Cherwell 3rd Week MT17 by Cherwell

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University accused of closing its doors to the homeless

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Double delight for hockey Blues against rivals Cambridge

David Lammy: Oxford does not reﬂect the country

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3rd week Friday, 27 October 2017

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Revealed: how Richardson splashes cash on ﬂights, hotels and hospitality EXCLUSIVE

£69k spent on VC’s expenses since taking job

By FRED DIMBLEBY Oxford vice chancellor Louise Richardson’s has claimed nearly £70,000 on expenses since her appointment in 2016, Cherwell can exclusively reveal. The ﬁgures, obtained by an freedom of information request, show that the University spent £30,818 on Richardson’s travel, accommodation, and hospitality in the seven months since taking the job. Since then, a further £38,339 has been claimed in total expenses. The vast majority of costs were claimed for air travel, with £56,522 being spent on 26 round trips throughout the period, giving each round trip an average price of £2,173. In 2016/17, £29,969 were spent on Richardson’s air travel. This is nearly four times higher than the average of £7,762 claimed by university VCs on air travel in 2015/16. £1,911 was spent on non-air

travel, such as train and taxi fares. A University spokesperson said Richardson takes economy class fl ights for short-haul journeys, and travels in business class on longer trips. These longer journeys could include long-haul fl ights to the US and the Middle East. Richardson has previously stated that she has “a transatlantic marriage” with her husband, Dr Thomas Jevon, who works in the US. A request for a list of specific fl ight details was denied by Oxford officials, despite similar FOI requests being approved by other universities. The University spent nearly £10,000 on Richardson’s accommodation during the period covered by the request. A request for the names and individual rates of hotels that the vicechancellor stayed in was refused by the University. This differs from the information release policies of other UK

Oxford University spent £6,601 on Louise Richardson’s accomodation alone. PHOTO: JOHN CAIRNS/OUIMAGES universities. A previous request to the vice chancellors of Glasgow and Edinburgh Universities led to a full breakdown of expenses, including receipts for the purchase of a slice of cake and a bottle of water. The limited release follows criticism at Oxford for initially refusing to respond to David Lammy’s FOI

request into the breakdown of Oxford’s offer holders, prompting to him accuse them of being “evasive” and “defensive”. President of Oxford SU, Kate Cole, told Cherwell: “Without seeing all of the details, this seems like a high level of spend. “In a time of increasing pres-

sures on budgets of student services we would want to see as much money as possible being spent on developing the student experience and improving the quality of education.” The FOI data follows a number of

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Oxford Union under scrutiny for extravagant spending By GREG RITCHIE The Oxford Union’s Standing Committee spent £291,791 in the 2016 ﬁnancial year, Cherwell can reveal. However, despite President Chris Zabilowicz’s public declaration earlier this month that he wanted “our Society to be as transparent as possible”, the Union refused to let members view the detailed records of expenses claimed by elected ofﬁcials. This is despite their own rules appearing to mandate it. Accounts seen by Cherwell give

an insight into where thousands of Oxford students’ membership fees go. Of the £291,791 spent, over £50,000 went on ‘debate costs’, which includes exclusive dinners, speaker expenses, and drinks. This represents an increase of over £10,000 from the 2015 figure of £40,128. When approached for clarification on the figure, the Union stressed the costs of paid staff to make and serve the dinners, as well as the expense on table cloths and other items. One member, who was invited to an exclusive Union dinner, told Cherwell:

Students of oxford...

“The dinner was three courses of high-quality food. Costs will have been driven up by the large amount of free alcohol available – both white and red wine, with port at the end. It felt a bit like an exclusive club.” There has also been a rise in ‘food and stationery’ expenditure by the Committee. While in 2013 this was £5,025, by 2016 it rose to £8,222. Of the expenses contributing to this category, the majority came from food, with stationery accounting for just £450. An £8 per day food budget, for

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Union staff working a full vacation day, was a major contributor. A £120 breakfast budget in the Easter and Christmas holidays, rising to £200 over the summer, were further significant expenses within the category. While these figures shed some light on the Union’s finances, the accounts Cherwell were shown do not include what is commonly accepted as full records of expenditure – despite this seemingly being permitted to all members by the Union’s own finance regulations. The Society’s rules state that “all

income and expenditure records will be available for inspection by any member by appointment with the President”. Despite making an appointment with President Chris Zabilowicz in advance, the Bursar Lindsey Warne refused to let Cherwell staff see receipts, not believing these to constitute part of the expenditure records. This interpretation was later conﬁrmed by Zabilowicz. Instead, the Union only allowed the

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News Oxford SU pulls funding for controversial group By HOLLY MACKAY Oxford SU chose not to fund the controversial Movement for Justice activist group earlier this week. A motion to fund students’ transportation to a protest outside Yarl’s Wood, an immigration removal centre in Bedford, was amended to remove all mention of the allegedly Trotskyist organisation. The funding instead went to Oxford Migrant Solidarity (OMS). The motion was amended after “recent allegations that have emerged against people in their central organising committee”. It originally proposed that the SU donate £250 from their discretionary funds to the MFJ. The amendment instead requested that £300, a ﬁfth of the annual discretionary budget, be given to Oxford Migrant Solidarity (OMS). The motion passed with 39 votes in favour. Wednesday’s motion saw OMS secure funding to subsidise the cost of coach transport to Yarl’s Wood for the mass protest on 18 November. Yarl’s Wood has long been criticised for a series of alleged human rights abuses, including rape, extended and illegal solitary conﬁnement, and racial abuse from guards. Oxford SU has previously pledged support for the Shut Down Yarl’s Wood movement.

Oxford don to sue over rape allegations By MUSTAFA AHMED Oxford professor Tariq Ramadan is suing French woman’s rights activist and author Henda Ayari over her allegations of rape against him, is now being investigated by Paris prosecutors over her claims. Ayari ﬁrst hinted towards the alleged sexual assault in her memoirs I Chose to be Free, published in November 2016, which detailed her escape from Salaﬁsm in France. In the book, she claimed an Islamic intellectual referred to as “Zubair” raped her in a hotel room after he gave a lecture at the Federation of Islamic Organisations conference in Paris. Arab News reports that in the book, Ayari claims that the academic invited her to his hotel room and took advantage of her weakness to hug and kiss her. After she refused his advances, Ayari alleges that the academic slapped her violently after screaming at her. It was only last Friday that Ayari claimed in a Facebook post “that the famous Zubair is Tariq Ramadan”. According to her lawyer, Jonas Haddad, Ayari did not report the attack earlier out of fear from reprisals. Speaking to AFP, Ayari’s lawyer added: “After revelations over the past few days of rape and sexual assault claims in the media, Henda has decided to say what happened to her and take legal action.”

She has since filed a complaint with the Rouen prosecutor’s office. Tariq Ramadan has responded to the allegations in a statement, saying: “Mr Tariq Ramadan categorically rejects all these false allegations. A complaint for slander and defamation will be filed with the public prosecutor in Rouen on Monday.” Notably, Ayari named Ramadan on social media on Friday, around the same time as millions of women began using social networks to talk of sexual harassment and assault in the wake of allegations against the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. Ramadan’s lawyer, Yassine Bouzrou, told Le Parisien on Saturday that Ramadan denied the allegations made towards him and would file a complaint of defamation with Rouen prosecutors on Monday morning. Bouzrou added: “The complainant says she did not name my client in her book in order not to be sued for defamation. When you’re telling the truth, it’s surprising to fear being accused of defamation.” Dr Tariq Ramadan is H.H. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies and Senior Research Fellow at St Antony’s College, teaching in both the Faculties of Oriental Studies and Theology & Religion. He is also the Director of the Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics, and the President of the

European Muslim Network. This is not the ﬁrst time Ramadan has courted controversy. In 1995, Ramadan was temporarily barred from entering France due to alleged links to Algerian terrorists. In 2003, he clashed with Nicolas Sarkozy, when he refused to condemn stoning, insisting instead on a “moratorium on the death penalty”. Since the allegations, Ramadan’s planned talk at Imperial College London entitled “What could the future hold for Islam in Europe?” has been postponed “until further notice” due

to “unforeseen circumstances”. Ramadan has previously been both praised as a reformist and condemned as a radical for his theories on Western civilisation, namely on how Islam will shape Modern Europe. He has also has spoken at the Oxford Union many times, and was named by Time magazine in 2004 as one of the 100 most inﬂuential people in the world. His US visa was also revoked that year due to an “ideological exclusion provision”, but the ban was then liften in 2009.

Tariq Ramadan speaking at a conference. PHOTO: UMAR NASIR/FLICKR

Richardson’s expenses revealed Union refuses to reveal detailed accounts CONTINUED FROM PAGE ONE recent controversies involving the pay and expenses of Louise Richardson. In August, the New College bursar attacked the “grossly excessive” pay of the VC, which totals £350,000 per annum. When her pension is added in, the total figure is £410,000 per year, making her the third highestpaid vice chancellor in the UK. Richardson has attacked “tawdry politicians” for their criticism of her pay figures. The new data show Richardson’s expenses costs are slightly lower than the year 2014-2015 when £44,239 was invoiced for the expenses of her predecessor, Andrew Hamilton. Over the four years since 2011 covered in the response, £152,695 was spent on Hamilton’s expenses. At the time Hamilton was also criticised for his high level of pay which totalled £462, 200 in 201415. The figures show that the University has spent £221,852 on vice

chancellor’s expenses alone since 2011. This amount would pay for just under eight full three year undergraduate courses, costing £9,250 each, at the University. It would also pay for just under 60 annual bursaries, costing £3,700 each, for students who have a family income of £16,000 or less.

£222 thousand spent on both VCs’ expenses since 2011 An Oxford University spokesperson told Cherwell: “The vice chancellor’s expenses reflect her role at the head of a £1.4bn organisation with global responsibilities. “She has regular commitments representing the University internationally, and all expenses are kept to a minimum – for example, the vice chancellor flies economy class on all trips within Europe and within the US.”

CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS A 20 October article incorrectly stated that Oxford Union president Chris Zabilowicz is under investigation for electoral malpractice, and could be impeached as a result of the process. Zabilowicz is not yet a defendant in the case, is not facing allegations of electoral malpractice, and cannot be impeached. The two unelected ofﬁcers were appointed by the committee. However, we stand by the amended online

version of the article. 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.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE ONE figures which are already available to any member without an appointment. Cherwell contacted the Financial Director of a major UK law firm for their opinion. They disagreed with the Society’s interpretation that “income and expenditure records” only refers to the audited accounts. Instead, they stated that the rules permit members to a more transparent view into the Society’s finances, including a detailed breakdown of income and expense claims. They told Cherwell it would “very hard to argue” that Rule 63(b) just meant audited accounts, “as if that was the intention there would be no point in adding 63(b) as 63(a) would suffice”. As per the Society’s rules, a request was also sent to the Treasurer Gui Cavalcanti to see the ledger, which is meant to contain “the receipts and expenditure of the Society… which shall be open to the inspection of Members”. On arrival at the appointment, however, it became clear that the ledger did not exist and had not for some time. There is no suggestion of criminal wrongdoing by the Oxford Union Society. This is not the first time the Union

has come under fire for appearing to not adhere to its own rules regarding its financial transparency. The Oxford Student used Rule 63(b) to request access to the full 2008-09 income and expenditure records in 2010, after initially being refused access to the full receipts. At the time, Simon McIntosh of consultancy firm Grant Thornton said: “Bluntly, records of expenditure do include expenses claims and all that goes with them.” In the face of growing student pressure the Union later backed down, giving members access to expenditure records including receipts. Contacted by Cherwell, the Union refused to comment on why their understanding of “income and expenditure records” has changed to not include receipts. The 2008-09 accounts are considerably more detailed than the ones available today. For example, they list the amount of money spent on miscellaneous expenses by individual positions, such as the president, treasurer and librarian. The accounts are now itemised so that assessing the expenses of individuals is impossible. Instead, the Standing Committee account has a ‘Miscellaneous’ category. The old accounts also revealed

how much was spent specifically on dinners and drinks by the Committee. Now it is grouped under ‘debate costs’. The 2008-09 accounts were termly, meaning one could attribute their numbers to a particular administration. The audited accounts given to Cherwell were only annual figures. This is in contravention to Rule 63(a), which states that all termly budgets and accounts must be kept on file in order that members may view them at any time during office hours. The Bursar stated that she could not recall when these changes occurred. Zabilowicz told Cherwell: “The Oxford Union staff and committee are scrupulous when it comes to the Society’s finances. The Society has never – and, I imagine, will never – offer speakers’ an honorarium [sic]. Any expenses of the Society must be reasonable (a theme throughout the rules), and this is closely scrutinised by the Society’s Finance Committee which any member can attend. “Every year, we have professional and external auditors go through the accounts, after which the accounts are available for any member to view. Debate Select Committee expenses have to be approved by both the Treasurer and the Bursar during a meeting of the Finance Committee.”

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The access schemes ﬁghting Oxford’s elitism

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In defence of smoking in college

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Why vegetarians could save the planet

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Cherwell | Friday, 27 October 2017

Oxford academics unite to condemn MP’s “creepy” letter By EMILY LAWFORD MATT ROLLER Oxford college heads, senior fellows and alumni have criticised Tory MP Christopher Heaton-Harris after he wrote to universities asking for a list of tutors lecturing about Brexit. Speaking exclusively to Cherwell, a number of leading university figures have variously condemned the letter from the Eurosceptic Tory whip as “creepy”, “stupid” and an “implied threat” to the universities and academics who received it, suggesting that Heaton-Harris “should lie down in a darkened room and think about his behaviour.” The letter, which was sent to all UK university vice-chancellors, asked for a copy of each institution’s syllabuses and links to any online lectures relating to Brexit. Helena Kennedy QC, principal of Mansfield, told Cherwell: “I think Mr Heaton-Harris has a rather narrow understanding of what happens in a university. “I have no doubt he holds the view that most academics are proEurope and he would be right but it does not infect the intellectual process. “The nature of academic discourse and inquiry is to examine issues from all sides. If Oxford did not do that, how come it produces politicians across the spectrum? “His kind of thinking is what produced a narrow curriculum in our state schools and the invention of Clause 28 to prevent any discussion of homosexuality in schools back in the late eighties and through the nineties. “Whatever he says, his true purpose is about proscription and it is

Magdalen to appoint new trans rep

By NICK BROWN

inimical to the true purpose of education.” Downing Street responded to Heaton-Harris’ letter by telling reporters that the MP had not been acting in his capacity as government whip when writing to university leaders, but as a member of parliament. Heaton-Harris, the MP for Daventry and a hardline Eurosceptic, clarified that the letter had been sent in a personal capacity, but failed to provide an explanation for his requests. “To be absolutely clear, I believe in free speech in our universities and in having an open and vigorous debate on Brexit,” he tweeted. Lord Andrew Adonis, former Labour minister and Oxford academic, agreed, telling Cherwell:: “academic freedom is the bedrock of a free society. Universities and academics should simply ignore this implied threat to their freedom.” Robert Gildea, Oxford University Professor of Modern History, who is writing a book on Brexit and the legacies of empire, thought the letter was more “huffing and puffing rather than a Leninist or McCarthyist threat”. He added, “the letter demonstrates the shallow and two-dimensional mindset that Brexiteers are increasingly

showing, as their project becomes more and more embattled. “It shows an ignorance about how universities and research work – no-one ‘teaches Brexit’ and Brexit isn’t just about ‘European affairs’. Our task as historians or political scientists is to understand how Brexit came about, and what its significance is, and this requires deep and multi-layered thinking, which is what we are paid to do.” Lord Macdonald, Warden of Wadham, agreed that the letter did

not pose a real threat to academic freedom. Speaking to Cherwell, he said: “Sending this letter was a stupid and creepy thing to do. I expect Mr Heaton-Harris regrets it. “Though I doubt it has any implications for universities, since no-one will take this infantile nonsense seriously. “He should lie down in a darkened room and think about his behaviour.” Another senior politics fellow, who wished to remain anonymous,

expressed his disappointment with the letter, remarking: “It is notable that Mr Heaton-Harris suddenly developed an interest in one tiny part of our teaching rather than Physics, Chemistry or any other subject. “If Mr Heaton-Harris is so interested, he could of course resign from parliament, enrol as a mature student, and contribute to seminars himself.” Oxford vice-chancellor Louise Richardson declined Cherwell’s request for comment.

A motion to establish a new position of transgender representative on the Magdalen College JCR committee was passed unanimously at a meeting on Sunday evening. The motion, proposed by Matthew Elliot, stated: “Transgender students face a large number of unique and personal welfare needs and issues which often have little guidance or support from the JCR.” It provides for an amendment to the JCR constitution to add the trans rep to the committee. The duties of the new position include ensuring equality of opportunity and providing welfare support to all undergraduate students who identify as transgender, and lobbying for changes to college policies on transitioning students. The debate was brief and passed with little controversy: there were no points against the motion and

with no abstentions or votes against. Magdalen’s JCR currently has an LGBTQ Trustee, Oliver Baldwin, and Ofﬁcer, Chiara McDermott. Billy Nuttall, who seconded the motion, told Cherwell: “I am very happy that the JCR supports members of the trans community in our college.” By passing the motion Magdalen college joins Wadham, the only other JCR to currently have such a position. Katy Haigh, Vice-President for Women at Oxford SU, said: “It is great to see that common rooms are expanding their representative positions to better reﬂect the demographics and the needs of their students.” Magdalen student Ben Hopkinson, who attended the general meeting where the motion was passed, told Cherwell: “This motion proves

that the JCR is committed to being welcoming and supportive to all members of Magdalen.” Another student, Amelia Horn said: “Matthew Elliot made crucial points on how the welfare needs of lesbian, gay, and bi students differ from those of trans students and so it is important to separate the role within the JCR.” According to the its equality policy, Magdalen College “welcomes diversity among its staff, students, a l u m n i , and visitors, recognising the particular contributions to the achievement of the College’s mission which can be made by

individuals from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences. In 2014, the college’s LGBTQ rep, Elsa Field, resigned from her position after an article written for the St John’s Gender Equality Festival zine, which was described as “incredibly transphobic” by senior University ﬁgures. Elections for the position are expected to be held later this term.

Chris Heaton-Harris (above) and a copy of the letter he sent to all UK university vice-chancellors (left) PHOTO: UK PARLIAMENT

Friday, 27 October 2017 | Cherwell

News

Student activism countering Oxford’s “social apartheid” Common Ground and ACS are amongst those taking a stand By MIA MILLMAN AMELIA HORN According to David Lammy, Oxford needs to stop “hiding under the bushels” and “instinctively blaming schools and educational inequality for the problem that they have”. But the extent of student activism aimed at reducing inequality suggests that Oxford students at least are not shying away from the problem. Students and societies have spoken out in response to criticisms made against the University last week. Speaking to Cherwell, Lammy emphasised the “important role” of students in forcing change. Last week’s report made national headlines for its exposure of racial inequalities at Oxbridge. Following a series of Freedom of Information requests, data was released revealing that ten out of 32 colleges failed to admit any black British A-level students in 2015. The data also showed that Oriel did not admit a single black British A-levels student from 2009-2015. In light of these findings, Lammy accused the University of “social apartheid”. When Cherwell asked Lammy about how to change the University, he said: “Students play a really, really important role.” He went on to state that colleges that have “have consistently been very progressive in how they have gone about trying to get a diverse

New access scheme founded for BME applicants

By EVE WEBSTER

intake” are often those where “work has been led by student officers really obsessed with the issue of getting access to these young people”. Several JCR representatives, as well as Oxford’s African and Caribbean Society (ACS), the Campaign for Racial Awareness and Equality, and Common Ground have spoken out following the publication of Lammy’s report. While last week’s report provides a damning criticism of the University, it did not acknowledge the access programmes and initiatives being

championed by student activists to counter these inequalities. Earlier this week in a statement, ACS said: “Attempting to reduce such a complex issue to a series of political soundbites only serves to obscure the depth of the problem and can often do harm to the progress being made in the area of changing perceptions and breaking down barriers to the students at the very heart of this discussion... “Oxford is a microcosm of the deep structural issues embedded in the British educational system”.

