5th Week Hilary Term 2022

Notting Thrill: In defence of the romantic comedy

Christ Church buys back book donated in 1587

What’s in a name: Buildings and the politics of nomenclature

Terrible Calm by Glenn Armstrong

5th Week Friday, 18th February 2022 cherwell.org Vol. 294 No. 4 Independent since 1920

LAW SOCIETY CHAOS: CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS, £6,000 LOST ON FLOWERS position in an acting capacity. The position of the Treasurer is an elected one while Ježek had been chosen by Trzos despite resigning in the previous term. As acting Treasurer and signatory, Ježek had sole control within the society over the bank account which contained the Law Society budget, amounting to Internal communications and financial doctens of thousands of pounds. uments reveal how Michaelmas Term 2021 This was not the only appointment of Law Society President Bartłomiej ‘Bartek’ close friends. Enrico Pelganta, also of Christ Trzos appointed his friends to influential Church and President of the Hayek Society, positions, tried to amend the constitution was another close friend of Trzos. He had to allow appointments until graduation, and originally been appointed IT officer. This splashed out on a lavish, cancelled ball. Many position is necessary to enable further hours of conversation with high-ranking promotion, as other positions require expemembers and exclusive access to internal rience on committee. Pelganta told Cherwell, papers paint a picture of a society wracked by “my appointment as IT Officer was perfectly power struggles and struggling to administer constitutional. I have gone above and beyond itself, exacerbated by what members of the during my involvement executive told Cherwell with the Law Society: I was a £50,000 loss on the ball cancelled at the end of personally had in several occasions to stretch my last term. capability to ensure the Trzos, of Christ Church, well--running of the sofirst won election to the ciety affairs, without any presidency in Hilary Term 2021. Serving as sort of gain from my side.”

However, on the 28th of president-elect throughOctober, at 00:27, Trzos out Trinity Term 2021, messaged the executive he became president at committee declaring that the end of that term. The handover was messy; he was “hereby appointing Enrico advisor to the the bank account of the Law Society was still in President”, a role which did not previously exist. the name of a long-gone Flower Invoice from MT Ball showing costs of over student, leading Lloyds to Another member of the £6,208.08 society responded: “It’s the finally block the issuance of a new card. A new signatory was eventually tendency for mid-party drunk appointments found in František Ježek, a friend of Trzos, as for me [crying laughing emoji].” Trzos and Pelganta deny that Trzos was inebriated at Trzos himself had a non-British phone number which precluded his participation. Ježek the time. Pelganta would later feature in some of the largest expenditures made by the had previously resigned in TT21 under the threat of impeachment, as the then President Law Society that term.

Trzos had now managed to appoint two of tried removing him for dereliction of duty and misconduct. Ježek told Cherwell, “I had his friends to powerful positions within the a strenuous personal relationship with the society. According to the constitution, the Vice-President, which is an elected position, President TT21, I stepped down for personal reasons and it is entirely misleading to sugalongside the rest of the committee, can exercise a restraining force. In reality, the gest that this was because I felt that I would be impeached and removed.”

Vice-President had resigned, claiming that she could not work with Trzos and his friends, The Friends and the rest of the committee almost never Ježek was appointed Secretary for MT21. Admet, despite section 4.1 of the constitution ditionally the role of Treasurer was also filled prescribing biweekly gatherings.

by Ježek, whom Trzos had appointed to fill the By now, Trzos had almost unfettered con-

Estelle Atkinson, Pieter Garicano, and Daniel Moloney report.

trol over one of the largest and - crucially wealthiest student societies. According to one high-ranking member of the executive committee during that term, Trzos managed to raise over £150,000 from law firms. According to a member who spoke to Cherwell, this was an exceptionally successful round of fundraising. Trzos also decided to amend the constitution in a way that could have enabled him to assert control over the society for many terms to come.

The Faux pas The first notice some on the committee received of Trzos’ attempt to rewrite theconstitution was the arrival of the proposed amendments in their inboxes. As President, Trzos had unilaterally commissioned a constitutional review from his associate and fellow student Christopher Collins, and scheduled the meeting for the 14th of November without communicating the amendments until the 13th of November. Collins justified his proposed amendments on the grounds that they would “increase transparency and accountability”.

Cherwell has seen these proposed amendments, which provided for the creation of an Advisory Board, whose members would be appointed by the incumbent executive committee, which at the time was dominated

by Trzos and his friends. This new body, consisting of a Treasurer, a Returning Officer and a Deputy Returning Officer, would be ultimately responsible for the running of the society and its financial affairs. The only term limit imposed on these appointed positions was graduation. The Advisory Board also had the power to overturn the impeachment of any member through an appeals process. This raised the prospect of Trzos being able to wield considerable influence within the society over a period far in excess of his presidential term. Through friends on the Advisory Board, and with possibly himself as Returning Officer, he could have controlled access to the committee and supervised the discussion on the society’s administrative and financial affairs.

The constitutional amendments also explicitly excluded any appointments not made by the executive committee from forming part of the new body.

This meant that the current Returning Off-

icer and HT21 President, Svetoslav ‘Svet’ Karagueorguiev, would not sit on the Advisory Board. However, his successor, appointed by the executive committee, would.

Trzos told Cherwell that, “upon becoming President, I immediately realised severe structural shortcomings were present in the society. I brought in Mr Collins as an external consultant who had significant relevant experience relating to constitutional matters.

Mr Collins acted purely as an advisor and had no decision-making capacity, which was left, as stipulated by the constitution, to members of the committee.”

Cherwell has been told that Collins “ex pressed reservations” about whether the proposals would be accepted by the committee.

Trzos’ actions kicked off a brief but messy constitutional crisis. The meeting that Trzos had called was cancelled by the Returning Officer. Karagueorguiev took this course due to “the complete non-responsiveness from...

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the executive committee about the location of their proposed meeting and their failure to notify of the proposed measures to be discussed.”

Labelling the meeting unconstitutional and citing fears that the short notice would artificially decrease voter turnout, he further directed committee members to “disregard the draft constitutional changes sent out… by Christopher Collins, who is neither a member of the committee nor authorised to advise the Society in any meaningful way.”

Trzos responded later that day by postponing the meeting in order to “ensure the highest possible turnout and a transparent and fair discussion of the proposed changes”.

Somewhat chastened by Karagueorguiev, he stated that “At the same time, I would like

to inform you that the ‘decision’ of the Returning Officer, … to cancel the meeting is ultra vires [beyond their authority] as the Constitution does not equip the Returning Officer with the power to make such a ruling, and therefore [sic] ineffective.”

Arista Lai, a former President of the Law Society, waded into the controversy. She expressed concern over the handling of the affair, noting a series of issues with both the scheduling of the meeting and the proposed constitutional changes. Initially, Lai observed that communications concerning the meeting called to discuss the constitutional amendments were not sent out within the required seven days’ notice. In her email to the committee, she then proceeded to pick apart the proposals and the review process.

She wrote “Who is Christopher Collins?...

The constitution does not provide for a “consultation” to be unilaterally called by Exec without notifying anybody”. Lai continued, “How can somebody who “never had any formal role within Lawsoc” have any right or capability or knowledge to rewrite our constitution? And if he was advised by Exec, then it is not an independent perspective at all.”

Lai also highlighted the unconstitutional actions of Trzos, condemning the attempted side-lining of Karagueorguiev, who was the “final interpreter of the constitution”, as well as drawing attention back to Ježek’s appointment, saying he “should not even have been appointed to Exec after having quit (under threat of impeachment) before fulfilling his first and only term on committee”. Labelling the proposal for an Advisory Board as “profoundly undemocratic”, Lai stated that it was the opposite of increasing “transparency and impartiality”. In a similar vein, she said “the proposals… that allow the appointed RO and Treasurer to continue in office for the rest of their student life are entirely ungrounded and would mean that the current Exec who appoint the inaugural Advisory Board will have significant influence, and the Treasurer [Ježek] will have access to Lawsoc funds, for a looooong time.”

Ježek told Cherwell,”I was appointed Secretary based on my past administrative experience and I believe this was entirely appropriate for the president to do. There is no requirement to have served a full term to be Secretary and there is no requirement to not have resigned previously.”

Faced with this criticism, Trzos climbed down in an email sent the following day. In the email, he disavowed the constitutional changes, encouraging the committee “to disregard the draft that was shared with you”. He apologised for his “conduct” and conceded that “the meeting was rightly and validly cancelled by Svet.” By now, multiple members were dissatisfied with Trzos’ leadership. Ježek, who had been a close friend of Trzos, floated impeaching Trzos to multiple members of the executive. Ježek told Cherwell that he did not consider impeaching Trzos, but rather “was surveying the mood

among committee members.” Karagueorguiev told Cherwell that “Ježek claimed to be doing it for the ‘noble and selfless reason of saving the society’”. Eventually, that plan was put on hold. But less than two weeks after this internal crisis, the committee would find itself faced with another, public, debacle.

The Flowers On the 27th of November in Michaelmas Term, 2021, the Law Society sent out an email to ticket holders announcing the cancellation of the termly ball due to be held the very next day. The reason given was ‘major unsurmountable logistical issues.’

These complications are still affecting society today.

A source closely involved with the planning of the ball told Cherwell that despite previously having had difficulties processing payments, the MT21 executive pushed ahead with the event. After they were unable to transfer funds to the ball’s venue, they reached out to Hogan Lovells, the law firm sponsoring the event, the day before the ball. The firm accepted the request that they pay the deposit for the Natural History Museum. A representative from Hogan Lovells clarified that they made this payment on an exceptional basis and did not play a role in any discussions over the cancellation, telling Cherwell: “As in previous years, the firm paid the sponsorship funds directly to the Law Society in good time ahead of the event. The firm was alerted the day before the event that the Law Society were having difficulties in transferring funds to the venue, and required some assistance. The firm kindly offered to step in and paid the sums required directly to the venue. Unfortunately, we were later informed that, due to some administrative hurdles, the event was unable to go ahead despite everyone’s best efforts. We understand that the ball has been rearranged and the firm’s sponsorship funds are being put towards this new event as a continuation of our support.” The last-minute cancellation of the ball, due to what Trzos has described to Cherwell as “unforeseen circumstances,” lost the society approximately £50,000, a figure confirmed to Cherwell by multiple members of the previous and current executive. It was too late to retrieve many of the deposits made on what was going to be an incredibly lavish ball.

Cherwell has seen an invoice for just one of the lost deposits, from a business called Gail Smith, for a total fee of £6,208.08 invoiced to Pelganta’s account. Gail Smith, it turns out, is a florist.

Over £6,000 in flowers is just one of a variety of transactions that went into the ball’s planning, and various invoices are linked to different members of the society.

This is not a unique event; many financial dealings have involved reimbursements to personal accounts from the law society account, complicating the current executive committee’s ability to get an accurate picture of the society’s transaction history - a complex web of personal invoices and large transfers.

