3rd Week Hilary Term 2022 by Cherwell

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3rd Week Friday, 4th February 2022 cherwell.org Vol. 294 No. 3 Independent since 1920

EXCLUSIVE: THE CHRIST CHURCH PAPERS EXONERATION OF DEAN REVEALED Pieter Garicano, Charlie Hancock, and Estelle Atkinson report. CW: Sexual harassment Cherwell has obtained a copy of the judgement on the allegation of sexual misconduct against the Very Rev Martyn Percy, Dean of Christ Church. Dame Sarah Asplin, judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, concluded: “it is entirely disproportionate that this matter should be referred to a tribunal.” The judgement – which was never made publicly available – cleared the Dean on the 28th of May last year. The Dean had been accused of sexual misconduct, after an incident which occured at approximately midday on the 4th of October, 2020. It was alleged that the Dean briefly stroked and commented on the hair of an unidentified woman, an allegation Percy denies. Initially, the incident was examined by an internal college investigator, until Canon Graham Ward, Professor of Divinity at Christ Church College, reported the allegation on the 5th of November 2020 – over a month later. The complaint was made under the Clergy Discipline Measure – a separate system of adjudication unique to the Church of England. An investigation was triggered, leading to this judgement, which examines whether or not

the case was worthy of consideration by a full disciplinary tribunal. The judge in this case, Dame Sarah Asplin, has served on the Court of Appeal since 2017. Appointed a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 2013, she also serves as the Chair of the Church of England’s Clergy Discipline Commission and President of its Tribunal. It is in the latter capacities that she prepared this judgement. Dame Sarah Asplin defined the matter as coming down to two competing versions of events given by the two witnesses: “There are two credible accounts. For these purposes, it is sufficient to conclude, therefore, that it is possible that on the balance of probabilities, a finding could be made that the incident occurred as Ms X alleged.” The question succeedingly addressed in the judgement was then whether or not there was a “case to answer upon which a disciplinary tribunal should adjudicate.” Summarising the complainant’s understanding of the incident, Dame Sarah Asplin’s judgement said: “the Dean approached Ms X when she was alone in [redacted]; he commented upon her hair, said he could not take his eyes off it and asked if he could touch it and before receiving a reply stroked it very briefly for approximately 10 seconds” “There was a conversation about the fact that Ms X was going to have her hair cut, [redacted] that very day. There was also mention of Ms X’s age”

“The Dean made a comment that no one would want his hair” “When leaving [redacted] and going down the stairs, the Dean made a comment that there was only [redacted] between them, although Ms X accepts that she may have misheard this.” In the estimation of the judge: “The incident itself was extremely short, the alleged hair stroking was even shorter and the language and the conduct as a whole was not overtly sexual.“ “If this is put together with: the fact that Ms X accepts that she was not upset in any way; stated originally that she was not perturbed (albeit she told the police that she was concerned what would happen next); the incident took place in a room which was or could be accessed by others; and Miss X stated that she would have accepted an apology if the Dean had admitted what she says took place, it seems to me that it is entirely disproportionate that this matter should be referred to a tribunal.” The judgement took place as a part of an investigation held by the Church of England, which has a separate disciplinary system. The police also undertook an investigation, concluding that the alleged incident did not merit criminal investigation. A spokesperson at the time said: “Following the report of a sexual assault on October 4, 2020, at Christ Church college, Oxford, Thames Valley police conducted a thorough investigation into this matter. Our investigation has now concluded

and the matter has been filed pending further information coming to light.” Regardless of these exonerations, Christ Church has seen student protests demanding further investigations, with protestors holding up signs such as “the tribunal MUST go ahead” and “never try to silence the victim”. The Very Rev Martyn Percy has been embroiled in a separate long-running dispute with the Christ Church governing body, which was originally triggered by a 2018 disagreement over his level of pay. An internal judgement on that dispute was requested by the College and provided by Mr. Justice Andrew Smith. Cherwell also has a copy of this judgement, which ruled in favour of the Dean on all counts. Supporters of the Dean allege that, having failed to remove him through that procedure, the College has utilised the allegation of sexual misconduct as a convenient opportunity to increase pressure on him. Despite this judgement’s clear conclusions, the Dean continues to face suspension pending a separate college inquiry. The full report can be read on the website cherwell.org. Cherwell has redacted the report to ensure that any details which could identify the complainant have been removed. Christ Church declined to comment. Editor’s Note Having previously covered the dispute between Christ Church College and its Dean, Cherwell was approached some time ago by an individual who purported to know more. They decided to pass on this confidential judgement. A second judgement is in the possession of Cherwell, and will be released in due course. Along the way to publication, Cherwell was called and cajoled by an unnamed West End PR firm, employed by an Oxford College, that intended to ensure these documents were not published at this time. In the end, the team at Cherwell decided that the general interest dictated transparency and the publication of these papers. Throughout this process, Cherwell has aimed to ensure the anonymity of the complainant at all times, and to respect the letter of the law. For this, we thank our wonderful legal advisor Petra Stojnic, without whom none of this would have been possible.

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LGBTQ+ secretarial election plagued by misinformation Cherwell News reports on the spread of misinformation surround the current candidate for secretary of the OULGBTQ+ Society. CW: Bullying, transphobia The current candidate for Secretary for the Oxford University has suffered from the spread of alleged misinformation surrounding her campaign, with both messages and posts on public forums describing her as an “evangelical Christian” and “right wing (American) Republican.” Juliet Dyrud (she/her) served on the general committee of the Oxford University LGBTQ+ Society in the role of Trans Rep from 2021-2022, and is currently the unopposed candidate for the executive committee position of Secretary. She told Cherwell “I am not an evangelical Christian. Before coming up to Oxford I was never involved in any religious institution (church or otherwise). I have since joined my college’s non-denominational chapel but have not otherwise engaged with religion.” “I am also neither Republican, nor rightwing.” The candidate first became aware of the alleged misinformation about her circulating on the evening of January 29, following her hustings for the election. A number of messages surfaced in a group chat containing LGBTQ+ representatives from various colleges, beginning with an inquiry from Sara Pelham, asking “anyone know who the Republicans/OUCA/Union LGBTQ+ Soc[iety] candidates are?” to which she subsequently responded, stating “I think it’s the person running for sec who might be the Republican,” coupled with, “RON [Reopen Nominations] the Sec.” Another student, River Deng, commented

“[As far as I know] she’s an evangelical christian & right wing (American) Republican and wants to collab with OICCU [Oxford Intercollegiate Christian Union], the famously homophobic one.” The candidate referred to this message in particular as ‘bullying,’ stating that it was both irrelevant as it is possible the source of the allegation may have dug up information of her life pretransition and triggering of unpleasant past memories regarding her family’s politics. Sara continued the conversation, stating “I won’t feel protected by the society if they have people on committee collaborating with conservative groups like OUCA and the Union … Juliet on committee will be a massive step back.” At the same time, posts on the anonymous public forum Oxfess began to surface, such as “Feel so uncomfortable [right now] with a Union hack and a Republican running uncontested for LGBT Soc Exec,” and “Can’t wait for the LGBTQ+ Soc x OUCA collaboration with these Soc Exec candidates.” When asked whether she has ever intended, or currently intends, to collaborate in her capacity as an OULGBTQ+ committee member with The Oxford Union, The Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA), or The Oxford Intercollegiate Christian Union (OICCU), the candidate confirmed to Cherwell “I have neither intended nor currently intend to collaborate with any of these groups listed. I have never attended events hosted or in collaboration with the Oxford Union or the Oxford Uni-

versity Conservative Association. I have attended an OICCU-organised event on one occasion but am neither involved with them nor on their mailing list.” While it cannot be confirmed where these instances of the alleged misinformation definitively originated, the candidate told Cherwell that “the misinformation has alienated me from many friends and acquaintances who happen to be LGBT+ who heard the misinformation, assumed they were true, and came to false conclusions.” “Defending my reputation to so many people who are now questioning my integrity is a huge burden on my time and energy for an ostensibly apolitical election.” Section 7F of the OULGBTQ+ Society’s constitution reads “Whilst acting within the capacity of their roles, all Committee members must remember the necessity of the Society remaining apolitical.” At least one instance of the alleged misinformation originated from people on the Society committee, which led the candidate to the conclusion that the actions of the people messaging misinformation “clearly politicise the society.” The candidate told Cherwell “the behaviour of the current Society executive committee members does not accurately reflect section 7F. Just as it is political to spread misinformation, it is also political to fail to act to prevent the spread of misinformation.” “Failing to spot the spread of obvious misinformation about a candidate in groupchats, where Soc committee members were acting within the capacity of their roles, is a political choice of the Society in violation of 7F. And this is exactly what happened.” When further asked about the reaction to the alleged misinformation by the current presiding Executive Committee, the candidate told Cherwell: “The current Exec only

contacted me in reply to a request I made to clarify an ambiguously worded question in the Society hustings, in which I was asked about two separate topics: collaboration with the Union, and collaboration with other societies. I made this request because the minutes implied that my response to the second part of the question also applied to the first part of the question.” Regarding the messages and posts, the candidate said: “The LGBTQ+ Society president publicly replied to one instance of the allegations on Oxfess. “No Exec committee member has yet replied to more egregious misinformation in private, even though they had seen the allegations and were also acting in their capacity as Exec. Just because some of these accusations were made in private does not mean that they would not influence the election.” When approached for comment, the Executive Committee of OULGBTQ+ told Cherwell: “The OULGBTQ+ Society is absolutely committed to making the hustings and election process as fair as possible, and our election guidelines are very clear about treating all candidates with kindness and consideration. We do not tolerate online abuse, harassment or bullying, and this extends to anonymous election-relation posts, as per our Zero Tolerance Policy. Our rules make it very clear that if it is brought to us that somebody is posting abusive or harassing messages, they will be barred from elections and depending on the severity, may have further measures imposed after an evaluation by the Welfare Working Group. “We do not, however, wish to silence those in our community who wish to bring genuine and respectful concerns about the candidates’ ability to represent them as this is necessary part of the election process.”

NEWS

Headington Shark at centre of heritage dispute Daniel Moloney reports on the dispute regarding the iconic landmark’s heritage status. The owner of Oxford’s Headington Shark house has become embroiled in an argument with Oxford City Council over the iconic landmark’s heritage status. The sculpture, which was erected in 1986 by journalist and broadcaster Bill Heine, was the cause of a six-year planning row with Oxford City Council. Heine had submitted a planning application, which the council rejected. He appealed to the then-environment secretary, Michael Heseltine. The rejection attracted a wide audience who came to the shark’s defense. Peter Macdonald, Heseltine’s planning inspector, ultimately decided to allow the sculpture to remain. Now though, the Shark sculpture at 2 New High Street, Headington, is one of 17 proposed additions to the Oxford Heritage Asset Register. The position of the City Council is far different than its original attempts to remove the sculpture, and instead they intend to preserve it. The statue was constructed by John Buckley. He worked alongside a group of volunteers in what was a three month process before the shark was transported to its permanent location. Magnus Hanson-Heine, who inherited the house in 2016, is adamant he does not want it added to the city council’s list of important pieces of heritage. The quantum chemist,

who works at Nottingham University, said there were two aspects to his objection to its inclusion on the heritage asset register. Mr Heine said he feared it was “a stepping stone” towards getting it listed on a national basis, meaning more planning controls, although “this is academic as I have no intention of removing it”. On top of this, if it was listed, it would go against the purpose of the sculpture, which was to protest planning restrictions and censorship. He said: “I see what they are trying to do and I’m sure it’s very well intentioned. But they don’t view it now as what it is. You grow up with these things, they become part of the scenery and you lose focus of what they mean.” “My father always resisted giving any conclusive answer to the question of what the meaning was of it as it was designed to make people think for themselves, and decide for themselves what is art.” “But it was anti the bombing of Tripoli by the Americans, anti-nuclear proliferation, a n t i -censorship in the form of planning laws specifically.” Mr Heine qualified this statement when speaking to Cherwell stating, “Those were clearly reasons for putting the shark up, but the surreal shock of seeing something like that unexpectedly and having the chance to look again at your surroundings and

the art work with “fresh eyes” to add your own meaning, I don’t think that’s an afterthought.” Magnus Heine does not ‘resent’ the council for the years it spent trying to have the controversial sculpture removed or for finally approving of it. However, he has complained about the alleged restrictive nature of the public consultation on the addition of these landmarks. He said: “The nomination forms have been, let’s say, lacking in that they do not really provide an option to object to the listing for listing’s sake.” “They ask questions like ‘do you think it adds value to the area’ which most people would say, yes it does. They have not given the option to say no. They have not truly consulted in that sense.” The consultation ends on January 26 after the deadline was extended from December. A decision will then be taken as to whether the nominations should be added to the register. Inclusion of a building or place on the register “helps to influence planning decisions in a way that conserves and enhances local character”. However, it does not place any extra legal requirements on owners. Image Credit: Eoin Hanlon

Oxford researchers crack sweet potato mystery Matthew Clark reports on the evolution of the sweet potato. For over a century, the evolution of the sweet potato has been a huge mystery. New research from Oxford’s Plant Sciences department has revealed a key missing link that completely changes the prevailing understanding of not only this crop, but also migratory history of early humans. Oxford Professor Robert Scotland, the leader of the team says, “How the sweet potato evolved has always been a mystery. Now, we have found this new species in Ecuador that is the closest wild relative of sweet potato known to date and is a fundamental piece of the puzzle to understand the origin and evolution of this top-ten global food crop.” Sweet potatoes are ‘hexaploid’ with 6 copies of the chromosomes. Understanding when their genetic duplication event took place helps researchers to reveal when the sweet potato first evolved and became available to early human farmers. Yet, researchers have long been plagued by a perplexing dilemma. The closest known ancestor of the hexaploidic sweet potato was only a diploid, with only 2 copies of the chromosomes. A new study by the Oxford team and collaborators, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the International Potato might have cracked the code: a tetraploid called Ipomoea aequatoriensis. Genetics are a complicated subject that require very difficult research to make sense

of. The numbers of genetics vary widely between organisms, with human beings having 46 chromosomes, resulting from a pair of twenty-three chromosomes, and ferns having 1,440 chromosomes. Unlike mutations of single DNA letters, polyploidy is ‘obvious’ looking so it can be a great way for researchers to trace the evolutionary history of organisms and compare when the duplication events occurred. Especially for crops – it is estimated that up to 80% of plant species has undergone it at some point. A quirky jump from two to more chromosomal pairs is not unprecedented. Multiple times throughout genetic history, organisms have jumped from two to four or more chromosomal copies. The sugar cane, for example, has experienced this phenomenon many times over, resulting in up to 12 copies. Image Credit: Llez / CC BY-SA 3.0

On the web THE CHRIST CHURCH PAPERS Exoneration of Dean revealed. Pieter Garicano, Charlie Hancock, Estelle Atkinson

Blackwell’s removes antisemtic conspiracy book The Protocols of the Elders ‘interesting.’

of Zion described in synopsis as

Yan Chan

Hundreds protest local river pollution at the hands of Thames Water A demonstration 350 people gathered to protest sewage in rivers. Estelle Atkinson

COVID cases double among young people in Oxford following students’ return The latest data about COVID-19 in Oxford is analysed. Felix O’Mahony

NEWS

Oxford University has not joined pledge to stop using NDAs in misconduct cases Meg Lintern reports on Oxford University’s absence from the ‘Can’t Buy My Silence’ campaign. Oxford University is yet to add its pledge to the Can’t Buy My Silence campaign. The campaign aims to end the use of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) by organisations to settle cases of sexual misconduct, racism, pregnancy discrimination, and other human rights violations. According to the campaign’s website, “these agreements, which threaten people with legal consequences, are being used to cover up abuse, and in some cases, criminal acts”. Can’t Buy My Silence and Michele Donelan, the Minister for Further and Higher Education in England, co-created a pledge for UK universities to stop using NDAs for complaints of misconduct. So far, pledges have been made by fourteen universities, including the University of Exeter, UCL, and the University of York. As of now, Oxford University has not added its name to the pledge list. The Can’t Buy My Silence campaign was co-founded by Zelda Perkins, the first woman to break an NDA, which she had signed with Harvey Weinstein, and Professor Julie Macfarlane, a Canadian law professor who persuaded the Anglican Church to cease the use of NDAs for victims of clerical abuse.

In some cases, NDAs can have negative impacts on victims of misconduct. They can enable abusers to move workplace without revealing their past wrongdoings, prevent victims from speaking out about their experiences, and, in some cases, cause victims to live in fear of breaking the terms of the settlement. The campaign’s website claims: “not only are NDAs used to cover up abuse in workplaces, schools, youth clubs, universities, and religious institutions, but they also keep settlements secret wherein revealing the details – faulty products, gambling addictions, paying off harassers with public funds – would embarrass the responsible party. The list is long and shocking.” In 2019, it was revealed that between 2017-19 nearly £90mn had been spent by UK universities in payoffs to staff that came alongside NDAs, raising concerns that victims of misconduct within higher education were being “gagged”. Although Universities UK stated that some NDAs are used by universities to protect information about research projects, their use to settle allegations of harassment and other welfare-related complaints may also have contributed to the £90mn sum.

On January 18, 2022, Michele Donelan, the Minister for Further and Higher Education, announced that the use of NDAs for misconduct cases in universities must end. She said: “I am determined to see this shabby practice stamped out on our campuses.” Subsequently, Minister Donelan and Can’t Buy My Silence created the voluntary pledge which universities can join. Currently, only fourteen of over 150 UK universities have signed onto the pledge. The goal of the Can’t Buy My Silence campaign is to end the use of NDAs across the world. Their four principles are to legislate bans of all NDAs outside of protecting intellectual property, create regulatory reform within businesses and the law, prioritise the protection of victims, and increase workplace transparency and accountability. A spokesperson for Oxford University said: ‘Oxford University cares very deeply

about the health and wellbeing of our students. We condemn all forms of sexual abuse and violence, and supporting victims is a high priority for both the University and Colleges. ‘We urge anyone affected by sexual abuse, assault, or violence to contact their college or the central University where they will be offered help and support, including advice on their options if they wish to make a complaint. ‘Oxford University does not use non-disclosure agreements to prevent students from reporting sexual misconduct or other illegal or inappropriate behaviour. In exceptional circumstances, confidentiality agreements may be used once cases have been resolved.’ Image Credit: Kat Smith via Pexels

Family-owned Blackwell’s bookshop Oxford study reveals COVID-19 can cause memory loss put up for sale for the first time Daniel Moloney reports on the sale of Oxford’s beloved bookstore.

Lottie Keys reports on research into long-term effects of Covid.

Blackwell’s, the iconic family-owned bookstore, has been put up for sale for the first time in its 143-year history. The bookseller, founded in Oxford, also operates Heffers of Cambridge, as well as shops in London, Edinburgh and Manchester, alongside university campuses sites. According to the Guardian, the chain said it was looking for an external investor after a plan to put the business into employee ownership fell through. It said that the goal “ultimately proved to be difficult, due in large part to the ongoing uncertainty on the high street caused by Covid-19”. Driven by a boom in e-commerce, the business has managed to grow sales for the past five years, despite the pandemic. It ended 2021 with a 1.9% increase in revenue year on year. “The sale of Blackwell’s represents a genuinely unique and exciting opportunity for any potential buyer to own a much loved and trusted bookselling brand,” David Prescott, Blackwell’s C.E.Os., commented. Prescott told The Bookseller that staff had been briefed ahead of the announcement, but the sale was still at its “early stages” and he would not be drawn on potential buyers. However, potential buyers could include Waterstones, which is owned by New York hedge fund Elliott Advisors. It snapped up rival independent Foyles in 2018 and previously took over smaller booksellers Dillons, Hatchards and Ottakar’s. According to the Guardian, while such a deal might attract at-

Researchers from Oxford University’s Department of Experimental Psychology and Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences have revealed that people who have had mild symptoms of COVID-19 can show ‘degraded attention and memory for up to 6-9 months’. Whilst it had been understood from previous studies conducted that people have suffered from cognitive symptoms including difficulties in concentrating, forgetfulness and fatigue, from an acute infection of COVID-19, these findings had not been proven amongst milder symptoms of COVID-19. Now researchers have found that this memory loss is consistent amongst people who have shown no other symptoms of long Covid and have had asymptomatic to moderate symptoms. 155 participants were recruited for this study of which 136 were included in further analysis. 64 had contracted COVID-19 whilst 91 reported that they have not. Whilst none of the participants had received treatment in intensive care, three participants had been hospitalised and seven had displayed severe COVID-19 symptoms that had affected their ability to carry out day-to-day activities. The study asked participants to complete a number of exercises which would test their memory and cognitive ability. The exercises had a particular focus on cognitive functions considered critical for daily life, such as sustaining attention, memory, planning and semantic reasoning.

tention from the competition watchdog, the scale of competition from Amazon and WH Smith means it could gain approval. Blackwell’s owner Julian ‘Toby’ Blackwell said: “I would have loved to have handed over the company to its staff, but I also accept that in order to grow and remain competitive in the future, it is time for new ownership, ideas and investment. I have always stood for innovation and transformation in the constantly changing world of bookselling. I am delighted to have supported, and now see, Blackwell’s become a significant player in online bookselling and to have helped keep alive the concepts of service and expertise so well embodied by our chairman and board and our wonderful staff.” Image credit: Rosewoman / CC BY 2.0

A control group on factors including fatigue, forgetfulness, sleep patterns and anxiety were tested against all of the participants who had previously been infected with COVID-19, but they were not significantly different. The study found that the participants performed well in most of the exercises. Their abilities including working memory and planning showed good results. However, participants performed significantly worse in their episodic memory abilities (up to six months post-COVID infection) and a greater decline in their ability to sustain attention over time (for up to nine months) against those who had not been infected. Dr Sijia Zhao of the Department of Experimental Psychology said: “What is surprising is that although our COVID-19 survivors did not feel any more symptomatic at the time of testing, they showed degraded attention and memory.” Overall, the results prove that specific cognitive abilities are affected by COVID-19 infection but that after 6-9 months these abilities are not significantly different than normal which demonstrates evidence of recovery over time. Professor Masud Hussain has stated, “we still do not understand the mechanisms that cause these cognitive deficits, but it is very encouraging to see that these attention and memory impairments return largely to normal in most people we tested by 6-9 months after infection.”

