14 minute read
Oxford nuclear fission revolution: First Light Fusion
Not Here, Not Anymore holds protest against Oxford Uni’s sexual assault policy
Meg Lintern reports on the Not Here, Not Anymore protest.
Advertisement
On Sunday 22nd, crowds of students convened outside the RadCam as part of a protest organised by Not Here, Not Anymore (NHNA). against the use of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) in colleges and push Oxford University towards improved sexual assault policies. It is associated with It Happens Here, a group linked to the Oxford Student Union which has been promoting a safer university environment free from sexual assault since it was founded in 2013.
During the protest, a series of speakers voiced the demands of NHNA and described their personal experiences of the cultures of “silencing and victim blaming” that exist within Oxford University. co-chair of Oxford University Labour Club. She read aloud the open letter which NHNA has addressed to Oxford University and published on their Instagram linktree. She said: “Oxford can and must do better to prevent sexual assault amongst students and protect survivors. To take up your place to study at one of the most prestigious institutions in the world should not mean you forfeit your right to learn in a safe environment. Education should not cost an exposure to danger.”
Hamilton voiced concerns that Oxford’s to tackle systemic sexual misconduct, since each of the colleges has an independent set of policies and procedures. She said: “You should not be at a higher risk of being assaulted or mistreated in the aftermath of sexual violence based on your college.”
Widespread calls for the universalisation of sexual misconduct policies across Oxford colleges have followed in the wake of high In 2021, a postgrad at Balliol described how she was treated with “hostility” after making a victim of rape.
In light of this, NHNA’s open letter states that “all colleges should adopt the same sexual misconduct policy so students are not forced to gamble with their safety based on where they are accepted or pooled to”.
Kesaia Toganivalu subsequently addressed the audience, saying that she was “sick of seeing well meaning infographics but no actual change”. She described her own experience of sexual assault, having been attacked by “someone I knew and trusted”, and she stressed that “it is not the job of survivors to beg [for protection]”.
She criticised the University for worsening the trauma of survivors: “How are survivors meant to be able to heal if rusticating has such big stigma?”
“I have the same punishment as the person who assaulted me,” Kesaia continued, referring to the responsibility generally placed on survivors to avoid environments where they might encounter their assaulter. “[Colleges] are rich as hell, they can afford to care, but they just don’t. I’m f***ing sick of this system and it needs to change.”
Hannah Hopkins, women’s rep at St Anne’s, added: “I’m so tired of Oxford not addressing things as they are, and caring more about reputational damage than the safety of students living there.
“Rape in most cases is legal in Oxford colleges… cases are run by professors who aren’t trained.”
Discussing the role of NDAs in Oxford colleges and the urgency of banning them, said: “NDAs are forced onto survivors who are in all directions.”
The NHNA campaign is actively urging JCRs to lobby their colleges to ban the use of NDAs. can force every other college to change.”
Jeea and Nicola, the two co-chairs of It protest. They stated that “sexual violence is one of the biggest threats facing our students today”, but urged students affected to turn to the resource guide circulated by It Happens Here and NHNA for guidance and support.
With a growing Instagram following of 545, the NHNA campaign is gaining traction. Having posted an image of the NHNA sticker covering the O of the Oxford Union sign, it seems that their mission is to not only tackle cultures of abuse in colleges, but also within Oxford’s societies, ultimately pushing for a more coherent and legible approach to sexual violence across the university.
Photo credit: Ceci Catmur
Write for Cherwell News
Sunday News Meetings Every sunday we host a news meeting where our news editors pitch stories for any interested contributor to write. No previous experience is necessary. Check our Facebook Page for details on how to attend!
Email – Send your pitch to cherwellnews@gmail.com
Messenger – Contact one of our section editors with ideas or questions!
Humza Jilani reports.
With a snap of its oversized claw, the tiny pistol shrimp, which has an average body length of between 3 and 5 centimetres, fires off a savage shockwave of bubbles at a volume that rivals the clicks of a sperm whale, three-hundred and twenty times its size. As Nicholas Hawker – a then-DPhil candidate in Oxford’s Department of Engineering – researched these small but mighty creatures and their perplexing shockwaves, a wild idea sprung up. The pistol shrimp’s ability to create such a powerful shockwave, despite its small size, might mean that it is possible to utilise focused shockwaves to trigger the conditions for nuclear fusion, the process that powers the sun. As an energy source, nuclear fusion produces no carbon emissions and a very small amount of fuel could theoretically power a house for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. It could be the closest thing to a silver bullet in the global quest to transition away from fossil fuels. Yet, fusion remains prohibitively expensive and currently consumes more energy than it produces, making it commercially unviable for the near-term. With his creative application of pistol shrimp research, Hawker may have found in the oceans an answer to a vexing problem that nuclear fusion scientists had searched for in outer space stars. Projectile fusion was an unexplored approach that could crack the code to make fusion viable within the next ten to thirty years.