They emphasised that the data fails to show “how many young black students are actively discouraged from applying to Oxford by their teachers, despite achieving the grades, because ‘Oxford isn’t for them’”. In order to boost application rates from the Afro-Caribbean community, ACS “developed an independent access framework” to help young black students. They have three main access initiatives – an Annual Access Conference (AAC), the Visions Programme workshops, and a shadowing scheme. Speaking to Cherwell, JCR BME representative Isabella Rooney agreed that student-led equality and diversity organisations are not given enough attention. In response to Lammy’s publication, she said: “While these statistics do convey that the reality of the diversity in Oxford needs urgent work, it also puts prospective students off applying.” Among other initiatives put in place by students is Common Ground – an organisation which aims to analyse and tackle present day inequalities through investigating Oxford’s colonial past. Last term, they held a symposium that featured over thirty events. Speaking to Cherwell about their progress so far and plans for the future, they said: “Now we have almost 1,500 followers on our Facebook page, and want to continue the

A Pembroke student has founded a new initiative to widen access to Afro-Caribbean students. Hope Oloye, a third year Biomedic at Pembroke, said “Oxford needs to take an active approach” in tackling racial inequality at university level. She is one of many students taking active steps to do so. Oloye has created a mentorship programme and prize scheme – the Afro-Caribbean Tyler Prize – to improve access for black students. The programme involves an essay competition in which each entrant is given one-to-one support from a current or former AfroCaribbean Oxford student. This

aims to assist the improvement of academic writing and essay skills in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. Oloye began working on the new scheme before Lammy accused Oxford of “social apartheid” last week, but emphasised that his comments have helped to highlight the need for change. The data may have been shocking to many, but according to Oloye: “The data’s hardly surprising, you only have to look around Oxford to realise it has a diversity problem.” Oloye’s decision to found this programme came when she “realised nothing was being done by my college to combat their incred-

colleges didn’t admit any black British A-level students in 2015

Members of ACS outside the Ashmoleon earlier this year. ACS consistently campa discussion interrogating Oxford’s racist, classist, and colonial past. Not only continuing the discussion, but working with the University to make structural changes. ” Another JCR representative, Aisha Tahir, who is BME representative for Hertford, said that “more can be done by Oxford in terms of progress and access”. Neha Shah, co-chair for Oxford SU’s Campaign for Racial Awareness and Equality (Crae) also responded to Lammy’s research into diversity at Oxford. Shah said there is an “entrenched systematic bias” which “persists at all levels of the university, especially with regard to racial and ethnic diversity”. Shah also condemned the Uni-

versity’s reluctance to fully publish the ethnicity data, which Lammy referred to as ‘defensive’ and ‘evasive’, according to The Guardian. CRAE also criticised the University’s response that they couldn’t release the data on the grounds of the Data Protection Act. Shah said that this “tells us all we need to know about the number of ethnic minority students at Oxford”. Hertford BME representative Aisha Nao told Cherwell: “More can be done by Oxford in terms of progress and access.” Echoing the sentiment expressed by many other students, she added that changes at Oxford need “to be backed up by a change to a system where socio-economic factors determine where you end up in life”.

ible whiteness”. She emphasised that one third of black offer-holders do not take their place, in contrast to an average of 13% for all other ethnic groups. Oloye went on to say: “I think we have to be careful not to further propagate the idea that Oxford isn’t a place for black students, because lot of the current discourse has the potential to deter prospective Afro-Caribbean applicants. “I know so many capable students that didn’t even consider Oxford because they felt like it was an institution solely for white students, which breaks my heart. “The reality is that not only are

they missing out on one-on-one time with leading academics, the university is missing out.” Speaking about her initiative, Oloye said: “The ultimate success of this scheme will be measured in the evolutionary changes in Oxford’s demographic intake. “Through the development of academic skills, the creation of culturally relevant contacts at Oxford and the demystification of the University, we hope to increase the submission of strong, confident applications made by Afro-Caribbean students.” The scheme operates at a specific school in East London but is open to any Afro-Caribbean student

Cherwell | Friday, 27 October 2017

NORTH-SOUTH DIVIDE

University hits back at claims of regional access disparities By JEREMIAH O’MAHONY

aign to improve racial equality at the University PHOTO: OXFORD ACS/FACEBOOK

Statistics obtained by MP David Lammy last week show that four out of five students at Oxford and Cambridge are from the top two most privileged economic groups. The data also shows that Oxford made only 193 more offers to applicants from the whole of Northern England than it did to applicants from the five home-counties, while Cambridge made 334 fewer offers to the whole of the north of England than it did to four of the homecounties. Lammy said: “Whilst some individual colleges and tutors are taking steps to improve access... in reality many Oxbridge colleges are still fiefdoms of entrenched privilege.” While nationally about 31% of people are in the top two social income groups, applicants from these two social classes received 81% of offers in 2015. The figures also reveal the enduring prominance of regional divides, with applicants from London and south-east England receiving 48% of all Oxbridge offers. By contrast, the Midlands received 11% of Oxford offers and 12% of Cambridge offers, while the North West, the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber between them received 15% of Oxford offers and 17% of Cambridge offers. A University spokesperson told

Regional admissions inequalities

Cherwell: “David Lammy asked for and focused on very small ﬁgures from a subset of the students who apply to Oxford (British students taking A levels), when the data we publish online (and we do publish more than any other university) looks at all applicants and can be broken down in many different ways – but always comparing like with like wherever possible. “Similarly, Lammy has chosen a socioeconomic indicator (NS-SEC class) that most universities (and indeed HESA, the Higher Education Statistical Authority) no longer recognise as being very useful, because it classiﬁes disadvantage by parental job occupation rather than looking at the indicators that most universities track, such as socioeconomically deprived postcodes or areas with very low participation in higher education.” They also told Cherwell that, while it is “very easy to focus solely on the raw numbers – ie. the total number of students from any given group who end up here… one of the most important things to look at in admis-

sions is the fairness of success rates, not just the raw numbers.. “In our case, ﬁgures for the latest admissions round show that students whom we ﬂag in the admissions process as being particularly disadvantaged (because they attended an underperforming school or live in an area of high social deprivation) actually have better success rates when they apply than their more advantaged peer applicants.” According to a new analysis by Ucas: “Oxford and Cambridge are two institutions that do not appear to show systematic or consistent bias against black or less privileged applicants.” Figures also showed that Wales had fewer than 100 offers from Oxford last year. Gareth Molyneux, a second-year Wadham student from Wales, told Cherwell: “In general my view was many people in Wales have faced a lot of abuse and jokes from many English people in general, they found that enough of a deterrent to not apply to many English institutions, let alone one as old fashioned as Oxford.”

College Baseball Caps

Figures released by Lammy last week showed regional disparities in offers made for Oxford

In-store and online

across the capital. It concludes with a celebration day held at Pembroke, when those taking part will be able to tour Pembroke and

6% of Oxford’s teaching staﬀ are BME, fewer are black other colleges. The day will also include a Q&A with a panel of Afro-Caribbean students. The impetus behind the prizegiving is to give pupils the chance “to become more familiar with

Oxford and, perhaps more importantly, feel that Oxford is in fact a place for them”. After this year’s success, Oloye wishes to expand the project to inspire younger children across the country in order to “better combat the complex set of societal issues that affect young, black pupils across the UK”. The programme is aiming to “demystify” the University and to address preconceptions which Oloye believes “can often prevent Afro-Caribbean students from accepting a hard-earned offer”. Oloye further criticised the University for inequalities amongst their academic staff, saying: “Only

6% of Oxford’s teaching staff are BAME and even fewer are Black. How can Oxford claim to be a world leading academic institution, when their research is conducted by the same voices?” Speaking more about the need for the programme, Oloye said: “As much students hate to admit it, Oxford is a place that opens doors. “Leading law makers, politicians, journalists and academics, have studied here and to break down the deeply entrenched systemic inequalities that Black people face in this country, we need to be in these positions. Only then will we truly see the change we need.”

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Cherwell | Friday, 27 October 2017

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

University accused of refusing to open empty buildings to rough sleepers By HENRY STRAUGHAN Oxford University has been accused of refusing to open up its empty and unused buildings to the homeless over the winter by Green councillor David Thomas. Thomas condemned the University for its “lack of imagination and genuine compassion and empathy” in regard to Oxford’s homelessness crisis. The Green Party reportedly approached the Council and the University in February to ask if there were empty buildings in Oxford that could be opened to the homeless, with the hope of reducing the number of people sleeping rough in sub-zero temperatures over the winter. But despite the Council acknowledging they had over 300 empty buildings in the city, and the University also noting that they had many empty buildings in their possession, neither body would make a single building available. Oxford University told Cherwell:

“We have been in talks with Oxford City Council and Oxford Homeless Pathways, but unfortunately we do not have any available buildings which would be suitable for temporary use as a homeless shelter. “We want to continue our conversations with the City Council and we will offer help if a suitable building becomes available. We are genuinely committed to working with these partners to help Oxford’s homeless, particularly as winter is approaching.” Thomas suggested however that in conducting their investigation into empty buildings, the University established so many conditions and unrealistic standards that they set it up to fail. He added that the University failed to see the buildings from point of view of homeless people, who often have the skills to bring buildings up to minimum health and safety standards. Thomas said he suspects the University and colleges have plenty of appropriate buildings available,

Somerville Love Island motion ‘insults history of the college’ A motion to make Marcel Somerville, a ﬁnalist in ITV show Love Island, an honorary member of the Somerville JCR has failed after heated opposition. JCR President Barnaby Harrison, who proposed the motion, said he had hoped it would “just be a bit of fun”, but members highlighted fears that the reality TV star “might be involved in some sort of scandal”. Physics and Philosophy student Meryem Arik said that he had “done nothing of note” that made him worthy of the honour, and said that the motion passing “would be insulting to the history of the college”. The motion failed by a margin of 24 votes to 15, with ten abstentions. In 2016, a Somerville motion to bid for left-back José Enrique on loan from Liverpool passed after the college’s First XI conceded 15 goals in six matches.

Lavinia Woodward Convicted student could return to Oxford Lavinia Woodward, who assaulted her then boyfriend with a bread knife during an altercation last winter, may return to her studies at Christ Church in the next 18 months. Woodward received a ten-month sentence, suspended for 18 months, in a ruling last month. Recent reports suggest that Woodward will be allowed to pause her studies at Christ Church until her suspension is concluded. This could result in the medical student attempting to return to the University by autumn 2019 for Michaelmas term.

Mansﬁeld JCR votes against playing Uefa anthem for Formal Mansfield JCR voted last Sunday against a motion “To play the Uefa Champions League Anthem as the high table enter formal hall”, instead of the customary silence. The motion, proposed by Joe Seddon, also called for the creation of a “new JCR Bench position for a ‘Champions League Button Pusher’ who presses the button which starts the Champions League music for each formal hall” and to “mandate the College Choir to perform the Champions League Anthem live for Formal events in order to justify the higher price.”

and that if colleges and students knew about this they could mount pressure over the question of: “why the hell will there will be empty buildings in Oxford city centre with men and women out in sub-zero conditions this winter?” The University claimed that none if its unused properties were suitable for accommodation. The request by the Greens came after the homeless community successfully cooperated with Wadham College over Iffley Open House. Last winter, a group of around twenty homeless people, known as Iffley Open House group, used squatter’s rights to take possession of a disused Volkswagen garage on Iffley Road owned by Wadham College. On occupying the building, they converted it so health and safety was up to standard, and stayed for several weeks. Councillor Thomas negotiated between the homeless and the college, so that the two groups settled on an end date for the squatters with the result that there was a smooth

handover of the building when the date came. Thomas suggested that the homeless group demonstrated that they could go into a building, use it for a temporary period and not pose any danger and raise health and safety up to standard. Thomas further claimed that the group showed the possibilities opened by allowing the homeless to use empty buildings in this way.

With many of the group getting their housing, education, and health sorted – so that a portion of the group got off the streets permanently. He pointed out the beneﬁts of such stability for homeless people, telling Cherwell: “If you have nowhere to keep your stuff, to sit down, and you spend all your time just surviving, you don’t have time to make plans and get set for the future.”

New Westgate centre opens By ALLEN HAUGH Two years after construction began, the Westgate Oxford shopping centre opened its doors this Tuesday. The 800,000 square foot centre, fronted by a threestorey John Lewis, is not yet completed, with half of the 125 shops planned for the centre, including Uniqlo and Primark opening this week. Another 30 are set to open by Christmas, including The Alchemist and the Curzon cinema. However the centre has come under ﬁre for its contribution to congestionin the city centre. Simon Hunt, Chair of cycle group Cyclox, told Cherwell: “Don’t get us started on the failure to provide attractive, well-signed cycle routes to and from New Westgate to help ease the major travel problems its opening will create. “Practically nothing has been done to help cycle users to reach the new facilities, or to help staff to pedal their way to work there.”

PHOTO: MIA MILLMAN/ CHERWELL

Friday, 27 October 2017 | Cherwell

8 Independent since 1920 Vol. 282, No. 4

Cherwell

The new Westgate Centre is a failure for social housing

EXPENSES

Time to open up

nterviewed after taking her position as the first female principal of St Andrew’s almost a decade ago, Louise Richardson said she wanted to introduce a new “openness” to the way universities are run. How ironic. It took Oxford administrative officials well over the statutory deadline of 30 days to respond to Cherwell’s Freedom of Information Act (FOI) request for the expenses claimed by the vice chancellor since she took her post 19 months ago. And when they finally did respond, a number of exceptions were used to prevent the full details of her expenditures being released, exceptions not used by a number of other UK institutions on similar releases. Another FOI we submitted, requesting the pay of all pro-vice chancellors was rejected by the University, citing time delays. We are appealing both of the decisions. What the figures do reveal, however, is important: yes, the overall spending is lower than her predecessor, the at times bizarrely aloof and remote Andrew Hamilton, but still ranks higher than the average travel and hospitality costs of other vice chancellors. This comes at a time of rising fees for incoming students and the slashing of bursaries for disadvantaged students. We are not naïve. We are aware that the vice chancellor must play a crucial role in promoting the University, if we are to retain our first place position – if only for the prestige over the Other Place. It’s true – Richardson must act as our ambassador across the world, and that this entails obvious costs in travel and hospitality. But there are more important reasons for revealing these figures. By

revealing the expenditure, Cherwell is assisting the vice chancellor in her ambitions to make higher education more “open”. Students have a right to know how much their senior staff in this university are lavishing out on personal expenses. It helps to rectify a distinct lack of transparency coming from those at the top, and remind them of their responsibilities and reputations. Over the next few weeks, Cherwell will try to rectify this situation. As a public institution, it is our right as students to know the full facts.

Simon Neumaier

The Union, again Richardson is not the only one being reminded of their forgotten promises of transparency. One week after Cherwell revealed the investigation into Oxford Union president Chris Zabilowicz’s decision to allow unelected officials onto its Standing Committee, our front page details an account of the hostile attempts by Union officials to thwart our request to learn more about how the Union spends your membership fee. Last week, we declared the Union to be an institution that’s rotten to the core. The ongoing investigation into Zabilowicz’s decision may yet expand to other matters, and we stand by our view. Moreover, it is our belief that an institution that really worked for its members would be willing to tell its members the truth about how it spends their money. We can’t make the Union give us their receipts, but for its own sake, we hope to see them soon.

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

CAT BEAN and RYAN MAMUN, Food Editors

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

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

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

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

SELMA STEARNS and ROSA THOMAS, Features Editors

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

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

ELLA BENSON-EASTON, Chief Photographer

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

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

This new development comes at a huge cost

hen the plans for the redevelopment of the Westgate shopping centre were discussed in 2008, they were met by multiple heated town hall debates attended by large crowds of residents, concerned by a multitude of worsening issues in the city. Those who opposed the plan discussed alternative uses of the additional space, the most pressing of which was affordable housing. Fast forward nine years, and the problems facing the city and its housing market are even more severe. Rents have increased continuously, and the number of rough sleepers in the city has more than tripled. In hindsight, it seems that the space which is now dedicated to a high-end shopping centre should instead have been used to mark a much-needed step in the right political direction. The uncomfortable truth is that affordable accomodation, or even council housing may have eased the pressure on local tenants, but it certainly wouldn’t have boosted Oxford’s commercial or aesthetic image in the way that an enlarged Westgate shopping centre does. It’s true that the developers did include new flats in the redevelopment plans – 59 flats were built as part of the new site. The only problem with this newly created space is that a one or two-bedroom flat would set you back between £350-£500k, extortionate figures which even break council provisions mandating that a balance be struck between affordable housing and expensive construction projects. According to the Oxford Mail, the new high-end flats featuring private balconies and rooftop gardens have their most promising clientele in the parents of university students, those looking to house their children and provide themselves with a long-term real estate investment. The terrible cynicism of this is that this space could have been used to remedy the effects of student housing and its ever-growing demand for facilities on local residents.

Instead, it is now being used to further a culture of monetised student living, meanwhile ignoring the needs of ordinary citizens. Housing conflicts on Iffley Road were a painful reminder of the role that the University and colleges play in Oxford’s housing crisis, occupying an increasingly large portion of the scarce space near the city centre. The acquisition of new spaces exclusively dedicated to students are putting an additional strain on the rent market in the city. While more students live as close to the city centre as possible, more permanent residents get pushed to the outskirts, feeling increasingly overlooked. Oxford is known as a student city, but moves such as Westgate further the narrative that permanent residents are not a priority. Heralding the Westgate as a miracle for jobs and opportunities is misplaced. Among other reasons, it ignores its social consequences and overlooks the fact that the ones hit the hardest by a lack of affordable space in Oxford are not those who will be able to indulge themselves in this new consumerist utopia. Only a minority of students will be able to afford these kinds of flats, but all share a responsibility for colleges’ housing policies and our impact on the local community as a group of temporary residents and consumers. The new Westgate centre projects a problematic message: profits can be made from the city’s students, and they are willing to ignore local communities in order to continue a pattern of frivolous consumption and luxuriant living. If we do not acknowledge our responsibility for our local environment, if we don’t challenge both our institutions and ourselves in how we use the limited space this city can provide, we are complicit in the social cleansing of Oxford, driving many further towards the outskirts. Oxford’s new social and commercial hub comes at a cost. We should all acknowledge that a large part of the local community is paying a price for our casual spending.

Life Arts Style

by Cherwell 27 October 17

+ Life Poland’s passionate fungal love aﬀair Music Bad vibes and a dire DJ – Gun Fingers fails to impress Theatre A gender-focused Bacchae that lacks female actors

The makeover Squaring a guilty pleasure with a feminist outlook page 8

Friday, 27 October 2017 | Cherwell

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EDITORIAL Creativity is our true defining feature By ALTAIR BRANDON-SALMON ANOUSHKA KAVANAGH Creativity. It is perhaps the defining word of culture, a noun which activates the whole of society to produce works in excess to what is strictly required to live – yet what would life be like without the art of the Renaissance or the poetry of the Romantics? We can’t live off art alone, but without it we would be spiritually impoverished. That’s why we’ve taken it as the theme for this week’s issue of Oxbow, although really, it could be theme for any or all weeks, because it is the hermetic desire to create, to move from consuming to producing, which defines everything we cover, from

literature to cinema, theatre to music. Yet the forms it takes are not always the expected ones. This week we’re publishing new poetry, which is perhaps an art form forever tied to our notions of high art, but we also have an interview with the broadcaster Andrew Graham-Dixon, whose BBC documentaries on the history of art have managed to inventively bridge the gap between the mass media and haute culture. It takes creativity to get 68 million people to watch, for an hour, a program on the art of Spain. So we want to celebrate it wherever and however we find it and refuse to engage it categorisations, stratifications, or classifications. We only care if it’s creative.

