of experience. These are just a few of the reasons why we and so many others have joined and stayed on at The Blue. As we celebrate our fifth birthday, we are so excited to celebrate all our past and present work, and to continue creating new milestones in Oxford’s student journalism scene. In particular, we would like to thank the previous Editors-in-Chief, Kiaya Philips and Niamh Stansfield, for their work which has been commended by the Student Publication Association.
So, we invite you, our readers, to celebrate Five Years of The Blue with us. Whether you’ve been reading our articles for several years or just a few days, written for us many times or only once, or just joined the team, you are all an integral part of this celebration. Five years on, we want to thank you for your continued engagement and support as we celebrate our past and continue to look towards our future.
by Isabel Valovin, Eric Balonwu and Louis Treasure Editors-in-Chief and Managing Director HT25
Identity by Mia Hollingsworth-Smith December 5th 2023
The feeling of a quarter-life crisis post-graduation isn’t uncommon. After three years of living on college grounds, focusing on impending essay deadlines, and worrying only about actually getting a degree rather than how to use it, graduating can feel directionless. Coming from a small industrial northern town (only known for a child exploitation scandal), just getting into Oxford was a rarity: I even made it into the local newspaper when I received my offer back in 2020. I was the first on my mum’s side to attend university, and most of them were under the gilded impression that an Oxford degree was a golden ticket into any high-paying job. Of course, as any recent graduate will tell you, this is far from true.
Consequently, ‘post-graduation panic’ proves far worse for working-class students. Not only do professional jobs seem like an alien environment, underrepresenting (and underpaying) workers from low-income backgrounds, but our identity also becomes uncertain. The only thing that is certain is more student debt to repay. I’d spent the first ten years of my life living between a council estate with my single mum, who worked part-time at a cafe, and with my dad in a house a few streets down, and now, degree completed, I have opportunities – a future I could decide – something generations before me never had the chance to have, but something that equally feels like I’m betraying my roots.
For me, and many other working-class students, the Oxford experience proved a weird sense of halfbelonging. One minute I’d made a best friend at 2 a.m. in the library over a mutual essay crisis; the next minute, I was meeting someone whose dad owned a pub chain I’d worked at part-time for two years.
Imposter syndrome hit me like a brick wall in my first year. I rarely ate around the table with either my mum’s or dad’s family unless it was Christmas; now, all of a sudden, I was attempting to make sophisticated conversation with academics at a formal dinner, hyperaware that I was holding my fork in the wrong hand.
I remember feeling as if I’d fallen from the top of my class straight to the bottom. I spent my first Old English class silent because I didn’t know what ‘transitory’ meant, and I entered tutorials struggling to decode questions, plagued by a fear of saying something wrong and outing myself as a fraud. “I don’t get the sense that Mia finds virtual tutorials particularly fun,” wrote one tutor in my first end-of-year report.
In my second year, I spent half of my tutorials being forced to pick apart my own sentences, feeling humiliated as my tutor explained my syntactical errors and incorrect word choices after he had praised my partner’s essay for its scholarly style. I couldn’t help but feel that the vocabulary gap between lower and higherincome families had played a role here.
Nevertheless, arriving in Oxford was the first time I could open a book in public without feeling judged. It was the first time that I had my own space. I didn’t have to share my room or carry the contents of my wardrobe and bookshelf in 50p carriers between my dad’s house and my mum’s. Everyone here was united in being at least a little bit of a nerd, and staying up to the early hours of the morning finishing work was considered normal.
It wasn’t until after my finals that I realised just how much this institution is a bubble of privilege. When I went outside with my mum halfway through a formal so she could have a ‘fag break,’ she said, “I feel a bit uncomfortable.” “Why can’t we sit down when they [the tutors on the high table], stand up? Why do they think they’re better than everyone else?”
Why was I supposed to stand up? Why did I have to listen to someone speak some performative Latin phrase who’d probably never needed to worry about finances? Why was I receiving a generous academic bursary of more than triple the amount of universal credit that my aunty, a full-time carer to my cousin with mental and learning difficulties, was getting to live off every month? Why does it feel embarrassing to admit to strangers at home that I studied at Oxford? Why were my mum and stepdad worrying about how to treat me to a fancy graduation meal while still managing to pay their bills? There are too many people at this university who don’t have to ask those questions.
We spent the remainder of the formal playing ‘bogies.’
Now, after my graduation, I feel estranged from myself. I have my very own paper certifying three years spent dabbling in elitism, and I’ve never felt further away from my council-house roots. Few people at home will be able to relate to me anymore. Yet, at the same time, as I doom scroll on ‘LinkedIn’ and rack up even more debt enrolling on a last-minute ‘panic masters’ in an attempt to delay the scary and unknown world of ‘proper’ jobs, I’ve never felt more aware of my working-class background.
“Just over a year on, I’ve seen myself take on a number of different roles - barista, MA student, and now, a trainee at a start-up CIC back in my hometown (I even tried being all three at once last summer, something I absolutely do not recommend). Within all of these, my relationship with my working-class background has remained complicated, and its barriers have become more tangible. While many of my coursemates spent their free time in societies or at trips to the pub, I had to spend 25 hours of my week huddled behind an electric heater in a trainstation kiosk, attempting to finish seminar readings on my break, and asked by dark-suited commuters if I could hurry up with the latte they ordered three minutes before their train. I never felt more behind, and isolated than my peers. Even in my current professional role, researching social impact for a careers education centre in South Yorkshire, I’m reminded of the systemic barriers to attainment and ambition my region has; only around half of the population pass GCSE maths and English, one in four aren’t in education or employment. Though I often wonder about how my life would look if I had had the means to go and find an office job in London, my background has given me a new sense of purpose: to challenge regional inequality, widen opportunity, and raise aspirations for others in underprivileged communities like my own.”
Comment from Mia Hollingsworth-Smith, HT 2025
POSTGRAD PANIC
The Identity Crisis of a Working-Class Oxford Graduate
Art by Claire Wong
TikTok and the Death
of the Attention Span
Culture by
Zaveri May 23rd 2023
Jui
Art by Aliyah Begum
For those of us who are essentially fossils at this point, in our memories, it began with Vine. “You now have six seconds to be funny” was the instruction given by the platform to its users. Then it was Musical.ly. After a merger with Musical.ly, TikTok – the most downloaded app of 2022 –was released worldwide in 2018. Keen to cash in on TikTok’s success, Instagram launched the Reels concept, shortly followed by Youtube Reels. Finally, Snapchat jumped onto the bandwagon with its own feature system called Spotlight. What do all of these forms of media have in common? One simple thing: how short they are. Does this mean anything? Has the length of consumable media shrunk to better suit our increasingly busy and chaotic modern existences or, more insidiously, has this short-form media axed our abilities to concentrate for more than six seconds?
