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Trinity Term, Week 5 | Friday 26 May 2023

OXFORD STUDENT The

The University of Oxford’s Student Newspaper, Est. 1991

LGBTQ+ Campaign takes down statement amid SU motion confusion he SU’s LGBTQ+ campaign has been forced to remove their post asking the Union to rescind Kathleen Stock’s invitation, the gender critical feminist and philosopher.

The campaign had expressed opposition with a now removed social media post calling “for the union to reconsider and rescind [Stock’s] invite” and instead “let Trans voices be heard”.

In their second statement about Stock, they have said that their original comments

had been removed “wholly against the wishes of, and without the consent of” the SU LGBTQ+ campaign.

Backing up their Union condemnation, they said that “the rights of any minority group should never be up for debate”. They also condemned the event saying “free speech

This Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 imposes stricter rules on deplatforming. It requires universities and student unions to take “reasonably practicable” steps to secure freedom of speech for staff, students, and most pertinently - visiting speakers.

It defines academic freedom as including the right “to put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions”.

Such a right is to avoid the “risk of being adversely affected” in respect to “loss of their jobs or privileges”.

Student unions must also ensure that “affiliation” is not denied on the basis of an individual’s “ideas or opinions” or a body’s “policy or objectives”.

Those affected by a breach will have the opportunity to enter civil proceedings, legally challenging deplatforming.

This comes just after weeks of student action in college JCRs, as almost half have voted for a motion to take back Stock’s invitation. This includes St Anne’s JCR calling on “the Union to rescind their invitation to Kathleen Stock” and be a true “chamber of free speech”

Read more on page 4

Sackler name removed Obviously, the global “whole from Oxford buildings situation

Eleanor Luxton

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ollowing a review of its relationship with the Sackler family, the University of Oxford have announced that they are removing the Sackler name from all buildings, spaces and staff positions.

The review was initiated by Vice Chancellor Irene Tracey.

The family has long been criticised for its marketing and sales campaigns of OxyContin, a synthetic opioid which con-

tributed to a US opioid crisis that has claimed over 750,000 lives.

The Sackler Rome Gallery and the Sackler Learning Officer at the Ashmolean Museum will be renamed, while the Sackler Library is set to become the Bodleian Art, Archaeology and the Ancient World Library.

However, the Sackler name will remain on the Clarendon Arch and on the Ashmolean’s donor board, as a record of Read more on page 5

is still very challenging […] but equally that doesn’t negate the fact that these increases will only make life harder for students

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Daisy Outram News Editor

should not be used to actively harm marginalised groups”.

In a statement to The Oxford Student, the SU LGBTQ+ campaign condemned Oxford University’s intervention stopping the SU boycott. They also criticised how “harm and hurt experienced by University members speaking out has gone completely unacknowledged”.

In a personal capacity, campaign officers maintained that they “call for the Union to reconsider and rescind this invite”. They supported the official statement acknowledging they “would like to speak freely on our views around this subject” but are unable to as a “[consequence] of the interpretations of this new ‘freedom of speech’ act”.

The SU told The Oxford Student that the removal was because the first post “went against the Oxford SU’s own policies”. The new post is now “compliant with internal SU Read more on page 3 policy and the organisational understanding of the new Higher Education (Free Speech Bill) 2023”, and they appreciated the “positive impact the SU LGBTQ+ campaign”.

- Maximilian Grindley, Pembroke JCR VP on rent increases

2 | Editorial

Friday 26 May 2023 | The Oxford Student

TRINITY TERM 2023 EDITORIAL TEAM EDITORS IN CHIEF Rose Henderson and Ayomilekan Adegunwa ASSOCIATE EDITORS Emily Hudson and Matthew Holland CREATIVE DIRECTOR Blane Aitchison STRATEGY Milo Dennison (director), Hannah Byrne-Smith, Susie Barrows, Priya Mahan DEPUTY EDITORS Martin Alfonsin Larsen, Tara Earley, Frankie Coy, Matt Holland, Charlie Bowden, Jasmine Wilkinson, Niall Hall, Sami Jalil, Haochen Wang NEWS Martin Alfonsin Larsen, Charlie Bowden, Anvee Bhutani, Canqi Li, Gabrielle Thompson, Daisy Outram, Eleanor Luxton, Milo Dennison COMMENT Tara Earley, Leon Wheeler, Vedika Rastogi, Jack Arrowsmith PROFILE Matthew Holland, Vedika Rastogi PINK Blane Aitchison, Daisy Outram IDENTITY Sami Jalil, Farrah Bergstrom, Georgia Ferris, Anna Ashkinazi FEATURES Frankie Coy, Haochen Wang, Grace Rees, Purav Menon CULTURE Charlie Bowden, Johannah Mathew, Jennifer Robinson, Lukas Seifert, Miracle Kalonga FOOD & DRINK Jasmine Wilkinson, Kasturi Pindar GREEN Jasmine Wilkinson, Eliza Smith SCITECH Emily Hudson, Nicole Hasler, Tymoteusz Syrytczyk OXYOU Niall Hall, Milo Dennison, Lukas Seifert SPORT Haochen Wang, Patrick Groves, Bradley Beck, Eleanor Luxton COLUMNISTS Blane Aitchison, Jonah Poulard, Amanda Li, Tasneem Jodiyawalla

issuu.com/theoxfordstudent

I

t’s fifth week already, and spending most of it in the SU laying in this print edition has been an interesting approach to avoiding its infamous blues. From the usual ‘jokes’ that Ayomi can’t use InDesign, to Milo and I finishing off the edition in a darkened room after the rest of the editors have abandoned us, the articles we publish today represent a huge amount of effort on behalf of the entire team.

Last week, Ayomi and I met up with some of the previous Editors in Chief at OxStu, and when asked about the 2am lay-ins and chasing up editors who hadn’t written anything, we could honestly report

that we hadn’t experienced that at all. While we would love to say this was entirely down to us, true credit must go to the people that turn up at 4 Worcester Street every fortnight. Every deputy editor consistently choosing to take a few hours out of their busy weeks to come in and lay in makes a significant difference both to the quality of the paper and to the time we end up leaving the SU! As for the articles in this print, the quality has been, as usual, consistently high. Beyond the news pages, look out for our contributors’ analysis of events in Oxford, from Frankie Coy’s feature on the Sackler family whose name has just been removed from University buildings, to Leon Wheeler’s comment piece dismantling some of the misguided narrative over relations between the SU and the Oxford Union.

@theoxstu

@theofficialoxstu

Editors’ Picks Features

What’s in a name? The Sackler Empire behind America’s Opioid Crisis

OxYou

Lukas Seifert gives us his guide to college marriages

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Rose Henderson,

Worcester College

Sport

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his week I have been thinking about the role of student journalism. What is the point of student journalism? Why do I dedicate hours of my life to a newspaper which is read less than an anonymous Facebook group?

As I am sure you aware, Oxford has once again found itself in the midst of a culture war. Last term it was the 15 minute cities, this term it is free speech. This term’s invitation of Kathleen Stock has captured the attention of the media - it seems like the Telegraph runs articles about Stock everyday. The backlash to her invitation, and the subsequent backlash to the backlash have been incredibly intense – with letters signed by hundreds of people being sent to the Tel-

I hope that you enjoy the great journalism in this week’s edition.

Ayomilekan Adegunwa,

Worcester College

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he curse of a finalist is to be brimming with ideas with no time at all to realise them. Hence, this editorial is a tribute to all the articles I would have loved to write so far this term. These have topics ranging from why the name change of Bannau Brycheiniog national park is a good thing to the evolutionary origins of coiled hair - with many more in between. Perhaps these will materialise, but if they don’t we can rest assured that they did exist somewhere, if not in print.

Lay-in has been as fun as ever and honestly provoking productive discussion (as evidenced by the inspiration for Matt’s latest article!) Thanks to the editors for your company and for your dedication to this week’s edition!

Emily Hudson, Oriel College

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Unladylike: the problem of labels in women’s sports

Culture

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A night of magic and mayhem at Magdalen College

From the Editors egraph and death threats being sent to student activists.

The media have turned this into an adversarial battle between those who are fighting for freedom of speech, and those who are intolerant of hearing views other than their own. In this, they have often misrepresented events or taken shortcuts to get the story that they wanted. Leon Wheeler’s comment piece on this is great – give it a read!

I’ve been really proud of the work that the Oxford Student has done in this area. We have presented the facts and brought light to confused issues. Again, I must say an enormous thank you to Rose Henderson, to whom the continuing functionality of this fine newspaper is solely down to.

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xStu readers, I have had the most Oxford weekend ever (20th and 21st).

On Saturday, I spent most of the day working, bumped into many other editors at various points, went to a Magdalen Garden Play, and then managed to gatecrash DJ Dipper’s final set at Oxford.

Sunday was much less BNOCy, I’m afraid. I met up with many friends across the day, went on a walking tour, went punting, and once again bumped into some other editors.

Conclusion: I’m a terrible editor and an even worse student.

Luckily, the OxStu is full of editors much better than me who have managed yet another amazing two weeks of content.

Matthew Holland,

Exeter College

The Oxford Student | Friday 26 May 2023

News | 3

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oxstu.editor@gmail.com

The Oxford Student

oxfordstudent.com

Huge rent increases to hit colleges

Contents

Gabrielle Thompson News Editor

News - p. 3 Comment - p. 8 Profile - p. 12 Identity - p. 14 Columns - p. 16 Pink - p. 19 Features - p. 20 Culture - p. 22 Food & Drink - p. 24 Green - p. 26 SciTech - p. 27 OxYou - p. 30 Sport - p. 31

@TheOxStu

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adham College has announced its intention to increase rent for students by 13.5% next academic year, marking the latest in a series of rent rises across the University.

Wadham’s housing system operates as a banded structure, with rooms categorised

by Type A to Type D. The lowest costing options, encompassing both standard and en-suite rooms on the main college site, will now cost £6,374.13 for a 178-day period under the new pricing structure.

Vacation residence is not allowed for these en-suite rooms and is restricted to only four staircases for standard rooms.

Prices originally ranged between £5,613.81 for a Type A or B room on the main college site, to £6,949.29 for a Type D room in Dorothy Wadham Building.

One of the most expensive bands of housing, an en-suite room on a site on the Iffley Road known as the Dorothy Wadham building, will now cost £7,922.19 for a 267-day period. Wadham’s website describes this building as “stateof-the-art”.

Another site called Merifield has jumped from £6,590.64 to £7,513.68, representing a 14% increase. This site is located in Summertown, and is the accommodation block furthest away from its parent college than any other major annexe across the university.

Unlike on-site Wadham accommodation blocks, Merrifield also operates a compulsory 9-month contract, lasting from October until June.

The university-wide website ‘Do I pay to live in my college?’, intended to inform incoming freshers of potential rent costs, describes Wadham’s rent for a 175-day period as £4,874 for the academic year 2022-23.

The figure has an unknown ori-

gin and is not reflective of the licence agreement distributed to Wadham students, which indicates the lowest band of rent is £5,613.81.

Wadham is the latest college to demonstrate rising rents across the university. Pembroke College recently allocated only five standard rooms of the lowest band for all returning students in second, third, and fourth year.

Pembroke is now facing dissatisfaction from JCR members after many were given a higherbanded room than they applied for, effectively forcing a rent rise.

This means that Pembroke students could be left paying £9,677.80 for a highest-banded en-suite and on-site room that they did not ballot for.

A Pembroke JCR member spoke to The Oxford Student describing students receiving a standard room next year as “the lucky 5”, and everyone else would receive “a total rent increase of at least 2,000 pounds”.

The student also suggested that “the rigidity of the contracts contributes to the inflated costs we are experiencing”, expressing desire for a compromise where students could pay for an offsite stay for the duration of term rather than be locked into a longer contract and therefore a higher charge.

However, they also stated: “I’m appreciative it is a difficult situation, given that there is a physical infrastructural limitation here with respect to the number of standard rooms, and I understand that the Accommodations team has been hard at work to try to do the best they can”, also commending the JCR for “conveying our grievances to the college” and “helping us in negotiating down the rent increase for next year”.

Pembroke’s JCR Vice Presi-

dent, Maximilian Grindley, said: “Obviously, the whole global situation is still very challenging and the economic circumstances mean that we have to brace ourselves for rent increases of some kind, but equally that doesn’t negate the fact that these increases will only make life harder for students.”

He also detailed the JCR’s intention to “engage with college on rent prices” in order to assure that “fair and reasonable figures” can be agreed upon.

Wadham students previously protested against rent increases in 2016 and 2018, staging sit-ins on the college quad both times.

Wadham College and Pembroke College have both been approached for comment.

Illustration: Jonas Muschalski

4 | News

Friday 26 May 2023 | The Oxford Student

LGBTQ+ Campaign takes down statement amid SU motion confusion Daisy Outram News Editor

...by “[allowing] trans voices to be heard on these topics in a non-hostile environment”.

Oxford students have also begun to sign a letter in opposition to the university blocking the SU disaffiliation.

Co-creator Kelsey Trevett said that “democracy and welfare should be prioritised, not undermined by university management”. They have commented to The Oxford Student that around 100 students signed in the first two days alone.

The letter is addressed to Pro-Vice-Chancellor Professor Martin Williams, and criticises his “conflation” of the SU’s reasons for disaffiliation with the Union’s invitation of Stock. It seeks to uphold the boycott as “motions passed by the SU are representative of the student body”.

However, The Oxford Student has seen the full version of Williams’ Telegraph letter, which acknowledges media misrepresentation of “Oxford University’s approach to freedom of speech”. He called coverage “ill-informed” in asserting that “freedom of speech and expression is alive and well at Oxford”.

We have included this letter at the bottom of the story.

In contrast, another group

of Oxford students have written a Telegraph letter to “condemn the targeted harassment, bullying and threats that the committee of the Oxford Union” received due to their “refusal to rescind” Stock’s invitation.

Over a hundred students signed in support of this message, including former Union President Charlie Mackintosh, acting OUCA President Peter Walker, and current Union officer Abigail Bacon.

As part of their defence of the Union, the group “[rejected] the notion that Professor Stock’s visit to the Union constitutes any real danger to members of the university”.

This is in spite of the death threat Amiad Haran Diman, President of the OULGBTQ+ Society, revealed they had received amidst this feud.

The Oxford Union discussed this legal right to free speech at a Union Standing Committee meeting, at which President Matthew Dick expressed that “Kathleen Stock’s speech and her beliefs are protected by the Equality Act and are protected by law and are not hate speech”.

Vice-Chancellor Professor Irene Tracey has spoken out on free speech in Oxford, telling The Times that “freedom of speech is what we stand for”, so Stock “has a right to come and speak”. Her view on

the public discourse, however, is that it has unfortunately been “turbocharged” by social media.

In a comment to The Oxford Student, a University spokesperson stated: “The University was given reassurances by the Student Union that they would allow the Oxford Union to attend freshers fair using existing mechanisms available to them under their regulations for Freshers’ Fair.

Any suggestion of ‘loop holes’ is incorrect. We will continue to encourage constructive discussions between the Student Union and the Oxford Union.”

The full letter which Martin Williams wrote to the Telegraph can be found below: SIR, Recent coverage and comments by those concerned about Oxford University’s approach to freedom of speech have unfortunately been illinformed and therefore are unnecessarily inflammatory and incorrect.

The Oxford Union, a debating society independent of the University but whose leaders and members are mostly drawn from our student body, has not been banned from attending the Freshers’ Fair.

Students should be free to de-

cide whether to join a society or club. Whilst we understand there are concerns held by the Student Union about the Oxford Union, the University is actively encouraging the two organisations to talk through the issues.

Our Freedom of Speech policy makes clear that the University seeks to prepare students to encounter and confront difficult views, including views that they find unsettling, extreme or even offensive. As a result, we do not allow the no-platforming of any lawful speech whilst also supporting the right of students, staff, and societies to protest and challenge speakers at events, as long as they do so within the law and our policies.

The University and its colleges host hundreds of events each term and we will continue to invite a wide range of speakers. So, despite what some may have been led to believe, freedom of speech and expression is alive and well at Oxford.

Professor Martin Williams Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Education University of Oxford

Alpacas return to the Radcliffe Camera Martin Alfonsin Larsen Head of News

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small herd of alpacas and a llama came to the Radcliffe Camera on 17th May. The petting zoo was available from 1-4pm, and was part of a Bodleian Libraries wellbeing program to alleviate stress.

Bodleian Libraries have stated that the animals were available to help both students and staff “deal with the increased stress and anxiety of the exam period, as well as encouraging short breaks away from screens.”

The animals were from Simply Alpaca, who are “experienced” with these types of visits. Trainers were present to show attendees where the alpacas are comfortable being touched, providing a “safe and up-beat environment”.

The event was a repeat of one that was held last year, and was called an “overwhelming success”. It was open to anyone with a Bodleian card, including students, academic, Libraries and support staff, and readers. No booking was required.

However, several finalists made complaints about noise in libraries about the area.

Dominic Grieve KC recommends changes at Christ Church after governance review

Martin Alfonsin Larsen Head of News

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ormer Conservative MP and Attorney General Dominic Grieve KC completed an independent review of the governance of Christ Church, Oxford, alongside a report setting out recommendations for changes in Christ Church’s governance to the Governing Body.

Among the report’s most significant recommendations include proposals that the College’s Governing Body

should be able to select a preferred Head of House who is not a member of the clergy.

This will give the Governing Body a wider pool of candidates when they choose the head of the college.

As it stands, the Dean of Christ Church must be ordained as the Head of House is head of both the college and of Christ Church Cathedral.

Under suggested reforms, the Head of House would also be

appointed for a renewable fixed term, and provided with a written contract.

These changes are significant because, as Grieve stated, they “would represent the first fundamental changes to its governance structure since 1867. In the course of this Review it has become clear to me both that significant reform is necessary at Christ Church, and that it would be widely welcomed.”

The report also argued that the Dean should no longer be the head of the Foundation, which comprises both the Cathedral and College.

Instead, Christ Church should consider creating a Governing Council like those seen at some Cambridge colleges, which would be smaller and meet more regularly than the current Governing Body.

The report also recommends reforms to disciplinary and grievance arrange-

ments, with a new Committee of Chapter to help run the Cathedral.

Grieve’s review was commissioned in June 2022 to ensure that the college’s governance met the needs of an Oxford college in the 21st century. The review found that changes to the existing governance arrangements are necessary to deliver the standards expected of a large charity.

It follows a years long controversy at Christ Church which began in 2017, when former Dean Martyn Percy was accused of sexual assault

by Alannah Jeune. In winter of 2022, the college was warned by the UK Charity Commission regulator over misconduct, and a 2019 Financial Times investigation claimed Christ Church was “virtually ungovernable” due to the dispute between the Governing Body and the Dean.

Professor Sarah Foot was appointed as the new Dean of Christ Church earlier this year.

The recommendations will now be considered by Christ Church’s Governing Body.

The process of implementing subsequent changes will require consultation with the University, the Church of England, the Charity Commission, and the approval of the Privy Council and Parliament.

