Cherwell 6th week MT17 by Cherwell

NEWS

Revealed: how the privately educated dominate Oxford societies

‘Fake news’ is more than just a modern phenonemon

The female nude laid bare and detective fiction in Oxbow

Cherwell page 4

6th week Friday, 17 November 2017

FEATURES

page 12

No more homophobic abuse, Wadham tells Queerfest guards SU imposes code of conduct after alleged abuse at last year’s event

Colleges condemned over living wage By MATT ROLLER

the security personnel reportedly took it home to his house. One of them told Cherwell: “My friend asked me to accompany him to an address that had popped up on Find my iPhone. “After we recovered the phone we realised that it had the guard’s SIM card in it.” No one pressed charges, and the case is reportedly considered closed. The code of conduct document reportedly contains a list of comments that could be interpreted as offensive. “It has examples of things we find problematic even if they don’t,” a Wadham SU officer told Cherwell. There are no specific allegations of this having taken out in the past, but the policy was included as “a preventative measure”. The Entz officers held a meeting with R&R on Monday to discuss

Colleges have been urged to show a “moral commitment” to the living wage after figures revealed that less than one third were claiming to pay their staff under the living wage. Only eleven of Oxford’s 38 colleges are currently accredited living wage employers, despite recent encouragement from the county council to help staff “live with dignity.” Christ Church, Hertford, Mansfield, Merton, Oriel, Queen’s, Somerville, St Cross, St Hilda’s, University and Wadham are the only colleges signed up to the Living Wage Foundation scheme. The University itself has been paying all staff the living wage – which is set to rise from £8.45 to £8.75 in 2018 – since April 2015. City council leader Bob Price urged Oxford colleges to apply for formal living wage accreditation. He said: “They may not think the accreditation is important but it shows a moral commitment to continue to pay staff the living wage in the longer term. “It would also give more weight to the scheme: the more businesses and institutions that can join will encourage others.” “We have been very pleased with the businesses involved so far and Oxford came out quite well in a recent survey of workers – but we want to push it even further.” The comments come shortly after the Oxfordshire County Council claimed it could not afford to pay staff the Oxford living wage, which currently stands at £9.26 an hour. Meanwhile, the city council announced that it would increase that figure to £9.69 in April 2018. “Oxford is the least affordable city for housing in the UK,” the city council said.

CONTINUED ON PAGE TWO

By SAM RICE Wadham students will place a code of conduct on hired security guards at this week’s Queerfest, after accusations of homophobic abuse, theft, and leering at last year’s event. SU Entz officers initially attempted to ban the firm R&R Frontline Services Limited, claiming their employees created an “unwelcome atmosphere” by using homophobic slurs at the event dedicated to “queerness, defiance, diversity and self-expression”. After the college informed the Entz team, they decided to enforce a code of conduct enforcing standards on “queerphobia, homophobia, transphobia, racism and sexism”. The college said the individual implicated in last year’s events will not be returning. This year’s Queerfest, themed ‘Where do we go from Queer? 100 Years of Queer, Past, Present and Future’, will see 850 students descend on Wadham College for a night devoted to artistic expression and freedom of identity this Saturday. Alleged incidents by a guard at last year’s Queerfest included a stolen phone and use of offensive slurs against attendants. According to senior SU officers, a security guard allegedly used a homophobic term of abuse against a student in attendance. An Entz officer said that they

cherwell.org @cherwell_online

INDEPENDENT SINCE 1920

sought this year to prevent guards from “staring out” attendees. According to the officer, this was “because people might come dressed in very little fabric, [and] we don’t want the security guards to check them out”. One queer-identifying guest told Cherwell: “The security didn’t feel welcoming at all. “If people aren’t being welcomed inclusively with open arms then it definitely feels a bit weird.” In response to the incidents, the Wadham Entz team, consisting of Son Olszewski, Oli Nelson, Alex Coonar, and Theo Anton, requested the college find an alternative security for this year’s event, which are also hired for bops and other events. Senior college figures informed the officers this would not be possible, and R&R would return. The Entz team has held discussions with R&R over the last two weeks, which resulted in the firm confirming the accused guard

Students of oxford...

from working at the event. Nelson told Cherwell: “The decision to use R&R came through college… The best we can do is to take steps to ensure that the same things don’t happen again.” After conceding to the college’s decision, the Entz officers chose to enforce a code of conduct for the guards working at this events. Nelson told Cherwell: “we’re submitting a very black-andwhite script to R&R detailing our absolute bottom lines in terms of conduct. “This involves our expected standards towards LGBTQIA+ attendees, definitions and working examples of queerphobia, homophobia, transphobia, racism and sexism, and protocol in regards to lost property/theft etc.” One incident that may have promted such a policy is the alleged theft of a mobile phone. Following the event, two students were forced to travel to recover the phone after a member of

A*AA at A Level required

Are you a little bit geeky? Find out more: www.tpptop50.com

Join inno an tech vative com pany

#TPPtop50

NO EXPERIENCE REQUIRED

Friday, 17 November 2017 | Cherwell

News Oxford professor accused of sexually harassing researcher By MIA MILLMAN An Oxford scholar has accused a senior professor nearly twice his age of sexual harassment. It has been revealed that these allegations include claims that the professor asked what kind of underwear the scholar was wearing. Dr Matthew Levy, 32, earlier claimed that he rejected the advances of Professor Peter Norreys, 57, after which Norreys launched a campaign of bullying and sexual discrimination. Levy is suing “The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford” as well as Norreys. A tribunal conﬁrmed his right to sue last week. It is understood that he is demanding more than £500,000 in compensation. The allegations, which are expected to be discussed at an employment tribunal next year, also include claims that Norreys touched Levy’s thigh and “grazed his crotch”. Levy, currently a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, also claimed that following his rejection of Norreys, his level of supervision was increased “far beyond that which was required under the conditions”. The complaint ﬁled by Levy also alleged that Norreys had said he “wouldn’t mind touching” the bot-

tom of a male student sitting near him at lunch. Speaking to The Telegraph, Levy said: “Oxford was a dream… [It] was the best place in the world to do my work. I am extremely upset.” Levy has now returned to California and has set up his own artiﬁcial intelligence company. Norreys, currently Oxford’s Professor of Inertial Fusion Science, has denied all the allegations and has been backed up by the University. The University also carried out an internal review following the allegations. Whilst the internal review showed no evidence of any wrongdoing, an employment tribunal is set to make the ﬁnal decision next year. A spokesperson for the University, speaking on behalf of Norreys, said: “Last week’s hearing was a preliminary hearing to establish whether the tribunal had jurisdiction over the case. “Dr Levy’s allegations were not examined last week and there was no ruling on them. “Professor Norreys strenuously denies all these allegations and they have yet to be heard by a full tribunal. “The University has itself thoroughly investigated Dr Levy’s allegations and does not accept them. We cannot provide any further comment as the matter is subject to ongoing legal proceedings.”

New policy aims to prevent Queerfest guard homophobia CONTINUED FROM PAGE ONE general security protocol. They agreed security personnel will be briefed on in three stages; first the head of security, second through the document which is being sent out, and third by the Entz team on the day of the event. Entz officers emphasised that the alleged incidents were committed by a freelance operative. “If we or the college had changed firms we could very easily have got the same individuals under question from last year, since they are freelanced and work for more than one company.” Queerfest is advertised as a space “to rejoice in a radical spirit of queerness, defiance, diversity and self-expression for six utopian, space-age, magical hours”. An evening of live music and dancing, Queerfest is Oxford’s biggest student celebration of LGBTQ+ culture, which culminates Queer Week. A spokesperson for the college told Cherwell: “Wadham College has been using R&R Frontline Services for many years. Since last year’s Queerfest, in consultation with Wadham students, the College has continued to employ this company

to work at regular Wadham bops and at Wadstock. “R&R Frontline Services have conﬁrmed that employees concerned in isolated incidents at last year’s Queerfest will not be working at the event on Saturday.” R&R declined to comment

PHOTO: JMPW PHOTOGRAPHY

CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS A report in Cherwell 10 November incorrectly stated that Tom Stileman had scored eight tries in his past three games, rather than nine. Cherwell takes complaints about editorial content seriously. We are

committed to the codes and practices of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso). Requests for corrections or clariﬁcations should be sent to editor@cherwell.org or by post to The Editors, Cherwell, 7 St Aldate’s, Oxford, OX1 1BS.

Oxfeud goes down after breaking Facebook standards By IGGY WOOD Oxfeud was taken ofﬂine by Facebook this week due to the offensive content of one of its posts over the weekend. According to the old Oxfeud administrative team, one of their posts had “violated Facebook’s community guidelines”. The student-run page was unpublished on Saturday following action taken by external Facebook content moderators. Contrary to an anonymous ‘goodbye’ post on the Oxfess Facebook page, the administrative team told Cherwell they hoped to republish the page as soon as possible. A new Oxfeud page has since appeared on Facebook, though under new management. A post on the new page said: “Oxfeud has risen, now with less toxicity and more petty feuds. (And lots of censorship.)” The new page does not allow users to view any of old Oxfeud posts made before the old Oxfeud page went down. Following the disappearance, an anonymous post appeared on the Oxfess page purporting to be from the sole Oxfeud “ex-admin”, announcing that the page had been permanently discontinued. When contacted through their FAQ

website, however, the team behind Oxfeud conﬁrmed that the post was not written by any of their administrators. They hypothesised that the post had been posted by one of the page’s “detractors”. The fake Oxfess post said: “I’m glad it’s gone, though. Maintaining it required me to read about two thousand words a day, much of it spammy.” Launched in February, Oxfeud provides a platform for students to share grievances anonymously, and quickly rose to prominence alongside similar pages such as ‘Oxlove’ and ‘Oxfess’. Before being removed the page had over 6,000 likes and more than 5,000 anonymous posts. But despite its stated aim of “making Oxford less awkward”, the page has been dogged from its inception by accusations that it enables various forms of abuse, particularly transphobia. While designed – and largely used – for the airing of “irritation”, some Oxfeud posts have denied the existence of non-binary people and attacked the practice of “stating one’s pronouns”. Other posts on the page expressed animosity towards racial minorities

and gay people, as well as criticising positive discrimination on the basis of gender. Oxfeud made the headlines in October when the page was used to leak details of changes to Christ Church’s early hall sitting, leading some students to attempt a collegewide boycott. Earlier this year in May, all three pages were thrust into the limelight when a Junior Dean of Exeter College warned students not to tag each other in posts relating to drug abuse.

Colleges criticised for pay levels CONTINUED FROM PAGE ONE “House prices in the city are more than 16 times average earnings. 30% of the city’s population lives in private-rented housing. The council believes that the high cost of living in Oxford means the living wage is essential to help employees live with dignity.” However, colleges have defended themselves against the council’s criticisms. In a statement, Corpus Christi College said: “College fellows, as trustees, review the remuneration of all staff taking into consideration hourly pay rates and a range of other signiﬁcant beneﬁts and conditions of service such as holiday and meals entitlement... and security of tenure. “It is our belief that a comprehensive approach to the evaluation of remuneration provides an inherently fairer and more reliable measure of the high esteem in which we hold our staff.” Green Templeton College said that while around twenty employees doing “casual bar work” were paid less than the living wage, the rest of its staff were.

NEWS

Student death prompts new bike safety charter

page 6

The 27 colleges without living wage accreditation ALL SOULS COLLEGE

NEW COLLEGE

BALLIOL COLLEGE

NUFFIELD COLLEGE

BRASENOSE COLLEGE

PEMBROKE COLLEGE

CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE

ST ANNE’S COLLEGE

EXETER COLLEGE

ST ANTONY’S COLLEGE

GREEN TEMPLETON COLLEGE

ST CATHERINE’S COLLEGE

HARRIS MANCHESTER COLLEGE

ST EDMUND HALL

JESUS COLLEGE

ST HUGH’S COLLEGE

KEBLE COLLEGE

ST JOHN’S COLLEGE

KELLOGG COLLEGE

ST PETER’S COLLEGE

LADY MARGARET HALL

TRINITY COLLEGE

LINACRE COLLEGE

WOLFSON COLLEGE

LINCOLN COLLEGE

WORCESTER COLLEGE

MAGDALEN COLLEGE

OPINION

Tabloids are twisting Church’s trans guidelines

page 11

SPORT

Women’s Blues edge out Bristol in Bucs clash

page 16

Cherwell | Friday, 17 November 2017

Calls for Oxford mental health reform after student suicide By OSCAR BAKER EMILY LAWFORD Students and mental health campaigners have condemned Oxford’s stressful academic environment and lack of mental health training for staff. Calls for reform follow comments made by the mother of Andrew Kirkman, a 20-year-old Balliol undergraduate who took his own life in 2013. Wendy Kirkman said she believes that the services currently in place are seriously ﬂawed, and would like to see mental health care professionals accessible 24 hours a day across UK university campuses. She called for the expansion of university drop-in services with mental health specialists in order that students can receive immediate assessment, and additionally for further training for university staff to improve awareness of signs of suicidal intent. Kirkman told The Telegraph she also wants university staff to be trained in how to spot the signs of suicidal intent: “I want them to be better trained to spot how at risk a student is and when it’s appropriate to pass it up to a specialist.” Andrew Kirkman was found dead in Port Meadow in December 2013, after being told the previous day to take medical leave when he informed his GP that he was struggling with academic demands and was thinking of self-harming. In a BBC Three documentary, Kirkman’s ex-girlfriend Clarissa revealed that he had told her he “felt like a fake” who was “falling short of the image that people had of him. He didn’t want to tell anyone else about his depression because he felt really

Magdalen plans to make race workshops compulsory

By LIBBY CHERRY

ashamed”. Three months after Kirkman’s death, another Balliol undergraduate, Jennifer Xu, also took her own life. In 2007, Andrew Mason, a 20-year-old Physics and Philosophy (PhysPhil) student and JCR president of Balliol was found dead in his bedroom. In the PhysPhil handbook, there is a section titled “When things go wrong”, that includes guides for “changing your course” and dealing with “problems with your tutor”. The Physics handbook contains no such sections. A second-year PhysPhil student told Cherwell that the poor organisation, isolation and intensity of the Oxford course could contribute to the high rate of students suspending their studies, changing their course, or experiencing mental health difficulties. They said: “PhysPhil is really poorly organised – meaning you could do 70% of your work in one term and 10-20 in the other two terms. “There’s no conversation between Physics and Philosophy so they don’t have an understanding of how much work the other is giving you and when – and limited choice in philosophy compared to PPE or Philosophy and Theology mean people are forced to do badly taught courses they aren’t interested in. “And in most colleges there’s only one PhysPhil student which means people are really isolated and lonely. “They wanted to make it so that you have at least two students per college but it didn’t happen.” Another second-year student, who Magdalen College JCR plan to make race workshops a compulsory part of its freshers’ week. The proposed workshop would cover topics such as “definitions of racism, institutional racism in Oxford, cultural appropriation, implicit bias, and advice on how to participate effectively in fighting racism for both BME and non-BME students”. A motion, proposed by the BME Representative Anveer Sodhi, will make it a constitutional responsibility for the BME Rep to organise race workshops during freshers’ week. It will be voted on at their next JCR meeting. Although a race workshop was held at Magdalen this year, only 20 freshers attended out of a cohort of 117. “It was about three or four days

Andrew Kirkman, who took his life in 2013 while studying Physics and Philosophy at Balliol College. switched from Physics and Philosophy to Music in their first year, told Cherwell: “One of the major things was that I found that not all, but a lot of my tutors were not supportive and made me feel really stupid. “One of my tutors told me to ‘treat problem sheets as if it was a life or death situation’. “On top of that, simply fitting in both problem sheets and essays with the amount of contact hours and classes was extremely difficult. They said I couldn’t row – they basically expected our whole life to be completely devoted to our degree.” According to research this year by the IPPR thinktank, in 2015/16, over 15,000 UK first-year students disclosed a mental health condition – almost five times the number in 2006/07. In England, 19% of 16–24-year-olds experienced a mental health condition, up from 15 per cent in 2003. In this age group, 28% of women experience mental health problems, compared to 10% of men. The study also found that a record number of students took their own lives in 2015. Between 2007 and 2015, the number of student suicides increased by 79%. In 2014/15, 1,180 students who

experienced mental health issues dropped out of university, according to the study, an increase of 210% from 2009/10. Tj Jordan, mental health campaigner and co-chair of the Oxford Mental Health Support Network, agreed with Kirkman’s claims, telling Cherwell: “Oxford University is known for its pressurising academic and social environment, but this tends to be a trigger, rather than a cause, for mental illness. “The problem arises from the lack of mental health training given to both support and academic staff. They are not fully equipped to deal with – or even recognise the signs of – cases of severe mental illness.” Kate Cole, President of Oxford SU told Cherwell: “Oxford SU calls for improvements to professional mental healthcare provision, at a university-level and a national scale, and resoundingly supports sustained access to these services. “Ensuring that mental health support for students is of the highest quality is a core part of Oxford SU’s long-term strategic priorities. “Our ambition of better provision of services for our student members is inherently tied to lobbying for more funding for national services

and parity of esteem between mental and physical health.” Speaking on the current state of mental health care provision, a University spokesperson told Cherwell: “Many students find the University’s college system a source of strength, offering an intimate environment where any mental difficulties are quickly noticed. “Every college offers medical support and a welfare team, clearly identified on their websites, giving students a choice of individuals to turn to. “The University’s professional Counselling Service provides training to the welfare teams on how to support students with mental health difficulties. “We also provide 30 hours of training to students selected to act as peer supporters and this initiative has been welcome by many other students facing personal challenges.” Student Minds provides local support: www.studentminds. org.uk. Nightline is an all-night helpline run by students: nightline.ac.uk For confidential support, call the Samaritans on 116123, visit a local branch or go to the website www. samaritans.org.

into freshers so I elected instead just to stay asleep for longer,” explained one non-attendee. Nevertheless, he admitted that by making the workshop a compulsory part of freshers’ week would “help to increase the awareness of race issues.” According to Oxford SU’s CRAE “100 Voices” report, published in 2014, “57.75% of BME respondents reported that they believed that racism is a problem at Oxford, as compared to 38.5% of white respondents”. This decision by the Magdalen JCR follows comments made in The Guardian by MP David Lammy and Afua Hirsch,

a writer, broadcaster, and Oxford alumnus. Whilst Lammy focused more on the problem of admissions, accusing the University of a “systematic bias” against black students, Hirsch also described the issues facing BAME students once they arrived. “Being in an environment where you are an extreme minority often pits you against a level of ignorance,” she said. In her article, she advocated that the University take “proactive steps” with students already at Oxford. The Oxford University Student Union hope to tackle both issues through its permanent Campaign for Racial

Awareness and Equality. Not only have they trained students to be able to give these race workshops, but they have also implemented “pilot programmes” at some colleges to help improve BAME access to the University. Oxford University has also offered Race Awareness Workshops for staff. Farheen Ahmed, Oxford SU, VP Welfare and Equal Opportunities said in a statement: “We welcome Magdalen’s motion to introduce race workshops, as an important part of bringing the conversation about race and ethnicity into the wider consciousness. “The University is becoming increasingly aware of the need to prioritise student voices on issues of race, as seen in the establishment of various groups to handle such concerns.”

Friday, 17 November 2017 | Cherwell

News INVESTIGATION

Revealed: the private school elite still dominating Oxford’s student life • Over half of college JCR Presidents attended fee paying schools By FELIX POPE Influential positions across Oxford University’s public life are still held disproportionately by students educated at private schools, a Cherwell investigation has revealed. According to the most recent data made available by Oxford, 59% of all offers made to students studying in the UK went to state school applicants. Yet at Oxford, under half of the significant elected roles within student politics examined were held by students educated in the state sector. The disparity is most obvious at the Oxford Union, where 76% of elected officials – from the President down to Secretary’s Committee – were privately educated. Of the 14 most senior roles (Standing Committee and above) just one was held by a former state comprehensive pupil – President Chris Zabilowicz. Within college politics the gap was less pronounced, with 52% of JCR Presidents having attended a fee paying school. Similarly, there was a 50/50 split between state and private across the senior editorial teams of Cherwell and The Oxford Student. Student party politics, by contrast, appears to show a remarkable lack of of private school alumni

University yet to respond to letter calling for “urgent action”

By MIA MILLMAN

• Underrepresention of state school students leads to “isolation”, claim campaigners

when the two largest political societies are examined. Oxford University Labour Club’s elected positions were – perhaps unsurprisingly – dominated by state comprehensive and grammar educated students. Oxford University Conservative

1 senior elected Union ﬁgure who attended a state comprehensive Association was the only body for which too little data could be found to draw any meaningful conclusions, with most elected members choosing not to reveal their former school on social media. Of the 69 significant figures selected, Cherwell was able to gather data on the school attended by 67. In virtually all cases claims made on Facebook and LinkedIn, or statements made by the school, were used to identify where they had previously studied. The data does represent a marked improvement from 2010, the last time an investigation into Oxford’s privately educated elite was conducted.

Oxford University is under ﬁ re again from David Lammy MP after failing to respond to a letter calling for “urgent action” on admissions inequality sent over three weeks ago. The University is yet to respond to the letter, sent to both Oxford and Cambridge, which was signed by 108 parliamentarians following claims of “social apartheid”.

Cambridge responded to the letter immediately after it was sent last month, whilst Oxford claimed it was to respond in the coming days. Condemning the lack of response, Lammy said the University “should be out there on the

Cherwell found then that almost 60% of JCR Presidents, 70% of University-wide society Presidents, and 80% of elected Union members were privately educated. At the time 55% of those admitted to the University came from state schools, with under 45% from independent schools. The figures will likely not be happy reading for University bosses seeking to change Oxford’s public image in the wake of David Lammy MP’s criticism of Oxbridge colleges as “fiefdoms of entrenched privilege”. Data obtained by Lammy through Freedom of Information requests established that in 2015 Oxford made 82% of its offers to children from the two top social

Oxford Union ofﬁcials, their guests, and speakers following last week’s ‘populism backgrounds. More offers were made to students from Eton than to students on free meals from across the entire country. Class Act, an Oxford SU campaign set up to represent the interests of students of working class, low income, first generation, and state comprehensive backgrounds at Oxford, told Cherwell: “Repre-

sentation of Class Act students within student organisations at the university is vital. “The dominance of students with privileged educational or income backgrounds in many of these organisations can be seen both as a reflection of the isolation Class Act students face at the university and as a reason why this isolation continues to exist.”