It happens to everyone, right? The overpowering desire to drop whatever you’re working on and to check Instagram just for a second. Half an hour and a million reels later, that desire has been replaced by deep, deep shame. Back to work! But first, a quick Snap to keep up all your carefully-cultivated Snap streaks. Another twenty minutes before you emerge, hating yourself for how incredibly weakwilled you are. It doesn’t last long, though, and the next distraction quickly takes over. Just one more. And another. What harm can a third do? Before you know it, you’ve been sucked down another digital rabbit hole.
If this feels familiar to you, you’re not alone. There’s just something inexplicably moreish about entertainment that only lasts a few seconds. Psychologically, this makes complete sense. It’s just too easy to succumb to its deceptive charm. Micro-dosing on TikTok for a couple of hours somehow seems less like procrastination than sitting down to watch a full-length film. The easy consumability of bitesized media makes it so much more appealing. Additionally, the algorithms of modern apps like Tiktok are based on the principle of random reinforcement. Simply put, it means that you win some and lose some. Though the Reel you just watched wasn’t particularly funny, the conviction that the next one could be is why you stay scrolling mindlessly. This search for intermittent gratification is the perfect trap and can slip into addictive behavioural patterns.
In the 1950s, the renowned American psychologist and behaviourist B. F. Skinner found that when rats received regular pellets as rewards for pressing a lever, they became
“The reason I wrote ‘TikTok And The Death Of The Attention Span’ can, I think, be condensed down to this one word: whim. I wrote a piece on something that took my fancy. I was interested by the topic, and I wanted to research and write about it to scratch that itch. That itch, it turns out, was one a lot of people had. Somehow, this little sidequest to satisfy my own curiosity tapped into a far greater cultural pulse - a keen, global attention towards social media, and what was happening to our real-life humanity in a world of flashing screens and endless digital possibilities. Today, with the growing prevalence of AI, our simultaneous devotion and revulsion of the technological has only skyrocketed, way beyond what it was when I wrote this article nearly two years ago. Like everyone else, I watch with bated breath, and poised pen, in case anything prompts me to write about it again. Still, I have a horrible suspicion ChatGPT or DeepSeek or Gemini or Claude or whatever we’re using these days could do a far better job than me.”
Comment from Jui Zaveri, HT 2025
bored and uninterested in the activity. However, when the pellets were awarded unpredictably, the rats became obsessive, even abandoning their usual activities (grooming, eating, sleeping, etc) to chase the high of the next big win. In fact, the researchers concluded that continuous positive reinforcement was the least effective reward pattern while variable ratio reinforcement was the most potent. As humans, we have fallen victim to this phenomenon too. It’s no surprise that tech developers quickly worked out that the best way to keep us equally as obsessed would be through seemingly low-stakes short-form content. With longer media, it is easier to stop watching and give up the search for something interesting. 6-second Vines or 30-second TikToks solve that problem by pretending to need no real-time investment. But in reality, the investment – or rather the sacrifice – is huge. While it is true that these things were designed to appeal to basic animal psychology, it is becoming apparent that they are now actively changing our brain functions too. It’s a vicious cycle – short-form media suits our brief attention spans but overconsumption further exacerbates our collective inability to concentrate on anything for an extended period of time. We no longer want to wait for the ‘good’ bits and short-form media gets straight to the point.
Personally, I don’t think I could sit through a whole film anymore. Why would I want to? An Instagram Reel could give me the same hit of emotion in a much shorter timeframe – it is literally designed to be the perfect quick fix. The people around me are the same: lectures on double speed, YouTube videos watched with one finger tensed over the button that skips 5 seconds ahead, impatience with any media longer than a few minutes at most. In fact, nearly 50% of users surveyed by TikTok said that videos longer than a minute long were “stressful”. The truth is that our attention spans are shrinking – so much so that the effect of shortform media on our cognitive functions has been given a name: TikTok Brain. As this is a fairly new concept, there is not a lot of long-term scientific research yet, however, it has long been established that use of social media negatively affects academic performance by creating an attention deficit. Furthermore, a recent study focusing on young adults who use the Chinese equivalent of TikTok – Douyin –found mild to significant “addiction-like symptoms” in more than half of the participants. The correlation between shortform media and attention deficit needs more research, but with the evidence available, a worrying relationship seems to be emerging.
The addictiveness of short-form media isn’t just due to its more easily digestible length. Its brief nature means that more can be produced in a specific span of time. This oversaturation of entertainment possibilities further affects our attention spans. More choice means even less patience. The sheer amount of exciting new things to watch has birthed a much more competitive and fast-paced media landscape. Researchers from the Technical University of Denmark conducted a study, titled “Accelerating Dynamics of Collective Attention” showed a notable decrease in attention span over time, due to the “increasing production and consumption of content”. They discovered that a 2013 hashtag stayed on top for 17.5 hours on average, but in 2016, a top hashtag only retained its spot for an average of 11.9 hours. We crave fresh, we crave new, we crave more.
Short-form media has us acting like children in a candy shop and who can blame us? It’s human nature. Media that cuts straight to the chase in turn frees up more time to chase that dopamine high. It is an addiction that has been specifically modelled to prey on the way our brains work. It is a trap and a damn entertaining one at that.
Acheerleading team – bet you didn’t know Oxford has one of them! Well, we do, and after years spent training as a gymnast, joining the cheer squad has shown me the wonders of competing as a group, and the benefit it can have on your work-life balance!
So, to clear a few things up first, no part of competitive cheerleading involves pom-poms or standing on the sidelines of a football match. Unlike the American movies, we train and compete routines consisting of stunting, flipping and stretching, and we do so against other university teams on a national scale. Whilst we have made the odd appearance at an American football game or two, mentioning pompoms never goes down well. This being said, team spirit really does shine through, and I believe that being part of a team (be it cheerleading, rowing or your college volleyball side) brings a lot of vital skills and wonderful experiences your way.
A key part of a team sport is quite obviously the friends you make. The act of simply going to training sessions and competitions means you spend a lot of time with these people, and it’s true in my case that the ladies on the cheer team are some of my closest friends. A team sport gives you the opportunity to meet people outside your college or subject, people that have the common interests, drive, and passion, people where you can chat about things other than essays and tutes; friendships built on and off the mat (our version of a pitch) are probably my favourite part of the sport.
This friendship extends to another key component of team sports at Oxford –crewdates. If you are yet to experience the joys of
downing echo falls out of your shoe at Jamal’s, then get yourself onto a team, simply to get yourself to your first crewdate. The concept in itself of two different sports teams doing a social together is actually a lovely idea. Lasting friendships may not be made with the other team (although there have been instances where the sparks of romance do fly) but bonds are definitely cemented with your own teammates. Crewdates are known to bring out a side of people you may not see at training and are a great way to get to know each other a bit better!