Foot stated that Grieve’s review and report “makes a series of important recommendations”, and that the governing body will “consider his conclusions and the changes necessary to ensure that Christ Church has an effective system of governance. This vital process will lay firm foundations for the future as we approach the 500th anniversary of Christ Church’s foundation.”

News | 5

The Oxford Student | Friday 26 May 2023

Oxford receives University of Sanctuary status

Daisy Outram News Editor

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he University of Oxford has been recognised for its efforts to support sanctuary seekers, receiving University of Sanctuary status this week.

Vice-Chancellor Professor Irene Tracey has celebrated this status, stating that it upholds the “long tradition of supporting peoples from around the world to find refuge” in Oxford.

Earning the status joins the University with the national Universities of Sanctuary initiative, bringing together Higher Education institutions in solidarity with those seeking sanctuary.

The award comes after individual colleges Mansfield and Somerville were awarded College of Sanctuary status in 2021. Their efforts included Sanctuary Scholarships funding graduate students from refugee or asylum seeker backgrounds.

The initiative describes itself as upholding the “proud and radical tradition of supporting refugees and people in the asylum system”. It brings together staff and students working towards safe, empowering, and inclusive education environments.

Oxford’s commitment to supporting those that have been forcibly displaced goes back to 1982, with the establishment of the Refugee Studies Centre.

This is a part of the Department of International Development, improving knowledge and awareness of forced migration.

Director of the Refugee Studies Centre Professor Alexan-

der Betts called Oxford’s new status “an important step”.

Betts added that it “reflects our shared commitment to increase scholarships for refugees” and provides a chance to “do even more in future”.

Support is available in the form of scholarships for sanctuary-seeking students, such as recent assistance for Ukrainian students since Russia’s invasion. This year, 26 students from Ukraine took up scholarships for master’s courses.

Funding and support is found under the new Oxford Sanctuary Community. It helped organise the inaugural Sanctuary Fair held on 11th May 2023, bringing together those impacted by forced migration to make the University more inclusive and integrated.

Also as part of the Oxford Sanctuary Community, a research base in Nairobi works to support displaced academics and promote research careers.

The community also supports the local Student Action for Refugees branch.

This status is held by 25 UK universities, which, as a part of the initiative, endorse the City of Sanctuary Charter. Oxford has been part of this movement as a city since 2008, with cross-party support in the City Council.

The University of Sanctuary Coordinator Maryam Taher said the group was “thrilled” to have Oxford join the network.

She said the efforts the university makes “welcoming those seeking sanctuary is vital” to create a national sentiment of safety and support.

Sackler name removed from University of Oxford buildings

Eleanor Luxton, Martin Alfonsin Larsen

Cont. from page 1

their donations.

The decision has the “full support” of the family.

Although the University has not received donations from the family or their trusts since the start of 2019, Sackler money will be retained and used as intended. The Sacklers’ 2 UK-based charities have given Oxford more than £10m since 1991, and also made donations to Harvard and US medical schools.

The family first came to prominence through aggressive and inaccurate marketing of Valium, making the drug among the bestselling medicines of the 1960s and 1970s. By the late 1990s, they were using the same tac-

tics to sell OxyContin, a synthetic opioid which is twice as powerful as morphine and has contributed to an opioid crisis which claims the lives of more than 100,000 Americans each year.

Institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the British Museum have since removed the family name from their galleries.

This came following pressure from photographer Nan Goldin, whose group PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) has repeatedly protested the family’s influence and philanthropy in the art world.

Several higher education institutions, including Tufts

University, Yale University and Edinburgh University have also cut ties with the Sacklers.

Goldin’s campaign pressured institutions to remove the Sackler name from their buildings. The group staged “die-ins”, where protesters threw pill bottles into museum moats, laid down on museum floors to represent OxyContin related deaths, and used chants such as “Sackler money, blood money”.

However, Theresa Sackler was invited to the OxfordCambridge Boat Race in 2022, despite insistent lobbying from Oxford students to boycott the family.

thus she was obliged to accept it. The Oxford LGBTQ+ Society stated, however, that her important role as president of the college meant that she should have extricated herself from such a high-profile case.

The Times’ story, written by its legal editor Jonathan Ames, quoted the Bar Standards Board, reporting that they told Colours Caribbean that Rose’s actions “might possibly amount to evidence of recklessness”.

The day after the article was published in The Times, the Bar Standards Board issued a statement which stated that they had taken “no regulatory action” against Rose and that there was no evidence that the actions she took were reckless.

They stated that “a barrister must not withhold their services on the grounds that the nature of the case or the conduct or opinions of the client are objectionable or unacceptable” and Rose was correct to accept the instructions from the Cayman Islands government.

Rose announced her intention to bring libel proceedings against The Times the

same day, tweeting that the newspaper was “warned that they were taking a quote from a press release out of context, without the decision being available”.

On 16th May The Times issued an apology to Rose, stating that “we accept that under the constitutional principles which she cited, the Bar rules did not allow her to refuse a brief for the Cayman Islands government in a case concerning the right to same-sex marriage. The article was therefore misleading.

We apologise to Ms Rose for the distress caused, and have agreed to pay her substantial damages and legal costs”.

In open court, solicitor Jessica Kingsbury, representing The Times and Jonathan Ames, stated that they “acknowledge that the article made allegations against her which were untrue”.

Mark Lewis, Rose’s solicitor, tweeted that it was an “honour and privilege” to represent her. He commented further that “it is fundamental to democracy that barristers act for all without fear nor favour, no matter whether their client is popular or not”.

The Times apologises to Magdalen President Dinah Rose

Charlie Bowden

T

News Editor

he Times has issued a formal apology to Dinah Rose KC, President of Magdalen College, after she sued the newspaper for libel earlier this year.

The libel case originated from an article published in The Times on 21st November 2022, in which they stated that the barristers’ watchdog, the Bar Standards Board, had categorised her actions in a Cayman Islands legal case as “recklessness”.

Rose represented the government of the Cayman Islands to the UK’s Privy Council Judicial Committee in 2021 regarding their opposition to same-sex marriage. Though her representation was criticised by groups including the Oxford LGBTQ+ Society, the Bar Standards Board maintained that she committed no wrongdoing.

Colours Caribbean argued that Rose should have used the ‘foreign work’ exception to the ‘cab rank’ rule for selfemployed barristers. This states that instructions from a professional client should only be not carried out under certain circumstances, including if the work would require the barrister to act for a foreign lawyer.

In an email to Magdalen students, Rose maintained that the cab rank rule applied to the Privy Council brief and

6 | News

Amal Clooney and Philippa Webb speak to Oxford Law Faculty Christine Savino News Contributor

O

n 15th May, Amal Clooney and Philippa Webb presented the event, “Waging Justice in an Age of Authoritarianism”, to an audience of Oxford Law faculty, students, and alumni at St. Hugh’s College, Clooney’s alma mater.

The event focused on Clooney and Webb’s book, The Right to a Fair Trial in International Law, a comprehensive analysis and collection of jurisprudence relating to the right to a fair trial. It was chaired by Oxford Faculty of Law professor and director of the Oxford Human Rights Hub, Sandra Fredman.

Clooney and Webb are legal mavens who have made commendable strides in international human rights.

Clooney is an international human rights lawyer, Adjunct Professor of international human rights law at Columbia

Law School, and co-founder of the Clooney Foundation for Justice.

Webb is an international public law barrister, Professor of Public International Law at King’s College London, and board member of the Clooney Foundation for Justice.

The event began with Clooney thanking St. Hugh’s for welcoming her “back home” to where her professional life began. She then described how her relationship with Webb commenced 20 years ago when they met in the International Court of Justice.

Many cases and years later, Clooney explained, Webb was the only one she approached to write the 1,000-page book on international human rights law.

Clooney also announced that the duo have been working on another international human rights book. It will also be published by the Oxford University Press and fo-

cus on the freedom of speech, with a release scheduled for January 2024.

Clooney and Webb then discussed the importance of the right to a fair trial and how all other human rights rest on it. Without it, they explained, such rights can be denied through government overreach.

The pair’s research uncovered that in a wide range of states, including Japan, Russia, Israel, China, and Georgia, the conviction rate in criminal trials is higher than 99%. It also revealed that a startling number of laws that target expression are criminal in nature.

More than 160 states have criminal penalties for defamatory speech, and blasphemy is illicit in over 80 countries.

Defamatory speech also carries the death sentence in at least 5 of these countries.

Clooney also described how she advocates for democracy through her cases, such

Friday 26 May 2023 | The Oxford Student

as that of defending former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed, also known as the “Mandela of the Maldives”.

Nasheed was sentenced to 13 years imprisonment for political dissent.

Likewise, Clooney also represents Maria Ressa, Nobel Laureate, journalist, and founder of Filipino news site Rappler. Ressa has been arrested numerous times, and criminally sentenced to decades behind bars for her advocacy of democracy in the Philippines and condemnation of former President Rodrigo Duterte.

However, Clooney and Webb

underscored that, by continuing to pursue the global fight for the right to a fair trial, we can tip the scales towards justice. Speaking to the Oxford Student after the event, Webb remarked that “Amal and I were delighted to share our work on advancing free speech and fair trials…

The need for action – for the waging of justice – is urgent.

The number of autocracies in the world today exceeds the number of democracies. We believe that international law is part of the solution [and] that there are many scholars and students at Oxford who feel the same way!”

Oxford SU establishes traffic light system for sustainability demands tracker Canqi Li

News Editor

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ollowing the launch of sustainability demands in November 2022, Oxford SU has established a new sustainability demands tracker for individual Oxford colleges with a traffic light system.

The traffic light system marks a college’s performance in each sustainability demand using three colours, with green indicating full satisfaction of a demand, orange indicating partial satisfaction, and red indicating lack of satisfaction.

Oxford SU has set three sustainability demands for every

college to complete by the end of March 2023. The “target” demand refers to whether a college has a target for net zero carbon emissions and a biodiversity net gain by 2035.

Meanwhile, the “strategy” demand refers to whether a college has published a strategy for achieving their net zero target that includes annual reporting, a focus on scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions as well as biodiversity consequences, and divestment from fossil fuels.

The “enablers” demand measures whether a college has sufficient governance, such as a sustainability committee and staff dedication,

to act upon the strategy.

Information on 38 Oxford colleges’ and 5 private halls’ performance in each sustainability demand is also available on Oxford SU’s website and is conveyed through the traffic light system. Somerville College received two green marks and an orange mark, making it the best-performing college in the tracker.

With one green mark and two orange marks, 11 colleges including Jesus College, Pembroke College, and Magdalen College, followed on the podium. There are 14 colleges and halls, including Blackfriars, Christ Church and Oriel College, with red marks for all three demands.

According to Oxford SU, the sustainability demands were originally established following some students “voicing their concerns and ask(ing) colleges to make commitments” in addition to the central university strategy.

This is especially relevant, as the University itself intends to reach net zero carbon by 2035, only ten colleges have committed to this so far. In a comment to Cherwell, the SU stated that “we can’t really claim the whole University is committed to this since the colleges make up such a huge part of the University”.

“I think the tracking system is quite a good one, but I don’t think it’s publicised enough,” Reece Molloy, first-year Physics student at Pembroke College and aspiring climate physicist, told The Oxford Student. Molloy added that the tracker should have placed more focus on issues such as biodiversity and the use of greywater.

Molloy also praised the establishment of the college leaderboard in the traffic light system. “It makes me proud to be part of Pembroke,” he said.

“In terms of the actual rating system, I think it’s quite a good system because you need something visual and graphic and quite immediate to catch people’s eyes,” Henry Nurse, first-year Music student at Pembroke College, stated. “But it should always be accompanied with detailed written analysis, so you don’t just have it be that reductive,” Nurse added.

Nurse also thinks that it is important not to let environmental policies become political tokens. “That’s something we have to be cautious with when we have all these enthusiastic environmental projects – are they actually going that extra mile and actually delivering a long-term

and meaningful change?”

“We hope colleges start work towards developing pledges if they haven’t already, and mentioning that they are hoping to set targets is one way to show this commitment,” Anna-Tina Jashapara, Vice-President of Charities and Community at Oxford SU, wrote in an email to The Oxford Student.

Jashapara added that colleges can show that they take their plans seriously “in all aspects of college life” by “covering all scopes of emissions, with topics such as buildings emissions, food, transport, and resource use”.

She also emphasised that colleges can make their actions towards their goals more visible “by publishing the work they are doing on their websites”.

Regarding biodiversity monitoring, Jashapara wrote: “Methodologies for measuring increases are developing, and the colleges are working on a cross-college report on audits.”

“We will share any information we can from the University and colleges as we receive them, and hope this is something that the University and colleges can work on collectively,” she stated.

The Oxford Student | Friday 26 May 2023

News | 7

OUCA President removed by Disciplinary Committee

Daisy Outram News Editor

C

aleb van Ryneveld has been removed from his post as President of the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA).

This follows his announcement of a motion of no confidence in his leadership, which constitutionally requires a Disciplinary Committee hearing to assess the charges.

The committee was “to consider allegations brought by a corporate complaint” against van Ryneveld. Such a panel is typically made up of the President, Returning Officer, Senior Deputy Returning Officer, former Returning Officers, former Presidents, and the President-Elect. However, those impacted by the case could not take part.

Complaint and defence had five witnesses each asking whether he had breached rules 5(1)(a)(i), 5(1)(a)(ii), 5(1)(a)(iv), and 5(1)(a)(v) of the OUCA constitution. The hearing was held on the 17th May, and President-elect Peter Walker announced via email today that van Ryneveld was found guilty for “three out of four of the counts against him”.

Guilty counts included “[bringing] the Association into disrepute or to undermine any of its objectives as listed in Rule 1(3)”. Alongside this risk to the association, he had “substantially failed in his obligation as President” and even verbally abused a committee member.

In response, van Ryneveld was sentenced to removal

from presidency, alongside having his membership suspended for the rest of Trinity term. He has since called the charges against him “politically motivated and comprehensively untrue” in comments to Cherwell.

Van Ryneveld’s promise of an “Extraordinary General Meeting” for a vote of no confidence was also clarified, with the committee asserting that “never existed a motion of no confidence in him”.

The controversy stems from his initial email on 12th May proposing constitutional reform to increase “transparency and faith” in elections to OUCA’s offices, pointing to the selection of the new RO as an example of the current “crisis”. In contrast, the association has supported the

validity of this process.

His “temporary suspension” was announced by presidentelect Peter Walker on 14th May due to the “serious and urgent threat” at hand. Walker has since announced the committee findings in further email correspondence, officially calling off the meeting van Ryneveld had planned for

tomorrow.

The last time that a President of OUCA was removed was in 2021 over financial misconduct charges.

Now as the Acting President of OUCA, Walker has expressed hope for “the rest of what promises a very successful term”.

Union debates the role of class in British politics

Daisy Outram News Editor

O

n 18th May, the Oxford Union debated the motion “This House Believes That Class Defines British Politics”, questioning the UK’s institutional inequality.

The night began with members voting down the emergency motion of whether “This House Would Abolish Private Schools”. How class impacts Britain’s education system inevitably became a theme, with passionate contributions on equality of opportunity rooted in the students’ own experiences.

Proposition speakers included Labour MP Emily Thornberry, former MP Dave Nellist, and author Simon Kuper, who are well-versed on the partisan divide of UK politics. Thornberry has served

in the shadow cabinet, while Nellist turned from Labour to the Socialist Party. Kuper wrote “Chums”, which examines the trend of Oxford Tories dominating government.

In the opposition, actor Vas Blackwood and George Herbert, the Earl of Carnarvon, spoke. The latter is the owner of Highclere Castle, the building featured in Downton Abbey.

Discussion began with the Union’s Director of Communications Amy Ellis Winter introducing the proposition.

Her message that “talent is spread evenly, opportunity is not” was highlighted in the statistic that the current cabinet is 65% privately-educated.

The opposition started with student ​​Silvan Bennett-Schar joking with Thornberry that

even the Labour Party is now run by an Oxford-educated KC Knight of the realm, showing weakening party distinction.

He posited that universal suffrage and House of Lords reform opened up politics, and viewing class as definitive was too constrictive for modern diversity.

Kuper’s speech focused on the recent history of Conservative dominance in the ruling class. He began by stating that rule of the Tories began in 2010 and would end next year, met with a resounding cheer.

Oxford was emphasised as the birthplace of this trend, calling it “the place where newcomers mix with the hereditaries” to produce toff politicians. Kuper’s discussion on how certain debates can treat politics as a game

rather than emphasising the real people they impact forced the Union into selfreflection.

Chair of the Consultative Committee Abigail Bacon continued for the opposition, arguing that class’ former significance was “no longer the case” in the modern era.

Bacon spotlighted how sexbased rights are often at the centre of British politics, and how class was too broad a generalisation for people’s political views.

National Chair of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition Dave Nellist used Tony Benn’s five questions to the powerful in his speech, asking whose interest political power is exercised for. He mourned the end of Jeremy Corbyn’s truly socialist Labour Party, while still maintaining that class interests dominate politics.

Nellist looked forward to a party rooted in working-class interests, which would instil radical change against capitalist consensus.

Vas Blackwood put forth his case for the opposition by highlighting the importance of race and culture in British politics. His example of the black community being “proud” of Eton-educated Kwasi Kwarteng was seen as being the pale of party politics.

Blackwood further criticised Kuper for his opposition to Oxford dominating government while himself being an alumnus, saying there is “nothing wrong with being privileged, as everyone

here is privileged”.

Floor speeches featured OUCA President Charles Aslet suggested that saying toffs dominate the Conservatives is a generalisation, as newcomers showed the potential for a more accessible ruling class. Kuper countered this, calling Oxford the “portal” to join the ruling class, again centring the discussion on education.

Emily Thornberry MP concluded the proposition, supporting Labour’s aims for candidate selection based on “egalitarian” principles of “meritocracy”. However, politics in general uplifts the private school “golden essence that is confidence”.

She ended by asking how a system “weighted against working people” could be changed: either changing that system or supporting those less privileged on the path to power.

The Earl of Carnarvon closed the debate, endorsing the conservative cause of “stewardship for the future”. This was based on an affectionate hierarchy likened to the characters of Highclere Castle’s Downton Abbey. Ending with The Frost Report’s class sketch, his message of order as a positive to politics rang clear.

However, the proposition passed by 143 to 23 votes in opposition, so the majority concluded that class remains a central part of British politics.

8 | Comment

Comment How a national misinformation

Friday 26 May 2023 | The Oxford Student

Deputy Editor: Tara Earley Section Editors: Leon Wheeler, Vedika Rastogi, Jack Arrowsmith oxstu.comment@gmail.com

campaign engulfed Oxford

O

n Tuesday 9th May 2023, the Student Union’s Student Council passed a motion which resolved to cease all commercial and financial ties with the Oxford Union for 3 years. Due to the Union’s current commercial stall at the university freshers’ fair, some students concluded this would prevent them from attending and bringing in new membership fees next year.