Contents

Clockwise from bottom left: Cloud of Petals 7, makeover montage 8, Oxford’s most overhyped night 12, noir cinema: the alternative to new releases 13

Interview

Music

12 Playlist Black History Month 12 Pick of the Week Frank Turner 12 Gun Fingers bad vibes and a dogshit DJ 12 Review of one of America’s greatest folk musicians

Exclusion David Lammy MP’s anger at Oxford

Life 4 4 4 5 5 6 6

Love Oxland Mushrooms in Poland Snapshot crewdating for the uninitiated John Evelyn plans of drunken men go astray How to leave a tutorial with any positivity Advertorial Comptoir Libanais A Life Divided by black tie

Visuals 7 7

A Divine Imagination religious crossovers at the Ashmolen Touch and tenderness in Cloud of Petals

Style 8

Shoot makeover montage

Culture 10 10 11

Interview with Andrew Graham-Dixon Picks of the Week new spaces for contemporary art Poem Superego

Film 13 Noir Cinema offering an alternative 13 Review The Snowman 13 Ones to watch popcorn alternatives

Books 14 14

Bouvier a journey to the East Review Jodi Picoult

Theatre 15 Bacchae at the Playhouse 15 Confessions a change in career 15 Five Minutes with LES’ community officer

Satire 16 16 16 16 16

World Politics Merkel and Macron Piers Gav sponsorship deal Donfeud a new platform Union Franz K or Chris Z? Comic Tute partners

“You cannot describe Oxford in any sense as an inclusive environment”

Interview Labour MP David Lammy tells Will Dry why he’s taking on Oxford’s “exclusive” application process, and how students should help

avid Lammy is a lighthouse in British politics: he seeks out rocky outcrops of injustice, where he sees the elite failing the people, and brings them into the light of public scrutiny. He labelled the Grenfell fire a “monstrous crime” and “corporate manslaughter” in the days after the tragedy. The most recent injustice at which he has directed his fire is the “systemic institutional issues” at the heart of our own university’s admissions policy. “You cannot describe Oxford in any sense as an inclusive environment that reflects our country,” he tells me. “It’s more exclusive than the House of Commons in terms of social background and diversity, or the room for criminal barristers at the Old Bailey.” He is speaking to Cherwell shortly after a series of freedom of information requests he submitted revealed the extent of elitism in Oxford’s application process. Namely: that in the years 2010-15, 82% of Oxford’s students came from the top two social classes, that Oxford makes more offers to five of the home counties than it does to the entirety of the North of England, and that 13 Oxford colleges did not make a single offer to a black A-level applicant. Many of those defending the university in the media since these revelations surfaced have argued that diversity would come at the cost of lower standards. But Lammy is not entertaining this possibility. “Let’s not even have a debate about lowering standards. There are young people who are able to go to Oxford on the grades that they have.” For

“Let’s not even have a debate about low now, he believes the debate should center on how Oxford is reaching those young people. He believes Oxford should be “actively writing to the students who are getting outstanding A*s in GCSEs: ‘Please come to us, please apply, you can come for free.’” Lammy, who attended Harvard, highlights how the majority of this year’s intake at the prestigious American institution will be nonwhite. This makes him “conscious of what is possible… the truth is in America the schools are considerably worse than they are in the UK. And yet, Harvard and Yale reflect America to a much greater extent than Oxford and Cambridge.” To drive the point home, he brings up the issue that one suspects will remain closest to his heart for the rest of his life. “A child who is on the twenty-second floor of Grenfell tower, who is, despite all the disadvantages of school, the disadvantages of parenthood, the disadvantages of space to revise, who gets one A* and two As, is probably brighter than the child who gets three A*s at Eton.” His simple message – that children who have the talent should be given the opportunity – has resonated across the political spectrum. Even Michael Gove tweeted that he “<3 David Lammy”, and agreed that blame shifting should be sidelined to

Cherwell | Friday, 27 October 2017

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interview Lammy in the headlines Smacking children In 2012, Lammy came under fire for comments he made during an interview on LBC radio, in which he appeared to suggest that the Labour government’s 2004 legislation, which tightened up laws on parents’ smacking their children, was partially responsible for the 2011 London Riots. “Many of my constituents came up to me after the riots and blamed the Labour government, saying: ‘You guys stopped us being able to smack our children’,” he said. However, Lammy later told The Guardian, “It would be quite wrong to suggest that smacking or not smacking was in any way responsible for the riots.” He did, however, say: “It is up to parents to determine how they [children] define right and wrong. It is not for the state to define that for them.” Same-sex marriage In 2013, Lammy made an impassioned speech in the House of Commons in support of the Same Sex Couples Bill, in which he compared Civil Partnerships to the legal doctrine which justified the Jim Crow laws in the United States. Grenfell Tower This year, Lammy described the fire at the block of public housing flats as “corporate manslaughter” and called for arrests to be made.

wering standards. There are young people who are able to go to Oxford on the grades that they have.” PHOTO: UK PARLIAMENT end this inequality. In some of Lammy’s fiercest remarks, he told me that Oxford “should be leading the debate about access and social mobility, not hiding under the bushes, reluctant to hand out data, reluctant to be transparent and instinctively blaming schools and educational inequality for the problem that they have.” Regardless of your interpreta-

“Oxford is a long, long way from reflecting our country” tion of the facts, it is indisputable that Oxford should regularly publish their data. Behind the worrying figures is the less headlinegrabbing but equally sinister story of Oxford administrators attempting to block Lammy’s investigation at every opportunity. Lammy described the university as “aggressively resistant” to giving him the data, and when it finally did agree to, after being informed that The Guardian was planning on publishing a story on it, they presented it in such an unintelligible fashion it took plenty of hard work

to interpret the results. Students, he believes, can “play a really, really important role” in fixing the issue. The exceptional colleges that buck the trend – Mansfield and Somerville, among a few others – do so because they have “student officers really obsessed with the issue of getting access to these young people.” One could infer that Lammy believes students at Oriel and Teddy Hall – where just one and two black students respectively have been admitted in the last six years – could become a little more “obsessed.” But in the grand scheme of things, these social justice warriors face insurmountable barriers. Lammy believes the basic problem lies within the college system. “A college-based admission system will always mitigate against progress in this area. Centralised faculties have to recruit so that you do not get the disparity across colleges.” Within the Oxford bubble, transferring the responsibility of recruitment from colleges to faculty is an almost unthinkable revolution. Just last week, Louise Richardson was hounded by various college academics for suggesting that the processing of taxi receipts, among other back office functions, could be centralised to save money.

To erode what many believe to be the lifeblood of a college’s autonomy, its ability to recruit who it wants, is bound to create a fierce backlash from some of Oxford’s more trenchant dons. On Brexit, Lammy is similarly scathing of the Tory government which he believes is attempting to “hijack our democracy.” “The people were sold Brexit on the basis that we would be taking back control. We are now seeing an attempt to hide the impact assessments that the government has done and not reveal them to the general public, and to thwart the democratic sovereignty of our parliament by not giving parliament a proper meaningful vote before the deal.” This, and the government’s refusal to publish its Brexit impact assessments, amounts to what Lammy believes are “dictatorial attempts to thwart democracy, which will only split this country apart even further”. “It’s clear that nothing that is now coming out of the government suggests that this is in the national interest of our country. We’ve moved a long way from the sunlit uplands of this is going to be easy, the EU is going to be begging us for a trade deal, the world is going to be begging us for a trade deal.” Lammy believes that students can play a pivotal role in resist

such dictatorial attempts. They must “resist, resist resist. Protest, campaign, write – make it clear that you will not vote for parties that are intent on Brexit.” Two days after the referendum, Lammy did his own resisting on Twitter, stating that parliament should ignore the referendum result – out of step with the frontbench of his party. He does, however, optimistically note that “the Labour Party is travelling on the issue of Brexit... Labour is an internationalist party, and it’s working people who will suffer as a consequence of leaving the European Union. I would hope that our front bench position continues to evolve.” The bulk of backbenchers, on both sides of the aisle, who believe in their heart of hearts that this policy goes against the country’s national interest, are very slowly creeping towards the position Lammy reached just two days after the referendum. His message to those MPs is: “Put our country first. Put our country first. Be brave and courageous about what is in the national interest of our country.” For a man who has pitted himself against those responsible for the Grenfell tragedy, against what he sees as outdated admissions practices at the country’s finest university, and against a govern-

ment – and potentially even electorate – insistent upon us leaving the EU whatever the cost, Lammy clearly does not check the odds before picking his battles. His source of inspiration and

“I believe there are dictatorial attempts to hijack our democracy” hope in these fights is the millennials – “a fantastic generation”. He is less affectionate towards baby boomers “who basically heated up the world and gave us climate change, spent too much money and gave us the 2008 crash, and now seem to be giving us a populism.” It remains to be seen whether our generation will resist the “bumpy decade” of “reactionism” and “xenophobia” that Lammy believes the UK is in for. Lammy’s optimism for the UK, and his own career, is grounded in the gamble that us millennials will give him a helping hand in the fights ahead. A proactive group of Oxford students might not be a bad bunch to start with.

Friday, 27 October 2017 | Cherwell

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Love Oxland “I do sort of like it when he’s rude to me.”

Alec Fullerton and Nell Norman bar crawl their way through pinot, Peep Show, and poison Nell Norman Second Year, PPE Christ Church

Alec Fullerton Fourth Year, French Trinity Nell gets top marks for originality – I’ve never been on a date that began with a wine tasting and ended feverishly pursuing a fox through a housing estate. In an effort to exploit the enigmatic ‘International Man of Mystery’ vibe I’ve been cultivating since returning from France, I thought I’d ﬂex my year abroad oenological muscles (that’s the study of wine for you non-linguist philistines) by whisking Nell along to a quaint little bar à vin in my ‘ends’ (her term). It may seem so far as if our date went off without a hitch. I’m afraid I must correct you. In what is easily the most bizarrely psychotic thing I’ve ever been told, Nell decided to inform me that, and I quote: “If you rub a daddy long legs into a wound, it will kill you.” She messaged me the following day with a screenshot debunking this ‘urban myth’. Puzzling.

What was your ﬁrst impression? Alpha female Personality? Well-seasoned, like a good steak. Any awkward moments? I *momentarily* forgot her name

Alec is something of a wildcard. He confidently assured me that the Duke of Cambridge (where we had arranged to meet) was full and that we ought to head to a nearby wine bar – a pretty romantic setting for a first encounter. As we drank, the frequency and intensity of his Peep Show references proved an enjoyable juxtaposition to our surroundings. We continued on a kind of bar crawl through Jericho (I think? I was very lost – he could have been taking me literally anywhere), as he discussed his brushes with the law, shades of white, the architecture of Bridge, and Johnny Cash. It was a surprisingly enjoyable evening: he took the piss out of me throughout, but I do sort of like it when he’s rude to me. (Hopefully that’s more a psychological defect than a weird sexual thing?)

What was your ﬁrst impression? Not my Channing Tatum Personality? 10% banter, 90% Peep Show Any awkward moments? He kept ﬂirting with the waitress!

A bit turned on by Alec’s oenological muscles?

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Poland’s passionate fungal love affair

The mushroom is the golden chalice of Polish culture, muses Jamie Onslow

Snapshot

Crewdating for the uninitiated By JOANNA LONERGAN

or most people at Oxford, third year means academic drudgery ending in exams so stressful that many literally crumble under the pressure, like digestive biscuits. It is not unheard of for particularly stressed ﬁnalists caught in the rain to dissolve completely and be washed away in Oxford’s sewer system. However, for modern language students like me, third year means something very different. For while my fellow students were returning to Oxford with heavy hearts, I was jetting off from London Gatwick on the adventure of a lifetime. And while other modern linguists touched down in such exotic climes as South America, Italy and France, I was carried to Poland on an aircraft bedecked in the orange and white livery of England’s premium carrier. Poland is a country about which little is known in Britain. Even though over a million of its countrymen and women live in our midst, a recent survey I conducted found that most Brits thought that Poland was a fictional country invented by Tony Blair in the early 2000s. To the uninitiated, Poland can seem a mysterious and opaque place, and yet for those desiring a better understanding of the country, there is no better place

xford crewdates. For the uninitiated – a crewdate is commonly associated with copious amounts of alcohol, outrageous sconcing and general embarrassment for all those involved. Sounds fantastic. This crewdate was a somewhat awkward interaction between some second-year boys and a few ﬁrst-year girls. And yes, that was as dodgy as it sounds. We rocked up to the restaurant at 7.30 (for a 7 o’clock reserva-

to start than the hallowed tradition of mushroom picking. While in Britain we spend our free time indoors, munching down biscuits and bathing in gravy, the Poles like nothing better than to spend weeks in the great outdoors, scouring the undergrowth for fresh, juicy mushrooms to satisfy their Slavic cravings. Poland’s love affair with the

Nationalists are reluctant to seek treatment for fungal skin infections mushroom goes back to prehistoric times. The Polish equivalent of the Prometheus myth tells how a demigod stole a basket of porcini mushrooms from the heavens in order to improve Polish national cuisine. Displaying their fine grasp of irony, the gods punished him with a fungal groin infection so severe that it would daily lay waste to the affected area, only for the demigod’s various appendages to grow back overnight. To this day, Polish nationalists are reluctant to seek treatment tion), well-equipped with booze, of course. We weren’t the only crewdate in the restaurant. In fact, it seemed quite the night for it, and the table next to us had already begun smashing a watermelon against their heads. It was around this time that I realised I was in for a good night. ‘I sconce anyone who lost their virginity on the toilet’. And so it began. At least three people stood up and drank to that one. ‘Does a portaloo count?’ Classy.

Cherwell | Friday, 27 October 2017

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life Evelyn’s diary The best laid plans of drunken men go astray

las, the optimism of youth has gone as quickly as it came. The dewy eyed freshers now find themselves in the monotonous mechanisms of Oxford student life. Life is all about finding those escapes which mean something to you. It might surprise you all to know that your favourite diarist is partial to a good night out. Bridge was always the venue of choice, and nothing less than the VIP section would be sufficient. However, thanks to the buffoons which constitute the Buller and Grid we face ever longer queues and fewer concessions for the nouveau riche crowd your diarist finds himself attached to. Bah, humbug indeed…

Port and Protestation

for fungal skin infections, proudly showing their athlete’s foot and ringworm, as if boasting of their body’s quintessentially Polish ability to support all sorts of fungal life. My first brush with this Polish national obsession was not at all what one might expect. Late one evening as I walked back to my dormitory through Krakow’s cold, dark streets, I took a wrong turn and ended up in a rough part of town. Within minutes, I had attracted the attention of a group of hooded youths. I was soon surrounded, and my assailants demanded that I hand over my valuables. I duly produced my phone and wallet, only to be met with blank stares and disinterest. After an awkward few minutes, I established that it was not my money, but mushrooms, that these disenfranchised young Poles were after. I was allowed to leave only once I had produced a sad-looking mushroom from my rucksack, which I had been hoping to enjoy for my dinner. I would later learn that these occurrences are common in povertystricken inner cities in Poland, which in recent years have been struck by a mushroom epidemic so severe that young Poles will commit all sorts of depravities just to get their hands on a few chanterelles.

For most Polish people, however, mushroom gathering is enjoyed within the boundaries of the legal system. If you were to wander through the woods and valleys of the Polish countryside, you would not go far before encountering groups of Poles on their hands and knees, their noses thrust deep into the loam. It is not a hobby completely without danger, for the conditions that make Polish soil so perfect for mushroom growth can occasionally lead to horrifying mishaps.

Polish mushrooms are unlike the mushrooms of any other nation. Here, the mushrooms flourish due to the wet weather, the rich soil, and a political system that has consistently guaranteed each and every mushroom access to first-class education and health services. Yet in some areas of Poland, the earth is so fertile that mushrooms have been known to burst out of

the ground at immense speeds and with incredible violence. The otherwise idyllic woods are scattered with the body parts of unsuspecting Poles, torn asunder in their quest for mushrooms. This danger has led to much of the country’s wooded areas being cordoned off, as one would a minefield – yet these are minefields so unpredictable that even Princess Diana would think twice before setting foot in them. The humble mushroom is as ingrained into the Polish national psyche as fast food and mass shootings in the States. It not only provides your average Pole with all his daily nutritional and entertainment needs, it has also shaped the country’s history and culture. Over the last few centuries, Poland has been repeatedly invaded and partitioned by neighbouring powers who would stop short of nothing to get their hands on Poland’s bountiful fungus harvests. When deciding what shape to make the cloud generated by the explosion of an atomic bomb, the American scientists picked the mushroom design as a tribute to the Polish nation. Other unsuccessful design submissions included the Michelin man, and a raised middle finger, but they were rejected on the grounds that one shouldn’t add insult to injury.

At various points throughout the evening, someone would put their shoe on their head. Woe betide the poor fresher who was obliviously reaching for the naan bread at that moment. I don’t think I’ll ever forget watching my friend pour her wine into her old trainer and down it. What an experience. Shout out to the guy who did it out of his boot: that thing looked nasty. As for the other ‘games’, there were multiple. The guy opposite me

didn’t touch the wall in time and was forced to do a ‘straight arm’. Just in case some of you haven’t had the pleasure of witnessing this, it involves pouring your drink into your mouth, keeping your arm straight above you. Safe to say very little of that guy’s drink went in his mouth, more his eyes. There was also the classic pennies flying across the table, aimed at peoples’ drinks. One went in my bra. (Apparently that counts). In terms of food (essentially the

reason I showed up and paid £15), I was to be disappointed. Being crammed onto a table meant food was a free-for-all. If you didn’t have long enough arms, you weren’t getting fed. In short, all I ate was rice, rice and some more rice. We were told to leave the restaurant, but the night wasn’t done there. It was off to Spoons – and that’s where the mingling (commonly known as sharking) really started.

I was allowed to leave only once I had produced a sadlooking mushroom

Away from my attempts to reconcile the creeping alcoholism which claims the very best of us, it seems that this week has been one deﬁned by the best laid plans of drunkards and men often going astray. Indeed, nowhere was this more obvious than Port and Protestation. Twice in the space of a week, the Lord of Sealand has found himself facing the wrath beﬁtting his tragicomic behaviour.

However, the greatest disappointment to come was to find someone so ludicrous as to take him seriously. The Magdalen Boy who showed so much early promise could not take a hold of his temper, and has found himself the subject of much embarrassment. It may be a case of too much, too soon for one so early on in his hack career. Given the lack of new talent the student Conservatives find themselves with, perhaps a speculative run for Returning Officer may be more suited.

Keble conflict The Union this week finds itself with a rather different conflict than a war of words. In one of the unsurprisingly archaic motions the Society has to go through, this week saw the opening of nominations for Deputy Returning Officer. Most nominations tend to be unobjectionable (they even let the Master of Hounds have a crack at it). However, it seems that the DRO, Keble College wishes to keep her career amongst politicians and rule keepers. All those individuals who bother to read this diarist’s musings cannot help but see the obvious conflict of interest posed here.

How to Leave a tutorial with any positivity By MATTHEW PALMER

o you’ve just ﬁnished a tutorial. Perhaps you’ve aced it. Your essay/problem sheet/presentation was brilliant, you had an answer to every question your tutor threw at you, you contributed meaningfully to the discussion and even said something mildly-insightful. Great. Leave the room buzzing with energy, take the rest of the day off and go pour yourself a glass of your favourite poison in celebration. Perhaps that happened. Or – more likely – it didn’t. You didn’t prepare enough for the tute, your pathetic excuse for an essay was a half-arsed, inchoate mess that made little sense under even the most casual scrutiny, and it was obvious that you didn’t have anything worthwhile to say in the following debate. Worse, you probably had to be rescued from your tutor’s polite inquisition by your fellow students. The tute crawled along as you prayed to be released from the pit of shame. Let’s be honest, you fucked it. Well, now what do you do? You could go to your room and sulk/cry/rage over a cup of tea and Tesco’s own-brand biscuits, which

is probably what you feel like doing. This has the beneﬁt of allowing you to wallow in self-pity for an hour or two, but, in the end, this will probably just leave you in a state of dull misery for the rest of the week, dreading your next encounter with the arch-inquisitor. Wash, rinse, repeat. Better would be for you to talk to your tute partners. Chances are, even if you thought you were the only one in the room to fail miserably, at least one other student went through the same hell. Even better if it turns out the entire group hated every moment – then you can have a good old-fashioned bitching session about the tormentor, and laugh off the fact that you messed up. And once that is done, make it your mission to ace the next tute. Go listen to some motivational tunes, hit the library early each morning, put in the extra graft, and send off your work way before the deadline. Passively-aggressively dare your tutor not to give you a decent grade this time. Feeling better? Good. Now pour yourself a glass anyway – you’ll probably need it. And let’s face it – it could be worse. You could do a science degree.

Friday, 27 October 2017 | Cherwell

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Life Advertorial

Comptoir Libanais brings real Lebanese food to Oxford

omptoir Libanais are very proud about their new restaurant in Westgate Shopping Centre where they are spreading the love of Lebanese cuisine and the generous culture. Translating to mean ‘Lebanese Counter’ this restaurant is somewhere for everyone where you can eat casually with no fuss. However comfort, style and authenticity are not sacrified in anyway. As the founder of Comptoir Libanais, Tony Kitous tells us: “we serve real Lebanese home-cooking all day, every day, bringing the flavours of Lebanon to our guests. “Our menu is based on Lebanese and Middle-Eastern mother’s food and recipes. “It is healthy, fresh and offers a huge variety of different dishes. Our way of eating is all about bringing friends and family together to share food around the table just like we do in Lebanon and all over the MiddleEast.” On the menu you will find dishes such as the Mezze Platters which ideal for sharing, Lebanese wraps, marinated Grills, Tagines, Man’ousha- flat breads, a selection of Baklawa and Lebanese desserts as well as homemade lemonades such as Romana (orange blossom water & pomegranate lemonade), Rosa (rose, lemon and lime lemonade), and the popular Rose Mint Tea which follows a traditional recipe and is served in a beautiful silver teapot. You can also order a healthy, freshly squeezed juice, or a speciality Lebanese wine or beer. Families are very welcome at Comptoir Libanais, there is a children’s menu which has a great selection of dishes for children to

choose from and it also features an activity pack and colouring in section to keep little ones entertained. The restaurant is a bright and beautiful mix of colours and patterns. Tony explains: “our design is real story telling , based on my childhood memories. We want to make you feel like you are eating in a souk somewhere in Beirut, Marrakesh, Istanbul or Cairo. “The décor is friendly, fun, humorous and very inviting – a true Middle-Eastern experience.” The restaurant walls and floors are filled with colourful tiles which can be found in Arabic homes,

courtyards and kitchens. As well as grandmother’s oilcloth chairs, brass tables, harrisa tins, vintage brass and silver trays, old family pictures, Fez hats, hand of Fatma all adding to the setting. “My dream for Comptoir is to create a place for everyone to eat, drink in humble and friendly surroundings. I always wanted to make Lebanese and Middle-Eastern food accessible for everyone and spread the love of the genuine cuisine and warm hospitality. I also wanted to create a small ‘souk’ – market to help our guests find authentic ingredients, goodies and homeware that are hard to

source on the high street.” The shelves of Comptoir Libanais are over flowing with beautiful gifts or speciality ingredients for you to purchase and take home with you. You will find spices such as Sumac, Zatar, or Orange Blossom, Rose Water, Tahina, and sweet treats such as Nougat and Baklawa. The handmade bags are made in the villages in the Middle-East. There are also two cookbooks you can buy if you want to cook Lebanese food at home for your friends and family. Open now at 227 Westgate Centre.