NEWS

Jesus and New College announce support for ‘Thinking Black’ creative writing prize

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Elena Rotzokou reports on the creative writing programme for Black British students. Jesus College and New College have announced their intention to support Thinking Black’s 2022 Creative Writing Prize. The writing competition, which is part of Thinking Black’s Year 10 creative writing course, is launching in March 2022 and is targeted at black British Year 10 students. Providing participants with a prompt, the course asks them to respond in the form of writing they engage with the most. This year’s prompts are: “Folk Tales”, “Windrush”, “The Diaspora”, and “Writing Fundamentals”. Dr. Matt Williams, Jesus College’s Access Fellow, views the sponsorship as an inroad into making higher education in Britain more equitable: “We are delighted to be working with Thinking Black and New College on this new creative writing. It is essential that the University of Oxford and its colleges work towards widening participation of Black British students in higher education. Thinking Black do such tremendous work with young students and it is our privilege to support them.” Daniel Powell, New College’s Head of Outreach has stated: “We are very pleased to be supporting such an important initiative. We are proud to be a College that is fully committed to widening participation to university, and recognise the importance of these sorts of activities to increasing aspirations and ambitions of students from under-represented backgrounds.” Thinking Black is a social enterprise founded in 2017 in an effort to equip young black British people with transferable academic, communication, and leadership skills that allow them to evolve into successful leaders. It has supported over 200 Black British students over the years and is already being sponsored by Oxford’s

Pembroke College. Its current administrative team consists of Oxford students and graduates. At the moment, Thinking Black supports four programmes, each one tailored to a specific age group from Year 8 to Year 10 and focused on one of the following areas: art history, public speaking, essay writing, and creative writing. As participants in the programmes, students enjoy access to lectures, discussion groups, and skill-oriented workshops, as well as a syllabus of books, articles, and music by Black thinkers. Black university students and graduates mentor participants will assist them in producing a researched piece of work on a topic of their choice, for which they can receive a cash prize or which they can get published. They also have the opportunity to attend a Celebration Day at Oxford University. Hope Oloye, Director of Thinking Black and an alumna of Pembroke College at Oxford, has spoken about the Year 10 programme: “We’re so glad to be launching our new Creative Writing Prize in partnership with New College and Jesus College. “The programme provides young Black students across the country with the opportunity to attend high-level lectures, access diverse works of Black literature, and formulate written responses. Students will be rewarded for their work with cash prizes and publication in an online anthology. We can’t wait to get started!” Thinking Black’s website states that the programme aims to enable participants to “cultivate a more personal relationship with writing.” Image Credit: Bencherlite / CC BY-SA 3.0

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Oxford trials 4-day work Humza Jilani reports on the Oxford-led pilot programme due to launch next year. After a year that has seen skyrocketing numbers of resignations, the surging popularity of working from home, and corporate rethinks over the COVID-19 pandemic, employers are scrambling to hold onto talent and avert the worst of the so-called Great Resignation. Researchers from the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge might have found a solution: a 4-day work week, which is set to be piloted at up to 30 companies throughout the United Kingdom. Similar tests are expected in the United States and elsewhere. Participating companies will slash work hours from 40 hours a week to 32, and will closely monitor any changes in productivity and employee satisfaction. The trials will launch in June 2022 and last for six-months. The trial is also expected to cover issues such as corporate environmental footprints and gender equality, reflecting a feeling from companies that the growing concerns of employees and activists have to be addressed. The U.K. version of the trial is overseen by 4 Day Week Global, a nonprofit pushing for shorter work weeks and improved labor rights, in partnership with researchers from Oxford, Cambridge, and Boston College. Researchers will analyze data about productivity, interview participating companies, and think of metrics to measure the overall success of the program. Researchers and advocates hope that the trials will produce an informed report that can be used as a template for companies thinking of making the switch. They also hope to use the report to sway the opinions of policymakers. Already, France is pondering a 32-hour work week, which would be a reduction from the country’s 35-hour work week. Advocates hope to show that reducing working hours to four days, without cutting

pay, will result in the same productivity and economic returns for corporations. There is some anecdotal evidence that reducing hours can counterintuitively increase productivity and staff retention, thereby saving costs for companies, as well. Campaigners argue that cutting work hours can easily be achieved by cutting down on meetings and relying on technology to sort through workloads. One of the biggest hurdles that supporters hope to overcome is perception. Previous trials have had mixed results, owing to the different needs of specific sectors. There are also fears that shortening the work day would come with a cut in worker compensation, potentially creating new problems for workers and exacerbating burnout. The COVID-19 pandemic led to surging interest in their work, as the explosion of work-from-home policies led to a broader reconsideration of norms in the Western office culture. The trials are the culmination of four years of organizing and advocacy by the 4 Day Week Global, founded by Andrew Barnes and Charlotte Lockhart. According to their website, they’re committed to finding solutions to improve business productivity, worker health outcomes, strong families and communities, and promote gender equality. The COVID-19 pandemic led to surging interest in their work, as the explosion of work-from-home policies led to a broader reconsideration of norms in the Western office culture. Image Credit: MIKI Yoshihito / CC BY-SA 2.0

COMMENT

The world ain’t so bad after all Ed Grayson discusses what the pandemic has taught us about society, human nature, and what can fulfill us as individuals.

he issues facing many of us as we begin 2022 revolve around distance and separation from loved ones. Stories abound of families separated as a grandparent falls ill, unable to say their goodbyes to those they love. Online funerals, numbers limited, prevent, yet again, those very important and very final goodbyes. And of course, this is happening all the while those ‘business meetings’ at Downing Street rage on. And Omicron’s now a big deal by the way. Certainly, it would appear, at first glance, that the situation is all rather gloomy. The pandemic has, for all of us, manifestly altered our lives. Isolation has caused calls to mental health helplines to skyrocket, nearly doubling over the past two years. It is unbelievable to think that we are approaching the two-year anniversary of the beginning of the March lockdowns in 2020. There is a certain difference in colour when I think of the memory of the January prior, receiving my Oxford offer, and dreaming of a summer travelling around Europe with my friends; instead, I was confined to my room, anxiously prepping for a Biology exam that I was told I might have to sit, never getting the closure from a school I so loved, and never passing through a rite of passage that all before me had gone through. Thus, on entering university in the autumn of 2021, there was a great deal of unease amongst the matriculating class of 2020. School, it seemed, had not finished. Certainly, I felt as if one day I would be back in my Politics A-Level class sitting next to the resident flat-earther reading Mr Farmery’s classical PowerPoints. One of my best friends told me

that, mid-way through our first Michaelmas term at Oxford, she felt the same too, but also as if ‘no one knew the real her’. I too was feeling rather out of sorts, a shadow of my former self. A central agent of this change has been the transition to much activity online. Though I’m not the massive clubbing-type to the great disappointment of my friends, my freshers was stuck behind a desk, alone in my room. Naturally, I say this with a great deal of hindsight, but perhaps I would actually have rather enjoyed my friends pulling me out of bed at 10pm to go out in my pyjamas … an event which did, I must shamefully admit, happen come the end of the year. It is a revealing point: that come Trinity term, restaurants, bars, and social areas were re-opening, and crucially, that people were drawn in this direction. As England challenged for its first ever European Championships in June and July, it was as if COVID had become an urban myth, thousands lining the streets. Certainly, come the beginning of our second Michaelmas term, there was a sense of optimism about the new academic year. The pandemic was a thing of the past; and even when we realised it wasn’t, it was the social interaction that we craved, the personal connections formed that couldn’t be fostered behind a screen. And

“It was the social interaction that we craved, the personal connections formed that couldn’t be fostered behind a screen.” I finally went clubbing, but only the once. As I speak to this years’ freshers as Hilary term begins, I’m glad to hear not only that they had a good Michaelmas but that they’re all back for their second term of the year. I

personally did not fare so well alone in the winter months in lockdown, absent from Oxford in Hilary; the photos of my beautifully shaved head resembling a certain Wallace of Wallace & Gromit, as my friends chose to see it, will certainly testify to this. What the pandemic has revealed is our fundamental need for personal connection and interaction. Although it may have altered the practice of interaction, it has not led to a manifest change in people’s hearts. People crave interaction, and people need it to function at a very chemical and biological level. I imagine that in years to come the records we leave behind will be fiercely studied by anthropologists and sociologists alike, looking to understand what drives people, and what connects them. The pandemic has revealed the fundamental interconnectedness of people, and that the world in which we live is one in which we are all a part, one in which we are all valued, and one in which we all have a responsibility to look after each other. Indeed, a great by-product of isolation has been friends increasingly ‘checking-up’ on each other, particularly amongst men, when perhaps it would have been a sign of weakness to do so. The pandemic has been a very uniform, blanket-level experience that has shed light on the real ties that exist between people. This has been corroborated when talking to many of my teammates in the various sports teams I’m a part of. The way they have opened up to me about their troubles, but also of the support they have received, is indicative of this awareness of the value of our friends and of our relationships. I’m far from predicting the end of the materialist and commercialist climate in which we’ve seen grow in the last 75 years; I’m just trying to say that the world really ain’t that bad after all, and that people do, fundamentally, care about each other. Therefore, I write this piece looking back on both my own experiences of the pandemic

Heidi Fang on Lunar New Year 2022

years through an oddly romantic hue. We have witnessed an immense period of change that has revealed not only so much about our society but also so much about ourselves. It is easy to imagine that the pandemic will force a changing way of life, but this presupposes a lack of human agency that certainly hasn’t been corroborated as the pandemic has begun to ease. Over lockdown, Netflix was perhaps the nation’s most popular pastime, and I began another binge of Friends for perhaps the 6th time in my short nineteen years (certainly not the nation’s most popular pastime). But did you see how many people turned out to watch Spider-Man: No Way Home? If there’s one thing for sure, it’s that people love the cinema, or perhaps it’s Andrew Garfield’s rugged handsomeness; but even more so, that people coming out of a time of isolation and fragmentation, have realised how much they loved the world in which they used to live. The return of fans to the cinema - and also to the football I might add - has highlighted what we truly love by their absence; and as a by-product shown that perhaps the pandemic won’t be as devastating in the longue durée. Despite the sorrow and the agony we have all experienced in the last two years, a silver lining can nonetheless be found. The pandemic will pass, and life will return to normal; but this, I hope, will be a normality in which we appreciate those around us, and look for the good in society and in others which the pandemic has so evidently revealed.

COMMENT

In a tale of Eastern European democracy, all unhappy families are alike Justas Petrauskas discusses the role of trust in the rise of authoritarianism in Eastern Europe.

he first sentence of Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina states what is often referred to as the Anna Karenina principle: ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ When it comes to democracy, in Eastern Europe there indeed seem to be a lot of unhappy families. Hungary, under the leadership of Victor Orban, is the only EU member classified as only a ‘partly free’ democracy. In Poland, the ruling Law and Justice party is moving towards a similar direction: free and independent media is under attack, the opposition are painted as traitors and the country’s constitutional court is firmly under the control of the party. Tiny Slovenia’s prime minister is experimenting with media-targeted assaults, and in Serbia Covid-19 is being used as justification for excessive restrictions on individual liberties and electoral cycle disruptions. The question is, however, are they really all unhappy in their own way? Are all these instances of democratic backsliding and shifts towards hybrid authoritarianism really unrelated and separate in origin? The remarkable similarities between the countries’ transitions towards one or another version of ‘illiberal’, ‘flawed’ or ‘plebiscitarian’ democracy suggest a different version. In 2009 Victor Orban, head of Hungary’s right-wing populist Fidesz party declared that after a series of election losses it was time to create ‘a central political forcefield’ in the country. Only three years later, helped by the unprecedented election victory in 2010, a new Hungarian constitution, combined with official and semi-official reforms, entrenched Fidesz’s domination in the judicial system and the media. In 2014, the party secured the constitutional super-majority for the second time, with the electoral playing field fundamentally altered and boundaries between the Fidesz party and Hungarian state essentially erased. The same story continued in Poland, where Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the éminence grise of the right-wing, populist and fiercely socially conservative Law and Justice party, declared in 2011 that ‘a day will come when we have a Budapest in Warsaw’. The day came in 2015 when Law and Justice won the first full parliamentary majority in Poland’s post-communist history. It was not long before judicial reforms effectively eliminated constitutional checks and balances, party loyalists filled an astonishing portion of civil service jobs and public broadcasters were turned into a mouthpiece of the ruling party. When the 2019 election came, Law and Justice comfortably received the highest vote share by any party since the country’s return to democracy in 1989. The fate of Serbian democracy followed along similar lines and in Slovenia, it can be argued, the first steps of this transition to flawed democracy are starting to materialise. It is not even that important what the state in which these countries find themselves is called – although ‘flawed democracy’ seems to serve the purpose best. What really matters is that the quality of the democratic environment in Poland, Hungary, Serbia and Slovenia is deteriorating. The changes these countries went through are not in themselves remarkable. In fact, they broadly resemble what Larry Diamond, a leading American democratisation scholar, has identified as ‘autocrat’s twelve-step program,’ including the demonisation of opposition, control of the judiciary and breakdown of independent media. What is remarkable though, is that these instances of democratic backsliding were localized in a very particular region and very specific period of time. They occurred to the East of the former

Iron Curtain, a couple of years after the 2009 financial crash and evolved during the uncertainty of the Covid-19 pandemic. To fully grasp how these similarities come into play, it is crucial to understand one thing: flawed democracy, no matter how quickly it comes about, never does so as a complete package. There is no bundle of measures that voters agree upon to approve a ‘hybrid regime’ or a ‘partly free’ democracy. There is no referendum on the abolishment of judiciary independence or sidelining of the NGOs. No party – not even Orban’s Fidesz and Kaczynski’s Law and Justice – include proposals to limit media freedom in their election manifestos. Instead, these changes come individually and societal support for them is gathered not as part of a complete, systematic package, but as support for individual ideas and measures. Poland’s crackdown of its constitutional court was motivated and carried out as an administrative reform, designed to eradicate the influence of former communist judges. And who, in a country whose darkest years have passed under the shadow of hammer and sickle, would disapprove of it? On the same note, the Law and Justice’s implementation of generous transfer payments to families with children and support for Poland’s infamous ‘LGBTQ-free zones’ are received well in a more conservative and rural east of the country.

“The strength and vulnerability of democracy, in short, is about trust.” This is where the strength of these populist authoritarians lies. To come to power, they do not need to persuade all of the electorate to agree with them on all the measures. They only need to get part of the population to agree on some individual measures separately. And the more vulnerable the electorate is to populist proposals, the more disillusioned people are with the status quo, the easier it is for would-be-authoritarians to get to power and start the destructive work of transitioning towards flawed democracy. Democracy is vulnerable to such attacks if the electorate has less faith in the the parties, the civil servants, the government agencies, the politicians and the journalists which make up the system as a whole than they do in one political actor promising to fundamentally alter and change the system in the benefit of the people. The strength and vulnerability of democracy, in short, is about trust. And trust is the factor which Eastern Europe is lacking. As the Pew Global Attitudes survey highlights, social trust – beliefs about the trustworthiness of other people – is in decline in the region. However, the situation is much worse with another kind of trust, the institutional one. The fifty or so years which these countries spent as communist-ruled USSR satellite states has generated social environments in which trust in institutions was punished. Trusting party-controlled media would have led one to form ridiculously false beliefs about the state of reality. Trusting government institutions and being a dutiful citizen would have prevented one from reaping the rewards of the shadow economy, which flourished due to the crystalclear shortcomings of the centrally planned one. Trusting one’s colleagues in work and expressing one’s beliefs about forbidden topics like failures of the state, life in the West or benefits of intellectual freedom could have resulted in job loss or, at worst, imprisonment. The communist societies of Poland, Hungary, Serbia and the USSR were societies characterised by the extreme

hostility of citizens towards the state and everything related to it: courts, government agencies and politicians. In HBO’s miniseries Chernobyl there is one particularly illustrative scene. When Valery Legasov, a soviet scientist, testifies in court and speaks of ‘lies that practically define us’, he speaks not only about fatal design flaws in nuclear reactors. His speech is also a reflection on society which had lost something that makes it a society in the first place – trust. Fifty years under authoritarian communist rule cannot pass without consequences. The effect of lack of institutional trust on the robustness of democracy is tragic. The whole democratic project, including parties, the media and NGOs, are significantly weakened and become more vulnerable to the attacks from populists who seek to paint them as flawed, illegitimate and not on the same side as the people. In healthy democracies, these attacks and political actors behind them are quickly identified and either refuted or ignored by most of the population. But where social trust is low, it is easy to sell one social group as scapegoats – the liberals, the gays, the EU supporters – and capitalise on these attacks on one’s way to power. The lack of trust also fuels other factors which make Eastern European democracies more vulnerable. One is growing urban-rural division: market-based reforms carried out in the 1990s unleashed the potential of cities and helped to generate a new, liberal and educated urban class, but resulted in slowly shrinking rural areas which are often poorer, less educated and more likely to support populist, socially conservative parties. In Hungary, Orban’s Fidesz was first elected mostly with the help of rural voters who were disillusioned with the previous socialist government. He carried on with the same support group ever since: those who distrust the “liberal values imposed by the EU” and those who are not educated enough to spot the manipulatory tactics used by the Fidesz-controlled press. These are the people whose faith in democracy as a project – all those

gruelling discussions and government changes every four years – was not high in the first place. In Poland, support for Law and Justice roughly divides the country into two parts – socially conservative rural East and liberal urban West. The would-be authoritarians of Eastern Europe also make use of its relatively weak social institutions. The media is not as strong or independent as in the West and twenty-or-so years of democracy is often not enough to establish well-followed precedents or evolved norms. However, the fact that the deterioration of the state of democracy was so quick and that societal divisions still exist in these countries means that there is some hope for the future of democracy in Europe’s east. In Poland, opposition parties control the Senate and in the streets of Warsaw, Krakow and other major cities protests against the destruction of rule of law or the oppression faced by the LGBTQ community often erupt. In Hungary, the united opposition goes almost head-to-head with Orban’s Fidesz in opinion polls and, with parliament elections coming up in 2022, could pose a serious challenge to Orban for the first time in a decade. This hope is, unfortunately, fragile. The longer Law and Justice or Fidesz or Serbian Progressive Party stays in power, the tighter their informal and formal grab on state institutions will be. The fact that societies are divided means that it becomes more difficult for the opposition to build a unifying case. It can then rely only on its own support base in cities, and this base is, after all, limited. Finally, no matter what strategies opposition parties choose, the structural obstacles will still be there. A significant portion of the population in Eastern European countries will still lack explicit trust in democracy as a system, with all its imperfections, and instead will tend to fall for the promises of populist leaders. Eastern European democracies are likely to continue to look like a group of unhappy families, but unhappy in one, very specific way.

Is Oxford a model institution? Isobel Lewis Is Oxford ‘elite’ or is it still just elitist? While there aren’t quite so many profligate Sebastian Flytes roaming around, admitted for their status alone, Oxford still has a long way to go in terms of its diversity. Oxford certainly isn’t perfect, but for those who are admitted the university experience can live up to more positive expectations. Yes, the hours are long, the tutors can be uncompromising, and the clubbing is disappointing. But the difference between the standard of education I’m receiving compared to friends studying humanities degrees at other universities is staggering. Academically speaking, other universities could learn a lot from Oxford. Having said that, I swear I found a stress-induced grey hair the other day so my positivity might be premature.

Zoe Lambert Oxford is not a model not only because it shouldn’t be but because it can’t be imitated. A product of a rich but not always admirable history, Oxford holds a unique and unparalleled position as an epicentre of cutting edge research and development housed in an institution older than the Aztec Empire! Even if you could somehow manage to ignore the darker side of the institution- the burnout, the cover-ups, and not to mention its colonial past- and embrace the features which make it so distinctive, attempts to model other institutions on Oxford would only appear pretentious.

Sonya Ribner I feel very privileged to attend Oxford, but I think the more you attend a university,the more you recognize that it’s difficult for a model higher education establishment to exist. As I use the American college system for a point of comparison, I find the tutorial system for undergraduates an incredible privilege - first years at Oxford are able to study with professors who are at the top of their field, whereas a first year at most United States colleges would be exclusively in seminars or lectures. However, I find the college system at Oxford means that certain opportunities that available to certain Oxford students are not available to others which can create an unequal educational environment.

Vlad Popescu I think Oxford is a model institution for all the wrong reasons - familiar of the microcosm of all the faults and corruption within British politics, the destination of so many after leaving here.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Science Snippets

The future of COVID-19 viral evolution? Aditi Chandra discusses fitness landscapes in virology.

A Mars Rover detects chemicals that could hint at past signs of life. NASA’s Curiosity rovers team detected traces of carbon trapped in a handful of rocks that are particularly enriched in light isotopes of carbon. On earth, the signal would have been seen as a strong indicator for ancient microbial life, but scientists are cautious not to eliminate other nonbiological reasons at the current stage.

Particles formed from the first seconds of the universe found in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. In the first millionths of a second after the Big Bang, the universe was a mixture of trillion-degree plasma of quarks and gluons. While cooling, these particles occasionally collide to form short-lived “X” particles. Today, X particles are extremely rare, but this research by MIT physicists marks the first time researchers have detected X particles in quark-gluon plasma.

Tech Tidbit

recent article in Quanta magazine explores how scientists have been attempting to predict the future of the pandemic by understanding the constraints on the virus’s evolution. The genetic material of any organism is like a computer program written in sequences of four types of either RNA (for many viruses) or DNA bases (for all other species). Changing the sequence, or genotype, of base pairs changes the program: in general, small changes will have small or no effects. These changes, which biologists call mutations, occur frequently and almost randomly in nature. (There are several caveats to this claim, and sometimes even a single mutation can have huge effects.) When a virus has enough mutations to change its behaviour and shape (the phenotype), it becomes a new variant or strain. Mutations happen because of random, independent events, and in general, this means that several significant mutations are unlikely to occur at once in a single generation. For a new variant to emerge from the original strain, the virus must accumulate the right mutations over several generations. This alone doesn’t limit the space of possible variants, although it slows down large changes. The more important restriction comes from natural selection. Natural selection compels the virus to gather its mutations in a specific sequence; in other words, the order of mutations matters. This is because some viral genotypes could leave the virus impaired and unable to function or replicate efficiently in their hosts - that is, some genotypes have low evolutionary fitness. If the virus moves into such a genotype “on its way” to becoming the next variant of concern, then the chain of mutations is likely to be broken simply because this strain of the virus dies out. One of the first people to formulate a way of thinking about whether evolution can deliver an organism to a particular spot in geno-

Continental scientific inventions Cherwell’s SciTech Editors share their favourite scientific or technological discoveries from each continent.

frica - glue - South Africa

Net Neutrality Law upheld by the Appeals court in California. Put in place in 2015, the California law calls for strict net neutrality rules, barring internet providers from blocking or throttling apps and websites as long as they are legal. It also banned prioritisation of paid content by ISPs. Internet providers and the Department of Justice under former President Trump have since filed multiple lawsuits against the state, but the decision by the federal appeals court on Friday ruled that California’s net neutrality law can remain in place. Image Credits (top to bottom): NASA/JPL-Caltech / CC by 2.0 via Flickr, Maximilien Brice (CERN) / CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons, Ai.Comput’In / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via Flickra

type space was the American biologist Sewall Wright. Wright re-imagined the problem in terms of a “fitness landscape” and reduced it to three dimensions to make it visualizable. The basic idea is that variation is represented on the horizontal axes (this could be either genotypic or phenotypic variation), and the vertical axis - the height - tells you how well a virus that is characterised by the values on the axes at any point will do in the real world. When you zoom out, you can expect to be looking at a picture of a landscape, with peaks and valleys, and perhaps the occasional canyon where a small mutation has led to a large change in fitness. If you were to drop a swarm of viruses over some region of the landscape, over time, natural selection would leave only the viruses that climbed to the top of a peak - those with the highest relative fitness. Depending on where you start, this doesn’t have to be the highest peak (and often isn’t, in practice); it may just be the peak that is nearest or easiest to climb. Our swarm of viruses usually can’t get to a higher peak by crossing a valley (this is why the order of mutations matters) because they would struggle to survive at all once they’re actually in the valley. Sewall Wright invented fitness landscapes to think about evolution, but they didn’t just remain biological tools. Fitness landscapes as a conceptual aid show up where the problem involves a large or high-dimensional space and only a few correct answers. The idea appears everywhere from the social sciences to string theory/cosmology, and is arguably one of the most powerful tools in science to conceive of problems with large spaces. In principle, the landscape idea does the trick: you need as many dimensions as there are bases that can mutate, but once you’ve got those, and a way of experimentally testing or even predicting fitness, you can predict evolution by exploring the connections between peaks. So where’s the catch? In comparison to humans, viruses have tiny genomes. SARS-CoV 2, for instance, has about 30,000 RNA bases. By contrast, humans have about 3 billion DNA bases. While the number of base pairs doesn’t fully determine

Glue is an understated but highly influential technological product of the African continent. Although glue may be thought of as being first invented by Neanderthals over 200,000 years ago, the oldest compound glue originates from South Africa c. 70,000 years ago. Archaeologists at Sibudu Cave and Rose Cottage found evidence of multiple types of glue created from disparate ingredients. The different properties of each glue were made useful for different purposes.

Asia - Radio waves receiver - India

Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose was one of the pioneers in radio communication, but he was often forgotten in history due to his aversion to patents. In 1895, Bose ignited gunpowder and rang a bell at a distance using millimetre wavelength microwaves, and noted in an essay the potential for wireless communication via radio waves. Following Bose’s demonstration of radio waves in 1895, he designed an “iron-mercury-iron coherer with telephone detector”, nowadays known as a radio waves receiver.

Europe - Vaccines - England

Edward Jenner in the late 18th century when he developed a smallpox vaccine which led to

its eradication. He and other scientists noticed the rumours that milkmaids were immune to smallpox, and that those infected with cowpox would not contract smallpox. Through some truly unethical tests, he found that his gardener’s son (James Phipps) was immune to smallpox after being injected with the pus of a dairymaid (Sarah Nelmes) who herself was infected with cowpox.

North America - Colour television Mexico

The engineer Guillermo Gonzalez Camarena created the “chromoscopic adapter” in 1940, which was defined as an adapter that could transmit and receive colour images. In his document outlining his invention, he used various intricate illustrations to demonstrate the model for such a system. What’s more, Camarena was just 17 when he came up with the model.

Oceania - Wifi - Australia

The first WLAN (wireless local area network), dubbed “ALOHAnet”, successfully connected seven computers on four islands of Hawaii without using a phone line in 1971, but it was expensive and the signals were extremely prone to interference from even the smallest object. Australia’s CSIRO real-

an organism’s complexity - onions have about 14 billion more base pairs than humans - the limited size of a viral genome still means that they must be relatively simple. But even viruses aren’t simple enough to make the problem fully solvable by a fitness landscape. 30,000 bases translates into nearly a quintillion (ten to the seventeenth power) possibilities. Even for computers, that’s hard. Add to that the difficulty of predicting the fitness of a genotype and the complications of testing this in the lab, and it’s easy to see why biologists have largely used fitness landscapes as a metaphor rather than a quantitative tool. This may now be changing with increased computational power and machine learning, and some argue that the fitness landscape is making a comeback. One way in which using the landscape has arguably worked is for the smaller problem of understanding the stability of mutations in the part of the coronavirus spike protein that binds to human lung receptors. The ubiquity and reach of the fitness landscape doesn’t mean that it’s without criticism, however. The idea has been criticised for being misleading: three-dimensional intuition doesn’t easily translate to high dimensional problems. While the landscape conveys some basic intuition, it is possible that the idea of peaks and valleys does not represent what really happens in higher dimensions. Some have argued that the problem is better represented by a network, with nodes representing genotypes and edges the mutational paths between them. Of course, the notion that the landscape is static is wrong too: the environment that determines the fitness of a genotype is constantly changing (vaccines and widespread immunity may have changed the fitness landscape of the coronavirus, for example). Several alternatives to the fitness landscape have been proposed, and the criticisms and caveats to the model mean that the landscape is an imperfect but valuable conceptual aid to convey basic intuition. Evolution is highly complex, and it may never be possible to predict it. While science has made significant progress in anticipating the routes the virus’s evolution could take, the future of the pandemic is still unpredictable. ised they could apply a method called “Fast Fourier Transformation” to strengthen and stabilise the signal. When the patent for this improvement was filed by CSIRO in 1996, and by 1998, it was apparent that the wireless communication standard would rely heavily on the CSIRO’s technology.