Having the support of your teammates around you brings the added benefit of people to cheer you up when you’re down or cheer you on when you’re trying something new (pun intended). The tumbling part of cheerleading, the bit involving doing lots of flips and somersaults in a row, in my experience is super fun but also rather scary. Trying a skill you haven’t done before for the first time, or in my case even going for some skills you have done before, can be pretty terrifying. Standing at the edge of the floor about to make your body do multiple flips with the potential of landing on many parts of your body that are not your feet can often make you back out or ‘not throw’ a skill. But with teammates standing there reassuring you it will be fine it’s much easier to go for it. Not to mention having people to celebrate with when you land a new skill on your feet for the first time!
Photography by Aayan Riaz
Making new friends and getting to know new people is not unique to team sports, but building trust really is. This is obvious in cheer; the person being thrown in the air (the flyer) must trust her bases to catch her, the bases must trust the flyer to not panic and hit them. While many concussions and black eyes can occur out of a lack of trust, when things work out and everyone does their job, trusting those around them to do theirs, the result is magical. Without this, skills just don’t “hit”, as we say in cheer. A key part of the scoring system within cheerleading is the points you get for ‘genuine enjoyment’. This does seem a little silly, being judged on how happy you look while doing a sport but it is actually quite common. Many aesthetic sports like gymnastics, diving, and synchronsied swimming for example are also judged on how effortless you make the skill look, cheer just requires a smile on your face to show this. My point here is that if you don’t believe the stunts will work then they won’t and it’s very hard to make yourself look happy doing something you know will go wrong, you need trust in your, and your stunt group’s, abilities to know it’ll all be fine. Allowing others in the team to do their job, whilst you focus on yours, is a skill that’s transferable to the rest of life, be it academic, the workplace or friendship groups.
Now, committing to train six or seven hours a week may not seem like the most sensible thing to do alongside an
“This article was one of the first articles I have written beyond science based journalism so I’m thrilled it has been included in this event. I think the article is still incredibly relevant today and always will be, team sports are a key part of university life and cheerleading especially has been a huge part of my time at Oxford so it was super fun to be able to write about it.”
Comment from Olivia Allen, HT 2025
Oxford degree. Even committing to an hour or so with your college football team can be stressful when you need to maximise time in the library. That being said, I think joining a sport, especially a team sport, has done wonders for my work. Most notably, in minimising my tendency to procrastinate. In an individual sport like gymnastics, if you miss a training session, you’re letting down no one but yourself. In contrast, when you’re part of a team, they keep you accountable. This is especially true with cheerleading, if one person isn’t there, then no one can train. There’s no point having all the bases there if there is no one to put up in the air. This accountability, knowing that you have to be at the session, does wonders for efficiency in the library. You can’t procrastinate – the work just has to be finished before a set time. It’s also great to give your brain a break. Being away from your laptop, moving your body, and having a laugh does a lot for your mental health.
So far it’s all been flowers and rainbows, but in truth, I can’t really see a downside to joining a sports team. So do it, there’s a whole host of team sports played by the university from hockey to Quidditch, maybe one of the ones out there will be the sport for you.
TEAM SPIRIT!
Why You Should Join A Team Sport.
My experience as a
HIGH-CLASS STUDENT ESCORT
in Oxford
On a Saturday night, when my coursemates are headed to the pub, I’m often headed to the Randolph or Malmaison for a glass of wine with one of Oxford’s seemingly countless businessmen. Later, when other girls my age may end up going home with some slightly inebriated guy they met at the club, I am led upstairs to give my gentleman the night (or two hours) of his dreams. At the end of the evening, I go home with several hundred pounds and a smile on my face: mischief managed. Of course, it’s not all just about ‘easy’ money: I enjoy my work for its own sake. I like the variety, I like meeting interesting people and hearing their stories, I appreciate good food and drinks in nice places, and I delight in giving (and receiving) pleasure and satisfaction. So, for me, this is a win-win.
During my undergraduate degree in Manchester: I needed a part-time job to fund my studies and had read about student escorts in a magazine. The first night I made £300 in two hours. After my first year I exchanged my tiny dorm room for a beautiful apartment close to the university. I never got greedy and only worked two evenings a week, even less in my final year in order to focus on my thesis. In meeting people from all walks of life I’ve had countless unforgettable and amusing experiences, and even made some real, lasting friends. Nevertheless, the job wasn’t as glamorous as I had hoped: living in a big city meant that quantity was more important than quality, and that applied to the clientele too. Sometimes I ended up in messy apartments that smelled of weed and dirty socks, or was dropped in a dodgy part of the city late at night by a concerned taxi driver.
Thankfully things changed when I moved to Oxford. As you would expect, clients are willing to pay premium rates for the company of an Oxford student. I did what every self-respecting escort should do when she gets to a certain age (24) and joined a smaller, more exclusive agency, Oxford Dodo Companions, which means a whole other level of clients. Most men appreciate more elegant and sophisticated company: the much-coveted combination of beauty and brains. Obviously even the rich and famous have their own character flaws, but (especially in Oxford) they are all trying to avoid trouble and maintain anonymity. So I can expect them to be respectful, and they can expect me to be professional and discreet.
As for the downsides of escorting, what comes to mind are mostly problems deriving from societal bias and negative stereotypes about adult workers. My close female friends all know about my job. Initially they were worried, but once they understood that I genuinely enjoyed it and was not being forced into anything, they were supportive. My male friends struggle more – they find it embarrassing that I sell my body. I can get very angry about this: the concept that a woman somehow loses value because she has sexual encounters with strangers, or because she accepts money for it, seems utterly archaic, and not a little hypocritical given the continuing glorification of sexual conquests among male students. For me, this is a job like any other. Having tried both, I can confirm that I enjoy cocktails and sex with my well-mannered clients much more than working on my feet behind a bar, getting
shouted at by drunk customers for hours on end. I’m far from the only one: in 2020, an estimated 7% of UK students turned to adult work to fund their studies, up from 4% in 2019. Naturally the pandemic played a role in this. It is widely known that online platforms like OnlyFans boomed during this period. Unfortunately, lockdown also meant most escort agencies had to close down, and many student escorts (including myself) were left without the financial support that people in other jobs received. This lack of government help is just one example of the discrimination that adult workers regularly face as a result of the persisting taboo on the industry. One reason behind this taboo is that most people do not distinguish illegal street prostitution and drug-infested brothels from highly regulated, tax-paying escort agencies. Not every prostitute is a junkie, and not every escort works for a pimp: some of us are ordinary students simply trying to pay our fees while focusing on our studies. The prudish attempts of the government and universities to sweep even safe and legal forms of adult work under the carpet makes it more difficult for student escorts to access the right healthcare, welfare and financial support. This is especially relevant in Oxford, where colleges are so deeply involved in all aspects of students’ lives that there is a constant fear of being ‘found out’ and reprimanded for making the university look bad. Colleges provide 18-year-olds with lube and the morningafter pill for their drunken escapades but they draw the line at consensual prostitution? Update your values, Oxford. Although it would be generally kind of nice not to have to hide my job from my coursemates, the main reason for addressing stereotypes and acknowledging sex work as a valid income option is to be able to provide a safer, healthier and more stable environment for that 7% of us (and growing) that rely on adult work – work that can be rewarding, enjoyable and, yes, satisfying in its own right – to fund our degrees. The Oxford colleges like to pat themselves on the shoulder for all their efforts towards female empowerment, while at the same time recoiling at the idea that their virtuous female students might stoop to so ‘lowly’ a line of work as escorting.