School backgrounds

issue and they are not, they are hiding it, they are defensive and they don’t want to talk about it”. The universities were also condemned by Lammy for the “knee-jerk” response to the recently-revealed statistics in which they placed much of the blame on schools and inequality in society. Lammy said: “It is all excuses: it’s the child’s fault, it’s the school’s fault, it is the education system’s fault. “It is never ever, ever the college’s fault, never the tutor’s fault,

never any acknowledgement that the burden for this young person [to go to Oxbridge] is a considerable burden.” He further accused the University of wanting to “shoot the messenger” rather than address the issue. The letter sent to the University followed the revelation that nearly one in three Oxford colleges did not any black British A-level students in 2015 and called on the universities to

take “urgent action”. The ﬁ ndings revealed last month also showed that 82% of Oxford offers went to students from the top two socio-economic groups in 2015. A spokesperson from the University told Times Higher Education that the letter “was signed by more than 100 MPs from across the country, all of whom we believe deserve a considered and personalised response. We are currently detailing and analysing our outreach activity in each MP’s constituency, and we aim to be in a position to send these tailored responses in the coming days”.

Cherwell | Friday, 17 November 2017

Oxford 54th in new university league table... for ethical performance By HENRY STRAUGHAN Oxford has performed poorly in a league table that ranks universities on their ethical and environmental performance. ‘The People & Planet University League Table’ uses a range of measures to rank universities, including: ethical investment, carbon reduction, workers rights, waste and recycling, energy sources, and education for sustainable development. Oxford came 54th out of 154 UK universities, up from 115th in 2015. It performed particularly badly on measures of carbon reduction, workers rights, education on sustainable development, and its ethical investment policy. The table comes a week after a Guardian report showed that Oxford and many of its colleges have secretly invested tens of millions of pounds in offshore funds supporting the gas and coal industry. Cambridge, which was also implicated in the Guardian report, came below Oxford at 58, an improvement from 113th two years ago. Oxford Climate Justice Campaign told Cherwell: “In a world facing climate catastrophe, an

institution like Oxford must prove its commitment to preserving the future in order to remain relevant. “The assessment released this week by People and Planet may be one of the only university ranking systems that matters much in the near future. “It certainly will be one of the only measures that will matter to future students of Oxford, if Oxford survives the economic and geological crisis it is helping to create. “We are grateful for the thorough analysis, and we hope Oxford leadership accesses and reads the report in full.” The Climate Justice Campaign highlighted three areas where Oxford underperformed compared to other universities and called on the University to improve its commitment to environmental practices. A spokesperson told Cherwell: “Oxford needs to commit to a comprehensive… ethical investment strategy by divesting from all fossil fuels in its direct and indirect investments. “It should look to one of its own departments – the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment – for new sustainable investment

opportunities. “Oxford must actively encourage education for sustainable development in all of its departments, not just those specializing in environmental concerns. “The future of our globe and the responsibility of global citizenship should be a task of concern for every mind entering the walls of this institution. “Oxford must hire sufficient human resources to see its sustainability goals through. “Perhaps, if Oxford is unwilling to cut ties with its major donors from the fossil fuel industry, then it could redirect some of the funding from Shell and BP to hire enough experts and sustainability scholars to help us compete in next year’s university sustainability report.” As a whole, universities performed better than a decade ago when the league table was first published. In 2007 only five universities were recycling more than half their waste. The number is now 85. Manchester Metropolitan University topped this year’s table, ahead of Gloucester and Nottingham Trent. LSE came top out of Russell Group universities.

m’ debate. PHOTO: THE OXFORD UNION/FACEBOOK

ANALYSIS

Why are private schoolkids still overrepresented? Oxford’s ongoing problems with accepting a socially representative balance of students are well known. Independent schools educate just 6.5% of pupils in the UK, but their alumni comprised 41% of Oxford’s British educated undergraduate intake last year. Less talked about, and arguably much harder to solve, is the problem within Oxford’s student body. Student societies, politics, journalism, club nights, and theatre all seem to be disproportionately controlled by those educated at fee paying schools. Cherwell has now confirmed this to be the case in regard to the Union, JCR Presidencies, and student journalism. The fact that 41% of the student

body controls over three quarters of elected Union positions and over half of JCR Presidencies clearly displays that some advantage must be conferred upon privately educated students that extends beyond good grades alone. The confidence and instant popularity boost that comes with arriving at Oxford with possibly dozens of classmates is a good place to start. Knowing that others from your school – possibly even your older siblings or parents – have already studied at Oxford allows for an immediate self-assurance, and some knowledge of how institutions such as Cherwell or the Union work. Nobody is claiming that those educated at fee paying schools have a greater inherent drive to succeed

than their state school peers. But practice in public speaking, in living away from your parents, and in regular rigorous exams means that private schoolkids enter Oxford better prepared for its unique trials. And this matters because Oxford serves as such an effective springboard into British public life. Large proportions of our national journalists, judiciary, political class, and cultural elite all emerge from this institution. How any of this can actually be changed is a matter of contentious debate. But the work of groups such as Class Act, that seek to pair first generation and working class students with ‘buddies’ and help them integrate into Oxford seems to be a worthy place to start.

Univ to end Oxford ‘spotty neek’ stereotype By AMY WILKINSON University College is set to elect two skincare representatives, after a motion establishing the position was passed at their last JCR meeting. The motion stated that the representatives, who will be given positions on the general committee, will be introduced to cater for student “skincare, shaving, grooming and general cellular wellbeing”. The motion was proposed by Francis Kerrigan and seconded by Anjelica Smerin. They felt it was necessary to help “banish the

stereotype of ‘the spotty neek’ for Oxford”. They argued this was particularly problematic as exam season approaches and skin issues worsen. Elections will be held in seventh week. The reps’ responsibilities range from spreading awareness of “issues surrounding pores, hydration and chapped lips” to weekly livestream videos to discuss “grooming regimes, face masks, shaving, and moisturising.” Smerin claimed such videos had been popular in the past, with rumours that the first one will deal

with the controversies surrounding chemical exfoliation. The motion was amended to make sure the videos are recorded and saved rather than livestreamed to ensure that they are permanently accessible for students. Kerrigan and Smerin have also promised to provide skincare consultations, and have stated “Kerrigan and Smerin Skincare Ltd Common Room Representatives reserves the right for any elected individual to be dismissed”, should they themselves deem the representative incapable of carrying out this role.

Wrap up with a College Scarf College stripes woven in wool

Made in the United Kingdom

Backed with soft fleece

10% student discount all year with University card. *Restrictions apply

106 High Street, Oxford OX1 4BW www.oushop.com

Friday, 17 November 2017 | Cherwell

News Student death prompts new bike safety charter By MUSTAFA AHMED

A charter demanding that Oxford becomes a safer city for cyclists has been launched, following the death of a student last term. Claudia Comberti, an Oxford DPhil student, was killed in a cycling accident earlier this year.

The Claudia Charter for Safer Cycling has calls for vulnerable cyclists to be given greater respect on the road. It also lobbies Oxford city council to create continuous, segregated cycleways as soon as possible. The charter asks the council to spend a minimum of £10 per person on improving cycling infrastructure across the city, whilst also calling for all cyclists to be taught to a minimum standard of cycling. The charter is supported by the cycling organisations Broken Spoke Bike Co-Op and Cyclox. The initiative was unveiled last Thursday, exactly six months after Claudia’s death. It was presented to the public at the Tap Social Movement, a craft brewery in North Hinksey Lane. Speaking to the Oxford Mail¸

the chairman of Cyclox, Simon Hunt, said: “Out of tragedy comes strength and cohesion. That’s why we want to keep up the energy charge. That’s what has been behind this charter. “In the two weeks or so after Claudia’s death I would wake up in the middle of the night thinking: ‘what needs to be done?’some of those things are on the charter.” According to an investigation carried out by the Oxford Mail, between the years 2005 and 2016, 2,004 cyclists were injured in Oxford. With 11,000 staff and students cycling daily, Oxford University’s sustainable transport manager Adam Bows supported the charter, saying it was “really important” that it was a safe city for people to ride around the city as he backed the charter. The Labour party Oxford City Councillor, Louise Upton, told Cherwell: “I was really impressed by the drive for something positive to come out of such a sad event. “One of the strengths of the Claudia Charter is that it includes things for everyone to do

- whether you are someone who walks, cycles or drives, as well as for elected councillors. “The decision to sign up to the charter was approved unanimously at the last City Council meeting, receiving support from all the Labour, Green and LibDem councillors.

“Students are a huge part of the cycling community in Oxford and the Claudia Charter is particularly relevant for them. “To keep them safe we need to build segregated cycle lanes and off-road routes, we need motorists to be considerate and we need cyclists to cycle respon-

sibly. “The launch of the Claudia Charter is the beginning of a long journey - it will take years to get safe cycle routes across the whole city, and for all motorists to treat cyclists like friends - but we are starting that journey now!”

Around 600 people took part in a mass bike ride on Broad Street to celebrate Comberti’s life shortly after her death

Cherwell | Friday, 17 November 2017

Shark Tales Drunk freshers meet world-class journalists. Watch now at facebook.com/cherwellonline

Residents evacuated to St Hugh’s after ‘chemical hazard’ By ISABEL MORRIS Local residents were evacuated to St Hugh’s last Thursday after a chemical hazard forced them to leave their houses. The college offered up their JCR to the 60 displaced residents of Elizabeth Jennings Way, Oxford, where the incident took place. The leak alledgedly orginated from the home of Hamed Ahmadi Nejad, a former university employee currently under investigation for conducting a campaign against the University and its staff. Police officers were conducting a routine arrest in Nejad’s flat at 5.16am when they became aware of a potentially noxious substance being released. The substance in question was later identified as hydrogen. According to Nehad’s legal defence he had the chemical because he is an “entrepreneur, a chemist, a physician.” The cause of the leak is currently unclear. The entire street was evacuated by emergency services and placed on lockdown as specialist teams conducted safety assessments throughout the day. St Hugh’s, which houses 432 undergraduates and 264 graduates,

offered emergency facilities for the evacuated residents. The college, which is located near the site of the incident, accepted 25-30 people over the course of the day, some of whom were young children. Most residents arrived at the college at about 11am and were initially accommodated in a smaller room before being moved into the St Hugh’s JCR, which contains sofas and games. The college provided residents with lunch and blankets, and the JCR welfare team offered out food and drink. The evacuated residents were also able to eat in St Hugh’s dining hall. The residents initially planned to be in the JCR until 3pm, but stayed until after 9pm, at which point they were able to be rehoused. The St Hugh’s JCR Welfare rep, Cameron East, said: “I really rate St Hugh’s for doing it. Our principle (Elish Angiolini) bought some chocolates for the JCR to thank us for letting the residents use the room, which was really sweet!” The college told Cherwell: “We have offered our thanks to our students who gave up the JCR for the day.”

Fake News Oxford hires professor The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) and Oxford Internet Institute (OII) are launching a new project investigating fake news and its connection with traditional journalism and social media. The RISJ and OII are seeking are seeking to appoint two Postdoctoral Research Fellows to work on the project. The aim of the project is described as an attempt to understand the interplay between misinformation campaigns, news media, and social media in different contexts around various scientific and technological issues, for example climate science and artificial intelligence.

SOLO Library online catalogue crashes SOLO went down earlier this week after a power outage in central Oxford, depriving students of several hours of intellectual fufufilment. Certain students were affected for up to several hours and left unable to access the Bodleian’s online catalogue. Speaking to Cherwell, a spokesperson for the University explained: “The network that was affected by the power outage is in the process of being replaced and SOLO will be off this network before the end of the year. This will reduce the Bodleian Libraries vulnerability to complications in the event of future SSE power outages. We apologise for any inconvenience the SOLO downtime caused to our users.”

Queen Bey Student founds Beyoncé appreciation society Sara Yassi, a second-year student at Trinity, has founded The Oxford University Yoncé Appreciation Society (Y.A.S.) to “unite all the fans of Beyoncé and anything related to her”. The society will host Beyoncé-related events including club nights, panels, and exhibitions. Speaking to Cherwell, Yassi said: “Anyone who knows me knows how much I love Beyoncé… Many are aware that Beyoncé also stands for issues of racial equality, feminism, and LGBTQ+ awareness which as a society we will hope to also stand for.”

Student arrest leads to chemical incident By DAVID STEINER The routine arrest of a former Oxford student developed into a major chemical incident last Thursday morning. Police officers were detaining Linacre College alumnus Hamed Ahmadi Nejad for harrasment without injury. During the arrest at his home on Elizabeth Jennings Way, unidentified chemicals were found on the property. As a result, Nejad and seven police officers were taken to hospital for treatment of potential poisoning. Nejad, a former computer science student, withdrew from his studies last year. Prior to the chemical incident, he had been arrested and charged with harassment of Linacre College staff and students. Nejad was on bail and await-

ing a court hearing. The Daily Mail reported that the alleged harassment included sending regular Facebook messages and in one instance, a picture of a dead rat. It was also alleged that Nejad dropped flyers over his former college using a remote controlled drone. Those effected by the chemical incident were checked out of hospital during the day, except for two police officers who stayed overnight for further examination. Thames Valley Police told the Daily Mail that they were initially “conducting a routine arrest. “They were made aware by the occupant of a potential chemical hazard and precautions were taken as a result.” Upon discovery of the chemical hazard, the police called ambulance services at 5:25am.

A hazardous area response team, two ambulances, and a tactical commander were immediately sent to the location of the incident in Summertown The Daily Mail reported that, as a result of the incident, 34-year-old Nejad was “charged with offences of administering a poison with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm and one count of intimidation of a witness.” Nejad was finally denied bail and is due to appear at Oxford Crown Court on 8 December. Nejad is listed online as a software developer and director of two private technology services companies. He won £5000 for the Man AHL Coder Prize in 2016, a coding competition open to UK and Irish students. He subsequently started working for Man AHL on a full time basis.

#FreeEdNOW student demo in London Thousands of students marched through London on Wednesday to protest the government’s education policy. The protesters were calling for free education and universal living grants, to be funded by increased taxes on the rich. The occasion included chants of “Education for the masses, not just for the ruling classes” and “no ifs, no buts, no education cuts.” It comes after criticism of the government’s education policies and cuts to the education budget. The demand for the scrapping university tuition fees comes in the wake of the government losing a non-binding vote of raising the fee cap. The demonstration was supported by the Labour Party, though the NUS declined to endorse it. It is thought largest mobilisation of student demonstrators since 2010, when students occupied the Millbank Conservative Party headquarters amid a string of violent incidents. PHOTO: HARRISON JONES

Friday, 17 November 2017 | Cherwell

8 Independent since 1920 Vol. 283, No. 7

Cherwell

The enduring legacy of Cherwell’s founding father

ELITISM IN OXFORD

Student societies make statesmen

t’s the background noise to Oxford. You hear it in the buzz of the bridge smoking area, as someone asks where you went to school, and in the unquestioned confidence of white tied officers strolling through debating chamber halls. And now, it’s laid bare on pages four and five of this newspaper: Oxford still has a serious elitism problem. Oxford’s JCR presidents, societies and student journalism (Cherwell is certainly not exempt) being dominated by the privately-educated in a university overrepresented by the rich and privileged is barely surprising, you might say. And more than that, you might wonder why it’s even a problem. Does it matter who introduces Union speakers or decides what appears on Cherwell’s front page? It matters because these positions act as launch pads for successful careers: those dominating student life at Oxford often go on to dominate public life. What’s to blame for this disparity? We can hardly suggest it comes from a inherent confidence from the privately educated. Much of the problem is with an educational system that creates marked social and cultural divides before we’ve even arrived at university. While those coming from the average state school may know one or two people in their year, those from St Paul’s and Winchester will have already acquired dozens of connections across numerous colleges. Which, of course, plays in your favour when it comes to winning university-wide elections. Attempts to tackle the issue within Oxford are beginning to appear, but seem to be in danger of falling flat. The newly-formed Oxford SU pressure group Class Act continues to shy away from media attention and appears to

have done little more to address systemic socioeconomic division in Oxford than to introduce a patronising ‘buddy system’ for working class students. It’s unfair to lay too much blame on Oxford itself for the issue – despite continued disparities in race and class, each year its admissions processes continue to boost the number of state-educated students. The real problem to address, as with so many, is not Oxford’s societies, but the way way our education system is structured. Elitism in Oxford is little more than a mirror to elitism in society.

Queer and now People don’t like reading bad news and this term Cherwell has been publishing lots of it. This week: an account of homophobic abuse suffered by students attending Wadham’s Queerfest last year. Depressing, yes, but deserving of attention and concern. We haven’t seen the full contents of the code of conduct that the college has produced to prevent similiar incidents this year, but it’s attempt to tackle the issue are encouraging. You might think it strange or misplaced for a college to devote so much attention and energy to what is essentially a bop. But what makes Queerfest important is its status as a symbol of diversity and inclusivity. It creates a moment for a student minority to celebrate its identity free from prejudice. And it deserves to be safeguarded, which is why its guards must abide by its standards. In the week Australians voted to legalise gay marriage, neither Wadham, its students, nor the queer community will accept homophobic slurs on its own territory.

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

CAT BEAN and RYAN MAMUN, Food Editors

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

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

EMILY LAWFORD, MIA MILLMAN, and HENRY STRAUGHAN, News Editors JORDAN BERNSTEIN and NAOMI PACKER, Comment Editors ROSIE DUTHIE and GREG BRINKWORTH, Comment Contributing Editors GREG RITCHIE and RYAN GOULD, Investigations Editors THEODORE CORNISH, MAXIM PARR-REID, and ALEX WAYGOOD, Deputy Investigations Editors SELMA STEARNS and ROSA THOMAS, Features Editors ABBY RIDSDILL-SMITH and JULIA ROUTLEDGE, Life Editors JAMES LAMMING, Deputy Life Editor ALTAIR BRANDON-SALMON and ANOUSHKA KAVANAGH, Culture Editors LUCY ENDERBY and TILDA COLEMAN, Books Editor BECKY COOK and JACK ALLSOP, Film Editors KATIE SAYER and IZZY SMITH, Theatre Editors CHARLES BRITTON and HENRY HATWELL, Deputy Theatre Editors THOMAS ATHEY and JOE BAVERSTOCK-POPPY, Music Editors ELEANOR BIRDSALL-SMITH and ELLIE DUNCAN, Visual Arts Editors

Ethan Croft

IRTEZA ISHRAQ and JON STARK, Science and Tech Editors ELEANOR BLACKWOOD and THOMAS MUNRO, Satire Editors SHIV BHARDWAJ and THOMAS BROWNE, Sport Editors THOMAS PLAYER, Puzzles Editor CALUM BRADSHAW and KATIE COOK, Video Editors JULIA ALSOP and CHARLOTTE TOSTI, Blogs Editors ELLA BENSON-EASTON, Chief Photographer INDIA BARRETT, ELLIE BOURNE, POLLY HALLADAY, GEORGIE RILEY, Business Team Cherwell is published by Oxford Student Publications Ltd. Oxford Student Publications Ltd. LOUIS WALKER, Chairman REBECCA ILES, Managing Director KATIE BIRNIE, Finance Director UTSAV POPPAT, Tech Director TESS HULTON, Events Director For all advertising enquiries, please contact OSPL at advertising@ospl.org or 01865 722780, or visit www.ospl. org Printed in Great Britain by Mortons Ltd.

Student journos must embrace tabloid philosophy

The journalist Robin Esser died last week. I admit that his name has only floated into my orbit in recent months. He was one of many British writers and editors who cut their teeth in student journalism before moving on to national careers. But the more I think of Esser, the more prescient his story seems. Whilst studying at Oxford in the fifties, Esser stumbled upon a relatively niche publication called ‘The Cherwell’. Back then, it was a high falutin literary magazine founded a few decades earlier in 1920. This posh rag’s main claim to fame was publishing the juvenilia of one Wystan Hugh Auden, alumnus of Christ Church College. Esser was a little dissatisfied with this, having come to Oxford with his childhood ambition a career in hard journalism still intact. Along with some friends, he refounded the old magazine as a new student newspaper, Cherwell. The new print would be based on the small local paper that young Robin had set up and run out of his school bag at a boys grammar in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. His first post at Oxford’s modish new paper was as Cherwell’s first real News Editor. In that role he set the precedent of long hours and high standards that still demands near total dedication from our news team today. Esser’s journalistic philosophy, which he carried with him through his eventful life, was relatively simple. Any newspaper under his editorship would primarily fulfil it’s obligation to entertain the reading public, whilst also keeping a check on “the hypocrisy of those in power.” After his graduation, from both Oxford and Cherwell, Esser went on to become a fixture of Britain’s tabloid papers, and eventually became editor-in-chief of the Sunday Express during the dying days of the Thatcher ministry.

Embarking on such a career, he no doubt attracted acrimony and sneers from many of his Wadhamite university friends. Never mind that Esser founded the Daily Mail’s first dedicated weekly arts supplement, the fact he pursued his belief in popular journalism through tabloid news was crime enough for his confrères, with their broadsheet pretences. Of course, in the story of Robin Esser’s career we see parallels with current attitudes to journalism at Oxford. The modern successors of Esser’s uppity peers now mock Cherwell as the new Daily Mail. Our affront to their sensibilities seems to have been merely reporting on events that they wanted kept quiet, whether that be in regards to college football or University Challenge. More broadly, this term we have broken exclusive stories week upon week, about the biggest societies in Oxford, and the potential misdeeds of the University itself. Yet in some fit of cognitive dissonance, Oxfeud contributors (RIP) have insisted on calling the Cherwell staff ‘careerist snakes’ and the like. If it were the case that we were simply trying to flesh out our CVs, why does so much effort go into exclusive reporting? Why don’t we simply take a leaf out of the comparatively thinner archive books of other student newspapers, and rewrite the news reporting of other journalists? It’s because we follow the example set by the modern founder of Cherwell, Robin Esser. He dared to think that student journalism could be more than an outlet for cliché ridden teenage fiction and soft reviews of rubbish plays (or club nights). He thought that Cherwell could be a popular breaking news source, rather than a barely mentioned magazine. Thanks to Robin Esser’s example, more people are reading this newspaper than ever before.