South America - Freeze drying - Peru

The Inca Empire came up with clever methods for freeze-drying, something not seen in other parts of the world in the 13th century. The Incas used to leave potatoes under a cloth out in the cold at night, and then squeeze out the liquids. This made it easier for them to carry food over long distances, and the dried potatoes, or otherwise called chuño, could be preserved over long time periods. Many believe freeze-drying was invented by NASA in the last century, but they merely developed the Incas’ elaborate idea.

... and Antarctica - Antarctic Treaty System - international cooperation

Although Antarctica has no native population, there are a few thousand people there all year round. There are no commercial industries, and visitors are either scientists or tourists. More abstractly, we posit that the Antarctic Treaty System as the continent’s most important invention. Beginning with the main Antarctic Treaty in 1961, it served as an agreement to recognise that: Antarctica should only be used for peaceful purposes, and that substantial scientific knowledge could result from international cooperation in Antarctic research. There are currently 70 permanent research bases which represent the individual and collaborative efforts of 29 countries.

BUSINESS & FINANCE

Breaking Down the Microsoft-Activision Khusrau Islam explores the largest deal in the gaming industry and potential. ramifications.

n January 18th, Microsoft announced that they would be acquiring Activision Blizzard for $75bn. This is Microsoft’s biggest ever deal, and the biggest one in the gaming industry. Microsoft is set to become the world’s third-largest gaming company in revenue, behind Tencent and Sony, and their gaming market share is set to increase from 6.5% in 2020 to 10.7% after the deal closes. Microsoft want to take a larger share of the 3 billion active consumers in the gaming industry. Activision can give them access to their players across the globe, which Microsoft might be looking to add to their Game Pass subscribers. Activision can also give Microsoft a foothold in mobile gaming through their 21.22% share of the mobile gaming market. The acquisition is also meant to provide the “building blocks” for the metaverse, according to a press release issued to announce the acquisition. On Activision’s side, the company is beset

Do student VCs make sound bets? Emma Toner takes a look at Student VC funds at Oxford and whether they are successful or not.

ne look at the popular press will show you the powerful grip each has on the nation’s collective imagination and the UK economy. Modern media is filled with the stories of entrepreneurs that defy the odds to attain phenomenal success. The entrepreneur has become a modern-day cowboy, exploring new industrial frontiers much the same way that renegades once explored the Wild West. By their side sits the venture capitalist, who funds their vision and in exchange, they get a piece of the action. Venture capitalists (VCs) are private equity investors that provide capital to nascent, high-growth potential companies in exchange for an equity stake. Notable examples of VCs include Sir Michael Moritz KBE, the co-founder of the Moritz-Heynman Scholarship as well as Peter Thiel, a PayPal co-founder who was also Facebook’s first investor. Some funds are aware that the next “unicorn” (a startup company with a $1 billion dollar valuation) may well be found on a university campus – Microsoft, Facebook, and Google are all examples of businesses that had their roots in such places. Increasingly, these funds are hiring students to scout for them. One such fund at Oxford is Creator Fund. Founded by alum Jamie Macfarlane in 2019, it is now spread across 28 universities in the UK. In 2020, the fund raised

with reports and lawsuits over a toxic work culture, and a declining share price. These factors helped lead Activision to approach Microsoft for an acquisition. This deal could have major ramifications in the gaming industry. This deal has caused speculation that either Microsoft will look to consolidate their position and acquire more gaming companies, or other companies will do the same to compete with Microsoft. Independent gaming companies, on the one hand, may receive increased interest resulting in higher stock prices, but on the other, as larger companies look to consolidate their acquisitions, gaming studios that are left on the outside may find it difficult to compete with these tech giants. This deal also represents efforts to break into the metaverse. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, in the press release that the acquisition “will play a key role in the development of metaverse platforms”. The metaverse is an all-encompassing term for a whole universe of virtual reality (VR) £1.5 million from Founders Factory and Schmidt Futures. This enabled its student analysts and investment partners, consisting of undergraduates, MBAs and PhDs, to invest up to £150K in promising seed to pre-Series A student-run tech startups. In April 2021 Creator Fund led a £685 K seed investment round for Baseimmune, a Jenner Institute startup using machine learning algorithms to develop variant-prone vaccines. Another such fund at Oxford is REMUS Capital. Founded by Krishna Gupta in his MIT dorm room in 2008, it maintains a presence at universities in Boston, Silicon Valley, London, Cambridge, and Oxford. Its campus analysts seek to invest in seed to early Series B startups “with a special interest in vertical technology and researchdriven companies at the intersection of humans and machines”, according to its London associate Marc Felske. REMUS has invested in a handful of successful Cambridge-based research-driven ventures such as Cambridge Cancer Genomics,

“The entrepreneur has become a modern-day cowboy, exploring new industrial frontiers much the same way that renegades once explored the Wild West. ”

which was acquired by Dante Labs in 2021. Last year, REMUS’ first ever portfolio investment, Presto, announced its intentions to go public via a $1 billion merger with the SPAC (special purpose acquisition company) Ventoux. So why students? For the same reason that Nathan Rothschild made a fortune from the Battle of Waterloo: early information. Jack Chong, an Oxford campus scout for REMUS, suggests that the unique

spaces and communities linked together. In it, people can work and play, and metaverse marketplaces rely heavily on cryptocurrencies. The technology industry is currently gearing up to move into the world of VR, as shown by Fa c e b o o k ’s r e c e n t r ebr a n d i n g into Meta. One of the big challenges facing this shift is consumer uptake. In 2021, the VR market size was approximately $4.8bn. The gaming market constituted almost 30% of that. Gaming is seen as the original manifestation of the metaverse as many games have their own virtual marketplaces and communities. By acquiring Activision, Microsoft also gain control of more online communities than the ones they currently have. Microsoft is hoping that they can build

a larger virtual network through Activision’s current users to populate their virtual spaces with, which could help them become a significant player in the metaverse. A potential roadblock for the deal will be antitrust concerns. Microsoft, through this acquisition, will be able to expand the scope of their gaming ecosystem. But on the flipside, because of this control, they can potentially restrict access of their games to other devices. Currently, they have pledged not to do this with certain franchises, such as Call of Duty. To assuage antitrust regulators, Microsoft will need to prove “the deal is neither anticompetitive nor harmful to new firms or consumers”. The face of the gaming industry is set to evolve. Through this deal, for better or for worse, Microsoft will have more control over the sector. Just as the Disney-Fox merger affected the nature of streaming, we could see the gaming industry become controlled by fewer, yet larger companies. Moreover, the deal could help them build larger virtual communities to establish a foothold in the metaverse. And why should we care? This deal could be one of many that shape the future of entertainment.

selling point is their ability to tap into the Gen-Z and student ecosystems. Students are far better connected within their university communities, more than any external scout or VC could ever dream of

Quick Takes

Read the full article at Cherwell.org.

“In VC, presence leads to deals. Deals lead to some limited success. Success being. They have one-of-a-kind access to student start-up support, but also student societies, or friends and acquaintances who are on the prowl for investment. As Chong adds, ‘in VC, presence leads to deals. Deals lead to some limited success. Success begets success.’’ The second reason is demand for students; venture capital is perceived to be difficult to enter for university graduates without ample experience in the financial industry, discouraging people from joining. Student VC experiences offer a tangible edge for future career prospects. Marc Moesser, an investment partner of Creator Fund, elaborates on these benefits: “Our analysts and new investment partners get an in-depth training in every aspect of VC, from finance, business strategy to negotiation and investment term sheet legals. You already know investors from other VC funds. Many of our student alumni joined top VC funds straight out of undergrad or grad school, which is normally almost impossible.” Like their more established counterparts, whether student-run VC firms make sound bets or not depends on their available capital, networks, and the extent to which the businesses they invest in generate returns. Taking chances on startups is risky, as more than 90% fail and 1 out of 5 of these within their first year. In another sense, student VC schemes can be a sound bet because they offer participants unique skills and experience conducive for entering the investment profession or becoming entrepreneurs themselves.

“Turkish Finance Minister Nebati says inflation will be contained at 40% this year. Is Nebati delusional? The TCMB’s nutty monetary policy has toasted the lira. Today, I calculate Turkey’s inflation at 94.86% using high frequency data.”- Steve Hanke, Applied Economics Professor at Johns Hopkins

“The National Insurance Contributions rise will in fact fall least on those who can most afford it. It is a tax rise that lets the mega rich off the hook.” - Jo Maugham, Founder and Director of the Good Law Project

“The racist attacks against Lisa Cook are fundamentally about power and who is centered when the most important economic decisions are made for our country.” - Pat Bayer, Pofessor of Economics at Duke, on the appointment of Dr. Lisa Cook to the Fed Board of Governors

EDITORIAL

Masthead SENIOR EDITORIAL TEAM Jill Cushen (she/her), Charlie Hancock (she/her), Estelle Atkinson (she/her), Maurício Alencar (he/him), Thomas Coyle (he/him), Flora Dyson (she/her), David Tritsch (he/ him), Katie Kirkpatrick (she/ her) NEWS Meg Lintern, Pieter Garicano, Humza Jilani, Daniel Moloney, Isaac Ettinghausen COMMENT Sonya Ribner, Vlad Popescu, Zoe Lambert, Isobel Lewis FEATURES Leah Mitchell, Jessica DeMarco-Jacobson, Hope Philpott, Mia Hynes PROFILES William Foxton, Issy Kenney Herbert, Niamh Hardman, Klemens Okkels SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Jennivine Chen, Milo Mee BUSINESS & FINANCE Khusrau Islam, Hung Jen Wu CULTURE Clementine Scott, Jimmy Brewer, Anna Mayer STAGE Rebecca Walker, Dorothy Scarborough FASHION Ciara Beale, Madi Hopper, Iustina Roman MUSIC Flynn Hallman, Zachary Sutcliffe FILM Wang Sum Luk, Caitlin Wilson BOOKS Elena Buccisano, Eliza Browning LIFE Michaela Esau, Katerina Lygaki THE SOURCE Anna Roberts, Shiraz Vapiwala, Thomas McGrath SPORT Edward Grayson, Oliver Hall FOOD Maisie Burgess, Rose Morley, Mille Drew PUZZLES Ifan Rogers CREATIVE Zoe Rhoades, Rachel Jung, Heidi Fang, Benjamin Beechener, Mia Clement

Jill Cushen (she/her), Editor-in-Chief This week has been a bit of a shitshow for me. Nevermind fifth week blues, I’ve had the worst bout of third week turmoil going. Yes, you guessed right. This is another case of an Oxford student taking up highly coveted editorial space to rant about their so-called problems. Indulge me just this once. I’m a problem solver but when you can’t pinpoint the problem, you can’t solve it. I’ve struggled with allowing myself to feel stress more so than actually being stressed, wrongly believing that because I don’t deem my problems problematic enough, then I should just get over myself. Not true. As anyone who helped me in my fragile state this week wisely advised (you know who you are), stress is not comparable and sometimes it isn’t even explainable. The root of my mood this week is that ‘I’m human and sometimes life’s just a little bit shit’. An Oxford workload may have contributed. Oh, and running this paper (solidarity, Charlie). But hey, at least it gave me something to write about - it’s all fodder when you’re a wannabe tabloid! Why did I share this with you? What in-

sight will you (by you, I mean the three or four people who actually care to read these 300 words of nonsense) be extracting from this week’s diary entry (ehm, I meant editorial)? Sorry to let you down this time but the answer is nothing. I have no life affirming wisdom to impart on you or mind-blowing conclusion to offer. I will take this opportunity to assure those who have also weathered a storm of chaos this week that things can only look up from here and that we’ll be the ones laughing when the impending blues of fifth week find us immune. Scrap that, more practical advice would be to take this time to prepare yourself for a possible round two. P.S. If I’ve been an emotional drain on you this week, take this as a formal apology. When (or if) I regain my sanity, we can role reverse. crucial to find an opportunity to pause for a moment and be overcome by something greater. For some, that will be religion. For others, the lovely sunsets we’ve been treated to recently. For me, it has been enjoying the thrill of live music again. Long may it continue! I want to end by giving a shoutout to the Cherwell team for their sterling work this week. I mean, Cate Blanchett in Cherwell! You have all outdone yourselves! I do, however, want to draw special attention to the work of our news team, especially everyone who worked on our front page story. I am amazed that none of you are sick of the sight of my face after the number of calls we have taken over the past few days. But it has been a reminder of the incredible dedication and hard work which goes into everything we do. That’s what makes all the stress worth it!

Charlie Hancock (she/her), Editor-in-Chief I’d like to apologise to the people who witnessed my little conducting break in the Lower Reading Room of the Rad Cam last week. I had, against my better judgement, decided it would be a good idea to listen to a playlist of Russian walzes while trying to meet a deadline. I didn’t meet it. It turns out that listening to music which is supposed to inspire you to move isn’t very condusive for sitting still and focusing. But one thing that has happily come back into my life recently is live orchestral music. Sitting in the rather swanky auditorium of St John’s last week, I felt the hairs on my arms prickle as the orchestra tuned in preparation up for some Shostakovich. How I had missed that feeling of anticipation! I grew up playing in orchestras (I was first chair horn, which entails serious main-character energy) so was reminded of the trepidation and excitement of seeing if your many hours of practice would result in sublime harmony, or an embarrasing flubbed note in the middle of your big solo. Among the hectic pace of Oxford life (and boy, has this been one of those weeks), it’s

Leader: Heritage vs Hegemonies

Flora Dyson (she/her), Deputy Editor ‘Gallwch chi basio’r tatws os gwelwch yn dda?’ These words have resonated with me a decade after I heard my cousin speak them to my grandmother. Whether you are Welshspeaking or non-Welsh-speaking, you are probably puzzled. The phrase, intelligible or not, means ‘please could you pass the potatoes?’. Still confused? I thought as much. I believe it is time for some explanation. I must have been about nine years old, perched on my chair at a family dinner, more engaged with the passing about of a roast than the general chatter of my family. Yet, this small snippet of familial pleasantry has not left me. I had little clue what my cousin had said to my grandmother; it was finally realised when a plate of potatoes sailed passed my eyeline. For it was this moment when a disconnect with my cultural heritage became explicit to me – I had missed out on an unbounded realm of language and culture. Recently I was reminded of the disconnect between my Welsh heritage when planning to watch Saturday’s Six Nations match against Ireland. As we discussed our excitement, my friend pre-emptively asked me if I had a

Welsh rugby top with me. With this comment I noticed a flock of intestinal butterflies taking flight in my stomach, my mouth opening to an ‘O’ like orifice and my eyes widening to the notion of having yet-another-thing-to sort, I realised this disconnection with my Welsh roots yet again. Though materialist and not representative of any inner sense of identity, I have, once again, been reminded of my familiar Welsh imposter syndrome. The thought of not being clad red in a Welsh rugby shirt for me represents a sense of cultural neglect – the sign of an outlying English intruder with the only sign of any Druidic heritage laid bare in my red hair. Despite my roots and dramatically Celtic complexion, I am ashamed to say I know little of its language. I have lived in England all my life and whenever I have begged my father to teach me a little Welsh, the mother tongue is mystically forgotten. Every so often I unleash

“Despite my roots and dramatically Celtic complexion, I am ashamed to say I know little of its language.” favourite party trick and ask my indifferent friends if they want to hear me count to ten in Welsh (again) and express my disappointment I forget number six (again, sorry chwech). It is not as though I have not had the chance to become well-versed in the Welsh tongue. After numerous failed Duolingo sessions and hopeless attempts for my Welsh family to engage me in conversation, the lazier (English) half of me conquers and I slump back in to its natural hegemonic phrases. It is this Anglophilic hegemony

which has dominated my sense of cultural identity. The Greek word hēgemonía means “authority, rule, political supremacy” and reflects my reigning sense of English identity. Operating greatly through language, Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemonies runs deep in English-Welsh history. Only recent devolution and increased powers to Cardiff have encouraged the combatting of the lingua franca of the dominant English state. Yet all David Lloyd Georges, Catatonias, and Welsh Language Acts in the world could not bring out on bilingualism I have missed out on in childhood. The historic, hegemonic Anglicisation of Wales runs deep in its geography and nationwide psychology. Edward I’s castles, a signifier of English cultural supremacy scattered throughout Wales, have left a mental imprint, and supressed my cultural connection as they represent hegemonic English rule – politically, linguistically, and culturally. In this half-and-half mental battle between kingdoms, English continues to dominate, though not to the complete quashing of my Welsh identity. My Welsh Id remains confused: when the Six Nations flashes on to a television screen, I feel my inner Druids raise their mystical heads and burn red with nationalistic pride. Yet, when I hear my family converse in Welsh around me, I feel alienated and yearn for a stronger sense of cultural connection through the language I have missed out on. Though I failed to learn a little Welsh in my infancy could a cultural disconnect be unified by watching enough rugby, doing enough Duolingo, listening to enough Catatonia, and using more disjunct phrases with my Welsh family to enter a dialogue with my cultural heritage and devolve power to my suppressed identity? Quite simply, I want to embody the message of Catatonia’s ‘International Velvet’-‘Every day, when I wake up, I thank the Lord I’m Welsh’.

CULTURE

CONTENTS CULTURE

12 | Pink Week Special

MUSIC

14 | Oxford goes underground: In conversation with Komuna

FILM

15 | Star gazing: In conversation with Cate Blanchett

THE SOURCE

16 | Snowdon Aviary 17 | A Christmas Flower

BOOKS

18 | Dystopian fiction: Comforting or terrifying?

STAGE

19 | Digital theatre for a digital age

FASHION

20 | I believe in unicorns 20 | Say it with flowers: Signifiers of queer fashion 21 | These boots are made for livin’

FOOD

22 | Restaurant review: Wilding

A word from the Pink Week President Maisie Molyneux, President of Oxford Pink Week 2022, on this year’s events, breast cancer and the importance of raising awareness.

ake sure to check yourself at least once a month!’ ‘It’s super easy, literally just have a touch around while you’re in the shower!’ ‘All it takes is copping a feel!’ These are all phrases you will undoubtedly have heard at some point over the last few years. Except maybe you haven’t, because surprisingly few people have been taught about the importance of checking yourself regularly, and this is part of what Pink Week is here to combat. Spreading awareness is one of the most effective ways of helping prevent the worst excesses of this disease, and so we make it one of our goals to reach as many people as possible, helping to arm them with the necessary information to detect the potential symptoms of breast cancer early, which is what it could take to make the difference between surviving this disease or not. Perhaps it seems strange that what we do occurs in large part amongst university students. When you think of the average breast cancer sufferer, you’re not thinking of the person sat in the Rad Cam with their Pret (necessarily obtained at this point with a subscription registered with the email of someone’s sister’s friend’s cousin’s mum) wearing a college puffer and Doc Martens; or the person

religiously attending Bridge Thursday’s, buying everyone overpriced shots for which they will never be reimbursed, even though the bottom of that overdraft is looking dangerously close… And yet the truth is, breast cancer can affect anyone, of any age and any gender, and we all need to know the signs to prevent it and have access to the means to treat it and talk about it. Into Pink Week itself: This year we have tried to incorporate a wide range of events happening all across the colleges and the city, which people can look out for. We kicked it off with an informational panel event with two speakers - Isobel Gordon and Maja Niksic - who talked about their respective fields of breast cancer related research. Tuesday brought a collaborative drinks night with the LGBTQ+ society. As I write this, tomorrow, Wednesday, we will attempt to walk 10k (emphasis here on attempting because I am navigating, and it is for this reason that the following events are operating on a conditional basis - the condition being that we don’t end up in Abingdon or half way down the A34…) and then head over to the Oxford Union in the evening for a night of £1 shots and karaoke! Our event planned for Thursday - a collaborative cocktail evening at Vinnie’s with Atalanta’s - has

been postponed, but do not fear, it is most certainly not cancelled! Friday sees the day of our Pink Ball, at the Isis Farmhouse - the biggest event of the week, at which you can expect lots of drinks, lots of cupcakes, and lots of boogying (imagine your local bakery owner meets Strictly meets a minor alcohol problem). Then to finish on Saturday we’re hosting a friendly netball tournament at LMH with free PINK ice cream, of course. Through these various events, we hope there will be something for everyone, and that we can raise awareness about breast cancer and its risks, whilst also relying on the incredible generosity of the people who attend them to raise as much money as possible for the five amazing charities whom we are supporting this year: CoppaFeel!, Walk the Walk, Breast Cancer Now, Teenage Cancer Trust, and the Leanne Pero Foundation. By providing what we’re sure will be a fun week of inclusive events, we’re aiming to also give people invaluable information about as much as we can related to breast cancer, and to help raise as much money as we can so that more people can receive adequate treatment and care for a disease which does not discriminate and can only be stopped if we support those working ceaselessly to fight it.

The politics of pink: A brief history of pink Anna Mayer takes us on a whistle-stop tour of the colour pink’s place in politics.

s a Pembrokian, I have an affinity for the colour pink – our college is, affectionately, the ‘House of Pink’. I remember commenting that the horde of Pembroke Freshers meandering down Park End Street on the first Bridge Thursday of Michaelmas, donning our pink freshers t-shirts, resembled a kind of ‘pink tide’. My comment certainly invoked the rich, dare I say colourful, history that pink has, socially and politically. From various feminist causes to centre-left polity, the colour pink calls forth almost a century of political turmoil and turbulence. The colour has long had a volatile meaning. Up until the end of the nineteenth century, it was a colour of youth; largely genderless, perhaps only slightly masculine by its association with red’s connotations of violence, anger and agression. By turns pink has been associated with luxury, the working class, prostitution, socialists. Indeed, according to Bloomberg, pink only became associated with femininity after the end of World War II, when canny advertisers began directing pastel pink appliances and upholstery towards women as an antidote to the military-inspired fashions and textile rationing of wartime. This was part of a postwar effort to remove women from the workforce and reestablish their traditional homemaker roles, marking out the feminine territories of the domestic and domiciliary and symbolising it within a self-contained pink universe of womanhood. It indicated a specific stratum of feminine experience. This connotation was extended to baby girls in the 1980s when ultrasound technology was first used. Since then, using

colour to mark out identity has become a Pink had staked its claim in the most dividistinctly 20th and 21st century obsession sive US election in living memory. – take, for example, our preoccupation The story of pink continued with Nancy with the visual symbolisms of gender Pelosi’s pale pink ‘mask-to-pantsuit colreveal parties and their perpetuation of our-coordination’, to borrow the words of blue and pink as gender signifiers. This Hilary Clinton on twitter. Still the colour theme is sustained by its multitude of maintained its grip on the twitterverse, gendered cultural associations, from the with the hashtag #AmbitionSuitsYou lazy stereotyping of Barbie memorabilia accompanying the motif of the hot pink and stuffed Care Bears to y2k chick-lit and pantsuit as part of a 2020 campaign to Mean Girls. At the same time, though, the mobilise American women to vote. A 21st century has embarked on projects of number of celebrities unapologetically subversion and, ultimately, destruction donned the pantsuit – Kerry Washington, of the constraints of such binaries with Zoe Saldhana, Mandy Moore and Amy only more seriousness. The global lexicon Schumer among them. One twitter user has stretched beyond such reductive coined it ‘pink power’. The Guardian gender-binary terms. Certainly, named pink ‘the colour of activpink has been reclaimed as ism’ in an article published in the unlikely hero of vari“The everthe same year. Pink’s road ous feminist and LGBTQ+ to reinvention was driven changng signimovements, freed of its by its reclamation and gender-normative shackreappropriation within fance of pink has les and given the power feminist politics. to challenge social conOutside the arena of worked to define structs and existing gender politics, the colparadigms. our pink certainly gives and redefine its Following Donald a subtle nod to the ‘new Trump’s inauguration in left’ governments of early own politics.” 2017, the pink pussycat hat 21st century Latin America. became a key piece of visual Left-of-centre administrations imagery employed by the in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Women’s March that opposed him – Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela formed defiant and dissenting creations of knitwhat the media coined the ‘pink tide’. Pink ted protest against Trump’s misogyny, was adopted as a softer, more muted vernamely his infamous ‘grab ‘em by the sion of the socialist and communist red, pussy’ comment. The march, which ended in the same way that the pink tide’s social up being the largest single-day demondemocracy was slightly more centrist and stration in US history, was an expanse capitalistic than its radically Marxist counof pink. The colour symbolised a story of terparts and predecessors. A distinct turn sisterhood and solidarity in the face of a towards progressive social and economic multitude of threats to women’s rights. policies, the pink tide saw Latin American

politics radicalised and their governments populated with former activists and trade union leaders. It was a resolute move away from the neoliberal model that persisted at the start of the century. Ultimately, while this turn to the left resulted in significant reforms that worked to lift millions of people out of abject poverty, the leadership of these regimes were unable, in the face of the assault from vested interests, to sustain their hold on power to carry out the more radical changes necessary to realise a more equitable social order. That is not to say that the pink tide didn’t leave a pink shadow. It fundamentally changed the location of the centre of Latin America’s political spectrum, forcing right-wing candidates and succeeding governments to adopt more socially-conscious administrations. In many ways, it challenged the prevailing free-market fundamentalist Washington consensus. Once again, the colour pink functioned as a vehicle for powerful social and political change. Indeed, as Leatrice Eiseman, Executive Director of the Pantone Color Institute asserted, ‘our use of colour is connected to the cultural mood.’ ‘Colours that celebrate our desire to break boundaries satisfy our fervent need for playful creativity and unconstrained visual expression’ she said. Colours don’t have intrinsic meanings – they simply soak up the meanings that we project on them. They exist both within cultural, social and political categories, and across them. In this sense, the everchanging significance of the colour pink has worked to define and redefine its own politics.