In April, First Light Fusion successfully combined atomic nuclei through projectile fusion, demonstrating an exciting proofof-concept in the race for commercially viable fusion. Cherwell interviewed a representative from First Light Fusion to share its decade-long origin story, from the labs of the University of Oxford to the forefront of scientific breakthroughs today. Before they launched the startup, Hawker and his DPhil supervisor, Professor Yiannis Ventikos (now at University College London), put out an advertisement for a fourth-year project student. Hawker and Ventikos hoped to tap into the raw talent and ambition of these young scholars. No one applied. now runs the target design team at First Light Fusion, answered their call in 2010. “I saw the advertisement, and I said to myself that this looks terrible and that I will not apply for this!” Betney told Cherwell. Sometime later, Betney found himself in a meeting with Dr. Ventikos, who reassured him that he need not worry about what was written on the advert and that he should take the plunge. “I decided I really wanted to be involved in this project, but I was not planning to join as an employee straight away,” he added, “It was a hyper risky startup with just two people and no one knew if it’d last 6 months, much less over 10 years.” Today, the conversation around fusion has certainly shifted from earlier uncertainty to greater optimism. “I am very positive about the future of fusion,” Betney told Cherwell. “I know that our technology is good. We have a good program to get to where we want to be. Fusion technology all around the world is really progressing. A lot of other research companies and projects are getting really interesting results,” he added.
Instead of superheating reactants within a strong magnetic field, First Light Fusion aims to fire a salvo of small copper projectiles at hypersonic speed into a tiny capsule, thereby transferring energy from each shot into a coolant. They hope to demonstrate energy “gain,” wherein the process will generate more energy than it consumes, within the next two to five years. And with so many of the fusion efforts centred in and around the University of Oxford, First Light Fusion is part of a burgeoning community of researchers and startups. “It is amazing that so many startups are starting here in Oxfordshire, such as Tokamak Energy,” said Betney. “With all of this around us, I would say to Oxford students: take up exciting opportunities. If you want to work at the cutting edge of science and research, going into new areas, believe in yourself. These problems are really interesting!” Betney added.
Editorial
Masthead
EDITORS-IN-CHIEF
Maurício Alencar, Estelle Atkinson
SENIOR EDITORIAL TEAM
Pieter Garicano, Leah Mitchell, Clementine Scott, Shiraz Vapiwala, David Tritsch, Wang Sum Luk
NEWS
Meg Lintern, Humza Jilani, Isaac Ettinghausen, Charlotte Keys, Annie Lu, Izzie Alexandrou
COMMENT
Georgie Cutmore, Isobel Lewis, Hope Philpott, Sonya Ribner
PROFILES
Aarthee Parimelalaghan, Sam Zia, William Foxton
INNOVATION
Matthew Clark
CULTURE
Meg Goundry-Napthine, Caitlin Wilson, Elena Buccisano, Charlotte Kutz
FILM
Flynn Hallman, Mayu Uno
MUSIC
Marlon Austin, Flynn Hallman
STAGE
Neily Raymond, Anna Stephen, Anya Biletsky
BOOKS
Fariha Uddin, Paula Odenheimer, Madeleine Hopper
FASHION
Madeleine Hopper, Yuri Hwang, Anna Roberts
THE SOURCE
Jessica DeMarco-Jacobsen, Aaron Low
LIFE
Aiktarini Lygaki, Bruno Armitage, Michaela Esau, Adam Collins pigeons
FEATURES
Jimmy Brewer, Imaan Haidar, Daisy Clague, Sara Hashmi
COLUMNS
Matilda Piovella, Anneka Pink
SPORT
Oliver Hall
PUZZLES
Ifan Rogers
CREATIVE
Ben Beechener, Eve Gueterbock, Charlotte Rich-Jones, Aleksandra Pluta, Rachel Jung
PHOTOJOURNALISM
Ceci Catmur, Cyril Malík, Jessye Phillips, Meghana Geetha, Michelle Marques, Niamh McBratney, Teagan Riches, Jana Nedelkoska, Daniel Stick, Amy Van Wingerden
VIDEO
Kaly de Oliveira Cerqueira, Taylor Bi, Yushi Zhao, Zack Thomas
MARKETING
Jacobus Petersen
Maurício Alencar (he/him), Editor-in-Chief
There’s no place I dislike more than Park End’s main dance floor and no place I love more than the Spirit lounge on a Thursday night, otherwise known as Anuba as it used to be called. I will always choose £4 cocktails and drinks, reggae and vibes, Adele covers, and you’ve-got-to-show-me-love medleys over cringe high school music, creepy DJ shout-outs, bouncers with no sense of their spatial awareness, and overpriced drinks.
Because who has ever in their life left Park End saying “I really love it when the main DJ yelps ‘this one’s for all the pretty ladies out there’, or, arguably worse, ‘shoutout to Bob for getting his third vaccine’? Who has ever thought that Bridge’s corridor, otherwise known as its main dancefloor, was great to walk through? All I want to do is get to that sodding smoking area, for crying out loud!
If you’re one to sweat your cheeks out so much that some stranger’s sweat starts pouring onto you from the ceiling above, then please, by all means, spend your nights dancing the night away at Plush. That’s as much as I’ll say on it. £15 or more entry to Bully or O2 Academy sounds wonderful, totally cheap and worth the price. I doubt Jericho-based Oxford students would ever want to make their way all the way to Cowley anyway. …Unless they’re on their way to Café Baba, of course! A night out at any place that ends in “bah” cannot be topped. Anuba, Café Baba, Oxo Bar. And if you love quickfire sound effects, wait till you hear about Hank’s.