Of course, no one is saying that colleges should go around recruiting their students into prostitution, but in the spirit of some favourite Oxford buzzwords such as ‘inclusivity’, ‘safe space’, and ‘progressive change’, some non-judgmental support is surely not too much to ask. Moreover, female empowerment surely includes female sexual agency: may we decide what we do with our own bodies, please? Thank you.
“Being a relatively ‘new’ voice in the Oxford journalism scene, The Blue aims to do things differently. Our aim is for The Blue to remain a ‘safe space’ for people to publish articles that contribute to Oxford discourse. Even if you agree or disagree with the views published in this article, we hope to continue to ‘shine a light’ on all areas of Oxford.”
Comment from Isabel Valovin and Eric Balonwu, HT 2025
by Anonymous November 2nd 2021
Art by Yasmin Beed
by Lois Heslop April 16th 2020
ARRESTED Exclusive: CHRIST CHURCH PROFESSOR
Over Scandal Of STOLEN PAPYRUS
An Oxford professor has been arrested by police investigating the mysterious theft of ancient papyri, The Oxford Blue has discovered.
Christ Church professor Dirk Obbink was arrested on 2nd March 2020 for alleged theft of ancient papyrus from the Sackler Classics Library in Oxford. Professor Obbink was suspended from his duties at the University in October 2019 following allegations that he had stolen up to 120 pieces of ancient papyrus owned by the Egypt Exploration Society collection, housed in the Sackler Library.
These alleged thefts rocked the heart of Oxford’s classics department, where Obbink is an Associate Professor in Papyrology and Greek Literature. He is also a Fellow and Tutor in Greek at Christ Church, Oxford.
In November 2019, the chairman of the Egypt Exploration Society said that following investigation into the Society’s collection of Oxyrhynchus papyri, 120 pieces had been identified as missing.
So far, 13 of the missing pieces have been located in the Museum of the Bible in Washington and another 6 in the collection of Mr Andrew Stimer in California. Both collections are returning these fragments to the Society.
Speaking to The Oxford Blue, Thames Valley Police said:
“Thames Valley Police is carrying out an investigation in relation to a report of theft of papyrus from the Sackler Library in Oxford. This was reported to the force on 12 November, 2019.
“A 63-year-old man from Oxford was arrested on 2 March on suspicion of theft and fraud. He has been released under investigation.”
Oxford University and the Egypt Exploration Society declined to comment further.
A spokesperson for Christ Church told The Oxford Blue: “Professor Dirk Obbink is on leave from Christ Church. He is not teaching any students at present, nor attending meetings of Governing Body.”
An investigation by The Guardian revealed the extent of the mystery surrounding these precious fragments. One fragment, from the Gospel of Mark, has been dated to the first century AD, potentially copied less than 30 years after it was originally written.
Obbink’s students received an email that there had been a “change in teaching arrangements” on 19th October 2019. Tutorials were rescheduled with a different tutor, but students were given no further information.
“This story on a curious case of theft of ancient papyrus by a senior Professor from right under the nose of his own faculty combines everything you might want in a blockbuster film about Oxford - scheming professors, cross-border smuggling, and Americans. This was my first piece of investigative journalism at The Oxford Blue, produced shortly after we launched, and it attracted significant attention in the wider press - platforming a then-fledgling newspaper onto a national stage. Oxford-focussed investigative journalism was a large part of what we set out to excel in and I am delighted that the discipline has continued under the teams since.”
Comment from Lois Heslop, HT 2025
One of Obbink’s former students commented to The Blue: “I was quite surprised that there was such a sudden change [in tutors]. We did not know why Dirk left, but the college did all it could to make sure tutorials were rescheduled promptly.”
Obbink was previously one of three general editors of the Oxyrhynchus project run by the Egypt Exploration Society, with 24-hour-access to the collection. In August 2016, the Egypt Exploration Society decided not to reappoint Obbink a general editor of the Oxyrhynchus series, stating this was “because of unsatisfactory discharge of his editorial duties, but also because of concerns, which he did not allay, about his alleged involvement in the marketing of ancient texts.” Obbink had his access to the EES collection removed in June 2019.
Obbink has only issued one public statement, in October 2019. “The allegations made against me that I have stolen, removed or sold items owned by the Egypt Exploration Society collection at the University of Oxford are entirely false,” he said. “I would never betray the trust of my colleagues and the values which I have sought to protect and uphold throughout my academic career in the way that has been alleged. I am aware that there are documents being used against me which I believe have been fabricated in a malicious attempt to harm my reputation and career.”
Diaries of a RUSTICATED STUDENT
Photography by Filip Jasionowicz
Ihad a phase when I was about 6 years old of being incredibly scared of dying. My mum had to calm me down before sleeping, to make me at peace with its silent and dark qualities. I wasn’t taught about heaven, so I imagined death to be like sleeping forever and the stillness of it all terrified me.
One day, my primary school put on a ‘bookswap’ event, and I found a book called A Story For Hippo and mum picked it up for me. Searching this book online now, I realise it’s actually designed to teach young children about loss, and it makes a lot of sense why I found such comfort in it. My mum would read it to me every time I got scared about people, or myself, leaving the world. The book explains how even when loved ones are no longer with us, they live on in memories. As long as we can keep telling their stories, they never truly leave us.