CULTURE

Pinks ribbons: The stagnation of a story Jimmy Brewer reviews and re-evaluates the history of the pink ribbon as a symbol for breast cancer awareness.

pastel pink ribbon, looped once, pinned to the lapel of a photogenic model, iced onto a biscuit or sold at a charity fundraiser. Now made gigantic and carried out on to a football pitch. A pink ribbon is lightweight, neat, cheerful – everything breast cancer is not. Perhaps because of this, as a symbol of awareness for the disease, it has endured. You may even be familiar with the story of its origin. It is 1992, and Self – “a magazine for women that specializes in health, beauty and style” – is compiling its annual breast cancer awareness special issue. Editor in chief Alexandra Penney, and Evelyn Lauder – senior at cosmetics company Estée Lauder – read a column about 68-year-old Charlotte Haley, who is distributing peach-coloured ribbons with the accompanying message “National Cancer Institute annual budget is $1.8 Billion. Only 5% goes for cancer prevention. Help us to wake up our legislators and America by wearing this ribbon.” Haley’s work is covered in the LA Times, described as a “personal, simple effort”. Alexandra Penney, market savvy, sees promise in the little peach ribbons, and calls Haley up to ask permission to use her idea in Self’s national campaign. Haley starkly refuses: ‘Too commercial.’ Taken aback, Penney and Lauder consult their lawyers. They are told, to their joy, that if they change the colour of the ribbon, they avoid the problem of permission. Peach loses its blush and becomes pastel pink. The edition of the magazine is a success and ribbons are distributed at Estée Lauder cosmetics counters nationwide. It only gains more traction after that;

today the pink ribbon is the most recognis- It is clear that in the pink ribbon story able symbol of breast cancer awareness. each rewrite did not have access to any This is a succinct narrative, perhaps new material. even an accurate one. Due to the PR success of the pink ribbon, Online coverage of this story is patchy, the story is looked back upon uncritically. with evidence of cut and paste from a 1997 Charlotte Haley is rightly seen as inspiraccount of it by Sandy M Fernandez, in ing; the more controversial Alexandra which Alexandra Penney is interviewed. Penney is not an idea thief but merely “You know how it is when things are in the “market-savvy”. air,” she says breezily to Fernandez of There is one notable dissenter: the atmosphere in the Self office Katherine O’Brien, on her before the special issue was blog ihatebreastcancer. released. Being the one who After a rare wellpopularised the ribbon, “As much as progress researched account of Penney gets the last the pink ribbon story, word. has been made, breast she wonders if the There is something profits from that in the story that recancer remains a year’s breast cancer sists reimagination. awareness issue of For a start, the tale – a Self will be donated deadly, frightening dissmall-scale campaign to research, or, engulfed by corporate ease that has cut many, more likely, kept power – has a strong by the company. arc, and feels complete. O’Brien ends the many lives tragically Secondly, Charlotte Hablog post with a burst ley passed away in 2014, so short.” of righteous anger: opportunities to interview “Well, as one of primary sources are dwindling. 150,000 U.S. people curOn top of this, rather than hisrently living with metastatic torical truth, pieces covering this story breast cancer, I want people to know that are often preoccupied with a different Oct. 13 is National Metastatic Breast Canpurpose – usually advocating breast cancer Awareness Day. In the U.S., incidence cer awareness. To illustrate the lack of im- of stage IV breast cancer—the cancer that aginative re-examination of the story: the is lethal—has stayed the same over the cards Haley distributed with an attached past 20 years; screening and improved p e a c h ribbon implore their recipients to treatment has not changed this. “join the grassroots movement.” The word “I am not among the millions of people ‘g r a s s -roots’ has been latched on to in who subscribe to Self. If I were, I would almost every account I have found online. rip out every page of breast cancer re“Haley was strictly grassroots,” “It’s a lated advertising and return it to editor grassroots movement,” “a grassroots ef- in chief Lucy Danziger and tell her fort,” “Charlotte’s grassroots campaign.” I support groups that support research.

Wearing the colour pink Clementine Scott discusses the anxieties surrounding wearing pink. Every year of my Oxford degree so far I’ve optimistically bought a ticket to the Pink Night fundraiser, and every year I’ve arrived at the same quandary a few weeks later: what to wear. I know it isn’t particularly sustainable to be buying new pink outfits every year with little repeat wear potential, even if they’re thrifted, but I am occasionally too weak to resist the promise of a fresh Instagram post, and so I have become well-acquainted with the pitfalls of wearing pink. Every possible shade of the colour seems to come with its own potential issues — pastel can feel a bit fairy princess, or worse, bridesmaid, coral makes it seem like you didn’t think you could pull off a ‘proper’ pink, and Schiaparelli-esque fuchsia is such a domineering shade that it threatens to wear you rather than you wearing it. I also think that part of the reason why pink can be such a difficult colour to wear is found in its diverse usage in popular culture. Much has been made of the mid-20th century shift from pink as a ‘boy colour’ to a ‘girl colour’, through landmark hyperfeminine iterations of the

colour worn by Mamie Eisenhower on Inauguration Day 1953 and Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, but less is made of how pink was now the definitive colour not just for girls, but for every type of girl. No other colour has had quite such a range of iconic female characters in film clad in it. While white and black-based looks still adhered to the Madonna-Whore dichotomy, pink was the definitive colour for every section of the spectrum of female archetypes from toxic feminine mean girl icons like the Pink Ladies and Regina George, to Molly Ringwald’s ingenues, to genuine role models like Elle Woods. In the words of the Lebanese designers Azzi & Osta, pink “represents the softer or the wilder side of a…woman”. Yet this universal palette of pinks provided to women across the board has inspired some reactionary approaches to the colour. The mid-2010s were the age of ‘millennial pink’ as the subject of derisive Guardian articles, and pastel manicures clasping rose gold iPhones, and more than ever before pink was associated with a particularly delicate brand

of femininity. At the same time, to a certain group of people born between 1999 and 2003, a certain shade of pink brings flashbacks to Tumblrs filled with sunsets and bub- blegum pink cigarette lighters overlaid with Lana Del Rey lyrics or question- able takes on mental health — here, suddenly, was pink gone grunge. The point is, people wanted pink femininity but without any hangups about being bad feminists, and the result was an aesthetic that seemed more regressive than any cinematic rich bitch’s go-to pink blazer. By the time Jodie Comer’s Villanelle made her debut in pink tulle in 2018, and stars from Gemma Chan to Dakota Johnson took cues from her at the Oscars the following year, the idea of an edgy, ‘not like other girls’ girl in head-to-toe pink felt a bit passé. So where next for pink? Who What Wear forecasts a step away from millennial pink and soft pastels, and towards hot pink, via Zendaya power suits and ubiquitous Jacquemus bags. However, just as paler pinks bring to mind troubling questions about our femininity and how we express it, brighter pinks can tread a fine line between feminine power and caricature. As long as pink has its cultural and political baggage, there will be few colours through which one can express oneself in a wider variety of ways. With the problematic versatility of pink uppermost in our minds, let the annual Pink Night outfit search commence.

I would ask her to write about people with metastatic breast cancer and help readers understand why it is different from earlystage breast cancer. I would ask her to do an article on recurrence. I would ask her if she thinks we have enough awareness.” This shatters abruptly images of pastel pink ribbons adorning photogenic models. The post begins to chip away at the original narrative from an oblique angle. O’Brien does not refute the facts, and instead highlights how tangential – and potentially obscuring – the media friendly pink ribbon tale can be to more painful issues. Like the fact that breast cancer is the second most common cause of death in women in the UK. Or that an estimated 12,000 women are living with undiagnosed breast cancer due to the pandemic’s disruption to screening services. Only the journalism from 1992 manages to capture any of the urgency and momentum of Charlotte Haley’s project. The story and imagery today has become folklore, an American tale of the elephant and the mouse, disconnected from crueller realities. The story functions the way a pink ribbon does. Both bring to mind ideas of ‘awareness’, which can certainly be positive, but are unproductivel if the thought goes no further than that. Neither bring home the grief of living with, or living alongside someone with, breast cancer. As much as progress has been made, breast cancer remains a deadly, frightening disease that has cut many, many lives tragically short. For the pink ribbon, superficial awareness is a start, but its inability to capture the devastation the disease still causes is where its symbolism ultimately fails.

55,920 cases In the UK, on average (based on statistical averages calculated from data between 2016-2018) there are 55,920 new cases of breast cancer every year.

11,547 deaths During these same years, there were 11,547 deaths from breast cancer.

25% In 2015, 25% of breast cancer cases were preventable.

MUSIC

PLAYLIST DOWN TO FUNK In the theme of this week’s print edition, our team has selected their funk favorites.

FUNKIN’ FOR JAMAICA Tom Browne Flynn Hallman

777 Bruno Mars, Anderson Flora Dyson

HERCULES Aaron Neville Flynn Hallman Image Credit (top to bottom): Jakob Owens/ Unsplash, slgckgc/ Flickr, John Matthew Smith 2001/ Flickr.

Oxford goes underground: In conversation with Komuna mune,’ or ‘have an intense conversation’”. The name neatly captures the atmosphere Flynn Hallman interviews Adam associated with the Warsaw Autumn festival, promoting the interactivity of a of Oxford’s upcoming queer music event with the intensity and energy funk, jazz, techno and of the underground scene. We asked how he classical night - Komuna. hoped the Plush event would also achieve this. “There’s going to be such a variety of music styles,” he said “and the idea is to hree Wednesdays away from Komu- blend them seamlessly”. Rather than having na’s launch event at Plush on the one act after another, he spoke of different 16th of February, Deputy Editor, Fora sounds, performances and approaches to Dyson and I sat down to chat with genre “progressing into each other, hopefully to try and make the experience as immersive the group’s director, Adam Possener. The event is advertised as ‘an immersive as possible”. “From funk to experimental jazz, night of queer funk, jazz, contemporary clas- you can trace a path,” he explained, “the more sical and techno music’. It aims ‘to celebrate experimental the jazz is, that can then go into queer contribution to experimental music as the classical, and then go into the more techno stuff” and so on. The intention is part of Pride Month’. It’s the first prothat “everything is amplified,” he ject of Komuna, a collaborative said, there’s live music as well group of musicians and artists, as DJ sets “so it should run split between Oxford and from DJ into London, and we wanted to “Komuna’s launch seamlessly string quartet.” In the get to know more about spirit of the group’s creaits origins. Adam explaiin a few week’s tive experimentation, ned that the idea for the this blended approach project came from his time represents an extends beyond the experience attending event’s music. Textual the experimental Warattractive experirecordings are incorposaw Autumn festival rated into the set-lists, over the summer. “I’d ment in a means of while all the group’s never heard classical artwork (some of which contemporary stuff in escape.” has already been released a club before,” he said, “I on their instagram page) is thought it was really cool, and done by their own artist and something there’s not as much graphic designer. of in the UK”. He went on to talk The topic of conversation then turned of the underground nature of the festival, and its conduciveness as an environment for to Plush’s suitability as an underground flourishing countercultures in musical expe- setting capable of providing a similar sort rimentation and underrepresented artists of counterculture atmosphere to that of the and approaches. “I came back thinking ‘I want Warsaw Autumn festival. “It’s a really cool to do that here,’ so I got some people I know space,” he said, “its underground, quite small and confined, they don’t normally have live together”. Shortly after its formation, the group agreed music there but I think it will be quite an on the name, ‘Komuna’. “It’s a Polish word,” interesting environment for it.” We wondered how the night’s music would he explained, “It kind of translates as ‘to comreflect this aesthetic, and particularly how he hoped it would celebrate queer contributions and experiments in music. “We’re trying to celebrate it but not completely separate it,” he said. “We didn’t want to ghettoise the music, it’s about focusing on underrepresented artists within those spheres.” He gave the example of one of the songs on the string quartet’s repertoire for the evening, ‘Gay Guerilla,’ by Julius Eastman. A late 20th-century minimalist composer, Eastman’s body of work has only recently begun to receive greater critical acclaim and public exposure, and Adam spoke enthusiastically of the process of hunting down his original, scrawling, handwritten score in order to adapt it for the string quartet ahead of rehearsals for the event. Asked about his views more generally on underrepresentation of queer artists in the music industry, he referenced techno as a prime example of a genre with popular heteronormative associations, with a tendency for queer contributions to be underrepresented and delimited. “You have to delve deeper into a genre to find different artists,” he said, “because they’re all there, but when it’s done it’s done separately, as only for the queer community”. In this sense he also spoke about his hopes for Komuna’s launch to bring something new in comparison to more mainstream pride events. Beyond (and by no means belittling) the Lady Gagas of the world, he outlined that “there’s so much more that also needs to be heard at these events.” In a similar vein, we wanted to hear more about

his views on underrepresentation and a lack of choice in the Oxford music scene. “There’s a lot of the same music being played,” he said, especially with a lack of club venues playing things outside the repetitive Bridge and ATIK pop repertoire. “Even on the classical side, lots of it here is very samey,” he admitted, perhaps hinting at the immutable presence of Bach and Elgar billboards outside the Sheldonian. With this lack of musical range naturally comes a lack of representation, and in turn, a diminishment of opportunities for individual expression. As he went on to say: “what’s useful about having [the range of venues catering to different music genres] in London is that you have a scene, there’s a vibe and aesthetic, and you don’t have that here so you have to kind of make of it what you can.” This seems to be the key aim for Komuna’s launch on the 16th of February. “It’s about what you do with the space,” he said, not only hoping to bring respective music scenes to Oxford, but on the same night, at the same time, and in the same room. The hope is ultimately that by enabling these scenes to seamlessly interact with and inform each other, they will also inspire a different kind of interaction between those attending the event. In this sense the theme of ‘conversation’, evoked in group’s name, seems all the more apt. As Adam went on to explain, this also ties in to the dress code for the evening. Left as one word, ‘experimental,’ he explained that “the dress code is a way for people to relate to the event.” The genres or sounds people associate themselves more with will “feed into their style, and so that improves on the conversation idea, because by showing and wearing or performing an outfit they’re part of the night and its atmosphere”. The event is marketed as unique for Oxford. Its tagline of ‘this is not your average club night’, full of the potential for platitude, actually feels genuine. Amidst your average Oxford term-table of late night kebab peregrinations, and reluctant, instantly regrettable, trips to Bridge or ATIK, Komuna’s launch in a few week’s time represents an attractive experiment in a means of escape. I mean, what’s not to like? It’s at once a club night and an underground festival, it will have multiple DJs and live music performed by a string quartet, all with the intention of celebrating pride month through an immersive interspersion of sounds, outfits, and influences. We ended our chat by asking Adam how he would sum up the evening as an experience for those attending. He answered honestly: “it’s an experiment for everyone… maybe you’ll end the night at a kebab van, but you’ll have had an experience that’s a bit different”. Now there’s certainly no cynicism about kebab vans here, but to take his point a bit further, maybe it’s worth considering what journey you want to take to that famed destination of the Oxford night out a few weeks from now. Hopefully it will be after resurfacing from Plush after a new, interactive, underground experience of an Oxford music event, and not another Wednesday stuck in the ATIK. Thanks to Adam Possener for the interview. Follow Komuna’s instagram page @komunacollective for event playlists and more info about the launch. Image Credit: Gala Hills

FILM

Star-gazing: In conversation with Cate Blanchett

Must See

Wang Sum Luk interviews double Oscar winner Cate Blanchett. Thought Cherwell just interviewed journalists? Think again.

t’s a strange feeling to stare into the void of a Zoom loading screen, waiting for a two-time Oscar winner to join the call. But that’s what I did one Sunday morning, counting the seconds until my interview with Cate Blanchett began. Her schedule was packed—plenty of news services wanted interviews regarding her recent roles in Nightmare Alley and Don’t Look Up, two movies considered likely to receive Oscars nominations—but she found the time for a half-hour audio call. I take a deep, but not quite calming, breath as she joins; knowing time is limited, we briefly exchange greetings and begin. The first thing I want to know is how she was cast in Nightmare Alley, a film noir about the rise and fall of Stan Carlisle, a carnival mentalist in 1940s America. In the movie Blanchett plays Dr. Lilith Ritter, a cunning psychologist who seems to partner with Stan, but has an agenda of her own. She tells me that she and director Guillermo del Toro had previously spoken about working on a project together; while that original project never bore fruit, he kept her in mind when it came time to cast Nightmare Alley. “I read the script, and was blown away by it, because it felt so distinct and obviously was drawing from deep recesses of not only the novel,” she says (referring to the 1946 novel by William Lindsay Gresham which the movie adapts), “but things that Guillermo and [co-writer] Kim Morgan had been thinking about for a long time.” I agree with her, saying that the movie’s clearly inspired by del Toro’s personal interests, such as his fondness for filming weird things in jars. Laughing, she tells me that she and del Toro have a shared love of the horror genre—“I was gripped by that all through my adolescence… I now can’t watch a horror movie without peeing my pants”. But Nightmare Alley doesn’t just rely on the sinister visuals that del Toro is often associated with; rather, halfway through the film the setting shifts from a seedy, exploitative carnival to the elegant ballrooms and offices of New York. While beautiful, it’s ultimately an equally dark and destructive realm—“there’s blood in the panels of those walls,” Blanchett says of that setting. So what makes film noir relevant as a genre these days? There are so many archetypes of the genre that can be used in a sloppy way, Blanchett notes, and a mere replica of its conventions can just end up being a “cinematic history lesson”. But what del Toro has done is to harness the tropes of the genre—characters haunted by a dark past, spaces that are claustrophobic and confining—and show how they remain pertinent to the psychology of the modern world. Gresham’s novel was previously adapted as a black-and-white film in 1947 by director Edmund Goulding, and while Blanchett likes the film and had seen it prior to signing on to this project, she does point out a limitation in its storytelling. For her, the 1947 adaptation’s characterization of Dr. Ritter felt “hazy”,

less memorable than some of its other components—but this, in a way, was useful. Without the fear of being held back by Dr. Ritter’s portrayal in the previous version, she could put her own spin on the character. “She had to be a little Sphinx-like, in the sense that she’s asking the question, but you sense that there’s a power and weight of experience behind those questions,” she says. Del Toro prepared a detailed biography for the character, which Blanchett tells me was headed by a quote from Hamlet: “I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in”. However, because she knew that to explicitly show her character’s past would be saying too much, the movie only hints at her true self and history. Blanchett especially praises the film’s production design, by Tamara Deverell, as a means of implying Dr. Ritter’s true nature—“I’ve never walked onto a set that so absolutely represented the character I was playing”. Ultimately, she didn’t want the character to be a stereotypical femme fatale, who sought to destroy men “simply because”; rather, Dr. Ritter had been physically and mentally scarred by a cruel world, and was trying to bring about a twisted form of justice. But that goal wouldn’t be achieved without Stan Carlisle, played by Bradley Cooper, who her character simultaneously works with and undermines. “I adore Bradley”, she says, as an actor as well as a producer and director. They found that they had similar rhythms as actors, so that performing alongside him was enjoyable even in the darkest and most complex scenes—“it’s a dance of death… it’s a matador and a bull,” she says of their characters’ dynamics. On the topic of the actor’s craft, does she see acting more as telling the truth or telling lies? She reflects on the question, telling me that for her, ultimately, “acting is revealing”. The things revealed can range from being pleasant to repulsive— “but it’s never, ever telling an audience what to think…I suppose that’s what art is, isn’t it? It does more and resonates more than what it seems to do on the surface.” Maybe that’s why some people think that art and acting is deception, she says. With this film and Don’t Look Up (a disaster movie by Adam McKay that satirizes the inaction and misinformation surrounding the climate crisis) speaking to the uncertainty of the modern world, I ask her what it’s like to try and make sense of truth in a time where nothing seems to be known. She agrees that it’s become difficult to hunt the truth out, to get at the things that are foundational to a democracy. “I feel for students

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SERIES Mrs America This gripping miniseries centres on conservative activist Phylis Schlafly’s fight against feminism. Flora Dyson

at the moment,” she says, wondering when it was that truth became degraded into nothing more than competing information sources—in the last six years? since the Cold War? “Certainly in the last four years, that word itself has been so destroyed”. As for the function of art in general, she says, “I don’t think art is political; it’s wilfully not”. Whereas politics focuses on the here and now, artists have the freedom to look backwards or forwards in time, such as how del Toro’s film uses the 1940s to reflect modern cultural questions back at us. For her, art is a provocation, a space for dangerous ideas: “art is a much more irresponsible medium—it has to be”. This leads the conversation to current affairs, specifically the experience of making movies during COVID. Noting the importance of how stories and films provided escapism amidst the pandemic’s stresses, she tells me that she felt privileged to be part of the film industry. However, she also notes that “there are millions of out-of-work performers, particularly in the live performing arts” who’ve not been as lucky as her and have struggled because of the pandemic. Blanchett also stresses that the film industry also hasn’t fully processed other key cultural moments such as Black Lives Matter or #MeToo, and the need to address these systemic issues in an uncompromising way. “The pandemic revealed just how broken everything was,” she concludes this train of thought by saying, “as you put the pieces back together, the upside is that there’s an understood necessity in our industry to fix it.” My final question for her is to ask, on behalf of our readers (and myself ), for any film recommendations she might have. She replies that while she hasn’t been able to see anything in a cinema yet, she

FILM Notes on a Scandal Judi Dench faces off with Blanchett in a schoolyard scandal thriller. Caitlin Wilson

rewatched the 1981 TV miniseries adapting the novel Brideshead Revisited, for particular praise. More recent works she singles out for praise include Long Day’s Journey Into Night, by Bi Gan— recommended to her by her son—the movies of Josephine Decker and Lucrecia Martel, and Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers. It’s clear from how she speaks that these are movies she genuinely feels passionate about. With that, she answers my final question—or so I assume. Because, later that day, she messages me with one final recommendation: “The other film to see is RED ROCKET. Unforgettable”. Image Credit: Joan Hernandez Mir// Flickr. Artist: Wang Sum Luk

E H T SOU Snowdon Aviary By Flynn Hallman

Above the canal, the aviary vacantly stoops, emptied of birds, I remember how they hovered and dived, circumscribed where the water below made light peripheral reflection and their flight glanced to shadow. The rainfall meets its mirrored end as the slack water trembles, its effect forgetting cause, and memory’s becoming stillness is carried away in other change, until difference unremembered becomes nothing changed. Still memory reflects before it perceives, receives though unable to attain, in the corner of my eye it glints and the caged birds remain in flight, beneath the net they stall, returning to peripheral light and then disappear in unreflected fall.