After months, would-be ball goers had yet to receive refunds. Oxfesses began to surface, all voicing upset at the cancellation and lack of refunds. On one of these anonymous Oxfesses, which was complaining about both the lack of refunds and the lack of events happening for the first few weeks of Hilary, the current president responded: “I’m sorry about the lack of in-person events, but unfortunately the past Exec has failed to pass ANY financial information onto me, which means I have 0 money to process your refunds or put down deposits for drinks, socials, or other networking events.”

In addition, Scharff-Hansen did not

receive a list of students who required refunds until the 2nd of February. This, coupled with the current executive committee’s complete lack of access to the bank account until well into Hilary Term, made the process of refunding students nearly impossible in a timely fashion. Some students are still waiting for refunds.

Causing further frustration, payments for tickets to the ball were not all processed in the same way. Tickets were distributed to Law Society members via QPay, a platform for ticketing on university campuses. While QPay has a convenient refund option, some refunds apparently have not gone through.

More notably, some students never bought tickets through QPay at all, but informally via bank transfer directly into the society’s bank account. The list Scharff-Hansen received did not include students who had bought tickets in this way.

Some students have approached the current executive committee to have a refund processed through bank transfer, as they purchased their tickets as ‘a friend of Bartek,’ as one of ‘Bartek’s exec invitees,’ or as a result of being on top of Trzos’ ‘informal waiting list.’ At this stage, refunds are currently being issued after the temporary standstill in the society’s financial liquidity. The current committee has sent out a google form allowing students to explain how they paid for their ticket, and consequently how they want to be refunded.

The Finances Both the Michaelmas Term executive and the current executive for Hilary Term have confirmed that the bank account was handed over (albeit in a delayed manner) to the current executive with over £50,000 in it. The signatories on the account include the current vice president of the society, Darian Murray-Griffiths, and former Secretary and acting Treasurer František Ježek.

The official handover was completed by Ježek and Murray-Griffiths on the 30th of January, which fell at the end of week 2 of Hilary Term. In an email explaining this delay, Ježek told Scharff-Hansen, MurrayGriffith, Trzos, and current President-Elect Geoffrey Cheng, that he had not been seeing messages from Scharff-Hansen in his Facebook Messenger inbox. Cherwell has seen these messages, which date from the 11th of December to the 19th of January, with approximately a dozen messages from Scharff-Hansen left unread by Ježek.

Ježek explained in the handover email, seen by Cherwell, that, in total, he had requested three authentication cards from Lloyds Bank. The first two only arrived after Ježek had already left Oxford at the end of Michaelmas Term, and were rendered invalid by the request of a third card, which arrived in Week 1 of Hilary Term. The PIN arrived early in Week 2. Ultimately, the email emphasised that until the end of Week 2, it was not possible for Ježek to have

handed the bank account over earlier.

The lack of funds available to the current executive committee put a cap on not just Michaelmas ball refunds, but also on outstanding fees owed to entertainment companies Merlin Entertainment and Curzon from the Trinity Term ball, which had been postponed to the beginning of Michaelmas term following an extension of COVID-19 restrictions. The society was issued a Level 2 Collection Notice for an outstanding fee of £2,687 from Merlin Entertainment. This type of notice comes after several unsuccessful attempts to settle the outstanding balance. The email, which has been seen

by Cherwell, was sent on the 19th of January, which is during Week 1 of Hilary term.

When Scharff-Hansen replied explaining that she was unable to pay for a lack of access to the account, Merlin Entertainment responded saying the fee had been settled.

A later look at the transaction history revealed that Ježek had paid the amount from the Lloyds account, as he was still active on the account despite no longer having any involvement with the society. Ježek told Cherwell that he intends to be removed as a signatory at the earliest possible time.

The Law Society would pay for expenditures by transferring large reimbursements to personal accounts of committee members; Cherwell found upwards of £20,000 transferred to Ježek’s personal account and £6,000 transferred to Pelganta’s personal account. Cherwell has seen invoices showing that both Ježek and Pelganta have been able to account for the full sums of the transfers, through receipts for ball related transactions, other society events, reimbursements to other students for Law Society related expenses, and money transferred back into the society’s bank account.

Ježek told Cherwell that, “the desperate state of lack of access to the bank account meant that we had to rely on emergency measures such as this.”

The transaction history also revealed that £2,172.96 was transferred into the personal account of Christopher Collins, who performed the review of the society’s constitution. Cherwell has seen receipts that prove Collins used the total amount to pay for two Law Society events: Burritos & Mojitos at The Alchemist, and a dinner with a law firm at Malmaison, despite Collins not being involved with the Law Society. Collins said that he was approached by Trzos after problems with the society’s ‘frozen’ bank account, putting Collins in the ‘uncomfortable position’ of paying for two events.

Scharff-Hansen is currently in touch with a team of accountants who are going through the transaction history looking for any anomalies. If there are any personal transactions that cannot be accounted for, the current executive committee has been encouraged by a representative from the Oxford University Clubs Office to either pursue a civil claim, or contact the police.

Despite this, former President and Returning Officer Svetoslav Karagueorguiev told Cherwell that Scharff-Hansen “has been leading by example and restoring the Society to its former position. Most recently, she is working on all the ball refunds which are in no way her fault and it is a shame she has had her term overshadowed by the negative impacts of the previous administration.”

Former President Bartłomiej ‘Bartek’ Trzos told Cherwell that the above “allegations” made to Cherwell “are wholly false and defamatory. They are politically motivated in order to deflect from the incompetence of the current Law Society executive.

I, and the former executive of the Oxford Law Society, reserve the right to legal recourse should these false and defamatory allegations be published.”

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Christ Church buys back book donated in 1587 Hope Philpott reports on Christchurch’s repurchase of a book donated by graduates of the college in the 16th century.

Christ Church has re-purchased a book which its students clubbed together to buy for the college in 1587. The 1570 edition of Euclid’s The Elements of Geometrie was the first English translation of the work. It was donated by a group of nine scholars after they received their Master of Arts degrees in the late 16th century. Christ Church Library then sold it in the 18th century because they already had a copy of the tome.

The names of the nine graduates who bought the book were written on the title page. Among them are James Calfhilll, later headmaster of Durham Grammar School, Edmund Gwyn, later Vicar of Market Lavington and grandfather of Nell Gwynn, actress and mistress to Charles II, and George Limiter, civil servant and solicitor to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster.

Christ Church was the first Oxford college to encourage recent graduates to donate money or books to the library. This system became more widespread in the 17th century. Often, wealthier colleges could afford to uniformly rebind some books with college binding, seen through the many uniform 18-19thcentury re-bindings at the Queen’s College.

Meanwhile, some colleges were more reliant on individual donations, in whatever bound form they came. This is evident from the rare books collection at Hertford College library, which exhibits the generous individual responses to a 17th-century call out for book donations. Many of their bindings were quite personalised, such as the proud red leather label with gold tooling, spelling ‘Martha Moor 1700’, on the calfskin leather of an edition of Whole Duty of Man necessary for all families and the stamps of initials “R.C.” and then ‘R.H” on the possibly 16th-century binding of Libri Prophetarvm.

Other donors to college libraries sought to represent their book ownership through symbolic means, with Magdalen home to

various armorial bindings. These include Magd. R.3.19, a fifteenth-century goldenbrown leather calfskin-bound Psalmes of David in meetre, featuring gold-tooled double-fillet borders with floral and leafy stamps and the arms of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales and son of James I. Sometimes the colleges themselves have left ownership marks on their books. A late twentieth century librarian at Lady Margaret Hall is responsible for all of the rare books having marker pen catalogue numbers on their spines and many heavily covered in black tape as repairs.

Gabriel Sewell, Christ Church College Librarian, said: “The purchase of the book sheds light on the early history of Christ Church Library and the study of material culture as well as supporting research into the history of mathematics at the college, in Oxford and further afield.

“It was important for Christ Church to be able to bring the book ‘home’ as it is a rare example of a book donated by a group of students when the college was still a relatively new foundation.The book is a link to the College’s history and to the students who gave funds to buy the book in 1587.

“The book has been catalogued and is ready to be accessed by members of the University and the wider community in our Special Collections reading room.

“Christ Church is very keen to make its rare books and manuscript collections as accessible as possible and encourages anybody with an interest in using our collections for research, teaching or enjoyment to get in touch.”

Christ Church also suggest that the donation may shed light on maths teaching at the college, with the fact that they donated a vernacular version perhaps indicative that the donors felt that it was time the College started teaching mathematics in the vernacular, rather than in Latin.

Having gone through various private collections and a spell in the John Rylands Library in Manchester, Christ Church has bought the book back using donations from the Friends of the National Libraries, Dr Fiona Hollands and Ethan Berman. The College intends for the book to be available for research and public engagement.

Writing on Christ Church’s website, Dr Philip Beeley of the Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine and Technology stated that, “Books which have been visibly used or which contain ownership details are particularly valuable because they provide important clues enabling the creation of a historical narrative”.

The phenomenon of selling duplicates of books was also not unique to Christ Church and was practised by many cash-squeezed and space-conscious college libraries in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Image Credit: The library of Christ Church, Oxford from Rudolph Ackermann’s History of Oxford (1813)

Oxford City Council warns that local bus services face a ‘cliff edge’ Lorcan O’Brien reports on the bus service funding crisis.

Funding support for local bus services in Oxford faces a “cliff edge” that could lead to further services being axed and a “slow economic recovery” from the pandemic, the city council has warned the government in a recent statement.

The council’s statement claims that the planned withdrawal of pandemic-related Bus Recovery Grant funding, which is due to expire on April 5, may force service providers to cut a large number of available routes, and “would significantly impact bus users and the city’s major employers”.

It also suggested the termination of grant support would undercut efforts to reduce congestion and carbon emissions in Oxford, such as plans to invest in an all-electric fleet of buses under the government’s ZEBRA (Zero Emission Bus Regional Areas) scheme.

Writing to the government, the council wants “all necessary” financial assistance to be maintained until the end of March 2023, to allow for the recovery of passenger numbers hit by the introduction of Plan B measures in December, which are currently thought to be at only two-thirds of their pre-COVID levels.

Oxford Bus Company has said the funding shortfall may require cuts of up to 30%.

This would be on top of previous changes to services in January, which entailed the closure of a number of routes, brought on by a “perfect storm” of the pandemic and difficulties in the recruitment of drivers.

In a letter to the Treasury, Liz Leffman, leader of Oxfordshire County Council, called the scale of potential cuts “unprecedented”, and suggested that not only all of Oxford’s park and ride services, but more than 40 routes, including key services to university hospitals, could also be under threat.

“Local authorities, including Oxfordshire County Council, have worked closely with bus operators over the past two years to support them through the pandemic, in the

expectation that the government’s National Bus Strategy would bring forward improvements”, she claimed. “It would be devastating for this hard work to be undone through the removal of support before we hear the outcome of our Bus Service Improvement Plan and future funding for bus services”.

The county council is in the process of a bid to secure £56 million from the government’s purportedly £3bn National Bus Strategy (‘Bus Back Better’) funding pot, as part of its Bus Service Improvement plan. The Observer had previously reported, however, that available funding has shrunk to £1.4bn, with the amount of funding bids submitted totalling more than £7bn.