Whilst this book still remains a milestone for me in regards to getting through nighttimes, I have always had difficulty sleeping. If it’s not the silence of it all, it’s the miles of black space where my thoughts solidify into worries. I have had, like most people, periods in my life where I simply am too anxious to sleep. The most prominent was actually at the end of my first year of sixth form, I went four days with absolutely zero sleep. I had obsessive health anxiety at the time, and became obsessed with the idea I might die once my eyes were closed. My dad, bless him, lay on the floor next to my bed to keep me from ringing A&E. He took me on long walks in the morning to try and bring some kind of body-clock back into myself, and he made sure I ate enough during the day. I finally managed to get a couple of hours of rest a night, and eventually once I returned to college, I was fatigued enough by school work to get back to a normal sleep schedule.
I came to rely on my parents a lot more in the next few years than I ever had before, and embarrassing as it may be, I still need them sometimes in order to help me sleep. The need for company in the dark is something sacred, it stops me interacting
RUSTICATED STUDENT Scared of the Dark
CW:
Discussion of mental health disorders and death
with the shadowy corners of my mind.
At university the dependency on my parents was obviously disrupted. I had to look for alternative coping mechanisms, one of which was propranolol. I remember when the doctor recommended it, he said he ‘prescribe[d] this more often then the contraceptive pill’, which I took to be a comforting statement. Propranolol is commonly prescribed for physical anxiety symptoms, including difficulty sleeping. Whilst it certainly calmed my evening palpitations, it came with an ugly side effect: nightmares. I began having very violent and vivid dreams, and would often wake up sweating and short of breath. My dreams felt so intrusive that I thought they made me a bad person. Soon enough, I began to hate everything about going to bed and would delay it happening for as long as possible. My boyfriend at the time would let me keep him on the phone until I ‘fell asleep’ (I often pretended because I felt so bad), something I thought I needed but turned out to be extremely unhealthy in the long term.
Between fatigue from lack of sleep and constant adrenaline from my anxiety disorder, my sense of reality became distorted. I often felt like I could hear a voice in my head, aggressively real yet not my own and outside of my control. The welfare team at my college recommended sleeping with the light on, which was helpful until I started feeling guilty about the planet. The other thing was, of course, meditation, but sitting still and trying not to have thoughts was just impossible. Eventually I closed my eyes at random points in the day when I simply had to, and woke up confused and probably missing a lecture.
For the next few months of my life, now deposited back home, I barely let myself be in darkness. I learnt to fall asleep by having Friends play on my phone, the easiest (and funniest) way to distract myself. I also spent a lot of time in nature, appreciating how plants were smart enough to not worry about bedtimes. But most important of all, I went back to the words of A Story For Hippo: I learnt again how not to be afraid of dying.
I tried once more to see life like a story, filled with unexpected narratives and humorous characters. How the darkness and silence is an inevitable part of everyone’s journey, but how everyone lives on as long as some part of them is retold. I took this fear of sleep, or death, or whatever its name is, and tried to think of it like an adventure.
“When I started Diaries of a Rusticated student, I was at the lowest point of my life. I was suffering intensely from mental illness, and had to suspend my studies at Oxford because of it. Applying to be a columnist at a university paper that I was no longer attending felt desperate and honestly quite embarrassing, it was a last hope in that I could do something useful with my time off from studies. Looking back on it today, writing a column for The Oxford Blue changed my life. I was given the chance to be heard and seen, and create connections with other students who had undergone similar experiences. I am forever grateful to the paper and what it has done for my selfconfidence, friendships and gratitude for life.”
Comment from Alice Brooker, HT 2025
Now, instead of recalling the early hours as dreaded silence, I think of a fox dancing its way across the road at 3 A.M. The trees are looking at me like friendly ghosts, and the moon is cold and beautiful and full of secrets. In these moments, nighttimes are nothing more than stories. They feel like safe, empty roads; a girl twirling under a lamp post, or the memories I made dancing in a club. Like most stories there is kindness in there somewhere, and the more I think about this the more I realise I’m no longer awake.
Columns by Alice Brooker
February 7th 2024
WHY I CARE ABOUT THE CLIMATE –AND WHY I DON’T
When I was seven, we had to do a presentation in school. I asked my dad for help choosing a topic, and he suggested climate change. We talked about it a lot. I thought that once people realised there was an issue, we would fix it. The prize went to a girl who did her presentation on surfing in Cornwall.
Still, I wouldn’t say that this was when I became disillusioned with the climate crisis.
When I was twelve, I went vegetarian. Now to be fair, I’m a hypocrite. I think nothing of eating palm oil and avocados flown in from Peru. I wanted to make a point or maybe to make myself feel better. But my family kept eating meat, as did the rest of the world.
When I was fifteen, Greta Thunberg took the world by storm, and I thought our generation would fix it. Then I began to blame older generations, placing the responsibility and failure to act on them.
When I was seventeen, I began to get angry at corporations for fuelling the climate crisis, at capitalism, at the 1% committing these carbon abuses, and at the 99% who would suffer. BP invented the idea of ‘carbon footprint’, a marketing scheme looking to place responsibility for the climate crisis on us, not them.
I began to think this wasn’t my fault, that I am not responsible.
And I’m not. I’m eighteen. I didn’t cause the climate crisis – none of us did.
Photography by Leon Moorhouse
Indeed, I think I first became disillusioned with activism, with environmentalism, when I realised this was so much bigger than just me, that I would never feel the brunt of climate change’s impact.
I was talking to someone recently, however, and I asked them, ‘Why do you think the climate crisis has become so controversial?’ Their answer: blame.
Activists blame climate change deniers, politicians blame corporations, and corporations blame consumers; consumers blame the media, the young blame the old, the rich blame the poor, and the poor blame the rich.
Indeed, I realised just how guilty I was of this. I looked to blame everyone in sight for the climate crisis, understanding that I was complicit but rejecting the responsibility.
How do you remedy the fact that you are not responsible, but you are complicit, and people are being hurt?
Well, 90% of the time, I ignore it. I can’t claim that the environment crosses my mind every day or that it is even my top priority when it comes to world issues. Nor do I feel guilty for this – Oxford is already hard enough!
But I do feel that what is happening is wrong. Yes, the world will keep spinning; we will not all die, nor every species, and mass extinction events have occurred throughout history.
I think the issue, though, the difference, is that we have the power to stop it. And to me, it feels wrong not to use that power when lives are being destroyed.
“I’m 20 now. Nearly two years on, I’ve spent lots of my time at Oxford talking about the climate. I still haven’t figured this out.
What has changed? I’ve bought new clothes. I’ve taken several flights. And I’m sure my younger brothers will be joyful to hear that now and then, when I’m feeling particularly frustrated, I’ve been known to eat a burger.
I’m also coming to the end of a year as copresident of the Oxford Climate Society. In so many ways, this society epitomises my feelings. It is full of brilliant, bright, kind and passionate people dedicating their time at Oxford to try and change things. But getting those without an existing passion for the climate involved has been challenging.