RC E

THE SOURCE

A Christmas Flower By Glenn Armstrong

As I lie, sleep-searching, Coloured words fill my mind And I find a fallen petal, Beside the fireside. In a moment of movement, I recall, It crashed to earth, From the crown of a lily, Across the dormant hearth. A holy, orange lily, Lit by electric-white light, It held the season’s spirit, Domestic and bright. Its beauty rescued for a month, Of days that turn to seconds, Lonely, hard-paused tears for some, For others, simply heaven. Touched by goodwill, Families smile and yet still, Some lilies miss others, Fathers, brothers, or mothers. As that petal fell, time flew, But its landing held beauty anew, For to recall that Christmas flower Was simple sweetness too. The new year’s new flowers, Conclude this memory And, beside the fireside, They persist hopefully. As I lie at dream’s edge, Thoughts flee my mind, A lily petal lies sweetly, And I out-sleep the night. Submit your creative writing to The Source at: cherwelleditor@gmail.com

BOOKS

Recommended reads DYSTOPIA As a companion to our article this week, the Books team recommend their favourite titles of the dystopian genre, covering a wide scope from thrilling stories of totalitarianism to more subtle horror to the best of YA. What brand of dystopia is your favourite? ...And which scares you the most? We By Yevgeny Zamyatin Often considered to be the original dystopian novel, inspiring the likes of Orwell and Huxley, We is a powerful, exhilarating story set in the twentysixth century AD describing the totalitarian society known as OneState - a glass-enclosed city of straight lines, ruled over by the all-powerful ‘Benefactor’. The citizens’ lives are devoid of passion and creativity - until D-503, the protagonist, a mathematician who dreams in numbers, makes a discovery: he has a unique and individual soul. Zamyatin’s novel was supressed for many years, foreshadowing the worst excesses of Soviet Russia. For all fans of dystopia, We is a must-read, remaining a resounding cry for personal freedom and a foundational work of dystopian fiction. - Elena Buccisano, Books Editor

Never Let Me Go By Kazuo Ishiguro Is Never Let Me Go dystopian, really? I’d argue yes. The novel reads like contemporary literary fiction, with a sprinkling of teenage relationship drama, but becomes increasingly sinister as details of the society is set in are gradually introduced. This is what sets the book apart - the horrors of the world are depicted not through dramatic battles and poltical conflict, but through the profound effects they have on the lives of a young group of friends. Never Let Me Go constantly sit on the edge of normalcy, lulling you into a false sense of ease before revealing the darkness happening behind this.

Dystopian fiction: Comforting or terrifying? George Adams tracks the developpment of dystopia, from Thomas More to Malorie Blackman.

n November 1975, after thirteen Emerging out of a science-fiction context, groups is key to overcoming oppressive and years, two months, and three weeks early twentieth-century writers of dystopia violent political structures. In the twenty-first of fighting, Portugal granted Angola used the genre to deliver oblique social comcentury, dystopias may be seen to empower independence. That evening Ludovi- mentary on gender, race, the environment, minority individuals and communities to ca Fernandes Mano bricked herself into her and political oppression. Although these resist systemic violence. apartment, where she remained in isolation dystopias are often uncomfortable to read, There is no doubt that, in recent years, dysfor twenty-eight years. These are the real-life they are very influential in fuelling political topias have become more inclusive, with more events behind José Eduardo Agualusa’s novel activism. Herland (1915), describes a peaceful diverse and intersectional protagonists. Teoria Geral do Esquecimento (A General Theory society composed entirely of women, The Young Adult series Noughts and of Oblivion), published in Portuguese in 2012, threatened by the sexual desire of Crosses (2001-2021), televised by and translated into English in 2015. three male visitors. Silent Spring “Despite the colonial the BBC in 2020, demonstrates Though based upon Ludovica’s ten-volume (1962) greatly influenced the the popularity of more dibeginnings of the diary (a first-hand account of the experience), environmental movement and verse iterations of the genre. Agualusa’s narrative is ‘pure fiction’. Although the banning of DDT in the In particular, Young Adult genre, it has since the novel is not a traditional dystopia, since United States (a cancerous dystopias with BAME or developed into the place is not imaginary, nor are the events insectide used in agriculture). LGBTQ+ protagonists proset in the future, much of the story feels dys- Costumes inspired by those vide inspiring role models an inclusive and topian, largely taking place in Ludo’s mind. described in The Handmaid’s for young activists looking diverse space for The novel’s dystopian elements – apocalypse, Tale (1985) are still used as to undermine discriminaisolation, and political violence – are both powerful symbols in pro-choice empowerment.” tory and marginalizing societal uncomfortable and terrifying. The novel dem- rallies around the world. The rise of structures. Despite the colonial onstrates how pervasive dystopian ideas have the genre in the twentieth century may beginnings of the genre, it has since become in writings about the past as well as be attributed to socio-political factors, includdeveloped into an inclusive and diverse space the future – histories of resistance, isolation, ing factors such as the devastating effects of for empowerment. One of the reasons we and friendship. World War I, and II, post-war rebuilding, the continue to read dystopias is familiarity – the The origins of the dystopian genre can be Cold War, the rise of the nation-state, develdystopian tropes, settings and narratives traced back to Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) opments in technology, and a greater public are well-known – a post-apocalyptic world, where Raphael tells Morus about his travels to awareness of the different methods by which environmentally, politically and/or socially island of Utopia in the New World, shaped governments, totalitarian or otherwise, damaged, in which an individual or group atlike a ‘crescent moon’. ‘Utopia’, deincarcerate dissenting subjects. tempts to survive and prosper despite the odds rived from Greek, simultaneously In the cultural moment of the that are stacked against them. This narrative connotes the ‘good place’ and pandemic it may be an attracof struggle to emancipation/redemption is ‘no place’, suggesting that an “Certainly, dystopias tive idea to compare present expected, and therefore offers a degree of ideal society may only exist society to fictional dystopias. comfort to the consumer of dystopia. have become more in philosophies of the mind. The sense of fear, the limits At the end of A General Theory of Oblivion, inclusive, with This idea is connected to imposed on people’s rights, the protagonist Ludo eventually emerges, alSocrates’ discussion of hypothe ubiquity of screens, most blind, from her twenty-eight-year isolamore diverse and thetical city-states in Plato’s widespread surveillance, tion when Sabalu, a young boy, attempts to intersectional Republic, culminating in the the spin tactics of the press, burgle her apartment which he presumes to be ideal state of Kallipolis. The beand the hypocrisy of leading abandoned. They go on to form a close friendprotagonists.” ginnings of the dystopian genre political figures are all features ship. In a dream in the final chapter, Ludo are linked to ideas of colonialism, of a dystopia. In addition, many imagines she is a little girl on a fictional beach conquest, and empire – Raphael’s jourgovernments around the world feature – her personal utopia. The final paragraph is ney was inspired by early sixteenth-century systemic racism, homophobia, transphobia, an overwhelmingly positive image of the value European voyages to the Americas. Though and misogyny, implemented by the state and power of human relationships. “The day is the island of Utopia is found in the distant and through violent means of oppression and born, Ludo. Let’s go”, says Sabalu, “And they largely unknown provinces of the New World, violence. went, the two of them, towards the light, the society on the island reflects many of the As narratives such as Nineteen-Eighty laughing and talking, like two people about to social, religious, and political concerns of Four (1949) show, it is sometimes uncertain head out to sea.” And so, although their vision sixteenth-century Europe. This is achieved us- whether minority groups will overcome their of the future is often terrifying, at the end of ing tools of irony and satire, highly important oppressors and found a new social order upon a every dystopian narrative lies the comforting for another forerunner of the genre, Jonathan different set of moral values. The free will and possibility of freedom. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726). self-determinism of individuals and minority

-Katie Kirkpatrick, Deputy Editor

Feed By M. T. Anderson One of the first works of dystopian literature I ever read, Feed is set in a futuristic cyberpunk world where everyone has a ‘feed’ of images, information and advertisements installed directly into their brain. The protagonist Titus and his friend Violet must find a way to destroy the feed before it destroys them first. Published in 2002, Feed was eerily predicative of the rise of smartphones and information technology. -Eliza Browning, Books Editor Image Credit: Enokson // CC BY 2.0 via Flickr

STAGE

Oscar Wilde, the 70s, and psychatrists: The Importance of Being Nihlists Cherwell’s Stage Editors talk to Anna Stephen about the conception and production of her new play. What made you want to write this play/ where did the idea come from? I drafted an initial, much shorter versionof the play in Year 13 while studying The Importance of Being Earnest for A Level. I wrote all the parts with my classmates in mind, and at the time it was just a bit of a laugh. Last term, when I was dipping a tentative toe into Oxford drama, I discovered that all you had to do to put on a play was get a bid together. I thought I could rewrite Nihilists and put out a call for a crew…and that’s what ended up happening! How has the rehearsal process been? It’s been fantastic: great fun and I’ve learnt so much from it. We started with a Zoom readthrough just before Christmas (after I had panic-written the rest of the play in the week after coming back from the Varsity trip). We then started online rehearsals in the new year. We spent 0th week, 1st week and 2nd week fitting rehearsals around the schedules of eight cast members (relying a LOT on When2meet and Exeter’s Cohen Quad). The cast are all brilliant and we get along really well – it’s always fun thinking of new warm-up games, and I often leave rehearsals feeling like I’ve had a decent ab workout from laughing. How has the pandemic affected the process of putting the show together? It’s definitely had an impact on my blood pressure. But in all seriousness, I didn’t really consider that having a cast of eight would significantly increase the risk. We’ve had to be extra careful in the weeks leading up to the show: wearing masks in rehearsals and making sure no one gets too close to one another (which proves tricky when trying to coordinate a fight scene). It’s a shame when people have to pull out due to Covid, and my heart goes out to all the other productions in the same situation. It’s stressful, but you can get around a surprising number of things if you’re determined enough. Any fun rehearsal stories? It’s always fun doing ridiculous warm-ups.

We all became particularly fond of ‘What Are You Doing?’, a game that involves walking around the room until someone points to someone else and asks, ‘What are you doing?’. Some bizarre scenarios have ensued from this, including a casual conversation with an electrician happening at the same time as a story about killer seeds taking over the world. Rehearsing a scene in the style of a teen high school movie was also hilarious. And I always look forward to blocking the scenes involving throwing Lucas into a piano… What has your favourite part of the process been so far? Meeting so many brilliant people. Whether that’s chugging coffee with crew members, spending 80% of my time on Facebook Messenger, or watching the cast giggle their way through the final act, it’s always about the people. What makes this project unique? The play is inspired by Oscar Wilde, his wit and his words…but Nihilists goes in many different directions. It’s sprinkled with anachronism, so watch out for 70s song lyrics and hippies reminiscing about the good old days. Although the play has its fair share of farce (we’ve got psychiatrists being transported inside pianos, very quick costume changes, and a lot of panic), at the end of the day the play is about who we are as people. It digs into some of the most important things we have to face in our lives. Sexuality, family, the education system, the way we judge others and ourselves. It’s tough to navigate life and love. Describe the show in 3 words. Pianos; deception; triviality seriousness?)

(or

What advice would you give to those wanting to write/direct a show in Oxford? Even if you don’t think there will be time, or you’re a bit unsure about your idea…go for it. Oxford drama has AMAZING resources and ere will always be people enthusiastic

Digital theatre for a digital age Rebecca Walker considers the evolution of theatrical culture.

like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost – it’s there and then it’s gone,” said Maggie Smith, one of the most celebrated theatre actors with an extensive career both on stage and screen. But no longer is this the case. Theatre is now being filmed and can be played time and time again, immortalising the productions. For many, theatre is an inaccessible medium, both in terms of the cost of tickets and the locations. But there are ways in which this is being challenged by the way that we view theatre. In our era of vast technological change, all industries and fields are adapting – and theatre is no exception. Not only are performances themselves incorporating technical, interactive features into them, but many productions are being streamed into cinemas and online. A production put on in London therefore, can now often be seen all over the country, and even in our

living rooms. Of course, there is nothing quite like live theatre. The atmosphere and shared experience with the people around you is not quite translatable to the screen. I feel lucky to have been able to go to the theatre fairly regularly throughout my life. Living in Sheffield meant being twenty minutes from the country’s largest theatre complex outside of London. And this meant I had the chance to see so many great productions, from touring shows like Kinky Boots, to small plays, such as Contractions. Shows created in Sheffield have gone on to be transferred to London. I am still smug that I got a £5 ticket to see Everybody’s Talking About Jamie in Sheffield, when now tickets are worth up to £80 on its tour of the UK after its transfer to the West End in 2017. Going to watch theatre in London, and other locations such as the RSC in Stratford, is an incredible experience. But this is not possible for everyone. One of

about your project who want to get involved. I had never directed anything before this, and despite watching some National Theatre behind-the-scenes videos in pure fear before the first rehearsal, I realised that once you’re in the room with the actors, there’s no ‘right way’ to do it. The whole team, both cast and crew, work together to create something that everyone is proud of. As for the writing, there’s so much new writing popping off at the moment and always room for more – now is the time to get that project out there!

Why should people see the play? If you want slapstick, wit, high energy, role doubling, love in many forms, a dash of seriousness, secrets and lies, vibrant costumes, bizarre but very human characters, and ultimately a good laugh… this is the play for you!

the big problems with live theatre is its inaccessibility. I have so often said for example, “I’d love to go to the National” or go and see Six the Musical, but as yet have not. Tickets can be so much money that however much I love going to the theatre, it can become difficult to. And for many people, they would not even be able to contemplate spending this amount of money on a theatre production. How do we get around this problem? Putting on these live shows is an expensive project: months of rehearsals, paying actors and crew, building the sets, are some of the many costs they incur. With the pandemic, the lack of funding in the arts was felt even more keenly, as with theatres shut, it was impossible to raise money beyond donations and grants. Do theatres need to charge sometimes hundreds of pounds for tickets in order to maintain themselves? But there are ways around this now. Already before the pandemic, digital theatre was growing, with productions being screened live to cinemas, but it has been encouraged further. A huge number of productions are being shown in cinemas and also on online platforms, such as Amazon Prime having Great British Theatre – a series of filmed blockbuster

theatre productions. I recently subscribed to the National Theatre at Home streaming service, deciding to try to watch as many plays as possible within my month’s subscription (an aim I am sure my tutors may not appreciate). If say, by the end of the month I have watched ten plays, I will have only spent £1 per play. It may not quite be the same experience, but it is amazing to have the opportunity to be able to do this for a fraction of the cost of seeing it live.. Online theatre allows productions to reach a wider audience, especially people outside of London. Going to the cinema to see plays was a chance to see theatre I otherwise would not have been able to, such as Twelfth Night by the RSC and All About Eve at the National. Especially when including travel costs, watching it on a streaming service or in the cinema is far cheaper than seeing it in real life. Furthermore, in seeing a production in a cinema, there is still some semblance of the experience of watching it with other people. Sat in the cinema, the audience can still laugh, cry and enjoy the performance together.

The Importance of Being Nihilists runs at the BT Studio, 7.30pm, 1-5 February. Image Credits: Sophie Magalhaes

Read the full article at cherwell.org.

FASHION

I believe in unicorns! Capturing Oxford’s mystical creature Madi Hopper explores how we can buy second-hand locally and provides an insight into Ship Street’s Unicorn.

s a slightly sweeter chaser to the serious discourse about clothes, balls and identity, I’d like to take the opportunity to recommend you a place where it’s all brought into reality. In my humble (but embarrassingly well-informed about Places To Buy Second Hand In Oxford) opinion, the next time you need an outfit for a ball, a bop or even a play, you need to mosey on down to The Unicorn. Yes, the problem of where and how to buy clothes for all three of these things is a bit of an Oxford Moment - and so it makes sense that I would recommend you an Oxford-based solution. After all, buying second hand and sustainable is great, but how about doing all that and supporting a small business at the same time ? As the name suggests, The Unicorn is an elusive beast – although it’s about as central as it’s possible to be short of setting up shop inside the Sheldonian, it’s nestled away in the centre of Ship Street – opposite the back of Jesus College (aka down the road which comes out by Big Pret). So if you don’t set out to find it, it’s pretty easy to miss – and though I will sing its praises given the slightest opportunity, it has almost no digital footprint, making it (in my opinion) Oxford’s ultimate hidden gem. If you have ever wandered past, you might have noticed a window festooned with a host of whiteish (though at the moment there is a long green satin

which has my entire heart) dresses from various eras dangling over a sediment of assorted shoes, hats and the odd 1950s cricket periodical. The window gives a pretty good impression of what it’s like inside; absolutely rammed with a clothes in no discernible order. Unlike the more conventional vintage shops Oxford has to offer, the stock in The Unicorn isn’t only confined to hangers – dresses, jackets, skirts, waistcoats – all are piled high in odd corners or peeping out from under racks. In short, it’s a scavenger’s paradise. Neither are the clothes sorted by era – I’d hazard a guess that most of the stuff falls somewhere between 40s-90s, but it’s pretty much a ‘wand chooses the wizard’, though the lady who runs it – Eva – will sometimes offer a comment on what exactly an item is if you’ve been looking at it a long time. Eva is another part of the charm of the place – she doesn’t tend to talk shop, preferring to leave you to browse in silence, and the shop, although right by Cornmarket, does indeed have a hush that is almost church-y. If you do decide to buy something, and ask her the price (as you might expect, nothing in there is priced by a label, and it is firmly cash only. I also once received change that she borrowed from a friend who was in there at the time), I’m fairly sure she makes it up on the spot, and might sometimes refuse to sell it to you, usually by naming an astronomical fee or

saying it’s rental only. But don’t let this put you off – I reckon it’s basically some kind of vibe check, and you’ll probably be able to rent whatever it is. Of course, if that’s not your cup of tea (and there are several Google reviews from people clearly expecting a more traditional shop environment - ‘cramped’, ‘crammed’ or ‘hectic’ - to prove that it isn’t for everyone) perhaps you might give it a miss. If you’re someone that likes the simply order of typing in a keyword and being able to filter results by size, style or colour, the absolute riot of clothes that is The Unicorn might quite possibly make your head explode. But for me, all the little foibles are exactly what makes it so fun – normally, shopping is shopping, but everything about The Unicorn makes it more of An Experience. It’s true, too, that something about the time you’ve spent rummaging around before you find what you find makes it more special, somehow, than if you’d only walked in and found it directly. If you’re down for a dig, it is rammed full of absolute treasures – it just takes a little more effort to find them. In terms of balls there are racks and piles of dresses, suit jackets and most strikingly an absolutely enormous selection of waistcoats – my current favourite is a a silk-y Regency-style with creamy floral embroidery. But there’s also basically every type of clothing you can think of, from ponchos to hotpants to girdles. Back in the pre-Amazon days, they used to do a lot of renting and buying from various student productions, so a good deal of the things in there are were originally made as costumes and can be wonderfully strange. One of my all-time favourite pieces of clothing is a shirt bought from

The Unicorn as part of a pirate costume last Michaelmas ; I have never before or since seen one with bigger sleeves and it’s now part of my subfusc (the jury’s out on whether it’d be allowed in the actual exam schools). To tap this back into what is supposed to be a Glitterball Special Edition, and to give my soapbox a little justification, do please see the photos on the following page – I found a gorgeous red silk chiffon overdress and an iridescent red wrap; also shown is Jon Starkey in an outsize linen shirt with pouncing and whitework embroidery, all courtesy of the best vintage shop in Oxford. So, if you fancy a shopping trip slightly out of the ordinary, not to mention the chance to find truly unique ball-clothes, head down Ship Street and look it out. Even if you end up not buying anything, the fun of poking around in the shop is quite an experience in itself – and you really never do know quite what you’ll find there. Image Credit: Madi Hopper

Say it with flowers: Signifiers of queer identity in fashion Alfred Dry queries queer fashion tropes.

ueer identity and fashion ofPersonally, I grew up in a small town in ten interlace in a celebration of Suffolk where to be gay was akin to farting expression and glamour. The in public. It happens, but people look at you campy, striking stylings of drag funny and try to avoid you. My first boyfriend and I had the pleasure of beginning queens, the couture runways of fashion deour journey as queer people there and he signers like Christopher John Rogers, and was, undoubtedly, more fashionable the impact of popular culture phethan me. I remember him once nomena such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show all demonstrate “I grew up in a messaging me about an outfit he was going to wear (bear this powerful connection. It small town in in mind this was around is important to recognise, and our town is about however, that queer expresSuffolk where to 2016 ten years behind the rest sion has not always been free be gay was akin of the world), for which he to blossom in a brilliance of planned to tuck his t-shirt flamboyance. Our collective to farting in into his jeans. Revolutionpast is drenched in oppression public.” ary. My internally homophobic and suspicion, forcing people to mind could not comprehend this hide their identity and rely on subbold move. He did it, looked great, tle indicators to signal their belonging and soon after I copied it. But when I did, to the queer community. Even today, it is I noticed there were a few other people our completely understandable for an individage around who were also already doing ual to not want to outwardly express their it, and the majority of these people were identity in public, especially when not in a queer. I hadn’t noticed it before but sudsafe space. Yet throughout history, queer denly this slight alteration on how to wear people have found each other, and formed a typical t-shirt and jeans had revealed an, the communities which allow people to albeit small, community of young people flourish. Oftentimes, it was fashion that fagoing through a similar time in the same cilitated this joining together. Subtle markplace. It was an incredibly exciting and reers to indicate who you were, and where assuring realisation, and though London you felt you belonged. Exploring these rehad seen the tucking-in trend, enjoyed it, veals a fascinating insight into queer hisfinished with it and untucked it, the young tory, and reminds us once again of the inLGBTQIA+ community of our small town trinsic link between fashion and identity. had found a way to communicate with it.

While it was far from the norm, it was never illegal to be gay growing up. Unfortunately, the same is not true for our predecessors, and many people living in homophobic societies today. During the time of Oscar Wilde’s trials in the 1890s, he had popularised the green carnation as an indicator of homosexuality through donning one to the opening of Lady Windermere’s Fan, a trend which bloomed into wearing a full green suit by the 1930s as an open expression of queerness. The association between green and the male homosexual community can be traced back to multiple sources, be it the ‘Macaroni Club’

of the 1770s, or Wilde himself emphasising the colour in his narrations of the queercoded Dorian Gray and the life of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright. The use of colour stretches even further, with purple (specifically violet) having a historic association with lesbianism through the poetry of Sappho. In early 20th century Paris, poet Renée Vivien kickstarted a resurgence in appreciation for the colour, fuelled by an adoration for both Sappho and her first lover, Violet Shillito. Thus, such a fashion choice is not just a marker of queer identity, but queer love. During these times, many straight people may have thought nothing of a green or violet accessory neatly attached to an otherwise unsuspecting outfit, yet for those who knew, they may as well have tucked their t-shirt into their jeans. While Oscar Wilde presents a particularly poignant example, to reference the queer community as a homogenous group regarding fashion is simply wrong. Throughout time, across the world, for all different identities, there have been countless ways in which fashion has provided a pathway for queer people to come together. Many of these will have been lost, hopefully through a lack of need to hide, but remembering our history through the lens of fashion is one way to honour and appreciate how queer people have survived through the most oppressive of times. And finally, to debunk the myth: it’s the right ear.

Image Credit: Lily Middleton-Mansell.

FASHION

These boots are made for livin’: Queer footwear at Oxford’s sparkliest ball Ciara Beale - Fashion’s roving reporter (yet again) - gives Cherwell an exclusive insight into the wildest night of 2022. No it’s not the Hayek Society’s ‘Kinks and Liberty’ - it’s Glitterball!

hen I showed my friend the dress I was going to wear for the Glitterball (a floor length beige dress covered in rainbow sequins that I bought from a charity shop for £15 for the Year 13 prom that never happened), he said it was gorgeous. His first question, naturally, was: ‘What shoes are you going to wear with it?’. I pointed down at my feet and mumbled something about how I thought I’d just wear these: my clunky platform Chelsea boot docs that I drag along with me in my day-to-day life. His response? ‘Ciara… as your friend, I am not going to let you wear that dress with those shoes.’ I was taken aback. The Glitterball dress code was to wear formal clothes but that feeling ‘most comfortable’ overrides this. My docs couldn’t be more comfortable – so, surely that would be ok? I have a real problem with heels. I can count the number of times I’ve worn them on one hand and the last time was a Winter Ball in sixth form. I refuse. I say it’s out of principle

Cherwell’s own Ciara Beale wearing a sequined vintage dress. Little did she know that the tag was on all night...

when asked: heels are designed to alter a woman’s posture; they make it more difficult to run away in danger; they’re meant to make our legs look longer and make us look taller and so more desirable to the male gaze. All of this is true, of course, but it doesn’t change the fact that, if I’m being really honest, I really love the way they look and wish I could just chant ‘beauty is pain’ and get through it. And what I find even more exciting about heels, as with most queer fashion, is they are no longer limited to female-identifying people by any means, and so reclaiming heels as something just simply pretty to look at becomes a whole lot easier because so many people have recently shown how all-inclusive they can be. Not that Elton John and Prince didn’t already make wearing heels so effortlessly cool. I still don’t understand how they, oraanyone else, danced in them, though. So, my reason for not wearing heels (I had to protest this issue to other friends, too) didn’t really stand up. Especially when I got my mum to bring me a selection of her heels from home to try on. My mum, who probably has a decade-spanning record-breaking shoe collection, responded to my message asking this favour with ‘I like a challenge’ and a selection of shoe emojis. I think I made her day. I subsequently spent a whole day in a pair of beautiful silver boots, with the teeniest tiniest heel you’ve ever seen, and I’ve never received more compliments on a pair of shoes, while my toes felt pinched and I toppled a little bit at every step. The point is: what made the Glitterball so exciting to me was that it wasn’t a stuffy, binary formal attire gig. It wasn’t black tuxedos and patent brogues, ball gowns and staggering shoes and mini bags that literally cannot fit more than a tissue inside (what actually is the point of these?). I am lucky to feel very easily accepted by the external world in my gender expression and in what I wear, but for many people this is not the case because, well, people are very quick to judge, and nonbinary conceptions of gender and style are still relatively ‘controversial’, for want of a better word. I really loved that, at Glitterball, you could wear pretty much anything and you wouldn’t have stood out. And there was glitter. Everywhere. A college ball must be so intimidating to those who feel that a pre-requisite to attendance is to choose the ‘male’ or ‘female’ manifestation of black tie and perfect it. There is really no need for this stress, whatever traditions we’re trying to maintain. Why shouldn’t we wear whatever we want? I wore my docs. Of course I wore my docs. And, actually, so did half of the people there. Who knew I was being such a queer stereotype? I wore my docs and danced the night away to Sisters of Funk (who are unbearably cool and could form the basis of an article themselves); I danced the night away to the ABBA tribute band; I even danced the night away in Plush, in my docs and my full-

length dress (dress: I’m so sorry for putting you through this horrifying experience). I also left the charity shop tag in my dress the whole night – not knowingly, but anything goes at Glitterball, right?