This motion included no reference to the invitation of Kathleen Stock, the prominent gender-critical feminist considered by many to be transphobic, to the Oxford Union this term. Furthermore, Stock was not mentioned during the debate of the motion. Instead, the motion cited “long-standing concerns relating to alleged bullying, sexual harassment, discrimination and data privacy breaches”. Complaints about the Union have been around for some time.

In the days following the motion’s passing, the Oxford Student and the Cherwell released articles on the event. Neither made any reference to Stock’s presence on the Union’s Trinity term card or calls for her to be de-platformed by members of the student body.

On Wednesday 10th May, the Times published an article on the SU motion. Although everything in this article was factually correct, it crucially conflated the passing of the motion with calls to de-platform Kathleen Stock. Headlined “Students sever ties with Oxford Union amid Kathleen Stock talk”, despite the fact that the two weren’t linked, the Times spent most of the article reporting on attempts to cancel Stock’s talk rather than on the SU motion.

It was at this point that discussion of the SU motion began to directly associate it with the opposition to Stock. The Telegraph advanced a narrative in which the SU was painted as an organisation aiming to suppress ‘crucial’ free speech

by Leon Wheeler

at Oxford, with a front page article on 17th May declaring: “Free speech is at risk in trans row, Oxford dons tell students”.

This narrative was seen further in the Telegraph’s publishing in full of a letter from 40 Oxford academics which condemned “the decision of the Oxford University Student Union (Oxford SU) to sever its ties with the Oxford Union (the Union) after the latter’s refusal to rescind an invitation to the philosopher and gender-critical feminist Kathleen Stock”.

This letter makes the mistake of attributing the reason for the SU motion to the refusal of the Union to cancel the invitation to Stock, despite this clearly not having been the case. Another Telegraph article, written by ex-Union President and former Conservative Party Special Adviser James Price, again directly linked the two, claiming that “in response to the crime of allowing a woman to discuss her ideas…the Union is threatened with losing its place at the annual ‘freshers fair’”.

Due to this incorrect narrative, members of government, pressure groups, and free speech advocates all put pressure on both the SU and the central university to reverse the motion, defending free speech. It was even argued that the SU motion breached a recent government bill to regulate free speech at universities.

This is not the case – as previously mentioned, the decision to end financial ties with the Union was due to bullying and harassmentconcerns.

However, at this point the narrative had very firmly turned against the SU. The issue had reached the BBC and the Guardian, with their representation of events discussing both the opposition to Stock and the motion as linked. It was at this point that Pro-Vice-Chancellor Martin Williams, recognising the reputational damage the purported reports of de-platforming were causing the University and its Student’s Union,

came to the ‘rescue’. It is the understanding of the Oxford Student that Williams suggested a potential solution: the University could adopt the position on this particular occasion that the Union was equivalent to a student society, as its members and leaders are mostly drawn from Oxford students. This allowed the circumvention of the scope of motion.

If the Union is a student society, then the motion passed by the SU cannot have been valid – as no university SU can cease financial and commercial ties with one of its student societies. In this way, the Union no longer has the immediate financial concerns caused by its inability to be present at next Michaelmas’ freshers’ fair.

To express this development Martin Williams sent a letter to the Telegraph. A Telegraph article was published on 18th May which presented Williams as a shining knight fighting on behalf of freedom of speech to intervene with the SU and prevent them from punishing the Union for inviting Stock. However, in order to present this image the Telegraph selectively quoted from Williams’ letter.

Having gained exclusive access to said letter the Oxford Student can reveal that the Telegraph grossly misrepresented its contents. The letter points out that the reporting on the issue had been inaccurate, and also clarified that Oxford University was not opposed to or suppressing free speech in any way. The fact that the Telegraph refrained from publishing this letter in full, but saw a need to fully publish the ill-informed letter from the 40 academics, is of interest. Other than an intention to push the narrative that trans rights advocates are trying to stop free speech (notably in line with the remark of Conservative Party Deputy Chairman Lee Anderson that the Tories needed to fight the next election on trans rights and other culture war issues), I can see no valid reason

for publishing only one of the letters in full.

The national narrative and representation of both the SU motion and the opposition to the platforming of Stock has conflated the two in a way that has benefited the Oxford Union. Due to public pressure, the university has been forced to perceive them as a potential student society, meaning that a motion that could have severely damaged their finances was made void. Furthermore, they have received a positive boost in the national perception of their society – a no doubt welcomed change from the numerous articles reporting on scandals of nepotism, sexual harassment, and racism over the years.

This fiasco has taken form in the way we have seen due to two reasons. One, the Oxford Union and those associated with it have had a vested interest in distorting the truth so as to secure financial security and attention (which the Union thrives off of). Two, the Union’s desire to misrepresent the facts has lined up with a national agenda currently being pushed by right-wing poli- ticians and the right-wing media to portray trans individuals and those that seek to fight for their rights as enemies of the people.

Make no mistake, this is being done to shift the political discussion away from the shambolic state of the economy, away from the mishandling of the country for the last 13 years, and onto culture clashes.

The Conservatives know they cannot win the next election without resorting to such manipulative techniques, as do the media bosses who benefit from preventing a Labour government. The Union, who has contributed more to the echelons of the Conservative Party than potentially any other society, is no doubt only too happy to play the role that has fallen to it - especially as such a role may simultaneously save its finan-

cial bacon.

By suggesting that the SU’s concerns over welfare are identical to an attack on free speech the Union may have won this battle – but this may prove to be a pyrrhic victory.

Even though the Union labels itself an independent society on its website, it is seemingly reliant on the university’s noncommittal perception of it as a student society to enable it to attend next year’s freshers’ fair. Like other genuine student societies, the Union may have to give up its independent status to retain financial stability.

Higher education industry specialist, Jim Dickinson (formally of the NUS) noted on Twitter that “it surely can’t be the case that the OU can make claim to being part of the uni for free speech purposes but separate from it for harassment purposes”. Were the Union forced to register with the Proctor’s office, the current opaque system in which misdeeds are covered up would be replaced with university oversight.

Additionally, the current majority of Union members are non-students. It is questionable if the University would allow a student society to be almost entirely made up of non-students – one student society ex-head informed me that the university restricts them from having more than 1/5 of their membership as external members and that they must individually be approved by the society’s committee. If the same applies to the Union as a student society, then its life membership model may be at risk.

Due to the public attention to the visit of Stock, the university no doubt felt forced to intervene on behalf of the Union.

It is doubtful if they will feel a similar inclination in the future once the national media focus has departed. It seems that a pandora’s box of troubles for the Union has been opened.

The Oxford Student | Friday 26 May 2023

Comment | 9

Oppositional alternative: Why Keir Starmer needs to present a radical case for

by Matthew Holland change

M

e and some of the other editors at the Oxford Student were discussing education reform the other day, to which the sentiment that stuck longest with me was the realisation that because of education cuts and underfunding, it will become increasingly difficult for people like me, from state-school backgrounds, to get into university, and especially Oxford. It was absolutely invaluable for me, at secondary school and then later at sixthform, to have a close relationship with my teachers. I was a teacher’s pet; it was easier for me to talk to teachers about the niche things I found interesting than it was my friends, who I was conscious not to bore.

For me, despite teachers already being stretched with massive classroom sizes and an endless revolving door of students, the few minutes which they could give to me to push me academically or motivate me to try and achieve more were some of the most important moments of my life so far.

With their time stretched even more, their pay in decline, their workplace challenged increasingly by external pressures such as social media; it is becoming impossible for people like me to get the support they need at that formative age.

...it will become increasingly difficult for people like me, from state-school backgrounds, to get into university, and especially Oxford.

Education reform is something that is incredibly close to my heart, and the example I have just detailed speaks to the general decline of social mobility which has been caused by 13 years of failing Britain’s children. It is symptomatic of our country as whole; services and initiatives which are falling into disrepair simply by a lack of funding or their poor management. So when I read of ‘Clause IV on steroids’, I cringe at the priorities which are being

established by the Party I have been a member of for the past 3 years.

I joined for the belief that Britain couldn’t afford for Labour to lose an election again, but that in the process Labour should competently put forward the case for the radical changes necessary to uphold the level of social mobility that, although I didn’t know it at the time, would get me into Oxford. Yet, it seems that rather than prioritise what is genuinely best for the country, the Labour Party Leadership is committed to a counter-productive battle to root out an entire section of the Party, simply because it hurts their feelings a bit when Rishi Sunak suggests that the Party hasn’t changed since Corbyn.

It is forsaking the country for a sense of a hurt pride.

I may know very little about economics, but it doesn’t take an expert to understand that our country is in an acute crisis which, whether it be the fault of the Tories or not, requires a drastic change in direction.

More often than that, it is those worst off, those most vulnerable in our society who feel the blow of economic hardship the hardest. For the past year, I have had an enduring memory of canvassing an elderly woman living in a block of flats in my ward, who because of rising inflation at the time was having to cut back on spending at the same time as caring for her ailing husband.

I have no idea what happened to her and her husband but I know that her struggle is not one that’s unique. It has become a depressing reality of everyday existence that almost every day I hear people talking about how their food shop is becoming unaffordable. Even among my fellow students, the reality of rising costs has contributed significantly to increased worries about student loans and being able to pay their way through University, before even considering the issue of their student debt post-University.

These problems won’t just go away and disappear in thin air, nor will their importance wane for other more trivial

issues. The fact that recent national political discussions have been shaped by trivialities is a national shame, both on politicians and journalists.

Personally, I don’t care about abolishing the Monarchy, I don’t care about stopping the flow of refugees and migrants, I don’t care about culture wars, I don’t care the reputational salvaging of political parties; much like many other people in this country, I care about politics solving the existential and daily problems which are faced by the citizens of this country.

The Labour Party should not exist simply as an alternative to the Tories in a year’s time, it should exist to serve this country and ensure that the needs of many are met. If, by extension, believing the schools and the NHS should be funded properly, that inflation should be controlled, that those in need should be cared for through the social security blanket; if all of that makes me a Corbynite radical, then I suspect the vast majority of the population would be stripped of Labour Party membership at present.

It is forsaking the country for a sense of a hurt pride.

It is a very common argument now to look back at the pledges which Keir Starmer has made at various stages of his political career, from the manifestos which he ran on under Corbyn, to the pledges he made in the Leadership Contest in 2020, to the policies which have been proposed for local election seasons in the past 3 years. The great danger of Starmer at present is not simply the idea that his message is one that is as conservative as the Conservative Party, but that much like the Tories, he is treading a path of populist desperation. While this might become a successful electoral strategy, Labour members must ask themselves at what cost that victory will come.

When did traffic get so toxic?

L

by Milo Dennison

ast week, I was recommended a tweet about Broad Street. It showed a side-by-side comparison of Broad Street before and after the new green spaces were introduced. One showed a long grey strip of tarmac, full of cars and empty road space, while the other was full of planters and seating areas, with beautiful flowers. Most of the comments were very sensible, discussing how much they liked the new planters. There were, however, a small but vocal minority arguing that the changes had somehow ruined Broad Street - that the removal of car parking for “pointless ugly junk” and “nonsense painted patterns on the road” had turned Broad Street into a “crack addict’s playground”.

Division over traffic measures in Oxford is nothing new, but it struck me that the sheer ridiculousness of those complaining about flowers rather than cars was emblematic of the wider debate.

A few months ago, Oxford hit the headlines around the UK and the world over the City Council’s plans for six new traffic filters. Opponents of the plans have increasingly relied on slippery slope arguments and any credible opposition has been hijacked by conspiracy theorists. Relying on unrelated plans for 15-minute cities being pursued by the County Council, many of those who don’t like the idea of traffic filters have argued that they form part of a wider conspiracy to lock people into 15-minute “zones” as part of a plot by the World Economic Forum for the “Great Reset”. When protests took place in February, some even tried to link 15-minute cities to forced vaccinations.

Clearly, the dialogue on the issue is utterly toxic. Yet bizarrely it is over an issue that I believe should be uncontroversial in every regard. The traffic filters being proposed are part of an attempt to create low traffic neighbourhoods, an idea that has been around for decades. They have been shown to have numerous benefits for the community: air and noise pollution decrease drastically, more people walk and cycle,

and crime falls.

I think it is fair to say that these are seen almost universally to be positive changes.

You need only take a short stroll down Broad Street to see people frolicking amongst the flowers, making good use of the new seating to soak up the sun and watch the endless stream of tour parties and bicycles go by. On the whole, Oxford seems to have been largely receptive to its newest green space.

Even if you dispute the usefulness of low traffic neighbourhoods, what is more bizarre still is the furore over plans for 15-minute cities. Introducing fines for driving occasionally understandably could be irritating for car owners, but that it is linked to 15-minute cities to make it seem like a bigger issue is nonsensical. The 15-minute city concept is an urban planning idea in which daily necessities and services, such as work, shopping, education, healthcare, and leisure can be easily reached by a 15-minute walk or bike ride regardless of where one lives in the city.

What it certainly does not involve is restricting peoples’ movements, locking them in zones, and forcing them to get vaccinated. The fact that this is what our discourse over 15-minute cities has descended into is symptomatic of our contemporary politics. Issues are twisted out of proportion, seized on by other groups, and hijacked by conspiracy theorists. At the end of the day, I’m just shocked that a few flower planters can cause so much hysteria. Wanting to be able to walk to the shops shouldn’t be divisive: can we please get a sense of proportion?

Friday 26 May 2023 | The Oxford Student

10 | Comment

The overstated advantage of bilingualism

by Henri Abensour

The media’s faux pas in depicting bilingual intelligence

W

e all have that friend who can speak a bit of French. Always showing off, yakking about the many cognitive, neurological, and educational benefits of bilingualism. You roll your eyes discreetly, yet can’t help but wonder whether any of it is true. Is bilingualism genuinely beneficial?

Whilst there are many somewhat obvious benefits to bilingualism, possibly the most relevant one today is its usefulness in our globalized world. We live in a society that is becoming increasingly connected, which has led to a need for bilinguals who can bridge language barriers. Companies want to appeal to customers all around the world, and bilingual workers can help them do so. According to a report by New American Economy, the number of online job postings searching for bilingual workers almost tripled between 2010 and 2015, with these companies ranging from banks to healthcare firms. Bilinguals have a clear benefit when looking for a job, as they have one more advantage on their C.V. that can set them apart in a sea of other candidates.

However, there are other, simpler benefits to bilingualism that make everyday life easier.

The most common example of this is travel. You can’t deny that being able to speak the language that surrounds you is hugely useful, and sometimes desperately necessary. There’s an anecdote about a Pole who was visiting Mexico and buying sunglasses. The vendor offered an exorbitant price. Then the Pole started bargaining in perfect Spanish and the price was magically halved.

Yet the benefits extend be-

yond saving money - in fact, it can be a source of pleasure.

All bilinguals will know the satisfaction of eavesdropping on a conversation of some unsuspecting foreigners who are complaining about the “rudeness” of the passers-by; or, the comfort when helping a confused foreigner with directions.

And an important disregarded aspect is the appreciation of language you gain when you’re multilingual. You truly acquire an enjoyment not only of speaking, yet also the etymology of, and surprising links between, different languages.

One benefit that appears far later in life is the apparent resistance to dementia. As a fascinating study by Ellen Bialystok, the most prominent researcher in the study of the effect of bilingualism on the brain, concludes: “The bilinguals showed symptoms of dementia 4 years later than monolinguals”. The premise is that using multiple languages keeps the brain active and nimble, similar to solving crossword puzzles. This strengthens the brain, which can ward off or delay dementia.

This is a major benefit that in and of itself should push people to learn additional languages as early as possible.

You truly acquire an enjoyment not only of speaking, yet also the etymology of, and surprising links between, different languages.

Now comes the benefit that I find must be taken with a grain of salt: that bilingualism can make you smarter. You’ve most likely heard of the abundance of recent research supporting the idea of a “bilingual advan-

tage”. Such research claims that both languages are active in the brain even when speaking only one. This causes the brain to resolve a conflict between two languages, which reinforces its strength. A bilingual can therefore manage their brain and gain enhanced executive control, which allows them to mentally “organise” stimuli by importance. This might explain why bilingual children were found to resolve conflicts between shape and colour faster than monolinguals in another study by Bialystok. The bilinguals can ignore the useless information and focus entirely on the important elements.

However, bilinguals were also found to be far more efficient with tasks that have no need for the suppression of stimuli, such as memory and thought.

Why is that?

Bilinguals are constantly internally verifying which language to use, which leads to “a heightened ability to monitor the environment”, as an article from the New York Times states. This ability is subconsciously used in everyday life for many activities, such as cooking, driving, and communicating.

You may be wondering why I named this article as I did, after having described with such precision the many benefits of bilingualism. Well, there are many disadvantages that are frequently overlooked. I’m not talking about people constantly asking you to translate for them, or the mocking looks of disappointment you receive when you simply forget a word.

I’m not even referring to the assumed arrogance certain people see in you for merely using your other language in their

presence. No, I’m talking about the false or unverified information that has been published.

The “bilingual advantage” may not exist.

Angela de Bruin, a bilingual speaker and student of linguistics and neuroscience, originally believed there was an important link between cognitive ability and bilingualism, so she attempted to verify this.

She performed four tests in which the participants had to resolve a conflict, for example between shape and colour. The bilinguals had no advantage in three of the tests, which led to her doubting existing research.

She started to observe the conferences and publications in this field, believing there was a bias towards publishing studies refuting this idea.

Her findings show that at conferences, where researchers express their initial thoughts, the results were split approximately evenly between those that supported and those that opposed the idea. However, when published, the studies that supported the bilingual advantage were far more common in scientific journals than those that denied it. This demonstrates that the media has “a distorted image of the actual study outcomes of bilingualism, […] believing that the positive effect of bilingualism on nonlinguistic cognitive processes is strong and unchallenged”, as de Bruin believes.

The disadvantages are far greater than simple misrepresentation in the media. De Bruin continued her research, searching to determine what bilingualism actually affects.

She performed four different tests, only two of which involved resolving conflict with

the others involving focus or problem-solving. There was no difference found, except in one of the tests to resolve conflict.

The bilinguals were faster. Yet when the conflict was removed, they were slower.

Disadvantages were even found in linguistic ability. Bilinguals were found to have a smaller vocabulary in both of their respective languages than monolinguals. They also had greater difficulty in finding words in either language.

Their total vocabulary library is larger, so finding a single book takes longer. Bialystok has also studied the negative impacts of bilingualism, but the media rarely observes it.

A bilingual can therefore manage their brain and gain enhanced executive control, which allows them to mentally “organise” stimuli by importance.

This does not mean that the bilingual advantage does not exist or that you should never learn another language. It simply means you should be wary of what the media tells you, as there is no clear, accepted belief about bilingualism.

With the advance of technology, learning other languages may become less useful, counterintuitively. That may not be a positive change, as it could lead to certain languages and their respective cultures gradually disappearing. However, I still believe that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

So, go learn another language.

It may save you from having to do the crossword in thirty years, and it truly is enjoyable.

Image credit: rvacapinta via Flickr.