The most challenging week of my year was a Michaelmas 5th week spent at COP29 in Azerbaijan, Baku. Getting to a place where decisions are made was a privilege. But equally, sitting through negotiations where little to no progress was made, often through the obstruction of Western negotiators, was draining. The same could be said for trying to progress the University’s climate policy. In so many ways, I left feeling overwhelmed and exhausted-------Disillusioned?
But,
I’ve tried hard. I’m trying hard. And I’m not the
This is why the government’s recent Public Order Act that restricts protests scares me. I’m not interested in the rights and wrongs of protesting. The bill reduces an individual’s power to gain attention and create change larger than them. So, what is the point of trying?
Why would a government go to this length to stop protests despite the institutional racism, misogyny, and homophobia this law will support?
Why wouldn’t they want to reduce the production of fossil fuels? Renewable sources might have kept our energy bills down.
Why is our government so determined to ignore the issue?
These are scary questions to consider, and they are why I feel so conflicted. I’m not responsible for the climate crisis. I care about people. I have a platform which I can use.
If you’ve read this far, I’m sure you’re just as confused as I am. How do we make a change in a debate so polarised?
For me, at least, thinking about it is the first step. The second is to stop blaming the past and think about the future we want to create.
Yes, I’m scared, but I’m also hopeful. I don’t think we need to act drastically, I do believe we need to act soon. Talking about it, getting other people to talk about it – to care about it – is potentially our biggest strength.
This is just one person’s opinion and, honestly, a plug to come and write for the new environment section. But every time I feel this is pointless, I try to remember that the power to change something, everything, is out there. Until that is gone, there is still a point to all of this.
only one.
God forbid your takeaway from this article is that you must be the climate society president to have a voice on this issue. That is so far from the truth. Climate has been a tiny part of my life in so many ways. I wrote that article as someone who had never been involved in any organisation, had never made it to a protest, and was scared and confused.
I still am. If you hoped age and experience might clear up my confusion, it definitely hasn’t yet. After COP29, my dad came up for lunch. “Are you going to sack this all off and go into finance then?” he asked. No. No, I’m not. Despite everything, I’m still convinced that continuing to talk about, continuing to try and make progress is the right idea.
So, I’m not going to shut up about it any time soon. Nor do I think I’m going to get everything right. Progress is hard. It’s contradictory. And it’s imperfect. I’m going to keep trying anyway.”
Comment from Flora Prideaux, HT 2025
Alice Garnett
Casual-anything (dating or sex) can be carefree, empowering, and fulfilling – given the right circumstances – but it can unexpectedly veer into an emotional minefield of confusion, bitterness, and heartache.
Getting a casual relationship right is tricky, as the lines between friendship and romance can be surprisingly blurred: there’s precarity in attempting to remain suspended between the two. Whether we’re talking friends with benefits, quick flings, or ‘just sex’, “keeping it casual” generally translates into the heady freedom of baring little-to-no emotional responsibility for your partner. Or at least this is often how casual relationships are (mis)interpreted. I don’t mean to vilify such set-ups – especially given how much I myself have reaped their rewards in the past – but often people forget that just because one isn’t ‘official’ with someone doesn’t mean you can go about your existence as though your actions are inconsequential regarding your partner. There’s a tendency to side-line casual partners – to insist that they are but minor characters in one’s narrative –but sex and dating (no matter how casual) are ultimately intimate acts which require sensitive management.
This is more than a cautionary piece; a few of my friends – and myself – have managed casual sex and/or dating with success. In fact, I spent an entire (pre-Covid) term doing just that. At times it was exhausting, but overall it was liberating and provided me with a space to practice vulnerability without being afraid of long-
Nice To Meet You,
term consequences. Casual relationships can provide wonderful opportunities for growth – for improving our relationships with romantic and/or sexual intimacy. So, based on my own and my friends’ more successful casual endeavours, I have provided some steps on how to keep it casual. I can’t guarantee that this is a mess-free formula, but it certainly helps to bear the following in mind:
STEP ONE: Recognise that “casual” on paper doesn’t always mean “casual” in practice.
I’m guilty of using the phrase “keeping it casual” to excess – it’s not an incantation you can use to magic feelings away. Most of us will have had an infuriating conversation with a friend regarding the “casual” status of their relationship with a partner; no doubt they will have insisted “we’re just friends” and that “neither of us want a relationship right now”. Sadly, simply not wanting a relationship also won’t protect things from getting complicated. It’s incredible how quickly you can go from no-strings-attached to an unresolvable knot of attachment – precisely what you were trying to avoid by pursuing casual relationships in the first place. Step one of any casual relationship should be recognising the obvious early on. Feelings happen, life’s messy, that’s okay.
STEP TWO: BOUNDARIES
Boundaries are obviously important in every kind of relationship, but – as I mentioned earlier – we tend to downplay our casual relationships and subsequently this can leave things a little too open. Some of the casual partners I have been with in the past have had temporal boundaries; i.e. they only see someone once (max) per week. This kind of boundary has worked for me in the past as it
prevents things from escalating too quickly and – in a way – creates a sense of formality that might squash any potential romance. Negotiating this set-up also stimulates conversation between you and your partner regarding emotional availability, giving each of you insight into one another’s schedules. It’s not particularly glamorous, but it is sensible.
Many people have personal boundaries – some unwritten rules they tend to stick to when engaging in casual sex or dating. These can include:
Only casually sleeping with someone a set number of times (i.e. 4 – however this is entirely arbitrary and very much dependent on your own relationship with sex and feelings).
Never staying the night; sometimes post-coitalcuddling can take things beyond casual (plus it’s nice to sleep in your own bed).
Keeping chat to a minimum; this seems pretty crude, but if you’re someone who’s averse to emotional intimacy then I suppose it functions as a means of selfpreservation.
The boundaries you set will differ from partner to partner as every dynamic is different, but it can be useful to discuss the kinds of boundaries you’d want to put in place during your first few interactions. They form a comfortable safety net and prevent things from escalating beyond whatever either party is happy with.
STEP THREE: *notice* your feelings
I know I’ve used casual relationships as a means of accessing the intimacy I was craving without necessarily exercising any vulnerability – but it’s a precarious line to tread. “Casual” exists liminally, so it’s easy to get lost amidst the haze of feelings that might feel more or less than just casual. This is why it’s important to emotionally check-in with yourself regularly and consider whether or not the set-up is still
“I’ve gone back and had another read of my “Guide to keeping it casual” and – I must admit – everything I said still very much stands. I’m almost impressed by my 21 year old self’s level of maturity, given that I still had another four years before my (now fully developed) prefrontal cortex would finish cooking.
As someone who has continued to write about sex and relationships, I sometimes feel like a broken record when it comes to dating advice. Communication, communication, communication. Without clear, candid and regular communication any relationship (be it marital or casual) is bound to fail.