Eilidh Roberts (left) and Cherwell’s own Flora Dyson (right) are pictured looking glam and ready to party! Image Credits: Flora Dyson, left Madi Hopper

Our own Madi Hopper is clearly having a good time with her friend, Jon. She wears a chiffon overdress bought from The Unicorn. Cherwell meets the anti-Cherwell. Alex Foster (left) wears a sharp suit. If only the Oxford Student always looked this professional.

FOOD

Wilding: OX1 2HP Gilbert Reviews: Fine wine and relaxed atmosphere make up for unsettled food and unsettling clientele at this bourgeois bolthole: 7/10

or those of you who don’t keep up with giving it a mottled grey colour. The sauce was the latest gossip in provincial wine-snob well-balanced and aromatic. But when the circles, Wilding is the neat new wine bar duck egg burst, the yolk started oozing into and vintner which opened to great fanfare it, like the aftermath of Deepwater Horizon. last May. It’s nestled between the overpriced Eventually, they coagulated on the plate, shops on Little Clarendon Street: you know, leaving a sort of placenta. At £16, the dish still the one with the nice fairy lights, like represents good value. But two such the town-planning equivalent of a fundamental errors prevented fresher’s bedroom. the quality of the evening’s The clientele were smart food matching that of the and prosperous, but irritat“When the duck egg wine. ing: when I was in, early Pudding was a return in the evening, we were burst, the yolk started to form. I had pears evenly divided between poached in marsala wine, chirping graduates, and oozing into it, like the topped with a blob of sloany women drinking mascarpone and some cocktails and ordering large aftermath of Deepwa- crushed hazelnuts. The glasses of red wine. Later pears were very fresh, the ter Horizon.” on, some Young Conservative marsala added warmth, the types seeped in and pretended to cheese bound everything up, know about wine. and the nuts provided texture. I The décor is a vamp on art deco: marble finished with coffee, which was very floors, quirky wall fixtures, brass skirting good (stating the obvious, as they buy in from boards, and so on. In the conservatory, they Jericho Coffee Traders). The bill was £45 for have large wicker lamp shades and matching three courses, including wine and tip. chairs, to make the place feel… alternative. What to make of it, then? The ingredients Like Hercule Poirot trapped in a yurt. Overall, are good, even if the cooking is unreliable. the effect is successful, and the restaurant – The wine is excellent, and their policy of which used to be a Café Rouge, by God – is a making them all available by the glass even pleasant place to be. better. Anyway, the food provides good value for If you go – and I think you should, if wine is money, with main courses costing around £15. your thing – try to get a table in the rooms Starters and puddings will each set you back near the back, where the décor is slightly less about £7, and there are a range of pizzas which hackneyed. Moreover, sitting near the front cost about £13. Sure, this is at the top end window means looking at the Wellington of an average student budget, but it hardly Square University buildings, which can be a breaks the bank. Even the menu design seems powerful emetic. Do take the time to inspect pitched at us brainiac students - a pompous their impressive compact wine shop. Euripides quote tops the wine list. This is ultimately another staple for the Speaking of the wine list – it is excellent. chattering classes of North Oxford. Or for There are suggested pairings for most of the students trying to convince their dates that dishes. And so I plumped for a Lisboa Arinto, they’re highly cultivated. But perhaps this is which was paired with the trout tartare. The more reason to go. Trundle in as I did, and tartare was bound with a touch of lemon treat your fellow diners as entertainment, an mayonnaise and topped with some flecks of absurd cabaret for your enjoyment. After all, Bloody Mary jelly. The trout was very good – it if we can’t overcome them, then we shall was fresh, savoury, and delicate, particularly have to find ways to coexist. when taken with the fun tomato jelly. The pairing, too, was classy and successful. The Arinto sluiced the cloying tartare with cleansGilbert is a food critic for the Cherwell. ing acidity, ending with herbal notes and a He dines anonymously and unfashionably, squirt of citrus. receiving no financial inducements from The main course, however, was a misfire. restaurateurs. His views are his own. If you Duck breast, pan-fried and served in a port have a tip for Gilbert, or know of a new opening reduction, came with heritage vegetables which deserves his attention, pass him a note and a breaded duck egg. The duck was wellby emailing lifestylecherwell@gmail.com. seasoned, but over-cooked: it had been left in the pan until nearly all the colour had drained,

An organic dilemma Maisie Burgess despairs over the organic food crisis.

s much as we may feel that the organic revolution is a product of the last few years, organic eating has been around for a while. In fact, the term ‘organic’ was coined in 1939, but it wasn’t until the 1970s when the movement really picked up and environmentalists started actively campaigning for chemical-free food. Organic food, by definition, is food which (according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) “avoids the use of man-made fertilisers, pesticides, growth regulators and livestock feed additives”. Generally, it also rules out genetically modified products – essentially, a system that is more on nature’s side.

Recent studies are further highlighting the importance of this movement in, frankly, terrifying ways. Long-term pesticide exposure has been linked to cancers, asthma, mental health problems and the development of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, whilst many of these chemicals have also been found to remain in the environment, or in our bodies, for years. And this is not even mentioning the disastrous effects on the wider natural environment. Such a crisis in our food system is, to me, overwhelming, and I am left wondering just how we expect to continue living on this planet in a comfortable, habitable way.

Recipe Couscous and and Crunchy Chickpea Salad Now that your Veganuary dreams are dead and gone, it is time to set yourself a more realistic goal. This couscous is bang for your buck: health is wealth here - vegetarian and delicious. You could knock this up for a chilly al-fresco lunch, a protein packed gym snack or a quick midweek dinner. This one is simpler than it looks, don’t be put off by the long list of ingredients - you’ll be sure to find them in someone’s cupboard. This one will also make you a BNOC batch cook, it’s been tried and tested for many an isolation lunch in this COVID chaos. INGREDIENTS (to serve four) For the chickpeas: 1x400g tin of chickpeas 2tbsp all-purpose flour 1tsp ground cumin 1 tsp ground coriander ½ tsp smoked paprika ½ tsp sumac For the couscous: 320g couscous 1 red onion 1 cucumber 150g cranberries 250g pomegranate seeds 100g feta 1 vegetable stock cube 1 lime, zested and juiced Olive oil Half a bunch of mint 2tbsp greek yoghurt 2tsp harissa

1. Get your oven preheating at 220C ahead of time. Drain your chickpeas and gently toss them around in a big bowl to loosen up their outer layer. Unidentifiable shells equal a crispea chickpea fail. Add a good glug of olive oil followed by your spices. Shake them around again until coated evenly, then whack them on a lined baking tray into the oven for 25 minutes. 2. Prep time. Slice the cucumber lengthwise and deseed the middle using a teaspoon (this is a crucial step that will help keep the couscous fresher for longer) and slice into half moons. De-stalk the mint and roughly chop it. Then, finely dice the onion. You can purchase some appropriate goggles or blame your tears on the work that you should be doing. 3. Boil the kettle and make up the vegetable stock. The secret to perfect couscous is four parts grain to five parts water. Ideally, save on washing up and just let it steam in the big bowl that you used to spice up the chickpeas. Pour in the stock, add some olive oil, salt and pepper, and the zest of your lime. Cover with a plate or some tin foil for five minutes and then use a fork to separate the grains. 4. With the production unit you have lined up, you’re ready (to) steady cook. Once the couscous is fully fluffed up, add the onion, cucumber, cranberries, pomegranate seeds, crumbled feta and mint to the bowl. Season well with salt, pepper and a good measure of olive oil. Finish up with the lime juice. 5. Plate up your couscous and add those crunchy chickpeas. Splatter it with some greek yoghurt and a hit of harissa. The apricot version is a particular treat. You can add water to thin the yoghurt if you are pretend-

Image: @milliedrewfood

However, as we all know, organic food costs. To look at one example, in Tesco, a kilogram of carrots will set you back a mere 40p. Make that organic carrots and you’re looking at £1.43. With that extra £1.03, you could buy a box of chocolate muffins and, unfortunately, I know which option most people would choose here, myself included. The problem is not that students are unethical. But when we are confronted with fees which leave us in debt for a depressing proportion of our working lives, every penny really does count. When your bank account is running low, and dinner is looking like baked beans or a pot noodle again, are we really going to fork out for the organic broccoli as a side dish? At this point in time, organic eating looks like an option for the privileged. It leaves everybody else with that delicious concoction of chemical residue for a meal, and continues to drive a destructive market in order to meet demand.

Is there a solution? If there is, it is unlikely to be found in the last two paragraphs of this article, but there are things we can do. Where we are able, of course, we can choose to buy the organic option (you might like to know that Tesco are currently offering a Clubcard discount on organic carrots and yoghurt). There are also certain items which are more important to buy organically, considering their impact on the environment and our health, including tomatoes, apples, strawberries and dairy products. It’s useful to know that it can often be cheaper to buy frozen organic produce than fresh. Organic farming needs to play a far greater role in the future and in the government’s agricultural planning. We, as students and the younger generation, need to support this. We need to make our unified voices heard so that, one day soon, we can really see the world heading back in the right direction.

LIFE

New habits die fast: Tales from the gym Katharine Spurrier excercises her peoplewatching skills at the gym.

es, I recently started going to the gym. No, I did not start going on a ‘new year, new me’ whim. No, I would not recommend it, or at least not for its intended purpose. In very typical fashion I started going to the gym as a means of procrastination, and as a result of slight coercion. The start of this term meant the deadline for my coursework, and the realisation that I might actually have to start doing something for my dissertation. So, as a means of combatting this ‘stress’, or lack of academic motivation, I decided that the gym was the place for me. For years I have heard people singing its praise. ‘Working out just clears my mind’, ‘you feel so good afterwards’, and my person favourite (if only for the wilful self-deception it must take to say), ‘running is actually really fun when you get into it’, are all examples of the lies I have been told. Nevertheless, I did manage my first trip, and then my second, and even my third – as I write this I am delaying the proposed fourth. I have not learnt that I enjoy the treadmill, I have not learnt that I enjoy the static bike, and I have not learnt to enjoy communal showers (too many school flashbacks with that one). What I have learnt – or

more accurately confirmed as this is not a new hobby – is that I do enjoy people-watching. The gym has been added to my peoplewatching hotspots. For context, also featured on this list is King’s Cross Station (for that matter any station, I just happen to frequent this most regularly), the airport (literally any airport is a place to witness chaos), and a foreign beach. The latter one only applies to those beaches outside of the UK – the comparison of Brit abroad and local resident is something that cannot but be explored. Since I can’t be on a foreign beach on a Tuesday night, going to the gym will have to suffice and I have noticed the gym provides me with all of my favourite peoplewatching features. The treadmill is prime for this. While I take my gentle stroll – don’t worry no actual exercise is going on – I have the opportunity to observe those around me. Following my three sessions I have split those who frequent the gym into 4 groups. The ‘Gym Lad’ – Ok, I know this label has been discussed on many occasions, but I felt it was worth mentioning both as our standard for

the gyming populous, and because as I had never been to the gym before, I did not really believe people like this existed. They’re big, they’re bulky, and they wear a surprising amount of clothes. This latter point is worth mentioning when you are in part surrounded by sports bras and leggings, and in part surrounded by men in trackies and jumpers. But, I suppose doing 4 rounds of circuits breaks rather more of a sweat then 5 bench press reps. Overall though the gym lad is not to be feared. 2) The ‘Gym Hog’ – a subsect of the ‘gym lad’, the ‘gym hog’ is a more fearinducing presence. In many respects they look and behave like the gym lad; they do minimal reps with big weights and while making an unreasonable amount of noise. The difference b e t w e e n these first two categories is that the ‘gym hog’ is really annoying. They sit hogging a machine, surrounded by dumbbells they aren’t using, and get annoyed whenever someone asks how many sets they have left. Half their time seems to be spent scrolling through gym TikToks on their phones. In short, they are the ultimate

Horoscopes...

SCORPIO

23 Oct - 21 Nov Your culinary life will improve exponentially. Whatever you are currently eating will look meagre in comparison to what’s to come. You will get a-cooking in the kitchen, hall food will taste yummy, and a special someone will deliver your favourite treats. All is good.

CAPRICORN

22 Dec - 19 Jan Not much to report for now, not going to lie. This week will be quite inconsequential and there is no remedy. You can try to wild out all you want, but your fate is already written.

selfish gymer. The ‘Primper’ – These are the people who seem to spend more time checking themselves (or supposedly their ‘form’) out in the mirror. These people live for the floor to ceiling mirrors that encompass the gym, they thrive on the machines stationed in front of the treadmills thus giving them a captive audience, and they excel in the glass ‘studio’ where the world can see them. Apparently, more mincing occurs in the gym than on a runaway, and more fake tan than on ‘TOWIE’. The ‘Gyming Duo’ – our final category, as I realise my gym musing is possibly less interesting to you than me. This is a duo of which one is super into it, and the other … not so much. Yes, I fall into this latter bracket. This pair are generally together, are generally having a chat, and are generally not doing very much. These are the only people ‘enjoying’ their time in the windowless box of sweaty angst. I understand that these are pretty broad categories, and of course not everyone will fit into them; you may be the unobnoxious, non Gymshark two piece wearing, solitary gym goer who is just there to work out and vibe. If you are, I am happy for you. I wish I could be motivated to go to the gym alone and actually enjoy it. But unfortunately, I have not found this to be the case. The gym is a new habit I don’t hate – but I’m not sure if I can be anymore complimentary. Saying that, catch me in 5 weeks’ time when I have become addicted, and I might have changed my mind.

CANCER

AQUARIUS

21 June - 22 July

20 Jan - 18 Feb

Arguments are inevitable and with the cold weather making us all cranky, please hold on to your patience because you are going to need it. I don’t know who is in the right here, I just know that something is brewing.

This is going to be a hard one for you. It’s hard being this amazing, but you pull it off great. Now that we have the obvious out of the way, brace yourself for the week to come.

LEO 23 July - 22 August

GEMINI 21 May- 20 June

TAURUS

You will let your work take over you for a hot second. We want to see you more! Mercury will be in retrograde and whatnot (that is not true, please don’t quote me on this) so we need all hands on deck.

20 April - 20 May I sense that you are ready to put yourself out there. So what are you waiting for? Put on your sexy outfit, a jolly attitude and get to dating. Ignore your work for a bit, third week isn’t even real.

LIBRA SAGITTARIUS

23 Sept - 22 Oct

22 Nov - 21 Dec Your farts are stinky. I don’t mean to shame, I swear! I don’t know if there is any hope for you though. Carry around some air freshener or essential oils: we are all begging.

Make someone smile today :) It’s a gloomy day, my hands are cold whilst I write this, and I can hear someone crying at the library. We all need more love, and you are now the chosen one to deliver.

VIRGO 23 August - 22 Sept

Honestly, you need to go to the cinema more often. When was the last time you even stepped foot in there? I have no clue if the current films are any good, but just go for the ambience. It may feel like a splurge but you need it.

You need to make yourself more heard. You have great opinions and perspectives but you need to stand up more.

ARIES PISCES 19 Feb - 20 March You will write an essay that is so good, your tutor will decide that you are to be an academic. Just thinking about this essay is bringing me joy. How ever do you do it?

21 March- 19 April Socialising will be your priority this week, and you deserve it. Don’t let the whirlwind of uni work take over your life. Go outside with a friend and smell the flowers.

Artwork by Ben Beechener

LIFE

Go get that bread: Tips for navigating the job market L. Sophie Gullino shares her secrets to securing the job without losing your head.

generic statements and explain with as pplying for jobs can be daunting much originality as possible why you and stressful. Below you can think this company would be a good fit find some bearings, ideas and for you and your future career, and what starting points to help you you could bring to their organisation. to navigate this uncertain time. This Personalizing your CV might be less list is by no means comprehensive, but straightforward, but the general idea is it includes some useful tips stemming to highlight the skills and experience that from my experience of applying for are relevant for the job at hand. This is scientific jobs in academia and industry. particularly relevant if you are applying The golden rule: personalize your for multiple jobs. For example, if you’re application applying to be a research assistant in a wet It is tempting to prepare one CV and lab, it makes sense to highlight all your cover letter and spam it across all job practical experience with molecular biology applications. I get it, there are loads of techniques, but a biomedical writing jobs you want to apply to and writing a company will have less interest in knowing different cover letter for each one might that you are great at performing PCR seem like a complete waste of time. If analysis. Make sure your CV reflects that. you don’t really care about the job, just Applying at the right time sending a generic cover letter and CV is I wanted to find a job as soon as understandable. But if you think you might possible (don’t we all?) and had loads of be a good fit for the position and want to jobs I was keen on. However, by applying increase your chances, the way to make in a random order you might end up an employer notice you is to personalize sending applications for positions that both your cover letter and your CV. won’t open for months, and instead miss How? Let’s begin with your cover letter. deadlines that are closing soon. Hence To start with, it’s okay to have a generic every time you find a job that could be introduction about your background, but of interest, it is important to check how make sure to not repeat line by line what long they are accepting applications you described in your CV. Instead, address for. There are usually two options: one by one all the job specifications. There is no mention of deadline, or Most jobs (especially academic) will there is a deadline but rolling applications have a list of essential and desirable job are in place. This is specifications. These the case for many can vary from very “Interviews are a great industry jobs. The specific competences like “having a experience, and after every employers will check applications only until b i o c h e m i s t r y interview you will be a a suitable candidate degree” or “advanced is found, so don’t experience with bit more prepared than postpone applying! MATLAB” to very before.” There is a set generic statements expiration date and about “team-working” no mention of how they will be checking or “interpersonal abilities”. Make sure applications. This is the case for most jobs you address them all, even the more basic in academia. In this case, I would save the ones, ideally with real world examples. For ad in a list of “positions to apply later” and instance, avoid saying “I am a great teamprioritize applications to other jobs first. worker” (that doesn’t prove anything!), but There is no benefit in applying sooner and list the aspect of your previous experience you won›t hear back until after the expiry that helped you to develop such abilities. date anyways, so no rush in applying. An example would be: “during that project Brief Interview tips I have worked in a team of 5 students The application aims to show you meet all and we were successful in… ”, or “during the requirements, but the goal is to get an my internship I interacted with hospital interview. At the interview stage, you need patients daily, which was instrumental to show that you are the best candidate and for developing my communicating skills.” highlight what sets you apart from the rest. Now, the tricky part is being able Typical questions to keep in mind: to provide concrete examples without Why should they pick you over the other writing a very lengthy cover letter, so be candidates? Tricky, I know. Spend some as concise as possible. Usually, one page time thinking about this in advance! should be enough to convey the message Why do you want the job? Again, without boring your future employer, even avoid generic answers. For example, if I must admit my cover letters always end you can think about specific features of up being longer than that. After you have the positions and how they match your written a few cover letters you will find interests and experience. This will also that similar specifications keep coming show that you did your homework and up, so you don’t actually have to rewrite that you are familiar with the company. the entire application from scratch. Random situational questions that start At the end of your cover letter insert a with “Tell me about a time when...” (e.g. paragraph – or at least a sentence – about a time when you worked in a team, made the company you’re applying to. This is the a mistake, disagreed with your superior, chance to show off that you have researched had to overcome a challenge…). Think the position and institution. Try avoiding

about some of these situations beforehand as it can be challenging to come up with an answer on the spot. Be as specific as possible and tell a story that is realistic but makes you look good overall. You can think about a few examples from a recent project you worked on and come up with a few answers around it. It’s useful to practice these with a friend! Lastly, think about some questions you can ask the interviewers. Usually at the end of the interview they will ask you if you have any questions. This is your chance to figure out if the company is a good fit for you (hence you can ask legit questions you might have), but it can also be yet another opportunity to show off your knowledge of the company. Make sure

you do not ask something that you could have found out by reading their website. Apply, apply, apply! Don’t be afraid of rejection. You will be rejected many times, sometimes even for that one job that you really wanted. But that’s okay, because applications and interviews are a great experience, and after every interview you will be a bit more prepared than before. Also, don’t be scared to shoot high. You want this very ambitious job but you fear you might not be good enough? Let the employers decide, don’t make the decision for them. When doubting if you are qualified or not just apply anyway!

John Evelyn

An inside look at the Oxford Union It’s been a horny few weeks at the Union. With the termcard set, the excitement of the first few weeks abating, and the spectre of elections still just far enough over the horizon, your indefatigable committee members have been left with far too little to do and have begun shagging one another. Nowhere has this been more true than on sex-retary’s committee, where current and former members alike simply can’t keep their hands off each other. On a particularly big night out, one member plucked up just a bit too much Dutch courage and found themself waking up East of the Cherwell in an unfamiliar bed, but next to a familiar face. Meanwhile, it’s been from one extreme to the other for the Univ Queen. Last time it was OULC. This time it was the attempted sex party by the WannabeeBullingdon Boys over at the Hayek Society. But our Queen and her consorts weren’t there for the sex. No, they were horny for some votes. Unfortunately, in their haste to attend every hackable event that evening, they forgot to abide by the dress code. Imagine showing up to a black tie Tory sex party in casual dress. My lord, the humiliation. No secret after-

party orgy at the Randolph for you, tut-tut. It was not all in vain, however, as it has been reported that the Queen may have slated one of her very own WannabeeBullingdon Boys, none other than the Italian Stallion himself. Perhaps the future does hold a few Randolph after-parties. John Evelyn is not envious. Still, anything would beat going to the non-orgy after party that wound up in the lair of a particular Greek God. In even sexier news, the ROs are now in fisticuffs over exactly what system should be used to decide the order of precedence for replacing empty committee positions in the event that a committee member resigns or is removed. I guess that’s what they get up to when they have too little to do. Finally, in the sexiest but saddest of news, the Union has eaten of the forbidden fruit and been ripped from the Garden of Eden. It shall be dearly missed. Well, that’s been another two weeks in this veritable bone zone. John Evelyn apologises for the filthiness of his colleagues and promises his next entry will be more highbrow. More to cum. John Evelyn x

LIFE

Cherpse! Trevor O’Connor Fourth Year/Postgrad St. Cross Comparitive Social

First impressions? When he did show up, I was very pleasantly surprised, and his humor quickly made me realize this wasn’t going to end as a dumpster fire.

Did it meet your expectations? Far exceeded, though I had the lowest expectations known to man. I’ve never gone on a ‘blind date’ before, so I didn’t know what to expect - though it did work out for my parents, so I never wanted to write it off. What was the highlight? We realized we both enjoyed the same niche Japanese otter accounts and even watched a couple videos of this cute, chunky otter in a sweater going on a walk. We also both had a beluga whale phase. What was the most embarrassing moment? Nothing particularly embarrassing, but our cultural differences as an American and a Brit did elicit some comical moments.

Trevor and Thomas “This date did not result in violence.”

Thomas Marin Fourth Year/ Postgrad Wolfson First impressions? A pleasant (albeit American) man, but why the college puffer? Had a mellifluous and charming accent. Nice teeth. Did it meet your expectations? I really had no expectations as I had never been on a blind date before. However, I had fears of having to endure the presence of a hideous bloviating Oxford-type, who I’d have struggled not to push into incoming traffic. Thankfully, this date did not result in violence.

Looking for love? Email cherwelleditor@gmail.com or message one of our Life editors!

What was the highlight? Having two different dogs hate crime us. Context not required. What was the most embarrassing moment? Any time I spoke about myself and my interests and realising how much of an adult loser I am. Describe the date in 3 words: Cold, freezing, and nippy.