Life Arts Style

by Cherwell 17 November 17

+ Film Mesmerising madness behind the Iron Curtain Life In conversation with the founder of Mob Kitchen Books The enduring appeal of Agatha Christieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Poirot

The naked truth

Friday, 17 November 2017 | Cherwell

2 oxbow

EDITORIAL A deep-rooted espionage obsession By ALTAIR BRANDON-SALMON ANOUSHKA KAVANAGH Oxford, as a city and a university, seems to breathe in an air of secrets, of arcana and inscrutability, accessible only to the initiated. So as the days grow dark at four o’clock, it’s appropriate that this week’s issue of Oxbow is Classified. Secrets abound in literature and the arts: it is one of the most venerable and long-lived of artistic traditions. Nowhere is this more clear than in those twin, titanic genres which captivate our imaginations: stories of mysteries and espionage. Agatha Christie, still alights our curiosity as to ‘who did it’ in her novels and innumerable adaptations

for film and television. The same is true for the archetypal detective, Sherlock Holmes, who almost blurred the boundaries between fiction and reality. Yet as Maxim Mower argues, our love of narratives based around secrets, seen nowhere more clearly than in the longevity of James Bond and the Mission Impossible series, has been cynically exploited by voracious film studios, hungry for revenues in the hundreds of millions. Still. It’s hardly possible that our thirst for these kinds of mysteries has been sated. For over a century, Britain has consumed them in books, film, and on television. With each new permutation, such as Scandinavian noir, the love affair begins all over again.

Contents

Clockwise from bottom left: student life drawings 8, the license to print money 10, Burial’s Untrue a decade on 12, Soviet madness in Death of Stalin 13

Interview

Music

Press Polly Toynbee discusses the importance of variety

Life 4 4 4 5 5 6 6

Love Oxland Movember and the stigma of men’s mental health A day in the life of a JCR president John Evelyn booze cruise for dastardly Blues How to deal with Oxistential angst Interview Mob Kitchen’s Ben Lebus A Life Divided by cuppers

Style 7 7

Naomi Campbell a rocky reign Met Gala yet more controversy?

Visuals 8 9

Life drawing spread The female nude and its insincerity

Culture 10 10

I spy a profit Bond, Bourne and the license to print money Picks of the Week Poirot

Nancy Drew feminist icon?

12 Burial ten years on 12 Review Oxford University Orchesta at the Sheldonian

Film 13 Death of Stalin mesmerising Soviet madness 13 Silence of the lambs A gendered re-watching 13 Ones to watch spy films

Books 14 14

Poirot an enduring appeal Review Pullman’s The Book of Dust

Theatre 15 Twelfth Night at the RSC 15 Confessions things get worse, again 15 Five Minutes with Sos Eltis

Satire 16 16

Isis magazine to be renamed Daesh Paradise Papers further relevations

This week’s Oxbow cover was designed by Amber Sidney-Woollett.

“If it costs eleven billion a year to elect a Labour government, that’s okay with me” Interview Veteran Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee talks to Jack Hunter about the problem with left-wing people

s we sit down on a gravestone outside a church where she has just given a talk publicising her latest book, Polly Toynbee tells me: “that was a nice audience – shame they all already more or less agree.” She’s right – the crowds dispersing from the venue are exactly what you would expect as the quintessential greying guardianista: all pearl necklaces, hair tied in buns and corduroy geography teacher chic. “That’s part of the problem actually – we go to lots of literary festivals and the people who’ve got the money, and the time, don’t need babysitters, are all going to be older people.” Toynbee says she is hoping to form “an older people’s movement” in order to “mobilise the old retired who’ve got money and knowledge into a political force.” (She does admit this might be a “tough ask” when her new book is calling on a wealth tax for the older, propertied classes.) Yet much of the problem is when progressives come up against a “rabidly right-wing” press. Wellattended book talks by well-educated metropolitans with weekly Guardian columns have increasingly little importance when “the news agenda is still set astonishingly by the dead tree newspapers”. “They’re much more influential than you think,” she says, “I wish I could say that of myself or the Guardian.” “If you look at…the front pages of the Daily Mail in the run-up to the Brexit vote they are just astounding: day after day, ‘migrant criminals that we can’t deport, here they come’ – pictures of migrants arriving on boats into Europe.

“If you only ever read the Guardian, you th “I mean just non-stop migration, migration, migration every single day in The Sun and the Mail, and pretty much the rest of them too. So that it can create a sort of atmosphere where that’s the received opinion – and for broadcasters who aren’t allowed to be biased it’s very difficult for them, having spent seven years in the BBC newsroom – to navigate their way and to find where is the line down the middle, when there’s such a lot of noise on one side and so little on the other.” Toynbee herself is not unfamiliar with receiving the ire of conservative opinion as the face of a condescending Islington socialist. Yet in recent years, she’s been facing increasing hatred from an unfamiliar foe: the left. Along with many commentators, Toynbee refused to welcome Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader in 2015, saying at the time that the party “threatens to be irrelevant” under his leadership. It has made her the centre of criticism for a new generation of dedicated young Corbynistas. Toynbee says she has noticed abused from a “very weirdly obsessed” cabal of “really, really angry people who blame us for Corbyn not winning.” She says “it hurts more when it comes from the left.” The reason for this is simple, Toynbee says. “If you only ever read the Guardian, you think that

Cherwell | Friday, 17 November 2017

oxbow

interview Polly Toynbee’s life in print 1966 - Toynbee publishes her first novel, Leftovers. Later in the year, she goes to St. Anne’s College, Oxford on a history scholarship after being awarded one A-level by the Holland Park School in Kensington. 1983 - she stands as a candidate for the newly formed Social Democratic party (SDP) in the Lewisham East constituency. She splits the vote with Labour, as a Conservative MP is elected to the seat for the first time since 1935. 1998 - after winning the Orwell prize for journalism on the basis of her work for The Independent, Toynbee is hired as a full time columnist by the Guardian, where she remains to this day. 2003 - on the 25th anniversary of John Paul II’s papacy, Toynbee brands the pontiff “a hate figure, and with good reason”. She particularly criticises the Catholic Church’s policy toward contraception in less economically developed countries. 2006 - Conservative MP Greg Clark calls for Toynbee to be brought into David Cameron’s team of advisors 2009 - in the run-up to the European elections, Toynbee endorses the Lib Dems.

hink that your battle is ‘why isn’t the Guardian more left-wing?’ But that’s not where the battle is. It’s where you never look.” PHOTO: POLICY EXCHANGE your battle is ‘why isn’t the Guardian more left-wing?’ But that’s not where the battle is, the battle is happening over there, where you never look. So pick up the Daily Mail once a week and read it and understand what it is you’re really up against – it’s not us, we’re not the enemy!” Finding herself against the current of opinion is a natural position for Toynbee. Arriving at Oxfordwith a novel already published,

“Pick up the Daily Mail once a week and read it” she became “immediately both prominent and hated at once.” This perhaps wasn’t helped, she tells me, by Cherwell, which at the time was “very, very maliciously gossipy about people” – plus ça change, some might say. It resulted in her dropping out from Oxford after her first year. Was this her ultimate act of rebellion against the establishment? Not quite, she says. “I was very unhappy in all sorts of ways, but I did think I would go off to be a writer, with a capital ‘W’, and be a great writer and be a great novelist. “And it would be a good thing to

go and work with my hands during the day – understand the real world: as a middle-class person from middle-class, academic writing family, I knew nothing about anything. I went and worked in a factory and worked as a waitress and in various jobs like that, and very quickly discovered why if you’d been working in a glass factory all day you wouldn’t on the whole go home and write like Tolstoy.” A fascination with the lives of ordinary people is something which runs throughout Toynbee’s career, from her first novel A Working Life to seven years as the BBC’s social affairs editor. Her new book with David Walker, Dismembered, is the product of over a year spent speaking with public sector workers about their lives in a system facing – she talks animatedly about meeting border force officers at Gatwick and paediatricians in Southampton. For Toynbee, “journalism is going to report on things I don’t know about.” “You go off and think about all sorts of things, about how society works, and how people work. I’ve always been really interested in people’s working lives – what they actually do all day – and I think much too little gets written about the texture of people’s work – what motivates them, what pleases them, what doesn’t, what’s hell and

what’s not. So the nature of work has always really interested me, and it’s very underreported. “It’s more reporting curiosity, social curiosity, I think. A sense of adventure – go off to somewhere you haven’t been before, amongst people living a very different sort of life is exciting and interesting, and you’re longing to write it down and record it. So it’s more a kind of reporter’s instinct I think.” Many would scoff, however, at the idea of Toynbee as any kind of objective reporter. In Dismembered, Toynbee and Walker pour scorn on successive years of underfunding and contracting out of public sector. It dissects, in Toynbee’s characteristically meticulous style, how the Tories “mounted an ideological assault on the public sector.” It’s a fairly Corbynite analysis, in tune we might think with many of her young leftist critics. So does this extend to the student fees of those young people in which her talks are so lacking? “Well I thought £9,000 was too much. I didn’t think it was altogether a bad thing that students should pay a bit – because the idea that people who are cleaning floors and whose children will never go to university should pay through their taxes for the largely privileged who will; there seemed to be a sort of injustice there.” But, she says: “I think I’ve sort of changed my mind about it. I think

the fact that so many more people go to university now, and the fact they’re never going to earn a huge amount of money – the differential between being a graduate and nongraduate has shrunk. “I think that you’re saddling people with debts that they’re never going to pay off at a time when it’s now impossible to get a mortgage which it wasn’t when I was young. You came out of university and got your first job, within a shortish amount of time, you could buy something or other, out of the money that you earned without having your family necessarily support you. “So I think so much has changed from the distribution of wealth away from the young to the old that this isn’t a bad way of pushing it back down again. “And if it costs eleven billion pounds a year to elect a labour government and kick out a Tory government, then that’s okay with me.” Even if the young are on side, Toynbee says opposition to her plan will come from the old. “I’m horrified by what has become of the old – despite the fact that’s it’s the old people who come to my talks and buy our book!” She’s scathing of the rest of her generation, who she says: “have ended up the selfish, narrow minded, willing to screw the interests of

the young in order to secure a big pension.”

Toynbee’s natural and perhaps happy position is as the outsider Toynbee, then, is back in her natural and perhaps happy position as the outsider. Constantly facing off critics from the left and right, does Toynbee see herself as a misanthrope? “Absolutely not”, she says. “You write a book like this you go around and interview all these public servants who are keeping it going, despite their own pay being really cut back, nurses losing three thousand a year less than they had, yet still determined to keep the thing going. “And are much more outraged about what it does to their service than what it does to their individual pay – so not at all. I’m always very encouraged by just how many good people there are who keep everything going, and I’m damn well going to get out there and persuade the rest. If only they’d read our book!”

Friday, 17 November 2017 | Cherwell

4 oxbow

Love Oxland semi-ﬁnal “The food was free, so we ordered the most expensive things on the menu.”

Lucy Zhu and Martha Raymer manage to enjoy their tapas, despite the staring waiters Martha Raymer First Year, History Worcester

Lucy Zhu Third Year, PPE Lincoln Having already met Martha, I knew this date was going to be great. The time ﬂew by and I can’t really remember what we even talked about, because I was having such a lovely time. I will say that I did not handle the restaurant not knowing we had been booked in very well and I deﬁnitely got vibes that she was not impressed by my blind panic at being in a vaguely adult situation. It was another lovely date, and the walk back into town was a very sweet (if cold) end to the evening, even if she wasn’t impressed by my college library, which did cause some tension. The weirdest part of the whole thing did not occur during the date, but later in the Park End queue where her friends tried to take a picture of me to send to Martha. Queuing for Park End is already horrifying enough...

What was your ﬁrst impression? Better equipped for cold than me Any awkward moments? The waiters staring at us Third date? We’re going to the same screening of Moonlight, does that count?

To get our free tapas, we had to fully expose the fact that we were there on a date. I would be mad at Cherwell for making us suffer through the knowing looks given by the waiters, but we soon decided that free food meant we were obliged to order the most expensive things on the menu. Thanks Cherwell. My date with Lucy, however, was thoroughly lovely – aside from Lucy’s bike not surviving the night. I’m also glad my aesthetic “Jane Austen vibe” is ﬁnally being appreciated. I only began to experience Lucy’s self-confessed murder-y vibes the moment I didn’t provide a shining review of Lincoln College library: it just can’t compete with Worcester’s lake! However, I’m keeping her abandonment of any morals unpublished: what happens at Kazbar stays at Kazbar.

It’s time to take men’s mental health more seriously, writes Fraser MacdonaldLister

What was your ﬁrst impression? Outrageously beautiful bicycle Any awkward moments? Maybe the waiters Third date? Will there be free food?

Are Lucy and Martha your Oxland winners?

Voting now open on our Facebook page Sponsored by

“There is a social expectation that men should just ‘deal with it’”

A day in the life

JCR President

£4.50 cocktails Monday to Thursday from 9pm. By NATALIE NGUYEN

very 60 seconds, a man weighs his problems against his life, and chooses to forfeit the latter. Many people are blind to the horrific reality of men’s mental health problems. Something has to change, and that’s what the Movember Foundation is working towards. I have suffered my own demons with mental health and continue to work through those issues today. At points, it has taken me to some very dark places. Juggling depression, social anxiety and low self-esteem with a challenging workload, I often choose to mask my feelings rather than share them with others. I have felt that a problem shared, far from a problem halved, is a problem multiplied into a burden on my friends and family. Movember always strikes a chord with me because it highlights the social expectation that men should just ‘deal with it’ when it comes to problems, big or small. Although this idea is gradually being eroded, it is ingrained in our generation. Young men continue to grow up feeling as though being the man of the house or thick-skinned is imperative to their identity. I was 16 when my dad passed away, and

he life of a JCR President isn’t as glamorous as it seems. This is most evident when you find yourself single-handedly cleaning up loo roll and broken glass strewn decoratively across the quad from the night before, or waking up to the realisation that you have to sit on the Health and Safety Sub-Committee that morning. It’s also probably safe to say that by the end of my stint, I had developed a genuine phobia of checking

Pembroke students Oliver Cliffant, Thom I felt responsible for holding our house together: I thought I had to become the man of the house, that the best way forward was to tough

I thought I had to tough it out and become the man of the house it out, so that my mum would have one less thing to worry about, and so that I could do Dad proud by passing my exams. In some respects, that was true: there were new responsibilities that I needed to take on, and immediate challenges to face. In other respects, it left an immeasurable hole where my memories of Dad, and the grief of losing him, should have been. While the Movember Foundation cannot deal with all these issues, it does provide support to men across the globe who are facing a similar predicament. The Movember Foundation works to improve the terrifying figures regarding men’s health. Three in four suicides are committed by my emails. Despite this, the role is very much a rewarding one. On a dayto-day basis, I managed the running of the JCR and acted as the student representative to college, whether that meant sitting on College committees or lobbying college to effect some (much-needed) change, such as the installation of air freshener in the toilets. Perhaps the best thing about the position is the people you get to know – whether it’s those who you

Cherwell | Friday, 17 November 2017

oxbow 5

life Evelyn’s diary Booze cruise for dastardly Blues

ith the emotional maelstrom that is fi fth week receeding, Oxonians fi nd themselves in the calmer waters of sixth week. The end of term is in sight, you have shed all the tears that you can muster and your eye ducts lay as barren as your relationship status if you spend any time at all in Shark End. Your diarist seems to be slowly accepting that they fi nd themselves trapped in this most unpleasant century, with a tipple or twelve helping smooth the transition between the century of Shakespeare to the century of Stormzy. Did she walk or was she pushed?

mas Gibbs and Pascal Foster are among thousands of British men participating in Movember this month. men, making it the single biggest killer of men under 45 in the UK. Every 45 minutes a man dies from prostate cancer. If detected early, there is a 98% chance of survival beyond five years, falling to 26% if left too late. Testicular cancer, which is also prioritised by the Foundation, is the most common cancer in men under 40. Though there is a 95% chance of survival upon detection, this is no comfort to the one man in 20 who won’t make it. The Movember Foundation is rallying to raise awareness of these staggering statistics. They foster international collaborations to advocate men’s health initiatives and build evidence to support them. Operating as an independent global men’s charity since 2003, the foundation also combats traditional notions of masculinity to improve male wellbeing. They dedicate each November to the campaign, mobilising the community of ‘MoBros’ and ‘MoSistas’ to raise funds and awareness for men’s health. With the goal to stop men dying too young, the charity prioritises the aforementioned core issues: prostate cancer, testicular cancer and poor mental health. Not just confined to November,

the foundation works year round in 21 countries to change the way that we think and act on men’s health, while investing to improve health services and systems provided to men. There is a profound lack of awareness and understanding regarding the prevalence of poor health in men, with stigma enshrouding this issue in silence. Due to the widespread conception of

masculinity as ‘strong and stoic’, it is well evidenced that men are reluctant to discuss openly or take action on health issues despite the clear need to do so. The Samaritans define masculinity as “the way men are brought up to behave and the roles, attributes and behaviours that society expects of them.” This notion ought to accept that men can feel overwhelmed or sad without com-

promising their masculinity. With Movember’s arrival in Oxford, we have organised a number of events to fundraise for this fantastic cause. While many will grow a ’tache for charity this month, others filled our Frat Party club night at Fever. On 19 November, teams from each college will compete in the inaugural Movember Barber Shop Relay race, while our rowing community has begun setting sponsored sprint times for ‘Rowvember’. The Movember movement has reminded me that I am not alone, and that my problems do matter. More than just raising money for men’s health, the foundation offers practical advice on its website, as well as growing new initiatives to make men feel safe to speak about their feelings. I am all for that, and while I have a way to go myself, I will advocate the cause as much as I am in need of it. We ought to acknowledge that men face different barriers with regards to health, which the Movember Foundation is working to identify and break down. By improving the general wellbeing of men we can help them to live happier, healthier and longer lives. Join us – together, we can stop men dying too young.

didn’t know before or those who you got to know better by virtue of working with them. And the satisfaction derived from having to defend (hopefully successfully) a proposal put to college definitely offsets the time spent leafing through stacks of agenda papers. It can prove quite difficult, however, to strike a work-life balance when you have to be on hand to deal with any issues that may arise. I found that organisation really is the key to success. My

mornings usually began with a salvo of emails, accompanied by industrial amounts of coffee and biscuits, but the day tended to be punctuated with meetings, events and JCR-related admin, with my degree and social life fitting round everything else. I would often receive emails or phone calls from college staff with problems that would demand my immediate attention. Sometimes these were frustratingly trivial – “Natalie, it would be great if you could sort out

the mess in the pidge room as soon as possible” – and, at other times, horribly ominous – “Please could we arrange a meeting at your earliest convenience to discuss X …” Whilst busy, the life of a JCR President is a lot of fun thanks to the people in the JCR who you get to know so much better and for whom you develop a vested and emotional interest in representing. It’s a serious position, with fairly weighty responsibilities, but an incredibly fulfilling one too.

There is a profound lack of awareness about men’s mental health problems

Alas, even across the ages one fi nds the constants of life remain untouched. The fi rst is to see the fi res of ambition, the resident fear and all the ridiculousness which surrounds it. None more easily can this be seen than in the electoral sweatshop that passes for Gladstone’s Legacy Project. It seems that a new candidate has come on the block, after a long period of time trying to Garner support. It seems that the threat of Doctor Doom’s elec-

toral prospects has lead to a quite unprecedented ‘unslating’ of Das Chief to protect those with rather less impressive resumes when it comes to the business of capturing votes. Any attempts to mollify her seems to have fallen on deaf ears, and one must ask the central question of any murder-mystery. Did she walk, or was she pushed? One can only guess when it comes to this cut-throat affair. Blues Brothers The other constant that seems to transcend time is a propensity to drink ﬁ rst and ask questions later. This is the approach that seems to have befallen the newly-anointed leader of the Blues Brothers (and sisters). It seems that even a failed nomination could take the wind from his sails, as he really did stretch the fair use policy when it comes to the provision on unlimited port. He and a lanky Exonian hit the town hard, though one does have to wonder what good there is trying to climb drain pipes at a most unholy of hours. Not that we ought to expect holiness from hacks, mind you.

How to

Deal with Oxistential angst By SAMUEL JUNIPER I don’t think anyone wants to admit how little control they have over their own destiny. We’re born to random parents, in a random place, with random DNA, and, when we leave education, we stumble into an endless cycle of work so we don’t perish due to starvation, only to die eventually by any other means. Try and dress this up however you want: we live only for the sake of it. I am at peace with this. It may sound counterintuitive, but Oxford was instrumental in that. There’s nothing like being surrounded by intelligent, driven, and extraordinary people who will go on to do amazing things – it really hammers home how unimportant you are. Let me phrase it another way: we inevitably compare ourselves to our immediate peers. It can be difficult to feel like you’re smashing it when you can easily list a dozen people who are also smashing it. Except, of course, they’re also JCR president, starring in a play, and running a marathon, while you’re binge watching Riverdale and treading water on work. Take me and my flatmate. He is a Blues rower, dating a beautiful girl, and has an excellent career all but nailed down. By contrast, my greatest achievement this term was not being hungover in all three of my classes so far. Two of them were on a Monday. Our topics of conversation consist of rowing (surprise!), Netflix, and my

idiotic shenanigans. I’d go as far to say our chemistry is almost sitcomesque – except every punchline is just my life. If one is measuring accomplishment by traditional standards, he is more successful in life than me. Except it doesn’t bother me. I regret wasting the ﬁrst two weeks of term applying for prestigious summer placements. Equipped with the comforting knowledge that everything I ever do will one day be redundant, why would I want to fritter away my mortality in the City? I don’t need anybody to tell me how far my stock has fallen in the past nine months. I’ve gone from being the bloke with the wonderful jacket who presented Shark Tales to being called “Cherwell scum” by freshers whenever I venture out of my room wearing my stash. It is beginning to look like a legitimate possibility that the creative peak of my lifetime will be Hilary of my second year. Does that matter though? I made a few people laugh and jeopardised a handful’s future employment: that will always be a win in my book. Will I be remembered for my marginally above-average writing, with its infrequent witticisms and rather lazy brand of humour? Or will I be remembered as a reckless hedonist, who crushed up and snorted his own dignity in a misguided attempt to get high? Given that a welfare rep recently labelled my drinking ‘iconic’, it’s likely to be the latter. Frankly, I’m beyond caring about it at this point.