The Oxford Student | Friday 26 May 2023

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Youni – who are they and what do they do?

Ayomilekan Adegunwa in conversation with the founders of Youni

t last year’s Freshers’ Fair, there was a company that seemed to be attempting to generate some buzz for themselves. Over the past year they’ve handed out lots of stickers, accumulated BNOCs as ambassadors, put on some events and given away lots of free stuff. If you didn’t already know, I am referring to Youni. The startup has generated lots of publicity, but if I’m being completely honest, I didn’t really know what they actually did – until I sat down with them to talk about it.

Youni was set up by a group of former Oxford students who graduated last year. I met with Georgia, one of the co-founders, who did Spanish and Italian at Keble, Omar, another co-founder, who studied Law and French at Jesus and Q, the Head of Community, who did Philosophy and Theology at St. Benet’s Hall. The first thing I wanted to know about them was simple – what is Youni?

They described it as a ‘community and events platform built specifically for universities’, emphasising that at Oxford things are ‘fragmented’,

meaning that events often only spread through word of mouth – something which the entrepreneurs were keen to come out against.

…‘the highs are so tied to personal interactions and emotions – they last and they are very powerful… they are kind of the star that keeps you on track’.

Once they had this idea, they entered the Oxford All Innovate competition, which was run by the Oxford Foundry. They got to the final of the competition, allowing them to win some grant money for the fledgling business. Having started during their final years, the three continued to work on the company after graduation – but full time.

I asked how they’d found the transition into working on it full time, and they were honest, acknowledging the ups and downs – but maintaining that

it was ‘very empowering’ to be able to work with the heads of societies.

As I mentioned previously, their system of using ambassadors means that there is a significantly personal aspect to their business – as Q said to me, ‘the highs are so tied to personal interactions and emotions - they last and they are very powerful… they are kind of the star that keeps you on track’.

This personal element of the company really comes through on their social media – where recently they’ve begun a series of ’23 Questions’ (which is like a short form version of Vogue’s 73 questions). Through things like this, they aim to treat the people who organise societies ‘almost like celebrities’, showing them as examples of active students.

The plan for Youni doesn’t end with social media – the goal is to create an app to be ‘one platform you can go to, and you can just see, right, here’s what’s happening this week in Oxford’, in the words of Omar, the CEO. He added that he wants the app to be somewhere people can ‘actually see that information

and get that in seconds without having to kind of be distracted by incoming ads’. The lack of ads was intriguing to me – ads are often the route for similar businesses to make money.

This fed into one of the big questions I had about Youni – how does this admittedly cool idea work as a business?

… ‘the goal is to create an app to be ‘one platform you can go to, and you can just see, right, here’s what’s happening this week in Oxford’, In many ways, Youni almost sounds like a community project – like an initiative to help local societies and events find the local people who would love to come along. While that does sound great, it also doesn’t sound like very much of a business, which is why I was keen to find out more about how the actual business operates. With that in mind, I saved my biggest question for last: how is

this a viable business model?

In response to me asking how they planned to monetise it, they set out their plan. They want to be free for societies and students to use – so there will be no money coming from subscriptions. They also, as I mentioned previously, suggested they want to be ad-free. The avenue to monetisation for Youni will come through booking fees – in return for facilitating interactions between people, they would charge a fee. In this way, the app seems like it would be like a ticketing company, but with a more personal touch.

Only time will tell if this business plan will work – they are preparing for a launch in Trinity Term 2023, and are still optimising their business plan for engagement for the time being.

I look forward to seeing their progress Image credit: Youni Image description: Founders of Youni; Q, Georgia, and Omar

The Oxford Student | Friday 26 May 2023

Profile | 13

Martin Alfonsin Larsen interviews J. Smith Cameron

“When writers write older women, I feel that they miss the innocence and bewilderment of people who are in middle age.”

J. Smith Cameron is an American actress who has spent a storied career mostly in off-Broadway theatre. She has recently shot to fame as Gerri Kellman in the hit HBO series, Succession, starring alongside Brian Cox, Matthew Macfadyen and Jeremy Strong.

Cameron spoke at Brasenose College for their annual Arts Week. She spoke to me about her career in New York theatre and beyond, the heights which Succession has reached, and the roles she’d still love to play.

MAL: Was there a specific play, experience, or group of people, from your time working in New York theatre that has really stuck with you?

JSC: I feel like there have been many, and they’ve come in stages. There’s not been one epiphany about it. That’s one of the great things about theatre and acting in general - it’s sort of like being reincarnated when you play different roles. You get to be different people in your imagination, and there’s lots of fresh starts. Every time you play someone, you start researching, either into their psyche or where they’re from, or what their work is. In a way, it’s been an education, being an actor.

MAL: How have you changed your process, going from theatre to film and then TV? Obviously, theatre is very all-encompassing, because you’re on stage seven nights a week - you might even be doing it eight times because you’ve got a matinee on the weekend.

JSC: Definitely; all three are very different. In the theatre, the most striking thing that’s different is that you have rehearsal; you get to really prepare for it. With film and television, you might have a read through, or you might have some token rehearsals. But

there’s nothing like in the theatre where you rehearse, where you have an eight hour day, or six hours with no lunch - your choice. That’s incredible, because you get to really investigate the play slowly, learn it, sleep on it every night, try different things, and have discussions. If it’s a new play, sometimes the writer gets involved in that process too, and rewrites the scene and maybe rewrites it again, or puts it back to how it was. But you try lots of things, you get to know each other, and it’s so different in camerawork, because you’re just kind of thrown in that situation. That was the biggest adjustment to becoming a television actress, because you really don’t get to prepare. You have to rehearse in a vacuum, and learn your lines by yourself.

Sometimes it’s almost hard to remember lines, because you envisioned a scene in a certain way. For example, you and I are seated at this table. But what if we came to work, and this was a scene we were playing? We were just walking around the Brasenose quad in the rain with the umbrella; you might have trouble remembering lines, because you’d imagine just sitting, looking at each other. In that scenario, we would be looking straight ahead; millions of things can throw you, because you didn’t even realise you imagined it a certain way. But you did, and you act on it.

MAL: What drew you to play Gerri in Succession? Was there a quality to the writing, and to the character, that really drew you to her?

JSC: When I first had to audition, [the writers] had a couple of scenes for me to read. I didn’t know what the situations referred to, because they weren’t just from the pilot script; they were from up-and-coming scripts that weren’t finished.

If the scenes were with Roman or Kendall, the guys would say something crude to me.

If [Gerri] had been a male character, they would have said something crude back, or not have proceeded in the same way. Since I was a woman, there was a lip biting. I was determined to be unflappable in the wider sense, and I refused to let them throw me off. That became an inner struggle for my character; to be grossed out by them all the time, but [...] not wanting to let them see that I was ever thrown.

MAL: What are you going to miss most about the show?

JSC: Gosh, everything. I love the cast. I’ve never worked with a cast that was so uniformly accomplished and fun to be around. They are the most perfect, funny, and sharp individuals.

Even to be in a hit show; when it started, I felt like it was going to be a hit, but the critics didn’t pick it up right away, and I wasn’t a regular character at first. Gerri was supposed to be a recurring role; she was in the corporate takeover episodes, going up to episode six, but she wasn’t necessarily going to be in the story.

MAL: You’ve had a decadeslong career in New York theatre. Did you feel ready when Succession became a hit? Was it a shock to you when people started recognising you in the street, or when the second season happened, people sent you pictures of Roman and Gerri together on social media?

JSC: I guess that I wasn’t personally expecting to get that kind of attention, but I thought it was deserving of being a hit.

I hadn’t ever been in anything that was that popular, because I’ve always chosen things that I thought were artistically good.

Usually, those things that are artistically good aren’t always hugely popular. They’re usually a little bit more for cult audiences, especially in television.

I was thrown by that, in a good way.

MAL: I’ve been watching TV shows since I was 13 or 14; the

first show that I ever watched was House of Cards. In the show, Kevin Spacey and Kate Mara have a very sordid relationship; she’s 20-something, he’s 50-something. But in Succession, Gerri is 60-something, and Roman is a younger guy.

Do you think that’s indicative of a reversing shift in ageism, in that women are more accepted nowadays in playing those kinds of roles?

JSC: I don’t know; I think it’s a bit radical, because I think that the only reason they put that in there was that it seemed absurd to them. It doesn’t usually happen; it’s a social norm for older men to be with young women, but it isn’t the other way around, and I think that’s a bit unique. This was largely due to Kieran Culkin, who just started flirting with me on the set, and we’ve known each other for years, so we were friends. But he thought it was funny that his character would flirt with me, so he started it, and then the writers captured it and said, “This is a fun idea.

Let’s see where it goes.” I think that they never meant it to go past that scene where I have to make him go to the bathroom…

I think it was supposed to fall out of it as far as that, but then it persisted, really.

MAL: Is there a dream role, be it theatre, TV, or film, or even a character archetype from any medium, that you really want to play that you haven’t been able to yet?

JSC: I get asked this a lot.

There are a lot of parts I want to play, but there is one thing that I think as I age in this business. When writers write older women, I feel that they miss the innocence and bewilderment of people who are in middle age. They don’t have the appetite of youth, and they don’t have the assurance of old age.

Their own parents are beginning to be frail; their kids are beginning to grow up and leave the house. It’s a very vulnerable time, from 50 to 70, or 40

”

to 60. That used to be old age, but now it seems like extended middle age, because people live and work for longer. But I don’t think that writers write women over 50 who have that innocent quality that actually is true of them. It’s a very soft and uncertain time emotionally for women.

MAL: If you had to give one piece of advice to someone who’s trying to make it in the business; someone who’s in New York theatre in their 20s, what would it be?

JSC: Say yes to as many opportunities as you can, even if you think they’re not going to be important or move the score forward; just try to get experience. Say yes to things, and be tenacious.

I think that luck is just readiness and opportunity coming together, so keep trying. Also observe your fellow human beings, because that’s the best character information you can get. I like to sit on the subway and just look around and watch the other people as they ride home or ride to work, and try to just channel what they’re feeling and who they are. It’s amazing what you can get from just observing them.

MAL: People-watching.

JSC: But you have to be cunning, because if they’re aware of it, they freeze up. But the tube is great for it, because people kind of have this social contract where they just behave naturally. It’s like they’re in private, but they’re all crammed together. In a waiting room, the same thing happens, where people act like they’re alone in the room. It’s oddly intimate, because people are just in their private worlds. It’s excellent for writers too - it’s a wonderful exercise.

The conversation was edited for clarity.

Full article available on our website.

Identity

Friday 26 May 2023 | The Oxford Student

14 | Identity Deputy Editor: Sami Jalil Section Editors: Farrah Bergstrom, Georgia Ferris, Anna Ashkinazi oxstu.identity@gmail.com

‘Emotional aftermath’ T

he moment I can remember most clearly of that night is my fifteen-yearold sister laughing at me as I repeatedly fall in the sand. She loves making fun of me when I’ve had a bit too much to drink and I laugh with her, not thinking about the fact that my state is unusual for having only had half a gin and tonic. After I am helped up, I feel so nauseous that just moments later I am back in the sand again. My family gathers around me, forming a half circle as they look down at me, and more than anything I feel embarrassed. I am barely able to hear them over the static in my ears. A waiter hurries towards us and offers a cotton bud soaked in ammonia spirit.

The beach was so crowded a few minutes ago, but after the last fireworks had gone off, the crowd streamed out of the village to their respective hotels.

“The meaning of her words only dawned on me the next morning...”

My stepbrother moans that he wants to go home, and I want to shout at him that “yes, I too want to go home, I just wish my legs would obey me”, but my tongue gets stuck in my throat. My mother insists that we should go to the hospital.

I can think clearly enough to know that going to a hospital means needles and I protest vehemently, but after trying and failing to walk for the fourth time I give in.

At the hospital, I lie on a stretcher, irritated by the fluorescent lighting while a nurse pricks my finger repeatedly to

draw blood. Though I feel relatively conscious, I am not able to properly speak - a very scary sensation.

“How many drinks did she have?” the nurse asks my mother.

“Just one.”

“Sometimes one is enough.” she says. The meaning of her words only dawned on me the next morning once the veil of nausea had lifted.

Back from the hospital, I spend the next few days in bed contemplating what happened. Could it, in that specific moment, have been prevented?

Was it my fault? The answer to both questions is no. We are very quick to look for our own missteps in situations like this.

It feels like a loss of control to admit that the incident couldn’t have been avoided. And even if it could have been prevented, why should the blame be on the victim rather than the perpetrator?

The apparent randomness of the event occupies me. The only time something could have slipped into the drink was at the busy bar where it was prepared, but I was sitting with my family on bean bags in the sand just a few yards away.

Of course, I’ve heard stories about drink spiking before, but I’ve always held the somewhat delusional belief that “these things happen, but not to me.”

After seeing countless PSAs, the message is clear: watch your drink at all times, and don’t accept drinks from strangers that you didn’t watch being prepared. That will surely prevent an incident, right? As long as I’m not careless, I’ll be fine.

At the hospital that night, it took me a long time to accept

that it wasn’t a lack of hydration or low blood sugar that made me completely lose control over my body. The thought that a stranger might harm me has crossed my mind, but I’d never come quite this close. I’d always considered myself lucky in a way, only having to deal with the occasional catcall. Being 6 foot tall at the age of 17 contributed to my feeling of relative safety when walking home at night.

One time, at about five in the morning in London, a cab driver insisted on walking me to Victoria Coach Station, which he couldn’t access by car. After I told him that I was perfectly comfortable walking the few blocks to the station on my own, he said I was a “brave girl”.

Following that well-meaning though patronising comment, the five-minute walk was drenched in uncomfortable silence.

Police statements had been issued prior to New Year’s Eve in both Yorkshire and Manchester. They warned to be ‘extra careful’ after COVID restrictions were fully lifted and had predicted an increase in spikings. Drink spiking has been titled an ‘epidemic’ since large gatherings and celebrations returned back to normal.

Even with increased statistics, the numbers aren’t quite clear, as a lot of cases go unreported.

It is common for victims to feel hopeless because of a lack of evidence. Feelings of embarrassment are also common, as well as not wanting to relive traumatic memories.

Still, I believe reporting these types of crimes is an important step as it may lead to the venue (clubs, pubs, etc.) implementing

“How getting my drink spiked made me rethink my vulnerability”

by Fay Lorien better safety measures. One incident being recorded may aid with prevention in the future. In 2021, a programme by National Pubwatch with Drinkaware was launched to prepare and give adequate training in hospitality venues. Programmes like these are incredibly important to make spaces safer on a larger and systemic scale.

“...how do we cope with this violation of autonomy?”

The most important takeaway I have from that night is a new awareness of my own vulnerability. Though of course an uncomfortable experience, I was very fortunate in a lot of ways: I was always with my family, a hospital was close by and I hadn’t even finished the drink containing the date rape drug.

Considering the symptoms I’d experienced, having a larger dose could have been extremely dangerous.

Though there are precautions to be made to prevent drink spiking at clubs or other gatherings, life is incredibly unpredictable. Despite campaigns and awareness about the topic and the precautions we take, drink spiking remains a problem. There are ways to minimise the threat, but it is near impossible to eliminate completely. In my case, I’d been at a family-friendly New Year’s celebration on a beach in Koh Samui. As soon as my drink arrived it didn’t leave my sight.

The question remains: how do

we cope with this violation of autonomy?

The first step to recover from the incident was acknowledging the rage and confusion I was feeling towards whoever had spiked me and sent me to the hospital at two in the morning. The fact that I didn’t have a clear image of them confused me. Someone completely unknown to me had done me harm! It made me consider my own safety, which I’d taken for granted. Self-reflection made me realise the somewhat uncomfortable thought that prior to this incident I’d felt a kind of superiority for never being too concerned with my own vulnerability in public spaces.

I used to view friends’ insistences on, for example, texting if I got home safe after dark, as slightly overkill. Now I have a renewed appreciation for their concern.

The most useful word of advice I can give to anyone who might have experienced something similar is to practise self-compassion. Furthermore, you don’t need to deal with this experience all on your own. Speaking with people you trust or a counsellor about any fear, anger, paranoia, etc. can be incredibly valuable. I believe there is a balance to be found between being careful and being paranoid, but as with most traumas, that is a process which needs time.

Image credit: Blane Aitchison

Identity | 15

The Oxford Student | Friday 26 May 2023

‘Lessons from Auschwitz’ Farrah Bergstrom reports on a conference by the Holocaust Educational Trust

T

he Holocaust Educational Trust runs Lessons from Auschwitz, a program that allows campus leaders to participate in training to combat antisemitism on campus and includes a visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland. As a student journalist, I had the opportunity to attend.

I tried to go into the program with no expectations. But I did go into it with the goal of understanding Jewish trauma and the ways it can manifest in campus life, particularly when instances of hate and antisemitism arise. Before our trip to Auschwitz, we all participated in pre-departure seminars.

During these seminars we had in-depth discussions surrounding antisemitism and the dehumanization of the Jewish people throughout history, and also took the opportunity to learn about the diversity of Jewish

heritage and make efforts to rehumanize Jewish people by learning about their lives before the Holocaust. We also got to hear from a Holocaust survivor, Janine Webber. Listening to Webber speak was a harrowing experience, and yet she demonstrated a resiliency I had never encountered before. She told her story with incredible wit and humor despite the atrocities she experienced, from watching her seven-yearold brother be buried alive by an S.S officer to hiding from the Nazis. One would not expect such a positive perspective from a person who experienced these things - and yet Webber’s final advice to us was to “help people.” When asked about the rise of antisemitism today, she was vocal about her deep concerns regarding racism and religious discrimination. When asked if she was concerned antisemitism was on the rise

again, she straightforwardly replied, “Aren’t you?”. I had never heard from a Holocaust survivor in person prior to this program and listening to Webber speak put things into a new perspective for me. I highly encourage those who haven’t yet had a similar opportunity to seek out these Holocaust survivors (who are comfortable and willing to speak) and listen to them or have a conversation, especially as the survivor population become more advanced in age.

“This isn’t just a problem for Jewish people.”

During our visit to Poland, we visited both the Auschwitz and Birkenau sub-camps. Prior to our visit, the Lessons from Auschwitz staff emphasised that there was no right or wrong way to feel when visiting the camps. What I hadn’t anticipated was just how much of a physical toll the visit to the camps would take on me.

I’m not Jewish myself, nor do I personally know anyone who was impacted directly by the Holocaust, and yet there were times where I felt ill walking around. In my experience, as soon as you step on the grounds, the atmosphere gets heavy. As I noted earlier, there were moments where I felt very nauseous. The first was seeing all of the hair that was removed when people initially entered the camps. When I first walked into the long room, I turned to the right and saw just one small glass case with braids and loose hair – but as I was guided through the room, I turned around and saw that the entire opposite wall was filled with mounds and mounds of hair.