Councillor Tom Hayes, Deputy Leader of Oxford Council and Cabinet Member for Green Transport said: “Bus travel is a crucially important way of getting around the city, and the City Council and Oxford’s major employers are very concerned about dangers posed to the bus network by a cliff edge withdrawal of Government support”.

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Oxford University research unlocks secrets of more transmissible HIV variant Matthew Clark reports on new research into a highly transmissible form of HIV. It seems that HIV is getting jealous of SARS-CoV-2 hogging the spotlight and has started acting out for attention. It is rather unfair, really, because in terms of viral ingenuity, HIV is a master jewel thief and the coronavirus is just a spotty little teenager shoplifting Mars bars.

When most viruses infect cells, they hijack the protein building machinery, crank out a few thousand offspring then sod off.

HIV on the other hand is a ‘retrovirus’. It penetrates deep into your cell’s nucleus, cuts open your DNA and integrates a copy of its own genome. These genes remain there forever. Even if your immune system is successful in destroying every single HIV particle in your body, your white blood cells are tricked into constantly churning out more and more viruses from their very own nuclei.

Luckily, HIV has a huge limitation that keeps most of us safe. Viruses such as SARS-Cov-2 and the common cold can be transmitted through airborne droplets. HIV is only transmissible through blood, semen, vaginal fluid and breast milk.

Worldwide, there are currently 38 million people infected with HIV. A majority of these cases are concentrated in southern

Africa, but newer variants are beginning to thrive in Europe. A new, highly virulent HIV strain (Named Virulent subtype-B) has been identified in the Netherlands, in an international collaborative study with key contributions from the Dutch HIV Monitoring Foundation and led by researchers from the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute The first VB patient was diagnosed in Amsterdam 1992. Significant differences in the virus’s genome were recorded but it was impossible to say how infectious and ‘dangerous’ this new variant was with just one patient. It took 10 years for another patient to test positive for VB so its significance was underestimated.

New data from the Oxford University’s BEEHIVE project, a data set analysis from 6700 HIV patients, showed that individuals with the VB variant had a viral load between 3.5 and 5.5 times higher. The rate of CD4 white blood cell decline was twice as fast for VB patients, placing them at risk of developing AIDS much more rapidly. Individuals with the VB variant also showed a significantly increased risk of transmitting the virus to others.

Patients that tested positive for VB were of the same average: Age, sex, mode of transmission and region of birth as standard HIV-1 patients – proving that this increased infectivity is a genetic property of the variant itself rather than biased sampling of an extra vulnerable population subset.

Search for volunteers for COVID-19 pill trials Cecilia Catmur reports on Oxford University’s latest COVID-19 trial.

Oxford and Southampton universities are looking for volunteers to trial Molnupiravir, a potential treatment for COVID-19. The trial is being led by Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Primary Health Care Science, partnered with the NIHR (National Institute for Health Research).

The antiviral drug Molnupiravir (brand name Lagevrio) prevents the virus from spreading and growing. The drug interferes with the Coronavirus’ genetic code, affecting its ability to replicate. As a result of it not being able to multiply, the virus levels in the body remain low. Therefore, the severity of cases and symptoms are reduced. The pill’s ability to treat infections, and reduce symptoms in high risk cases, could be critical to nationwide progress in combating the virus.

The drug is the first of its kind to be approved for further trials for COVID-19 treatment. It is a small, oral antiviral drug which can be taken at home. The course requires four tablets to be taken twice a day over five days.

Analysis of the interim ‘Phase 3 MOVeOUT’ trials published in ‘The New England Journal of Medicine’ reveal that ‘Molnupiravir’ proved effective in reducing COVID-19 symptoms if taken within 5 days of their onset. Further investigation by Merck and Ridgeback reveals the risk of hospitalisation was reduced by around 50% in those who took Molnupiravir compared to the placebo.

These trials have so far revealed no major safety concerns. The only people whom it is

not recommended for are those in pregnancy or breastfeeding. Hence, if the results of further trials are similarly favourable, Merck hopes to be able to administer 10 million people with the drug course by January 2022.

Side effects are minor; headaches, dizziness, diarrhoea, nausea and vomiting only affect 1 in 100 people who take the drug.

Volunteers must prove they currently have COVID-19 through a PCR or lateral flow, alongside symptoms which have lasted a minimum of five days. The search is for those over 50, or for 18-49 year olds with underlying health conditions. According to trial results, the most common risk factors for COVID-19 which this drug will be authorised for are obesity, older age over 60, and diabetes mellitus.

Image Credit: Christina Victoria Craft via Unsplash

The enzyme that replicates HIV’s genome has a 1 in 10000 error rate which is catastrophically inaccurate compared to most organisms. This lets HIV mutate incredibly quickly, explaining why many treatment plans involve a cocktail of several different antiretroviral drugs.

The VB variant has over 500 point mutations, 250 amino acid substitutions and several insertions/deletions of large garbled sequences. This makes it incredibly hard to pin down exactly what makes it so infectious but there are a few promising leads that are currently being researched further.

83% of VB genomes sequenced had an M41L mutation in their Pol gene. This makes them resistant to antiretroviral treatments such as Zidovudine. Out of the 17 VB positive individuals from the BEEHIVE project: 16 entered blood cells through the traditional CCR5 receptor route but amazingly 1 has evolved to use a slightly different receptor called CXCR4.

Despite this new variant’s increased transmission rate, it is easy to protect yourself from infection using simple barrier methods such as condoms during sex.

Image Credit: Matthew Clark

Oxford Diplomatic Society visits Russian Ambassador’s Residence Humza Jilani reports on DipSoc’s trip to Pakistani High Commission.

As the crisis brewing at Russia’s border with Ukraine and Afghanistan stands at the precipice of humanitarian disaster, fifteen University of Oxford students got a sneak peek at the delicate art of diplomacy at work in London.

Over 100,000 Russian troops are stationed at the country’s border with Ukraine, raising the spectre of the largest land war breaking out in Europe since the end of the Second World War. American, British, EU and Russian officials have shuttled throughout the continent in search of an elusive solution to bring down the temperature and avert an outright war. At the same time, United Nations officials have warned that Afghanistan, under international economic isolation since the Taliban wrestled back control in August, is on the brink of a mass famine.

A delegation from Oxford’s Diplomatic Society (DipSoc) went straight to the sources and got the first-hand perspectives of British, Pakistani, and Russian diplomats shaping the narratives of these issues in London. Their itinerary included stops at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO)’s headquarters in Whitehall, followed by a trip to the High Commission of Pakistan in London and a tour of the Russian Ambassador’s residence.

“As crises unfold in Ukraine and Afghanistan, we were very interested in getting different points of view on the current situations in Ukraine and Afghanistan, “ said Tiril Rahn, the founder and president of the

DipSoc. At the FCDO, UK diplomats outlined the government’s position on the dual crises unfolding. They emphasised concerns over instability and refugee flows, and reaffirmed that the UK was committed to finding a diplomatic solution to ease suffering and panic.

Later that day, the group was treated to a reception at the High Commission of Pakistan. They heard the High Commissioner of Pakistan’s thoughts on the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, and they were treated to an assortment of Pakistani appetisers and pastries.

Then, they hopped on the tube for a scheduled tour of the Russian Ambassador’s residence. Russia rents the complex, a regal 19th century townhouse in Kensington, from the United Kingdom for a token £1 per year. Standing outside of the residence, the excitement was palpable, Rahn said. The event was under Chatham House rules, so specific details cannot be provided.

“To our surprise, they answered all of our questions! But the answers were essentially what has been out there in the media anyway,” said Rahn.

Oxford’s fastest growing society, the DipSoc’s membership has ballooned from three to over 700 since its founding in December 2020. The roster includes seasoned diplomats from the foreign services of tens of countries, aspiring diplomats seeking to forge connections, and others eager to learn more about and contribute to diplomacy.

“It is really special to be a student of diplomacy, because you can ask any questions you want. While real diplomats work in the interest of their country, students can be neutral actors, and broach topics that might otherwise be taboo,” said Rahn.

NEWS

5

Oxfordshire scientists set new record for generating energy through nuclear fusion

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Elena Rotzokou reports on last week’s breakthrough in nuclear technology.

In the wake of a series of recent experiments, scientists are now closer than ever to recreating nuclear fusion, which powers the Sun and the stars, on Earth.

The Joint European Torus (JET), a plasma physics experiment based in Oxfordshire, has witnessed a breakthrough in its 40year endeavour to extract nuclear fusion energy by forcing together two forms of hydrogen.

The energy output produced by JET may not be massive, but it provides strong support for the conviction that nuclear fusion can successfully be replicated on our planet. In the words of Dr Joe Milnes, the head of operations at the JET reactor lab, “The JET experiments put us a step closer to fusion power. We’ve demonstrated that we can create a mini star inside of our machine and hold it there for five seconds and get high performance, which really takes us into a new realm.”

The energy output generated by JET’s recent experiments is over double that produced through similar efforts in 1997.

The JET breakthrough gives hope for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) experiment conducted in France – an internationally led endeavour projected to become the world’s largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment in the world by 2025. The experiment aims to recreate the fusion processes of the Sun. Efforts to produce fusion on Earth are particularly urgent at a time where the need for carbon-free energy is greater than ever. Fusion-based power plants would generate no greenhouse gases and only small amounts of radioactive waste.

There is, however, skepticism as to whether the recent breakthroughs into

the production of fusion will result in its commercialisation imminently. BBC science correspondent Jonathan Amos said: “Fusion is not a solution to get us to 2050 net zero. This is a solution to power society in the second half of this century.”

Another obstacle to fusion production in the immediate future is the fact that lab fusion reactions consume more energy than they produce. JET can no longer operate because its electromagnets tend to get too hot, while ITER will need to rely on internally cooled magnets.

This challenge can be overcome in the future by scaling up the plasmas used, but this will take time, concerted efforts, and long-term commitment. Around a quarter of the 300 scientists working for JET are at the early stages of their careers. As Dr Athina Kappatou has pointed out, “Fusion takes a long time, it is complex, it is difficult. This is why we have to ensure that from one generation to the next, there are the scientists, there are the engineers and the technical staff who can take things forward.”

Apart from technical hindrances, Brexit poses another challenge to getting as many countries on board as possible. The UK may still be a member of EUROfusion, but it will need to affiliate itself with certain EU science programmes to get fully involved in ITER. It has been unable to do so thus far as a result of disputes over trading arrangements post Brexit.

The world is watching as the promise of a nuclear fusion future draws closer. It is likely that JET will be decommissioned after 2023, while ITER is planning on commencing its plasma experiments around 2025.

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Don’s appointment blocked Suzanne Antelme reports on the vetoing of Jonathan Michie’s appointment to the ESRC. Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng reportedly blocked the appointment of Oxford professor Jonathan Michie to a research council, allegedly due to disagreements over his political affiliation.

Prof Michie was selected by an independent panel to become chief executive of the publicly funded Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), which uses its annual budget of about £200m to finance research across the social sciences.

Michie, a Professor of Innovation and Knowledge Exchange and President of Kellogg College, recently received an OBE for services to education and lifelong learning and has been in academia for 30 years, but – in a move the FT dubbed as opening a “new front in Britain’s culture wars” – had his appointment to the ESRC vetoed by the Business Secretary.