Friday, 17 November 2017 | Cherwell

6 oxbow

Life Food

“The internet is crying out for interesting video content”

Cat Bean chats student cooking with Mob Kitchen’s Ben Lebus

t is a sunny afternoon, in early May, but right now I don’t notice the weather. My ears are filled with the thudding of blood, and my heart pounding in my chest. Adrenaline is coursing through every part of my being. There is a single word on the lips of everyone around me. They call it a chant, but that could never encapsulate its beauty. This is a symphony, a moment of flawless rapture; brought out in a guttural cry, rising from the depths of each individual soul, and swelling to envelop us all in the same cloak of celebration and joy, so much contained in just two syllables. “Keble”. But what is this moment of such beauty, such joy, such climax you ask? The answer should be clear: it is the winning of the rugby cuppers final. In this moment, I am sure there has never been a group of people more closely bound than we are now. I am not simply a student at this

en Lebus is a busy man. When I sit down for a coffee with him on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, he’s just come out of a meeting with his literary agent, and is set to meet with Miguel Barclay from One Pound Meals for a drink later this evening. He’s also going on a date. Lebus is the man behind the multitalented hands of Mob Kitchen, a top down cooking channel which has been creating and posting video content primarily on Facebook for little over a year. In that time, the following has reached nearly 90,000, has had multiple tie-ins with brands such as Tofoo, the Tab and Bumble, and has even started sponsorship deals – most recently with Oriel Rugby. It’s full on, and the growth has been pretty steady, but when I meet Lebus he admits that he’s currently “in a bit of a trough.” Having recently returned from a holiday, and run out of video content, he’s gearing up for a big weekend of filming at his parents’ house in Oxford. All this being said, Lebus is cheerful and clearly loves his work. He has always been drawn to “easy, simple home cooking using nice fresh ingredients”, with an ability to pair flavours together that he attributes to watching Jamie Oliver’s cooking videos. These cooking skills grew from an obsession with watching cooking shows from his teens, but really blossomed at university in Edinbugh when moving into a house with some friends. Here, he notes that some of his housemates “couldn’t cook for shit”, and longing to get away from endless pesto pasta, Lebus became a frequent home cook. In fact, Mob Kitchen’s entire USP, the ability to feed four people for £10 or less, came from his writing for a student magazine and based around the idea of providing a cheap meal for his housemates. As a student, Lebus was frustrated with both student cookery books that patronised their readers, and approaches to budget cooking that presume one has herbs and spices already in the cupboard, not accounting for the fact that students and people on a tight budget may have to purchase a jar of cumin for a recipe that only needs a teaspoon. This may put students who don’t want “to end up spending 16 quid on college, at this sporting event, I am every one of us. Every player, every spectator, every poor soul trapped in the library learning of the game only through sporadic texts. We are each cells of the greater body that is the college, moving, rising and falling together to the beat of a drum only we can hear. In this moment of epiphany, I feel I finally understand the Buddhist concept of Interdependent Co-arising. And every cell sings with the same pride, for the college, for the team, for the self that we all become together. How could anyone claim to be a better college, when we have so clearly proved our infinite worth by being the best at passing balls across a large field?! If this experience has taught me anything, it is that cuppers must be something fantastic, to bring us together with such force, and to raise college pride between us to such extent. To question it is to question the very fabric of college society as a whole.

a dish that’s meant to have cost four.” So, Lebus’ recipes take a “much more real approach to budget cooking”, presuming that a cook will only have salt, pepper and olive oil in their kitchen. While writing his dissertation, there was a huge explosion of topdown cooking videos, and Lebus was immediately enamoured, but wasn’t so much a fan of the “cheese pulls”, or deep fried things covered in ice cream that popped up each day. So, he decided to make a channel for “food people would actually cook”, hired out a production crew to film 20 videos, then edited them for release in October last year. “And the rest is history”, he says. Lebus is a one-man operation, which makes it hard to find a position for himself against the likes of Buzzfeed’s Tasty, and Tastemade. This doesn’t daunt him at all, though; “the internet is crying out for interesting video content”, he argues, and while he doesn’t love the natural comparison to ‘Tasty’ videos when explaining his concept to people, Lebus sees the industry as having plenty of room to grow. Mob Kitchen videos certainly meet the “interesting content” criteria. The food is enticing, skilfully cooked, but not daunting to the novice chef. My personal favourites are the sticky

A life divided

Cuppers

Claire Castle and Alice Ritchie get competitive over college contests

tofu, and the recent mushy pea linguine. One unique aspect of Lebus’ videos is the heavy integration of music in them, acknowledging the bands behind the songs and encouraging viewers to check out the Spotify Playlists that Lebus keeps updated. This part of his videos almost didn’t happen, Lebus says, and had planned to put up recipes with a kind of “stock, elevator music”, to let the food become centre stage. But, after running out of money during production, a couple of lesser-known bands were drafted in to provide backing tracks, and people loved it. Lebus recalls playing a couple of tracks with the videos and thinking, “Oh my god, this is a vibe!”. Since then, a big part of Lebus’ job has been sorting music. The songs featured are usually upbeat, pumping tunes that perfectly match Lebus’ buoyant personality and laddish charm. He says that rock and heavy guitar music motivate him in the kitchen, and get him really pumped up to cook. In the future, Lebus envisions Mob Kitchen videos as moving beyond the top-down model and opening up somewhat, inviting bands into the kitchen to play while he cooks, and “make it more of a production.” In fact, this is where he sees the industry in general to be going, as cooks incorporate more

o the uninitiated, cuppers seems to offer a non-threatening and relaxed introduction to Oxford’s inter-collegiate competition. You are lured into a false sense of security when you hear that comforting phrase which all enthusiastic (but useless) competitors, such as myself, long for: “it’s the taking part that counts.” But that’s not what it’s about. As with everything at Oxford which contains even the remotest hint of competition, those who participate are out to win, and absolutely obliterate their competition, without even a shred of mercy. So much so, that the unsuspecting fresher who signed up, confident in the knowledge that no-one else could sprint either, is suddenly up against quasiOlympic athletes. And the keen amateur dramatist who thought their cameo appearance in the

personality into the videos posted online. For now, though, he considers the top-down model to be robust enough to keep growing. But where to next for Lebus and Mob Kitchen? Ideally, he would like to hire out his own production team full time, and move away from filming in his parent’s kitchen – a move that would relieve some pressure off of the intense weekends of filming that currently take place. He would also like to publish a book, which he describes as being “the ultimate student bible”, something like that Delia Smith book that finds its way into every parent’s kitchen. In the immediate future, aside from the usual cooking videos, Lebus plans on continuing to work with brands on sponsored content, and creating branded videos as part of Mob Productions. This is a route he didn’t envisage initially. But great returns have enabled him to continue funding production. Lebus is preparing for a big weekend of filming, and encourages me to watch Mob Kitchen’s Instagram story to see behind the magic. Here, one can see Lebus relaxed, joshing around in the kitchen cooking and cracking jokes with his cameraman. The food looks excellent too. Starting a food content channel is tough work, but clearly a labour of love. school’s rendition of We Will Rock You would cut the mustard, finds themselves on stage with those who would have attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, had the Oxford offer failed to come to fruition. Masquerading as an unintimidating way for anyone to enjoy the extra-curriculars on offer, cuppers sets the average Joe Bloggs up for failure and humiliation. So traumatising is this experience that many return to the comforting embrace of the library, never to be seen again. Peel away the amicable veneer which once enticed you, and the true nature of cuppers is revealed: it is not the golden ticket to stardom and lifelong friendships that it pretends to be. Nor is it the perfect opportunity to hone your sporting acumen in order to score that chirpse. In fact, the only thing I can say for certain is that it’s just not my cupper tea.

Cherwell | Friday, 17 November 2017

oxbow

style The rocky reign of Naomi Campbell Gemma O’Sullivan documents a journey from fresh-faced cover star to political commentator

or those who haven’t opened a fashion magazine in the last 30 years or, indeed, paid any attention to popular culture, Naomi Campbell is one of the original supermodels and one of the most iconic and sought after models of the late 1980s and 1990s. Having been spotted by an agent in the summer of 1986 window-shopping in Covent Garden, Campbell was featured on the cover of British Elle just before her 16th birthday. She has made history since the start of her career: in 1988, she became the first black woman to appear on the cover of French Vogue. In 1990 she featured on the iconic supermodel cover of British Vogue, alongside Christy Turlington, Linda Evengelista, Cindy Crawford, and Tatjana Patitz. Later joined by newcomer Kate Moss, they became known as the six original supermodels. This was followed by covers of French and Italian Vogue, and a shoot for American Vogue. Her career progressed quickly and she walked the runway for designers such as Gianni Versace and Azzedine Alaïa. In an age before social media made the lives of models more accessible and allowed them to promote themselves easily, Campbell successfully crafted herself into one of the most in-demand models of her generation. Thirty years after her life as an iconic face took off, Campbell is still at the top: her profile in the industry is at the highest it has been since she ruled the catwalk in the 1990s. Not only is she a new contributing editor for British Vogue, but she’s become an increasingly loud and active political commentator in an era which calls for engagement. While the Campbell we are seeing now is, like that of the ‘90s, one of the industry’s favourites, this wasn’t always the case; between 1998 and 2008, Campbell and her scandals became a staple of the tabloids. In 1999 she entered rehab for cocaine and alcohol addiction. She assaulted her personal as-

On the street

Photography by Eleanor Birdsall-Smith

sistant with a mobile phone, threw her BlackBerry at a housekeeper, and assaulted two police officers at Heathrow Airport, earning a five-year ban from British Airways in the process. Sentenced to community service and sweeping the streets of New York, Campbell was photographed wearing a floorlength, silver sequinned Dolce & Gabbana gown, and recorded her experience in a W magazine feature called ‘The Naomi Diaries’. This message of never being defeated by a scandal was reiterated in August 2010 when she gave her infamous ‘blood diamonds’ testimony at the war crimes trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor in Sierra Leone. Campbell was called to give evidence on a ‘blood diamond’ she allegedly received from Taylor in 1997 and caused controversy when she initially refused to testify, describing her time in the witness box as “a big inconvenience”. De-

She transformed her own controversy into part of her personal brand spite the genuinely unacceptable nature of many of her actions, her controversy transformed into part of her personal brand and became a glamorous myth, seeming only to have strengthened her legend. In more recent years, Campbell’s career and indeed her public image has seen something of a renaissance, moving away from shocking tabloid exploits and toward activism, social engagement and political commentary – not that she was ever anything but vocal. In the latest edition of British Vogue, she interviewed Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, and the pair reflected on London’s history and future while discussing how the strength of modern Britain is found in its diversity. They spoke of how London has changed since they were children, their experi-

Cara Nicholson

Another Met Gala controversy?

ences of racism, and how to combat post-Brexit discrimination. Both Campbell and Khan said that they fear Brexit could lead to a drain of talent from the capital. Also speaking on LGBTQ+ communities, Khan spoke of how embarrassing it is that he was the first ever mayor to walk the entire London Pride event last year. Campbell in turn commended him as a vocal advocate for the community. Speaking to the BBC this week, Campbell continued to stress the importance of diversity, highlighting some of the recent significant changes in the fashion industry and the importance of ensuring that this is not just a trend. She also commented on the abuse of vulnerable young people in the industry, stressing the importance of using her voice to support young models where she can. Campbell holds a significant degree of power in the fashion industry and seems to take her responsibility as an advocate for younger models seriously. Having confronted instances of racism in the industry since her early career in the 1990s, she formed the advocacy group ‘Diversity Coalition’ in 2013 with fellow models Bethann Hardison and Iman, calling out designers who consistently used one or no models of colour in their shows and campaigns. She also called out British Vogue for its lack of diversity in August 2017, posting on Instagram a photo from the outgoing editor Alexandra Shulman’s farewell issue of its editorial staff,

highlighting the all-white team which the current editor, Enninful, has taken steps to change and which Shulman has since outright denied represented a problem at all. Indeed, Shulman has hit back against Naomi’s criticism of the

Campbell defined the era of the untouchable 90’s supermodel image and comments on Shulman’s apparent swipe at Ennifull, branding her accusations as “weird” and saying that it is “not particuarly becoming” of Campbell to speak out against her. Campbell defined the era of the untouchable 90s supermodel, but is now using her position of influence more than ever to comment on issues beyond the fashion industry. Gone are the days when models only functioned to look pretty and wear clothes, but 2017 offers an alternative fashion paradigm. Perhaps as a result of social media increasingly becoming a tool for models to reach a wider audience with their own views, and with there being more interest for dialogue about diversity in fashion, mod els now have more space to make a political statement, and Campbell is certainly seizing that space.

he much-anticipated Met Gala 2018 theme has been announced – Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination. This reflects the title of the exhibition to be run by the Costume Institute at the Museum of Metropolitan Art. Extreme dressing becomes the norm at this event, and avid followers of celebrity culture can expect an impressive performance led by hosts Rihanna, Amal Clooney, and Donatella Versace. Avant garde designers making reference to religion is no new phenomenon; among others, Dolce and Gabanna and Christopher Kane have produced ornate, theologically-inspired collections. The theme’s incendiary potential is revealed when compared to last year’s event, which payed homage to designer Rei Kawakubo and her label Comme des Garcons. In contrast to this relatively tame concept, all eyes will be on high profile followers of conservative Catholicism this year as we witness the reaction of those who advocate a a more humble approach to religion. Liturgical apparel is typically justified in its splendour as a means of glorifying God, and so placing these garments under the material lens could arguably detract from their spiritual nature. The timing is equally bold given existing tensions within the Catholic Church, yet the indirect co-operation of the Vatican in loaning items from its archive suggests official support for the project. Despite no confirmation of the Pope’s involvement, Curator Andrew Bolton is said to have exercised caution in consulting representatives across a range of Catholic groups, but how true this is and how closely their recommendations will be followed is another matter. This marks new director Daniel H. Weiss’s chance to make the case that, far from trivialising religion, this venture will deliver “constructive debate.” The collective term ‘cultural appropriation’ is securely fastened in the collective conscience however, and Bolton will need to avoid the allegations of cultural appropriate faced in the wake of 2015’s China: Through the Looking Glass. For instance, Sarah Jessica Parker’s Philip Treacy headpiece sparked accusations of ‘asian dragon lady’ stereotypes. But can we interpret the attention payed to Catholicism as belittling, when this leading religion is only at the forefront as a matter of hierarchy? The exhibition itself will likely be nuanced, but could facilitate a string of outrageous outfits among attendees. The ball isn’t until May, but with all this time to prepare can we expect notorious figures (looking at you Lady Gaga) to refrain from making a statement, and should they have to?

Friday, 17 November 2017 | Cherwell

8 oxbow

Life Drawing This week, we have decided to take things back to basics. Every artist needs to understand the intricacies and potential of the naked body, so we have highlighted a variety of styles all celebrating the human form in all its glory. 1,2: Emily Beswick, 3,4,5: Zoe Brandon, 6,19: Jessie Evans, 7,8,9,10,16,20: Ewan Davies, 11,12,13,14,15,18: Rebecca Marks, 17: Amber Sidney-Woollett. 2

13 16 19

Cherwell | Friday, 17 November 2017

oxbow 9

visuals The insincerity of the female nude

Women should not be afraid to reclaim the authority of their naked bodies, writes Priya Vempali

ohn Berger once wrote: “To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognised for oneself.” These are the words which ring in my ears as I stroll through the halls of an art gallery, confronted by a never-ending stream of breasts, lips, cheeks, and hair – these are faces without stories, mouths without voices, smiles without substance. As a woman, you become accustomed to seeing your own image reflected wherever you look, in a glamourised, beautified format. However, something about seeing the female form anatomised, deconstructed and rebuilt according to the male gaze never fails to astound me. It’s a disconcerting experience, only ever seeing reflections of your gender from an outsider’s perspective. That’s not to say that men cannot express the subtleties of the female form within their work, but rather that women shouldn’t be confi ned to the other side of the canvas. When it comes to the artist-subject dynamic, I think that women probably have a better understanding of their own bodies than the men who attempt to possess them. Historically, the gender imbalance within the art world has seen women adopting the role of the silent muse, the creative spark which spurs the male genius into producing yet another masterpiece – so long as he doesn’t cast her off in favour of a younger, prettier model. This is the view which continues to pervade the creative fields, despite second and third-wave feminist attempts to reclaim the female body as our own. Indeed, Germaine Greer has described the muse, in her purest aspect, as being “the feminine part of the male artist, with which he must have intercourse if he is to bring into being a new work.” Disregarding the overtly sexualised submission within this statement, Greer’s perception of the female role here is rather degrading, as the woman is conceptualised as an aspect of the male genius rather than an individual in her own right. The compensation here, apparently, is that there is a kind of role reversal, whereby the female assumes the dominant position: “her role is to penetrate the mind rather than to have her body p e n e t r at e d .” U n f o r t u n a t e l y,

I’m not convinced by this fl imsy recompense. As an English student, I am constantly presented with the patriarchal tradition of glorifying the female body, most blatantly for instance in Petrarchan poetry. Just like the female muse in artwork, the Petrarchan vision espouses a notion of femininity, which is supposedly empowered through identification with the erotic. Indeed, the form exalts the apparent sexual authority of the writer’s ‘cruel mistress’, whilst she, ironically, remains little more than the silent object of male fantasies. The idea that as a woman, the muse should take pride in her sexual dominance over the male creative is, quite frankly, ridiculous. Should we, as a gender, not aspire to be more than glorified

Authority rather than submission, creator rather than muse mannequins ready to be stripped and painted, or is the glass ceiling too fi rmly established to be broken within the world of fi ne art? One individual whose work provides a direct response to female objectification is the artist Tracey Emin, whose installation ‘Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made’ saw her painting naked in a Stockholm art gallery for three weeks in 1996. Viewers could come and see her working through fish-eye lenses in the gallery walls, and yet as the subject and object of her own piece, Emin remained in complete control. She subverted the traditional role of the female nude by bringing her naked body into a position of authority rather than submission, the domain of the creator rather than the muse. In this way, she provided women with an example of what true female empowerment within the arts might look like: a world in which female nudity is not necessarily sexualised, but an extension of our own authentic identities. Instead of attempting to reclaim the ‘nude’ from centuries of male artists, let us as women boldly reclaim that which is already ours – our own naked bodies.

Friday, 17 November 2017 | Cherwell

10 oxbow

I spy a profit: Bond, Bourne, and the licence to print money Maxim Mower wonders whether spy ﬁlm franchises exist to make money or art

he spy genre has been a major stalwart in the glittering hills of Hollywood for decades now, but it is only recently that a handful of franchises have started dominating the global market. The trident of James Bond, Jason Bourne, and Mission Impossible have collectively grossed over eleven billion dollars at the worldwide box office, with mouth-watering new additions for each series already being dangled over the heads of their eagerly awaiting fanbases. But when such extortionate fi gures as these are at stake, it is natural to question the true motives behind keeping these franchises going. Are the producers genuinely concerned with satisfying their fans’ appetites for thrillers, or are their eyes now too intense a shade of green to notice? It seems to be a chicken and egg situation. Most cast and crew members involved in the day-to-day creation of a fi lm will undoubtedly be doing what they do simply out of love for their craft, with money being a secondary factor. But if a fi lm franchise is not making a profit, there’s no way even the most avid producer could keep it running. This was seen with the case of Bourne, which saw a significant fall

Picks of the week

The best Poirot novels

in revenue when Matt Damon was replaced by Jeremy Renner. Unsurprisingly, Damon was reinstated as the star for the subsequent fi lm. Money most defi nitely talks. What is also interesting is that producers now seem to be targeting the global market far more intently than the domestic market. With the Mission Impossible series, the US revenues for each fi lm have never really strayed far from 200

Producers are now targeting the global market more than the domestic market million dollars, which, whilst still a colossal sum of money, is not showing an exciting enough amount of progress to keep producers happy. Why keep the franchise going then? Because the global box office revenue has rocketed from around 450 million dollars from the fi rst Mission Impossible fi lm, to over 700 million dollars from the most recent Rogue Nation instalment. It seems producers are far more content seeing this fi gure rising and the domestic profits dwindling,

than the reverse. It is often claimed that the likes of Mission Impossible and Bourne are past their sell-by dates. Whilst they were good in their pomp, now the shine has worn off and the credibility of the original ﬁ lms diminishes with every new, avaricious addition to the series. There comes a point, so it is argued, usually after three or four ﬁ lms, where the plot lines start being regurgitated, and suddenly we notice that Tom Cruise’s ever-charming smile has descended into a rather strained wince, and we are no longer impressed by that 4x4 doing a triple somersault over a ravine and our star leaping through the sunroof in the nick of time, shooting a few bad guys for good measure before he lands athletically on his feet, his closing bon mot at the ready. The genre has become banal, production companies’ insistent on sustaining tried and tested franchises, even when the spark has so clearly gone. Or has it? Maybe we’re being too sceptical. Perhaps Western commercialism has corrupted our minds to the extent that we now automatically presume all creative processes can be traced back to a few iridescent, enticing dollar signs, casting murky shadows over long-lost concepts such as ‘artistic passion’, Left: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd The case has Poirot in retirement, trying to grow the perfect marrow. There’s village politics and the creepiest ending to a mystery I’ve ever read. Right: Evil Under the Sun Set in Devon, the ending is brilliantly nonsensical. The mystery hinges on the killer being ‘small and dainty’, but it turns out to have been a ruse, they are in fact a tall and muscular. Far Right: Death on the Nile

By TILDA COLEMAN

Poirot goes on a cruise down the Nile. The murder comes half way through, so it’s easy to become fully engrossed in the characters.

Casino Royale (2006) saw the “ofﬁcial” MGM Bond franchise reboot, with a new timeline and n

If fans keep paying to see them, does this mean people enjoy them? and ‘giving back to our fans.’ Cinematography being pursued as an end in itself is now, so we think, restricted to independent, start-up ﬁ lm-makers who are willing to experiment and take risks, because they are not restricted by

money. But what if we are wrong? Just because a fi lm franchise makes a large profit, it doesn’t follow that this profit was the company’s only motive for making the fi lm. Take the role of the lead actor, for example, a more specific aspect of fi lm franchises, but nonetheless one of the most crucial, as demonstrated by the earlier Bourne example. While he may be most well-known among younger viewers for starring in the Mission Impossible franchise, Tom Cruise has been praised for his willingness to take on slightly more left-field and inventive roles,

Cherwell | Friday, 17 November 2017

oxbow 11

culture franchises come in. The hugely popular Austin Powers franchise grossed over 650 million dollars worldwide, while the two Johnny English films have checked in at over 300 million dollars collectively. The gravitas and urgency that are so prevalent in ‘serious’ spy films make them the perfect foil for the likes of Mike Myers and Rowan Atkinson. Their harmless, tongue-in-cheek caricatures pro-

such as in Vanilla Sky and Eyes Wide Shut. The same could be said for Matt Damon, with The Talented Mr. Ripley, for example, so there is certainly an argument that these actors would not agree to do films that are devoid of any creative direction and that are simply geared towards making money. Yet, in reality, would even the purest virtuoso be willing to fight for his art in the face of a bulging cheque? Let’s not forget that movies are a form of entertainment, so maybe this is the sole basis upon which

The legend of Sherlock Holmes

By ERIN O’NEILL

they should be judged. If fans keep paying to see the latest instalments of Mission Impossible, or Bourne, or James Bond, then this obviously means that they enjoy the films. And if people enjoy them, then perhaps this is all that is required for us to be able to call them ‘good’ films. Whether the producers made them with the sole intention of making a profit, or whether they are the most philanthropic, artistic, spy-fanatics in the whole world, it is arguably irrelevant. So are we taking this all too seriously? Perhaps this is where the spoof

n 1893, swarms of English citizens wore grieving black armbands. There was a sombre mood in the air; one even described it as ‘life’s darkest hour’. What national hero had died to create such a reaction? It was none other than the cleverest hero of them all, Sherlock Holmes. Obviously, Sherlock was not actually dead, in a canonical sense, and in, well, never actually having been real. But to those Victorian fanboys and fangirls, and subsequent generations, Sherlock was and always will be an extraordinary figure. His powers of deduction have earned him a status that has extended beyond literature, achieved only by select others such as Dracula.