The other moment that put things into perspective (and made me quite sick) was walking into one of the first gas chambers in Auschwitz. What was particularly nauseating about seeing it was that, if you looked closely, you could see where the people in the chambers would have been scratch-

ing and clawing at the walls as they were dying from the poisonous gas. Needless to say, by the end of our time in Poland I was utterly exhausted - both emotionally and physically. At the end of our tour, the organizers of the program held a small candlelit ceremony in remembrance of those who perished in Auschwitz-Birkenau. “...clawing at the

walls...”

Participating in Lessons from Auschwitz was a deeply sad but necessary experience.

Like Webber, I too am worried that we as a society are moving backwards when it comes to addressing antisemitism. Listening to world leaders refuse to denounce antisemitism or make antisemitic comments themselves and still be rallied around should be deeply concerning to us all. This isn’t just a problem for Jewish people. We all bear a collective responsibility to fight anti-semitism - so let’s get to it.

‘Here: Swinging The Lens’ Sami Jalil reports on a workshop at St Catherine’s College with Adjoa Andoh

O

n May 21st 2023, Adjoa Andoh ran a workshop called ‘Swinging The Lens’ at St Catherine’s College.

I got an email from one of my tutors about this calling for musicians to participate, and though I had no idea what to expect, I felt like this was something I needed to do. And I most certainly was not disappointed.

‘Swinging The Lens’ brought together people from across the University of Oxford to create a performance centred around the theme of “here”.

The workshop began with exercises that helped ground us in the moment, involving guided meditation, controlled collective breathing and gentle

movement to relax our bodies and minds. As a vocal warmup, Andoh split the room into three sections and had us sing together in canon. Though seemingly simple at first, it was a magical moment when a room of dozens of people burst out into one unified symphony of sound.

As someone who struggles with dissociation, I found this workshop to be incredibly enlightening and valuable for my own mindfulness. In our society, it is so easy to get caught up in what we need to do in the future, or what we did in the past, when really the most important thing to grasp is what we are doing right now. Andoh

had us write for five minutes around the theme “here”, and the passage I wrote during this time is printed below. I think there’s something profound about capturing a specific moment like that, and it was wonderful to hear all the different ways people had interpreted what it means to be “here”. But this wasn’t all that the workshop had to offer. Andoh had a wonderful final goal in mind, and these exercises were just the start.

The workshop itself was centred around drama and spoken word, with freely improvised musical interludes acting as a thread between acts. After the warm-up, we split off into groups to work on our own sections with the ultimate goal of threading them together into

a performance. The excerpts read by the actors thickened the air with the intensity of their themes, and the freedom and creativity of the improvised music complimented these well. The final workshop will be held on the 11th June 2023, and is certainly an event that is not to be missed.

“I am here in a chair. My physical body is tense and sore, but my spiritual body is free. It collides with the souls of the others in the room and fills the air. Here is a collective: here is present, the present mind that lives and breathes amongst us all. Here is now, and here is unique. Here I feel the chair on my back, the ground beneath my feet. Here I hear pens scribbling, mumbles and coughing and crackling paper. Here I hear the sounds

of life, the sounds that define us, the sounds that breathe and live and move with us. Here I hear the sounds that show we are alive.

I look down and type with two hesitant thumbs, and in my peripheral I see the moment we are here. I see shoes, stairs, windows, bricks, and all the things that exist here and now. I see the world framed by my glasses, and I see the world through my own window. Time flows like a river through this moment, and it carries here to the past and carries us to the future. But wherever we are on the river, we are here, and we are now. Our souls touch all parts of the river of time, and we exist as one. We live and breathe together, as one unit, here and now.”

Image credit: Sami Jalil

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16 | Columns

Friday 26 May 2023 | The Oxford Student

Behind the BNOC with Amanda Li Heart-toHearts with Hamish

T

his week, we decided to delve into the realm of postgrads, who seem quite elusive to me: they’re less plugged into social life compared to undergrads and forced to be quite independent learners. So it was to my surprise that Hamish Nash, famed tagger on Oxfess, was in fact in his penultimate year of not only a Masters degree, but of a phD. I made the trek to the Oriel MCR to have a chat with him, fully unsure about who on earth I was going to speak to outside of the Facebook knowledge I could glean from his profile.

My main question was simple: why tag each other?

I gleaned that HN had tagged SH for months, and tagging a Cambridge student in every single Oxfess would be nothing if not annoying. “He is the one friend of mine who would not block me…I just thought it was funny.” The two are friends from their research group at Cambridge, where they both go, to the immense confusion of about everyone I knew. Hamish was simply placed to do ex-

periments in a lab near Oxford, and he got a spot at Oriel out of pure convenience: Oxford was closer than Cambridge. Hamish and Shu have a more casual relationship now that they were busy with their degrees: when I interviewed Hamish, we tried calling Shu after Snapchatting him a few times. He didn’t pick up.

As we gave up after the second call, Hamish explained how the tagging Shu on Oxfess really began to blow up. “There’s always something outrageous on Oxfess, and I started tagging him in the truly outrageous stuff. Shu would reply occasionally, but he opens his facebook about once a month to see a wall of tags. He didn’t see that I tagged him only in one or two per day, so he’d reply by tagging me in everything, and it just spiralled.” Attention was drawn to the tagging soon after Michaelmas, with Oxfesses written about just how annoying seeing every tag was, and the two became a constant, if not irritating, presence on the Oxfess scroll.

It came to the point where things like Hamish’s Facebook picture changes were scrutinized and constantly commented on. (He forced me to include one of these pictures, the one with him in his car, dressed up

in water polo gear.) The car was his own, as he proudly said, a BMW that he keeps parked at his house near Westgate. As someone who doesn’t drive, living and going to school in walkable cities, this made no sense to me, but he seemed to enjoy having the car, so I didn’t press more. He picked up water polo when he first began at Oxford, gradually growing to enjoy the sport. Hamish loved crew dates for water polo, and he got the position as social sec for the squash team so he could plan crew dates for them as well. Crew dates were certainly a large part of Oxford culture, and from there, he got to meet a large variety of both undergrads and postgrads that he’s befriended throughout the years. No wonder he’s so wellknown…

When asked what other things he does in his spare time outside the physics phD, Hamish noted a fondness for balls– both Oxford and Cambridge.

He’s been to plenty throughout his years in academia, noting that they were once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to attend.

He goes to every Park End as well, relishing Oxford’s club life compared to the “boring” equivalent Cambridge clubs.

Hamish, despite being a tab, still loves Oxford more, mostly

because of the vibrant social scene compared to the more antisocial “nerds” populating Cambridge. He also noted the fun of being in a central college here compared to Girton, which was his Cambridge college. Being two and a half miles out from the city center meant that he was mostly going between the lab and his college.

We finished with how wellknown he’s become. On whether he’d continue tagging, he quipped, “It’s not a unique claim to fame anymore. I can say I’m the OG, but it’s no longer unique.” With the rise of random tagging (my friend Joe has begun tagging Hamish in posts as well) on Oxfess, Hamish feels that the copying has taken all the fun out of the tags. It was certainly fun in terms of getting the two of them second on the BNOC list (he thought it was incredible how two random Cambridge kids were on the Cherwell BNOC list), though Shu didn’t know what a BNOC was and he didn’t even vote in the poll. “We wanted to see how we could rig it for us, but brainstorming ways to cheat the form took so long that we didn’t even get to do anything before it closed.” Hamish was shocked yet joyed to learn that random people had thought of the two enough to put him sec-

ond on the list.

Perhaps his claim to fame was not as scholarly or activist as the others on the Oxford radar, but Hamish has certainly made a name for himself in the ranks of Oxfess. Please don’t copy him in an attempt to get your name well-known, though: it’s honestly gotten quite annoying.

Amanda Li

Columns Columns

Columns | 17

The Oxford Student | Friday 26 May 2023

B

A Guide to Oxford Balls

alls are a staple in the Oxford social calendar, being held by almost every college and society at the university. One issue with Oxford’s balls is how expensive they are. With tickets starting around £100 for society balls, and often approaching £300 for college commemoration balls, it’s important that you make the most of your ball experience. Here are some Blane’s Style Files (TM) certified tips to help you have fun at any balls you go to.

Black Tie Vs White Tie Most college commemoration balls are ‘white tie’ and most society balls are ‘black tie’, but what does this mean?

Black tie is, essentially, a suit with a bow tie. Despite the use of ‘black’ in the title, no element of the outfit technically has to be black, so why not experiment with a coloured velvet jacket, or a patterned bow tie?

Optional extras for black tie include a pair of fun cufflinks, a lapel pin, or a cummerbund.

On the other hand, white tie is much more formal, and a much stricter dress code. In terms of suits, a white tie outfit consists of a tailcoat, a white bowtie, and a white waistcoat. White tie trousers often have a black satin stripe down the outside of each leg, and white tie shirts often have a wing collar, meaning that you can see the band of the bowtie as it goes round your neck, and so a pre-tied bowtie is very easily noticed and can look out of place.

Ball organisers sometimes send out discounts to ticketholders so that they can rent their white tie ensembles for less than the cost of buying them outright, but the total cost of hiring white tie is still usually more than £100.

I was lucky enough to find my white tie outfit by scouring charity shops,

and eventually pieced it all together for around £65, although it did take a while. If you have the time and the patience, this is definitely a route I recommend, if not only because you then own the outfit and don’t have to rent anything if you go to any more white tie balls in the future.

Dresses There is much less of a distinction between black tie dresses and white tie dresses than there is between black tie suits and white tie suits. At both events, the safest option is a ballgown, but shorter cocktail dresses are usually acceptable at black tie events.

Historically, black and white tie dress have tended to be unpatterned, and in darker, jewel toned colours, but this isn’t something that really matters nowadays.

Something that isn’t often mentioned is that balls can often get cold at night, even in summer. I recommend taking a shawl or a scarf, or even a bolero jacket to add a unique flair to your outfit while also keeping you warm.

Accessories are really important at balls, so break out your fanciest earrings, necklace, and rings to really make your outfit stand out.

Shoes No matter what else you wear to a ball, make sure you are wearing comfortable shoes. Balls can go on until 6am, and you can often be stood up the entire time. Some people take a pair of flip flops with them to change into later on in the night, which is a really good idea if you’re planning on wearing high heels

Blane Aitchison

A

Arcadia

fter a long weekend of confining myself to the LMH library (as a result of going out two nights in a row and getting very little revision done towards the end of the week), the 5th week blues were already beginning to lower my serotonin levels, even though it was only Monday morning. Nevertheless, to cure my sleep-deprivation – this was the result of me binge-watching the new Bridgerton series, not working – I decided to go to Greggs (not Pret, because I’m not like other girls) to get a coffee, and more importantly, to visit a bookshop I’d often heard about: ‘Arcadia’.

I tried my best to avoid getting trampled on by the hordes of schoolchildren and tourists marching down Cornmarket Street, and turned onto St Michael’s Street — Arcadia is the first thing building on the right. The shopfront was very charming, with a carefully arranged selection of flowers and books, certainly living up to the utopian harmony suggested by its classically inspired name.

been at least seventy years old — I would have taken if if I had a bigger bag with me than my flimsy tote.

I talked to the owner, a lovely, softspoken man called Michael Keirs, who runs the shop with his wife, Andrea Keirs. He told me that the shop was initially founded in the 1940s as a paperback-only shop, which the couple bought in 1975. They have been co-running the shop since, for almost fifty years. He gave me some much-needed validation about how Classics and French was an incredibly interesting and useful degree and my parents must be proud of me, and from the way he spoke about the shop, it was obvious that he genuinely adored his job.

After a heartwarming conversation, he asked me if I had bought any books yet, and when I told him that I had, he asked me to follow him to a beautiful selection of postcards — I was able to take one for free, as a ‘little gift’, in his words. I left the shop feeling very fulfilled, with a free postcard, a birthday card with a very As soon as I stepped in, at the risk cute watercolour of a badger on it, of using a cliché, it genuinely felt and a copy of Vladimir Rybakov’s like stepping into an oasis of calm ‘The Burden’. compared to the chaos just metres away. Maybe this is a result of contaminating my brain with too much Bridgerton, but the interior resembled something from the Regency or Victorian era — the classical music in the background might have also contributed to this. There was such a wide range of products in a relatively small space: birthday cards, calendars, postcards, and candles, to name a few.

Tasneem Jodiyawalla

Many of the books had been carefully wrapped up in plastic for their protection, especially the older ones, with some dating back to the 1940s1960s. There was even a little crate containing a selection of free books, within which I spotted a massive French dictionary which must have

ssnnm muullooC C

18 | Columns

Friday 26 May 2023 | The Oxford Student

Eastern European Expeditions:

A

fter Zagreb, I had a spare night until I needed to be in Split to meet a buddy. So I went to Zadar, conveniently located equidistant between the two and interestingly the location of that Top Gear episode where they made fire engines. The drive down to Zadar, right in the middle of the famous Dalmatian Coast, was truly breathtaking – barren mountains, rocky coves, distant islands and water of pure blue.

I thought it would be a pretty sweet spot to do some hiking, although I did worry about the practicalities of pitching a tent in the gravelly brush. An adventure for another time, at least.

Zadar itself pleased me enormously. I only had about 18 hours there, so I had to get busy from the get-go. I took the walk from the bus station to my hostel at breakneck speed, rationalising to myself that the less time I had to trek with my backpack in Croatia’s summer sun the better. I only stopped to witness two tortoises copulating. It was weird, especially the noises from the male. After two minutes of committed spectating, I began to feel like a bit of a voyeur and so left the two beshelled lovers to it. I reached the hostel soon after, drenched in sweat and completely famished, but there wasn’t time to scran or shower if I wanted to see the city before the sun went down.

Bags dropped, hostel pool table duly noted, I headed down to the coast. Zadar has a promenade of sorts that stretches for a good couple of miles along the water, with stunning views over to islands with names like Ugljan. There are loads of cliff jumping spots, courts for basketball and futsal, and openair swimming pools and bays made from weathered concrete.

The whole place was very alive, joyous even, an encapsulation of everything great about being by the seaside (forgive the nursery rhyme). The tranquillity was briefly ruptured by a man shouting loudly in Croa-

Experimental Instruments in Zadar

tian while watching his car get towed. His position was understandable, but amongst the crowd of bemused beachgoers there was little empathy.

Moving on towards the Old Town – yep, yet another one – I went through a little park and met some cats who were inhabiting some sort of derelict concrete structure, likely a relic of the Yugoslav War. I then came across a quaint harbour filled with small sailing boats at the base of the town walls, of which more than two had smooth jazz on the radio, which I like. The Old Town itself was pretty nice, whitewashed walls, a couple of lovely, sunlit Dalmatian-style churches, an old Roman forum, marble alleys that reflected the setting sun beautifully but were very slippery, a square that for some reason had five wells in it. It was refreshingly quiet too, as I was there in that lull of the tourist day between the beach and dinner where you lie on your bed eating crisps and sipping on Fanta Lemon™, as the stereotype goes.

The promenade proper also was situated in the Old Town, evident from its carefully spaced palm trees and pair of riviera-style hotels overlooking the seafront. It was along this charming stretch that I would come across what Zadar is arguably most famous for: its Sea Organ. You don’t really notice it from afar, it simply blends in with the rest of the pristine promenade, but then, as you approach, its sonorous tones wrap around you and draw you in. A network of chambers and tubes beneath the marble stairs of the promenade combined with the lapping waves of the sea produce an other-worldly, Eno-esque soundscape of interlocking harmonies that simultaneously evoke feelings of reassurance and unease. It was cool for a while but then I grew bored with the lack of tempo change, so I headed back to find some food.

Back at the hostel I had a quick

dinner consisting of tomatoes, an entire cucumber and some bread and ham. Newly sated, I got stuck into beer and pool with some other hostellers, taking great pleasure in thrashing an extremely tedious man from LA, albeit being carried by a guy who had competed in amateur tournaments back in NZ. In order to shift us from the hostel to avoid noise complaints, our hostess brought us out a tray of raki shots before sending us on our merry way. The night was spent in a bar that was actually just a fenced off bit of Five Wells Square and that had a horrible pop-art portrait of Drake on the door to the gents. All in all, Zadar was pretty mint, a chill spot replete with opportunities for relaxation, exploring and nightlife in equal measure.

The next morning, I was sad to leave the city that had so endeared itself to me, but such was the schedule. The next four days were spent in Split and on the island of Hvar, neither of which I particularly enjoyed.

Lacking in the charm of smaller spots like Zadar, replacing it with a brazen party culture that was neither interesting nor unique, but certainly overpriced, the pair constituted the most disappointing leg of the first six weeks of the trip. It is what it is. I can always think about the Sea Organ to cheer myself up. In a bit.

Jonah Poulard

The Oxford Student | Friday 26 May 2023

Deputy Editor: Blane Aitchison Section Editor: Daisy Outram oxstu.pink@gmail.com

Pink

Pink | 19

OverWerked: On the Oversaturation of Drag Race

Marco Stomboli

S

ince its inception in 2009, RuPaul’s Drag Race has had 15 normal seasons, 8 All Star seasons, 5 UK seasons, seasons focussing on queens from Thailand, Canada, The Netherlands, Australia, Spain, Italy, France, The Philippines, Belgium, Sweden, Brazil, Mexico, and Germany.

This onslaught of drag has led fans to criticise the show for becoming overproduced, with many also lamenting the perceived drop in quality of recent seasons.

All Stars 8, the most recent season in which queens from previous seasons return for a chance at Ru-demption, was announced only 5 days after the winner of season 15 was crowned, and fans com-

plained that many of the queens weren’t ‘All Stars’, with many of them being queens who sashayed away early in their original seasons.

All Stars 2 was a season that came an entire 4 years after the original All Stars season aired, meaning that the anticipation and excitement of seeing fan-favourite queens had time to build up. Whilst the new schedule of an All Stars season every year does mean that

lesser-known queens get their time in the spotlight again, it also means that fans are finding it difficult to root for queens they haven’t had time to get to know in the main seasons, and eventually the producers will run out of past queens to call back.

“Fans are finding it difficult to root for queens they haven’t had time to get to know in the main seasons” The more frequent seasons have also given fans bigger insight into the production of the show, with many complaining of the ‘edits’ that certain queens have received. These archetypal edits (including the ‘delusional’ edit, the ‘villain’ edit, and the ‘rivalry’ edit) have become all too noticeable for avid fans, and the producers have, in turn, been vilified by the fans for trying to invent drama that never existed.

The lack of drama has also frustrated fans, who claim that the interactions between the queens no longer have the ‘organic’ feel that they used to. This has led to fans feeling dissatisfied that

there have been fewer iconic moments in recent seasons.

If you think about the best moments of Drag Race, most of them come from the earlier seasons. Shangela’s Sugar Daddy monologue, “Backrolls?!”, and Willam’s disqualification all came from the first 5 seasons. However, some queens have stated that a fear of being cancelled online by fans is what made them hold back, because social media presence has become a more valuable resource to queens since the first few seasons aired.

Furthermore, the issue of editing, paired with accusations of queens being given strict contracts that mean they have to run all of their events past the producers for approval, as well as them having to appear at certain events after their time on the show, means that the producers and RuPaul himself are becoming rapidly less popular with the fans.