What we ate

From left: Szechuan-style whole sea bass, godmother’s lamb, egg-fried rice and spicy prawn crackers from Zheng, Jericho

xford, in some sense, is black tie – and black tie, in some sense, is Oxford. If nothing else, both can be captured in three simple words: tradition, style, and timelessness. Ever since Edward VII took his tailcoat to Henry Poole on Savile Row and had his tails lopped off, black tie has rested at the forefront of elegant evening dress – although those who wear it now are often less than elegant by the end of the evening. That being said, in some ways, black tie and Oxford exist for the same reason. Oxford is here to exercise the minds of intellectuals regardless of their background, and black tie – although less academically stimulating – allows everyone to enjoy great company on a level playing field. They can eat the same food, drink from the same can of Dark Fruits, and even engage in the same banal Great British Bake Off

related chat as their counterparts. Simply put, they can revel in each other’s company whilst all sporting the same penguin-like attire. Think, in today’s era: when do we really set aside time for conversation, rapport, and that alone? In our constant efforts to drive on towards the future, we forget and we lose the things on which we look back with nostalgia. We can all too easily overlook those halycon days of getting drunk whilst feeling like cast members in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Just like Oxford, it is a great leveller of people. Black tie should be cherished as one of the rare occasions in modern society when we can truly enjoy the uninterrupted company of our peers, our contemporaries and our friends. Also, it makes drinking Strongbow outside the King’s Arms at 6pm feel just that little bit more classy.

A life divided

Black tie

Jules Desai and Anoushka Kavanagh have a formal disagreement

t’s midnight. Your feet feel as though an elephant has trodden on them – or, if you are lucky, are now totally numb – from the heels your toes are sticking out at unnatural angles from. And you’re groggy and chilly as the effects of weak alcohol have worn off. The black tie ball that started out so beautifully is no longer so beautiful. After a long cloakroom queue behind likeminded sufferers, you welcomingly snatch your sneakers like the lifeline they are and head back to the dance tent. Only your gown is now far too long for you minus the artificial six inches, and you accidentally step on the trail, snagging it. That perfect dress you spent *literally months* searching for on Asos, instead of writing the essays you should have been writing, is now ruined. As a saving grace, you remember you couldn’t possibly wear it again anyway, because oh god, it would be social

suicide to be seen in the same dress at a black tie event twice. Not only are you drunkenly tearful about this minor wardrobe disaster, but you’re also now cold. Shame you didn’t think about how chilly British May nights are when admiring your own cleavage. You look enviously to the boys prancing around in their waiter-like uniforms, complete with warm jacket. Black tie’s probably not so bad if you only have to throw on a tux. One of them takes pity on you standing shivering and staggers over inebriated to offer you some warmth. What a gentleman! Until… “You can have my coat if you sleep with me” he slurs. What a prick. You come to the conclusion that he must be a member of that stalwart of misogyny, the Bullingdon. Why else would he look so good in a tux – you’ve heard that’s an entry requirement. Besides, you remember reading it in Cherwell, so he must be, right?

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visuals A divine imagination: religious crossovers at the Ashmolean

By LIZZY DIGGINS

he Buddha. Vishnu. A bearded Jesus. A Parochet. A guilded Hajj certificate. The Ashmolean’s engrossing and important new exhibition begins by addressing the assumptions most of us hold about the “big five” religions. Yet it sets these up only to slowly dismantle and shatter them. While these may be representative of religion in the early modern period which these artefacts hail from, the exhibition takes the viewer back 1000 years to investigate the more ideologically porous time in which the images of these religions, both literal and figurative, were formed. The exhibition as a whole is a rare chance to see the impact of research work, laid out in a visual and almost tactile way. The exhibition is a culmination of the ‘Empires of Faith’ project based at the British Museum and Oxford University, which is evident throughout with the focus on clear explanations and intellectual exploration. Next, the exhibition takes the viewer through early Christianity, some of the remarkable objects synthesized in the room including the Hinton St-Mary mosaic with the Chi-Rho symbol behind it. In this instance, possible ambiguities are not quite emphasised enough: it is labelled as a figure of Christ, whereas there are convincing arguments that it is in fact a depiction of Constantine. This would have been an interesting debate for the exhibition to untangle and delve into, especially in the context of the room as a whole, which investigated a crossover between temporal and divine rule. What is perhaps most remark-

able about this room is the small cabinet of curiosities in which the figurines and coins sometimes cannot be identified, due in fact to the extent to which the cultures and symbolism intertwined and intermingled. The section on Judaism, while small, powerfully challenges understandings of early Judaism. Indeed, the figurative illustrations of a God, alongside Romanesque and Islamic techniques and styles,

The exhibition is a powerful message about what unites us demonstrate the transformation Judaism has undergone between then and now. Turning the corner into the main room of the exhibition, a reverential silence seems to fall. The cavernous hall befits the exhibition’s focus on the divine, and seems almost a shrine dedicated to the art that fills it. Indeed, the works and relics in this room are worthy of respect, intricate both in artistic terms and in the analysis that accompanies them. One relic in particular demonstrates the close relationship between image and understandings of the divine, the sculpture of a goddess left unidentifiable due to her powerful attributes having been chipped off. The final section takes the visitor through rich Islamic texts, and then the British Isles. Yet here it feels like the exhibition slightly

loses its focus and clarity. This is not to say it is not interesting or beautiful. Indeed, the placement of three standing stones against a backdrop of a rugged vista is visually stunning. Here too, there are early medieval English illuminated manuscripts, gilded and intricate, as well as a fascinating example of a monk practising such illumination. However, while an interesting case study, it slightly feels as if the exhibition just trails off, rather than finishing with a visual bang. The exhibition is cleverly coloured, with each of the religions it explores assigned a hue in order for the viewer to more clearly follow the complex ideas about religious assimilation that are distilled in the exhibition. Yet given that the exhibition’s focus is on the relationships and similarities between religions, this can be more unhelpful and confusing than elucidating. Indeed, the division of the exhibition into more discrete religious sections means that a copy of the Qu’ran, and a codex Torah to which it was remarkably similar, are situ-

ated at different ends of the exhibition. Similarly, a blue Qu’ran and an Anglo-Saxon codex that was a clear imitation are placed in separate sections. While this is a result of the multiplicity of connections that the researchers discovered, it is disappointing for the viewer and makes the links on which the exhibition is based far harder to make. This is a strong and powerful message from academia about what unites us, and the religions that many follow. Indeed, at a time when deep divisions are forming along sectarian and religious lines, this is a timely reminder that they were not, and are not, so distinct after all. While the exhibition in many respects throws up more questions than it answers, it has begun a pertinent and long-needed discussion on religion, and what it can demonstrate about the power of unity and assimilation. Indeed, as the Co-Curator Professor Jaś Elsner says, “This discussion has been begun at a time when cultural exchange, migration and globalisation are of critical importance.”

Touch, tenderness, and technology in Cloud of Petals Sarah Meyohas’ new exhibition embraces electronic form in its exploration of beauty, writes Eleanor Birdsall-Smith

arah Meyohas’s Cloud of Petals grants its audience no time to adapt or understand before it launches forward. We are immediately hit with its startling power, as thick thumbs rub the clitoral centre of a plump dusty pink rose. Yet, while at times erotic and deeply seductive, it is not just about sex. Set over the course of four days, the installation aims to address perceptions of beauty as well as the relationship between nature and technology. In a sentence out of context, this sounds appalling, tired and clichéd, yet remarkably it manages to almost completely avoid all of these usual shortcomings. The brief premise of the film follows sixteen men who were chosen to carefully and diligently pick flowers they deemed to be the most beautiful. These flowers were then used and explored in a laboratory designed by the renowned Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen. Over 100,000 petals of all different types and colours were both physically pressed and uploaded to a cloud system. This leads us to the interesting way Meyohas interprets the relationship between beauty, nature and technology: “This film traces beauty and subjectivity within the systems of automation and artificial intelligence,” says Meyohas. “From the trove of images taken by

the ‘workers’, an artificial intelligence algorithm is created, allowing for the creation of new, unique petals forever.” However, while the concept behind the piece is intriguing and brilliant in its own right, it is the finished spectacle that truly amazes. It is filled with fast pace transitions which make your tummy turn and your heart swell. This manages to strike an interesting balance between uncomfortable and exciting, for instance at one point focus is put on the thick bodies of Burmese pythons as they slip scale by scale past the rose petals, until we are suddenly but seamlessly zooming beneath an amass of exposed rubber wires and tubes in the ceiling, which otherwise would have remained ordinary and overlooked. This sense of unity and connection continues throughout with a particular emphasis on line and geometry, which somehow manages to stay tied down to the experiment at hand, with almost Orwellian imagery of men working within this bizarre factory full of grids and parameters. There are also beautifully tender moments, as a child laces glimmering blue blurs into the hair of another, which then, a little jarringly, are revealed to be little blue bottle flies. Yet it is at times undeniably sensual in a way no romance novel, film or porno ever could be. It will hit you in

the depth of your chest, exciting your heart and mind and inciting desire

It is sensual in a way no romance novel, film or porno could be purely though its keen focusing on the impact of the touch. It embraces its electronic form and presentation through an ongoing house fly motif, which flits between being on video, and physically resting on the screen which displays the video. This enables the shots of the cloud and loading icons to continue the narrative without becoming trying or cringe inducing. The sombre and foreboding soundtrack to the video adds a weight to the piece, which on its own could seem fleeting frivolous and skittish with its quick paced shot changes, yet in combination becomes serious and almost scary. The actual music has the same effect as trailers for blockbusters, which inexplicably give you goose bumps in the cinema, however this is also combined with interspersed moments of ASMR-style whispers. The result is that the video seems to hit every sense, setting the

body on fire. Tuning in to the intricacies of human sensation, the piece above anything else seeks to invite emotional response. At no point is the narrative (to use the term loosely) or themes of the piece driven home or flagged up for the easy consumption of the viewer, enhancing and stretching the accepted ‘show not tell’ principle. Cloud of Petals is on show at Red Bull Arts, New York, through 10 December 2017, but an extended cut is available to stream via ‘nowness.com’ as part of their ‘Video Art Visions’ series, which also has many other beguiling pieces from a variety of different sources.

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Makeover Montage The insidious question is, why are we still in love with the makeover montage? Shamika Tamhane gets beneath the surface.

or me, the makeover montage is the guilty pleasure within the already guilty pleasure of the rom-com, the perfect thing to watch when feeling under the weather in bed and far from glamorous. The transformation from ugly duckling to sexy swan is seen as far back as fairy tales like Cinderella and remains a common plot line, sometimes accompanied by a desire to change a woman’s behaviour to conform to societal expectations as seen in Pygmalion and The Taming of the Shrew. This is all deeply problematic when we look at it from our modern, feminist perspective and yet we still enjoy it. Conventions like ‘monobrow removal’ and ‘girl takes off her glasses and she’s suddenly hot’ leave a lot to be desired but seem to reoccur time and time again with little real complaint from their audience. In its modern form the makeover montage is seen in iconic movies including Grease, Clueless, Mean Girls, and The Devil Wears Prada.

The makeover is a social act, a bastion of female friendship The messages of the montages in these movies often seem to be more positive or empowering and less troubling, but there is still the underlying assumption that changing your appearance will help you attract men and, by consequence, success. Some poor girl is often shown to be assaulted by hairspray and tight clothing in a bid to improve herself and her social standing within high school cliques, the career ladder, or the romantic playing field. As a severely myopic woman I’m most concerned by the way glasses are broken without a second thought. Can the girl see? Why not insert a section where she puts on some contact lenses so we can all rest easy? It is certainly perplexing that we love watching something that disempowers women and crudely reduces them to their physical appearance. So why do we enjoy it, even when the flaws they remove are ones we have, and can something valuable be taken from the makeover montage? On a purely superficial note, these montages are fun. Fast paced eyebrow plucking and throwing clothes around coupled with a breezy pop song can never go too wrong. Transitions are made more humorous because no one ever seriously believed that Sandra Bullock (Miss Congeniality) or Anne Hathaway (The Princess Diaries) are even mildly unattractive. It simply makes for good entertainment watching the frenzied attempts

to get a girl ready. The physical comedy is also pretty good because painful hair removal does have its funny moments. We can relate to pain of a bikini wax and eyebrow plucker. That’s the crux of it- it is all somewhat relatable to our own lives, and to the ritual of getting ready. We recreate our own version of the makeover montage each week before a night out. We cram ourselves into one room sharing gossip, hair straighteners and a bottle of £4 Sauvignon Blanc purchased hastily from Tesco at 9:45pm. It’s our Cinderella-esque transformation from being hunched over in the library to feeling like a queen We had similar ceremonies when we were younger – albeit without the Tesco booze run. At sleepovers we painted each other’s nails badly using Miss Sporty glitter nail varnish and put on homemade yoghurt face masks to try and sort out our burgeoning acne. Makeover montages have been and still are a real part of our life. Beneath the lip gloss, DIY crop tops and haircuts, the makeover montage represents something much more important. Rarely do we see a girl transform herself – the makeover is a social act, a bastion of female friendship. It’s women coming together to talk and trying to empower and help each other. Granted that empowerment shouldn’t come solely from our physical appearance, or at the expense of others’ self esteem, but a flick of mascara can definitely help you feel a little better about yourself. Perhaps what helps the most is that the recipient of the makeover is surrounded by friends who in their own, sometimes misguided way, are attempting to help. Friendships are built during the montages which are much more significant than a new look. In film, a makeover montage frequently undercuts its own values before the end credits. For instance, it is Alicia Silverstone’s character in Clueless who needs an internal makeover because of her harsh judgements and prejudice, while Brittany Murphy’s Tai is eventually accepted for who she is. The execution of these montages can definitely feel disempowering but they often come from characters’ good, albeit warped, intentions. We have to dig through the superficiality and layers of makeup in order to find what really mattersthe friendships and bonds created through getting dressed up. Even if the end goal is pleasing a male protagonist, the makeover itself is a distinctly boy-free zone. Now more than ever, it is increasingly important for women to support each other and show kindness and empathy. Helping a sad friend pick out some shoes is just one step along a path that leads to solidarity and love amongst women and for that the makeover montage is at its core a good thing.

Styled by: Daisy Chandley, Zoe-HarrisWallis, Chloe Dootson-Graube, and our models Original photography by: Mia Parnall Models: Alexandra Murray Luo, Hannah Chukwu, Maya Tikly-Young, and Rose Atherton Assisted by: Gemma O’Sullivan and Grozzy Parnall

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STYLE

Malibu Moment Inspired as ever by the charity shop scene from Wild Child, we gathered four girls (who all knew at least one other person) and dropped them into an Aladdin’s cave of fur, food and 00’s bangers (About You Now will never get old). We wanted them to put on the clothes that they genuinely wanted to try, and to get that excitement of going through someone else’s dressing up box at primary school sleepovers. As Shamika writes in her article, the makeover montage is a double edged sword - on the one hand it relies on constructed and often eurocentric ideals of beauty, but on the other it captures a meaningful girlhood ritual tied up in community, friendship, and genuinely enjoying a traditinally feminine activity without fearing the judgement of male peers. For this reason, we didn’t do the girls’ makeup, only giving them a palette of bright eyeshadow s - reminiscent of many girls’ starter pack - to messily smudge if they wanted. Our makeover montage wasn’t about ‘becoming beautiful’, it was about having fun, being unashamed to do so, and eating a lot of waffle-marshmallow sandwiches. We hope that this spread spurs new groups of fresher friends to bond over hair curling and shoe sharing, and that it gives nay-saying boys some insight into why we spend so, so long getting ready.

Friday, 27 October 2017 | Cherwell

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Bridging the gap between high culture and mass media Art history documentary maker Andrew GrahamDixon talks contemporary art and BBC spending to Altair Brandon-Salmon

ndrew GrahamDixon is one of the most famous art historians working today. Thanks to his television series for BBC Four, he has brought to the general public probing accounts of the art of France, Australia, America, and a host of other cultures. Graham-Dixon sees his mission, he explains to me, “[as] doing Civilisation again.” Instead of tackling world art in one concentrated bout, like Kenneth Clarke did in his 1969 series, Graham-Dixon has been surveying the globe’s cultures over a period of three decades. It is the paucity of art history on television since the nineteen-sixties that motivates Graham-Dixon. Apart from the brief highlights of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing (1972) and Robert Hughes’ The Shock of the New (1980), the area has been largely ignored by public service broadcasting. “The range of subjects was so small in the past—even compared to Clarke—there was no mention of the art of Spain [in Civilisation]. Try finding out about Spanish art in English, or even in Spanish.” His programs are proudly didactic, not in a condescending, top-down way, but driven by the desire to educate

Picks of the week

Creating new spaces for contemporary art

By ANOUSHKA KAVANAGH

an enthused audience starved of high quality television. Educated at Westminster, he went to Christ Church, reading English Literature before graduating in 1981 and moving onto the Courtauld Institute, the art history research institution par excellence, where he gained an MA. On his Oxford days, Graham-Dixon recalls that he was not involved in

“I just sat in a dark room and read fourteen books a week.” student newspapers or magazines like Cherwell or The Isis, saying ruefully that “I just sat in a dark room and read fourteen books a week.” Indeed, he relates, “when I finished, they wouldn’t serve me in [Christ Church’s] Buttery as they said I wasn’t a student there!” Instead, he travelled frequently to Bristol University to visit his thengirlfriend, and watch Two-Tone bands like The Specials. After university, Graham-Dixon entered journalism, writing for

Vogue and the recently-founded Independent, describing his drive as borne out of his twin pleasures: “All I knew was that I was going to be a writer. I was always interested in art, so one thing lead to another really.” Becoming The Independent’s Chief Art Critic in 1986, he looks back fondly at a moment in the late eighties when The Independent seemed to challenge the Fleet Street status quo. “At the Indy, before I came, it was a quarter of a page for an art review. We started doing two whole pages, three thousand words on Rembrandt. Lots of papers at the time never even had regular art critics. They had reviewers for theatre and classical concerts, but not for art. All of that has really changed. Now The Sunday Times has double page spreads on exhibitions.” He considers that “All of that has made a big difference. It has changed things. That’s good, I wanted to change it.” Here, I begin to see beneath the even, urbane manner of Graham-Dixon, to the steely determination which has propelled his desire to bring art down from the pedestal. Gradham-Dixon was on the Turner Prize panel in 1991, the year Anish Kapoor won, and just

PHOTO: ANDREW GRAHAM-DIXON as the Young British Artists were emerging into the public consciousness. “Norman Rosenthal and I were on the Turner Prize committee. We wanted Michael Landy, but he wasn’t even on the shortlist. But Nicholas Serota was on the committee and his was the deciding vote, and he had bought a large

“All I knew was that I was going to be a writer. I was always interested in art.” collection of Anish Kapoor, so I said this looks like he’d won it Left: Performa, New York City, Rosa Lee Goldberg The seventh edition of this performance art exhibition kicks off next week. With marketing produced by artist-activist Barbara Kruger (left), the fortnight looks set to raise hardhitting problems through art on the city’s streets. Right: The Louvre, Abu Dhabi, Jean Nouvel Part of a project for cultural development for Saadiyat Island, the Louvre’s forthcoming middle-eastern branch hopes to bridge the gap between Eastern and Western art. As such, works collected originate from Turkey, Syria, France, and Japan.

from the start. As a sop to us, they changed the age rule, so that only artists under 40 could win.” “When the Turner Prize began there was a massive prejudice against contemporary art in the media—this false outrage over art being shit, was alleviated by the Turner, it became such an annual bore for the press to attack the Turner that they became sick of their own outrage. So it worked, in a way.” Yet he sees this as part of a wider issue within contemporary art. “The problem is saying art must be avant garde, which is bullshit—if art is only powerful if it shocks you.” “[Karlheinz] Stockhausen called 9/11 the ultimate visual spectacle, committed on TV [‘the biggest work of art there has ever been’].

Cherwell | Friday, 27 October 2017

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culture sparing when it comes to the national broadcaster’s failings. “The BBC is rich as hell,” stressing “it’s not about funding cuts but funding choices. One episode of Match of the Day has the same budget as ten of my series.” He admits to finding the BBC having “lost its way”, too dedicated to spending on large-budget costume dramas than educating and informing the British public.

“The subtext of my programmes is that nationality is a powerful ﬁction.”