On a personal note, I reread this piece with my partner, with whom I did actually manage a healthy, respectful (and very, very sexy) casual relationship for 18 months before we veered into a romantic relationship. How did we achieve a year and a half of good, drama-free casual sex? By doing everything my 21-yearold self advised others to do.”
Comment from Alice Garnett, HT 2025
fulfilling. Whatever you do, do not repress or shy away from whatever feelings there are emerging from the dynamic. Feel your feelings; sitting with them is a better way to process them than shrugging them off. As I said previously, feelings can happen regardless of whether we wanted them to.
STEP FOUR: communicate these feelings
Arguably the most important aspect of any casual relationship, communication and regular check-ins with your partner is the best way to ensure you are both on the same page, provided you are both honest first with yourselves and then with each other. One of my big petpeeves with casual relationships has been a partner’s inability to communicate. Don’t air your casual-sex partners; if you really don’t want any kind of relationship with them beyond sex at least let them know. Personally, I prefer to have a bit of a friendship with casual partners (i.e. the occasional text, or even a coffee) as it helps to maintain a healthy dialogue between the two parties. If there’s already a bit of ongoing dialogue between the two of you, it makes it easier to raise grievances as and when they spring up. It makes those conversations feel like less of an ordeal.
But regardless of what your relationship with your casual partner is like beyond sex and dates, it’s crucial that you keep each other in the loop and make sure you communicate those feelings you’ve taken the time to *notice* as and when they come up.
These steps are all you really can do to keep things healthy and uncomplicated with your casual partner. I recommend that you repeat steps one-four – regularly reminding yourself of the reality of what “keeping it casual” means, re-evaluating boundaries where necessary, checking in with yourself and your partner regularly. Repeat these steps throughout the casual relationship, until it fizzles into a friendship or develops into something more (as casual things so often do). This can only ever be a rough guide, but I have faith in the ability of these steps to prevent emotional carnage and confusion.
With all this in mind, I encourage all you “no strings attached” people to go forth and keep it casual (and emotionally responsible)! <3<3<3
Art by Laurentien Jungkamp
Opinions by Maddy Ross June 6th 2020
Hi, sorry for the hack message, was just wondering if you had heard about…’ Messages along the lines of this one are the scourge of an Oxford student’s term, and every term the same Oxfesses are written about how irritating they are. The people sending them dislike sending them, reducing friendships to a mere transactional arrangement, and the people who receive them find the endless pleas for votes incredibly annoying. Facebook is the ultimate tool of the hack – in the run-up to elections, they message hundreds of people, switching between laptops and phones to stop Facebook suspending their account for unusual activity. The past few years have seen a real development in hack messaging: the number of overly-friendly text copypastas and vote me memes getting around has skyrocketed.
Conventional wisdom has always been that hack messages are a necessary evil, but they have typically been seen as one of the less problematic aspects of student elections. In the process of getting themselves elected, hacks will manoeuvre, lie, exploit and backstab: for years this behaviour has not been addressed, despite hundreds of manifesto promises to improve this regular feature of Union elections. There is no real incentive, once candidates are elected, to follow through on the change they promise.
The scandal in the past few days, which saw an
entire Union slate dissolve, centred around some hack messages and the slow, hesitant response of the slate’s officers (those running for higher positions). A candidate for Standing Committee sent messages that referred to the present riots and protests surrounding racial discrimination and the murder of George Floyd to garner votes. The officers on the slate were made aware of these messages on Monday, but did not publicly respond until Wednesday, and only then because a student at Christ Church published the messages online.
What started with inappropriate hack messages soon highlighted wider issues. The officers’ response was slow and the draft of the apology from the candidate was criticised for focusing more on their own reputation and justifying the content of the messages than for actually apologising for the racist content. It seemed that the slate was focusing more on trying to contain the damage than to address the upsetting nature of the messages themselves. This electioneering only served to worsen the upset, as students who received the messages did not feel that their concerns were being addressed; the consequences for the slate were therefore far more severe.
Every term, candidates run on manifestos promising to bring change and progress to the Union and other recent scandals only serve to highlight its desperate need for reform. Access has become a key
Photography by Kassian Koeck
Will
THE UNION
“It is amusing to re-read my thoughts on the Oxford Union, having reported on its goings on for several years. I think the insights have stood the test of time, given the continued turbulence since 2020. Will the hacks ever learn?”
Comment from Maddy Ross, HT 2025
issue since President Brendan McGrath stood down last Michaelmas after a blind student, Ebenezer Azamati, was violently removed from the chamber. Despite these promises, scandals continue to plague the Union; why is it that these commitments to change have failed to materialise?
The candidates themselves often spend the week leading up to the elections barely eating and sleeping and the amount of stress that they often feel put under is enormous. If they win, then there is hardly a moment to draw breath before the next cycle begins. If they lose, then their career in the Union is over. This isn’t healthy for anyone and is clearly not conducive to change; so why is it that is has been allowed to continue for so long?
One of the clear reasons is that there just isn’t time for those who are elected to make change. Terms in Oxford are short and intensive; widespread reform of the kind that the Union needs would take a much longer time to implement. The people who do get elected are often then focused on getting elected to higher office. The hacks who are moving up the ranks, with grand ambitions of being able to write ‘President of the Oxford Union’ on their CV, do not want to jeopardise this future by upsetting the status quo. Strict rules about interaction with the press means that the people currently serving often find themselves unable to speak out about the issues they would like to tackle.
Ever Change?
The question of why someone would want to be involved in an institution that seems so inherently toxic is a good one: not only do a lot of students involved want to better their CVs and future prospects, but it is also an exciting and addictive lifestyle. The Union provides access to a wide and relatively diverse community, and running for election is exhilarating – a chance to win status in a hallowed institution. Many treat it as practice for the political careers that they want to have in the future, but it shouldn’t be treated as a game. The actions of hacks have real world consequences – the ‘Oxford Bubble’ is not that insulating.
A lot of people go into student politics with pure motivations – their friends do it, they want to improve access, they enjoy debating and meeting new people. The Union is filled with decent people who also run for positions – it is very rarely the people that make the environment toxic. The problem is that the traditions and bad practices are not challenged and just get passed on to the new recruits.
Last night, the Union’s Standing Committee made a statement committing itself to an anti-racist stance, reminding us of Malcolm X’s words when he spoke there in 1964. The President has been mandated to create a non-political committee to focus on long-term reform by the end of Trinity term, and has advertised office hours to give members better access to complaint procedures. Disciplinary procedures will be reformed, with these measures promised to be only the start of bigger reform. The trouble is, the officers currently in charge cannot bind the actions of their predecessors; there is no guarantee that these will be carried out.