An ally of the Business Secretary claims that Kwarteng’s decision was driven by allegations that Michie previously had links to leftwing political organisations.

Michie was university friends with Seumas Milne, who later served as Jeremy Corbyn’s head of communications, later co-authoring a book with him.

Michie told Cherwell: “I’m afraid that I have no knowledge of [whether the appointment was vetoed] at all, other than the speculation that I’ve read, the most informed appearing to be that published by Research Professional [News].”

“I have accordingly never publicly expressed any political views of note, and do not belong to any political party.”

Susan Michie, his sister, tweeted, “Why is supporting ‘Corbyn’-type values rather than this Government’s values a reason to not appoint brilliant academics to leading academic positions? What kind of society are

we drifting into? Dystopian & scary. I hope academics resist this politicisation of our culture.”

Michie was selected for appointment by an independent panel including former advisor to Boris Johnson and pro-Brexit economist Gerard Lyons and both the former chair of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) as well as their current chief executive – UKRI being the departmental public body of which the ESRC is part.

James Wilsdon, a Professor at Sheffield University and director of the Research on Research Institute, told Research Professional News that this independent panel was “hardly a Marxist cabal” and that “to penalise senior academics based on their friendships or political positions as students 30 or 40 years ago is ridiculous – and reflects little more than the insecurity, paranoia and narrow-mindedness of Kwarteng and those advising him. It’s also a further sign of the creeping politicisation and corruption of the public appointments system.”

When asked for comment, a spokesperson for the Business Department would only say that “while the initial recruitment returned a strong field of candidates, none were ultimately suitable. Another campaign will start shortly with a view to attracting a wider range of candidates.”

A UKRI spokesperson told Cherwell that appointment to the ESRC’s executive chair is a matter for the Business Secretary, who has not yet responded to Cherwell’s request for comment.

Image credit: Kellogg College/CC BY-SA 4.0

COMMENT

6

COVID: The crisis of compassion Leah Mitchell discusses the impact of Covid on our compassion for those suffering during the pandemic.

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e are all familiar with the devastation Covid has wreaked: the millions of lives lost, the millions of lives curtailed, the sacrifices we have all had to make to protect public health, the financial damage and precarity that will haunt us for years to come, the enormous strain placed on our health services, and the terrifyingly huge mental health toll. These things are solid facts; grievances we can point to and complain about together, as victims alike of suffering imposed on us from above by the forces of the universe (and the government).

But what about the violence Covid has done to our compassion? When will we talk about how Covid has stripped so many of us of our sensitivity towards suffering, of our true concern for others? And can it be refound?

For many of us (myself included - I hold my hand up, though not with pride), case numbers became almost meaningless a long time ago. Even mortality statistics, reduced to jagged peaks and troughs on a graph, failed to spark much emotional response.

Their enormity combined with their constancy made it impossible to process. On top of the detached flatness of life under various degrees of lockdown and the general misery we were more or less all experiencing, our brains could simply not cope with more. Our grief and anger became channelled elsewhere - sometimes rightfully so, in light of the callousness, irresponsibility, and lack of foresight or even common sense with which our authorities have at points acted. But one side effect of this was that we became dangerously practised in a form of compartmentalisation - perhaps to some ex-

tent necessary to allow us simply to carry on existing, but in its stronger concentrations a force which allowed many of us, in ways big or small, to prioritise our own convenience over the safety of others.

In the first few months of the pandemic, I was terrified. I dealt with this terror by rigid adherence to Covid protocols, desperate to control what little was left for me to control, and by a consequent sense of moral righteousness - I might still get Covid, but at least I had Done All The Right Things. My sense of righteousness, I might add, was only fuelled by the perhaps inevitably moralising messaging being fed to us: Stay Home. Protect the NHS. Save Lives. I was saving lives, and I was incandescently furious with anyone who was failing to do the same. I could only imagine that their actions must derive from some perverse and inhuman selfishness, as well as a sense of superiority or exceptionalism which, rather ironically, got under my skin like nothing else.

But then. Ah, but then. I found myself around the early summer of 2021 forced to abandon my mental “black list” of those who had infringed Covid regulations, and there-

“Covid has stripped our sensitivity towards suffering, our true concern for others.” fore my neat and tidy moral code; partially because I literally lost count, but partially also because I suffered the crushing realisation - obvious now, but something I was incapable of seeing for a long time - that there was in fact no clear moral binary. Sure, some people behaved in particularly selfish ways and egregiously flouted the rules more than others. But at the end of the day, we were all guilty of the same core thought process - or failure of thought process - to lesser or greater

extents. I might not have technically broken any rules, but come that summer I, like everyone around me, was being a little less careful, a little more emotionally detached from it all. I avoided looking at news headlines and case numbers. I still in some abstract sense cared about people, of course; and I still took public health measures seriously. But I didn’t really feel these things anymore. I trotted off to get my vaccinations, I avoided crowded events, I wore my mask indoors as required.

But I no longer felt the crushing fear or the bitter anger. It was great.

Except at the same time, with the alleviation of restrictions and the return of quasinormalcy, I no longer felt a true connection to those still suffering immensely under the long shadow of the virus. I no longer felt the full weight of my compassion, because it had become too much to bear. Too much for us all to bear. We’re all implicated in this mess - in perpetuating the emotional disconnect that enables the harming of our most vulnerable.

With the pandemic far from over, how can we pull ourselves out of our apathy and into our empathy? I’m not sure I really have

the answers, except that we must walk the tightrope between burning ourselves out and avoiding all emotional responsibility.

We’re still connected to one another. Our government may represent a morally bankrupt failure of leadership; but that means we must lead ourselves. We must reach back into our communities, and into our most compassionate selves. We must rid ourselves of our numbness, and together remember our humanity.

I admit that it still feels overwhelming, and maybe impossible. But it is worth remembering that empathy, like apathy, is a mental habit we can practise. We won’t always get it right; we’re not perfect. But perhaps we can start with one small action checking up on an isolating friend, perhaps - and gradually expand our compassion outwards. We can at least try. And if more and more of us tried - really tried - wouldn’t that be something?

Image: fernandozhiminaicela via Pixabay

Cherwell Sex Survey It has been eight years since Cherwell last ran a survey looking at the sex lives of Oxford students. A lot has changed since then, so what better way is there to *anonymously* divulge your sex life on this love-infused Valentine’s Week 5 of Hilary Term 2022?

In 2014, Cherwell found that the average Oxford student has had sex with 4.67 people since arriving at university.

505 students responded to the survey. Exeter was dubbed “the horniest”, and Balliol the least. Is Exeter still the biggest sex lovers? Are Balliol really not so sex hungry? One in five people claimed to have had sex in public. The most popular locations included the Radcliffe Square, the Bridge of Sighs, and the New College mound. Park End was voted as the club with the best opportunities for casual sex.

Do you want to find out if ‘college incest’ is still prevalent? Then scan the QR code!

Important notices Please only answer this survey if you are an undergraduate/postgraduate student at Oxford. Cherwell does not collect respondents’ names, email addresses, or IP addresses. The information Cherwell collects from you is meant for assessing broad trends, such as the mean number of sexual partners per college or course. The information will be used as the basis for an article published in print and online by Cherwell.

The information will not be used for any other purposes. Data points, such as a student’s gender, course and college, will not be combined to identify individuals. Please do not include information, such as names or descriptions of individuals, that could be used to identify a third-party. The information Cherwell collects from you will not be shared with any third parties. Cherwell will securely store this information until March 4th 2022. At this point, Cherwell will delete all collected information. If you have any questions, please contact: legal@ospl.org or cherwelleditor@gmail.com.

COMMENT

7

The right to dissent: Protest in the post-pandemic world Maggie Wilcox discusses the changing nature of protest in the post-Covid era.

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CW: Racism This article began as a critique of the proposed Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill’s erosion of free speech and freedom of assembly.

Then in late January the House of Lords rejected numerous clauses of the act, particularly those pertaining to stricter policing of protests and protesters. With only about two months left in this Parliament, pundits do not think that the Police and Crime Bill will become law. If it does, the most controversial elements, like those rejected by the Lords, would not be part of it. This is an act of good fortune for the British public, unfortunately not for my article.

W hile I was procrastinating writing about a now doomed law, something dramatic began to happen in my home country, Canada. Hundreds of people assembled in trucks, vans and cars to protest in Western Canada on January Ninth against vaccine mandates for truckers and COVID restrictions. This group swelled to thousands as the so-called “Freedom Convoy” converged on the capital city, Ottawa, starting January 28th. The movement has since began to block various border crossings with the US, severely impacting trade and disrupting day to day life in Ottawa and the other major cities occupied.

This is an example of the type of protest the proposed Police and Crime Bill would have criminalized in the UK. Amongst the clauses voted down by the House of Lords were the creation of new offences for “obstructing the construction or maintenance of major transport works” or “for a person to interfere with the use or operation of key national infrastructure, including airports, the road network, railways and newspaper printers”.

Hearing stories of supply chain shortages, closing factories and hostility from boisterous protestors from family and friends back home, such harsher penalties begin to seem logical, maybe even necessary. And, there was talk of other trucker convoys popping up in other countries, including the US and the UK. Suddenly, the Police and Crime Bill is less of a cut and dry issue. This turn of events has forced me to grapple with a new question: what should protests look like in 2022?

Over the past few years, the Internet has become the leading way to make one’s voice heard. Online petitions and social media ‘slacktivism’, consisting of reposting articles, photographs and hashtags, has been steadily rising since the dawn of the Internet and especially over the past ten years with increased social media usage. Unsurprisingly, when

“Online petitions and social media ‘slacktivism’ has been steadily rising since the dawn of the Internet.” the COVID-19 pandemic pushed so much of life online, protest followed in part. The typical re-posting trends denouncing racism, foreign conflict and climate change made the

rounds on social media in the first half of 2020. Then, the murder of George Floyd and the re-invigoration of the Black Lives Matter movement laid bare the weaknesses of digital activism. The infamous “Blackout Tuesday’’, where social media users were encouraged to post a black square to protest racism and police brutality, was a disaster. Important hashtags and information were impossible to find in this sea of dark images. While the internet was indispensable in organizing the mass protest movement over the summer of 2020 across the US and abroad, it was still real-life marches which showed the widespread and profound desire for change.

But movements and civil disobedience like this, that gave life to revolution and civil progress in the 20th century are dying out. The first in-person protests after the COVID-19 shutdowns were those of anti-lockdown and anti-maskers, not too dissimilar from the groups that now compose the Freedom Convoy. These were, and continue to be, fueled by misinformation, conspiracy theories and sometimes even harm those involved by spreading the very disease many of the participants did not believe in. Black Lives Matter protests too became deadly, though often due to clashes with those who opposed them. After months, years now of isolation, our pent-up anger has found a way to spill over.

Yet, another worrying answer to this question of protest in 2022 is that protests may decrease. The Police and Crime Bill, which carries some truly worrying clauses, like the

“A growing apathy or

play of solidarity coupled with general growing pressure pushed Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, to issue a state of emergency on February 11 which could finally force the convoy to stop disrupting trade and travel. Only by

showing each other and ourselves that we can make our voices heard in a peaceful, yet forceful manner can we save our right to dissent.