Isis speak the language of shock, the language of the avant garde. How can an artist compete? Art has lost the power the provoke.” When I ask him about the state of contemporary British art, he points to Gillian Wearing. “The problem now is knowing who the good ones are. What’s astonishing is how every museum collection is so uniform—if one gets an Anish Kapoor, everyone has to have one. In the past, such works went to the basement quicker, but who wants to put £200m in the basement? Who would be brave enough to do that?” In a way, it is not surprising that Graham-Dixon has spent the last decade focusing instead on the art of the past. It seems certain that his television work will be his lasting contribution to art history, Right: The Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art, Cape Town, Thomas Heatherwick Opening earlier this year, Zeitz is now the world’s largest museum of contemporary African art, with 6,000 sq metres of space dedicated to artists from across the African continent. The collection’s architecture has received much publicity, with the disused 1920s grain Silo building having been converted by British architect, Thomas Heatherwick – in a similar fashion to London’s Tate Modern. Whilst preserving the industrial heritage of the site, Heatherwick opened up the 42 concrete storage cylinders to create the futuristic cathedral-like atrium seen here.

despite his impressive 2010 book Caravaggio—A Life Sacred and Profane (and he is working on a biography of Vermeer). Keeping to a similar format with each of his BBC4 documentaries, GrahamDixon’s The Art of... has notched up eleven distinct series, each tackling a different nation. “The objective over twenty years,” he explains, “has been to choose as many different cultures as possible over three episodes.” From Germany to China and back to Scandinavia, he has always refused to tell the easy stories about humanity’s artistic past. Indeed, when it came to making this year’s The Art of France, he laments that “it was delayed because BBC4 thought it would be too familiar.” Graham-Dixon is certainly un-

Graham-Dixon is keen to point out that it is hardly a problem with audiences –“The Art of Spain was on BBC World and sixty-eight million people watched it!” he says with justifiable pride – but with the BBC’s priorities. “At the moment for the BBC it is about the big audiences, which I don’t think is what public service broadcasting should be about.” Yet this pessimism has not infected his work – he is keen to tackle the art of India and Latin America next, bringing fresh art historical narratives to the screen. Graham-Dixon ruminates that “part of the subtext of my programmesw is that nationality is a powerful fiction,” pointing to the crossover in European cultures shown by his programmes on Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and the Low Countries. “Nations have been constructed. By doing the whole world, the overall message is anti-nationalistic despite paradoxically being a history of nations,” threading an internationalist undertone to his work, leaving it there for an audience to find. I ask him how he closes the gap between art and an audience wary of museums and galleries. “I don’t know, [I try] bridging the gap between art history and museum, to tell people it’s alright to be interested in art. I don’t want to sound condescending, but I’m trying to set an example about it being okay to like art, to be enthusiastic about art.” With that deceptively humble mission, Andrew Graham-Dixon hurtles towards another corner of the world, to bring it to us.

Superego By CATHERINE CIBULSKIS

Like every patient person, Tongue-tied and talkative We sit and coil copper rings around our lips in a room pregnant with pears Powerful edges and canyons drift in and out of the locked door as sirens rob us of silence. Romeo points himself her way and makes love in unloving lines, blaring biceps, never brains in the place where brains are laid out to be fi xed. In our divided court he teases tremors out of what he sees walk back and forth in the well-kept Garden of Eden. Here, disturbances are disturbed curtains. Lined with sunpetals, they stand to attention each watch, timing and turning to the torchlit hallways through day and dusk. Blinded by different darknesses these sheets wrestle with themselves and the other laundry, counting, waiting for their turn to be spun out, dry and crisp as a flat, black button. Pressed and charred mouths repeat old news to new, aged company in a game of whispers which resound, fold and wither in the liver, kidney and colon of each recipient. Tablets slur and ill define swans who bind their bodies. It’s all notes and notices that nobody notices in a Neverland where tea trolleys sing salvation to a few biscuits mid brew. Apples snap into belly stalks, bent back in bejewelled greasiness we are huddled in an underground’s sigh. Genies pushed out and quickly back in the bottle tire of these tireless moments. Daffodils crowd and creep their way through carpets, lemoned and crossed with white sugar. Acerbic circles form in the tides and tables which pattern one long day of casinos In a wing where wings are clipped and doubled, feathers can’t recall from where they flew. Drunk on charcoal, chipped and yellowed, they drop in on the cruellest month. Health harvests his harvest with rapid degrees. Elastic bands draw together in scattered glitter and bowled fish. Each fin travels from pink to blue in polished laps of a practised tank. In mutual dizziness we joke of stardust and his alter ego, skating rinks in zig zags of he and she. Hours elapse in luminous mantles and panic buttons as Justice crosses himself, tea-stained and dreary. Moons of hay are stacked, triangled by clubs of time. Planes which drop crescent curls of smoke make soft chambers of sky, lit and misty cubicles that linger above thatched streets. Rooms are gardened, garnered in happy outcasts, In yellow pastures we rupture and rebuild like waves and disks dropping into the sea. Small diamond kites watch with vanity opium eyes, divine and unbridled in their sin. We all wear veils in the same vein. Rings wrestle their way onto unfaithful fingers in a circus of pink mist and fantasy. Rose whirlwinds of dust are weightless in the afternoon, circling and subsiding, combed by the hot summer sun. Burnished by olive sunlight, velvet hearts fold and beat beneath golden beams, Crimson and anchored beside sweetened pools of light. Graced sisters dance in a silver arc. Joined in solitary confinement they laugh and love.

Friday, 27 October 2017 | Cherwell

12 oxbow

music

cherwellmusic listen to our latest playlists

Playlist

Black History Month

lack History month is a chance to appreciate the massive contribution people of colour have made to modern music. Jazz, rock, rap, and electronic music all have been pioneered by black musicians. To

appreciate black history, one should consider the contributions black music has made toward their political struggle for social equality. From protest music, calling out injustice, to uplifting songs, hoping for a better future.

Bad vibes and a dogshit DJ – Gun Fingers fails to live up its overhyped reputation Nina Simone ‘Mississippi Goddam’

Sun Ra ‘Space is the Place’

Despite its lighthearted tone Simone expresses true frustration at discrimination in the South, denouncing those who want to “go slow”.

Committed to pushing the boundaries of jazz, Sun Ra pushes the aspirations of black people in his seminal piece, hoping for a spacefaring future.

N.W.A. ‘Fuck tha Police’

Kendrick Lamar

Rap pioneers turn their attention to police brutality and discrimination. Ice Cube calls out the use of the war on drugs to target successful blacks.

In this uplifting song, Lamar describes the harrowing events he has witnessed growing. As a parting message, Kendrick instructs others to transcend their past and enjoy life.

‘i’

Gun Fingers: Sir Spyro The Bullingdon

3/10

eeing a club during the day is an extremely weird experience. Stripped of darkness, music, people, it seems somehow tragically bereft of purpose, like a cruise liner stuck in a dry dock. It’s the elements only brought together at night that can turn this blank space into something transcendent. And so that’s why it’s so vitally important that those elements are good. Of course, in Oxford transcendence is not the norm. With much of the city’s clubbing given over to the commercial hellscapes of Bridge, Park End, and Fever, where most student’s aim is more to sink VKs and discover which of your friends can scream the lyrics to Mr Brightside (Britain’s favourite paen to stalking your ex-girlfriend) the loudest. So, to Cowley one must venture to see an actual DJ and hear some actual dance music. The Bullingdon

Phil Ochs “You’re not a folk singer, you’re a journalist”

Pick of the week

Frank Turner ‘There She Is’

Gun Fingers is a bassline night for people who don’t really like bassline, write Felix Pope and Joe Bavs

Having had a long and distinguished solo career to date, Frank Turner recently announced his intention to release an album reworking his favourite previous recordings. It contains one new track too however, here released as a single. More accessible than some of his earlier work, it remains to be seen if this is a sign of his future musical direction.

Felix Bunting laments the unjust obscurity of one of America’s greatest folk musicians

– Oxford’s answer to the Hacienda, had the Hacienda been located in the sweaty backroom of a pub - is the setting for the latest reload (ha ha) of Oxford’s most overrated student night: Gun Fingers. Promising a mixture of drum and bass, bassline, and jungle, the night arrived in Oxford mid last year. With a reward of Henny for the waviest garms and memorable branding (branding that’s blatently ripped off from Kurupt FM, incidentally), Gun

It was clear that Sir Spyro could not actually mix one song into another Fingers has become the night to go to. And since almost everyone our college was attending, we decided to bite the bullet (ha ha) and go. Though the warm up act was promising, Sir Spyro – the supposed highlight – was simply dire. Spyro took it upon himself to repeatedly rewind virtually every song, sometimes as many as three times. Does Sir Spyro understand what a rewind is? It’s supposed to be the climax of a long build up of energy,

nce described as ‘The Greatest Folksinger You’ve Never Heard Of’, Phil Ochs is as loved by those who enjoy his music as he is forgotten by others. Folk music is associated with fighting for justice, particularly in the upheaval of post-war America. The fight for civil rights and the anti-war movements were soundtracked by the style of music epitomised by Bob Dylan. Although many of these musicians are still enjoyed today, Phil Ochs is notable both for his music and the way he has vanished from popular memory. More tuneful than Dylan, and arguably a more proficient musician, Ochs is strangely less well known. While Dylan moved from social commentary to romance, philosophy or surrealism, Ochs never did. Many of his songs are unflinching in their targeted focus, such as (‘The Marines Have Landed on the Shores of Santo Domingo’ and ‘Ballad of

one that might have been climbing the entire set. Overuse it and your set will sound like shit. Playing songs in full with noticible gaps in between them, it was clear that Sir Spyro couldn’t mix one song into another. Why bother even booking a DJ when you could have achieved the same effect with a Spotify playlist? Despite a distinct lack of any musical ability of the act, the crowd, who clearly had no clue either, lapped up the dogshit in the most obnoxious way possible: mosh pits. Already fairly insufferable, Sir Spyro’s constant rewinds only encouraged the crowd to engage in stupid behaviour. I’m not saying that mosh pits are crap, but when the crowd turns into a never ending all encompassing mosh pit, the ordeal becomes more than a little jarring. Oxford needs more grime and bassline nights, we don’t disagree. There are, however, plenty of better options than Gun Fingers. When a night is limited only to ‘brutal’ drops, momentum killing rewinds, and interactions with your mates are limited to smacking into one another the whole thing just starts to feel a bit tedious. The DJ was inept, the crowd dull, and the night a resounding disappointment. William Worthy’.) Even songs which are less obvious in their target are nevertheless highly political. ‘The Cruciﬁxion’ focuses on the media reaction to the death of an unnamed hero, widely seen as a lamentation upon the death of JFK. His most famous song, illustrating the extent he has been misremembered, is ‘Love Me, I’m a Liberal’, a scathing attack on the centre-left. A song that feels like a reﬂection on many in student politics, Ochs focuses on the hypocrisies of many middle-class leftists. In lyrics like “The people of old Mississippi/Should all hang their heads in shame/ I can’t understand how their minds work/ What’s the matter don’t they watch Les Crane?” he attacks the predecessors of the Metropolitan Liberal Elite. During an argument, Dylan kicked Ochs out of a car, shouting “You’re not a folk singer, you’re a journalist”. In an offhand comment, Ochs may have been summed up quite well.

Cherwell | Friday, 27 October 2017

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film In search of originality? Retreat into cinema’s monochrome past

This blockbuster adaptation of Jo Nesbo is a perplexing failure, writes Jonnie Barrow

Noir cinema offers an alternative when new releases don’t appeal, writes Malin Hay

The Snowman dir: Tomas Alfredson

t is a truth universally acknowledged that commercial filmmaking has recently entered a new phase of life. Countless articles and blogs bemoan the lack of ‘original’ content coming out of the Hollywood machine. It can be frustrating to feel that there are nothing but high-octane action movies and live-action Disney remakes in the cinema. I find that the lack of interesting films on release increasingly makes me want to look back, to examine what earlier filmmakers did. The limitations of black-andwhite photography lend themselves to experimentation in lighting, angles and makeup. The concerns of films from the silver era, while sometimes unsubtle by today’s standards, are surprisingly diverse. And of course, having railed against the remake-heavy culture of Hollywood today, I am going to write about a remake: George Cukor’s Gaslight (1944). Boy meets girl. Boy and girl marry. Boy convinces girl that she’s going insane for shady ulterior motives. In Gaslight Ingrid Bergman’s Paula loses her autonomy, her dignity, and finally her sense of self, as her whirlwind courtship with Gregory Anton (Charles

How an apathy avalanche buried the snowman

Boyer) takes a horrifying turn for the nightmarish. The original play gave rise to the term ‘gaslighting’, which is still used today. And the emotional and physical terrors that Gaslight documents are terrifyingly familiar. Gaslight is painfully tense. Paula’s sudden movements from frenetic delight to sobbing despair are intensely unsettling. Anton’s powers of suggestion are supreme: he dangles possibilities in front of his wife’s eyes, never quite articulating his suggestions. He whips her into a frenzy of uncertainty that nearly succeeds in breaking her grip on reality. Part of why Gaslight is so disturbing is that it inverts Hollywood tropes that we all buy into on some level. Anton and Paula’s whirlwind courtship could, in another film, be deeply romantic. We don’t object to

the idea of love at first sight, even though it exists only in fiction. Only recently has Disney begun to question its validity: “You can’t marry a man you just met,” says Frozen’s Anna to her sister. Gaslight portrayed the danger of doing just that, 70 years earlier; Paula’s recklessly blind belief in her husband is built on a foundation of ‘trust’, a touchstone of the modern romantic-comedy. Nonetheless, there is hope to be found. George Cukor, known as a ‘woman’s director’, approaches the story from Paula’s perspective. We rarely see her husband alone, and his designs are obscure until the end. The plot threatens to make Paula simply a passive recipient of abuse, yet in the film’s climactic scene it is she who holds the power to save or damn her husband. Of course Gaslight is in parts

corny. The fights are old-fashioned and some of the drama is heavyhanded. Yet overall it is strikingly

Chocolate

Grapes

Chips and Dip

The varieties are endless, and the most appropriate film classics like Chocolat or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are on your viewing agenda. Smaller nibbles and sharing bags are often the way to go: Maltesers, Minstrels, and M&Ms are all popular options. Life can often seem like a box of chocolates, particularly if you choose Revels, as you really never know what you’re going to get.

In defence of this fruity option, grapes provide a source of both nutrition and the optimal sweet to crunchy ratio. Clean up your diet after a post-club Hassan’s; a movie marathon with a punnet of seedless in hand is sure to be the perfect hangover cure. Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath pairs with this munchable, although a slightly more light-hearted and fool-proof option might be The Breakfast Club.

A combo as iconic as Netflix and chill, the beauty in this snacking option is its versatility. Opt for the humble tortilla chip with an accompaniment of salsa, or if you’re feeling decadent, splurge on a packet of Popchips, but don’t forget to grab some guac and hummus to pair. If you want something sweeter consider giving Oreos and peanut butter a go – perfect when watching The Parent Trap.

Boy meets girl. Boy and girl marry. Boy convinces girl she’s going insane. chilling. Joseph Ruttenberg’s cinematography, which constantly returns to that image of the hanging lamp slowly dimming, is full of dread. It is an exaggerated version of life, a gothic exploration of the way we trust those we love, and what happens when that trust is abused.

Ones to eat

Three alternatives to popcorn

2/10

o film this year constitutes a more ignoble failure than Tomas Alfredson’s (Let The Right One In, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) Scandi-snoozefest detective drama, The Snowman. At least other bad films this year looked poor from the outset: The Emoji Movie had a snowball’s chance in hell of being good, The Dark Tower’s production problems were publicised well in advance, and nobody ever cared about Transformers 5. But The Snowman has such a wealth of talent in front of and behind the camera (it’s even executiveproduced by Martin Scorsese!) that its failures seems more pronounced than other terrible movies this year. Michael Fassbender (in a performance more dreary than I would ever have thought him capable of) plays Harry Hole, a detective who you’d be forgiven for thinking is absolutely rubbish at his job, if other characters didn’t inexplicably tell us he’s the ‘Best Detective Ever’. He teams up with a new recruit (Rebecca Ferguson) to find and stop a serial killer who keeps leaving snowmen at the scenes of his murders. The film never explains why he does this. Not only are none of the performances even passable, but the story itself makes very little sense. Desperate to understand the trainwreck I’d just witnessed, I rushed home from the cinema to find out how a director who has previously been so clearly obsessed with creating coherence out of convolutions in Tinker Tailor could create such a bafflingly hard-to-follow mess here. It transpires that, by his estimates, ten to 15 per cent of the screenplay wasn’t even shot, meaning that essential pieces of the story were forgone in favour of a speedy shooting schedule. The flashback sequences, starring a laughably awful Val Kilmer, are inserted into the story seemingly at random. Elsewhere, whole plot threads are picked up and dropped on a whim, as if the two editors were trying to outdo each other in a game of creating loose end upon loose end to convince the audience to get up and leave. Incomprehensibly edited action scenes and ludicrous plot developments inspire murmurs of incredulity, and mitigate any semblance of payoff the film could’ve had at many key moments. Everyone on the screen looks bored, and everyone in my screening looked bored too. The film starts bad and, despite glimmers of improvement peeping through the snowy landscape, somehow gets worse the longer it goes on. Blade Runner 2049 is far more worthy of your attention. Avoid The Snowman like frostbite.

Friday, 27 October 2017 | Cherwell

14 oxbow

books An improbable journey to the East Sam Dalrymple reflects on mundanity and self-discovery in Bouvier’s The Way of the World

n 1953 Nicholas Bouvier and Thierry Vernet left their homes in Geneva for ‘the East’. With a rusty Fiat Topolino, enough money for nine weeks and a vague idea that they wanted to get to Afghanistan, the two set out on a journey that would take up four years of Bouvier’s life. Indeed, during his lifetime he would often proudly proclaim it had taken him longer than Marco Polo to reach Japan. The Way of the World is the story of the first eighteen months of this trip. Despite being all but unknown in the UK, Bouvier occupies the same cult status in Switzerland and France as Patrick Leigh Fermour or Bruce Chatwin does in the UK. The Way of the World is unique amongst his works, however, in that it depicts his first trip abroad, exuding the passionate fascination of a man who has never left home. His prose is simple and direct, there’s no abstraction of detail and only a bare sketch of his surreal days animates it. There’s no flourish beyond that, and, of course, there’s no need. Denying themselves “every

Review

luxury except one, that of being slow”, the duo creep across Yugoslavia, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and finally Afghanistan. Their companions are humble Azeris, paranoid school teachers, wistful Persian truckers and the occasional European spook. Every few months a lack of cash hits and the duo are forced to settle down in some distant town: indeed, the highlight of the book occurs when they arrive in Iranian Azerbaijan. Trapped by the falling of snow, the two men sink, fascinated, into the Armenian district

Bouvier’s writing elevates the mundane to the monumental of Tabriz, working as French teachers as they wait for the snow to melt. By the time they emerge from their ‘hibernation’ they are true

“If I cannot do great things, I can do small things which are great” By LIZZY MATTHAMS

Tabrizis, nit-picking the angle at which hats are worn and marvelling at the differences in the shape of clouds outside their city. With a passion for simplicity, Bouvier’s writing elevates the mundane to the monumental and transcendental. In eastern Anatolia he writes: “Time passed in brewing tea, the odd remark, cigarettes and then dawn came. The widening light caught the plumage of quails and partridges and quickly I dropped this wonderful moment to the back of a memory like an anchor that one day I could draw up again. “In the end the bedrock of existence is not made up of family or work or what others think of you but of moments like these when you are exalted by a transcendent power that is more serene than

hen I picked up Jodi Picoult’s Small Great Things, I was looking for an easy read. I wanted to actually complete a whole book rather than just picking out the relevant bits for an essay. I ended up finishing off the entire thing in a day, finding myself completely drawn in by the questions Picoult posed but, most of all, the way she made me question myself. In Small Great Things, Ruth Jefferson is a labour and delivery nurse with over twenty years of experience. Caring for an infant patient, she is told to stop by his white supremacist parents, Turk and Brittany Bauer, because she is black. When he dies after a routine procedure, she finds herself on trial for murder. Despite her insistence that this has everything to do with race, her white lawyer, Kennedy, repeatedly advises her that arguments based on racism do not win court cases. In Kennedy’s first real conversation with Ruth, she proudly states that she “[doesn’t] see colour”. Yet, through the means of a parallel scene from Ruth’s point of view, we soon learn that this proclamation of blindness is far from helpful, because colour is all that Ruth can see. Kennedy’s intentions are not in doubt – she means to say

love. Life dispenses them parsimoniously. Our feeble hearts could not stand more.” Throughout their journey Bouvier and Vernet pass through some of the most politically charged landscapes in the world – they are in Iran during the trial of Mossadegh – yet Bouvier never lets such events form any more than a backdrop to the book. Instead its focus is on those he meets on the road – the songs of gypsies in Serbia, the legends spread by chai khana customers across the deadly Baluchistan road, the folk tales told by prisoners in a Kurdish gaol. Since Bouvier’s travels, Iran has undergone an Islamic revolution, Afghanistan has been plunged into 30 years of war and, indeed, his stint at working in a bar in the

Pakistani city of Quetta would be impossible in today’s radicalised and bandit infested Baluchistan. The Way of the World captures a history that has all but disap-

that the colour of someone’s skin doesn’t consciously inform her opinion of them, or her actions towards them. In contrast to the seething hatred of Turk Bauer, Kennedy seems liberal and progressive. In fact, I identiﬁed with the character because her thought processes and self-image were similar to my own. Picoult’s success here is to promote this empathy among her white readers and then, just as quickly, to highlight the issues with Kennedy’s outlook. In so doing, she not only questions the character, but forces the reader to question themselves. The ultimate implications of Kennedy’s erasure of colour from her mind are shown through her attitude towards using racism as a defence in Ruth’s court case. Although she has the power to highlight a real issue, she lets the prospect of a victory in her ﬁrst case take precedence over Ruth’s right to have her voice heard. Whilst the outcome of the court case seemed slightly far-fetched, Picoult’s message to speak up about race is loud and clear. The author’s note at the end of the book clearly echoes the sentiments which Kennedy expounds in her closing argument – unsurprisingly so, because Kennedy is Picoult, and

Picoult is her white readers. We get the sense that Picoult has gone through the same stages of realisation as Kennedy and, at the climax

The Way of the World captures a history that disappeared peared. Yet, it is much more than a simple story about foreign lands – it is a journey toward the self. “Traveling outgrows its motives” Bouvier writes. “You think you are making a trip, but soon it is making you - or unmaking you.”