“The big question now is ‘How do we fix this?’”

The big question now is “How do we fix this?”

The easiest solution is to go back to the previous sched-

ule of regular seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race airing every year and All Stars seasons airing more sporadically, with at least a year of two being left between them so that anticipation can build up. However, in this consumerist age, fans could just as easily be disappointed by the lack of Drag Race content this could create.

Image Credits: VH1/World of Wonder Productions, DVSROSS, via WikiMedia Commons

All things considered, there is essentially a stand off between fans who want quality seasons and producers who want entertaining seasons at any cost – a situation where no one is really to blame.

Do you want to write for the Oxford Student’s Pink Section? Join the contributor’s Facebook group via the QR code below to view our content calls, or email oxstu.pink@gmail.com if you want to become a section editor!

20 | Features

Features

Friday 26 May 2023 | The Oxford Student

Deputy Editor: Frankie Coy Section Editors: Haochen Wang, Grace Rees, Purav Menon features@oxfordstudent.com

What’s in a name?

by Frankie Coy, Editor

D The Sackler Empire behind America’s Opioid Crisis

T

he announcement that the University of Oxford is removing the Sackler name from all buildings, spaces, and staff positions has reminded people of the history of the family. However, the recent action by Oxford University is the definition of too little, too late. The controversies and legacy of the Sackler family has been well-known for many years with 2,600 states and local governments in the United States having taken legal action against the Sackler owned Purdue Pharma, specifically the painkiller OxyContin, and the family themselves, in 2019.

The Louvre was the first major museum to remove the Sackler name in 2019 and in 2021 the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who accepted a $3.5 million donation from Arthur Sackler for a new wing containing the Temple of Dendur, also dropped the name. Fellow universities, such as the University of Edinburgh in 2021, followed this trend.

Therefore, the announcement from Oxford University in 2023 was not unprecedented, with many other institutions taking this step a few years previously.

Moreover, the Sackler name will remain on the Clarendon Arch and on the Ashmolean’s donor board, as a record of their donations which have totalled between £10 to 15 million since 1993. Oxford argues that this is for ‘educational purposes’ and that no donations have been received from the Sackler family since 2019. Yet, the recent announcement has left me feeling underwhelmed, too small a gesture being made too late.

Who are the Sackler family?

I was introduced to the Sackler family by Patrick Radden Keefe’s book Empire of Pain.

The book chronologically details the history of the family from Arthur, Mortimer, and Raymond Sackler, the three children of Jewish immigrants in the 1930s, to the development and marketing of OxyContin, a highly addictive opioid.

OxyContin heavily contributed to the opioid crisis which claimed 500,000 American

lives which began in the 1990s.

The marketing of OxyContin, introduced to the market in 1996, played down its addictive qualities. Purdue Pharma marketing claimed the drug was less addictive than Morphine, which later was proven to be a false claim. The family argues that OxyContin was mainly used to treat cancer patients with severe end-of-life pain, however they have faced thousands of lawsuits for downplaying the addictiveness and risk of abuse in advertisement.

Purdue Pharma filed for bankruptcy, and in 2021, although they admitted no wrongdoing, the Sackler family agreed to never produce opioids again.

They also reached a financial settlement of £10 billion paid overtime to a charitable organisation. The settlement also specifically called for certain members of the family to contribute $5.5.billion to $6 billion over the next 17 years to ease the opioid crisis. However, there is a substantial feeling that this legal punishment does not fit the crime. The Sackler family appears to remain relatively unscathed while the opioid crisis still takes the lives of 100,000 Americans a year. Purdue Pharma, the privately owned company, has pleaded guilty to many federal crimes but the Sackler name remained relatively untarnished. The family spent time and money building their reputation in New York society and then went global with their philanthropy.

The Sackler family is well known for their philanthropy to many academic and cultural institutions on both sides of the

Atlantic. Arthur Sackler began this trend with his large collection of Chinese artefacts and long standing relationship with the Met in New York. The Sackler Trust gave more than $15 million in a year to British public bodies, with its largest donation of £500,000 being received

by Newbury’s Watermill theatre, followed by £280,000 given to the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra Trust. Donations were paused in 2019, as many members of the family stood accused in federal cases, and were broadly never resumed again. Keefe details in his book that the philanthropy of the Sackler family was a vital element of their image. The family appeared publicly disconnected from Purdue Pharma and OxyContin, mainly being known for their contributions to education and the arts for many years. The philanthropic element of the family allowed them to create a publicly separate image, avoiding blame for the opioid epidemic plaguing America.

Oxford University continued their relationship with the Sackler family until May 2023, which was considerably later than other institutions who began to cut ties with the family as early as 2019. The most notable Sackler contribution to the University of Oxford is the Sackler Library but in 2021 Oxford Development Trust also received £50,332 from the Sackler Trust to fund previously pledged research positions at Worcester College and the Ashmolean.

In 2022, Dame Theresa Sackler was invited to a private viewing of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race, invited as a member of the “Chancellor’s Court of Benefactors” according to the guest list. In September 2022, Theresa Sackler was also invited to the Ashmolean gala dinner. While Oxford University has not accepted new donations from the Sackler family since 2019, they have not removed them from their privileged position within the University. Going forward I hope that the formal severing of financial ties with the Sackler family also means that the University cuts all social and cultural links to the opioid empire.

The decision by Oxford University to remove the Sackler name, although maybe well intended, seems inadequate and performative. The Sackler family has been tied to the opioid crisis in America for some years now, with institutions begging to drop their name from 2019. Part of the survival of the Sackler family relied on their philanthropy retaining a clean and generous image. I can only hope we are moving into a ‘new era’ as George Osbrone, the chair of the British Museum, proclaimed as they too cut ties with the Sackler family. However, in order to move on these institutions need to confront the uncomfortable truth of where the Sackler donations came from and respond accordingly.

igital diplomacy, a rapidly evolving field, is reshaping global interactions. Drawing on the insights given by Dr Corneliu Bjola and Dr Jennifer Cassidy at the Oxford Diplomatic Society’s recent “Digital Diplomacy: A New Era in Advancing Foreign Policy” event, I will explore the past, present, and future of Digital Diplomacy.

Through this article, I present my view on the trajectory of digital diplomacy. Its promising future hinges on our collective ability to shape it positively. We need to focus on four areas: establishing collaborative synergies between governments, academia, and the private sector (G-A-P); bolstering international regulation; anticipating the emergence of new technologies; and understanding the shifting global power dynamics.

Yet, embracing these technologies comes with the responsibility of ensuring data integrity and security. Countries slow to adapt to risks falling behind in this new era. While the UK has made significant strides, more must be done to compete with power brokers such as the US, EU, and China.

Moving into the origins of digital diplomacy, we trace back to the early 2000s, with one of the early examples being the US State Department’s pioneering eDiplomacy Taskforce.

This marked the beginning of a radical transformation in the global diplomatic landscape.

Enabled by the internet and social media, this innovative approach involved various actors, including states and tech firms, communicating across borders and with their citizens.

Digital diplomacy started emerging in the early 2000s, with one of the early examples being the US State Department’s pioneering eDiplomacy Taskforce, and has radically transformed the global diplomatic landscape. Enabled by the internet and social media, this innovative approach involves various actors, including states and tech firms, communicating across borders and with their citizens.From social media to digital broadcasting, digital diplomacy’s reach is extensive, one that can be both positive and negative.

The Oxford Student | Friday 26 May 2023

Features | 21

Diplomacy in the Digital Age: The Rise, Impact,

by Anas Dayeh and Future of Digital Diplomacy Its objectives span building international relationships, promoting cooperation, countering misinformation, managing crises, and advocating for human rights and democracy.

This diplomatic revolution’s impact is seen in various instances, like Sweden’s pioneering virtual embassy in Second Life in 2007, promoting cultural exchanges in a virtual environment. The Maldives followed suit shortly after, signifying a new age in diplomatic interactions.

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the World Health Organization effectively used digital tools to deliver vital health information worldwide.

It showcases how digital diplomacy can leverage partnerships with tech platforms for global health emergencies.

Similarly, since 2014, the misuse of digital diplomacy has been evident in Russia’s disinformation campaign concerning the Ukraine conflict, emphasising the influential role of social media in shaping public opinion.

Looking ahead, emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Metaverses, and Large Language Models (LLMs) are set to shape the future of digital diplomacy, offering improved data gathering, early issue detection, and more effective problem-solving.

During the Oxford Diplomatic Society’s event, Dr Corneliu Bjola, an Associate Professor in Diplomatic Studies, emphasised the urgency of establishing digital multilateral cooperation amidst increasing geopolitical tech competition.

His views struck me on the present state of the international digital order, which he argued is currently in flux. This instability offers a closing opportunity to shape the norms, rules, and structures defining our digital future.

Similarly to Dr Bjola’s view, I believe that digital diplomacy can foster dialogue and cooperation among nations, helping to manage the complexities of the digital age. Through international data agreements, tech partnerships, AI standards, and Metaverse regulations, we can ensure privacy, digital security, ethical use, and user protection. Although these efforts are urgent and complex, I share Dr

Bjola’s optimism regarding the potential of digital diplomacy as a tool to navigate the challenges of the digital age and contribute to a more secure, equitable, and cooperative digital world.

Dr Jennifer Cassidy, a lecturer and diplomatic scholar, delved deep into the transformation of digital diplomatic signalling and online strategic narratives.

Her focus on the influential role of tech companies in digital diplomacy and the challenge of legislative pacing echoed Dr Bjola’s sentiments. She presented the audience with a thought-provoking question, contemplating potential strategies to expedite legislative processes while ensuring adequate scrutiny and thoughtful consideration, all in the face of the breakneck speed of technological advancements.

As I’m sure this is a common feeling for all,

“I’m strongly frustrated by the slow and bureaucratic progress within government institutions and legislation.”

This issue must be addressed and fixed. For too long, government negotiations and work have remained the same. Current and emerging technological innovations provide a revolutionary opportunity for governments to become more efficient, cut costs, and address many challenges, including possibly Dr Cassidy’s question of how legislation can keep up with the pace of technological advancements.

The conversation then shifted to the revolutionary role of translation technology in modern diplomacy. Dr Cassidy’s pointed out the revolutionary role of translation technology in modern diplomacy and in breaking language barriers.

This reminded me of recent transformative tools, such as Skype Translator and Google’s Universal Translator, that could enhance diplomatic interactions. With the latter launched very recently, on the 11th of May 2023, these tools use speech recognition and natural language processing to translate real-time video calls. This represents promising progress in breaking down language bar-

riers and improving diplomatic interactions.

These discussions underline the potential of digital diplomacy to address digital age challenges. In my view, the insights from Dr Bjola and Dr Cassidy strengthen my belief in the future of digital diplomacy and its potential contributions to a secure, equitable, and cooperative digital world.

As I look ahead, I’m optimistic about the future of digital diplomacy. Yet, its promise hinges on our collective efforts to guide it positively. There are four areas, in particular, that citizens, diplomats, and governments should focus on to steer future foreign policy developments: collaborative synergies between governments, academia, and the private sector (G-A-P); international regulation; emerging technologies; and the shifting global power dynamics.

The landscape of digital diplomacy is evolving rapidly, driven by unique collaborations between G-A-P. For instance, Europe’s model of these alliances has demonstrated its potential to address complex technology-diplomacy challenges. However, governments must keep up with these changes to avoid being left behind in the shifting power dynamics.

Private companies, traditionally passive entities, are now significantly shaping global events. The recent example of Elon Musk deciding whether

to provide satellite internet to Ukraine during its conflict with Russia highlights this shift. Additionally, the European Union has taken the innovative approach of liaising directly with US-based tech companies, opening a diplomatic office in Silicon Valley and signalling a move away from traditional government-to-government diplomacy.

Navigating international legislation on digital technology is another critical concern. It encompasses complex challenges such as disinformation and online propaganda. Digital diplomacy can be a potent tool to counter misinformation and uphold the truth. Take, for instance, the recent Turkish elections, where Twitter blocked some content from the opposition, showing how private firms can control information access. Regulations are necessary to ensure accountability and transparency, particularly during politically sensitive periods.

Regarding technology, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and quantum computing are set to redefine digital diplomacy. AI’s potential to identify and resolve problems in real time could serve as an effective early warning system during crises. Such developments could make diplomacy more responsive and practical, yet they could also introduce new complexities and risks, mainly related to data security.

Furthermore, we’re witnessing

a shift in power dynamics in the digital diplomacy landscape.

Countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE are investing heavily in tech infrastructure, while smaller nations are leveraging technology to boost their diplomatic influence. Tech companies are emerging as influential brokers, requiring agile legislation. Countries lagging behind, like the UK, must intensify their efforts to compete with these power brokers. Such nations can benefit from integrating traditional diplomacy with core values and developing effective networks.

In conclusion, digital diplomacy offers an innovative approach to global diplomacy, leveraging digital technologies and social media to communicate, engage, and shape public opinion. With emerging technologies like AI and the Metaverse set to shape its future, we must remain attentive to collaborative synergies, international legislation, emerging technologies, and shifting power dynamics.

Despite the challenges, the potential of digital diplomacy to contribute to a more secure, equitable, and cooperative digital world is compelling.

Image Credits: Hakan Dahlstrom via Creative Commons (CC BY 2.0)

22 | Culture

Reviewed: The High Performance Podcast live Tymoteusz Syrytczyk

Culture Culture

Deputy Editor: Charlie Bowden. Section Editors: Johannah Mathew, Jennifer Robinson, Lukas Seifert, Miracle Kalonga

Friday 26 May 2023 | The Oxford Student

E

arlier this month I had the opportunity to see the High Performance Podcast live show in Oxford’s New Theatre. I went in completely blind, armed with only 2 minutes of internet research for the show. I must confess that I came in sceptical.

Podcasts have the unique appeal of being audio-only and cheap or free. Both of these attributes are missing from a live show so the idea seemed a little strange to me. I knew that this was originally a podcast about high-performing athletes led by a sports commentator and psychology professor. I was also certain of the fact that I cannot name more than 7 athletes.

Nevertheless, I got comfortable in the large seats of the New Theatre and the audience was immediately plunged into a cinematic experience.

Lights out, speaker bass up, and the large floating screens all combined to introduce the essential concept: high performance comes from within, and there are a range of paths to get there.

Jake Humphrey and Damian Hughes were more than eager to introduce us to the concept and they entered to an eager applause. From the very beginning the format was clear to me: this is a show about stories.

We begin with the story of

its host Jake Humphrey and the bizarre world of fame and sports commentating. Jake has a clear skill for narrative. He transformed the unfamiliar experience of receiving widespread Twitter hate for your day job into a moment everyone could relate to. Sure, not all of us are famous, but many of us had to reassure a worried parent that things are going to be alright. Jake wasn’t scared to show his vulnerability, telling the audience that at the end of the day, he secretly appreciated the worried calls from his mum and he frequently joked about the quality of his early work.

Damian Hughes threaded the individual and narrative aspects of the podcast together nicely. Initially, he explained, the podcast was about athletes, but the show took a risk by bringing other voices in. With this range of people came a range of ideas, such as Dame Stephanie Shirley’s messages of how to excel in spaces you may not be initially welcomed in, or Ryan Holiday, who introduced the ideas of stoicism to the audience. A range of sources of wisdom, self-help concepts, and famous names were zipping through the show screens: Ikegai, Bear Grylls, Amelia Earhart, the Bible. Most had a story around them too.

Although the stories, con-

cepts and jokes were honest and amusing, the strength of the show came with the introduction of the special guests.

Singer Kye Sones, self-development coach Roxie Nafousi, and High Performance Podcast fan Craig really brought the concept to life. Kye movingly stated that the best period of his music career came only when he was able to address his mental health issues and anxiety. He stole the show when he performed two of his songs, supported by great stage management and lighting. The most heartfelt moment came humbly; Craig, a 40-something recently established business owner, sat opposite Damien.

Craig had the space to discuss internalised homophobia and realising who you are only in the middle of adulthood.

Roxie Nafousi gave a talk of pure enthusiasm and self-assurance. She repeatedly mentioned her book about the concept of manifesting. She also talked about how the podcast introduced her to manifesting. This ultimately helped her move from a dark past of drug addiction. What made her talk powerful was its authenticity.

Throughout the show neither Jake or Damian ever claimed to have the answers, but throughout the show they were eager to explore and present what

worked best for people of different backgrounds.

This element of collective knowledge was important in the ending Q&A. Large basketball sized and shaped speakers were thrown around to weave in audience participation. The audience presented topics such as gender equality and the challenge of sudden disability to the floor and Jake and Damien would ask for the opinions of the audience themselves for answers.

The final element of the liveshow to discuss is this audience. I managed to ask a few questions to audience members during the show interval.

Richard, a listener for 8 months, found out about the show from his adult son and they would use these podcasts as a frequent topic for conversation.

I also talked with Jonathan, a schoolboy who loved spending his Tuesday lunchtimes discussing the concept of high performance with his teacher and friends. He told me he did not miss a single episode.

The self-help industry has a range of areas for improvement. Nevertheless, Jake Humphrey and Damian Hughes successfully connected the most attractive and universal elements of self-help into the High Performance Podcast and the live show.

Culture | 23

The Oxford Student | Friday 26 May 2023

A night of magic and mayhem: Jennifer Robinson

I

t’s Trinity term, the sun is shining, what better time to stage a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream?

Shakespeare’s enchanting play has been resurrected and reconstructed many times before, and in Magdalen’s President’s Garden madness and dreaming reigns once more, directed

by William Shackleton. Before entering the garden itself, the immersion has already begun, actors and music guiding you towards the seating. The play hasn’t even started and already Shakespeare’s Athens is beginning to feel alive. Indeed, it is this liminality between performance and audience that is given its foundation in the setting, where the lights strung throughout the shrubbery glow invitingly, and picnic blankets at the front allow the audience to sit with the performers.

Some audience interaction furthers the fluidity between stage and crowd. The creative use of staging in the gardens means that we are in the scene, part of the environment. Sweet aromas from the garden elevate the atmosphere, perfuming the

Magdalen Players’ A Midsummer Night’s Dream review performance so that all senses are enthralled. Wisteria tapering along the walls acted as the perfect backdrop to the central raised stage. However, it didn’t stop there, as the actors were brought to the audience, using the garden itself as part of the staging to dance on grass and climb trees.