Image: StockSnap via Pixabay

Should there be a reading week?

fear of protest seems to be taking root.” ability for police to search anyone “without suspicion” at a protest, elicited little public outcry in the UK. Right here in Oxford, last month’s demonstration against the Immigration and Borders bill was fiery and wellpublicized, but the crowd never exceeded 60 or so people. Oxford is no stranger to student protests going back to the St Scholastica Day riots of 1355 to the NUS demonstrations against tuition rises in 2010. Yet it is not a hotbed of student activism akin to American universities such as Columbia and Berkeley of the 1960s. Still, a growing apathy or fear of protest seems to be taking root here and around the world.

The very increase in a certain kind of bombastic and newsworthy public dissent over the past three years is to blame for this.

Groups like the Freedom Convoy have given rise to the myth that protest is inherently extreme, destructive and selfish. At the same time, social media, the pandemic and political dysfunction have catalyzed the polarization of Europe and North America. So, only the most desperate or angered among us go out.

But as the Black Lives Matter protests showed us in 2020, protest movements can only have success when they are supported by large, diverse groups. With this in mind, I come to the answer to my question of what protests should look like in 2022: there need to be more of them. Back in Canada, we have already seen proof of this approach. Opposing the Freedom Convoy in Toronto were a group of healthcare workers, who staged a counter-protest in order to escort staff and patients safely to hospitals. This public dis-

Isobel Lewis Those stereotypical tropical island depictions of bliss do nothing for me anymore.

They are only for the naive. But we all know that true happiness belongs to a week of no deadlines. Week five, and I can feel the standard really starting to slip. Grovelling emails asking for extensions are brewing and the innocent week one version of myself is long gone. A nine week term with a week to catch up and recover in the middle might just be what we need to keep the momentum going.

Zoe Lambert With the intensity of the Oxford eight week term and the extensive weekly reading lists it is far too easy to become overwhelmed and fail to cover all of the material.

When topics are independent this is not too much of a problem. When the content is cumulative, however, this means that gaps in early content make trying to learn new content far more challenging. Extending term for a week and giving students a week in the middle to consolidate and catch up on the earlier topics would go a long way in mitigating latter week stress.

Sonya Ribner Since Oxford weeks each have their own flavor of hectic, a reading week could be very useful to catch up on any work that has slipped through the cracks and to better orient one’s focus for the rest of term. However, the possibility of a reading week currently depends on the organization of a subject’s course work. For example, history students are sometimes given a reading week because they do less preparatory work during the vacations and, thus, require time during term to catch up on reading. Giving a reading week to all subjects would likely involve a restructuring of how some courses are currently taught. However, this shift in format could prove beneficial to students’ academic output: people might find themselves able to put more focus and energy toward the work that remains after the reading week.

Vlad Popescu Who can really deny they’d like a reading week? Fast-paced Oxford life is all well and good until you get home for the vac and you’re unable to do anything for a week. A reading week would be beneficial to everyone’s wellbeing and maybe even kick off the fifth week blues that are so infamous.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

8

Science Snippets

Meta-perverse: On the inherent misogyny of the technology and gaming industries Svetlana Nartey discusses the perverse misogyny surrounding the technology and gaming industry.

40/49 newly-launched SpaceX satellites lost due to solar storm, triggered by a large burst of solar radiation. This has been the largest collective loss of satellites stemming from a single geomagnetic event.

European Scientists set a nuclear fusion energy record after successfully producing 59 megajoules of sustained fusion energy at a site in Culham, near Oxford. This has more than doubled the previous record.

Tech Tidbits

New Samsung phones to feature parts made from recycled materials, such as recycled fish nets, used water bottles and CD cases. From its company vision, Samsung’s “Galaxy for the Planet” is a promising five-year plan to eliminate plastics in packaging.

Apple hopes to combat Airtag problem through its next update.

Apple users will be alerted earlier that an unknown AirTag is travelling with them, after a number of women complained about stalking.

Image Credits (top to bottom): p2722754 / Public Domain Certification via Pixabay, Matthias Weinberger / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via flickr, Kārlis Dambrāns / CC BY 2.0 via flickr, Swisshashtag / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

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eta has announced the rolling out of a “personal boundary tool”, prohibiting avatars from coming within nearly four-feet of one another in its Horizon virtual reality experiences. Avatars will now be immobilised upon approach and have to “extend their arms to be able to high-five or fist bump.” This follows reports of harassment from multiple female beta testers of the game being groped by strangers in these Horizon Worlds. Until now, Meta had responded with casual victim-blaming, telling female testers that they should have activated the “Safe Zone” tool if they felt threatened.

It is unsurprising that sexual harassment has made its way from reality into the metaverse. Last summer Ubisoft, maker of top games like Assassin’s Creed, faced allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct. Similarly, Riot Games, maker of League of Legends was accused of sexist culture in 2018, leading to a company walkout in 2019 and class-action lawsuits for gender discrimination. Most recently, Activation Blizzard, creator of popular franchises like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, was sued by the State of California for discrimination, sexual harassment and assault of women in the workplace. The case was almost immediately settled with an $18 million payout, however as seen by the inappropriacy in the metaverse, perversity remains at the

core of the gaming industry.

Documentary-drama The Social Dilemma, brought to Netflix late last year sought to enlighten viewers of the issues that social platforms, including Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, entail. Attracting a swarming volume of 38 million views within the first 28 days of release, the exposé film reveled shockstatistics such as an 151% increase in female preteen suicide as a result of social media usage. However, this docu-drama only grazed the surface of gender issues cultivated by social media and incited no retrospection from Meta to act in protection of their female users.

We should recall that Meta, until recently known as Facebook, was originally birthed ‘Facemash’; a tool that Mark Zuckerberg created for male students to rate the attractiveness of their female classmates. The nonce word, punning on words ‘face’ and ‘smash,’ not only correlated appearances with female worth, but also advocated sexual violence.

As the company evolved into Facebook, these values were not abandoned, only amplified.

Women reported being sent explicit, offensive, insulting or graphic messages and images on the platform, or having their own private photos shared without consent. Conducted in 2019, The Survation poll revealed 29% of women experienced sexual harassment on the platform and of those that reported this, 52% were ignored or told that there had not been a breach of community guidelines. Despite voicing intent to take action, the victim-blaming of female beta testers in the metaverse only echoes Facebook’s inherent misogyny that, unlike their re-brand, has not been resolved.

Conveniently, Meta’s positively impactful action to combat harassment after decades

of ignorance, comes at a time when such is also needed in its market evaluation. Only a few days prior to this announcement, Meta made history as having the biggest single-day drop in market value the US stock market has ever seen. This followed a disgracefully bad earnings report, with more than $250 billion wiped off Meta’s market value and shares plunging 27%.

An anti-misogyny stance is therefore opportunely for Meta. In showcasing concern for its female players through setting boundaries, Meta outshines its competitors who, in light of the same issues, have remained torpid.

Yet, is removing physical contact entirely the right move for combating the issue, when it addresses symptoms rather than the cause?

Though the raising of one’s hand to initiate a high five or fist bump is didactic of consent; it is only consent on a very small scale. Prohibiting physical contact entirely not only creates a false reality that forces us to ignore women’s impossibility of setting “personal boundaries” in real life, but also fails to penalize the excess of inappropriate sexual desire directed at female players. Instead, we are left with a new universe in which ill-breeding thoughts are still housed, and perverse individuals remain mobile. The physical boundary set does not censor verbal harassment that can still occur in the game’s hangout spaces and messaging features, leaving women as equally exposed to emotional abuse as they are in Meta’s other channels.

Meta has too soon proved that it is a textile cut from the same misogynistic cloth as its former self and the industry in which it exists.

Instead of rectifying the misogyny concerns of the industry at large, like the window that segregates a child from the candy store, by erecting this four-feet parameter, it has only made men lust over women more.

Broader system challenges for net-zero energy transition Evan Ng discusses the economic, financial, and market factors affecting the commitment to meet Paris Agreement’s net-zero emission target by 2050.

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eaching net zero emissions by 2050 is necessary to meet the Paris Agreement’s targets, so that catastrophic climate disasters can be avoided. This means that the energy system must be decarbonized deeply – fossil fuels which represent 81.2% of the current global energy consumption need to be gradually substituted with cleaner energy vectors as much as possible, while technologies like carbon capture, utilisation and storage will be required to offset emissions associated with the remaining usage of carbon-intensive fuels.

Electrification will be the critical enabler for a net zero energy transition.

Technologies like heat pumps and electric vehicles are already available in the market, yet their potential in decarbonizing the building and transport sectors have not been fully realised. Concurrently, continued digitalization of economic activities with robotics and advanced manufacturing methods could reduce industrial processes’ reliance on fossil fuel. Many difficult-to-electrify sectors like aviation, heavy vehicles, and high temperature industrial processes can also transition into using low-carbon processes supported by hydrogen, which can be produced using renewable energy through electrolysis.

To support these demand-side changes

for achieving a low carbon future, increasing penetration of renewables in power systems is crucial. However, despite the availability of technologies and abundance of resources, the net zero ambition remains far from realisation – this shows that technical restructuring is likely not the main obstacle hindering energy transitions. Instead, the progression towards a renewables-dominant world is limited by various economic, financial, and market factors across different stages of the energy transition.

Challenge 1: Energy Market Distortions Despite the falling costs of renewables and energy storage technologies over the past decade, the low-carbon transition is still occurring slower than what is required to mitigate climate change. One key challenge hindering the net zero transition lies in the sustained distortions of energy markets – the economically illogical action of subsidising fossil fuel consumptions in many countries prevents renewables from competing with carbon-intensive incumbents on a level playing field. To put the scale of these subsidies into perspective, post-tax fossil fuel subsidies amounted to US$5.3 trillion in 2015, approximately 17 times the global renewable energy investment in that year.

Not only are persistent fossil fuel subsidies a significant opportunity cost to national budgets, thereby reducing available financial resources to invest in low-carbon energy technologies, but they also manifest substantial economic inefficiencies and encourage excessive energy usage. In fact, an analysis on 50 energy-producing economies found that their fossil fuel consumption almost increases linearly with the amount of subsidy that the government provides. This suggests that legacy fossil

fuel subsidies have created social and infrastructural lock-ins in these economies, leading to persisting energy-intensive, inefficient practises. Consequently, this cements inertia in transitioning away from fossil fuels. Reforming fossil fuel subsidies is urgently necessary, as subsidies distort market signals to inform future technology choices, potentially risking additional carbon lock-in which negatively impacts progress towards a net zero energy system.

Besides regulatory distortion, the current energy market also features notable social distortion – the negative environmental and social externalities associated with fossil fuel consumptions are not sufficiently considered. To minimise the inefficiencies from such externalities, emissions must be priced appropriately.

Nevertheless, only 16% of global annual emissions are currently covered by carbon pricing arrangements, like carbon taxes or emissions trading schemes. Emissions must be priced appropriately to correct distorted markets, enabling appropriate price signals to guide long-term planning and investment decisions towards achieving the net zero ambitions.