By ELLIE DUNCAN

vide an antidote to the hair-raising shoot-outs and skin-of-the-teeth escapes of regular spy movies. While they are no match for their bigger brothers in terms of popularity or financial gain, it is a measure of how far the tentacles of the genre stretch that these parodies can flourish on the coattails of the Bonds and the Mission Impossibles. Now one-off secret agent spoofs such as Central Intelligence (2016), Spy (2015), and Get Smart (2008) can make huge profits, all grossing over 200 million dollars despite not really filtering into the mainstream consciousness. Does this mean that they are essentially exploiting the genre? I don’t think Mike Myers or Melissa McCarthy or Kevin Hart would ever claim to be trying to make deep, probing masterpieces. But equally, comedy is a vital genre and aspect of life, so why should we dismiss the value of these films based on the fact that they are intentionally imitative? In the same way as normal spy franchises satisfy the desires and demands of the public, spoofs exist to fulfil another, yet equally important, facet of the human experience. So is it really a bad thing that there are so many successful spy franchises churning out new material for us to guzzle down hungrily? Surely not. So why don’t we grab our popcorn, forget the cinematographic complexities and the profit-pining producers, and for now let’s just leave the detective work to Bond, Hunt, and Bourne. And if all else fails, at least we’ll have Powers and English to keep us smiling throughout.

pend time at the gym to build upper body strength. Detective work may require fending off a vicious hair pulling.” So advises Nancy Drew in The Thirteenth Pearl, foreseeing that state of affairs most particularly dangerous to the female sleuth. Constantly developing accurate ‘hunches’ and pre-empting obstacles, seeing (and solving) crime everywhere, Nancy Drew – the “titian-haired blonde” – has been a paradigm of the female literary detective for over 80 years. Nancy Drew is as familiar a name as Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot, another character we can chart the proliferations of through contemporary culture. Nancy Drew might be up there amongst the most prolific of all, featuring in over 200 books written by a variety of ghost-writers from 1930 to the present, as well as appearing in films, television series, and video game manifestations. Clearly, Nancy Drew is a formula that sells. Originally conceived as a female counterpart for the Hardy Boys mystery series by the publisher Edward Stratemeyer, distinctive writing style or originality has always been secondary to character, and it is the vision of Nancy herself that has given the franchise unity over the decades. Taken at a glance, Nancy’s hairpulling quote seems like it could have come straight out of Legally Blonde, films that gloriously reclaim a ‘girlygirl’ image while simultaneously gently satirising it – in particular the socioeconomic background of their heroines. By contrast, Nancy sadly seems to lack the ironising streak that might give her gleaming façade nuance, imperfection, or even a bit of humour. Nancy can be easily contained in an uncomplicated package of adjectives and nouns, prepared for anything – at once talented sportsman, dignified hostess, and resourceful detective. Her female sidekicks, cousins George and Bess, represent two ends of a spectrum of stereotyped girl, mythically united by Nancy. In The Mystery of the 99 Steps, George the ‘tomboy’ with her “close-cropped, dark hair” is the “exact opposite of her slightly plump cousin”. Dimpled Bess, meanwhile, displays qualities of hesitation and shyness that Nancy is at pains to discourage. In Nancy

Drew, everything is done in earnest, everything for a ‘greater good’ that is only vaguely defined. The ‘mythical’ quality of Nancy Drew is inseparable from her background. Criticism of her impact on popular culture has frequently noted her Wasp status and certainly every appearance of Nancy takes place in a removed, romantic world beyond education or a need to make a living. Many Nancy fans venerate her independence, hard work, and refusal to submit to an authority she does not respect. Certainly there are elements of Nancy’s characterisation, particularly in the earlier titles, that powerfully contradict expectations of women in the social sphere she emerges from. All this coalesces in Nancy’s blue convertible car, the icon of radical female freedom. Although Nancy does appear in different ways, the formula is essentially unchanging: variations on the same theme, to use a cliché in the vein of the franchise itself. In a world where everyone around Nancy is seemingly one part of her consummate characterisation, Nancy herself is pitted constantly against an ‘other’. In The Mystery at Lilac Inn, Nancy identifies a girl as a thief because she is black and wandering around an upmarket shop. The implicit frame of comparison here is obviously to herself. For Laura Barton, writing in The Guardian in 2007 upon the release of a new Nancy Drew film, the enduring formula shows that “there is a strength in being unconventional, in being your own kind o’ gal”. Yet Nancy has never really been her own girl. A corporate invention from the beginning – envisioned by a man who later worried that his ghost-writers were giving the articulate Nancy too much ‘flip’ – Nancy Drew became a kind of touchstone for developing styles and tastes, reflected in the book covers for example, as well as becoming markedly more stereotypically feminine. Nancy is expressive of a highly romanticised, narrowly defined, white American stereotype. As Bobbie Ann Mason puts it, “adventure is the superstructure, domesticity the bedrock”. A voyage into the unknown in the blue convertible will always lead back to the same crystallised vision of carefully tempered, inherently and damagingly qualified ‘achievable’ femininity.

Sherlock Holmes is no longer just a Doylean creation – he is an icon of British culture, and a type upon which to base fictional creations, such as Dr Gregory House. Thanks to the character becoming public domain in the UK and USA, Sherlock has been listed in the Guinness World Records as the ‘most portrayed movie character’, having had 70 actors play him in over 200 films. The most recent of these starred Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock, and reinvented Sherlock into a bare-knuckle fighting hero more in line with contemporary action heroes. It is this ability for reinvention that is his lasting genius. Sherlock can be a gun-wielding fighter, or a pipe-wielding gentleman, or an

animated gnome, but he remains recognisable as the shrewd and sassy detective. It is not only in film we see evidence of this; Sherlock’s ability to be transported into different media forms has kept the character thriving in our technological climate. Apart from books, magazines and theatre, Sherlock has been brought to life in comics, computer games, and perhaps most famously in recent years, television. The BBC’s Sherlock is the perfect example of the adaptable nature of the character. Not only is Sherlock independently humanised alongside the foil of Watson, but he is brought into the modern world in a seamless translation that does not infringe on his character. This

unique timelessness and mutability is what allows the recreation of Sherlock again and again without damaging his figure. A Japanese manga was even created following Sherlock; the BBC show saw the detective’s appeal branch out not just internationally but across different media too. In short, detective Holmes continues to be reborn, in what has now become not only The Return of Sherlock Holmes, but The Legend of Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle, however, would probably not have approved of Sherlock’s continuing legend – after all, he did try to kill the character off in The Final Problem. But perhaps Sherlock’s now iconic status would change his mind.

Parodies flourish on the coattails of James Bond and Mission Impossible

d narrative framework. IMAGES: Opening credits, Casino Royale (2006), Daniel Kleinman (MGM/Eon)

Nancy Drew – feminist icon or tired corporate creation?

Friday, 17 November 2017 | Cherwell

12 oxbow

music

cherwellmusic listen to our latest playlists

Playlist

Classiﬁed music

usic can be controversial, especially in the pre-internet age where record labels and radio stations felt a responsibility to cater for entire nations. Alternative scenes increasingly produced songs

with controversial messages. The response from radio stations was often to censor the music from the public’s ears. Hearing these songs is an interesting insight into the taboos of the past.

Ten years on, Burial’s Untrue is still dripping with raw, morphed emotion

By JOE BAVS

Elvis Presley ‘Jailhouse Rock’

The Sex Pistols ‘God Save the Queen’

Elvis Presley is a controversial ﬁgure today for his appropriation of black music. However, in his time he was censored by White Citizen Councils.

Released for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, this song attracted censorship for its attacks on the Queen, accusing her of running a “fascist regime”.

Ian Dury ‘Spasticus Autisticus’

Frankie Goes to Hollywood

A disabled victim of polio, Ian Dury wrote this song as a criticism of the patronising treatment of the disabled in the 1980s. Its title says plenty as to why this song was censored.

Despite being a smash hit single in 1983, the BBC banned this song for its sexually explicit lyrics. Many have suspected an element of homophobia in its censorship.

‘Relax’

Review “At times jubilant, at others intensely jarring”

Pick of the week

The Wombats

‘Lemon to a Knife Fight’

en years ago this month, Burial’s Untrue album was released. At the time, nothing was known about its producer. This element of secrecy piqued the interests of the national media. However, what makes Untrue so incredible is how much can be understood about its artist just through listening. Untrue develops an emotional language – through woozing ambience, wailing vocals and overwhelming reverb – that produces a uniformly unsettling atmosphere. Even at its most hopeful, there is an air of isolation and melancholy that pervades the ﬁfty minutes. Alongside its emotional power, Untrue manages to depict an affecting geographical picture of autumnal South London – vinyl crackles like distant ﬁreworks, pitch shifted vocals boom out of passing cars, and drums echo as if played inside a concrete leviathan. This landscape of a city at its most desolate reminds you of those lonely walks home from a night out everyone experiences, evoking all the emotions that come with that. Despite its vividness, there is much more in Untrue that remains

The Wombats return with all their classic characterisitcs in this new single. Slightly tongue-in-cheek titles, upbeat riffs, and (once again) lemons all feature. There is little to be gleaned in terms of future musical direction, and this single easily could have been present on their previous album. But then again, if it ain’t broke, why fix it?

Josephine Southon enjoys a ﬁrst class performance by the Oxford University Orchestra Sheldonian Theatre Various composers

8/10

confidential. Burial’s use of vocals, stretched into androgyny, chopped into new sentences and melodies, obscure the identities and sources of his muses. Burial’s R&B influence is clear – sampling D’Angelo, Beyoncé, Erykah Badu, and Ray J – but these vocals are obfuscated to create a total loss of identities, reflecting the broader sense of isolation and existential tension. Untrue lacks a central sense of

At its most hopeful an air of isolation and melancholy pervades identity in terms of genre too. In the mid-2000s, dance music was strongly distinguished along these lines: dubstep, jungle, garage, grime, and house all had incredibly unique sounds and crossovers. Today, from Hessle Audio’s exodus from dubstep to jungle crossovers like ‘Hackney Parrot’, much of dance music’s genres has melded together, but Untrue could be seen as one of the ﬁrst. While some ill-educated purists try to claim this album as the holy grail of “true dubstep”, it is

he acclaimed Oxford University Orchestra [OUO] is known for its ability and desire to undertake ambitious programmes, and last Thursday evening was no different. Battling with a chorus of rowdy students outside the walls of the Sheldonian Theatre, the OUO controlled the opening of Tchaikovsky’s ‘Romeo and Juliet Overture’ with impressive sensitivity. With the composer’s unsparing use of call and response throughout this work, the orchestra took care not to decay with each repetition but rather build with increasing urgency. Unphased by the countless purposefully uncoordinated rhythmic passages the ensemble proved themselves to be masters of syncopation. When tensions were high there was no holding back. The brass section was a powerhouse which drove the ﬁnal climax to its outro – the sudden release of tension recalled the chillingly beguiling aura evoked in the opening bars.

in reality so much more. Like walking through a neighbourhood of loud but distant radios, Untrue comes into contact with a number of styles and absorbs them all. Clattering drums capture both the speed of garage and the sparseness of dubstep, buzzing basslines throw us back to jungle days. ‘Raver’ even offers a turn into more continental genres with a driving beat straight out of tech house. A third of the tracks elude beats altogether taking shape as ambient mood pieces instead. Untrue eludes genre as a whole just as it eludes any identity, by morphing and merging identities beyond any recognition. Burial’s Untrue was deeply influential, helping spur a new generation of British experimental electronic artists who placed emotion ahead of technicality in contrast to cold IDM from the 90s. Untrue’s genre hopping encouraged greater exploration from his contemporaries, engendering postdubstep and the unclearly defined sound of contemporary UK dance music. However, in a way, Untrue’s sound has never been replicated since. The process that produced such a masterpiece remains a mystery leaving its remarkable atmosphere truly one in a million. Although Borodin originally intended his ‘Polovtsian Dances’ for the operatic stage, the OUO adeptly demonstrated that these characterful pieces can be enjoyed as stand-alone works. Conductor Luis-Bassa’s attention to both poise and momentum throughout was commendable. At times jubilant, at others intensely jarring, the OUO captured with sensitivity the veracity of Prokofiev’s ‘Fifth Symphony’. Faithfully adhering to Prokofiev’s belief in melody’s primacy, the warm fluidity in the woodwinds offered a sense of hopefulness. In contrast, the orchestral forces were at times so alarming I had to question whether the rattling in my ribcage owed to heart palpitations or tremors created by the powerful percussion section. The unyielding exertion of energy which permeated the concluding passage was remarkable, ejecting the audience from their seats, unreservedly applauding, irreversibly transported.

Cherwell | Friday, 17 November 2017

oxbow 13

ﬁlm Mesmerising Soviet madness exposed in The Death of Stalin Christopher Goring enjoys the satire of Iannucci’s warped world behind the iron curtain

ear to the beginning of Armando Iannucci’s The Death of Stalin, head of the NKVD Lavrentiy Beria (Simon Russell Beale) is distributing the names of all those who are to be arrested that night. Authoritative and mildly bored, he points out one name and says to kill “her first but make sure he sees it,” in a moment of weary professionalism, a microcosmic representation of the absurd horror which fuels the film’s comedy. It shouldn’t be funny, but in the hands of Beale and Iannucci, it straddles that oh-so-narrow line between repellent and comic, between jaw-droppingly awful and gut-bustingly amusing. In the cinema I was in, there were shocked splutters, followed by laughter. Iannucci, lead writer of cult British comedy The Thick of It and the first four seasons of Veep, takes his brand of comedy, one fuelled by escalating political insanity, relentless narrative momentum and an absolute ton of swearing, and mixes it with the elevated stakes of Stalinist Moscow. Instead of media outcry following a public scandal, the characters are faced with the constant risk of death. Instead of

By ANGELICA DE VIDO

ment, everything just stops being funny. There’s still the shouting and swearing and absurd leaps of logic, but it’s no longer amusing. Somewhere, almost imperceptibly, the film shifts gears, and its final moments are brutal and unsettling and impossible to forget. The Death of Stalin takes something which has no right to be

low-level ministers and civil servants, the core cast is comprised of the most powerful individuals in the USSR. The resulting concoction is intoxicating. The trappings of his style transfer remarkably well to this heightened scenario. While they occupy the summit of Soviet political life, his characters are never in control of events. Instead, they are hemmed in by the legacy of Stalin, by their loyalty to the party, and by the machinations of their colleagues. They scuttle around, plotting and counterplotting, cocking up and righting course, endlessly reacting to wild shifts in the balance of power. This instability makes the film tick, it lends every scene a boundless energy propelling it forwards. This is complemented by tight writing. In one meeting of the Central Committee, every vote is passed unanimously because no-one wants to vote against the party. Their hands go up, one by

one, like a bureaucratic Mexican wave, in what is a masterful display of comic pacing. Meanwhile, the prolonged, futile struggle between Stalin’s alcoholic son, Vasily (Rupert Friend), and a guard lasts so long that it goes from being funny, to unfunny, to funny all over again – the camera never once looks away and the background acting of the ensemble is given time to shine. The cast is incredible. Devoid of any weak links, they sell the heightened reality of those fateful days in the wake of Stalin’s death. Particular praise must go to Beale and Jason Isaacs – Beale for his fusion of menace and humour, Isaacs’s for his rough-and-ready take on General Zhukov. Nevertheless, the film is always aware of the bleakness of its material, and never shies away from it. Beria is shown to be a sexual predator, his interactions with the main cast inflected by our knowledge of his abusive proclivities. As the plot reaches its denoue-

funny and transforms it into comedy gold, driven by its own warped logic which has been moulded by the instability at the heart of the plot. The Death of Stalin is excellently written, brilliantly cast, and soulcrushingly funny. Get out, and watch it this very instant.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

North by Northwest

Munich

Boasting a swathe of acting heavyweights (Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hardy, Colin Firth, and others), Tinker Tailor’s slick cinematography and labyrinthine plot makes for gripping viewing. Yet, it is Gary Oldman who deﬁnes this ﬁlm, playing a cerebral British operative. The espionage action is muted and psychological, shunning high-octane stunts.

Hitchcock’s classic rejects espionage norms ﬂagrantly and successfully. Cary Grant is a consummate leading man (and the inspiration for James Bond), an advertiser drawn into a cross-country pursuit after being mistaken for a government agent. The infamous scenes where Grant is attacked by a crop duster plane and the ﬁnale on Mount Rushmore are iconic.

Spielberg’s ﬁlm is loosely based on the events following the 1972 terrorist attack on the Israeli Olympic team in Munich and charters the Israeli government’s retaliation. It’s a tale of retribution that questions the blurred line between good and bad and refuses to pick a side. This impartiality resonates profoundly as each character is divorced from their actions.

Its warped logic is moulded by the instability at the heart of the plot

Ones to watch

Espionage ﬁlms worth sneaking a peek at

A gendered rewatching of Silence of the Lambs BI agent Clarice Starling enters a race against time to catch serial killer ‘Buffalo Bill’ in Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Twenty five years after winning the ‘Big Five’ at the Oscars, this film remains a landmark cinematic achievement. Demme immediately posits Clarice (an outstanding Jodie Foster) as a brave, strong, and resourceful protagonist – the film opens with her powering onto the screen as she tackles an assault course. Indeed, despite the vulnerability suggested by Foster’s petite frame, Clarice is tough, underlined through Demme’s close-up of her hands as she climbs over obstacles. Rather than the sexualised images of the female body that routinely dominate cinema, Demme instead showcases female power, and establishes how the film will relentlessly rewrite the dominant gendered characterisations of the action genre. Clarice uses this resilience to navigate the FBI, which is immediately established as a ‘macho’ domain through the sign on the assault course that reads, “hurt, agony, pain: love it!” Demme repeatedly underlines Clarice’s status as outsider and intruder in this masculine world by framing her alone alongside male colleagues, all of whom tower over her and scrutinise her through their gaze. Indeed, one extraordinary element of Demme’s direction is his use of extreme close-up point-ofview shots, to foreground Clarice’s obectification. As men leer at Clarice, the audience is also forced to become a victim of the assessing and objectifying viewpoint, a position that male viewers are rarely placed in, in society and in Hollywood cinema, which subsequently highlights the subtle, yet relentless ways in which patriarchal society exerts sexual pressures on women. It is these barriers that Clarice forcefully overcomes over the course of the film. These extreme close-up, point-ofview shots are at some of their most powerful and memorable during Clarice’s interviews with Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), the infamous cannibal psychiatrist who becomes her unlikely aid in the hunt for Buffalo Bill. Their fi rst meeting is one of cinema’s greats, as Clarice boldly confronts Lecter’s gaze, causing him to blink and look away fi rst. From its unforgettable characterisations of Clarice, Lecter and Buffalo Bill, to its innovative camerawork and thrilling plot, over 25 years later, Silence of the Lambs remains unsurpassed in the action genre. As Lecter tells Clarice, “the world’s a more interesting place with you in it,” and the same resoundingly applies to Demme’s masterpiece.

Friday, 17 November 2017 | Cherwell

14 oxbow

books Rock’s best storyteller By BARNEY PITE

utside the world of indie rock, John Darnielle is almost unheard of, and even within it he’s not exactly a household name. As the lead singer of the Mountain Goats, a band with a small but extremely devoted cult-following, he’s had to get used to artistic anonymity. If you get it, his music is sensitive and all encompassing, emotionally charged and always well considered. If you don’t, it’s rasping and weird. Darinelle published his second novel this year. Following his 2014 debut, Wolf in a White Van, the new Universal Harvester is a story set in built out of creepy homes and Iowa cornfields. Darnielle’s songs tend to look back to past times that have disappeared: his childhood in Southern California with an abusive stepfather, or his experiences living as a teenage meth-addict in Portland, Oregon. Universal Harvester, which evokes the pre-digital age of burner phones, film rental and the dial-up internet, is no exception. It is a mysterious and accomplished work of fiction. Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize for literature, described it as ‘moving’ and ‘beautifully etched’, whilst the TSL judged its tone to be ‘bewitchingly and eerily still’. Darnielle’s greatest skill as a songwriter is his ability to write a defined sense of atmosphere, and this ability is extended into his novel; Universal Harvester evokes a world in which nothing changes, where the days ‘roll on like hills too low to give names to.’ The world of indie rock has proved to be fertile ground for novelists. Nick Cave has published prolifically and Colin Meloy of the Decemberists writes fantasy novels for younger readers. Darnielle’s new novel confirms the status that Rolling Stone granted him, that of ‘Rock’s best storyteller’, and supports what fans of the Mountain Goats believed; he deserves more attention than he gets.