We should see colour, and to say so is not to engender racism of the book, white readers have been taken through this process as well. At its heart, this is a book about learning. Although most of us cannot possibly relate to Turk Bauer’s violent racism, Picoult carefully lays out his story to prove that all racism and prejudice is learned behaviour. The character’s subsequent transformation at the end of the book suggests further, that what has been learned can also be unlearned. In the end, white readers are encouraged to ‘unlearn’ their blindness. We should see colour, and to say so is not to engender racism. It is to say that we should notice the glaring inequalities in our society. It is to say that we should whole-heartedly take on the role which we must, in the route to their extinguishment.

Cherwell | Friday, 27 October 2017

oxbow 15

theatre Confessions of a Drama Queen

A focus on gender isn’t reﬂected in casting

This year’s Oxford Greek Play, Euripides’ Bacchae, aims high but fails to impress. Louis Morris reviews.

★★★ Bacchae Oxford Playhouse 21 September, 7.30pm

he Oxford Greek Play is an august tradition, providing a special opportunity every three years to see a performance of a Classical tragedy in the original language. Despite its many strengths, however, this year’s performance of Euripides’ Bacchae – the story of how the god of revelry returns to Thebes to wreak bloody revenge on his mother’s family – leaves the spectator wishing that its creators had been a bit less traditional in their staging of such a potentially powerful play. In his director’s notes, Sean Kelly acknowledges that choosing the theme of gender as the main focus of this production presented him with a number of delicate problems concerning casting and staging. Unfortunately, the slightly apologetic tone he takes at this point seems justified by the

Five minutes with

Light Entertainment Society’s Community Ofﬁcer, Markus Beeken

A change of career By KATIE SAYER

W god of mad excess and the play revolves around the inner struggle between savagery and civilisation, another thing that prevented it from achieving its full potential was that the cast too often held themselves back. The choreography had plainly been arranged with considerable care and imagination by Isobel Hambleton, and was ably executed by the chorus. However, its stylised precision sometimes felt at odds with the ‘bacchic frenzy’ that the maenads sing about. Some more rough-around-theedges physicality would have been welcome – one of the most raw and chaotic scenes, in which the maenads exult over Dionysus breaking free from his prison, was also one of the show’s most effective. Although King Pentheus represents the counterpoint to the unconstrained debauchery of the revellers, Spencer Klavan’s portrayal of this character could have also used a little extra forcefulness. His Pentheus came across as peevish and pernickety rather than disciplined and dictatorial; a more macho performance in the earlier scenes would have given the character’s subsequent reversal of fortune – when he is emasculated by Dionysus’ trickery, then infantilised and placed at the mercy of his mother – even greater impact. That said, there are still many areas in which the production succeeds. The cast are to be commended for the considerable feat of mastering an entire play in a

dead language, and, in general, the ancient Greek was delivered with clarity and poetic power. Bill Freeman as First Messenger and Emilia Clark as Agave were particularly noteworthy for their fluent, naturalistic delivery. The scenery was simple but effective, with a giant cage-like cube serving as a prison, portico, and dressing-room as required. Some shrewd decisions were also made to work round certain conventions of ancient Athenian drama which often prove

his week, we chat to Markus Beeken, a member of the Oxford University Light Entertainment Society (commonly referred to as “owls”), about his involvement with drama at Oxford:

arts week in first year, having never got involved in any drama back home. From there it was just a case of saying yes to anything that came my way and trying my hand at new things.

would be effective.

Can you tell us a bit about OULES and your role there? OULES is the Oxford University Light Entertainment Society. We’re basically the more casual approach to drama, everyone who auditions gets a part and we write all our own shows. I’m the Homes and Schools Officer, which basically means I deal with promoting OULES in the community, organising taking shows to Care Homes and local schools to raise money for charity.

What is your favourite play? That’s a big question! I’m writing on theatre for my dissertation and the play that’s interesting me the most at the moment is Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee. It’s so claustrophobic and threatening it’s hard not to get sucked in.

results of some his choices. The decision to have Dionysus played simultaneously by three actors was a bold one which felt in keeping with the character’s multifaceted nature – part man, part god, and part beast – and Derek Mitchell, Harry Lukakis and Marcus KnightAdams worked well together to form a capricious and frightening triumvirate. However, by failing to give the members of the trio any distinguishing features or to identify them with particular aspects of the protagonist’s self, the director left the purpose of this device somewhat unclear and under-developed. In addition, given that Kelly specifically writes that “Dionysus is not confined to a gender binary”, having all three of the deity’s incarnations played by men also seems to be a missed opportunity. Indeed, the general reluctance to cross-cast any major male roles felt oddly conservative for a play so rich in themes of feminine power and gender fluidity (one character, Tiresias, is famous in mythology for having swapped sexes). No female actor spoke a non-chorus line until the final scenes of the play, and even half the chorus of maenad women were played by men. Given that Dionysus is the

How did you get involved with drama at Oxford? I started by assistant producing a garden play during my College’s

How would you want to stage it at Oxford? As I said, it’s a very narrow and suffocating play, so I feel like putting it on with minimal staging in something like the Burton Taylor Studio would highlight that sense of entrapment. It wouldn’t be a comfortable performance but it

No female actor spoke a non-chorus line until the ﬁnal scenes onerous to modern audiences. Notably, the ponderous tradition of replacing all action-scenes with a messenger’s monologue describing them was circumvented with the help of a well-shot film, which was projected onstage to accompany narration of the show’s climax in which Pentheus is hunted down and dismembered by his own family (I would say spoiler alert, but the play has been out for 2400 years, so you’ve had time to learn the twist ending). In sum, this is a production not lacking in good ideas and technical accomplishment, but a reluctance to go for broke and embrace the bacchic spirit prevented it from fully living up to its promise.

What is your happiest memory of Oxford drama? Probably the feeling I got when I decided to pursue my long-time dream of directing The Winter’s Tale. It’s always been a passion project of mine and seeing it all coming together has been an honour. More than this though, the outpouring of support from my friends has been kind of overwhelming. Have you ever had a production go really wrong? My first experience as a stage manager I forgot to put an integral prop on the stage and only realised about ten seconds before it was needed. I’ve never seen a group of people running so fast in my life! What advice would you give for freshers who wanna do the dramz?

ell, on the one hand my review didn’t exactly go down brilliantly. But on the other hand, this has been a very controversial week for student journalism all round, so hopefully nobody noticed. It didn’t start well. First of all, I couldn’t find the theatre – I mean, why call it the Keble O’Reilly if the entrance isn’t actually at the Keble lodge? – and then, when I did find it, half-way through, I seemed to be watching completely the wrong play. I had been expecting to review Aeschylus’s Oristeia (directed by the bitch from last week) so imagine my surprise to find it was the Oralstya instead, an erotic ballet about the relationship between Clytenmnestra and Orestes, with incest personified by an interpretive dance to ABBA’s ‘Does Your Mother Know?’ I couldn’t use any of the pre-made insults I’d come up with, (“the only way to describe it was ‘tragic’”, “Clytemnestra was more wooden than the Trojan horse”, “save your money and don’t make an Aeschyloss”) so I had to come up with a completely new review in less than ten minutes, as I had forgotten my deadline. and spent most of the evening watching Gossip Girl. Consequently, I did what any selfrespecting reviewer would do and copied and pasted a template off the internet and changed the adjectives. I have to say, I thought the stage editor was quite unreasonable. Even though I’d only used it five times in a 300-word review, I was told off for over-using “heinous” as my adjective of choice, and apparently the title I had suggested (“Orestes’ Heinous Anus”) wasn’t witty, and just read like shit journalism and fake news. As a result, it has been suggested that perhaps I should write for Cherwell instead. I have decided to give stage reviewing one last try, and then perhaps try out pole dancing.

Firstly never, ever call it “dramz” but I think it’s a case of remembering that whatever you want to do, there’s probably other people out there who would be willing to do it with you so go for it. I’ve always treated drama as a social exercise, not something to be taken too seriously. So join the Light Entertainment Society, make some friends and then keep trying out new things. Have you got any exciting projects that you’re working on at the minute? I’m currently directing a hypermodern production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale at the Maths Institute which will be on in November. It’s a really exciting project, especially pulling such a strange play into the modern era. The event is floating around Facebook, look us up! It’s going to be great.

Satire WORLD POLITICS

Merkel and Macron - what were they saying? Political commentators everywhere have been speculating about a photo showing Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron speaking in hushed tones behind hands raised to their mouths. Cherwell asks several authorities for their explanations. Mel Slackford, expert lip-reader: “While their covered mouths make it pretty difficult to see, I think Macron is saying something like “skrra pa pa ka ka ka” and Merkel responds something like “skidyki pa pa skiya.” Tyrell Backward, Zone One resident: “I think it is perfectly clear that they are preparing a deal which will welcome Britain back into the EU with our full membership restored. Frankly, what a day for Britain and our relationship with our European brothers and sisters.”

Dr Belle Jackwood, Head of the Oxford Institute for Europe: “Given the complexity of the issues at stake, a post-modern deployment of network theory in the context of the post-Cold War East-West dichotomy seems the most sensible way to interpret what they are saying, but to be honest I have no idea.”

Renowned drinking society secures new sponsorship deal

Theresa May “Quite frankly, I really just don’t give a fuck anymore.” Nigel Farage: “Given my long history with these two leaders, and my experience of dealing with Brussels bureaucrats and fat cats, I can confirm that they were discussing baguettes and bratwurst. Also, on the topic of national dishes and issues, it’s difﬁcult not to draw attention to the national threat posed by the extortionate price of Freddos. Yet another example of European meddling in BRITISH business.”

Oxford dons create new anonymous page

#Donfeud_69 – why are students these days so stupid?? I mean seriously how did they get into this university if they don’t know how string theory relates to Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade??? smh

#Donfeud_101 – Louise Richardson needs to stop complaining about Uni democracy... she can congre-get the fuck out (Eds: Thanks to Benn for this submission - you have a bright career in satire behind you)

be openly homophobic in my tutorials #Donfeud_666 – I pulled down the papal ﬂag last term and Cherwell still think it was OUCA

#Donfeud_123 – lolz at the freshers I just taught not even noticing that I was drunk in that last tute

#Donfeud_720 – I’m not actually here to complain about anything, I just need the validation Facebook gives to my fragile masculinity.

#Donfeud_200 – @#Donfeud_101 you need to lay off our VC!!! If it werent for her comments on freedom of speech I wouldn’t have been able to

#Donfeud_1001 – Can the Classics lecturer in the set next to me please stop stealing my milk from the kitchenette?

NIGHTLIFE

Accused of unknown charges by the student press, and set to be tried by a mysterious board of sinister judges about whom no-one knows anything, Cherwell can confirm - really, we actually have evidence this time - that Chris Z is trapped in a lost Kafka manuscript. With the dry and airless offices above the Union reportedly inspiring the settings of the Austrian writer’s The Trial, we hope that no-one gets turned into a beetle.

After several hit shows including The Island and Bear Grylls Builds a Bear, the acclaimed TV presenter has conﬁ rmed that his next show will see 12 brave contestants battling through the Bridge queue in 8th week Michaelmas – without tickets or ID, armed only with a Bod card and a sense of entitlement. Critics have already commented on the thrills that previews of the show have offered, but voiced concerns about participants’ safety.

Union president in Kafkaesque horror

Bear Grylls makes new survival show

by Rebecca Marks @missmarksart

ACROSS

1 Toilet (3) 3 Noise of disapproval (3) 5 Currency (6) 8 Study of symbols (7) 9 Cattle herder (6) 10 Employing (5) 11 Celestial body (6) 14 Greek letter (2) 16 Cut hair short (4) 19 Reigning king (3) 20 Asthmatic (6) 21 Resting (6) 22 Cow’s noise (3) 23 Yell (4) 24 Infrared (abbr.) (2) 25 Gathers (6) 27 Secretes (5) 30 Gin botanical (7) 33 Shape (7) 34 Small (6) 35 Yes (3) 36 Knick-knack (3)

DOWN

1 Male cattle (5) 2 Naive (5) 4 Scallywag (5) 5 Pair (3) 6 Unit of distance (9) 7 Melodious tune (3) 12 Sloppy (3) 13 Unit of force (6) 14 Italian bread dish (5) 15 Shoe (6) 17 Below (5) 18 Deﬁning spirit (9) 22 Males (3) 26 Tale (5) 28 Finished (5) 29 Covered with trees (5) 31 Place of higher education (inf.) (3) 32 Needle hole (3)

PUZZLE Group the words in the grid below into four sets of four, each linked by a common theme.

Wellington

Dylan

Downing

Baldwin

Clare

Kipling

Pembroke

France

Brown

Europe

Einstein

Darwin

California

Churchill

America

May

Working space

Puzzle: America, California, Einstein, Europe (Elements named after them) Baldwin, Brown, May, Wellington (Prime Ministers of UK) Clare, Darwin, Downing, Pembroke (Cambridge colleges) Churchill, Dylan, France, Kipling (Nobel Prizes in Literature) Last week’s crossword ACROSS 6 Pulse 7 Aurora 9 Ashore 10 Demons 13 Cup 14 Svalbard 16 Oath 17 Lord 18 Bear 20 Clue 22 Armoured 24 Ark 26 Gypsum 27 Totems 29 Oxford 30 Omega DOWN 1 Spy 2 Glass 3 Revolver 4 Tundra 5 Commodore 8 Heals 11 Northern 12 Subtlety 15 Clears Off 19 Electron 21 Dusty 23 Memory 25 Amber 28 Pan Anagram: La Belle Sauvage

In response to a profusion of Oxford student pages such as Oxfess, Oxlove, and Oxfeud 2: Political Boogaloo, Cherwell can today reveal that Oxford professors have established their own page - Donfeud – to complain about other tutors and students anonymously.

LITERATURE

Cherwell | Friday, 27 October 2017

Opinion

Politicians like David Lammy should stop using BME students to further their own agenda

Arya Tandon

Of course Oxford can do more - but society also plays a vital role

ast week I was approached by a BBC journalist. He wanted to know if I’d be willing to answer some questions about diversity at Oxford. At first I was tempted by the prospect of a brief touch of fame. But I eventually decided against it, made my excuses, and walked away. It wasn’t because I needed to return to college (though this was what I told them), or that I had freshers’ flu, and would like to save my 15 minutes of fame for when I could both walk and breathe at the same time. It was because I didn’t want to be the token BME student in their report. That’s not to say that the voices of students from minority backgrounds at the University aren’t an important part of the conversation. Their first-hand experience of life within an elite institution is vital if we are to have a productive conversation on inequality and admissions. However, it must be noted that much of the ‘conversation’ splashed across recent headlines has not sought to thoroughly analyse the reasons for a lack of diversity at Oxford, but instead focus on reinforcing stereotypes about the admissions process as elitist and discriminatory. In his article for The Guardian, David Lammy, the Labour MP who has recently criticised Oxford’s “social apartheid”, raised the problems of below-par schools and

a lack of support for applicants only to briefly dismiss them as “excuses”. Herein lies the real cause for outrage. As a British Asian from a state (albeit grammar) school in the north, it seems as if I’ve become a pawn on the chessboard of identity politics. Painting a picture of a racist, classist university makes for a great story. But it’s not necessarily a truthful one. Meanwhile, the immense underlying problems in our society, ranging from huge divides in educational opportunities to severe regional inequality, continue to go largely ignored. When the University points to these issues, we can react in one of two ways. In disclosing that it receives a reduced proportion of minority and disadvantaged applicants in the first place, we can recognise that Oxford raises a profound issue. Or we can choose to subscribe to a conspiracy theory of tutors throughout the colleges meeting up in the dead of night to decide how many black applicants to disqualify, or that, after having a discussion, they don’t want to put up with anyone with a Geordie accent. Joking aside, it’s understandable why when the statistics are taken at face value without informed context, some people jump to the conclusion of active discrimination in the admissions process. The figures are shocking, and rightfully so. Oxford still has a dispro-

portionate percentage of students from private school backgrounds compared to the general population. Admissions statistics consistently show lower acceptance rates for those from ethnic minority backgrounds, and the fact that a third of Oxford colleges failed to admit any black A-level students in 2015 is objectionable. But the same admissions statistics also highlight alternative reasoning: higher proportions of ethnic minority applicants consistently going for the most oversubscribed courses. More widely, private schools educate 7% of all students, yet account for a third of all those who get AAA or better in their Alevels. So, although there are implicit ‘biases’ within the admissions system – for example, a ‘bias’ towards private school students because more of them achieve the highest grades – many of the fundamental causes lie in pre-existing social conditions. The effects of wider social issues on admissions are serious enough without unfounded claims of discrimination. Of course, Oxford can do more to widen access where

Lammy’s extreme portrayal requires far more evidence

it can influence these societal problems. Focusing on expanding outreach, particularly to those regions of the country with fewer current applicants, would help to improve the availability of information for those who could most benefit from it. Lammy’s proposal for the University to write to all those who achieve 3 As in their A-levels might be impractical but reflects good intentions. Teachers across the state sector should not only receive training in supporting struggling pupils, but also in how to support particularly highachieving students in reaching their full potential. In contrast to this vital discussion on improving equality of opportunity, Lammy refers to many colleges as “fiefdoms of privilege” with “interviews overseen by academics recruiting in their own image”. This extreme portrayal is unhelpful, especially since strong claims require strong evidence and he provides none. At a previous symposium on admissions held at Oxford, he contended that the burden of proof lies on the University to demonstrate that there is no unconscious bias in its interviews. In reality, the burden of proof lies on Lammy to show that, considering the thorough training on such bias for interviewers, any unconscious bias that does exist actually affects the selection process at elite universities.

Friday, 27 October 2017 | Cherwell

Opinion Is there a way out of this crisis for the Catalan people? Roddy Howland Jackson

Don’t believe the half-truths and empty rhetoric on both sides, warns Jorge López Llorente

here is a ‘crisis’ in Catalonia. Yet it remains hazy, probably even more so from the outside, as it gurgles with manipulation, fake news and indecision. Catalans now live in a broken mirror of bitter division that sometimes slips into absurd comedy, like the minute-long declaration of independence by Carles Puigdemont, President of the regional government, who then backed down. You may have believed the international coverage, which was mostly dreadful: nationalist lies were taken at face value, as in the Washington Post’s article signed by Puigdemont. Voices shout over each other, but dialogue fades. We must step back and realise that nationalists of both kinds, with Catalan esteladas or Spanish ﬂags tied to their necks, are equally problematic. Their only ‘dialogue’ is to ram their heads against each other. It’s Spain at its most factious – but their fanaticisms must leave the centre-stage to real talk. “Aren’t the Catalan people supporting nationalism just for freedom, legitimately, fairly?” Secessionism has been organised from above, from the powerful, so drop that populist idea of ‘the people’ ﬁrst. Legitimately and fairly? That’s questionable. The Catalan regional government has been contaminating educational curricula with nationalist ideology for years: there are many cases in which Spanish is neglected, whilst Catalan is reinforced at schools, for example. They have manipulated the regional television channel, TV3, as a propaganda platform without respect for the numerous Catalan anti-separatists who support it through taxes. “But the referendum they suggested is democratic, right?” Perhaps on paper. The latest poll on 1 October, organised by Puigdemont without consent and illegally defying the Constitutional Tribunal, was a joke, not a referendum, including Tupperware ballot boxes and people voting twice or more. Participation

was below 50%. “What if nationalists are a majority anyway?” I don’t know, but I doubt it. Most, if not all, secessionist supporters voted in that poll and they didn’t make it beyond 50%. In the 2015 regional elections (a de facto referendum), the secessionist parties didn’t gain the majority of votes, even if in a messy coalition featuring the radical left-wing CUP they reached a majority of seats. A reasonably reliable poll by CEO (July 2017) indicates that 49% of Catalans reject independence, although a majority want a referendum. Uncertainties remain, but that speaks for itself: their high-ground is shaky. “Then what? Do you claim that Rajoy has acted correctly?” Far from it. All these years, the useless mannequin performing as Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy has been incapable of acting on anything other than defending his inaction. Crisis exploded and (unsurprisingly) he was unready. Then he worsened the situation, swinging to the other extreme: he lashed out with unnecessary police brutality on referendum day, which should have been snubbed. All states act repressively, but open violence stings even more. It wasn’t even an effective strategy: now separatists can play ‘the only victim’. Furthermore, Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sánchez were sent to jail, in an anti-democratic reaction. The judge spoke politically. “Some say they deserve it for breaking police cars - is that an excuse?” Legal action may be necessary, but these activists could have been ﬁned. It seems that Catalonia will break away. Instability has taken hold. An independent Catalonia cannot emerge though. Rajoy’s government, alongside a parliamentary majority,

The Catolinia debate must shift from populist nationalism

won’t allow it. “What if Puigdemont had his way?” Alright, devil’s advocate, if that (magically) happened, cold numbers would destroy his rhetoric: as you read this, companies are ﬂeeing from Catalonia to other regions, like CaixaBank. Also, an independent Catalonia would economically self-destruct, out of the EU and without Spain’s support to pay debt and pensions, despite Puigdemont’s delusion that Spaniards would still pay Catalans’ pensions whatever the situation. “Still, Rajoy just activated article 155 of the Constitution, which won’t help… It means that Puigdemont will be sacked, Rajoy’s cabinet will govern Catalonia…” So that there can be regional elections in some months. Inés Arrimadas, a levelheaded politician, suggested holding regional elections and that’s reasonable. “It’s a democratic option.” Exactly, but it’s only possible through article 155 or, ideally, convincing Puigdemont to call elections. Puigdemont won’t budge and Rajoy rejects referenda, so there are almost no other scenarios. So what happens now? Who knows. Hopefully, the debate can progress from populist nationalism to actual problems too, like corruption or unemployment. Flags have covered the muck of corruption from Rajoy’s Popular Party and ‘the 3% scandal’ from Convergència i Unió (the former label of Puigdemont’s party) “Yes, while both leaders disgracefully mishandled other issues, especially public healthcare.” Indeed. Economic accountability on all sides would temper secessionism’s fantasies and direct taxes to better purposes than police violence or nationalist propaganda. Not only just the Spanish, but surely everyone, could do with less shouting, less deception and less hatred, don’t you think?