In the power sector where energy generation infrastructures typically have a long lifespans of at least 25 to 30 years, achieving Paris Agreement’s target for net zero by 2050 means that no new fossil fuel power plants should be built from now on.

However, without internalising pollution costs to provide clear price signals reflecting Paris’ commitments, an investor who focuses solely on monetary cost will naturally prioritise cheaper fossil fuel incumbents, exacerbating costly stranded asset problems as energy systems progress towards net zero.

Read the full article on cherwell.org

BUSINESS & FINANCE

9

Orda: Reshaping restaurant management across Africa Imogen Lewis explores the company looking to digitise restaurants in Africa.

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he past two years have shaken up the economy like no other period in our lifetime. While some sectors, such as hospitality, suffered huge hits, others positively exploded. Take ecommerce, for example, whose share of global trade rose from 14% to 17% in 2020 alone, and SaaS (software as a service), a sector at the centre of a 17% revenue growth for worldwide public cloud.

At the intersection of the ecommerce, hospitality and SaaS sectors comes the electronic point of sale (ePOS) solution, first widespread in the 1990s, but later becoming the retail standard when cloudbased technologies took off post-2000.

With these solutions, restaurants and hospitality venues can now fully customize the way in which they electronically store and access all relevant business information. Gone are the days of sticky, dog-eared menus and order numbers scribbled down on barely legible sticky notes.

Orda Africa is one such ePOS solution,

describing itself as “a cloud-based restaurant software built for African chefs and business owners”. The startup was founded mid-pandemic in 2020 by Oxford DPhil alum and now-CEO Guy Futi, along with co-founders Akinwale Adinlewa, Mark Edomwande, Kunle Ogungbamila, and Namir El-Khouri.

Offering a full-stack solution, Orda covers all bases: not only providing a point-ofsale software that works with little to no internet, but also offering inventory management solutions, credit and lending aid, and real-time business analytics. The approach allows chefs and business owners to completely streamline operations and greatly reduce risk of human error, improving the hospitality experience for themselves and dining customers alike.

Yet, what does Orda have on competitors such as US-based Toast and Square? Well, they are tackling restaurant management in an extremely pertinent market: Africa.

Here, the food service market is set to see a CAGR of nearly 8% between 2020 and 2025.

For now, Orda’s cloud-based solution for SMEs is the only solution on the African continent that allows businesses to manage restaurant processes completely end-toend. In an interview, Orda’s CTO explained that the company’s approach comes as the result of nearly 18 months of research into how users in its specific a d d r e s s a ble market manage every aspect of their businesses.

The result of this, along with the significant market experience CEO Guy Futi gained during his two years working at Jumia Group, a leading ecommerce platform in Africa, was a solution tailored to enable smaller restaurants in Africa to ditch time-consuming pen and

Students are set to be among the biggest losers in the cost-of-living crisis Rachel Tait discusses inflation, cost-of-living and student loans.

U

K inflation is now at 5.4%, a near-30-year-high, driven by a combination of the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the surge in global fuel and energy costs, and the increase in trade-tariffs on European goods caused by Brexit. This is expected to increase to 7.25%, almost four times the Bank of England’s official inflation target of 2%, by April 2022, an estimate thought optimistic by some economists. The Bank of England attempted to combat rising prices by increasing interest rates to 0.5% for the second time in three months.

However, for the foreseeable future, they have lost control of inflation. As a result, consumers will face significant price hikes and increases to the cost of living, as prices are set to spiral, thus reducing purchasing power and eroding disposable income for at least the next few years.

Students are likely to feel the effects of unbridled inflation particularly acutely.

“[ONS] currently uses CPI to calculate inflation for the ‘average consumer’... However, CPI does not accurately reflect how bleak the situation is for students.”

The Office for National Statistics currently uses CPI (the Consumer Price Index) to calculate inflation for the “average consumer” by taking ‘the price

increases for a set of representative items’ and ‘weight[ing] those price increases according to the share of household spending and the overall economy going to those things.’ However, CPI does not accurately reflect how bleak the situation is for students. Alan Shipman’s alternative student-targeted inflation measure, the ‘Student Price Index,’ consistently runs higher than CPI; ‘in July 2008, while CPI was on 4.4% SPI was running at 6.6% for FT students in England.’ This is because they spend disproportionately more on certain items, including housing costs.

When we also take into account the role of energy prices in the current rise in inflation, which is likely to drive up rents, the disproportionate increase in the prices of basic goods like cheap food products, and the universal nature of these rises, students, including those in Oxford, are likely to see their cost of living affected to a greater extent than other consumers in society.

Moreover, the student loan scheme run by the Student Loans Company is extremely sensitive to changes in inflation and government policy. Interest rates for student loans are now at 4.4%, an increase of 0.3%, and are set to rise to 4.5% by March of this year. While some experts have argued that this rise is unlikely to affect students as most will probably never earn enough to pay the loan back in full, this picture is incomplete given government plans to freeze the salary threshold for student loan repayment in England at £27,295 per year for 2022-23. Paul Johnson, Director of the IFS, argues that the higher interest rates and the freezing of the salary threshold constitute ‘a 6 or 7% real terms reduction and hence a real terms increase in repayments of c. £150 a year.’ Thus, while those with student loans below the salary threshold and those earning significantly above it are unlikely to be affected, for middle income graduates this is in effect ‘a tax rise by

stealth,’ according to Ben Waltmann, a senior economist at the IFS. According to the Higher Education Policy Institute, were current levels of inflation to persist

paper methods and catch up with the traction of the biggest fast food players.

After an initial pre-seed raise of $1.1m in early January 2022, Orda now has its eyes set on expansion into South Africa, and possibly further across the continent.

While they have already begun to dip their toes into the world of payments processing, another way the company could look to grow their revenue is, as Toast has done in the US, selling their software as a white-label product – allowing their fullstack solution to become the underlying infrastructure for a huge number of other brands.

While already conquering the Nigerian and Kenyan markets is no small feat, it would be a mistake to assume that this means Orda has cracked the code to the entire African market. Expansion into the remaining 52 countries on the continent seems like an obvious next step. And yet, an interesting fork in the road comes in the start-up’s participation in the Techstars Boulder Class of 2022. As an operational investor that has already helped over 150 companies raise over $2B collectively, it will be interesting to see how they leverage this opportunity, and whether US expansion could be on the horizon.

Quick Takes

“Even as the real cost of repaying a student loan increases due to rising interest rates high inflation will erode the real value of tuition fees such that universities have less to spend per student.” and continue to drive up interest rates until 2025, a 2020 graduate would owe almost £90,000. The prospect of debt on this scale risks discouraging students, especially those from low-income backgrounds, from pursuing higher education in the first place.

Even as the real cost of repaying a student loan increases due to rising interest rates, high inflation will erode the real value of tuition fees such that universities have less to spend per student. If inflation continues to rise experts suggest that by the end of this year the real value of tuition fees will have been eroded by 38% compared with their value in 2012, and 51% by 2024. This will affect what higher education institutions are able to offer students in terms of teaching and facilities.

Students are facing higher costs of living and increases to student loan repayments down the line, all while their tuition fees lose value and the spending capacity of universities declines. There is a serious risk that high inflation could change the calculus for many on the value of higher education and drive low-income students away from universities.

“High inflation, rising energy cost and a weakening UK economy are now with us. The impending tax rise will make it worse.”- Martin Wolf, Financial Times

“It’s no surprise that the [NvidiaArm] deal has ended in failure...

Finding a way to appease regulators whilst maintaining the value and justifying the $40 billion price tag has proven overwhelmingly challenging.” Geoff Blaber, CEO of CCS Insight

“Last year I paid under £300 a tonne for nitrogen fertiliser; this year it’s over £700 a tonne. [Russia and Ukraine] know exactly how much the world is reliant on them for natural gas and fertiliser.” - Minette Batters, President of the National Farmers’ Union

EDITORIAL

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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 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 Welcome to our penultimate edition of term and my penultimate edition as a Cherwell staff member (she says in both sorrow and sheer delight). We’re more than halfway through term and as was confirmed by another typical Oxford evening of vino and JCR antics, I’m halfway through my degree (*shudders).

Life during Oxford term time is a condensed form of reality. Paradoxically, things move so quickly but also so slowly. Days slip by in a flash, while others feel as if the clocks have stopped and the events of two weeks all occur within a twenty-four hour period.

I’m pretty exhausted... academic work, Cherwell, my inability to say no to socialising, life in general… but mainly, it’s because I’m running a race: finish line = eight week.

We don’t have very many Oxford terms and yet, we sprint through, trying to hold it together without crumbling into a zillion pieces before the final essay deadline.

Just hours ago, I sat in our college dining hall when a wave of sadness washed over me (poor you, having another existential crisis, I hear you say). In relation to the length of my existence, I have a very limited amount of

Tom Coyle (he/him), Deputy Editor My introduction to Cherwell was reading a Features article, just after I’d received my UCAS offer. It was an expose on Oxford’s secret drinking societies. One section of that article caught my eye; a reference to how the infamous Piers Gaveston society had started selling ‘reduced price access tickets’ to its balls.

Access, outreach, support, opportunities.

Oxford’s new buzzwords – and rightfully so. Nobody can deny the success of schemes like UNIQ, Opportunity Oxford and Target Oxbridge. I certainly can’t – if it wasn’t for the opportunities the week-long UNIQ residential gave me, I wouldn’t be writing these words today. I wouldn’t be at Oxford at all. This institution needs to be open to the world, not a closed-off cesspit.

But those ‘reduced-price access tickets’ did little to allay the same fears I’d felt before my UNIQ residential, in that they continued the same imbalances and inequalities UNIQ had tried to prove didn’t exist. Access and outreach are being commodified in box-ticking exercises, without attention being given to why such access schemes are necessary at all. Oxford’s access schemes prove that the University is changing, but the students it attracts are still stuck in their archaic past, drenched in privilege and faux-exclusivity.

The success of schemes like UNIQ and The Sutton Trust’s residentials is that they don’t just make the information regard-

time left in the company of those I was surrounded by. If I live until the grand old age of 100, my ‘Oxford years’ will only make up 3% of my life (my attempt to convince you that humanities students can use a calculator right there), and yet, these years are possibly more significant and formative than any that have come before.

So, what conclusion have I drawn from this mathematical revelation? That I should drop-out, reapply and do it all over again?

Perhaps not, I don’t love Oxford that much. I don’t regret anything about the first half but I am going to try and slow down for the second. Not to the point where the term swallows me whole but I will be more conscious of making the most of my time here. Embrace every essay crisis, say yes to every social invitation, relish my remaining days of Cherwell power - that’s the plan. Wish me luck in my naivety.

Another thing that struck me was how much I have changed as a person since matriculating. I was painfully sensitive to criticism as a teenager. Now I delight in the fact that the staff at Cherwell can (and do) challenge my judgement. It makes me a better leader. I was also largely solitary, not by choice (growing up with undiagnosed autism is tough). Now, I don’t think I have ever been more outgoing. I’ve learned that people can be great. You’ve just got to find them.