Controversial as it is to say, the Tikki ‘Bar’ at Park End is the sole exception to this rule; they just churn out whatever boring stuff is being played in Park End’s main dancefloor. It is the most overhyped location in Oxford.
Glamorous opened up recently. Went once. Not sure if I am a big fan. It will never live up to ‘Bah’ status. Bah status requires a certain threshold of vibe, drinks, music, and fun.
Anuba has all those parts. So when you next go to Anuba on a Bridge Thursday, you know I will be in there singing ‘Hellooooo…. Adele). When you’re next on the Park End dancefloor, please sort yourself out.
Cherwell, we were always writing about the Union.” But whether this role is contributive or correlative, I am not sure. Did the 80s era editors of Cherwell observe and report on the culture surrounding them, as we purport to do now, or did they, and do we, contribute directly to the rise of Oxford’s elite?
If the ‘chums’ only ever convened behind closed doors, if no one cared what they got up to and their names were not easily found in Cherwell, would they be in the Times today? A large part of how I assess an article’s value is its potential use as a historical record. I want people to, 50 years from now, use 2022 Cherwells as effectively as Kuper has. I never take publication of students’ names lightly, as for some this may well be the first in a long series of mentions in the press.
Estelle Atkinson (she/her), Editor-in-Chief
Simon Kuper’s new book - Chums - which details the “troubling amounts of political power wielded by a very small and privileged Oxford elite” opens with a quote from a 1989 edition of Cherwell: “The keener observers of British public life will have noticed a particular breed of Establishment men and women. They’re over forty, smugly successful and successfully smug. Chances are they were also educated at Oxford.”
Kuper’s research takes him back through various copies of “yellowing student newspapers from the 1980s,” pages upon which he saw familiar faces - Boris Johnson’s election to president of the Oxford Union, Michael Gove named alongside him as one of five Union hacks involved in a “romp shocker”.
Kuper identifies the phenomenon of a smooth transition from trivial Oxford ‘fame’ straight onto the national stage. Britain’s premier Conservative politicians are a product of the uniquely privileged atmosphere at Oxford, which historically saw the Union as its primary arena.
Turning the pages of Chums, it’s clear Cherwell had a role to play; Kuper tells readers “at
as a grid post or a story, but this past term has changed my attitude. I still use social media, but instead of meticulously planning Instagram story On paper, BeReal doesn’t sound particularly revolutionary. There’s the central gimmick of the experience, anywhere between 10am and 10pm), but beyond that it has the potential to become as homogeneous as Instagram, just in a different way. Instead of posed pre-bop pictures in student kitchens, we get hundreds of pictures of people’s essay crises in the Rad Cam from different angles. and early adulthood, it’s Instagram. I try to resist the shallow stereotypes associated with people, and especially women, who avidly use social media, but when the acquisition of Instagram by Facebook coincided neatly with my entry into ence it’s had over the last decade of my life.
We experienced in real time the development of Instagram from place where Year Sevens me, makes all the difference. BeReal, along with deposited photos as mundane as a blurry shot of Wordle and other late-pandemic phenomena, their Starbucks, to the home of the circa-2018 in- only happens once a day and thus has an inher ent mechanism to control addictive behaviours, but it is not only parents scaremongering about function it’s become today. For a while, I thought phone addictions to whom this feature might this app would continue to be a protagonist in my appeal. When one only feels obligated to post one photo per day, the pressure to document every myself whether a given moment worked better single second disappears and my brain can more
Leader: BeReal has the potential to change student social media usage for the better easily switch off content-hunting mode. Conversely, BeReal places a healthy amount of pressure on that one crucial picture, which deters me from wasting time far better than an impending essay deadline ever could – the app has taught me to be conscious of whatever I’m doing at the present moment just in case that value in smaller moments that aren’t conventionally ‘Instagrammable’. We can also live peacefully in the knowledge that the potential for data breaches is low; the data an app can accumulate from random daily snapshots is surely less than Instagram’s highly curated, consistent displays of its users’ interests. As well as taking the pressure off of social media, BeReal also helps us have a more healthy Clementine Scott (she/her), relationship with external validation. Even Deputy Editor “Instead of on BeReal much as they would on Instagram, I meticulously planning understand that my picture of my laptop screen Instagram story not particularly exciting, so my expectations are content, I merely low and I don’t mind that the only people who wait for the BeReal regularly react are my boyfriend, parents and a couple of friends. The concept of taking a picture notification.” of whatever’s in front of you is worlds away from the agonising process of selecting what to post from an Instagram photoshoot; when the bar is already on the ground for how interesting the content needs to be or how attractive you need to look, then the expectation for people’s effusive reactions are equally low. Time will tell whether the lessons to be learned from BeReal will stick, or whether it will be remembered as Trinity 2022’s passing fad. But in the meantime, each day I will stay healthily de strikes.