Review

An eery Oxford: Pullman’s The Book of Dust By RAFFAELLA SORRO

Poirot’s enduring appeal Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express reminds us why the detective remains so intriguing, writes Raffaella Sorro

enneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express must be at least the third adaptation I have seen of the famous novel. It seemed to me that, while the Belgian detective’s little quirks had been picked on and exaggerated by previous television efforts, all of the real charm of a Poirot mystery had been sacrificed to the construction of a flashier, rather incredible and perhaps more popular sort of character, a character who was not Hercule Poirot. Nevetheless, I soon discovered that I was wrong. It was a tiny detail in Branagh’s performance that gave me hope as to the insight his new adaptation could offer into one of Christie’s masterpiece. For, all through the film, Branagh’s eyes had the right sparkle. In the books, Poirot’s small eyes are of great importance. They are always full of expression shrewd and vigilant, and the light that animates them is often secret knowledge, a private joke. This knowledge often corresponds with the solution of the crime at hand, and the joke is invariably on Hastings, or on whoever, including the reader, is witnessing Poirot’s display of genius. There is indeed something incredibly satisfying in an Agatha

ike all good children’s stories, His Dark Materials is just as enjoyable to read at twentytwo as it was at twelve. As I recently re-read the trilogy, however, I was struck by just how greatly and how variously this truth relates to it, compared to other children’s books. As time goes on, I have not just discovered new ways to enjoy His Dark Materials, but new worlds within the book, worlds of meaning beyond those within the story that would have been imperceptible to my twelve year old self. Of course, however, I have also lost perhaps just as many of these worlds in the dull process of growing up. The perception of this loss made me wonder what 12-years-old me would have thought of La Belle Sauvage, the first installment Pullman’s newly released prequel to the trilogy, The Book of Dust. While this question is sadly destined to remain unanswered, I am ready to guess she wouldn’t have been half as struck by it as I was. After I finished reading the first

that appeal to us in Christie. They are the mechanics of her greatness, its sinews and bones - they are not its heart and soul. Similarly, one is usually given the impression that, behind the little sparkle in Poirot’s eyes, there is something more than the solution to a problem, something more than the frantic working of his ‘little grey cells’ and

the serene application of ‘order an method’. Indeed, all through his series of exploits, there is some greater, deeper secret ‘papa Poirot’ is in the knowledge of: that is the secret of understanding life and its power, as much as murder and its appeal. There is a real appreciation of life in Poirot’s characters. It is something that goes beyond the mere insight in human nature that is essential for the solving of all Christie’s mysteries. When I ﬁrst started reading Christie, I pledged my full devotion to Miss Marple over Poirot. Indeed, the extraordinary working of her mind is something she certainly shares with Poirot. A crucial aspect, however, that differentiates Miss Marple from Poirot, is that while both revel in solving crime, the sweet old lady genuinely enjoys pointing her wrinkled ﬁnger towards those who have committed it; for Miss Marple, that justice will be served is as crucial as that the murder should be solved. Not so for Hercule Poirot, who believes in the existence of good and evil, but who also understands compassion. This is not to say that Poirot would ever let a criminal go unpunished, but he does recognize that there are many more diverse

installment of The Book of Dust, I felt shattered. The journey undertaken in reading La Belle Sauvage is a dark one, but the quality of this darkness is different than that of Pullman’s preceeding trilogy. Lyra, the protagonist of His Dark Materials, is a half-wild creature, brave and fierce and slightly savage from the start of the books. Malcom Polstead, the protagonist of La Belle Sauvage, is at first glance very different. There is a sweetness to him, and an aura of love and warmth surround his life at the Trout Inn. Like Lyra, he is clever, and yet unlike her, he is from the first a lovable character. This warmth is something Lyra and Jordan college unmistakably lack. Her story begins without preamble with a strong sense of the corruption of figures of authority, and children going missing. From the outset, the reader is encouraged to trust no one but Lyra, and her demon Pantalaimon, despite Lyra being such an accomplished liar that she wins the name

Lyra Silvertonge over the course of her adventures. By contrast, at the beginning of his story, Malcom definately always tells the truth. Stemming outwards from Malcom’s initial innocence, the atmosphere of the first part of Le Belle Sauvage encourages the reader to feel safe and to trust its character. But the warm shelter of the first half of the novel acts as a foil to its much gloomier second part. As we venture into the flood on board La Belle Sauvage the familiar, reassuring Oxford landscape changes. Under the water, the city and the story assume an eerie, menacing light. The cold, haunting tone which permeates His Dark Materials is again felt, and felt all the more impactfully because of the warmth it replaces. Trying to explain his perception of the flood, Malcom says: ‘It’s kind of between time. Like a dream or something...It’s as real as anything could be. But is just seems kind of bigger than I though. There’s more things in it”.

Christie mystery, at least when one uses one’s ‘little grey cells’ and gets the solution right. John Curran, the editor of Christie’s notebooks, ascribes her long-lasting, boundless popularity to the fact that: “No other crime writer did it so well, so often or for so long; no one else matched her combination of readability, plotting, fairness and productivity”. While all these elements are certainly true, and would be enough to grant any author eternal fame, however, they are not the only things

There is a real appreciation of life in Poirot’s characters

layers to justice than Miss Marple would ever notice. In 4.50 from Paddington, the unyielding old lady regrets the fact that death penalty is no longer available for punishing the abominable murderer she has just exposed. By contrast, Poirot, more than once, mercifully allows his murders the shortcut of suicide. This ability to recognize the complexity of the world, to hate the murder and, at the same time, feel

The light in Poirot eyes suggests a private joke pity for the perpetrator, stems from his joie de vivre. In An Autobiography, Christie writes: “Always when I woke up, I had the feeling which I am sure must be natural to all of us, a joy of being alive … there you are, you are alive, and you open your eyes and here is another day; another step, as it were, on your journey to an unknown place. That very exciting journey which is your life.” This true enjoyment of life is present as an undercurrent in all of Christie’s most enduring successes, and perhaps her greatest mystery.

In the flood, the world is different than it was before; both richer, and more scary. In a nod to the diluvial, the flood seems to mark a turning point in history. The reader is left with the soul shattering impression that after the flood, nothing in Malcom’s life will be the same, just as the book cannot fail to change the reader’s own world view, albeit in subtler, less definable ways.

Cherwell | Friday, 17 November 2017

oxbow 15

theatre Confessions of a Drama Queen

Things get worse, again By KATIE SAYER

The Luscombe effect strikes again

The RSC’s new version of Twelfth Night is an innovative reinterpretation, writes Katie Sayer

★★★★ Twelfth Night RSC, Stratford-upon-Avon 9 November, 7pm

he RSC’s latest reinterpretation of Twelfth Night, from director Christopher Luscombe, transports the kingdom of Illyria to the decadent world of London in the 1890s, and the bold decision to update the location to this luxuriant, opulent setting pays off. The sense we get of indulgence suffuses all aspects of the performance. Luscombe’s directorial history at the RSC has been coloured by similarly innovate reworkings of classic texts – from his Love’s Labour’s Lost, which was set in 1910, to his Much Ado About Nothing set just after WWI – and the updating of Twelfth

Five minutes with

Sos Eltis, senior member of Ouds

Night, while slightly less coherent in places, is similarly effective. From the minor Fabian being recast as the vivacious scullery maid Fabia, played with zeal by Sarah Twomey, to Feste being reset as Olivia’s munshi rather than her servant, some of the updates work incredibly effectively, establishing a tone that is colonialist while still reeking of aestheticism. It is against this intriguing backdrop that the comedy plays out, and the decadent 1890s setting plays into the text well. The slight culture clash between empiricism and aestheticism, which is accentuated by the very Wildean division of the settings into “town” and “country”, contributes nicely to the tonal dissonance – of all Shakespeare’s comedies, this is the one that has perhaps the sharpest aftertaste. The taunting of Malvolio, often exaggerated to hyperbolic comic levels, is here executed in a way that shies away from excess. And what starts off with some incredible moments of physical comedy involving

T Ouds:

his week, we chat to Sos Eltis, vice principal of Brasenose College and senior member of

Could you tell us a bit about your position at Ouds? I’ve been a senior member for Ouds for the last 18 or so years – at ﬁrst alongside Adam Swift, then with Kirsten Shepherd-Barr and now with Ros Ballaster. How long have you been working with Ouds for? At least 18 years – possibly longer, but I can’t remember precisely. I’m ﬁnally stepping down this year, as the Proctors have declared that no-one should be a senior member for more than three years – so my retirement is rather overdue. Were you involved with drama as a student at Oxford? Not much, sadly. I directed a load

statues and letters quickly devolves into quite a depraved manipulation, with the tormented Malvolio expertly played by Adrian Edmondson. The darker moments of the comedy were also greatly aided by the strong musical accompaniment. Nigel Hess’ excellent compositions, played live by a team of musicians, accentuate the moments of poignance and tension and often capture our feelings far better than the actors, while also playing into the moments of comedy, with a number of more humorous songs designed to invoke the tradition of the Victorian music hall. Aside from the indulgent creative aspects of the production, it is the cast who bring the play to life, and most roles are very well-cast. Kara Tointon, possibly most recognisable to our generation for winning Strictly Come Dancing in 2010, puts in an excellent turn as Olivia, with a deﬁant stage presence that supersedes her physical slightness. The comic duo of Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek are also played with strong panache by John Hodgkinson and Michael Cochrane respectively. The decision to cast a slightly older actor as Aguecheek is deﬁnitely one that pays off – Cochrane’s performance is in equal

parts witty and endearing, and complements Hodgkinson’s Sir Toby Belch well. The supporting cast are also very strong, with all of Olivia’s household staff giving particularly good performances. Aside from Sarah Twomey, special credit must go to Vivien Parry, whose performance of housekeeper Maria as a gossiping Welsh matron brings some of the most heartfelt laughs of the evening. Luscombe’s interpretation of Twelfth Night is imaginative without ever verging into excessive, and is opulent without being overlyindulgent. The cast are strong, the musical accompaniment is stronger, and the running time of two hours forty minutes is sure to ﬂy by. It will be broadcast live in cinemas on Valentine’s Day 2018, and while the romantic subplots might not bode well for a date, for two and a half hours of something slightly different, you can’t go too far wrong with this witty reimagination of Shakespeare’s most deceptively subtle tragicomedy. To paraphrase the play’s most famous line: if theatre be the food of love, book your tickets now. Twelfth Night runs until 24 February, 2018, and will be broadcast live in cinemas on Valentine’s Day.

of plays at school, but rather lost conﬁdence when faced with the vastness of Oxford drama – I was at Christ Church and there was no low-level way in that I could see. I can’t act to save my life, and taking the leap into directing was too daunting. Then I found rowing, and that was all my spare time for the next decade gone!

What’s your favourite play? Can I have two? The Importance of Being Earnest – I’ve probably read or seen it at least 40 times by now but I love every word of it. W. H. Auden called it “the only purely verbal opera in English” and it’s true – it’s not just brilliantly funny, it’s also has the most perfect rhythms and phrasing. My other favourite has to be Kushner’s Angels in America. It’s angry, urgent and incredibly humane, and still spine-tinglingly innovative.

What’s your fondest memory of drama at Oxford? I directed Aphra Behn’s The Rover for the Brasenose Arts Festival and absolutely loved it. It was a complete joy – a really lovely and talented bunch of actors, and incredible fun. The play came together brilliantly in the end. It was an open-air production in the summer. One night was so cold that the audience were freezing but didn’t want to leave. So we found blankets and jackets, and everyone hunkered down to the end.

Do you have any heroes in the world of theatre? So many! Off the top of my head (and heart): Yael Farber, Athol Fugard and Tom Stoppard. Yael Farber for some of the most thrilling, moving and emotionally gruelling experi-

write this diary, locked in my darkened bedroom, with only the torch-light on my phone for company, and some Itsu that I had Deliverood to me to wane off the starvation. In case it wasn’t obvious, I have had to go into hiding following the traumatic embarrassment of the Little Shop of Horrors read-through. So far this has mostly entailed asking my scout not to clean my room, only showering when I know all the scientists have already left for labs, and sitting with the curtains shut so that everybody thinks I’m out. You see, I am currently dying of shame, at having been talent scouted to play… A CARNIVOROUS POT PLANT. Yes, dear reader. You heard me correctly. The face the producer spied across Cornmarket last week was not, as it transpires, the face she wanted to cast as Audrey, the young and enchanting female lead in her musical. Oh no. Her conception of my face as “just what I’ve been looking for” was based on the idea of me playing a venus fly trap from outer space, with a whopping zero lines and a cardboard box as a base. As if to add further insult to injury, I have been rejected by the props team for Sweet Charity, on the basis that “I like charity shopping” doesn’t form a strong enough application. Apparently people actually want to work backstage. Who knew? These times we live in are dark, mostly because if I turn the light on then people might know that I’m in. I have only one hope left for my stage career, and that is that the tragedy of my life can at least be turned into a stand-up routine. Consequently, I’ve booked an audition for The Oxford Revue next Tuesday. It can’t be that hard to be a female comedian. I’m sure the industry is really very evenly gendered. Wish me luck!

ences I’ve had in theatre. Fugard is an incredible playwright and an extraordinary human being. He made theatre a powerful weapon in the ﬁght against apartheid - a weapon that scared the authorities while expressing the incredible power of man’s humanity. He’s compassionate, wise, open, unbelievably generous and inspiringly open about his ﬂaws. And Tom Stoppard, for giving me more pleasure in the theatre than anyone short of Shakespeare. For the intellectual excitement of his plays, the sheer pleasure of thought and joy in language. For the sheer chutzpah of what attempts and the extraordinary brilliance that he so often carries off. What advice would you give to those who might be reluctant to get involved with Oxford drama? Get stuck in. Try anything. And don’t be scared. The joy of Oxford drama is not just the range of talent but also the freedom to make mistakes.

Satire STUDENT JOURNALISM

Isis magazine to be renamed ‘Daesh’ real effect. He said: “Under the leadership of the western converts known only as ‘Lily’ and ‘TJ’, Isis did in fact begin to establish state-like structures within central Oxford. “As the Iraqi army retreated before their barbaric atrocities and experimental graphic design, they began healthcare and social security distribution networks. “A change in name is little more than a symbolic gesture.” As student pressure ramps up over the weeks to come, it remains to be seen whether that is the case.

Success in business and politics guaranteed!

CORRUPTION

Five evil things the Paradise Papers reveal Oxford’s done The leaked Paradise Papers revealed last week that many Oxford colleges are implicated in offshore investment in fossil fuel. Cherwell Satire can reveal that those allegations are just the tip of the iceberg – here are some more revelations that have been leaked.

2) They sometimes park on double yellow lines Last year thousands of cars registered to the University were caught committing minor trafﬁc violations like parking on double yellow lines and changing lane without signalling.

4) Louise Richardson watches Embarassing Bodies unironically Just when you thought that the allegations against our vice chancellor couldn’t get any worse, it turns out that she watches Channel 5. Where will these allegations end?

1) Oxford isn’t its real name Though ‘the University of Oxford’ will claim constantly that this is what they are called, we can secretly reveal that we are all actually students at ‘Northern Didcot Polytechnic’.

3) They organise tutorials at deliberately inconvenient times Cherwell can reveal that the University goes out of its way to inconvenience students, something which would not have been clear to us otherwise.

5) The ‘Oxford Comma’ doesn’t exist. Every time you ever used a comma at the end of a list, you fell for a giant practical joke perpetrated by senior academics. Wake up, sheeple!

Crossword set by Dani Ball

ACROSS 1 Breasts break out! (4) 3 Converse sole starts to waste away (5) 6 Commotion put you and me in fire station (4) 10 Strange trope in bodybuilder’s diet (7) 11 Different guitar fingers – Clapton starts getting mixed up with Queen (7) 13 Fish will tell the truth in emergency department (5) 14 Bubbly hero a crooked general? (9) 15 First, murderer killed me. Prison? (3) 16 Help! Pool too sizzling – makes head spin! (11) 17 Old lady heads off: mothering is horrible – she has an extra job! (11) 18 Primate guzzled vegetable (3) 19 Booster lamp toppled leading island to awful fire! (9) 23 Skepta’s music is awful drug (5) 24 Magical creature visits Romanian vet, ultimately wanting to get better (7) 25 Fever? Flu? Treatment: rest (7)

JOURNALISM

EQUALITY

As the editors-in-chief prayed at a shrine of Rupert Murdoch constructed entirely of papier-mached Cherwells, a piteous moan arose from the ofﬁces late last night. “We have failed you, Lord Murdoch” came the cry. “We showed sympathy for our staff and printed that which shall be spoken with dread – the truth. Oh forgive us for our sins and let us into the pearly gates of the Daily Mail grad scheme”. At the time of print, the prayers were unanswered.

Speaking exclusively to Cherwell, third year male maths student Dave Bloke has revealed he knows why women aren’t getting as many firsts in mathematics finals at the university. “Basically they’re just not as good as men,” said the qualified logician and professional tosser. “I mean, it’s obvious. You don’t need to be a genius to see that – you just need positive structural discrimination and examiner bias in your favour.”

Eds-in-chief express their anguish

27 Heartless tiger is rank! (4) 28 Sportspeople get sad? (5) 29 Snatch card – game is rigged (4)

Maths gender disparity explained

NEWS QUIZ

1 Bob Geldof has handed back which award, in protest that Aung Sun Suu Kyi holds the same honour? 2 Lupita Nyong’o and Solange Knowles have recently critiDOWN cised UK magazines for changing what about their pictures? 1 Party hit! (3) 3 Sydney locals voted that one of their six new harbour ferries 2 Awkwardly, Newton sought front seat (7) 4 What to do at the disco? Silly to start napping! will have what name? 4 Jodie Whittaker’s outfit as the new Doctor Who was revealed Take endless cocaine! (5) last week – can you name the quiz host who will be one of her 5 Mountain with high altitude on top? (5) companions? 7 Writer heard of silly javelin technique (11) 5 On Monday the Italian football team failed to qualify for 8 Setter (again!) goes viral (4) next year’s World Cup. When did the four-time champions last 9 Prepare army, after a break, to come back (8) fail to qualify? 12 Strange alternate identity (3) 6 Scientists demonstrated that sheep can recognise human 13 Playing with me, some leaders deployed faces. They were trained to recognise four famous figures – Captain Charlie (11) 16 Sweet, plentiful love before lip operation (8) can you name them? 18 Artist baffles a playwright (7) 20 Burst pancreas initially needs operation (3) 21 Setter to give out diamonds? Perfect! (5) 22 Life is weird right at the start – search for value (5) 23 Gruel is vile, not right – it’s a paste! (4) 26 Bribe insiders – it’s a tease (3)

NEWS QUIZ 1 The Freedom of the City of Dublin 2 Airbrushing out their hair 3 Ferry McFerryface 4 Bradley Walsh 5 1958 6 Fiona Bruce, Jake Gyllenhaal, Barack Obama, and Emma Watson Last week’s crossword ACROSS 6 Downcast 8 Curry 10 Filthy 11 Eyebrow 12 Baby 13 Depressed 14 PE 15 Army 17 Tory 18 PC 20 Cambridge 21 Roux 22 Begonia 23 Boyish 24 Pluto 25 Cerulean DOWN 1 Motivate 2 Navy 3 Attempt 4 Guernsey 5 Brewed 7 Nutty 9 Hetero 15 Almighty 16 Marine 18 Prussian 19 Advance 20 Cobalt 21 Royal 23 Bore

Students and fellows across Oxford have pledged to refer to so-called ‘Isis magazine’ solely as ‘Daesh’ from now on. Arguing that the termly collection of literature and non-fiction does not, in fact, control a state structure, nor adhere to the principles of Islam, they insist that the derogatory moniker ‘daesh’ is thus more apt. The Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Great Britain told Cherwell: “The actions of socalled ‘Isis magazine’ betray every principle of orthodox Islamic theology. “The campaign of despicable evil carried out by their editorial staff is opposed by ordinary Muslims across Oxford, Britain, and the world. “We can only hope that by demeaning them through the use of ‘daesh’ this false caliphate can be stopped.” Professor Arnold Appleby, an expert on non-state conflict at Magdalen College, disputed that a change in name would have any

New tanning lotion‘for all skin tones’

Cherwell | Friday, 17 November 2017

Opinion

The All Souls scholarship shows progress, but is little more than a token gesture Priya Vempali

All Souls defends backward customs as tradition

t’s hard to forget that the buildings in which you stand were built off the backs of racial subjugation and slavery. The endless portraits of white men that occupy our colleges further emphasise that most blatant point – Oxford wasn’t made for people like me. And yet, every now and then, we hear stories such as the one coming out of All Souls College about its ‘heroic’ attempts to redress their slave-built legacy through an annual scholarship scheme, which would fund graduates from Caribbean countries to study at Oxford, in addition to providing a fiveyear grant for a higher education college in Barbados. Seems great, right? Indeed, it is a step in the right direction, but given all that needs to be done in order to make Oxford a truly diverse, egalitarian institution, this move is little more than a token gesture. Ever since last June, when student protests brought to attention the college’s colonial legacy, eyes have been on All Souls to see how they would distinguish themselves from their humiliating title of ‘All Slaves College’. The college’s library, opened in 1751 and designed by the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor, still bears the name of Christopher Codrington, a former fellow of the college and slave owner/sugar plantation magnate who gifted the college £10,000 in his will. For context, this sum would be worth around £1.5 mil-

lion in today’s money. So, for a college which is still benefitting from the financial rewards of the slave trade, it was necessary that they do something to abstract themselves from their colonial legacy by providing some (very visible) gesture to get campaigners off their backs. The scholarship provides them with the perfect solution: they get to retain the library’s name and its marble statue of Codrington, while seeming to acknowledge the bitter roots of their ever-increasing fortune. As Shreya Lakhani of Common Ground notes, “the people we celebrate are reflections of our past but also expressions of our present day values.” All Souls’ failure to remove the Codrington statue and change the library’s name is indicative of an institution which defends its backwards customs and practices as a simple continuation of its tradition and heritage, all the while attempting to extricate itself from the growing controversy. It is hard not to draw a parallel between this and the politicallycharged debate around the Cecil Rhodes statue in Oriel College, which still remains after much public controversy. Rhodes, a British imperialist and architect of apartheid within the Cape Colony (now South Africa), created the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship programme which is awarded to full-time postgraduates of the University, although it was initially intended for “young colonists”

to continue the British imperial legacy. Just like in the case of the Rhodes statue, arguments for the renaming of the Codrington library and the removal of the Codrington statue to a more suitable location (such as a museum) have been repeatedly shot down by critics who claim that this would be an erasure of history. Their arguments fail to see that the removal of a statue from a place of glorification and academic excellence to a more historicallysensitive setting is the least we can do to combat the institution’s colonial legacy, which to this day continues to make BME students highly uncomfortable. The appalling lack of diversity within the University as a whole serves to emphasise the issue. Oxford needs to fundamentally address issues of racial diversity and academic white-washing. Although many colleges have great access schemes which aim to attract applicants from historicallydisadvantaged backgrounds, the University could be doing a lot more to tackle the racial diversification of the institution through changes to the admissions process (such as centralised, rather than college-based, undergraduate

We ought not to commend colleges for complacency

admissions). Furthermore, certain curricula within the University need to be addressed for their lack of BMEinclusivity – in particular the humanities need to seriously redress the balance when it comes to what they teach. Rather than having an almost entirely Eurocentric approach to history, for example, a greater focus on those countries which Britain has historicallysubjugated would provide students with a more well-rounded understanding of both UK history and the wider world. Scholarship programmes make good newspaper titles, but actually attempting to diversify Oxford and its curricula is what will enable change. I am not trying to say that we haven’t made any progress – things are much better than they were 30 years ago, and continue to improve daily. But as advocates for a more inclusive and equal university, we ought to be wary of simply commending colleges into complacency for their token gestures. Moreover, we have to see universal policy change rather than individual recompenses from certain colleges, in order to create a culturally-sensitive and diverse student body within every part of this university. We need to continue to scrutinise the institutions which, to this day, rest on their imperial legacies, because without being challenged, nothing will ever change.