I’m in an odd place right now. I’m exhausted, behind on my work, stressed, and sleep deprived. But strangely, I don’t think I’ve ever been more fulfilled. I’m doing what I want to do with my life around wonderful people. Long may this state continue! I just have to work out what to do with my life next term. ing access available, but they enable a holistic experience of Universities, just like we have as Oxford students. There is a limit to this, however. The most recent pre-pandemic figures available online indicate that UNIQ accepts somewhere around 1500 students to attend in-person, with more invited to an online programme. Yet Oxford normally has upwards of 3,300 undergraduate places per year; with just 1 in 18 of these being a UNIQ graduate. The scheme is increasing opportunities, absolutely; but it is limited by its size and funding.

This might be addressed by Colleges taking on their own access work, but the majority of such schemes fall into the pitfall of simply making the information available – meaning they are simply not as effective as more holistic University experiences at inspiring people to apply. YouTube videos - like those released by Jesus College - are informative but limited. They often don’t offer a student’s perspective - instead focussing on how an academic perceives the admissions process.

Their ‘natural’ audience is small, so they rely on clickbait titles and atrocious thumbnails.

“This institution needs to be open to the world, not a closed-off cesspit.”

If they don’t indulge in such practice - as my own College‘s YouTube channel proves - then much of the engagement is from alumni disagreeing with the direction their ex-College has taken. Don’t believe me? Just check out the comments on Hertford College’s 2030 Masterplan video.

Such videos don’t reach the desired audience; appealing to those who want to know about Oxford as an institution, rather than Oxford as a potential university. Their comments are filled with questions from those looking to affirm that they have ‘Oxford

Charlie Hancock (she/her), Editor-in-Chief I’m going to let you in on a little Cherwell secret: these editorials are invariably written at midnight, twelve hours before we go to print. It can be quite difficult to come up with something interesting today at this time of night. Tonight, more so than usual, as I am fresh from Halfway Hall and sleep-deprived from two straight nights of staying up until the small hours picking through our front page story with our news team. C’est la vie.

Last night was a far cry from the fresher’s meal I had at the start of my time at Oxford.

But at least I had one. Sorted into our households, we ate mezze from bento boxes while our newly-minted Principal quoted Obama. It was an exciting night, albeit one tempered by the fact we knew we were getting an Oxford experience, but not the one we had signed up for (although does anyone really know what they signed up for when they moved in to this place?).

Rather like Jill, I was struck by how quickly my time here has gone by. I haven’t been to that many formals. Not for a lack of trying, but for a lack of time and energy. Maybe I’ll be able to go to more once I’ve hung up my editorial gloves. intelligence’, and not what the reality of studying here is.

It hasn’t always been this way, though.

Hertford pioneered a revolutionary scheme in the 1960s to address the imbalance in Oxford admissions. The then Tutor for Admissions would visit schools that had never sent anybody to Oxford. He would interview those selected by the school’s senior leadership - those that actually understood the pupils. He would interview these pupils early, without an admissions test, and give them an offer to study at Hertford if they got two ‘E’ A Level grades. Hertford would shoot to the very top of the Norrington Table as a result. Ironically, the scheme was killed by the standardisation of admissions across the University - the very same standardisation that would eventually spawn UNIQ. This historic approach addresses all of my concerns about ‘modern outreach’. It isn’t a Piers Gav-style box ticking exercise, as Tanner himself knew the difficulties faced by disadvantaged students in accessing higher education, having himself received a scholarship to Cambridge. It didn’t just make information available, as they connected directly and personally to the students in question. It didn’t require an active search for information about Oxford, as word of the scheme was spread by teachers; those that truly understood their pupils. I’m not trying to talk current access schemes down – instead I’d love to see them expand.

I fear that it will come down to us, as students, to do the heavy lifting. Studytubers (as much as I dislike the term) offer a realistic and personal take on applying to Oxford, drastically better than the corporate style currently shared by Colleges. Social media is a powerful tool to share the personal stories of applicants – just look to @humans_of_Oxford_University.

I’m proud that I arrived at Oxford having benefited from its access schemes. I’m just worried that there will be countless more ignorant teenagers like me, denied opportunities through no fault of their own.

Culcher

CULTURE

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CONTENTS CULTURE

12 | Society Special 13 | Fashion and Photography in Oxford

MUSIC

14 | Sampling’s effect on female agency

FILM

15 | In defence of the romanti comedy

THE SOURCE

16 | Sisyphus 17 | Terrible Calm

BOOKS

18 | The revival of the print book 18 | Reading for pleasure

STAGE

19 | Reviews: She Felt Fear & Wendesday, Death Meditation

FASHION

20 | ExperiMENTAL 20 | BRIT Awards 20222

FOOD

22 | Restaurant review: La Table d’Alix

COVER PHOTOGRAPHER Eilidh Roberts

The apparent symmetry of this picture is what at first makes it so appealing – the calm stillness of the water and sweeping lines of the clouds, and particularly the predictable shape of the trees and plants reflected in the water makes the image smooth and mind-soothing. But I also think there’s something interesting about the intrigue of the plants which emerge from the water in the foreground, not reflected, as everything else, is in the sky or horizon above. They break the pattern and focus the eye on the subtle differences between the somehow more vivid reflections seen in the water and the opposing sky’s subtle pink hues. To me, this photo’s calming nature is both found in its composition and in the fuzzy memory of a relaxed 0th week late-afternoon stroll with friends I had missed all vacation.

In conversation with the Oxford Opera Society Clementine Scott speaks with an exciting new student venture not by Cherwell, but by Oxford Opera Society.

O

f all art forms, opera is the one that can perhaps feel the most overwhelming to the uninitiated — there are the venues in every major city that make you feel as though you’ve stepped back into the 1800s, the convoluted tales sung in a foreign language, and, above all, those eye-watering ticket prices. Enter Opera Scenes In Concert, a performance somewhere between a concert and an acting showcase, featuring composers from Handel and Monteverdi to Rimsky-Korsakov and Offenbach, as well as nearly every major operatic titan in between.

‘We have so many different periods, genres, and national traditions. A beginner gets to dip into all these different types of opera’, says Laura Butcher, one of the production’s co-directors and a French & Italian student at Merton (indeed, she credits her love of the latter language to opera — ‘[Mozart’s 1787 opera] Don Giovanni has one of the most funny, witty, librettos, to do it justice you need to immerse yourself in the Italian’).

Those who aren’t so familiar with the plots of the major operas, or who wish to immerse themselves in the romance, revenge and occasional comedy so characteristic of the genre, needn’t worry that Opera Scenes isn’t staging a full production. The performance will not consist of

disparate scene selections with nothing in common with one another, but of scenes united around the theme of ‘Chiaroscuro’ — just as that artistic technique revolves around contrasting light and dark, so too do the scenes oscillate between tragedy and light entertainment.

Cast member and Master’s student Zhaoyi Yan tells an amusing anecdote about the rapid switch in acting and vocal technique between playing the daughter of a dying father in Don Giovanni to a Parisian courtesan in Lehar’s The Merry Widow, but Butcher interestingly highlights how both scenes are concerned with, although in highly different ways, sexual attraction. Furthermore, codirector Deborah Acheampong, a first year at Worcester reading Theology, adds that since the running order of the scenes takes us from a very dark opening scene (from Marschner’s Der Vampyr) to a much lighter closing one (from Mozart’s The Magic Flute), the show as a whole comes to be about ‘the perseverance of human bonds’. She adds, ‘it’s hopeful in that way, and shows there’s a light at the end of the tunnel’.

Another consequence of choosing to stage opera in this format is a production that is much more accessible to singers auditioning for it. Butcher explains that ‘in a full production, not as many sing-

ers would get to perform, and because the singers were cast before the scenes were chosen, the scenes could be picked based on their strengths and types of voices’. Yan had prior experience singing operatic arias in a concert setting, but feels thrilled by the learning experience of acting in a dramatic scene, telling Cherwell that ‘it’s been a big leap, with the intimate interactions in the Don Giovanni scene we started off so shy, but gradually developed trust with one another’.

Opera Scenes is providing an exciting step into unknown waters for crew as well as cast. Butcher has previously worked as an opera director’s assistant, but that involved ‘putting the director’s vision in place, so this is the first time I’m directing my own vision’. Acheampong, moreover, has come upon directing opera almost by chance (‘I’m from a state school background, so I got into opera drip by drip through Spotify, and then I saw The Magic Flute and Tosca and thought “these kinda slap”’). Most of her prior experience is in writing plays, monologues and screenplay, while occasionally playing cello and singing (‘several different interests of mine were coalescing, so I thought, why not pursue this?’). Acheampong’s multifaceted interests have led her to a varied approach to directing; while the pastoral Acis and Galatea ‘is less theatrical, more about them just appreciating their environment’, she was able to pay attention to dialogue and play with inserting comedy when it came to the conspiracy of the sorcerers in Dido and Aeneas (‘the queen sorcerer and her lackeys are trying to one up each other’).

Of course, opera’s issues with accessibility go far deeper than Oxford, and Butcher, Acheampong, and Yan all speak insightfully on this. ‘With opera there’s a perception of cultural capital. It’s an association with the upper class – if you don’t belong in that class then you won’t belong there,’ says Acheampong. ‘But there’s also a more fundamental issue with material funds, paying for seats and singing lessons. If you’re trying to get into opera and you’re going up against people who’ve had money and trained from the age of five, there’s always going to be a disparity’. Butcher and Yan, who hail from Germany and China respectively, speak eloquently of the financial status of the opera industries in their home countries; the more generous German state funding of opera has made Butcher acutely aware that in the UK and US, ‘opera is a business that’s bound to make losses, it’s not well subsidised so needs to be run for profit, even though with streaming more people are watching than ever before’.

Still, the Opera Scenes team as a whole radiates hope, that there are new ways of presenting old material and new ways of making opera accessible to all. As Yan tells us, ‘we’re just trying to say that “this is fun”, you can enjoy this no matter who you are, for half an hour you can come and have a peaceful, or an exciting, time’.

Image credit: Giusi Borrasi

CULTURE

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Behind the scenes: Fashion and photography in Oxford Jimmy Brewer sits in on an event where the worlds of fashion and photography collide in a joint society event.

I

t is 3pm on a Saturday; Oxford is heavten minutes, pairs of patterned trousers ing. Cornmarket is thick with charity and wide-cut jeans, with accompanying collectors and religious preachers. (“I legs, filter in. A group as sartorially orienknow you are young and are probably tated as one named ‘The Oxford Fashion not thinking about death and eternity Society’ inevitably attracts those who right now…” I hear trailing behind me.) care about what they wear. Fastidiously I enter a building that I did not know dressed, upright, serious-faced characters existed, into the Student Union’s social come in and sit down quickly. Tote bags are space. A low, square-gridded ceiling and removed from shoulders. Sauntering in plain furnishing brings to mind alongside, generally attired with my old school’s ICT room. less panache, are members of Why am I here? I am the photography society. covering the first of three When the session begins, “People talk about the there are about 30 of us. sessions run jointly by the Oxford photogMegan Baffoe, one of raphy and fashion artists they admire... the event’s organisers, societies. The sesgives a brief overview a pleasant change sions are building to of the guidelines and a final exhibition, goals of the project, the culmination of to hear a group of then the groups are the project, in week let loose. After initial 7 of Hilary Term.