Despite these promised changes, it seems unlikely that the latest scandal will have any real impact on the Union long-term: although there may be fewer hack messages this time around, by the time elections swing round in Michaelmas, it’s almost certain that things will be back to normal. In spite of how a single scandal can now bring down an entire slate in less than twelve hours, one thing remains clear; unless the Union changes its term structure dramatically, it will remain resistant to any meaningful change.
Arab Spring – A Decade On
by Lily Shanagher
Photography by Leon Moorhouse
2020 marks ten years since young Tunisian fruit seller
Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire to protest the local police officials who had seized his cart and produce. Now known as the Arab Spring, this single act of defiance triggered a wave of social movements across North Africa and the Middle East, toppling autocrats and starting civil wars, in a bid for democracy and human rights. Many regard Tunisia as the lone success story, with countries such as Syria and Yemen now embroiled in devastating civil wars and conflicts.
After gaining independence from France in 1956, Tunisia had their first president Habib Bourguiba. He was regarded as a liberal but authoritarian leader and was succeeded in 1987 by Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. Ben Ali embodied the authoritarianism of his predecessor to a much greater extent, harassing and imprisoning opponents, winning elections by margins of over 90%, and presiding over a police state where torture and censorship was rife. Tunisia did experience some economic growth, but the effects were mostly felt by the wealthy in big cities and on the coast, while people in the countryside remained side-lined. This dissatisfaction led to several protests, and by 2010 many had realised that the regime was less powerful than it seemed. The emergence of social media helped movements grow, as Tunisians found a way of communicating and organising without regular police interference.
Tunisia was primed for revolution – all it needed was a spark of ignition. This came from Bouazizi’s cousin, who filmed the self-immolation and uploaded it online. When the video was released, protests erupted in Bouazizi’s hometown, and more followed in the South. In Kasserine, police opened fire on protesters, killing 22 and injuring many more. All the while, these injustices were being filmed and circulated on social media, attracting national attention and outrage.
Ben Ali had crossed a line and people could no longer keep their heads down. 80,000 people marched in Tunis, holding banners demanding ‘jobs, freedom, national dignity’. In poorer districts people protested primarily for economic reasons. They wanted roads built and more jobs. In urban regions, activists and students demanded civil freedom, such as the right to expressions without threats from the police.
Cracks appeared in Ben Ali’s façade and, on the 14th January, he fled to Saudi Arabia, never to return. The first free elections were held and various political parties, both secular and Islamist, agreed to collaboratively form an interim government, and develop a new constitution for their country. But as tensions from opposing sides grew, progress in parliament stalled. The political assassinations of Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi, the former a politician and leftist critic of fundamentalist Islam, and the latter being the founder of the People’s Movement party, flooded Tunis with protests. Citizens feared that the democratic experiment would regress back into authoritarian rule or lead to civil war.
The demonstrations reverberated around neighbouring countries, leading to a wave of protests. In Egypt, 18 days of collective action, involving protests in Tahrir Square, Cairo, which hundreds of thousands attended, ended the autocratic ruler Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year reign. In Libya, demonstrations broke out against Muammar al-Gaddafi, who was discovered hiding in a tunnel and publicly killed. However, not all revolutions had such clear-cut outcomes: protests in Yemen led to a
“Something that sticks out for me when looking back on the article is the final paragraph. It remains true that people can topple seemingly all-powerful autocracies – as we have seen in recent months with the fall of Assad’s regime in Syria, which had managed to maintain its grip on the country following the 2010 movement.
With Middle Eastern conflicts continuing, including new ones I didn’t know would happen at the time of writing, Syria is perhaps an example of cautious hope for a war-torn region; that people can take on dictatorships and eventually prevail.
Writing this article helped cement my interest in conflict and foreign affairs and was a starting point in exploring issues outside of my comfort zone.”
Comment from Lily Shanagher, HT 2025
civil war which continues today, with over 100,000 dead and widespread famine. In Syria, protests against Bashar al-Assad led to the use of chemical weapons and foreign intervention. Its civil war has seen ISIS claim territory and place it under strict Islamic law, causing millions of refugees to flee. In Bahrain, the pro-democracy protest was quickly crushed, and today the country remains under a repressive regime.
Back in Tunisia, the freedom granted by the revolution and the collapse of a surveillance state also had negative impacts for the country, as it made it easier for terrorist groups to organise. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for a massacre on Sousse beach in 2015, intending to undermine the tourism industry and the democratic revolution. In response, the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, who won the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts, helped push through a new constitution. After several free elections, the conflict abated.
Despite what many have labelled progress, many Tunisians feel disillusioned. The negotiations were rightly praised but took up a lot of political energy. The focus on political identity and the state has meant that the economic problems that powered the original revolution have been ignored. Economic growth has more than halved since 2010 and living conditions have fallen for many, who see the revolution as to blame. In 2018 protests broke out against the cost of living and unemployment, in a country where young people make up 85% of the jobless. This reflects a wider issue with the process of democratisation: the rich benefit, but the poor, who start the revolutions, are ultimately neglected.
Today, eight out of 10 Tunisians say corruption is endemic. Many are attracted to the fundamentalist messages peddled by extremist groups. Others seek to migrate to Europe. The conflict has decimated economies globally and in Syria, millions of displaced people have contributed to the European refugee crisis. This has encouraged the rise of populism and xenophobia in the west.
Dissent has now been crushed and human rights groups have described the conditions in Egypt and Syria as intolerable.
In spite of this, the Arab Spring retains a certain lustre. It shows that by working together, people can topple even the most powerful-seeming autocracies, and how social media can be utilised to effect change, transforming the face of revolutions.
Acknowledgements
Isabel Valovin and Eric Balonwu, Editors-in Chief HT25
Louis Treasure, Managing Director HT25
Timothy Blackburn and Leon Moorhouse, Print Team HT25
Artists:
Sophia Banner
Yasmin Beed
Aliyah Begum
Victor Garza
Filip Jasionowicz
Laurentien Jungkamp
Kassian Koeck
Rebecca Nolten
Leon Moorhouse
Aayan Riaz
Claire Wong
Since 2021, The Oxford Blue has been publishing a termly arts magazine - The Blueprint - giving a platform to some of the best artists at Oxford. In creating this magazine we wanted to acknowledge the role art has played at The Blue over the past 5 years. We commissioned a team of brilliant artists to produce pieces in conversation with some of our best articles: artworks that did not simply illustrate those articles but instead worked creatively with similar themes. As I am sure you will agree, they have done an incredible job and we are immensely grateful for all the work they put in. Thank you! - Timothy Blackburn and Leon Moorhouse, Print Team HT25