Friday, 17 November 2017 | Cherwell

Opinion Time to show Johnson the door, for all of our sakes

Let’s deprive the tax-dodging super rich of their power Maxim Parr-Reid

It’s not enough to say tax avoidance is immoral. It’s time to do something about it, writes Daniel Iley-Williamson

t’s no secret the UK is a deeply unequal society. The richest 1% own as much as the combined wealth of the bottom 55%. This year we learned that the UK is home to more billionaires than ever before and has record numbers of working people living in poverty. It’s not a coincidence that things have been getting better for the super rich while getting worse for the rest of us. Since the 1980s, government policy has taken a decisive shift in the interests of the super rich. Under Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, their taxes were cut, they were sold industries at knockoff prices, and house ownership was redistributed in their favour: the power of their workforce was severely diminished. It’s against the background of a deeply unequal society that we learn of the Paradise Papers, in which our own university played no small part. These papers, like the Panama Papers before them, show that the super rich engage in tax avoidance on an industrial scale. They use their privileged economic position to employ lawyers and accountants – whose services are inaccessible to the rest of us – to identify and exploit tax loopholes. They register their businesses, shares, and savings beyond the reach of UK tax authorities, further enriching themselves and depriving the UK public purse of much needed tax revenue, tax revenue that could be used to help fund our hospitals, schools, and other vital services. Much of this is legal – it’s tax avoidance, not tax evasion. Defenders of the super rich are quick to come to their aid, and there are two arguments they tend to deploy. The ﬁ rst says that because tax avoidance is legal, it is beyond criticism: people are acting within the law and therefore no one can reasonably complain. This is a clearly ﬂawed defence: the case against tax avoidance is not that it is illegal, but that tax avoid-

ance is morally wrong and ought to be prevented. After all, simply because something is legal does not mean that it is moral. Furthermore, there are plenty of acts whose moral impermissibility are good grounds for legal impermissibility – murder, for example, is and ought to be illegal because it’s immoral. This shows that the legality of tax avoidance does not establish the moral permissibility of it and the case for the moral impermissibility of tax avoidance is straightforward. The super rich use their economic privilege to sidestep the rules that apply to everyone else in order to further benefit themselves, and they thereby disadvantage everyone else. This appears patently unfair, and it sounds like strong grounds to prevent tax avoidance. The second common defence of the super rich is that given the opportunity, everyone would engage in tax avoidance. After all, people tend to act in their own interests – that’s just what people are like. Hence, it’s mere moralising – perhaps even an expression of envy – to condemn those who avoid tax. This is false, but it does hint at an important truth. It’s false because it’s not true that everyone who can exploit others for their own benefit will do so, and to say otherwise is a straightforward self-serving alienation of agency: the super rich can refrain from engaging in tax avoidance, it’s just most of them choose not to. However, the important truth this defence hints at is that, waved on by the cheerleaders of greed, the super rich tend to exploit circumstances for their own benefit. This truth isn’t important primarily because of what it says about the moral character of the super rich,

Just because they can cheat doesn’t mean they should

but because it needs to be remembered when we’re thinking about our social institutions. It helps to explain precisely why the opportunities to avoid tax exist in the fi rst place. The super rich, in virtue of their wealth, have massive political power – they fund political parties, lobby parliament, sponsor think tanks, dominate influential professions, control media outlets. How do they wield this power? As many on the right are so keen to argue, like many people they tend to act in their own interests. It’s just that when the super rich act in their interests, they exert massive political influence. They use it to create and maintain offshore tax havens, protect the non-dom tax status, and fi nd loopholes in tax law. But the political power of the super rich doesn’t just explain tax avoidance, it explains how society functions more generally. From legislation regarding media ownership to the funding of political parties, trade union legislation and the operations of the arms industry – none of this is left untouched by the political power of the super rich. In all these instances, the super rich tend to use their power to advance their own interests. The revelations in the Paradise Papers are a symptom of extreme inequality. To end tax avoidance we need to do more than tinker with tax regulations. Instead, to prevent the super rich from wielding their power to rig the economy to serve their own interests, we need to deprive them of that power. As it stands the country’s power and wealth is concentrated within a select few. We shouldn’t merely accept this state of affairs, but instead criticise it with increased fervour.

The ability of the super rich is borne of political power

May is in no position to sack heavyweight Brexiteer Johnson

t seems not a week goes by without Boris Johnson making over one gaffe or another. On a visit to Myanmar, the Foreign Secretary was caught on camera reciting Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Road to Mandalay’. He is infamous for, among other things, his poem ‘White Man’s Burden’ written in 1899. The piece attempts to justify imperialism on the grounds of a civilising mission. And Johnson’s propensity for the gaffe has not stopped there. Just this week, the Foreign Secretary has had to apologise over remarks made regarding Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and for the “further anguish” these might have caused. He suggested – or rather outright appeared to accuse – that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been training journalists in Iran, exactly what her family ardently denies. Johnson has had to retract previous statements made regarding Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s visit to Iran: “She was there on holiday. I do apologise, and of course I retract any suggestion that she was there in a professional capacity.” Back in September, Johnson reafﬁrmed his pledge to get £350m a week for the NHS. Writing two differing articles surrounding your views on Brexit is one thing, committing to a pledge that has been widely rebuked is quite another. Doing so as Foreign Secretary is indefensible. How can Britain be taken seriously in EU negotiations with a Foreign Secretary who said the EU could “go whistle” over the UK’s Brexit divorce bill? How many of the 17 million Brits who voted Leave will be let down by the Brexit which Boris’ bumbling seems likely deliver? It’s no wonder that a campaign calling itself UnSeat, is targeting Boris Johnson’s Uxbridge constituency. Many on the left, and those who fought for Britain to remain in the EU, will surely be salivating at the prospect of a ‘Portillo moment’ (harkening back to the ousting of then-Defence Secretary Michael Portillo in the Labour landslide of 1997). It isn’t hard to see the appeal of this campaign given Johnson’s actions and pronouncements in the past two years, much to the chagrin of those opposed to Brexit and the Conservative government attempting to deliver it. So why is this man still Foreign Secretary? Put simply, Johnson has been extremely lucky. Despite his abortive bid for the leadership of the Conservative party, this led to him being appointed Foreign Secretary (as well as his potential to challenge May’s leadership) from the back benches, needling the PM from afar with his Telegraph column. His prominent role in the Leave campaign made it hard for him to be sidelined when May became PM. How can the PM sack Boris when only seven Tory rebels are needed to bring her down, the very same Prime Minister who has already lost two Cabinet ministers in the space of a week? Stripped of both her authority and her parliamentary majority, May is in no position to sack heavyweight Brexiteer Johnson.

Cherwell | Friday, 17 November 2017

Shape the conversation Oxford’s debate continues around the clock. Get your voice heard at cherwell.org

Tabloids must stop using children as a bastion for bigotry

Naomi Packer

he Daily Mail is incredibly adept at manufacturing rage. Many groups and individuals have been the victim of their scathing words or vitriol, but last week’s paper concerning the Church of England’s revised approach to the treatment of transgender children was harboured a distinct air of desperation. If you missed the news, the Church of England issued a statement saying that it’s fine for little boys to wear tiaras. And while we’re at it girls can be fire-fighters or members of the police. (If this wasn’t already known.) To most this was simply assumed. Tutus and tiaras are merely an outward manifestation of a child’s imagination. But for the Church of England this marks a

turning point. They have accepted that there is social progress to be made, but certain periodicals are reluctant to do the same. To Daily Mail, so many have fallen by the wayside. They have lost the public, politicians, and now, low and behold, the church. They are the last still fighting ‘the good fight’. To them, such change is ‘political correctness gone mad’ and outrage is the only valid response. In reality, this is bigotry and panic. The front page blares that the church has endorsed ‘boys as young as five’ to wear traditionally female attire. It is reporting which is designed to stoke the fires of all those who feel we have slipped into a dangerous new era of enablence. The report itself is encourag-

ing, sensible, and long overdue. In short, the updated guidance for the church’s 4,700 schools, titled ‘Valuing All God’s Children’ follows advice issued three years ago that covered homophobic bullying, and has now been expanded to include transphobic and biphobic bullying. Yet The Sun shouts ‘TRANSGENDER TOTS.’ Reporting that ‘children as young as two’ are being taught by drag queens. What’s truly worrying about such reporting is how commonplace it has become for children to be used as a bastion for bigotry. It’s true that children are some of the most vulnerable in our society, and there are serious conversations to be had about their welfare and protection. Moreover, there are important discussions to be had about the healthcare and legal protection of transgender children. But this is not the motivation behind such pieces. This is about anger, and children are being used to protect a regressive ideology. The outrage and scepticism which various newspapers displayed last week comes from the same shrouded corner of the brain which believes that gay parents will raise gay children, and sex education for children will result in a new wave of teenage pregnancies. It’s reductive and illogical thinking, and we should all require more from our media.

CONTESTED

Should Oxfeud have been resurrected? Raphael Levy

Yes

or a short while, Oxfeud was gone. Good riddance you might say. You might even go as far as to say it was an awful platform that allowed bigots and racists and sexists and generally angry people to be rude about anyone and anything with the protection of anonymity. As someone who used it regularly (mainly about cyclists), I must respectfully disagree. I am not normally an angry person but if one more cyclist does not stop at a zebra crossing when I am about to cross, or – even worse – actually crossing, I may explode with fury. Oxfeud gave me the opportunity to express that rage at the inconsiderate behaviour of a cyclist without getting annoyed in the real world. And you know what? That’s important. I am not saying I am now necessarily going to punch a wall because I cannot vent my fury at nearly being run over by a cyclist anonymously online, but just that we all get angry. Things irk us, things annoy us, things frustrate us. Sometimes trivial, sometimes not, sometimes somewhere in-between. Whatever those things are, we like to know people agree with us without worrying about, for example, being judged for hating cyclists and their complete disregard for my safety. Oxfeud gives

us that outlet. We can post pretty much anything and see how many reacts the post received. People could respond by tagging their friends in agreement or disagreement of varying degrees. People could call us out on our absurd anger. The response, or lack thereof, is a vital part of posting on Oxfeud. It is not enough that I become angry, I want to see how people respond to my anger and my post. Short of going up to people in the street, Oxfeud was the best way for this to happen. You may say that my example is trivial and misses the point of the problem. Oxfeud allows people to post horrible things with anonymity and this, for whatever reason, is objectively wrong. The issue seems to be anonymity, but I just do not see the link between posting horrible things and anonymity. Oxfeud is just like any other social media platform. Some of the things posted were especially awful and the admins of such a page have a role to play in filtering the things that are posted, of course they do, but our concern cannot be with the posting of horrible things. The difference in the eyes of the world seems to be anonymity. But why does that make a difference? You can change your name on Facebook, make it effectively anonymous and do exactly the same thing. Let’s not pretend that anger is not a normal part of life or that seeing horrible things online is not part of life. If you do not want to see things being posted, then delete your social media accounts.

O Seeing horrible things online is a part of life

scar Wilde once wrote, “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” I think it is fair to say that these lines succinctly summarise the core issue with Oxfeud. In polite conversation, the hurtful and nasty is almost always absent. Reasonable disagreement is ideally addressed out in the open, in the spoken form, in person. After all, exactly how many of us can remember at least one keyboard rant of some description or another? Having anonymity (though probably only to some extent) in publishing our hurtful comments about others definitely doesn’t reduce the harm which is caused to their subjects upon reading them, and probably doesn’t reduce the likely regret that the author has for what was written all that much. More fund a m e n t a l l y, how much time do we realistically have to spend on making petty negative judgements about our peers, never mind expressing them publicly in writing, online? Oxford is such a busy place, in which even the most efficient amongst us, in addition to the most ‘fulfilled’, regret not having pursued particular pathways and explored individual

Why waste precious time on general nastiness?

No Alexander Curtis facets of being. This eternal frustration is especially evident in the community of this University, where so many of us can be characterised at least somewhat by a palpable sense of ambition. In view of this, it seems to be a great shame that any time at all is wasted by any of us on an endeavour as inherently unfavourable and unproductive as general nastiness. Yes, many of us are prone to needlessly speaking ill of others from time to time, myself included. However, that doesn’t mean that we should be encouraging and facilitating bad behaviour, in either the active sense, or even in the passive. Indeed, it is very difficult to see what good can come to either individuals or society at any level through the enabling of such behaviour, which Oxfeud so obviously provided a medium for. It is apparently rather clear why we should be pleased that Oxfeud has been taken down from Facebook. Upon examining the issues involved with the page, it is difficult to draw any conclusion other than that which states that its removal will make Oxford a less imperfect, happier, and all round more harmonious place.

Friday, 17 November 2017 | Cherwell

At length Based on a true story: the neglected history of fake news

appeared in the papers” were said. Fake news is not as new as we might have believed. Lies and misrepresentation existed when we turned pages instead of scrolling down news feeds, and they will exist long after the creations of Zuckerberg have become obsolete.

We say alternative facts are a modern problem. But distorted truths and inaccuracy have a long history, writes Rosa Thomas.

“I

am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors.” So spoke the forefather of American government, George Washington. Worlds away on a talk show sofa, when asked if he has lied to the American people, Sean Spicer responds, “I don’t know”. Apparently, he is also unconscious of intentional error. Washington and Spicer, President and Press Secretary, truth and lies. Of course, as any patriotic American will tell you, Wa sh i ng ton’s statement is one of modesty and humility, an admission of the limits i mposed on all of us by human frailty. In contrast, Spicer’s comment is a linguistic contortion, an

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman” move, intended to use language to wriggle out of constraints. But as far apart as these two men are, I wonder: how alien would Sean Spicer be to Washington? Would the term ‘fake news’ shock presidents, reporters, and editors of the past, or would it instead simply be putting a name to a face they know well? The Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year, post truth – denoting “circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief” – implies that there was a time before our current degenerate era, a golden age, where truth was king. However, despite the current zeitgeist that news has only recently become untrustworthy, news has a long and frequently sordid history of misleading its subscribers.

n 1695, the Licensing Act, which had previously restricted freedom of the press in Britain, expired. One of the new freedoms of the English press was their ability to print transcripts of parliamentary speeches. The gates to the government were to be thrown open, and for the ﬁ rsttime the British people had the freedom to read and analyse the political decisionmaking process. However, when we look at transcripts and opinions from the time we can see that newspaper s, politicia ns’ own diaries and popular elite opinion are littered with complaints about inaccuracies. In 1780 the f a m o u s politician William Pitt the Younger wrote that the printed version of fellow politician Edmund Burke’s speech had been altered and was, in his opinion, “much the worse for revision.” The Morning Chronicle scathingly noted of the transcript of a speech by Lord Mahon that “not twenty words of the rhapsody which has

Would the term ‘fake news’ shock editors of the past?

f anything, the media moguls of today tell us that news has been democratised, offering greater freedom that ever before. In the past what counted as news was determined by a small cabal of elite editors. Groups that threatened the status quo had little hope of a fair hearing in mainstream media, and frequently had to start their own internal newspapers at great cost. For example, The Black Panther newspaper, published in 1969, included summaries of discriminatory trials, progress in the black liberation struggle, and records of visits to the UN. These were stories dismissed by conventional newspapers. Today, the narrative is no longer monopolised by the elite. It is no longer the case that news must conform to the sensibilities of a few editors to be heard. The rise of the internet has meant that the average citizen has the freedom to read information from different sources, and even write it themselves, democratising information. Or at least that’s what we’re told. But the new pathways the internet has provided can only democratise news if the average citizen uses them and has power within them. In the modern media industry, attention is currency. As a recent report by CNN highlighted, this new currency, much like the old, is ﬁ nite. The survey, carried out by Ipsos OTX MediaCT on behalf of CNN, studied 2,300 individuals and their online news consumption over a two-month period. The survey reveals that the market on attention has been cornered by a minority of highly active individual users. Far from being democratised, 27 per cent of sharers are responsible for 87 per cent of news content shared on social media. The source of power may have shifted, but the information we receive is still shaped by a

minority.

urthermore, the ability to draw attention frequently rests on brand recognition, so old strongholds of media power are likely to be part of this narrative moulding minority. The survey further reveals that users are more likely to engage with “recommended” news and embedded advertising. Online attention can be bought by the highest bidder and as a result, news is frequently controlled by the same elites that have monopolised information since 1695. Google and Facebook attract one-ﬁ fth of overall global advertising spending, nearly double what it brought in in 2012. Admittedly, much of this advertising is for products not news stories, but it does reveal that the price tag on buying attention continues to rise. We should therefore be weary of blindly believing that the internet has allowed us to access a wider variety of news. We are just as affected by a narrow elite as we always were, we’re just less aware of it. But if nothing has really changed and news is as imperfect as it always was, then why does it feel like everything is shifting under our feet? Why do people feel that the news apocalypse is happening now? Certainly some ‘fake news’ claims have become more outlandish, with stories such as “Pope Francis Shakes World, Endorses Donald Trump” getting 960,000 engagements on Facebook in the ﬁ nal months of the 2016 US presidential election. S i m i l a r l y, the ability for anyone to write news and be heard, if they have the resources to garner attention, has further weake n e d

In the modern media industry, attention is currency

Cherwell | Friday, 17 November 2017

trust in news.

rust in journalists isn’t just blind faith in authority figures. Journalists are both known and paid, unlike their citizen counterparts. Being employed means they can be held to account, and, if found guilty of lying, have something to lose. During the Brexit referendum a domain called YourBrexit.co.uk falsely claimed that Corbyn had confi rmed that the Labour Party would pay £92bn in a Brexit bill. The article was written by “Walter White”, the pseudonym of an anonymous student in Southend. Much like his namesake, Walter’s anonymity and lack of association to a reputable source insulated him from being held to account. Furthermore, journalists can be relied upon to comply with standards of journalistic practice. It is no coincidence that despite the rise of clickbait internet journalism, big investigative stories such as the Panama Papers, the Harvey Weinstein scandal, and now the Paradise Papers, have all been broken by established journalists in some form or another. This is partly because journalists have the time and capital to go out looking for stories, instead of just reporting what they see. But, it is more than that. Sources choose to go to professional journalists, because they believe they will protect their anonymity and will know what to do with the information they provide. This second consideration is increasingly important, given that we now live in a world where data is so easy to send that leaks frequently include amounts of data so vast that they are inaccessible to the majority of the population. The Panama Papers, the leak of 11.5 million fi les from the law fi rm Mossack Fonesca, included so much data it was almost unusable. It included 2.1 million PDFs, 3 million database fi les and 4.8 million emails, some of which were useless and some of which contained the biggest story in the last ten years. So how did journalists fi nd the story amongst all the red herrings? Suddeutsche Zeitung, Zeitung the fi rst paper to receive this data, called in help from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, who sorted through the data and created a search engine for it. Unsurprisingly, we relied on professional journalists to search through the data and turn it into a format accessible for everyone. When it comes to the big stories, ones where the safety of sources lies in the hands of the press, journalists are still the ones we turn to.

think there’s a n o t h e r problem though, more significant than the lack of accou nt abilit y in the current world of news. We have stopped being outraged

at lies, and we have stopped treating truth as salient political currency. But more than that, we have stopped believing that truth exists at all. We are constantly presented with a choice. We must either choose partisan press, which intentionally interpret all facts one way no matter what they imply. Or we can choose ‘neutral news’ which presents all opinions as equal even if one is clearly not borne out by facts. Press neutrality has been conflated with presenting both sides of the argument, irrespective of their factual support. This in and of itself distorts news. Yes, people are entitled to their opinion. They are not, however, entitled to have everyone act as if their opinion is equal to all others purely because they believe it to be so. We can acknowledge that there are scientific opinions that deny the existence of climate change, whilst also acknowledging that these scientists are out weighed both in number and prestige by the scientists whose research suggest that climate change is a problem. Neutrality is not the same as equal weighting, and presenting it as such distorts debate. Furthermore, calling something a lie has become an act of partisanship and therefore truth is informed by opinion as opposed to vice versa. As Obama stated in his farewell address, “we start accepting only information, whether it’s true or not, that fits our opinions.” Fake news is not new. What is new is that we no longer believe news exists and as such, we are no longer outraged by lies.