An independent state would economically self-destruct

The process won’t be demystiﬁed by headlinegrabbing questions

Questions alone don’t tell the story of an Oxford interview

he prospect of an Oxford interview is a mixture of the terrifying and the impenetrable. Horror stories abound in the media, ranging from the bizarre (“Tell me about this banana”) to the plainly brutal (“How do you know that California exists if you haven’t been there?”). Apparently candidates are asked to cut off their own ties, or throw a chair through a window. You could be forgiven for thinking that the interview is an opportunity to bully nervous teenagers into argumentative holes in some sort of annual cathartic academic fetish party. But of course, this is far from the case. My own interview touched upon Bob Dylan and cereal packets at various points (to the great delight of my friends who were further convinced of English’s non-status as a subject), but that’s not all we talked about. I suspect that all interviews can be distilled into a series of juicy soundbites like these, ripe for sharing and apt for catastrophising. To divorce these sort of questions from their contexts is unhelpful to applicants. My interview had its moments, but Bob Dylan had just won the Nobel Prize, and cereal packets came up organically. The ‘banana’ is not designed to be a prop in a performance at gunpoint. Similarly, abstracting upon ‘California’ is a cue for exploration rather than for an existential crisis. But Oxford’s own sample interview materials, recently released, are surprisingly deficient. The questions are decontextualised to give the impression of a fragmented interrogation, rather than a flowing discussion. The exemplar question for Biochemistry - “Ladybirds are red. So are strawberries. Why?” - is stimulating, but it suggests an interview model rewarding eloquent bluster over tongue-tied intelligence. Owen Lewis, Professor of Ecology at Brasenose, explains the thought behind the question: “Red can signal either ‘don’t eat me’ or ‘eat me’ to consumers [...] I’m interested in seeing how applicants attempt to resolve this apparent paradox.” This information is likely to be ignored in favour of the clickbaity obscurity of its parent question. Dr Samina Khan, Director of Admissions and Outreach, emphasises that “the interview is primarily an academic conversation.” This conception of the interview is the most familiar to those who have undergone it: for all its quirks, it is essentially a challenging discussion Oxford cannot demystify its admissions process by publishing a series of headline-grabbing questions - it is this genre of question that has fermented notoriety around interviews. More weight should be lent to mock interview videos, which offer a better insight into the shape and style of an interview. It is counterproductive to spotlight the weird and wacky parts of a jigsaw when you could instead demonstrate how they fit together as a whole.

Cherwell | Friday, 27 October 2017

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

A Catherine Cibulskis

tion of whether Oxford caters to all students, regardless of background. Most college balls cost between £100-£150, which for many students constitutes a substantial part of their budget. As Oxford bars students from work during term time, students must rely on their maintenance loan to fund their Cinderella-esque journey. Whilst most universities do host balls, Oxford’s extravaganzas carry their own culture. And to some, it’s a culture of exclusion. Former Education Minister David Lammy has recently accused the university for its overarching and acute lack of diversity. The University has also recently been identiﬁed as being dominated by students from more afﬂuent parts of the country, such as the South-East, with only 15% of students coming from Northern regions,

PHOTO: OLIVER ROBINSON

Balls are the clearest indication of Oxford’s elitism problem

fter purchasing a ticket to the upcoming Rag Ball, some of us will ﬁnd our pockets lighter by £85. With carousels, ﬁre breathers and psychedelic light shows, Oxford we spare no expense when it comes to having a good time. In an evening of decadent excess, students can socialise and celebrate in beautiful surroundings. But who exactly enjoys these college events? Many feel that these charity balls, along with college and society balls, are an integral, fascinating element of the Oxford experience. Though the night may promise free food and drink, which many will binge on to redeem their losses, the golden ticket is still a tall order for those living on a tight budget. And this begs the ques-

11% from the Midlands and 3% from Wales. Stastics like this bring the arguably elitist aspects of the Oxford experience into question. Arguably, the attendance at commemoration balls is indicative of a wider problem within the University, that of access. While events like these are an important feature to retain, it is difﬁcult to navigate doing so without excluding certain members of the student body. However, by diminishing the cost, the experience itself may be diminished. Do the most lavish and memorable nights come hand in hand with the expense? Subsidising tickets for those who struggle to pay is also fraught with difﬁculties reminiscent of the stigma attached to free school dinners. Making steps to ensure that Oxford’s college balls are available to everyone, regardless of their wealth or background is an important step in Oxford’s progression towards a modern, diverse and equal environment, whilst preserving the characteristics that give the University its own distinct, traditional atmosphere. Despite the criticism that these occasions attract, they are still a treasured milestone for many. The more salient fact is that Oxford as a whole has to consider how wealth and class affect the overall experience of students as individuals, whether this limits their prospects when it comes to application, acceptance and life within college itself.

CONTESTED

Should colleges follow Exeter and ban smoking? Yes

Emily Patterson

moking is a habit that affects more people than just the smoker. The effects of secondhand smoke are well-documented, and it is hugely unfair to inﬂict this upon others without their consent. For everyone arguing that smokers have a right to smoke if they wish to, there is the equal and opposite argument that everybody has the right to clean, fresh air in their home. Exeter would set a great example by banning smoking in their college grounds, and other colleges should follow suit. With the ban on polluting vehicles set to come into effect in the next few years in Oxford city centre, it makes sense that colleges should be doing what they can on a smaller level to contribute towards a cleaner, greener city. Those who argue that smoking can provide a coping mechanism for people with anxiety or other mental health issues are missing the point that banning smoking within college grounds does not stop people from smoking, it simply means that they do not do it in a way that makes an impact on other peoples’ lives and health. Even having designated smoking areas does not work – people have to walk past these areas to get to their rooms or tutorials,

breathing in the fumes as they go. At Brasenose, the smoking area on the college site was closed due to the smoke drifting into a student’s bedroom, making the room essentially uninhabitable, and this problem is likely to be present all over the city. Students should not have their health put at risk by other peoples’ life choices. The important issue here is that, yes, people should be free to smoke if they wish to, but not in such a way that it infringes on other peoples’ freedoms. Banning smoking also sends a clear message against smoking and the negative health effects it causes. It is a personal choice, but we should be doing everything we can to steer people away from making that choice, and we definitely should be protecting other people from the negative health effects of smoking when they don’t smoke themselves. While colleges are not public spaces and therefore do not apply to the law banning smoking in public places, we should remember that they are home to many people, and having an area filling with toxic fumes will not make everybody feel at home there. Colleges are also a place of work for the many staff members, and the main reason for banning smoking in public places such as pubs was to protect the staff. Exeter has taken the first steps to solving this issue, and it is now the turn of other colleges to do the same. Schools and hospitals ban smoking on their grounds. Why should colleges be any different?

I Everyone has the right to clean and fresh air in their home

was unsurprised when the highminded administrators of Exeter College decided to play mother this week, and propose a smoking ban for the alleged good of their students. And I was disappointed at the slightly damp rejoinders offered by the college’s tobacco-loving students. Smoking was described by opponents of the ban as “symptomatic of the working class”, another one of those crass but fashionable statements which assume everybody in an economic group thinks and acts the same. But whether these arguments hold up to scrutiny or not is beside the point. Individual smokers have their own motivations, which shouldn’t require justification to the authorities of their university. I didn’t start smoking because I grew up without much money, but because I like tobacco. I like the rush of nicotine to the blood. I like the peace of sitting in the quad, u nd i s t u r b ed , without the need for a social excuse. I like the opportunity to retreat from the boredom of an office, or a library, or an argument in the kitchen. And I like smokers. It’s a young person’s hobby, and a particular type of young person at that. Cigarettes might not be good for you, but they’re definitely good to you. Smoking is the proclivity of

Cigarettes aren’t good for you, but they’re good to you

No Ethan Croft someone who, exceptionally at this University, isn’t planning to settle down in a Surrey semi-detached with a wife and two kids. It’s the pastime of someone who doesn’t actually believe they’re so brilliant that they should live forever. If there’s one thing that really puts us off quitting, it’s the insufferable piety of the smoke-free. I’m sure all smokers reading this have heard it: “smoking kills, you know!” Yes, of course we know, it says it on the front of the packet. These encounters aren’t even the worst. It’s the melodramatic coughers, and splutterers who really grate on me. Their spiteful idea, that we should be stripped of our ciggies because they don’t like the smell, was also the motivation of Exeter’s proposed ban. The exact phrasing was “inconsiderate behaviour”. But smokers are, in my experience, considerate. We have moved out of restaurants, bars, and pubs, and onto the street. And smokers, seeing a child or an elderly person coming their way, turn their cigarettes away to spare discomfort. But this is not enough for the deans of Exeter College and Oxford University at large, who continue to believe that we need them to enforce good politesse. They are mistaken. All we need is for them to leave us alone.

Friday, 27 October 2017 | Cherwell

At length of a culprit than I’d assumed. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a body set up by the UN to assess the science related to climate change and according to their headline figures, Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) account for 24 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. This figure is well ahead of transport on 14 per cent, industr y on 21 per cent, and this is only superseded by Electricity and Heat Production on 25 per cent. These figures are striking, and led me to seriously question my image of vehicles and factories as the destroyers of the planet. The AFOLU category isn’t just telling us about the impact of our diets though because it contains all emissions from forestry and land use, not just agriculture’s contribution to emissions. So we need to break it down. Although, a large but decreasing proportion of the AFOLU emissions is from forestry, most deforestation takes place with the aim of clearing land for cattle rearing, especially in the Amazon (80 per cent of Amazon deforestation is for cattle, according to a Yale research group) this all adds to the impact of meat. The next largest subcategory of AFOLU is enteric fermentation, which is basically cows and sheep producing methane through digestion and farting it out (nice). A further large category is manure spreading. Together these three agricultural processes make up a substantial proportion of AFOLU emissions.

It’s undeniable that meat is bad for the environment

The planet saving solution sitting on our plates As fear of environmental disaster escalates, Tom Ash argues that the solution is right in front of us, if only we could skip the late night kebab.

eat is bad. Well at least that’s what all the vegetarians want you to think. But what exactly compels them to say this and confine themselves to a baron world with no burgers, no juicy lamb chops, and not a single Hassan’s kebab? I wanted to find out. More specifically though, I wanted to find out about the environmental reasons for giving up meat. Sure, many vegetarians still claim that “animals have rights too”. While not denying they may be right, more and more people seem to have stopped eating meat because it kills the planet, not because it kills baby cows. Most will have experienced their JCR adopt meat free Mondays, and so

probably won’t be strangers to such environmental arguments but perhaps, like myself initially, you just brushed them aside. In fact, its hard not to, especially for me. I come from Somerset, where one of the main areas of employment is farming. I’ve grown up around cows and sheep and always just accepted that eating meat was part of life. Eating a roast on a Sunday from the local butcher was never questioned in my household. Of course, I knew vegetarians and was often was curious about why they’d decided to give up something that

was such a staple for me, but, for the most part, they were nothing more than a curiosity. As I grew up already I became more aware of arguments against meat consumption, and constructed some pretty weak defences so I could continue brushing them aside. But about a year ago, content to brush no longer, I searched for the facts. Should meat get the chop? The poster children for climate change are gas-guzzling cars and fumeproducing factories, not cute little cows. However, it turns out the latter may be more

ut if we replaced meat with other food, would the effect be similar? It turns out that the same IPCC report found cutting animal-based products out of our diets could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 64 per cent. It also turns out not to be true that meat is a more efficient source of protein than other foods. If we compare greenhouse gas emissions per ton of protein consumed, beef produces roughly 15 to 20 times the CO2 of pulses (beans, lentils, etc.), according to the World Resources Institute, a global NGO focusing on resource sustainability. Dairy, meanwhile, produces roughly five times the greenhouse gases of pulses, and poultry and pork four times. And not only is meat an environmentally damaging source of protein, the same report also suggests we do not need nearly as much protein as we currently eat, so we can decrease our impact both by reducing our protein intake and eating more efficient sources of protein. It really does appear, then, that we could be reducing our carbon footprint substantially by dropping meat and animal products from our diet, especially beef. This is bad news for fans of a medium rare steak.

ut what about the reasons for eating meat? You can’t simply say meat has a negative impact on the environment and call for an end to the debate.

The good things about meat need to be considered. The most significant factor for the majority of people, including myself, is simply that meat tastes good. Obviously whether you think this outweighs the bad effects of eating meat is a somewhat personal decision, but there is at least one thing that we should all be taking into account. If we eat meat because we think we get enough pleasure from it to make the detrimental effects worth it, we need to remember if we did not eat meat we would consume a non-meat product, which presumably would give us some pleasure. So, what is important is the additional pleasure we get from eating meat as opposed to nonmeat products. Given the growth of non-meat alternatives in recent years, such as Quorn (their sausages are almost as good as real sausages, if you ask me), as well as the existence of the many delicious vegetarian recipes that have existed for years, this difference is likely to be minor and may struggle to outweigh the negatives. This seems even more obvious once we consider what meat is probably taking more out of our pocket that could be spent on beer rather than burgers. However, ultimately, I leave questions of pleasure to the reader.

ne other countervailing factor to consider is the economic effects of significantly reducing meat production. Although a g r ic u lt u r e is a vanishingly small part of the economies of the developed world, in some less developed countries people can be quite dependent on it. I thought perhaps the effect on those in the poorest regions of our stopping meat consumption might outweigh the environmental benefit. However, although some

Don’t wait for superefﬁcent technologies to save the planet

Cherwell | Friday, 27 October 2017

countries in Southern Asia and Africa are quite dependent on agriculture — according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations, in a few agriculture makes up over 30 per cent of the economy. These are not meat producing regions. Most meat imports to the developing world come from South America, which is much less dependent on agriculture (it’s less than 10 per cent of the economy in most places). In fact, if we started eating more

vegetables, the poorest regions would probably benefit, because we’d have to start eating more plant based foods which these countries do produce. Also, we cannot know how regions that are dependent on meat exports would adapt to any change in meat production. Seeing as a lot of the cattle rearing farms in South America, for example, grew up very quickly in response to demand for meat, the region may respond quickly to a reduction. It seems to me, then, that the economic benefits of meat are at best quite uncertain whereas reducing meat consumption would bring obvious environmental benefits.

here does this all leave us? It is undeniable that meat is bad for the environment. Stopping beef consumption especially could go a long way to saving the planet. What’s more, unlike with the alternatives, we could quite easily make diet changes right now. We don’t have to wait for the invention of super-efficient technologies, for businesses or the state to invest in renewables, or go and hide in a cave with no electricity. We could simply stop eating meat tomorrow.

That for me seemed a pretty hard fact to avoid when I found all this out, but still the pull of culture and pleasure was hard to resist. Not only am I surrounded by farms but we, as a family, have actually raised pigs on a very small scale to sell to local friends and to eat ourselves. It’s hard to escape the mentality that eating meat is just a normal, acceptable part of life, so I struggled with all this. Slowly though, the pull of the arguments became too much and I reduced my meat intake. I’m now a vegetarian, and have been for over a year, and am slowly reducing my dairy consumption. It was hard, but it felt like the right thing to do.

o what is being done and what should be done? If meat is so bad for the environment, and if it’s really true that climate change is one of the greatest problems facing the world, then surely this should be a major issue. We seem constantly being advised to turn out the lights, cycle more, or take shorter showers, and investment in renewables and electric cars are hot topics in the world of politics. Meat, on the other hand, rarely seems to come up in these public discussions. This is more than just an impression. The government report from the Department of Energy and Climate change says absolutely nothing about meat. Meanwhile, in a piece heavily tucked away on their website, Greenpeace does talk about meat’s effect on the environment. It claims veganism and vegetarianism are not practical solutions, citing subsistence farmers and fishers who would have very restricted diets if they were vegetarians. This is all well and good but it hardly applies to most in the Western World, and for us reducing meat consumption would be a highly effective way to reduce our ecological footprint. WWF do talk about the problems with meat consumption on their website, but they only go so far as saying “eat more vegetables”, which is hardly an ambitious target. Even more shockingly, Peter Singer and Frances Kissling, both prominent ethicists, have noted in the Washington Post that at a UN conference on sustainable development, meat was served at most of the meals, and environmental spokesman could be seen unabashedly chowing down on beef. Clearly, giving up meat is at the bottom of the agenda for those involved with conservation.

The author (right) has a bike ride in his home county of Somerset interrupted by a visitor PHOTO: TOM ASH

his may sound familiar to those who have heard of Cowspiracy, a documentary that says there’s a massive conspiracy to protect the meat industry which charity interests allegedly protect. Whilst I think this is a bit far-fetched, it does strike me that governments and charities have self-serving reasons not to sing the praises of vegetarianism and veganism. First, they would annoy the farming lobby, which is powerful enough to have inefficient agricultural subsidies, mostly through the Common Agriculture Policy of the EU. Second, no government or NGO wants to face the nation and say “You shouldn’t be eating the food that you eat for nearly every meal.” This would admittedly be a hard sell, especially compared to advising walking a bit more or investing in green technology. However, if we want to avert major environmental catastrophe, hard decisions are going to have be taken and governments are going to have to be the ones to make them, by coordinating our actions. Plus, encouraging reduced meat consumption could actually be one of the easiest environmental decisions. It wouldn’t be massively costly and could be achieved fairly quickly. It’s time governments and campaigners started getting loud about just how bad meat is. In fact, the more I think about it, the more the idea of a meat duty tax seems an obviously good idea. One easy way to reduce consumption of something is to increase its price, and one way to do that is through a tax. Not only would this help the environment, it would improve health, since it is well known that red meat in particular is bad for you when consumed too often. The money raised could also be used to subsidise the price of fruits and vegetables, further encouraging a healthy diet. This would help alleviate the negative effects on low-income groups as they could swap meat (which is expensive anyway) for cheaper

Protein emissions? Different protein sources on greenhouse gas emissions per ton

DATA: WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE vegetables. Of course, those who consume a lot of meat through low-price outlets such as fast food restaurants would suffer, but that would be the point: to encourage them to change their habits or to incentivise the restaurants to offer meat-free alternatives. They could be given fair warning and this would allow them to adapt their diets or menus accordingly. A meat tax, combined with a strong public voice on the negative impact of meat, should be at the head of governments’ environmental policies. However, these hopeful reflections are, unfortunately, just that. I realise governments are unlikely to tackle their bad relationship with the agricultural lobby or have the strength to stand up to meat eaters any time soon.

e must ask, therefore, what we can do in the inevitable case our government fails to do anything for us. Whilst personally the facts I uncovered did lead to me becoming vegetarian, I do realise this might be hard for everyone to do. However, we can all take steps to improve our diet’s environmental impact. You could simply reduce how much meat you eat, or cut out

beef, the worst culprit, or even, if you love meat that much, forgo other greenhouse gas emitting activities to compensate for your meat consumption. In particular, you could try swapping Quorn or something similar for meat in a curry or bolognese. It’s almost as tasty and produces 90% less greenhouse gases than beef. Or have eggs for breakfast instead of milk and cereal, as eggs have greenhouse gas emissions almost as low as vegetables. But however you change your habits, be loud about it! It’s great if you eat less meat, but if you encourage others to as well, you can multiply your impact. Personally, although my family still eats meat, they eat much less, and they’ve pretty much given up beef as a result of my slow (but still, I’m told, slightly tedious) prompting. We should not be quietly virtuous, because no movement was ever built in silence.