They may have kept the Shakespearean English, but this production refuses to replay the same scenes of old, and breathes new life by forming connections and twists to give a new edge to the classic narrative. One such innovation is it being Oberon rather than Titania falling under the spell of ‘love-in-idleness’, raising questions of love, sexuality and gender in the same playful spirit of the original, so that there’s something for fans old and new. Another interesting interpretation was Alice Wyles and Aravind Ravi playing both Titania/Hippolyta and Oberon/ Theseus respectively, suggesting the parallels between the fairy and mortal worlds and self-reflexively expanding the work. All the actors handled

the Shakespearean discourse and soliloquies effortlessly, imbuing real emotion into the characters and balancing comedic elements with more emotional plot points to convey the rich plurality of interpretive potential that is the source material. However, it was not only the speeches, but the choreography for fight scenes and other moments of chaos that added a joyful dynamism. Especial credit has to go to the central characters of Puck, the two pairs of lovers, Bottom, and Titania and Oberon. These demanding roles were performed with spectacular dexterity by the actors, so that they remained the central interest despite the incredible scenery around them. Even if it had been a blank stage in an empty room, the cast would have conjured up the life of the play through their performances alone. All the actors did a phenomenal job in transporting the audience to another world, one where dreaming and reality blend and intersect. And of course, it would be remiss not to mention the starring role of

Scrumpy the dog, who gave an adorable cameo, much to the delight of the audience.

Despite being a student production, there were no holds barred in the stagecraft, which really elevated the play. Audio was used to great effect in scenes that emphasise Puck’s supernatural powers, and lighting heightened both drama and comedy. Both devices were put to especially hilarious use in Shackleton’s personal favourite scene, involving Bottom’s seduction by Oberon to the music of ‘I Put a Spell on You’.

They also combine once more for comedic effect in the playwithin-a-play, hyperbolising the deliberately melodramatic performance.

Being out in nature as it grows dark has its own sense of magical whimsy that feeds into the fantasy of the performance, as the encroaching darkness immerses the audience into the dream-like state of the play, literally becoming a midsummer’s night. Costume designer Kathrine Surgay said she especially enjoyed designing the fairy costumes and it shows,

the incredibly fun costumes are dripping with character and effectively flesh out the world of the play in lurid detail. A Midsummer Night’s Dream at its core thrives on spectacle, and this production ensured that it was a feast for the senses throughout. The lighting grew more enchanting as the night drew on, enhancing Oberon’s crown, the fairies’ makeup, Titania’s magic staff and especially the magical potency of the light from the ‘love-inidleness’ flowers. These fantastical florae were central to the magic and the mania of the play, having equal effect on the magical and the mortal, showing that we are all fools to love.

As the play ended and we all awoke from the collective dream, I couldn’t help but wonder at such a vivacious and fantastically fun performance. This production feels like a natural extension of the original play, bringing it into the modern age in an inventive fashion whilst keeping the fantastical elements that make this performance a quintessential Shakespearean comedy.

Immaculate review: modern Marian gospel Charlie Bowden

A

delightful twisting of biblical precedent took place last week in the Michael Pilch Studio Theatre at Balliol College, as Darcey Willing and Katie Peachey’s raucous adaptation of Immaculate lit up the black box theatre.

Immaculate is a modern comedic interpretation of the Immaculate Conception, placing the less-than-perfect Mia in the middle of an intense spiritual conflict between archangel Gabriel and fallen angel Lucifer, as well as the eccentricities of her ex-boyfriend Michael and best friend Rebecca. Written by Oliver Lansley and first performed at the 2005 Edinburgh Fringe Festival by Lansley’s theatre company Les Enfants Terribles, the play has had notable success since its first showing, including a national tour after its Edinburgh debut.

The premise of the play is certainly an interesting one, with the two supernatural beings arguing over the father of Mia’s

child while the intolerable Gary Goodman also rocks up with a claim in the second act. What makes this performance enjoyable is the ability of the cast to bring the play to vivid life.

In other hands the lack of a clearly-defined resolution to the opening problem would turn audiences away, but the journey from Mia’s discovery of her pregnancy to the birth is made worthwhile by the acting.

Laetitia Hosie was the star of the show as Mia, playing a great straight man to the delightful weirdness of the other characters but also providing a welcome depth to the mistress-turned-expectant mother.

Isaac Wighton’s performance as Gabriel is literally pitchperfect given the archangel’s uptight formal timbre. It would be easy for such a morally immutable character to fade into the background but Wighton’s dexterous physicality and solid chemistry with Leah Aspden’s Lucifer ensure the archangel

remains memorable.

Aspden was the show’s secret weapon, displaying a remarkable skill for comedic timing and impressions. The random interjection of an overexcited Scottish doctor announcing the pregnancy could have played out very differently if the scene was not in Aspden’s clearly capable hands. Cosimo Asvisio and Millie Deere were scene-stealers as Michael and Rebecca, bringing warranted attention to the oddities of their characters without disrupting the rest of the narrative. Deere’s melodramatic portrayal of Rebecca when she first entered Mia’s house was particularly memorable, in part thanks to Asvisio’s recognisable change in body language when Rebecca revealed their secret relationship to Mia. Although Jo Rich was not on stage as much as the other cast members, his Gary Goodman portrayal was dynamic and relatable, perfectly encapsulating the kind of guy

you wouldn’t want as the father of your child.

The staging of the play highlighted efficiency, using a red curtain to act as Mia’s front door and having the characters sit on the table to deliver the play’s frequent monologues. Its use of lighting was particularly effective, with the show opening in complete darkness as Wighton, Aspden, Asvisio, and Deere moved around the stage, their faces half-illuminated by small hand lights. There was a clear shift in tone whenever the spotlight came to focus on a particular character ahead of their soliloquy. The costumes were simplistic but suited the natures of each character. For most of the play, the oft-overdramatic Michael sported a red T-shirt which said “unreliable narrator” on it. The contrast between Gabriel and Lucifer was highlighted in Wighton wearing a beige ensemble mired in the corporate world while Aspden wore a more stylish

black shirt and – crucially for the narrative – wings.

Willing and Peachey’s production of Immaculate was a very enjoyable way to spend an evening. The atmosphere in the theatre was palpable from the beginning as the cast frequently interacted with the audience, whether through Aspden’s Lucifer sitting on an attendee’s lap whilst wallowing in sadness or Rich’s Gary asking an audience member to check if Gabriel had really turned water into wine. The inversion of the Virgin Mary’s perfect image was an ideal vehicle for comedy, and the cast took Lansley’s original idea and ran with it to create something that I can only describe as devilishly funny.

Image credit: Olivia Cho

Friday 26 May 2023 | The Oxford Student

FOOD&DRINK

Food od & Drink Food & Drink Food & Drink Food & Drink Food & Drink Food & Drink Food & Drink Food & Drink Food & Drink Food & Drink Food & Drink

24 | Food and Drink

Deputy Editor: Jasmine Wilkinson Section Editor: Kasturi Pindar oxstu.food@gmail.com

Vegan Food On Tour

The ultimate guide to the best vegan spots

A

ll across the United Kingdom vegan options are available and never hard to find. As a vegan eater myself, I have tried and tested many different places. Below is a list of some of my favourites that I have ranked 10/10 or even higher for the taste or the atmosphere of the restaurant.

1. Red Lion Tavern

Next up is Chiang Mai Kitchen which is a very authentic Thai restaurant just off Oxford High Street. Their fried tofu tord matched with zesty peanut sauce is to die for! A bowl of their tom yum het spicy soup is incredible and I would highly recommend it! The price for both of these items is relatively low and will leave you feeling satisfied and full.

Location: Cotswolds

Rating: 10/10

First up is the Red Lion Tavern which has the most amazing vegan chilli. This chilli will comfort your soul as well as your belly. They also offer delicious vegan cheese that is melted on top to offer an extra layer of creaminess.

This quaint spot is located in the centre of the Cotswolds.

The Cotswolds is a region in central-southwest England which is designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

It is filled with lovely people who live in charming cottages, and is definitely worth a trip!

3. Uzumaki Location: London My next selection is Uzumaki an Anime restaurant in downtown London. They serve incredible freshly brewed teas in the cutest mugs along with their Anime inspired dishes.

They can do vegan options and make a few modifications, so it’s best if you make a reservation and give them a heads-up about your dietary preference.

The atmosphere in this place is out of this world, with the Anime paintings, music, and even the wardrobe of the servers really enhancing the experience.

The fourth is Drury, a coffee shop-style café with amazing food paired with a lovely latte. Their fast-paced service is served with a smile, completing the experience and making you desperate to go back. My favourite item was the blondie bar. The blondie has the perfect crunch and sweetness to it. If you check out Drury’s social media accounts they are always adding something new to the menu!

Rating: 12/10

Rating 11/20

2. Chiang Mai Kitchen

4. Drury

Location: Oxford

Location: London

Their fast-paced service is served with a smile...

Rating: 10/10 ...this chilli will comfort your soul as well as your belly...

5. The Den Location: Cheltenham The final place that you must go to is The Den. This sweet little place is encompassed by a picturesque town and boutique shops. They have a little bit of everything in this town, with a beautiful river flowing through it. The Den is close to a nearby attraction called ‘the Model Village’. I would recommend grabbing a bite to eat and then going for a stroll through the town for the perfect day out.

My favourite sandwich was a toasted bagel with homemade vegan pesto, vegan mozzarella, and fresh heirloom tomatoes. The iced latte flavour I would recommend would be their seasonal lavender latte.

Rating 11/10

By Alexis Caffrey

Coconut Chocolate Truffles Ingredients: 18 digestives 9 tablespoonfuls of hot chocolate powder 9 tablespoonfuls of dessicated coconut 1 tin of condensed milk Half a block of unsalted butter Dessicated coconut for topping Instructions: 1. In a small saucepan, heat the butter and condensed milk over a gentle heat.

2. While it is melting, crush the digestives in a mixing bowl using a soup ladle, or in a ziplock bag using a rolling pin. The digestives should still have some small chunks left - you don’t want a fine powder.

3. Add the hot chocolate powder and dessicated coconut to the digestives in the mixing bowl. Mix well.

4. Add the melted butter and condensed milk to the digestive mixture and combine.

If the mixture is too runny to form into balls, add more coconut and hot chocolate powder. If it is too stiff add more melted butter.

5. Roll the mixture into small balls (golf ball or smaller) and sprinkle coconut on top 6. Leave to set in the fridge overnight

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A Softer Rebellion?

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xtinction Rebellion (XR) self-describes as ‘an international movement that uses non-violent civil disobedience to halt mass extinction’. Their mission is to raise awareness and catalyse action to combat this threat, which is caused by climate change.

Criticism of Extinction Rebellion?

Extinction Rebellion has long been renowned for its disruptive methods for getting its message across, including blocking roads, throwing paint, and smashing windows. Just last year, in 2022, Extinction Rebellion (XR) protestors superglued themselves around the Speaker’s chair in the House of Commons and padlocked themselves to the railings outside. XR has also previously encouraged supporters to get arrested, with 680 arrested in the 2019 climate protests.

Although XR describes these actions as ‘peaceful civil disobedience’ designed to raise awareness, opponents have argued that such disorderly methods are detrimental to the cause, since they alienate the British population. For example, YouGov found in 2021 that XR’s popularity among the British public was low, with just 19% of the public saying they approve of the group.

‘The Big One’: The recent protests, also known as ‘the Big One’, which took place in Parliament Square in London, between the 21st and the 24th of April, represent a significant departure from previous XR demonstrations. There were four days of peaceful activism, comprised of family-friendly rallies and marches, a reportedly ‘goodnatured’ crowd sporting fancy dress including the distinctive red robes of XR protestors and masks depicting the new King and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, as well as music and speaker events featuring names such as Chris Packham, the well-known naturalist, who addressed the crowd in a speech that warned that ‘the planet is in crisis’.

The demonstrators also took part in a ‘die-in’ in London on Saturday, which involved lying on the pavement at the Mall, to physically symbolise what will happen to humans if nothing is done about climate change.

Following concerns that previous protests were alienating potential supporters by being too disruptive, XR ensured ‘the Big One’ was as accessible as possible by attempting to not block London’s streets or bridges, and even entering discussions with the organizers of the TCS London Marathon,

which happened to coincide with the climate protests, to reduce any disruption caused.

How successful was ‘the Big One’?

The result was a marked success for Extinction Rebellion, with XR organisers estimating that the total number of people who attended over the four days is over 60,000, making it the biggest joint environmental protest in the UK after the 2019 climate strike. The pro-

“…just 19% of the public say they approve of Extinction Rebellion.” test was also more inclusive than previous ones, with many activists attending with their children to inspire the next generation to join their ranks, and the action involving a wide range of groups, including Extinction Rebellion, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace, as well as the Christian climate coalition, marking a strategic alliance between the major climate change protest groups.

The biggest joint environmental protest in the UK since 2019.

The change comes as XR declared a new strategy of mass movement in January of this

year, announcing that it would ‘temporarily shift away from public disruption’ as a tactic to highlight its cause, instead concentrating on more peaceful activities that are commonly associated with political parties. This implies that XR has reevaluated its strategy in light of criticism as well as increasingly draconian protest legislation by the UK government.

Although XR achieved staggering success in terms of numbers in attendance, it, unfortunately, failed to achieve its purported aims, with Ministers failing to respond to their demands by the Monday afternoon deadline. The protests were designed to push the government into negotiations with XR by 5pm on Monday the 24th of April.

XR listed its demands as follows: that the government would agree to stop new fossil fuel projects, including halting the more than 100 new oil exploration licenses being offered to companies this year, create ‘emergency citizens assemblies’ to tackle the climate crisis, and commit to reducing carbon emissions to net zero by 2025. If the government failed to meet their demands, XR threatened to build an ‘unprecedented coalition’ and ‘step up campaigning in the weeks and

months ahead’.

Continued radicalism in the climate movement?

However, although the event marked a shift from XR’s more radical tactics, radical actions in pursuit of climate action continue to be pursued by organizations such as ‘Just Stop Oil’.

This is highlighted by recent events in October 2022, when two men from the organization scaled a bridge on Dartford Crossing, each earning around 3 years of jail time for their actions.

Although some organizations seem to be carrying the flag of more radical protest methods in XR’s stead, the marked success XR enjoyed during the Earth Day weekend, despite their failure to get the government to comply, seems to suggest that changing their tune would be valuable for the organization’s future, and, indeed, the future of the climate change movement itself.

Changing their tune would be valuable for the organization’s future, and, indeed, the future of the climate change movement itself.

The question is, will they stick to their new strategy, or will they revert back to their old ways?

By Jasmine Wilkinson

SciTech The little allotrope that might: does

SciTech | 27

The Oxford Student | Friday 26 May 2023

Editors: Emily Hudson, Nicole Hasler, Tymoteusz Syrytczyk oxstu.science@gmail.com

graphene still have potential?

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raphene was promised to be the next big thing. I remember being told by my chemistry teacher about this miraculous discovery at Manchester University. Graphene has humble origins and its original production process is near-trivial. All it took is two smart guys to stick cellotape to a rock and peel it off.

Nevertheless, graphene has been hailed as the greatest material discovery since plastic. It is incredibly light, and orders of magnitude stronger than steel.

It can also conduct electrons at near-light speed. Properties not seen in any other material.

But what exactly is graphene?

Graphene is the first two-dimensional material discovered, a sheet of single carbon atoms in a hexagonal lattice. It can be considered the finest carbon structure possible and it was originally derived from graph-

ite. In even simpler terms, graphene is the result of a hypothetical pairing of flat Stanley and a carbon-based superman.

Graphene, like plastics, can be used in almost every industry. From aerospace manufacturing to implants, consumer electronics, and batteries. However, graphene has struggled to take off since its discovery in 2004. This is primarily due to the costs and difficulties of mass production. Cheaply produced graphene will be riddled with silicon impurities.

Graphene needs to be modified for practical applications.

For example, it is so conductive that the material has no natural band gaps, areas which lack electronic charge. The current king of electronics, silicon, is a semi-conductor. This means silicon allows for a stop-go flow of electrons, a vital feature for electronics that graphene is too

conducive to emulate.

Artificial band-gaps can be introduced into graphene, but it often involves large costs in addition to the existing difficulties of mass production. This, until recently, could only be done through complex methods such as chemical vapour deposition. These methods would often result in toxic chemical by-products at best and completely unusable samples of graphene alongside the toxic by-products if done incorrectly.

However, there have been recent developments on the issues of graphene mass production, and the lack of natural stop-gap, aka the excessive conductivity problem. In 2020, researchers at Rice University developed a much cheaper method of graphene manufacture known as ‘flash graphene’.

Flash graphene is produced by heating up any solid carbon ma-

terial to 5000 degrees kelvin for 10 milliseconds, which is 4726.85 degrees celsius. This allows for the majority of the carbon bonds of the product (e.g a car tyre or plastic waste) to break and leave the lucrative thin sheets of graphene behind. However, this cheaper and more industrial-friendly production process comes at a quality cost. Research marches on, with Rice now employing machine learning to fine-tune their process and improve the quality of the flash graphene product.

Meanwhile, on the conductivity front, the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology recently made a breakthrough. The researchers developed a ‘bottoms-up’ approach of bonding carbon atoms to result in a form of graphene with similar semi-conducting capabilities to silicon.

leasing the stress hormone cortisol. This long-term response is what is thought to negatively impact physical health.

Intuitively, it seems obvious that long-term stress is bad for our health. Psychological stress is often experienced strongly in the body as headaches, exhaustion, or feeling tense. However, the exact link between psychological stress and physical illness was long unclear. It’s only in the past decades that evidence has suggested the negative health effects of stress could be due to inflammation.

The first studies linking human stress and the immune system emerged in the 1990s, when researchers took a sample of healthy volunteers and asked them to rate their stress levels. The volunteers were then exposed to the common cold virus, and results showed that the subjects with higher stress scores were more likely to catch a cold. Later research revealed that cortisol down-regulates the immune response, allowing the body to expend more energy on fighting off the perceived threat instead of fighting

off illnesses. When there is a lot of cortisol, such as when a person is chronically stressed, this response is attenuated as the body becomes less sensitive to it. This reduced sensitivity to the inflammation-reducing effects of cortisol means that inflammation will be increased, affecting not only the response to infections, but also fostering the development of diseases such as asthma, diabetes, or heart disease.

Despite evidence that longterm stress can contribute to inflammation and thereby negatively affect health, there is still hope. First of all, moderate stress can also be good for you.

When its levels are at a sweet spot, adrenaline can improve brain function and foster new connections between brain cells, promoting learning and adaptation.

Second, it’s becoming clear that it’s not necessarily stress itself that is bad for our health, but our beliefs around and responses to it. In a 2010 study, doctors were exposed to training scenarios that replicated stressful medical emergencies.

The doctors that perceived the tasks as a threat had higher levels of cortisol and reported feeling more stressed, while doctors that perceived the tasks as challenges had much lower levels of cortisol and performed better overall. Reframing stressful situations as challenges and learning opportunities therefore seems to be a way to take control of the stress response. A further study supports the idea that our beliefs around stress may be more important than stress itself: a national survey in the US revealed that high levels of stress increase the risk of dying earlier than expected, but only if people believe that it’s harmful to their health.

Of course the solution to the negative health effects of chronic stress is not as easy as telling someone not to worry about it.

Many factors that contribute to people’s daily worries are systemic and can’t be controlled by the individual alone, and even within the Oxford bubble it’s clear that anxiety can’t just be rationalised away. Nonetheless, there are some practical tips for

These developments are promising, but they also reveal the complexity and multifaceted nature of material science research. Many problems are being worked on at once. Yet the common denominator issue is always profitability and the market. Encouragingly, costs have been falling, and that original potential from 2004 may still lie within this humble hexagon.