We have stopped being outraged at lies

ut why did we stop believing in truth in the ﬁ rst place? Part of it is undoubtedly the sheer number of different ‘facts’ modern-day news consumers have to wade through. But I would argue it has also been a result of politicians making claims to ‘facts’ which don’t reﬂect the experiences of constituents. For those who have lost

out from globalisation, the repeated claims of politicians that free market trade deals are economically beneﬁcial for everyone destroys trust, not just in politicians but in facts themselves. Unlike claims to principles, facts rely on their ability to be proven to be actually true. Disjuncture between what we claim to be ‘universal facts’ and what people experience, disintegrates the power of ‘fact’. Therefore, as more and more politicians use ‘facts’ purely as rhetorical devices, ‘truth’ becomes an increasingly empty concept. Is there any future then for news as we know it? Certainly, news has attempted to change its game to keep up with the changing face of news consumption. Vast amounts of capital are being invested in new journalism projects, funded by a variety of backers, including Pierre Omidyar, the billionaire founder of Ebay and Jimmy Wales, the cofounder of Wikipedia. For example, Wikitribune, Wales’ project, seeks to pair journalists with a community of volunteers who edit, and fact check articles. This is an attempt to combine the wisdom of crowds with journalists who can be held accountable for content. It’s not just individual donors, projects t h a t seek to combat fake news are increasingly becoming a part of our electoral process . The most recent UK election was monitored by the Full Fact and First Draft i n it iat ives, w h i c h broug ht together 25 fact checkers and statisticians to verify the facts behind viral news stories. Similarly, the EU has developed its East Stratcom team which has discredited 2,500 stories over the last 16 months in an attempt to address disinformation campaigns in European elections, speciﬁcally

Finding truth may be an impossible task

those believed to be organised by the Russian government. However, possibly the most signiﬁcant development is the production of tools that allow users to determine the accuracy of content for themselves. For example, the Google plugin developed by the EU and backed by inVID provides users with the ability to verify the location and times v ideos were recorded, as well as check more detailed information about the source. Giving individual users this power means they can discredit for thems e l v e s content that

was photoshopped or staged. Similarly, Project PHEME, so named after the goddess of rumours and fame in Greek mythology, produced an algorithm able to classify the accuracy of tweets, classing tweets on a scale from one to ten, with one being ‘rumour’. If distrust in the existence of ‘truth’ is the primary problem in news, creating tools that allow consumers to rely on their own ability to verify information should go a signiﬁcant way to ﬁ xing the problem.

rust in news is not gone altogether, revealed by our trust in the ability of journalists to reveal societies largest problems, to

the large increase in subscriptions to the New York Times. It is important to remember at this point that despite the current trend amongst commentators to characterise the world as con-

s t a nt l y getting worse, the press has always had problems. Our doubt over truth is new, but the propensity to lie is not. Some concerns that used to plague news are gone altogether. For example, the ability of governments to control the news is becoming increasingly impossible in today’s interconnected Britain. News and journalism have always faced problems and indeed always will. But as anyone who has ever submitted a tutorial essay will know, something does not have to perfect to make expending effort worthwhile. Finding truth may be an impossible task and human history is ﬁ lled with those who have made errors on this path. Neither Spicer nor Washington were perfectly truthful; the difference is Washington sought not to exploit loopholes in news and truth, but to serve it to the best of his abilities. This may seem like an irrelevant distinction, but we can never get all the facts correct. What matters is not one hundred percent accuracy, but rather that we care when things are shown to be wrong. When we cease to care we leave power in the hands of those with the loudest voice, those with the platform to decide what counts. In today’s world we must try and remember that whilst perfect news may never exist, it is more important than ever to try. Original illustrations by Vicky Robinson.

Friday, 17 November 2017 | Cherwell

Science+Tech Body clock may affect survival By NANDANA SYAM

oes time of day affect chance of recovery after surgery? A recent experiment led by David Montaigne studied the variations in myocardial injury at various times of the day for patients undergoing aortic valve replacement. They ﬁnd that the incidence of major cardiac events was signiﬁcantly lower in surgeries that occurred in the afternoon. The team conducted a study of 596 patients who were referred for aortic valve replacements, and it was found that that for every eleven surgeries conducted in the afternoon, one major cardiac injury was prevented. In a follow up study aiming to exclude confounding variables such as lifestyle and age, patients were assigned to either afternoon or morning surgeries and their release of Troponin T, which is a known indicator of probable heart cell failure, was measured. In both studies, patients were operated on by the same senior surgeons and the same surgical team in both the morning and afternoon of the same day. Taken together, these two studies suggest that there is daytime variations in myocardial injury in patients undergoing aortic valve replacements. Surgeries that took place in the afternoon were more likely to have positive results. They then subjected atrial biopsies from patients operated on at both times to low oxygen (hypoxic) conditions to explore whether the differences were due to intrinsic mechanisms. After inducing hypoxia, they reoxygenated the tissues and observed the recovery of normal contraction. They found that the samples taken in the afternoon did better despite no differences in patient characteristics. Although there have been previous studies showing mixed results in the existence of a biorhythm in cardiac tissue, this paper consistently shows not only that there is biorhythm but also that it affects the risk of myocardial injury and tolerance to hypoxia and ischemia. An important point to remember is that this study was only conducted in one hospital, on one type of cardiac surgery and so it will be a while before these results can be applied clinically in any way. John O’Neill from the MRC laboratory of Molecular Biology suggests that this research can be used to timetable surgeries more efficiently using one’s chronotype – a person’s natural inclination to times of day regarding to sleep and maximal energy. This research may only be an initial step, but it could lead to better surgical outcomes in the future with minimal extra cost.

CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS

Understanding sleep, one ﬂy at a time Jonathan Stark interviews Anissa Kempf, an Oxford researcher using cutting edge technology to observe the inner workings of ﬂy brains

am standing in a small, dimly lit room, surrounded by equipment that looks so valuable and delicate I’m almost scared to move. Inside the room’s pièce de résistance – a gigantic microscope which probably costs more than my undergraduate degree – an insomniac fruit fly is fixed in place, alive, waiting for its brain be probed, one neuron at a time. The building is Oxford’s Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, and the beaming researcher who’s showing me around is Anissa Kempf. She has been analysing the effect of the cv-c mutation, which has been shown to cause insomnia in flies. The connection between genetics and sleep is a hot topic in neuroscience right now. One of this year’s Nobel prizes was awarded for analysing the fruit fly’s internal clock by looking at a mutation, and Anissa and her colleagues hope that studying the cv-c mutation will help us to further understand the mechanisms that control sleep in the brain. What does the mutation you’ve been studying do to fruit flies? We know that there is a specific set of neurons in fruit flies that promotes sleep, called sleep promoting neurons (Pimentel et al, 2016). These neurons are active when the flies sleep, and electrically silent when the flies are awake. What the cv-c mutation does is that it locks the sleep promoting neurons in a state in which they are silent. The mutated flies cannot sleep normal hours, and show memory deficits associated with lack of sleep. We know that this is what the mutation does, and what we want to do in the lab is understand the mechanisms of how it happens. How exactly do you find out how the cv-c mutation affects neurons? First of all, we genetically manipulate the neurons to get a group of flies which carry this particular mutation. Then we study the behaviours of those flies, we study when the neurons become active and inactive

using electrophysiology, we look at different ways to make the mutation more severe, and we see which proteins can be activated to overcome the mutation’s effects – to ‘rescue’ the mutation. This allows us to see exactly which proteins are affected by the mutation and which proteins are in turn affected by those proteins. Will understanding these mechanisms be useful for other fly labs? I think understanding these mechanisms will be useful for other fly labs, but also for the sleep field in general because it allows us to get mechanistic insights into how single cells compute sleep at a cellular and molecular level, and how they operate as part of a circuit that’s responsible for sleep. So you think that this applies to other types of creatures besides flies? We think that it’s likely that different organisms share a framework of what

sleep does, and how sleep occurs in the brain. What we don’t know now is whether different organisms all have the same molecules, the same proteins and the same mutations. Something we do already know is that ﬂies respond to caffeine – if they are fed with caffeine they become more awake. So there are some similarities at a molecular level between ﬂies and other animals. But whether the actual molecules that promote sleep are shared, we don’t know. What might this research mean for human healthcare in the future? What it may mean is that we may be able to develop better therapies for inducing sleep. By understanding better which molecular players are involved in sleep promotion, we will be able to develop better tools to help treat sleep disorders. For humans, however, this is quite far down the line from now.

What about the possibility that humans might have genetic forms of insomnia, as fruit flies do? There are actually quite a few studies about genes that are linked to insomnia in humans. That’s something that we’d like to look into as well, to see whether a mutation can be identified that is linked to human insomnia. Finally, what’s the next step for you and the lab you work in? I’m really interested in the possibility of finding sleep promoting agents. This is something that has been hypothesised for a long time in the field now - that certain substances accumulate during the day, and when they reach a certain concentration they ‘flip the switch’ to make you fall asleep. I’d like to find out if this hypothesis is true, and perhaps identify a sleep promoting substance. That would be a big step towards a better understanding of sleep.

Triggering a fly’s brain cells Kempf explains how she activates specific fly brain cells in the lab. The first technique is called whole cell patch clamp electrophysiology. In this technique (pictured) we open the brain of the fly, and insert a tiny glass electrode that has a silver chloride wire inside, which goes into a single neuron. We then stimulate the neuron in different ways and read out whether the cells are electrically active or silent. That gives a good idea as to how different signals affect the relevant neurons, so that we can understand the mechanism of the mutation. Now onto the second technique

– optogenetics. Here, we express a gene in a small group of neurons such that when light is present, an ion channel opens up and the cells become activated or inactivated. This technique allows us to link a group of neurons with a behaviour – in our case, we observed that when we activated the sleep promoting neurons by shining light on the ﬂies, the ﬂies fell asleep straight away. Optogenetics allows us to show that these neurons promote sleep, and also understand what happens when neighbouring neurons are activated, telling us which parts of the brain would normally activate the sleep promoting neurons.

Cherwell | Friday, 17 November 2017

Sport All-weather warriors

CRICKET

“You never felt like you’d actually made it”

By SECRET COLLEGE FOOTBALLER

Ex-England batsman Chris Tavaré tells Matt Roller about his Ashes success and Blues memories For a certain generation, Chris Tavaré’s name is synonymous with blocking. The former England opener frustrated the great Australian and West Indian bowling attacks of the early 1980s with a series of obdurate innings, and could be relied on to wear down an opposition not by flaying them to all parts of the ground, but by going hours on end without scoring. But this was not always the case. Batting at three or four for Oxford and his county side, Kent, Tavaré was more than capable of scoring quickly, and taking a game away from the opposition. Indeed, despite winning sixty caps, Tavaré was rarely given the opportunity to prove his worth at the top level, and was arguably disposed of too quickly. “I knew my limitations,” he tells me. “I didn’t mind opening, but I liked batting three more – it means you have the fifteen, twenty minutes I needed to get focused and get my thoughts clear.” “But at that level, I was just happy to be picked and playing.” Indeed, England’s batting line-up of Tavaré’s era was littered with greats, from Mike Gatting to Graham Gooch “I was very lucky to be surrounded by such talented players,” he says. Tavaré made his Kent debut the same year he matriculated at Oxford, playing a handful of first-team games, but it was at the University that his career really kicked into gear. In 1975, he played alongside future Pakistan captain Imran Khan, who had already made his international debut by that point, in a Blues side filled with future professionals. “It was really important to have players like Imran in the side, because you really looked up to them,” he says. “For people like me, the younger players, they showed what was possible, and [their presence] meant that we were much more competitive.” Whereas the Blues now play other university teams and various club sides for most of their season, in the 1970s university cricket was thought

of in a higher regard. Currently, counties typically treat their early-season friendlies against Oxford and Cambridge as little more than glorified practice matches, but in Tavaré’s era, a Combined Universities side used to enter the domestic one-day competition, the Benson and Hedges Cup, and counties took the games extremely seriously. “They turned up with their best team, so we were always going to be the underdogs,” says Tavaré. “We beat two of them in ’75 – Worcestershire and Northants – and my recollection is that Imran played a huge part in both games.” Tavaré’s recollection serves him well: against Worcestershire Imran took 4-4 and top scored with 35, while managing an unbeaten 61 in the Northants win. But it was 1976 that proved to be his best year in an Oxford shirt. After missing out on the captaincy to his good friend Vic Marks, he had “his best year of the three,” with the bat, and top scored in the Varsity win at Lord’s with a first-innings 99. “[Varsity] was the big fixture for Oxford students, and it was at Lord’s.

The combination of the two made it a really important tense sort of game. “I was absolutely furious!” he jokes when I ask if he was disappointed that Marks was given the captaincy ahead of him, before admitting that “he was obviously the much more appropriate candidate.” Following a drawn Varsity match in 1977, Tavaré graduated with a zoology degree, but went straight back to the professional game, having played for Kent throughout his time at Oxford. It was only four years later when he found himself making his England debut against a West Indies side featuring the feared pace quarter of Michael Holding, Joel Garner, Andy Roberts, and Malcolm Marshall. “I was terriﬁed! I batted at the end of the day and it was almost unplayable. We came back the next morning and it was bright sunshine – the conditions were in my favour.” Tavaré managed to top score in that game, making an unbeaten 82 in a team total of 174 all out. “Getting off to a good start and getting that bit of conﬁdence was great,” he says, “but you never felt at that level, certainly for people of my level, that you’d actually made it.” The year after, Tavaré made 69 and 78 in the Ashes win at Old Trafford, and he counts the Saturday of that Test as his career highlight. He stood at the non-striker’s end watching Ian Botham compile a 102-ball 118 to take the game away from the Austral-

ians, an innings he describes as “just amazing.” “The crowd’s reaction when he started hooking [Dennis] Lillee for six – it was a real hairs standing up on the back of your neck moment.” While he was in and out of the team for much of the rest of his career, Tavaré toured Australia in 1982/83, and despite some level of personal success, the tour ended in a 2-1 series loss. “It was tough,” he tells me. “Like the other tours I did, we went 1-0 down. It’s really hard to battle back into a series from there. When you go 1-0 down, the cricket gets really pressured – there wasn’t much sledging, but the pressure was there.” I ask him how the current England side can learn from previous tours, and he says that Joe Root’s team “have got to get off to a good start. “They need to win one of the first two Tests, and the key over there will be the bowling. You’ve got to get twenty wickets, and knock over good players. If you can keep their scores down to reasonable levels then I think our batting line-up will be ok. But if they go getting 400-450 regularly, then you’re going to struggle.” Given England enter the series with a flaky batting line-up on paper, it is easy to wonder what Trevor Bayliss would give to have a player in Tavaré’s mould in the middle-order: while some find his style frustrating, there will always be a place for the blocker at Test level.

Men’s JCR Football Premier Div

Women’s Football Midlands 2B

Bucs Men’s Hockey South B

Bucs Women’s Hockey South A

Tavaré, who won sixty caps for England, is now a biology teacher at Sevenoaks School PHOTO: SEVENOAKS SCHOOL

“I was very lucky to be surrounded by such talented players”

Balliol

Oxford 1

Exeter 1

St. John’s

Lincoln 1

Cambridge 1

Oxford 1

Exeter

Warwick 1

Exeter 2

Bath 1

Worcester

St. Catz

East Anglia 1

Bath 2

Cardiff 1

Wadham

Bedfordshire 1

Cardiff 1

Bristol 1

Queen’s

Northampton 1

Canterbury CC 1

Cambridge 1

“But can they do it on a windy night in Stoke?” The perennial question is asked of Europe’s most luxurious of players. However, given that many of them ply their trade in our college football leagues, a more pertinent question might be whether they can do it on a grim afternoon in Oxford? Though it may not share Stoke’s renown for miserable weather, Oxford can occasionally conjure up a bad spell, which can present a whole different challenge for college footballers on top of the game itself. With little protection from the elements on open playing fields, players have no choice but to battle through the adversity. To borrow from theatrical terminology, the show must go on, and college football being the greatest show on earth, there isn’t a lot that can stop it. This being Britain, sometimes it rains. Most of the time, the pitches can take it, but on the odd occasion we get a shower of biblical proportions, which even the obsessively manicured playing surfaces of the Premier League would struggle to withstand. Indeed, so-called professionals might call off the match in such circumstances, but college footballers are made of decidedly sterner stuff: Ryan Shawcross, eat your heart out. It’ll clear up in a minute, someone declares as you squint through the haze, trying to figure out which sodden silhouette is which. Spare a thought for the keeper, who has one hell of a job on his hands trying to see the ball, let alone catch it. The wisdom holds that wet conditions favour the attacker, but it’s difficult to string passes together when the ball, and the players, are skidding all over the place. As for defenders, slide tackles become more slide and less tackle when the surface is positively soaking. When the fi nal whistle has blown and you’ve trudged back into the changing rooms, the weather can really dampen the atmosphere, even if you managed to get a result. The captain’s joke about not needing to wash the kit this week falls on deaf ears as their teammates peel off their saturated shirts. The post-match beer doesn’t quite taste the same when infused with the rainwater dripping off your face. It hardly seems worth changing back into something dry, only for you to get drenched all over again on the walk home. But same time next week? Oh, and the Cuppers game this weekend? Of course, rain or shine. These are no fair-weather footballers. This is college football. The only thing worse than having to play in abhorrent conditions is having to not play. Players crave their weekly fi x of football, and though they may end up getting beaten by their opponents, they certainly won’t countenance being beaten by the elements. College football can sometimes push players to the limits of human endurance, but they wouldn’t have it any other way.

Cherwell | Friday, 17 November 2017

Tavaré’s tips

Sport

The former England batsman tells Cherwell how the Test side can beat Australia this winter

RUGBY UNION

Injuries marr Men’s Blues win

Blues ensure league survival with Bristol victory

By MATT ROLLER

five Bucs games this season. After starting on the front foot, some nimble footwork allowed Oxford full-back Sophie Trott to burst through Bristol’s defensive line and run in the first try of the match under the posts. But Bristol responded with intent, scoring a converted try to move into the lead. An excellent run down the touchline by Oxford’s Helen Potts gave the home side their second try, but Bristol responded again shortly after to open up a 14-10 lead at halftime. After a rousing team talk from the coaches, the Oxford side brought a new intensity to the second half, putting in some strong tackles and driving the visiting

scrum backwards from the outset. Laura Simpson consistently broke through Bristol’s defensive line, while prop Hester Odgers put in some crunching tackles as the forwards held firm. The Blues scored twice more, with one try from winger Alice Mingay shooting around the outside of the Bristol defence and another from the excellent Johanna Dombrowski, who plowed straight through several Bristol players to reach the tryline. The Oxford team managed to defend their lead for the remainder of the match, despite Bristol spending the final few minutes in the Oxford 22, before a sneaky turnover allowed Trott to kick the ball out of play and secure the

points. The win was an important one for Oxford, who secured their place in the Bucs Premier South for next season. As things currently stand, the Blues sit fourth in the league, putting them in contention for the Bucs Cup play-off later in the season. It also continues the Dark Blues’ preparations ahead of December’s Varsity Match, where they will look to secure a second consecutive win at Twickenham. Their opponents, Cambridge, have racked up an impressive 366 points in their past five games, conceding only seven, but Oxford will take confidence from last year’s gritty display and their own strong form.

Injuries to Kieran Ball and debutant Dominic Waldouck marred a fifth successive victory for Oxford’s Men’s Blues on Wednesday. The Blues ran in seven tries in a scintillating performance to continue a fantastic run of form with a 45-19 win against Major Stanley’s XV. But the win was overshadowed by a pair of blows to players that Oxford consider key to their Varsity success on 7 December. Waldouck, making his first Blues start after an injury-riddled term, went off just eighteen minutes into the game looking dazed, with a suspected concussion. The centre’s first game for Oxford had been hotly anticipated: he signed a contract with Newcastle last April which allowed him to combine playing for the Premiership side with his Masters degree, and had been frustrated by niggles throughout the season to date. The 30-year-old, who is likely to line up alongside Canada international Dan Moor in the centres at Twickenham, is no stranger to the big stage, having come off the bench in Wasps’ 2007 Heineken Cup final win against Leicester. He started in the Premiership final a year later, and his impressive form with rewarded with a place on the England tour to New Zealand – although he didn’t make an appearance. Since then, his career has fallen away somewhat, but he will be hoping that his injury does not prove too serious and that he can make a return shortly. Ball, however, will be fearing the worst after being stretchered off just before half-time. Cherwell understands he was taken to hospital on Wednesday evening for a scan. The prop, who started in last year’s narrow defeat against Cambridge, has been an integral part of the Blues’ success this year, and it would be a huge blow on both a personal and a team level if he were to miss out on Varsity. On the night, Oxford were comfortable winners against the visiting side, with tries from Dan Barley (two), Hugo McPherson, Will Wilson, Alex Hogg, Ed Elvin and Tom Stileman securing a routine victory.

Valtteri Bottas’ Formula One career has not always been plain sailing. After two seasons as a test driver, he struggled in his 19 races in 2013, winning just four points and finishing 17th. It was a tough introduction to the sport, but one that helped to shape both his career and his character. Four years on, and Bottas is third in the drivers’ championship with one race left in the season. 2017 has seen him win a race for the first time in his career, and alongside Lewis Hamilton, he has helped Mercedes win a fourth consecutive constructors’ championship. For a man still making his name in the sport, it has been a fantastically successful season. Indeed you can see from Bottas’ demeanour that he is thrilled to be in the position he is. Now 28, and with 22 years of racing experience

under his belt, Bottas still has a childlike excitement about racing. While he has tailed off somewhat in the second half of the season, after impressive victories in Russia and Austria, the Finn remains upbeat about his year in interview with Cherwell. “It was a big step,” he says of the transition from his old constructor Williams to racing alongside Hamilton at Mercedes, “but in the way that moving between teams always is.” The Finn has taken the move in his stride, and was full of praise for his new teammate. However, while Bottas remains successful, there is an idea floating around that Formula One is struggling. Whilst viewing figures are increasing, races are becoming more and more predictable and there is a temptation to reminisce with nostalgia about the days of

Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, when crashes were commonplace and each grand prix promised a weekend filled with excitement. But Bottas disputes this claim. “Time goldens the memory,” he told Cherwell, before praising the sport’s administrators for the recent safety measured they have proposed. “The crash tests have been made tougher and tougher,” he says. Unlike Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, Bottas has been quick to praise the decision to implement the ‘halo’ cockpit protection system, which will come into place from 2018: “If it can save any injury at all, it is definitely a good thing.” He is quick to underline the fact that every time drivers jump into the car, they are risking their lives, and yet “we still give it our all” – while Formula One racing has

been Bottas’ dream from a young age, he is still acutely aware of the safety implications that his career has. Bottas follows in a rich tradition of drivers from his country, but his lively sense of humour could hardly contrast more sharply with his compatriot Kimi Raikkonen’s notoriously deadpan approach. In essence, the Finn loves the thrill of racing, and criticises modern tracks – which he describes as “massive carparks with painted lines” – in comparison to old-style tracks like Suzuka in Japan. Bottas’ tenacity, ambition and fearlessness are clear for all to see. If he can continue making the progress that he has managed over the past few years, it would not be surprising to see him consistently at the front of the grid in the years to come.

Oxford’s women launch another attack as they scrape past Bristol University in Wednesday night’s Bucs fixture PHOTO: ANDREW BUNTING/OURFC

Women’s Blues

Bristol

By PAT METCALFE-JONES Oxford’s Women’s Blues secured their Bucs Premier South status for next season on Wednesday night, scraping past a strong Bristol side 22-14. After winning 10-7 against the same opposition in October, the Dark Blues kicked off under the floodlights at Iffley Stadium in front of a sizeable home crowd quietly confident of a victory. The match was hotly contested from the start, since the sides were fairly well matched, but Oxford prevailed to secure a third win in

FORMULA ONE

Valtteri Bottas: living his F1 dream

By SHIV BHARDWAJ