Describe the date in 3 words: Funny, chaotic, easy

Is there a second date on the cards? I’m keen, so long as it isn’t outside!

Is there a second date on the cards? We left it open for one! We’ll see :)

Words of Wisdom from... RUSTY KATE This mildly comedic column has been written by a drag queen agony aunt. It is not for the faint hearted and contains sensitive topics which may cause distress to some readers. Be prepared for dirty douche water, relationship issues, adultery, and finding out why your Dad never loved you. Struggle remembering who you shagged last night? Think it might be early on-set dementia? Struggle remembering who you shagged last night? Good old Aunt Rusty is here to help! Rusty Kate is Oxford’s premier cum-filled crossdresser, known for turning looks, tricks, and straight men seven nights a week. She’s decided to take a short break out of her busy schedule hunting OUCA members for sport in Plush to act as Cherwell’s Dragony Aunt, and help sort out your pathetic little lives one horrendously uncensored column at a time. [The editor notes that any OUCA members with floppy curtains and a trust fund can submit their complaints directly to Rusty, in person, over a candle-lit dinner at QUOD. As long as you’re paying.] Remember to submit your questions through the link on the Cherwell Facebook page or linktr.ee/rustykatedrag – you’re guaranteed complete anonymity. Unless you’re an OUCA member in Plush and you DON’T hit on me. Hey Rusty, I have a bit of a situation. I’m head over heels in love with a boy, and I’ve told him such. We had a very close relationship and have agreed to let things grow naturally, while both seeing other people. Am I clinging on to hope, letting him walk all over me, or am I being a mature adult? Help an old, haggard poof out Rusty! Nothing of value grows naturally darling. Think of your love life like my fuckhole: barren. You’re better off completely detaching yourself from him emotionally, putting your willy in anything that has object permanence, and calling it a day when he eventually tells you it’s not going to work out. That, or put a ring on it so he has no way out. Try getting a divorce on an academic’s salary – you might as well douche with concrete and walk off a pier. Hi Rusty, bit of a problem. My foreskin is far too long! Everyone who’s seen it has said the same, with some saying they could even wear it as a scarf. Do I get the chop, or do I tie it in a bow and make it a permanent feature of my penis? Tying it in a bow will make it quite difficult to urinate. And ejaculate. And attract a mate. In all honesty, I’m no doctor, but I do think you should bite the bullet and let your next shag bite it off. I’ve actually been looking for a new turtleneck, so feel free to send it on. Heyyy, I’ve been a secret admirer of drag in Oxford a while now, and love your work. I’m a curious guy, never really dressed up and never drag. I would love for you to help me transform one day and be friends. I know this is probably crossing a boundary but look forward to an email back. Curious man? In Oxford? Who loves my work? And crosses my emotional and physical boundaries? I’m in – drop me a DM x

FEATURES

In the belly of Jordan Peterson: Ambivalence in question with the ersatz journalist

Sophie Barshall blends in with the student press at an Oxford Union event to observe “the Jordan-Petersonspectacle”, and reflects on the culture war Peterson thrives on.

I am sitting on the front bench in the Oxford Union chamber. Next to me, laptops are open. ‘Who do you write for?’, asks the boy on my left. This boy is my friend for the next hour. We shake our heads at the same things, he thinks my notes about lobsters are funny (he was looking at my laptop screen. Thank God I never broke character). ‘I’m independent’, I say. ‘Okay’.

I certainly am independent – independent from the world of amateur journalism entirely. The boy on my right is in on the whole thing – he saw me come in late and sneak onto the front bench. ‘Just open your laptop and do an essay or something’, says boy-on-the-right. I oblige, and title a document: Professor Jordan Peterson – Oxford Union 25th November 2021. There is excitement in the room, and I am in the world of journalists

now. It feels great. The front rows of the benches ahead of me are for Peterson’s guests. This is what friend-on-the left and I infer, anyway, since they’re dressed much better than anyone else. Lots of shirts and brogues. I spy a fur hat. I spy… Jordan Peterson. There he is outside the glass door. We have all stood in the cold, in a line, for some considerable time to see this man. But why? A happy boy outside told me that Peterson ‘had been incredibly helpful for him’; in fact, I really had the sense that he might have changed his life. But otherwise, the Oxford ‘position’ seems to be one of curiosity garnished with scepticism. This is certainly my own. Perhaps being a Jordan Peterson ‘stan’ – an overzealous or obsessive fan – lacks the sort of nuance that these

scholars might purport to possess. Peterson limps into the room. From the front, he is handsome and thin. His hair is dark grey at the forehead and fades into silver at the collar. He walks up to the platform and there is a standing ovation. I look around and can’t see any of the sceptics I met outside – they must have transformed into ‘stans’. Boy-on-the right joins them. Friend-on-the-left and I stay seated – besides, I committed to journalistic neutrality just five minutes ago. There are some ‘booers’ but they’re nowhere to be seen amongst the standing-stans. I feel very confused. From the back, Peterson is an old man. At the pub that night someone will remind me of the First Rule for Life: ‘stand up straight with your shoulders back’ (see 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, 2018). His body is

FEATURES angled, and the way he hunches pushes his frame through his clothes. Something has changed. But, he moves with grace. Jordan Peterson is well dressed and dignified. There is a special elegance in the way he twists his

27 ‘Are you okay?’, he asks me. ‘Yes!’; he thinks I am crying. I laugh even harder. It’s not that funny, it’s just absurd.

“Here is some familiar Peterson-style argument I can follow. He talks about metafictional narratives, and I am reminded, with sadness, that I am not a real journalist after all. I make my pretend journalist notes anyway.” hands as he speaks. The title of the talk is Imitation of the Divine Ideal, he says, and he tells us about perception, truth, artificial intelligence, the problem of interpretation, cybernetics and robots. I try, but I really can’t follow. This isn’t the Jordan Peterson I (sort of) know. I’ve read the first few chapters of his book, I’ve seen the Žižek debate and I’ve watched him ‘own’ and be ‘owned’. I’m sure something is different, and this isn’t surprising: the Professor has recently overcome a clonazepam addiction and survived a coma, and he now lives by an all-meat diet. Peterson faces the room like a man talking to himself. His gaze hovers at floor-line; the upper chamber is all but invisible. There is an inwardness about the whole address. Richard Dawkins, who is sitting ahead of me, nods along. Some latecomers enter the hall and the bench opposite squeeze up. A girl with perfect hair sits down with the boys in boat shoes. Peterson tells a story about a child who is scared when he sees a dog on his way to kindergarten. In the first version, he has a panic attack, spurring a lifetime of panic attacks, enabled by what Peterson calls the ‘Oedipal sacrifice of his mother’. In the second, the mother tells him to be brave and he walks past the dog to school, and he is fine. Here is some familiar Peterson-style argument I can follow. He talks about metafictional narratives, and I am reminded, with sadness, that I am not a real journalist after all. I make my pretend journalist notes anyway. He loses me again. Now Peterson is talking about chimpanzees, rats and dogs (lots of dogs). He hasn’t mentioned lobsters yet (friend-on-the-left laughs). ‘Do your controversies overshadow the subtler parts of your work?’, someone asks. Peterson pauses for a long second. ‘No’, he says. ‘People always hate when I tell them that, on average, women are shorter than men. That’s not a social construct, and it’s not controversial: it’s just a fact’. Everyone laughs, including me. Boyon-the-right looks up from his computer screen. He shakes his head in disgust. He’s

I know how this goes: we, as (supposedly) rational thinkers, subscribe to the first step of Peterson’s argument. But now we are on board the Peterson train, and if we stay aboard, we will soon pass under rough skies. But don’t be scared, boy-on-the-right! You should get on the train with us – what no one has told you yet is that you can get off wherever you like! Get on with me, and I’ll stay with you so long as the sky is flat. I am not telepathising hard enough, and boy-on-the-right is still staring at his

“What a total waste of an hour’, says a girl at the end of the bench. It’s true, Peterson was incoherent; but I know much more than I did before, and I am glad. I have been in the belly of the beast, and I have taken its temperature.” screen. Think about John Stuart Mill, boyon-the-right! You just cannot be sure that a ‘silenced’ opinion doesn’t contain some element of the truth… Nope. We’re getting to the end of the talk, and finally! Peterson pushes me too far. I climb off the train with friend-on-the-left. We sigh and feel the sweet validation of arriving where we had expected. ‘What a total waste of an hour’, says a girl at the end of the bench. It’s true, Peterson was incoherent; but I know much more than I did before, and I am glad. I have been in the belly of the beast, and I have taken its temperature. I have learnt more about boy-on-theright than the Imitation of the Divine Ideal: I have seen the people who truly won’t listen. Peterson is right about that. Even face-to-face with the enemy, he won’t look up from his screen. Why had he even come? He must have been curious like me; and then he must have been afraid. I imagine dead dogmas whizzing around his brain;

“The title of the talk is Imitation of the Divine Ideal, he says, and he tells us about perception, truth, artificial intelligence, the problem of interpretation, cybernetics and robots. I try, but I really can’t follow. This isn’t the Jordan Peterson I (sort of) know.” researching for an assignment, and he hasn’t listened to a word of the talk. This is his first sign of engagement since the standing ovation (this, being at odds with the rest of his behaviour, leads me to believe that he is deeply confused).

the twenty-four rules he has stacked upon himself. It feels like his career will not continue as before. I think I understand why he believes in God, because he believes in big ideas, and because it all seems to be too much for this man. I do not hate him. The talk finishes and there is another standing ovation. A head of bright red hair pops up and I recognise the Jordan-Peterson-changed-my-life boy from outside. I remember a Tweet by ‘bad-bitch’ Democrat A.O.C (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) from November 2020 – “Is anyone archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity in the future? I foresee decent probability of many deleted Tweets, writings [and] photos” – and look again at the ‘ambivalent’ ones cheering all around me. The students in this room are probably not Trump supporters, but this rhetoric of surveillance has filtered into their consciousness, nonetheless. If A.O.C doesn’t scare people out of the ‘wrong’ ideas, it seems like she just scares them out of expressing them: and I can see that all we have done is force ‘stans’ to adopt a façade of scepticism. The truth of their feelings has simply been pushed one layer deeper, and all it takes is a round of applause to lift it right up to the surface; the curtain raises

they’re pastel pink and green because they’re actually Instagram infographics. I know I’m right! They are saying. I just don’t know why! Jordan Peterson is burning in a fire of his own making – bowing under the pressure of

for just a moment. What happens when people are alone, or online? How does suppressed desire express itself then? And what will happen in the polling booth when no one is watching? Many in this room of young men (they make up ninety percent of us) will believe that they are subject to a culture of conformism and hyper-vigilance, and we should diffuse their fears by acknowledging them, not silencing them – lest we risk alienating people further (and even pushing them further to the Right). Listening more attentively, and even gently, could invalidate Peterson’s and A.O.C’s narratives of hostility, and we may find that this is a conflict that we no longer need, and that there is no Culture War without its student soldiers. In some ways, the Jordan-Peterson-spectacle is funny; and we can laugh. But we cannot dismiss these people. Perhaps instead we might look a hunched Professor in the face and ask ourselves: what’s it all about? ‘What do you think you’ll submit?’, asks friend-on-the-left as we close our laptops. ‘Probably a poem’, I say. Artwork by Ben Beechener.Image Credit: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0

Peterson’s ‘12 rules for life’ 1. Stand up straight with your shoulders back Take on the obstacles of the world without blaming the world for your obstacles. Instead of focusing on why the situation exists, accept the situation and focus on going forward. Peterson says we must give ourselves an advantage by holding our heads high and taking on challenges. 2. Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping Basically, we should take care of ourselves like we would for a loved one. This means you will sometimes have to do what is best for your future instead of just doing what will make you happy. 3. Make friends with people who want the best for you Choose meaning by making sacrifices instead of temporary happiness through pleasure. Balance your life between hedonism and righteousness. Peterson says that you should choose friends who help you adhere to these principles. 4. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today We should criticize ourselves while avoiding too much self-deprecation. By being too self-critical, we can lose the big picture. You shouldn’t compare yourself to others or judge yourself based on your prior accomplishments. 5. Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them Children can be naturally aggressive. As a parent, you should limit the amount of rules your child has to follow. Instead, give them a few basic principles to follow. 6. Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world Again, do not blame the world for your suffering. Peterson claims that you must change yourself before you change the world around you. 7. Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient) There is a price for greed. Do not pursue pleasures that are not in your best interests. Sacrifice some things now to make your life better in the future. In other words, seek meaningful goals over instant gratification. 8. Tell the truth—or, at least, don’t lie Telling the truth is hard because the truth can be harsh. However, telling the truth is the best course of action because lying makes you weak. Communicating your personal truth articulately will help ensure the benevolence of the future. 9. Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t Socrates said that the only thing that he was certain of was that he knew nothing; this allowed him to have an open mind and become one of the wisest men who ever lived. Listen to the people you speak to and try to learn something from them. 10. Be precise in your speech There is a connection between communication and reality. Identify things with careful attention and language in order to bring them to your control. As Peterson says, you must specify your destination in order to chartyour course. 11. Do not bother children when they are skateboarding Peterson believes that what is often considered “toxic masculinity” has more benefits to society than issues. He believes that it allows them to develop confidence in their own experience. 12. Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street Appreciate the little things in life, because life can present a lot of tragedy and pain. Peterson believes that it is these dark moments that allows us to appreciate the good in life. Summarised by Jessica DeMarco-Jacobson

COLUMNS

The how-to guide to Hilary

Uma Gurav on how to tell if you are a typical rower - and what to do about it!

o you constantly complain about the number of frankly appalling blisters you have on your hands? Frequently whine about how you just have to go to bed early tonight so you can wake up for rowing tomorrow? Repeatedly remind people how you simply cannot go out this evening because you are so tired from all the ergs you have been doing? If you have been experiencing any of these symptoms, I am sorry to have to tell you but, yes, you are in fact a typical rower. As I am sure many fellow rowers have already discovered, when someone finds out that you row they tend to react as if you had just told them that your favourite food is ice cream and chips – you are met with raised eyebrows, a lip curled in disgust and a sceptical groan of disapproval even as you attempt to convince them that it is actually

La Vie en Rose

Maddy Bellucci discusses the multifaceted personalities encouraged by New Year’s resolutions.

couple of days ago I went to see a Baudelaire exhibition, and as I meandered through colourful rooms full of poems about flowers and beautiful glass-eyed girls, to rooms displaying portraits of skeletons and poems about the inevitability of rotting in hell, I couldn’t help but notice a dichotomy. Now, this isn’t an essay for my French degree (don’t worry!), but rather a realisation I have had about myself. In fact, not just myself, but a select group of people. My whole childhood I was mesmerised by the rather magical prospect of reinvention. Every single summer I decided that they wouldn’t know what hit them and I would be a changed human. One summer it meant that after having decided that I needed a new, cool-girl laugh, I spent the next few months plaguing my friends’, teachers’ and family’s ears with a rather strange and unpleasant

‘really good once you try it’. You see, when you are not actually rowing at 6:30 in the morning, you will still undoubtedly be complaining about how you fell asleep in your 9am lecture because you had to row at 6:30 this morning. You will be grumbling about how your toes are practically dropping off because it was so cold at 6:30 this morning. You will be parading around in one of your numerous rowing jumpers or – better yet – the unisuit because, did you know, “I row at 6:30 in the mornings?” What is more, over the last few weeks, colleges have begun the nail-biting process of boat selections, adding a whole new layer of erg-mania into the equation. Rowers have been pouring blood, sweat and tears into training with the hopes of defeating the most fiendish and dreaded adversary of the rowing world: the 2k test. If you are anything like me, the very thought of the 2k test leaves you feeling half-determined, half-terrified and completely exhausted before you have even gotten anywhere near an erg. All in all, it hardly sounds like an enjoyable way to spend your free time. I can hear the confused voices of oh-so-many of my friends, and I can hardly blame them for asking me: “Why on earth do you not just quit?” The answer, of course, is blindingly obvious but it is something that I know I certainly do not remind myself of enough: I love rowing. Too often, we forget that we are allowed to do things for no better reason than the fact that we love doing them. It is hardly surprising given the pressure that is put on us during term time to not only complete a lot of academic work, but also to produce that work to a very high standard. But no matter what level of a sport or an academic subject we are at, working hard and putting long hours into it should never be at the expense of your passion for it. I have heard the term ‘typical rower’ get

thrown about a lot at Oxford. It is a phrase that somehow manages to turn the act of being extremely devoted to a particular discipline into a fault. But the thing is, we are all typical rowers in our own way. Being ‘a typical rower’ is not about constantly reminding all your friends about your early mornings and your tiring ergs. It is not about blistered hands or 2k tests. It is not even about being amazing at rowing. It is about the hard work and devotion that each and every one of us puts into those things that mean something to us in life. They can be the degrees that we all spend hours and hours working towards, the sports that we train in, the societies that we are part of or the skills that we hone.

throaty cackle; another such renewal manifested itself in Year 7, with permanently worn galaxy leggings and fishnet gloves. I think the teachers must have thought I was just slightly odd and let me do me. They had less sympathy for cap-wearing Ron. My case was met with more pity, rightfully. (As much as I would like to say that I don’t claim her, the fishnetted galaxy girl is definitely buried deep inside and still a big part of who I am today). I know that I am not the only one with this desire to romanticise the everyday. And I think, to some degree, it’s this escapism that makes life worth living. Us Baudelairean existentialists (the select group I mentioned earlier) can’t just commit to one person, it would be too boring. Let’s move away from self-monogamy and accept our multi-sidedness. We’ve just entered the New Year, a wonderful period of wishful thinking, where determined self-delusion is not only expected, but compulsory. However, when writing my own riveting resolutions manifesto, I realised that the goals were all over the place, and that some completely contradicted each other. Some I wrote on days where I was feeling very much like the wrongly done main character and they went a little like “to put myself first and be more selfish”. On other days, such as when my best friend spent all morning looking for her lost earphones, (that could have been mine for all we know, even though mine are different colour and definitely on that bus I rushed out of last week), I wrote: “don’t be so selfish, be a nicer person”. And at the end of this exhibition was a quote by Baudelaire referring to “l’homo duplex”, the dual man. He says that we are composed of two different selves. And that’s exactly it. (But I actually think it’s more than two for me – rather, ten.) So how do I go about New Me-ing all of these Maddys? Glow-ups are always fun. And here in Paris, it’s easy (as long as you make sure your BFF who is also in Paris is on board, or reinventing your name at the bar and lying about being

Russian can all go very south very quickly.) But this year I would like it to go beyond the vari’ous alcohol-induced ‘Calypso’ and ‘Natalya’s. If I am going to do this properly, I have to commit to all of the various real mes. And you to all of your various and wonderful yous. So, I’ve identified a few mes that seem to be more prominent at the minute: - Me with my French friends here: a Jane Birkin wannabe with a conveniently sexy (and thus slightly exaggerated) English accent. - Me with my actual friends: a loud, ridiculous and overly-confident boisterous selfish delight. - Drunk me: an insufferably clumsy. - Me with my family: insufferably slobbish. - Me with strangers: an overly apologetic, mumbling wreck. - Me with the studious anti-alcohol antidrugs housemates I live with: an intellectual who, like them, lives in the library and is opposed to heavy drinking and drugs (“I know right, it’s just so unnecessary”). Now it is just a matter of bettering each and every one of them, with equal care and dedication. The fundamental trick for this to work is to make sure none of these various groups of people meet/interact with each other. It’s got to be within a controlled environment (It would be extremely awkward if your drunk self told the fit stranger at the club that you’re a Calvin Klein model and then it turns out he’s good friends with someone you know who later informed him that this is, in fact, not true. Not that I would know, but hypothetically speaking I can imagine that would be a little embarrassing.) I am aware this is all veering towards the ludicrous, but – all jokes aside – coming to Paris made me fixate on this New Me concept and I tried and aborted certain Maddys along the way. I’ve come to the conclusion that it doesn’t work if you espouse a self that isn’t really you. Why invent a new one when there are already so many brilliant ‘yous’ to choose

“If you have been experiencing any of these symptoms, I am sorry to have to tell you, but yes, you are in fact a typical rower.” I started rowing last year while I was going through a bit of a difficult phase in my life. Friendships and relationships were starting to become exceptionally strained and work was continuing to be (unexceptionally) stressful. Dragging myself out of bed and cycling to an outing each morning before the sun came up became an oddly empowering ritual in the midst of all this. It reminded me that dedication is something for each and every one of us to be proud of. If you are a typical rower, wear that badge with a smile.

It is true, the things we commit to so wholeheartedly have the power to make us feel worse than we thought we ever could. I have rarely felt as bad as I do when I come back from a morning outing where I feel I have not rowed as well as I could have. I have never seen some of my friends as stressed as they were before we had to do our 2k tests this term. Alongside all the blisters and the tiredness, there is a disappointment of the worst kind which can only result from not quite achieving the goals that we worked towards with all our hearts. But the things we love and devote our hours to also have the power to make us happy in a way that absolutely nothing else can. For me, it is the orange and pink sunrises over the Isis river that suddenly make the early mornings worth it; it is the herd of cows that noisily shuffle across Port Meadow in the summer, and the rapid halting of our boats as we watch processions of tiny ducklings cross the water; it is the motivating screams of my wonderful friends that keep me going through a 2k test that seems to stretch on forever, and the exhausted smiles of achievement that we share as we collapse on the floor having finally completed it together. If, as I have sometimes done lately, you ever forget what the blisters or the late night essay crises or the hours spent practising your skills are all for, take a step back – remember what your orange and pink sunrise moments are. To all the typical rowers and typical degree students, to all the typical musicians and typical writers, in short, to all those people who strive with a wholehearted commitment to reach perfection in your chosen discipline – I hope you are proud of what you do. As for me, I really should be off to bed now – after all, I do have rowing at 6:30 tomorrow morning.

from. There is a fine line between the adulting task of networking, and just being a big one-woman show with ten different parts and thirty different wigs. But can I be blamed? It’s hard enough being alone with my ADHD/OCD mind, I need my many selves to spice things up in there. This is really not about being fake. There’s nothing fake in accepting your duality. I was talking to my friend who agrees that there is already a detach from one’s “real” self, especially in another country because of the language barrier. You’re a slightly altered being when in a new lexical world. A psychological analysis may well conclude that this stems from a place of deep-set insecurity and some form of unresolved past trauma, sure. My personal anthem ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ states “I’m a million different people from one day to the next” – so I will carry on bettering the various different me’s in unison. But my favourite me is one I’ve not yet mentioned: the me of early childhood who had no conception of (and therefore cared not for) who she was and was everyone and everything just as and when she pleased. Image Credit: Kevinbism via Pixabay

COLUMNS

Hiraeth

Anmol Kejriwal discusses the identity we all carry with ourselves as we attend university.

ast autumn, I was forced to pick and choose pieces of my life that I wanted to bring with me to university as I packed to move halfway across the world from India. I tried to fit in as much as I could within the stingy baggage allowance. My belongings sat piled against each other: the soft folds of sadness over having to leave the comforts of the familiar pushed against the hardbound spines of the books listed on my reading list. I vividly recall the argument I had with my mother: I refused to remove my copy of India after Gandhi by Guha, a book I wished to carry as a personal read rather than academic requirements. In hindsight, I did not know that as I struggled to make space for both Guha and Perry Anderson, it would be a sort

JCReviews

Conrad Moe heads to Worcester and New College to give their JCRs an indepth review.

he colleges of this ancient place are numerous, and so are the common rooms which accompany them. Whilst most of us will never get a glimpse of the civility that lurks inside the SCR, so attractively portrayed by William Rothenstein on canvas, we undergraduates are free to enjoy the range of pleasures that its somewhat more vulgar younger cousins, the JCRs, have on offer. From stained sofas and scattered junk, paintings and photographs, not least the people who populate them, here follows a lively and much needed dissection of the sheer range of quirks and oddities that make up the unparalleled experience that is the JCRs. Worcester The gate to Worcester is magnificent. Whilst most colleges tend to settle for more of a quiet entrance, Worcester`s main gate imposes itself on the onlooker, making him almost nauseous about the distant potential for the whole structure to collapse on one’s head. No other college, as far as I can tell,