We can all take steps to improve our impact

Original illustrations Crabtree.

by Grace

Friday, 27 October 2017 | Cherwell

Science+Tech COSMOLOGY

Finding the universe’s elusive ‘missing matter’ 90% of the universe’s ordinary matter has never been seen – until now. Jonathan Stark reports.

hile the search for dark matter and dark energy grabbed headlines over the last few years, many forgot that most of the universe’s ordinary matter was also missing. When counted up, the amount of baryonic matter - protons, neutrons, atomic nuclei - found across the galaxies in the universe comes out to only a fraction of what should have been produced by the Big Bang. However, this problem of ‘missing matter’ was partially solved last month as researchers working separately in Edinburgh and Orsay, France both demonstrated that a large portion of the missing baryons could be seen as thin belts of gas strung between close galaxies. The current model of physics allows us to predict what percentage of the Big Bang’s energy was turned into matter, and observation of the cosmic microwave background - residual radiation from the fiery birth of the universe - gives a good idea of how much energy was involved in total. Multiplying these together, then, should say how much matter exists across the whole universe. However, as of a month ago much of this predicted matter had not been found, with only 10% existing in-

side galaxies, and a portion of the rest thought to reside close to galaxies and randomly scattered in the space inbetween. Note that this is not the same as the problem of dark matter, wherein the movements of galaxies suggest invisible masses exerting gravitational forces on them. The ‘missing matter’ addressed by the France and UK teams is made up of baryons, which are well-understood particles that should be able to absorb and emit light - making it even more concerning that it had still not been seen by astronomers. The two research teams, based in the Institute of Space Astrophysics in Orsay and the University of Edinburgh, decided to look into the possibility that the unseen baryons existed in strings of hot gas between galaxies. The gas would be too hot to block radiation, but just too cold to create its own - making it appear almost invisibly faint in any image of the sky. To test this possibility, the re-

Baryons are wellunderstood and should be able to emit light

searchers took the best image of the sky that we have: the ESA’s Planck Satellite map, which shows a pattern of microwave radiation that was emitted in the Big Bang and can still be seen today. They took advantage of the SunyaevZel’dovich effect, where high energy particles deflect microwaves and so show up on the map. Even using this, there was no clear evidence of gas between any individual pair of galaxies. However, the teams eventually found a way to observe the gas strands. They took thousands of images of pairs of galaxies - 260,000 images for the Orsay team, and 1 million in Edinburgh - and overlaid them onto each other, lining each one up so that the superimposed galaxies became two bright circles on the final image. And, just as they had hoped, each team saw a line of matter running between the two dots, as clear as day against the background noise. This can be seen in image (a), which shows the Edinburgh team’s results. The significance of this result is clear when compared to image (b), which shows a prediction based on all the previously known locations of baryonic matter. The Orsay team had a similar result, seeing a band of hot gas where none had been predicted before. The gas found by these two separate teams is estimated to account for around 30% of baryons in the universe. This is the first direct observation of ‘missing matter’ outside galaxies and goes a long way to support current ideas about how the universe was created and evolved, as what was previously a gaping hole in the theory becomes a lot less mysterious.

A superimposed image of one million galaxies (a), showing a belt of matter not seen in the predicted result (b). PHOTO: UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

Capturing the cosmos • The Edinburgh and Orsay teams used images taken by the Planck Satellite, launched by the European Space Agency in 2009. • Instead of taking photos in visible light like an ordinary telescope, the satellite takes photos in microwaves, which have a lower frequency. • The satellite’s main job is mapping the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), a pattern of radiation from the blast of the Big Bang which has been travelling around the universe ever since (pictured below).

• The bands of hot gas observed by the research teams do not absorb or emit enough light to be seen in most images, but they distort microwaves through a type of scattering called the Sunyaev–Zel’dovich effect, and so they can be seen on the CMB - if you use the right method.

Hacking Crispr will open new avenues for biological science By CONNOR SCOTT

nless you’ve been living under a rock the last few years you’ve most likely heard of the revolutionary gene-editor Crispr, short for “Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats”. Crispr has made headlines in recent years due to its ability to cut and paste new DNA sequences into targeted parts of the genome. Many research groups are attempting to use this to permanently cure diseases that originate from a single genetic mutation. The greatest thing about Crispr is its simplicity. The Crispr component acts as a genetic homing device and can locate any part of the genome whereas the Cas 9 component acts as a genetic scissor that cuts out and replaces the diseased sequence with its healthy counterpart. Crispr has been hallmarked to be the most likely technique to cure diseases such as congenital blindness, cystic ﬁbrosis and Huntington’s Disease. Clinical trials in using Crispr to treat cancer are already happening in China, with

the US soon to follow. So, if Crispr is so useful why are scientists trying to break it? Some biologists have found that the precise homing component of this system is more useful than its complementary genetic knife. Biologists have started to hack this system, disabling the scissor-like ability and instead using it to target individual genes. Activating proteins are commonly used to switch on the function of other proteins, and by coupling them with the targeting ability of Crispr scientists have designed a complex that allows them to pinpoint any gene within a cell and turn it on. Martin Kampmann’s group at UCSF have managed to use this genetic whack-a-mole to screen neuronal cell lines, testing to see which genes affect the survival rates of neurons when exposed to toxic protein aggregates – a mechanism that underpins most neurodegenerative diseases. Knowing what genes contribute to the immunity towards these aggregates could help pave the way for genetic treatments for diseases such

as Parkinson’s and ALS. Although the permanent effects of Crispr is what makes it most attractive, some researchers require the ability to switch genes on and off at will. Charles Gersbach’s lab at Duke University have taken their modified protein-activating homing beacon and attached additional proteins that are activated by light. The resulting system allows targeted genes to be switched on or off whenever their cells are introduced to a blue light. This has proven useful in understanding and controlling cell structure and growth. Gersbach’s lab is planning to use this to force cultured cells to develop into blood vessels, in the hope of using them as a model for testing future drug screening and cell therapies. Moritoshi Sato’s group in Japan have gone one step further: they have designed a modified Crispr system where simply shining a light on their cells results in the repair of the broken Cas9 enzyme. This allows the Crispr complex to find, cut, and paste new DNA sequences whenever it is exposed to a particular wavelength

of light. The result of this is very tight gene regulation, which his group has used to accurately control cellular and molecular processes in human cells, with the goal of introducing this into animal models. As well as altering DNA, some scientists have started using Crispr to govern the epigenome – a collection of c o mp o u n d s that controls when the body accesses certain parts of the DNA itself. By using Crispr to control the methylation patterns of different cells scientists can bypass the need to cut and paste DNA sequences and instead simply silence them, which can avoid some of the side effects associated with slicing through DNA. Exploiting epigenetics won’t just silence genes. Research groups at

Disabling Crispr’s cutting allows for a much wider range of uses

Duke has also been using their broken scissors to acetylate (i.e. to add acetyl) to chosen regions of DNA. Their ﬁndings showed that doing this dramatically increases or decreases the expression of targeted genes which should allow a back-door approach to curing diseases without having to nip and tuck away at a patient’s genome. Using Crispr to control the epigenome can also allow scientists to discover the purpose of our mysterious “junk” DNA, which takes up 98% of the human genome but does not code for any proteins. This would be done by silencing whole regions of junk DNA to see what happens. Crispr has been hallmarked as a next generation tool in gene-editing, and although it is not without its ﬂaws there is a reason it has become the hot new technique on a geneticist’s toolbelt. By experimenting with Crispr’s malleability scientists have manage to modify this system from a potential gene therapy to an exploratory probe that can be used to overcome biological challenges and to help us better understand the cellular world.

Cherwell | Friday, 27 October 2017

Sport The toughest English clubs’ European aspirations rest on Jose’s United job in college football By ROWAN JANJUAH FOOTBALL

It’s fair to say English clubs underperformed in the Champions League last season. While Leicester City were the surprise package, nobody really believed a club who were struggling in the most high-tempo league in the world could mount a real challenge. This season, however, five of the so-called ‘big-six’ English clubs have qualified, and have had another season with their respective managers, who have all forged their own ways to win. These clubs are almost certainly stronger than last year’s, in part due to the TV money pouring into the Premier League. Since this is unlikely to stop any time soon, it seems like a new era for English clubs in Europe is dawning. With that in mind, we should look at the current stock. Last year’s champions Chelsea have some worldclass players: Eden Hazard and N’Golo Kanté would get into any team, and Thibaut Courtois and Álvaro Morata are not far behind. They are masterminded by Antonio Conte, whose tactical sharpness is matched by his persona day-by-day. But it is hard to see the blues challenging Real Madrid and PSG. They lack pace and squad depth, which is a real problem when competing on both a domestic and European front, something that Chelsea didn’t have to do last campaign. This has been seen already: after a stunning performance in the 2-1 against Atlético, they lost to Manchester City only days later, with Morata going off injured. Manchester City have looked indomitable this year, and have the most attacking verve in the top flight. They also have the most depth, with Bernardo Silva and Leroy Sané strug-

By SECRET COLLEGE FOOTBALLER

José Mourinho’s big-game nous means that United represent England’s best chance of European success gling to hold down starting berths. In Kevin de Bruyne, they have the best player in the Premier League, and a player capable of threading passes through the best defences in Europe. I still see them falling short, however, as Pep Guardiola, for all his brilliance, plays his own game, never the opposition. So, when Neymar or Lionel Messi ﬁnd space and are bearing down on their defence, City will lack the necessary cover or quality to handle it. Liverpool and Spurs share the same qualities and shortcomings. Both are scattered with world-class players (Philippe Coutinho and Harry Kane

spring to mind), and both have mercurial and charismatic managers and a high-intensity style, but both lack squad depth and enough strength to challenge the sides that will reach the knock-out stages. Manchester United, therefore, are the best English hope of going far this season. They have power, depth but, most importantly, they have José Mourinho. In crunch-games, he always plays the man, not the game. Indeed, when he puts his mind to winning a big game, he rarely disappoints, no matter what side his team comes up against. While United are

unlikely to go all the way in Europe – they lack the quality of recent winners – Mourinho’s nous means they should reach at least the quarter-ﬁnals. There is, admittedly, a tricky obstacle facing English sides. Whereas Spanish, German and French clubs can leave their best players out of league games before European clashes, the Premier League’s smaller clubs are too strong for that. But Mourinho’s United are used to rotation after last year’s Europa League success: if they can ﬁnd the right balance, a lengthy Champions League run is on the cards.

Rugby Union Blues put eight past Gloucestershire

Super Cuppers Keble beaten by St. John’s, Cambridge

Rugby League Spoils shared in Brookes Bucs clash

Football Forrester free-kick seals win for Women’s Blues

Oxford’s women have moved to second in the Bucs Premier South thanks to a 46-0 thrashing of the University of Gloucestershire. Scrum-half Pat Metcalfe-Jones scored two tries in either half, with Johanna Dombrowski (twice), Laura Simpson and Hester Odgers also crossing to complete the side’s biggest win in three years. This week’s game against Hartpury College was postponed, meaning the Blues stay one point off the lead.

After their 20-10 win in last year’s Rugby Cuppers final, Keble RFC travelled to Cambridge on Sunday to take on St. John’s, 2017 winners at ‘the other place’. Keble started slowly in the inaugural ‘Super Cuppers’ fixture, going 19-0 down, and never recovered. Their eventual 38-12 defeat was testament to John’s flowing rugby. Nearly £700 was raised on the day for the rugby charity Um Rio thanks to entry fees and donations.

There was nothing to separate the Men’s Rugby League Blues and the Brookes Bulls last Wednesday. Having scraped past Birmingham in the opening game of their Bucs campaign, the Blues travelled to Harcourt Hill with high expectations against a Brookes side that were thrashed by Coventry in their opening game. But Will Henshall’s experienced side were held to a 18-18 draw, leaving them second in the league.

After being held to a 1-1 draw by the University of East Anglia in their opening ﬁxture of the season, the Women’s Blues sealed a late win at home to Lincoln University. Beverly Leon scored two ﬁrst-half goals to take the teams into the break at 2-2, before Sherona Forrester – a Rhodes scholar who has played internationally for Jamaica – stepped up in the game’s dying embers to snatch the points with a sublime free-kick.

Men’s JCR Football Premier Div

Bucs Women’s Football Midlands 2B

Bucs Men’s Hockey South B

Bucs Women’s Hockey South A

Balliol

Oxford 1

Exeter 1

Exeter

Warwick 1

Cambridge 1

Oxford 1

St. John’s

Lincoln 1

Cardiff 1

Wadham

St. Catz

East Anglia 1

Bath 2

Bath 1

Worcester

Bedfordshire 1

Exeter 2

Cambridge 1

Queen’s

Northampton 1

Canterbury CC 1

Bristol 1

Football is a game consisting of two teams of eleven, but there is one person on the pitch that this description does not account for. The man in the middle, the thin black line between order and chaos, the most influential figure on the pitch - the referee. In the lightning-paced world of college football, where captains can forget to pay refs’ fees and refs themselves can forget to turn up, sometimes the responsibility lands in your lap, and you’d better be ready when it does. Although squad rotation means that they’re not likely to ref more than a half per game, taking the black can present certain challenges for college footballers. Brought up on a diet of blood, sweat and tears, needing to adopt an unpassionate approach to a match is an extremely big ask for players, especially if they are asked to ref straight after being subbed off. Even the most mentally flexible players struggle to rise above the situation at the flick of a switch. While no respectable ambassador of the sport would officiate with deliberate bias, it is not easy to stifle the celebrations when their would-be teammates score, nor to forget that they’re no longer marking a particular opponent and clear them out in a 50/50. Critics might accuse these players of indiscipline, but it is important to remember that being a referee is temporary; being a custodian of college pride is a lifetime responsibility. You can never blow the final whistle on your college. This is a fact that many of the refs’ would-be teammates tend to forget. When college footballers think with their hearts as well as their heads, as they are wont to do, their teammatecum-ref is lost to them. Where once they saw a comrade in arms they now see only a malevolent watch and whistle. Flashes of vitriol may be directed the ref’s way, especially if the match if finely poised, or worse, turning against their would-be team. However, their true nature as a fellow player affords the ref patience in these situations, and all is forgotten once the prodigal son returns to the fold at the end of the half. Alternatively, other players might always see the ref as a teammate, to the point where they sometimes attempt to pass to them. To avoid such situations, some kind of distinctive clothing is advised. Past options have included but are not limited to a bib, a coat, and a scholar’s gown. Of course, challenges from former teammates are not the only ones that a hastily appointed referee has to face in a game. There is also the physical challenge. Imagine spending 70 minutes marauding up and down the left flank, running yourself into the ground for your team. Then, when you are eventually subbed off for a well-deserved rest, you find that you never even make it to the touchline. Instead, you’re made to swap shirts with the previous ref and keep up with the game for another 20 minutes. It’s a thankless task, but someone has to do it, you might well tell yourself as you struggle to mask your exhaustion. But why, you may add, does that someone have to be you?

Cherwell | Friday, 27 October 2017

Champions League

Sport

Why Manchester United represent the Premier League’s best chance in Europe’s top competition

Clinical Blues wrap up Bucs hockey double

Both Men’s and Women’s Blues extended their strong recent records against Cambridge with Bucs League victories over their biggest rivals on Wednesday PHOTO: MATT ROLLER/CHERWELL

Women’s Blues

Cambridge

By THOMAS BROWNE In the first part of Wednesday’s double header against Cambridge, the Women’s Blues stepped out onto the turf to see if they could keep their streak against the Tabs going after their 4-0 victory in last year’s Varsity Match. From the off, Oxford had the upper hand and were bringing the game to Cambridge. Despite some difficulties with the sprinkler system pre-match, Oxford were playing the ball around quickly, totally in control. This dominance finally came to fruition with an early goal from Georgie Walton. The ball broke forward and her shot at the near post squirmed under the Cambridge keeper and managed

CRICKET

Blues train with Windies captain

By MATT ROLLER

to evade the Cambridge defender’s fumbled attempt at a goal line clearance, trickling over the line to make it 1-0. Thereafter, Oxford continued to control the game, despite a few green cards being dished out for some cynical fouls – it was a match against Cambridge after all, and after the first goal the raucous home supporters were baying for Tab blood. The Dark Blues peppered the Cambridge goal with shots, producing some impressive reflex saves from the beleaguered Cambridge goalkeeper. The visitors did have one half-chance towards the end of the half, when a sloppy defensive mistake left a visiting player one-on-one with Oxford keeper Rachael Dellar. But Dellar was up to the task, diving on the ball and clawing it away to maintain the home side’s clean sheet. The half ended with a scrappy passage of play, and when the

teams returned for the second half it was clear that tired legs were playing a part as the quality of the match dropped slightly. Oxford maintained their dominance and soon forced a brilliant reflex save from the Light Blues’ keeper, followed by a goal-line clearance from the ensuing chance. In the final portion of the game, Oxford really put the screws on Cambridge, camped in the final third of the pitch, laying siege to the Cambridge goal with a barrage of attempts. It wasn’t long until Dalton found space through the middle, dribbled past a couple bewildered visitors and coolly slid the ball across goal for a tap in by Rachael Harrison at the far post – an excellently worked team-goal. The match finished 2-0 and the commanding display by Oxford certainly bodes well for 2018’s Varsity Match at Southgate Hockey Club.

After a convincing 6-1 win in last week’s Bucs game against Canterbury Christ Church, the Men’s Blues went into Wednesday’s game against Cambridge with a 100% league record. And from the offset, they were clearly brimming with confidence: while there were few clear-cut chances in the early stages, Thomas Claughton’s mazy run down the right nearly created a goal out of nothing, but nobody got on the end of his cross. Midway through the first half, the pressure paid. A defensive mix-up from Cambridge left the ball free in the area, and 2016/17 captain Ryan Kavanagh was on hand to make it one-nil to the hosts. Not long after, Noah Francis’ drag-flick was well-

saved by the Light Blues’ keeper, but Claughton was on hand to slam in the rebound to double the lead. Oxford were cruising, and Francis led a series of penetrating attacks through the middle. Andrew Oxburgh’s driving run led to a chance that was nearly bundled in at the back post, and despite Cambridge hitting the post from a short corner, the Dark Blues went into half-time having completely dominated. The second half was a drab affair, as Oxford starved the visitors of any real opportunities. Josh Keeling should have scored after a driving run from Nick Leach, and Alex Copestake failed to turn in a ball from Jolyon Dannatt, but neither side looked like scoring. With two minutes on the clock, Cambridge ﬁnally broke through a ﬁrm home defence to score, but it was a case of too little too late: the Dark Blues held on to complete a 2-1 win, giving them a three-point cushion at the top of the league.

Oxford’s Blues cricketers had a surprise addition to their winter training last week, as West Indies T20 captain Carlos Brathwaite joined the squad for a handful of sessions. The Bajan, who shot to prominence after hitting four consecutive sixes off Ben Stokes to win the 2016 World T20, was in the city to visit his girlfriend, who works at the John Radcliffe Hospital. Brathwaite’s agent called Blues coach Graham Charlesworth, in a bid to give him an opportunity to train ahead of his stint with the Khulna Titans in the Bangladesh Premier League. He netted at the indoor school at Iffley Road on several occasions, and Blues players had the opportunity both to bat with and bowl at

the hard-hitting all-rounder. The 29-year-old has gone over a month since playing competitive cricket, after being an unused squad member in the West Indies’ recently-concluded ODI series in England. In the one-off T20 international in mid-September, he took 3/20 in 3.3 overs to seal an unlikely 21-run win for the visitors. Blues captain Daniel Escott described the six foot four Brathwaite as “a very modest guy who was keen to help and advise us. “He has a huge amount of expertise to share,” Escott told Cherwell, “so it was really insightful. All the guys who spent time with him really enjoyed it, and we hope he’ll come back again soon. “He hits the ball harder than

anyone I’ve ever played with before, and he put a hole through the wall of the cricket school in his first session.” Brathwaite has largely focused on twentyover cricket in the past eighteen months, ever since earning a $620,000 contract with the Delhi Daredevils. Since then, he has also appeared for the Sydney Thunder and the St Kitts and Nevis Patriots, and was named West Indies captain in that format after Darren Sammy’s controversial sacking in August 2016.

Brathwaite flew to Bangladesh on Tuesday after a brief return to Barbados ahead of this year’s edition of the BPL. He is likely to make his Khulna Titans debut in the side’s opening fixture, against the Dhaka Dynamites on 5 November. The Titans squad also contains former South Africa players Rilee Roussouw and Kyle Abbott, Pakistanis Shadab Khan, Junaid Khan and Safraz Ahmed, and uncapped Englishmen Benny Howell and Jofra Archer.

Men’s Blues

Cambridge

By MATT ROLLER