By Tymoteusz SYRYTCZYK Image credit: Kie S on Unsplash

Stressed? Here’s what it does to you, and what you can do

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ur bodies have evolved to respond to threats.

In human history, being able to quickly react to predators and run away was key to survival. Nowadays, our stressors may be somewhat less life-threatening, but our bodies haven’t quite caught up: when faced with an impending essay deadline or Trinity term exams, we activate the same stress response our ancestors did. Recently, much has been made of the detrimental effects stress can have on our health – but is this always the case, or can stress be positive?

The hormone responsible for the short-term effects of stress is adrenaline. When your body is in “fight or flight” mode, adrenaline causes the heart to beat faster, raises blood pressure, and triggers the release of glucose into the bloodstream – all things that are great when you’re trying to flee from a sabre-toothed tiger or jump out of the way of an approaching car. After this initial surge of adrenaline, the brain releases hormones that keep the fightor-flight response going by re-

managing stress that can help us feel more in control.

Firstly, being aware that stress can also have positive effects on your brain has been shown to be helpful for people in nervewracking situations. Similarly, reframing things as challenges rather than threats can shed more of a positive light on them. Second, keeping a journal is a great way to identify triggers and what makes you feel better when you’re stressed. It can also help to optimise your time by making to-do lists, setting priorities, and setting smaller goals. A healthy diet, exercise, and sleep are often the first things people compromise on when they’re under strain, but making time for these aspects of life is key to helping the body cope with stress. And finally, don’t underestimate the importance of spending time with friends – having strong social support is one of the factors that has been shown time and time again to be effective in limiting the negative mental and physical effects of pressure.

By Nicole HASLER

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OXYOU

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Deputy Editor: Niall Hall Section Editors: Milo Dennison, Lukas Seifert

A guide to college marriages Lukas Seifert

C

ollege marriages are the sort of thing that gives Oxford its reputation. It’s the strange looks from your parents when you announce you’re tying the knot. It’s the dramatic couples that invite 200 people to their ‘fake’ wedding. It’s overzealous 18-yearolds taking the whole tradition slightly too seriously. Now, as the time for freshers to officially lock down partners draws near, here are the 5 kinds of college marriages that everyone is familiar with.

Too soon It’s freshers’ week and the Atik smoking area is rife with possibility. Two impressionable first-years lock eyes and get to talking. Scared of ending up alone, it only takes 4 hours for them to get engaged, as their new-found friendship group pressures them into it.

Parents barely consulted (a phone call is just too much to ask), it seems a recipe for disaster. Yet, while all sails smoothly at first, after a few weeks, partners’ flaws start to be uncovered.

“I don’t want you to come with

me to PnP, but it would be nice if you showed an interest!” One screams at the other as political spats reveal conflicting ideologies.

Suddenly, it seems as though the instant connection over name, school, degree is insufficient to sustain healthy matrimony! Who knew you shouldn’t get married to a stranger?

who’s buying which child the carnations.

Spouses to Lovers “We’re just friends,” they say.

Sure thing. If Bridgerton has

Lovers to Spouses If you think lovers to spouses seems like the correct order of doing things, you’d normally be right.

Oxford, like E4, offers a different reality.

Getting college married to your significant other, or someone you just slept with in fresher’s week, can get complicated.

Like real-life marriage, it’s great in theory. However, like real-life marriage, it often goes horribly wrong, especially when children get involved. “I want you to want to clean up after pres.” It gets messy. And inevitably, post the messier prelims breakup, the fresher romance is reduced to a civil debate over

pants is a trick as old as time.

Her friends advise her against the marriage but ‘he’s like a brother,’ so what’s the problem? Chiefly, the fact is these couples are unequivocally frustrating to watch, as they constantly deny their feelings for each other, with just enough giggling to keep the possibility alive. The veil becomes less effective once one of the two starts dating someone else. A disapproving husband and a jealous boyfriend creates an uneasy household.

What do you do when your wife wants an open relationship?

The 3-Way

taught us anything, it’s that we all love a friends to lovers arc. The freshers ‘marriage rizz’ is a common affair, and the using of potential wedlock to get into someone’s

With the rising popularity of polygamy, the threeway marriage is increasingly common.

Though, the reasons for it are often practical. Sometimes, taking a look at the pool of single people, there just aren’t enough fish in the sea.

Sometimes the trauma from year 9 P.E. proves too much and, with no partner, it’s time to push into an already established pair. Sometimes the

platonic ideal proves triumphant but, more entertainingly, hormones take over. In any case, the sex gets complicated - and that’s just considering the positions.

OUCA believes anyone within such a marriage is surely condemned, but we all know they’re still curious. At least it’s not subject incest. The 3-way elicits many an innuendo, but despite all the drama, it’s ultimately just another parent to forget to buy the carnation.

The Perfect Marriage Does it exist? Is it possible for Adam and Eve to stay away from the apple? Rarely. From the data at hand, it seems the best couples are fully platonic, share a friendship group and respect the rules of the contract. Or, in other words, uneventful. Who wants to be happily married anyways?

We have our whole lives to fail at that.

Image Credit: Samantha Gades Image Description: Two hands showing wedding rings

BEST OF THE ROAST Rordon Gamsay

‘With great power comes great responsibility’, the former OUCA president read as he was removed from the group chat. This was a week of power, and alpacas. There were tory tantrums, outside of Braverman having to attend a speed awareness course, as well as the removal of iconic drug-dealers. Don’t panic, not the kebab van fronts, but the Sackler family name.

Inquiries went into different power structures here at Oxford and, surprisingly, things have been done about it. Cecil Rhodes could never. Here is a rundown via Rordon’s roasts.

MOVING VAN OUCA controversy strikes again, with the Caucasian cutie president removed after screaming at a centralist

(citation needed). Rordon is fed up with student politics at this point. It’s like Groundhog Day, except instead of Bill Murray, he watches an overly defensive PPEist. Carrying the Tory torch, he is the fourth out of the last six OUCA Presidents to come from Christ Church.

Rordon is currently taking bets on how many of them will end up as Prime Minister.

He hopes none, but suspects otherwise. The new actingPresident, promises “a very successful term”. Rordon is doubtful. “When has OUCA ever seen a successful term?” one student commented.

“It is never ending politics, Thatcher dress-ups, and subpar term cards. It’s basically Union.” Rordon agrees, and is expecting to see him run for Secretary’s Assistant to the Liberian (40 vac hours) next term. Good luck to him,

hope it goes better than SU president.

GET THE SACK Fashionably late, Oxford will rename places tied to the Sackler family. Except the Clarendon Arch and Ashmolean’s donor board, naturally. This comes after their responsibility in selling OxyContin: what sources call the second largest source of addiction, flappy bird being first. Rordon put forward a couple of names, one being his own, but was informed his suggestion lacked the snappiness they were looking for. Instead, the Sackler Library will become the Bodleian Art, Archaeology and the Ancient World Library. It will not bear their name, so the only link really is that their money

built it. Rordon said, “if I did something really bad, like run through a field of wheat, and publicly had to abandon OxYou’s three readers, you could not then ask me back under a pseudonym. You have to uproot the problem.

Close libraries forever.”

LECTURE NOTES Rordon had one lecture this week. With this particular speaker having a tendency to impose some ‘general knowledge’ questions – where general includes “What happened on the third Monday of 1672?” – he sat towards the back. One guy genuinely got up and moved towards the front half-way through. Maybe someone nearby farted, or maybe he knew 1672 well. It was done subtly though, like the folk

that duck under the cinema screen on their way to the toilet. Someone lobbed a pen across the room at the same time. One better, a woman had what Rordon can only describe as an exorcism.

Her ponytails clashed as she swayed from side to side.

This all happened within twenty seconds. To top it off, his lecturer from last term, who is like the drama teacher that casts themselves in all the students plays, peered through the window.

A chaotic one contact hour a week. He is unsure he could have done it again the next day. Rordon described this as reason 376 to be grateful for not doing STEM.

Sport

Sport | 31

The Oxford Student | Friday 26 May 2023

2022/23 Premier League:

By Maxi Grindley An Attenborough-esque survival of the fittest?

I

would argue that three things are guaranteed when watching a David Attenborough documentary: you will see some beautiful scenery; you will meet some heart-warming and inspirational characters whose stories are equal parts inspirational and unbelievable; and you will ultimately be reminded that we live under merciless laws of nature. There may be hope and brief reprieve but finally the prey will bleed and the predators will feed.

Sporting Lisbon was not disastrous in itself, but the injuries suffered during it to Takehiro Tomiyasu and, especially, William Saliba did prove ultimately catastrophic. With two of their regular back-four absent, it would take eight Premier League matches before Arsenal held a clean sheet. In hindsight, conceding in the first minute to Southampton, a team rooted to the foot of the table for much of the season, and then only being able to rescue a draw looked pivotal.

But then again, so did Bukayo Saka’s missed penalty against

the lion. How powerful, how fearsome, how irrepressible, how inevitable. That is how it feels to watch Manchester City under Pep Guardiola.

Erling Haaland provides the ruthless, robotic killer instinct they have perhaps been missing previously. Debates may continue about how well his poacher style of play meshes with Guardiola’s intricate passing football, but there is no doubt about his efficacy. Records have been broken with disdainful abandon. Behind him, the likes of Bernardo Silva and Kevin de

Ake, Kyle Walker, Manuel Akanji, Aymeric Laporte, John Stones and Ruben Dias stands between the invader and Aderson in goal.

In fact, if anything, Arsenal should be praised for making this season seem quite so competitive for so long. Because truly, this title race has been over almost since it began. Man City’s efficiency and effectiveness is just too intimidatingly excessive for there to be any doubt of that.

And yet, look beyond the very top of the league and there are signs that things are

This season’s Premier League followed these tropes remarkably well. There was beautiful football played across the league, probably a result of the league containing more talent than it ever has previously with even relegation scrappers boasting multiple world beaters. The likes of Brighton and Brentford provided feel good stories that’d be hard to disparage. And watching Man City chase Arsenal down in the title run-in was as brutal and remorseless a demonstration of nature’s age-old adage of the survival of the fittest as you are ever likely to see.

Of course, Arsenal will have their excuses and justifications. A loss on penalties to

West Ham the previous week, which was, itself, the second game in a row Arsenal surrendered a 2:0 lead in.

However, now is not the time to focus on Arsenal. Watching Attenborough’s documentary, it is inevitable to feel heartbreaking sorrow as the gazelle who once looked so sleek and effortlessly quick gradually begins to tire. It is easy to feel pity for them as you notice the lion gradually and only just perceptibly narrow the distance. And it is impossible not to feel sympathy for the poor gazelle as you see it realise that the lion has won, again.

But whatever deep and sincere emotions the gazelle may generate, they are nothing to the awe and shock evoked by

Bruyne – ably assisted by Phil Foden, Riyad Mahrez, Julian Alvarez and Jack Grealish – offer a frankly greedy hoard of attacking talents.

In most situations this topheavy accumulation of offensive artillery would be reckless, verging on suicidal.

However, Man City have managed to accrue the defensive talents to render their foundations almost unfairly unbroachable. Rodri and Ilkay Gundogan have guarded the defence so irreproachably well that Kalvin Phillips has been forced to spend the season watching games from the bench. On the rare occasions when they are breached, a backline featuring some selection of Rico Lewis, Nathan

changing. The achievements of Newcastle, Aston Villa and Brighton coupled with the relative disappointments of Chelsea and Liverpool suggest that the stronghold of the ‘Big Six’ on the top of the table is perhaps beginning to weaken.

Perhaps the Premier League won’t follow Attenborough’s documentaries quite as formulaically as I thought. After all, I have never seen what happens when the predators lose their speed and the prey sharpen their claws.

Image description: A Manchester City match against Wolverhampton Image credit: Bex Walton via Wikimedia Commons

As we see numerous women’s footballers sidelined by ACL injuries, notably the Arsenal power-couple of England forward Beth Mead and Ballon d’Or stalwart Viv Miedema, pressure is increasing on sporting giants to accommodate women’s bodies (rather than the current ‘add in and stir’ model). Changes trickle down to grassroots too, with more comfortable kit potentially encouraging the 61% of girls who give up sport at secondary school to rediscover their passion.

Whilst the long, cruel arm of puberty is something of a stereotype used to degrade teenage girls (for being too hormonal, or moody, or emotional), it’s also a killer for self-confidence. Changing rooms are living nightmares for many students – boys and girls alike – not to mention those who may be unsure of or exploring their gender identity and/or sexuality. Headlines focusing on trans folk, such as World Athletics’ recent banning of transgender women from competing in global events, certainly don’t help to promote the idea that sport is for everyone.

Some simple changes can be made from the bottom-up, I believe. As Myrans pointed out, “we need to ditch the idea that women should be held to a higher standard when it comes to how they act towards each other, the opposition, their fans, and how they present themselves.” In other words: we need to be unladylike, women.

Image description: 3 women playing football Image credit: Ashley Williams via Pexels

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Sport Friday 26 May 2023 | The Oxford Student

32 | Sport

Deputy Editor: Haochen Wang Section Editors: Bradley Beck, Patrick Groves, Eleanor Luxton email: oxstu.sport@gmail.com

Unladylike: the problem with labels in Reflections on the Oxford Bidwells Town&Gown 10K women’s sport

By Haochen Wang

By Eleanor Luxton

Y

ou may once have been told “that’s not very ladylike”. My mum certainly said this a few times, and I always responded with something along the lines of “I don’t want to be a lady!”. It’s a comment which I think riles most women, and sits in the league of being told to “smile!” by men on public transport, or a stranger not believing that you could possibly study at Oxford.

So when I saw Jenny Myrans’ LinkedIn post a few weeks ago, I was intrigued to learn that this is still a problem, even in professional sport.

Jenny joined Tsunami Sport as a Product and Brand Developer.

When she met the team, she immediately raised the issue of clothing labels being marked as “ladies’”, rather than “women’s”.

“The term ‘ladies’ is oozing with connotations of fragility and daintiness”, Myrans told me, “these are hardly traits desired when playing sports”. Myrans played rugby for many years, but was repeatedly told that she was “butch” and would end up with a “thick neck”, despite her physical strength being an obvious advantage in contact sports.

It’s not just the sexist connotations that frustrate Myrans, but practical considerations too – the “patronising” term hints at a much bigger problem, with sports kits not fitting women’s and girl’s bodies properly. It might seem crazy, but none of the major football boot manu-

facturers have invested in a design that supports women’s feet, even though elite players report blisters and stress fractures caused by boots designed for male heels and arches.

It wasn’t until the 2019 Women’s World Cup that Nike, Adidas, Puma and Umbro started making bespoke women’s kits.

These changes matter – having played in men’s football shorts (too big at the waist, fall down) and women’s football shorts (too short and revealing), I can attest that kit and equipment has a massive impact on your confidence and play. It can be dangerous too – Olympic cyclist Hannah Dines had to undergo plastic surgery on her vulva due to years of pain caused by saddles designed for men.

Whilst positive changes have been made – such as Manchester City and other clubs introducing non-white shorts – sexism in sport remains pervasive.

Over the weekend, the sporting director of my home team – Stuart Webber – came under fire for having “zero interest” in women’s football, even as Norwich City Women claimed their seventh County Cup final title at Carrow Road on Friday 19th May. Having been lucky enough to attend the Women’s Euros final last year, and witnessing the incredible, emotional, supportive atmosphere that women’s games foster, it seems shocking that Webber believes his comments to be justified and reasonable.

O

n 14th May, the past Sunday, Oxford played host to the 41st edition of the Oxford Bidwells Town&Gown 10K race, the oldest in the series of Town&Gown races. I, along with an impressive crowd of around 5000 runners, split over the Junior 3K race and the adult 10K race, flooded the streets which were closed off to traffic specifically for the race.

This was the longest continuous run I had done in about half a year, but, thankfully, I suppose, I had motivation: I was running to raise funds towards Muscular Dystrophy research.

I heard about the 2023 Oxford Town&Gown in December through Instagram, and was drawn to it through the

due to MD and other conditions like it. So, when the opportunity to fundraise presented itself, I jumped on it.

The race was started by 66 year old Anne Peterson from Corringham, Essex, who was running in memory of her son, Paul, who had been diagnosed with MD aged nine and died in July, 2014, aged 34. As the horn blared and we slowly inched forward through the crowd, I was reminded of why running appealed to me – as repetitive, boring, and tiring as it can be (and I was treated to plenty of this during the run), it is equally liberating. For more than 40 minutes, I was too tired and too focussed on the run to think about the looming pre-

fundraising opportunity: all profits of the event go to Muscular Dystrophy UK (MDUK) to research MD. To athletes, and anyone, really, almost all forms of disease or condition are unwanted, but MD is especially bad. It is an inherited, progressive condition that gradually cause the muscles to weaken, leading to an increasing level of disability.

I did a lot of distance running, triathlons, and other long-distance sports before Oxford.

While some of my fondest (and proudest) memories were perhaps getting to train with Olympians and world champions through my club, within that same club, I also witnessed the immutable deterioration that some teammates had to endure

lims, the three page reading list for the week that I had barely tackled, or what my summer plans were. I had one thing to think about and that was to do as well as I can on the run.

Typically, a Sunday morning would see High Street, Cornmarket, and much of central Oxford flooded with students, residents, and tourists alike.

Yet, with the roads closed to accommodate the race, I was introduced to a new side of Oxford – the city of in all its tranquil glory.

It took me 43:11 to finish the race, not a bad time I would say. But from about three kilometres in, the Blues athletics runners and members of local athletics clubs seemed to have flown away from me and,

from then on, were always at least two kilometres in front.

Would I have liked to break 40 minutes? Most definitely. But equally, not racing, but actually only participating for perhaps the first time in many years of my running career allowed me to bear witness to things I would have previously missed.

I saw a fellow runner striding ahead not wearing running shoes but Birkenstock sandals; I cheered on wheelchair and visually-impaired athletes, and ultimately, these experiences made the 10k distance that had seemed so daunting rather friendly.

Truth is, running as a fundraiser inherently altered the nature of the race. Where I had previously run to compete, to break my Personal Best, or for whatever purpose, I was running for myself. Running while wearing a bright orange vest proudly adorned with “Muscular Dystrophy UK” meant that I was no longer an individual in competition, but a part of a wider effort that summarily raised £200,000 for MDUK. And while it’s easy to laud myself with platitudes of charity and philanthropy, the fundraising equally benefitted me.At the risk of drowning you in sappy sentimentality, the fact that, perhaps for the first time, I didn’t view the race as a competition meant I could “stop and smell the roses” (though I didn’t stop and there were no roses). While I had previously enjoyed distance running races for my successes at them, I enjoyed the Town&Gown for its reminder of why I inherently like to run. So, I hope to see you on the roads next year when the race returns for its 42nd edition.

Image description: A crowd at University Parks for the Town&Gown Image credit: Haochen Wang