29 of foreshadowing, a kind of a microcosm if you will, of a life that I would come to become familiar with. A weighing sense of dichotomy between my culture, languages and history that amalgamate to shape my ‘Brown’ identity and my surroundings. Over time I’ve come to realise that they feel the heaviest in the careless moments which hold no significant value in the grander scheme of things. As I set my bag down on one of the wooden desks of the Upper Camera, and start to pull out my books and laptop, subconsciously I notice an array of my belongings tumble out alongside and realise each one carries with it a neatly packaged bundle of thoughts, musings and uncomfortable histories. Half an hour passes; they hang there uncomfortably, while I pretend to pay attention to Dworkin’s essay on ‘Rights’. I can no longer hold back. As discreetly as I can, I pick them up, one at a time, and caress them softly. Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish’s words “our love is an inherited disease” echo in my mind. Never does it seem more true than in that moment in the warm – yellow lamp stained stillness of the Bodleian Libraries. I realise that being ‘Brown’ runs deeper than an extra shot of melanin in my skin: it’s the conditioned familiarity and subsequent comfort I feel in the prolonged ‘a’s and the rough edged ‘r’s in my name, the sliver of hope that age-old Hindu prayers extend to my anxious mind and my perennial dalliance with history, community, love and grief. I question the relevance of the perceived gap I feel between my surroundings and myself. I wonder if this dichotomy is real or whether it’s a consequence of the internalised postcolonial lens that I’ve been condi-

tioned to view myself through that leads me to constantly feel like an outsider, tipping around carefully in measured steps, as one does when one feels as if they’re intruding in someone’s home. I am now compelled to come to terms with facets of my identity and reality, that I wasn’t particularly aware of since I naively assumed that they were natural; and they were, in the limited world that I lived in before coming to Oxford. There are culture shocks I’m still coming to terms with (Marmite, really?!) and ideas and histories I’m still struggling to convey. I’ve come to recognise my role as a translator of sorts, as I struggle to choose and translate between cultures. While I adapt to a new culture, the guilt of leaving behind my own habits and traditions weighs me down. This guilt turns into frustration, widening the apparent chasm of ‘otherness’. I often think about the fragments of

my past and how, if at all, significant they are to my identity. I wonder if I’m being foolish in wanting to cling to the suffering of familial and communal history. The questions become notably heavier as I pause and ask myself: How can I not, when my past, present and future are stained with my ever-present dalliance with my deep rooted history, and the familial connection I feel with loss, pain and fragile resurrected ambitions? I’m not sure where the boundaries lie. I’m not sure if there are any to begin with. Over the next few weeks, this column will seek to unpack the echoes of poetry and politics, familial history and acquired loss that I subconsciously carry with myself as I navigate the maze of deadlines, libraries, bops and friendships at Oxford..

feel the need to have a clock above their main entrance. It is a particularly beautiful place at night when lights highlight the façade, but I am visiting at the unforgiving light of the mid-afternoon, accompanied by Dan Harrison, a second year HisPol student who tells of how Worcester ended up as his home by accident, after the turbulent government mishandling of the class of 2020’s examination results. The JCR is conveniently located on the lefthand side of the main quad in one of their six medieval cottages, overlooking the perfectly kept lawn which forms the stereotypical image of Worcester. An ancient looking staircase takes us up to the JCR situated on the first floor. Opening the door is like being hugged by a jaunty white light, and upon entering one is immediately struck by the vaulted ceiling, where wooden beams are interspersed among a devoutly white background, the contrast between the oak and the white canvas emphasised by wall-mounted lights. Instinctively, you get the sense of a space which has witnessed the passage of time, but whose flavour has been altered with refurbishments made in recent memory. The room has cleverly been divided into two sections; a seating area at the back followed by a kitchen, and a more adaptable beginning and middle phase where a ping-pong table forms the centre of attention. The contrast between the whiteness of the walls and the light yellow and green sofas gives the room the quasi appearance of a waiting room at a specialist clinic, just without the risk of a positive chlamydia test. Lining the walls are JCR photographs, both silly ‘midway’ ones and official matriculation photos, making the room feel haunted with the presence of previous students. Oxford is a place where a great diversity of characters co-exists. A quick scan of Worcester JCR prove they are a college of no exception. According to an untampered whiteboard where students have written down happy experiences from the Christmas vac, students at Worcester entertain a variety of interests. Whilst some have enjoyed a good Netflix binge others have

seen loved ones and reunited with grandparents. Another student writes of the fun times she has had doing cocaine. According to Dan, the whiteboard is from a recent welfare session, which are frequently hosted in the JCR. If an alien civilization where to write a history of humankind based on the things they found in Worcester JCR, the sheer diversity of junk would strike them. Uncollected puffers and a set of poker chips occupies diverging corners of the room, whilst a pink hula-hoop hoovers over a blow-dryer and two small buckets, one red and one blue.

confusion of old and new seems appropriate for a fourteenth century college which still lingers onto a paradoxical understanding of what it means for something to be ‘New’. Yet, the walls seem to exude stories of ages past, and even if the sofas are a bit grim, the space possess the imaginative quality of bringing old students back to life; visualising a young Hugh Grant occupying the same sofas at a time when they were once brand new, is not far-fetched. It is clearly a place where manners have been in the making for a long time. Scattered junk, as with Worcester, is a natural addition to the landscape, so natural in fact that I would struggle to imagine the room without it. For weird objects, New triumphs. It must be the only JCR where a pin-maker is a casual instalment. Worcester and New both possess JCRs which demand attention. Whilst I would pin Worcester as reliable and respectable, New triumphs when it comes to character and atmosphere. If you are looking for a predictable and cosy evening, Worcester is your bet, but if you want to be surrounded by walls that appear seasoned by the passage of time, and are unafraid of grim seating, New’s JCR is the one for you.

New College New College’s JCR has the longest pedigree of all the junior common rooms, able to trace its origins as far back as the 1680s, a fact their students no doubt relish in. The early history of the JCR is that of drinking and debauchery, its function primarily a private members club until college authorities forced through reform in the middle of the nineteenth century, paving the way for the development of the JCRs as they function today. Worcester and New’s JCRs are architecturally not unalike, but the atmosphere attached to each decor could not be more different. Whilst Worcester’s settles for respectability but ends up being a bit sterile, New has all the cosy and characterful ambiance of an American college common room at the turn of the century. The feel is Oxbridge meets American Pie; scruffy but not unclassy, a place where both copies of Homer and kegs full of beer accompanied with red-plastic cups seem equally appropriate. In terms of character, we have clearly moved up a step from Worcester. It is a rather old space, which carries itself with a light but dignified level of respect, with sofas ripe for change (no, seriously!) and a decisively authoritative looking fire-place marking out the separation of the JCR into two different wings. The walls are lined with modern abstract artworks which all seem completely out of place, a photographed red toothbrush with a blue background is a personal favourite. This

Artwork by Ben Beechener

Image Credit: ‘Dessert in the Senior Common Room’ by William Rothenstein (1872–1945), Worcester College (used with permission)

SPORT

Lifting the cloud: South Africa’s return to winning Adam Wilson discusses the recent success of South Africa’s cricket team amidst controversies.

CW: Racism, abuse atching South Africa comfortably sweep aside India, widely held to be one of the best limited-overs sides in the world, in the shimmering December heat in Paarl, it was hard to reconcile the confident and mature display on the pitch with the chaotic few years that the team and administration have endured off it. Indeed, less than twenty-four hours after Quinton de Kock and Janneman Malan had sealed another series victory to go with their 2-1 defeat of India in the preceding Tests, the team had to adjust themselves to the announcement that the country’s cricket administrators will be arguing over the coming months in favour of the dismissal of their own head coach, who has been accused of gross misconduct and of bringing Cricket South Africa (CSA) into disrepute. Mark Boucher, a former captain who played 147 Tests for South Africa between 1997 and 2012 was named in the board’s Social Justice and Nation-Building hearings in June last year as the perpetrator and enabler of a number of instances of racial discrimination that back to his time as a player. He has also been charged with improper conduct as head coach: his charge sheet, quoted by ESPNCricinfo, accuses him of exacerbating divisions and alienating players when the Black Lives Matter campaign hit the sport in 2020, and of treating Enoch Nkwe, his former assistant coach, in “a manner unbecoming of a leader in your position”. He will now be subject to a disciplinary hearing which could result in his dismissal.

Oxford results and fixtures Teddy Hall, Jesus, Balliol, and St Hugh’s are through to the football Cuppers semis in men’s football. Facing the Tabs: Oxford Blues drew to Cambridge Blues in both women’s lacrosse and men’s hockey, 9-9 and 2-2 respectively. Oxford football women’s Blues beat Nottingham Trent 2s 2-1 in a BUCS match. Oxford women’s water

These allegations are a reminder of the difficult period that Cricket South Africa has been through since the suspension of then-CEO Thanang Moroe, under misconduct allegations, in 2019. Persistent administrative issues climaxed in April of last year, when the South African Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture announced his intention to remove governmental recognition of Cricket South Africa’s authority over the sport. This would have defunded the federation and prohibited the South African team from representing the country internationally, effectively discontinuing the high-level organising of cricket within the country. South Africa’s three captains were reduced to issuing a joint statement apologising to stakeholders for the depth of the crisis within the sport’s administration. Those captains hardly needed more on their plates; on the field, South Africa’s men’s teams have at times over the past years looked bereft of direction and ideas. Between 2019 and 2021 they endured one of the worst runs of Test form in their history, losing three series in a row for the first time since 2004, and with the white ball they suffered the ignominy of being the second team, after only Afghanistan, to be eliminated from the 2019 World Cup. Their T20 record has scarcely been any better – they went six consecutive tours without a series win between 2019 and 2021, and fell at the first hurdle at the T20 World Cup in October. The chaotic state of the sport in the country was in many ways encapsulated in the behaviour of Quinton de Kock, South Africa’s star wicket-keeper. He began 2021 as South Africa’s stand-in Test captain, following the retirement of Faf du Plessis; he began 2022 by retiring from the format altogether, sensationally, in the middle of the Test series against India. In between, he was caught up in the row surrounding South Africa’s confused and often contradictory approach to the Black Lives Matter movement, notably (although not uniquely) refusing to take a knee before international matches. When Cricket South Africa issued a directive requiring their players to kneel before matches at the T20 World Cup, he instead issued an emotional statement and removed himself from the playing squad. His rapid reintegration – he played South Africa’s next match, despite assumptions that he would be sent home, and this time took the knee – only made the situation more confused. But the series against India could well go some way to dispelling the shadows around the team, if not the still-troubled administrators. To win a Test series against this India team is an achievement in itself, with Australia and England both having failed to do so last year. There were therefore good reasons for India’s status as pre-tour favourites: put simply, they are a team to compare with almost any in the history of the game, and their pace attack – surely, the best in the world – was tipped to do well on the bouncy South African pitches. To have overcome such a team, after having lost the opening Test, and having lost the toss in the two mustwin encounters that followed, and having dealt with Covid-19 and Quinton de Kock’s retirement, must surely give South Africa a huge amount of confidence. They attach, after all, a great amount of pride to their status as India’s final frontier – it will be a relief to have kept that record intact for

another series. Indeed, it seems to have boosted the squad already. As much as the Test side flashed hot and cold last year, with wins against Sri Lanka and the West Indies punctuated by a difficult tour of Pakistan, the ODI team had not won a series since Australia’s visit in March 2020. In between, they were bowled out for 125 and 197 in consecutive games in Sri Lanka, lost at home to Pakistan, and – probably most ignobly of all – fell to a 43-run defeat to Ireland at Malahide in July, drawing the series 1-1. The spectre of the 2019 World Cup has loomed large in recent years. But when Aiden Markram pushed a de-

“These allegations are a reminder of the difficult period that Cricket South Africa has been through.” livery from Shreyas Iyer to mid-off to seal the series win against India, South Africa could bask in the knowledge that they had outplayed their much-vaunted opponents in almost all facets of the game. Never mind that India have Jasprit Bumrah, Virat Kohli and Rishabh Pant. Never mind that Anrich Nortje, who has never yet failed to impress at the international level, had been forced to sit out of the whole tour through injury. Never mind either that India are a team with serious World Cup ambitions and the strongest domestic white-ball structure in world cricket. South Africa won the series with a game to spare. Captain Temba Bavuma, who had set the series up with his hundred in the first match, put it well when he said his team was one without superstars. It is not that they lack world-class players; Kagiso Rabada, Nortje and de Kock would be serious contenders for any side in the world, in any format. But South Africa in their glory days were often defined by individuals. Graeme Smith’s tenacity, the genius of AB de Villiers – and, yes, Mark Boucher’s skill behind the stumps. The legacy of that great team is now being reassessed; all three have been mentioned in CSA’s hearings in connection with a misman-

aged and potentially discriminatory team culture. Whether or not Boucher loses his job, it will be no bad thing if it is South Africa’s team, rather than star players or administrators, who make the headlines in the coming years. The great initiative of the Social Justice and Nation-Building hearings was to elevate the voices of the overlooked. We have heard much in the past from the storied greats of the game, Boucher, Smith and de Villiers amongst them; we have heard now from Paul Adams, Thami Tsolekile and Khaya Zondo, three black players who suffered in an uncaring dressing room not yet ready to embrace the post-Apartheid world. Their stories are saddening, but the fact that they are being told gives hope. If Temba Bavuma, Dean Elgar and their players can build a new legacy in South African cricket, where diversity is recognised as a strength and not endured as a supposed necessary evil, the current team may well in time come to be seen as greater still than their predecessors. There was a postscript to the win at Paarl, a match that deserves its own place in the history of the tour. Beneath the unmistakable profile of Table Mountain, at the grand old Newlands Cricket Ground in Cape Town, South Africa defended 278 to seal a clean-sweep of the series. It is only the second ODI whitewash that India have suffered, at the hands of anybody, in the past eight years. Quinton de Kock collected his second player-of-the-match award in two games, a reminder of the important role that the 29 year-old will still play in South Africa’s medium-term future. A brave and tenacious bowling display ensured that they fought themselves back into a contest they had no real right to win. Bavuma – South Africa’s first permanent black captain, it should not be forgotten, appointed in the midst of whispers of racial disharmony within the team – presided over it all with a calm and tactically astute performance. And, as the squad celebrated the rewards of a home summer that few had thought possible, it felt fitting that Table Mountain, so often shrouded under its distinctive blanket of cloud, had emerged instead into the bright sunlight once again. Image: Louis Roussouw / CC BY 2.0 via Flickr

SPORT

Why Balotelli might rescue crisis-hit Italy Oliver Hall discusses a potential revival for Mario Balotelli in a depleted Italian squad.

ew players in the recent history of European football have divided opinion quite like Mario Balotelli. Few players have seen such euphoric highs followed so quickly by such dramatic lows. Now though, with newly crowned European Champions Italy on the brink of missing out on World Cup qualification yet again, Roberto Mancini has turned to his old friend Mario: and it might just be the stroke of genius that saves the Azzurri. At first glance, it seems hard to believe that Italy have found themselves in this position at all. After winning the Euros on penalties at Wembley in July off the back of a tournament full of sensational performances, many predicted a return to the top table of world football after the embarrassment of missing out on the 2018 World Cup. Things started well enough back in March with three back-to-back comfortable 2-0 wins over Northern Ireland, Bulgaria, and Lithuania. At that point, very few would have guessed that they would win just one more of their remaining five games (an emphatic 5-0 demolition of

“The striker was once seen as one of the most promising young talents in world football.” Lithuania). As it turned out though, the Euros hangover was real and after draws to Bulgaria and Switzerland, a 0-0 on the final day of qualification in Belfast was the perfect demonstration of every going wrong with Italy. A period of games littered with penalty misses, goalkeeping errors, lack of leadership, and above all a lack of goals has left Mancini facing two rounds of playoffs, first against North Macedonia but then a crunch game with Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal. It is notable that on the whole, the notoriously impatient and brutal Italian Tiffossi have yet to turn on boss Mancini. His Euros success was so unexpected and admired that his experienced hand has so far been trusted to dig his side out of the hole they are in without calls for him to go. This is perhaps why he has been able to make such controversial decisions, such as recalling Mario Balotelli to the national team set-up for the first time since 2018. The striker was once seen as one of the most promising young talents in world football. He exploded onto the scene at Inter in 2008/09, scoring eight Serie A goals in 22 games in his first full season as a professional. He left the Italian giants in the summer of 2010 after amassing 86 total appearances and winning five trophies, including a historic treble under Jose Mourinho. His ¤29.5 million move to join the Manchester City project at the Etihad was viewed as the biggest statement of intent so far from the new owners and he continued to enjoy success with six league goals in his first season and a total of 21 in all competitions over the course of his three years at the club. He was a key member of the squad that brought City the FA Cup and their first Premier League title with his pass to Sergio Aguero for the Argentine’s last-minute winner in 2013 one of only three assists Balotelli ever made in sky blue. Controversy followed the Italian wherever

he went. He was famed for stories of training ground bust-ups, setting off fireworks in bathrooms, and genera, craziness. Whilst the goals and performances kept coming though, no one seemed to care. With the national team, things were only getting better and better for the striker. Euro 2012, when Italy eventually lost in the final to Spain, saw Balotelli win the golden boot and a place in the team of the tournament. Most famous of all were his two goals in the semi-final against Germany that instantly became a part of Italian footballing folklore. A successful 2012-13 season on the other side of Milan followed when he made the Serie A team of the season and netted 14 league goals. It was in 2014 that the decline really began. After a disastrous world cup campaign that saw Italy exit in the group stages alongside England, things seem to begin to fall apart. It was in fact against England in Brazil that Balotelli scored his most recent international goal. A sorry spell at Liverpool, where he scored just four times in 28 games, was followed by a brief renaissance in Nice before a falling out with head coach Patrick Viera proved the catalyst for a monumental decline and seasons playing in Serie B for both Brescia and Monza. This summer though, Balotelli was bold. He turned down the money-filled prospect of a move to Qatar in favour of Adana Demispor. There he has proved somewhat of a revelation, helping the newly promoted club to fourth place in the league, getting in amongst the goals but perhaps most surprisingly being labelled “the hardest working player on the team” by his manager. Maybe then, things have finally changed. At 36, Balotelli is unlikely to ever again establish himself for good in the national team setup but right now might just be exactly what they need. A desperate lack of attacking players, owing to injuries and dips in form, have seen Mancini do what most would have thought unthinkable six months ago and recall Balotelli to the squad. What happens next remains to be seen but one thing is for sure, an in-form motivated Mario Balotelli with a point to prove will be a terrifying prospect for anyone who faces him. Image: Илья Хохлов / CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Oli Hall’s Oxford United Updates

Club Update Another week and more craziness at success for Oxford United. The men’s team ran out 7-1 winners in an extraordinary affair at Gillingham, the women’s side triumphed 3-1 over Portsmouth on Sunday, and more transfer deals started to go through. The game at Priestfield on Saturday afternoon was truly hard to believe. Cameron Brannagan scored no fewer than four times from the penalty spot and the result came alongside an emphatic 6-0 defeat for promotion rivals Sunderland at Bolton. Elsewhere, MK Dons leapfrogged Wycombe and Wigan also dropped point. Those favourable results leave the Us just three points off fourth with a game in hand. The women made it a remarkable nine wins from nine to start the season with a 3-1 win at home over against Portsmouth. Goals from Daisy McLachlan, Lauren Haynes opened the scoring before Beth Lumsden scored for the fifth match running to secure the three points five minutes before halftime. The U’s are now just four points off the top with a

game in hand. The National League Cup is up next week with a trip to Crawley before a return to league action against promotion rivals Bridgewater the week after. In transfer news, winger Joel Cooper joined Port Vale on loan on Thursday in search of more game time. Manager Karl Robinson said: “Joel needs to be playing games. Port Vale are a good club where we know he will be looked after and hopefully he gets to help them push on from their league position in the second half of the season.” In other news, Daniel Agyei joined Crewe after two and a half seasons with Oxford and 93 total appearances. On the women’s side, full-back Amber Roberts has rejoined the U’s from Cardiff. Looking ahead to next week, the men’s side faces a crunch game against Wigan under the lights on Tuesday night before returning home to host 11th placed Portsmouth on Saturday. form when they welcome a struggling Chichester and Selsey.

Gillingham 2-7 Oxford Saturday saw one of the most extraordinary results of the season so far in League One. Oxford demolished struggling Gillingham, scoring seven times in total with Cameron Brannagan contributing to the tally with four goals from the spot. Oxford dominated from the word go and the first goal came after just eight minutes when Billy Bodin capitalised on a defensive error to slot past Sweden keeper Pontos Dahlberg. Three minutes later, Brannagan got his first chance from the spot after Matty Taylor was brought down. The midfielder dispatched the spot-kick calmly and Taylor headed home from a trademark Bodin setpiece delivery to make it three within 18 minutes. More horror lay in store for Gillingham fans after the break when a comical error from Dahlberg saw him foul Brannagan inside the box. The Oxford man scored his second from the spot to make it 4-0 before adding the fifth from 12 yards just seven minutes later. It was a moment of history for Brannagan as he became the first man in

Oxford history to score a hat-trick of penalties in one game. A forgivable lapse in concentration saw the home side grab a consolation but the bubble of optimism was pierced with seven minutes of normal time remaining when Brannagan obliged from the spot yet again. This time, Gerald Sithole was to blame for a careless handball. McKenzie did get one more back for the Kent side but it was Oxford who had the last word. Substitute Anthony Forde nodded home his first goal of the season to ensure that the Yellows scored seven goals away from home for the first time ever. It was a crazy day elsewhere in the division too. Sunderland lost 6-0 to Bolton, meaning that having started the day with a goal difference eight worse than their promotion rivals, Oxford finished it with a tally three better. They now sit just three points off MK Dons in fourth with a game in hand and can look forward to an away trip to Wigan next week, which might just prove to be their toughest test all season. Image: Steve Daniels / CC BY-SA 2.0 via Geograph

CHERWELL

32 Medium Sudoku

Hard Sudoku

Micro Cryptic Crossword

The numbers 1-9 must appear only once on each diagonal line.

Across: 1. Eton lice ruin democratic process (8) 5. Split acre, reorganise to smaller pieces (9) 7. Found Ray with their 3 feet back (4) 8. Finding garlic or eggs at centre (4)

Down: 1. My pet’s gone wild – nothing left inside (5) 2. Borrower loses bow by mistake (5) 3. Stumble on a journey (4) 4. Nocturnal bird discovered in shadowless part of Oxford (3) 6. Legal proceeding underway to start secret UFO enquiry (3)

Pencil Puzzle - Numberlink Connect matching numbers by drawing lines between them. Lines go horizontally or vertically through squares, and only one line is allowed in each square. Lines are not allowed to intersect, nor go through squares with numbers in them.

Pencil Puzzle - Hashiwokakero

Send your solutions to puzzlescherwell@gmail.com

The islands are represented by circles, and the number inside each island tells how many bridges are connected to it. Bridges are straight horizontal or vertical lines that connect two islands, bridges must not cross other bridges or islands. At most, two bridges connect any pair of islands, these are represented by a double line. By the end, all islands should be connected, i.e. you should be able to travel from any island to another.

Editor’s Corner: Evan Davis

Hashiwokakero means “Build Bridges” in Japanese and like many other popular pencil puzzles, first appeared in Nikoli. It comes with a story of a king ruling over a kingdom of islands who wishes to connect every island with bridges.

Evan Davis was Editor-in-Chief of Cherwell in Michaelmas Term 1983. Davis studied PPE at St John’s College. He has worked as the BBC’s economics editor and has presented Newsnight, Radio 4’s Today programme, and since 2005, Dragon’s Den. How would you describe your experience working at Cherwell? I was tired and stressed the whole time, and when I look back I wish I’d had the mental energy to enjoy it more. (Remember in those days, although the paper was quite short – 8 or 12 pages – the whole business of typesetting, proof-reading and printing it was incredibly laborious. This was before word processors were available for ordinary mortals). What is your best memory from your time at Cherwell? I loved the team. And I still see many of them. I also have a happy memory of getting into a huge fight with OUSU over the jointly-owned rights to the Oxbridge Career Handbook. They wanted a bigger share of the profits and we saw

them off by threatening to cancel the joint venture and launch our own competing product. (*It was Gerry Baker who led their side of the negotiations). What is the biggest lesson you learnt during your time as editor? We did a lot wrong, and some things that were plain silly. So for me the lesson is that we are all jerks sometimes, and we should forgive ourselves our inadequacies, as we should forgive those of other people. Would you have done anything differently as editor? I wouldn’t have had the main headline “Police in Search Row” on the front page of my first edition. I hadn’t anticipated that people would be

confused as to whether the word “row” should be read as rhyming with “flow” or “bough”. Did your experience at Cherwell help you in your career? Yes. I’ve come to the view that all experiences help you in your career. Really. And also, it is useful to have a CV that shows you are someone who goes out and gets involved with stuff. Again, it doesn’t matter what it is, just something constructive. What was the biggest story you published? One about a row over police search tactics. No, just joking. Shockingly, I actually can’t remember many of the stories in my papers. Looking back, I didn’t break big stories, and interestingly I really haven’t done that in my

career since. It’s funny how scoops have not really been a feature of my style of journalism. I could write a much longer essay on the place of different kinds of reporting, but it’s not for here. How did Cherwell change during your time on staff and how do you think the paper has evolved since? One memorable change was the acquisition of an answering machine that allowed people to leave messages when calling in from pay phones. More generally, the paper became significantly more tabloid in style – and fun – in my time, especially under the editorship of the late Paul Carter. What delights me about the paper now, is that it is still so recognisably the same product as it was then.