Oxford students not ice is broken, things Participants will join start to happen. Peocomplaining about one of seven groups, ple talk about artists each with designated they admire. Big permodels, stylists and essay deadlines.” sonalities of the groups photographers. Their task emerge. Bejewelled fingers today is to brainstorm ideas swivel laptops around to show on the intentionally vague topic the rest of the group their screen. of ‘paintings’. The groups will meet one Certain artists names’ keep reoccurring, another for the first time, so, naturally, Klimt and Mondrian. One can guess why: there are social as well as creative waters the colourful, mosaic-like works Klimt to navigate. is known for adapt themselves well to When I arrive, there are about five peoclothing. Mondrian, on the other hand, is ple sitting around. “What college are you an at-tractive choice on account of his at?” is the question echoing in the air. Of simplicity of colour and bold design. This course, a respectable student is at least five is the kind of chatter floating around minutes late to any event. Over the next the room – a pleasant change to hear a

group of Oxford students not complaining about essay deadlines.

Clothing is a dominant topic of discussion, but so too is clothing’s opposite, nudity. Experimentation with nakedness, or aspects of it, is proposed by some, and, though mostly well-hidden, cringed from by others. Megan Baffoe had stressed at the beginning how important it is that everyone is comfortable wearing the outfits – a guideline certainly being put to the test. Alongside these kinds of abrasions, the groups periodically have an idea that snaps together with momentous synergy.

Ideas are scribbled down, pictures sent into group chats. This is typical of the jolting pace of a brainstorm session.

Turning one’s emotional response to artwork into words is a challenging translation of medium and I was impressed at the participants’ ability to do so. Aided by pictures from Pinterest, one of them gives an insightful description of painter Egon Schiele’s contorted, intricate artworks.

Another shows me a landscape photographs he has taken and explains why he likes pictures of nature so much. “It lets me combine walking and photography.”

Pragmatic reasoning, but he does not stop there: “landscapes are so vast, and panoramic, that in the moment they can be overwhelming to take in. Photography allows tiny fragments of this bigger picture to be isolated, and details that would have been missed to be brought out.” Showing me a photograph that, he tells me, is a heavily zoomed in section of a much larger landscape, I can see a road winding daintily past a forest, over which a thick bank of cloud hovers. It is an affecting image.

This is the general tenor of the session – interested and interesting students sharing art that excites them. Each participant I ask has taken a different road into the hobby that, thanks to the session, now unites them. Some had started photographing during lockdown; others had been making clothes with a mother since they were very young. The common thread running through the event is a creativity that, though unspoken, defies the definition of a person by such narrow measures as academic performance that so often dominates this university. It reminds me, happily, why art is and will forever be essential.

Image credit: Zachary Elliott

14

PLAYLIST SEEMLESS SAMPLES To compliment this week’s article, the Music editors recommend you their favourite listens which use samples.

MUSIC

Recyling voices: An exploration into sampling’s effect on female agency Rosa Chalfen addresses

I KendrickLamar Flynn Hallman

sexism and its ties to sampling, male ownership and agnecy in her exploration of its covert effects.

CW: mention of racism and race-related violence.

1 PLASTIC 100’C Sampha Flora Dyson

WE GO ON The Avalanches Flora Dyson

OTIS The Durutti Column Flynn Hallman

ANGEL LoyleCarner,TomMisch Flora Dyson

7-year-old rapper Arz’s latest single is probably not the first place you’d expect to hear an old Billie Eilish song. Listening to Arz’s track ‘Alone With You’ is a weird experience: extracts of Eilish’ song hostage, from her debut album don’t smile at me, are interspersed with Arz’s lovelorn rapping. The version of Eilish that haunts the song is even more phantom-like than usual, with her voice edited to a reedy recognition, in particular adding sexist tone that removes some of the original lyrics over female artists’ sample. ArrDee song’s gravitas, whilst keeping its creepy changes Malika’s original love-balsweetness. lad-esque lyrics (‘I’ll bring you flowers Arz’s use of Eilish is a recent example in the pouring rain/Living without you of ‘sampling’, a practice within rap and is driving me insane’) to satirise the hip hop where artists include an element trope of the ‘clingy girlfriend’: of a pre-existing recording—a melody, ‘I don’t give girls flowers, a beat, vocals—which can then be ma- I’ll give you good wood nipulated and chopped into their own though/ If you want me track. It’s a practice that’s been used in all for yourself, then, music from the 1970s and, with the rise darling/ You probably of TikTok, where short samples can easily should go’. Romantic be found, reused and manipulated, samp- or what? Although no ling has become even more widespread. one listens to an ArrA particular trend in recent rap and hip Dee track expecting hop is male artists sampling the work Simone De Beauvoir, of famous female artists for their own the juxtaposition tracks. As well as Arz, there’s Drake’s feels somewhat track ‘Fair Trade’, where Travis Scott exploitative. Similarly, samples Canadian singer Charlotte Day Drake and Central Cee Wilson’s ‘Mountains’. ArrDee’s recent hit change Day Wilson and Pink ‘Flowers (Say My Name)’ samples Mali- Pantheress’ vulnerable love songs into ka’s voice from Nathan Dave’s ‘Flowers’, stereotypes of female infidelity, with and Central Cee’s ‘Obsessed With You Central Cee claiming that ‘you ain’t ‘samples the TikTok hit ‘Just for me’ by gotta worry ‘bout none of these hoes/I’m Pink Pantheress. grown, I’m done with these bitches’.

This trend shows us how the music in- Male ego replaces female yearning in a dustry is changing—it’s no longer enough complete inversion of the female singer’s for a track to be self-contained but, in a original voice.

TikTok age, songs have to be ‘interUnsurprisingly, these ethical and textual’, set within the context legal concerns have haunted of the music scene that it’s sampling since its concepbeing produced in. But tion. The juxtaposition this could be disturbing between a sample’s “It’s no longer news for female artists, lyrics and those of the who are chronically eventual track has enough for a track underrepresented in caused massive contmainstream rap and roversy—for example, to be self-contained hip hop as it is. For yvngxchris’ track one, many male ar‘blood on the leaves’, but, in a TikTok tists draw on female which samples ‘Stransingers that have ge Fruit’ by Nina Siage, songs have to already surpassed mone, a cover of Billy them in success: is it Holiday’s song about be ‘intertextural.’’ the fair that Arz, a rapper lynching of African right at the start of his Americans during the Jim career, should play off Crow Era, caused massive Eilish’s astronomical fame, or backlash for adding sexually that Central Cee should use Pink graphic lyrics over Holliday’s origiPantheress’ sounds to gain the atten- nal (‘And way before I met your mother, tion of her enormous TikTok fan base? boy, I was a virgin/My n****, she made Secondly, male artists’ tracks often trans- me a slut’). Chris apologised on TikTok form the original song’s meaning beyond and announced that he wouldn’t be

releasing the song, although it was eventually released last October. Meanwhile, musicians including 50 Cent, Mac Miller, Nicki Minaj and Kanye West have been entangled in law suits for not crediting samples properly, with Miller eventually settling a $10 million lawsuit for lifting an entire instrumental from Lord Finesse’s ‘Hip 2 Da Game’ and Minaj being hit by a copyright infringement suit by Tracy Chapman. To sample a track, artists, or more likely their record labels, have to get permission from both the original record label and the writer or publisher of the song—if they don’t get permission from the record label but do get it from the publisher, they can rerecord the sample and use it. This system also means that artists don’t have to credit who they took their sample from: although most do, Arz, for example, doesn’t credit Eilish in ‘Alone With You’.

Sampling female artists risks creating a culture where women must be attached to a man’s fame in order to ‘make it’ in mainstream rap and hip hop. Artists like Arz and ArrDee aren’t just ‘reusing’ these songs, but corrupting them, making tracks where female voices are used either to gain clout or to frame sexist lyrics in a disturbing power play. The current culture, where music is easily changed and distributed, can give artists great creative freedom—or it can be merely another outlet for the unequal power dynamics that have haunted music since the beginning of time. Artists and record labels have to do more to ensure it’s the first option, rather than the second.

Image Credits: crommelincklars//Flickr. Left (top to bottom): Bastite Safont, Sakena, Martin Rajdl, Christoffer Engstrom, Raphael Nogueira

FILM

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Notting Thrill! In defence of the romantic comedy

Must See Romance

Izzy Lucas discusses her cinematic guilty pleasure just in time for Valentines Day: the rom-com.

FILM To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before

A teen rom-com dream featuring all the classics: fake dating trope, love triangles and meddling younger sisters.

Caitlin Wilson

O

ver the first lockdown, my family developed hobbies: sourdough (my dad), piano (my brother), learning German (my mum), and running (somehow my other, cardio-averse brother). These are all fairly harmless hobbies – although the running really did start to grate when every morning I was confronted with cirque-du-soleil stretches in my kitchen.

Mine was slightly more fun: I fell into a rom-com hole.

I devoured the genre. I went through a phase of watching one a day as a form of serotonin intake after mind-numbing days on glitching Teams calls.

I watched Richard Curtis films, everything Hugh Grant has been in, Katherine Heigl playing the same character in four different projects, as well as innumerable others that have melded into a vague haze of warmth in my mind.

I remember telling my brothers of this new quirk of mine at the time, and their reactions of mingled disgust and embarrassment. It was like the entire genre was taboo to them, and my admission that I – God forbid – enjoyed it was bringing shame on the family by association. My family started joking about me being bitterly single or becoming a swooning heroine. My dad was suddenly worried I was not going to end up the Beauvoir-on-the-beach feminist daughter he wanted because of this new hobby.

But what was I doing wrong? The genre is vapid and over-saturated, but it’s still a very popular one. It has entered so deeply into the cultural Zeitgeist it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t recognise lines such as ‘I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy’, or ‘TO ME, YOU ARE PERFECT’, even if they haven’t watched the original films. The genre has indisputable cultural capital.

There are valid criticisms to be made, of course. The dialogue is usually bad and almost nothing will be remotely surprising: if the film were a pop song, it would hit the same chords over and over again until your ears bled. If you watch a rom-com from before about 2016, the main characters will almost certainly be white, cis, and straight. The girl will always have whatever the current fashion

deemed ‘perfect’ proportions, the guy will probably have a six-pack. She is quirky and clumsy and unable to look after herself. The guy will be funny and emotionally repressed. They will treat each other terribly and demonstrate characteristics that should send any sane person running for the hills.

Take, for example, beloved teen film Ten Things I Hate About You: as attractive as young Heath Ledger is, making money off tricking Kat is disgusting. Four Weddings and a Funeral shows Andie Macdowell and Hugh Grant repeatedly cheat on their respective partners with each other. In How To Lose a Guy in Ten Days, Kate Hudson makes Matthew McConaughey’s life a living hell, whilst he tries to manipulate her into falling in love with him.

Whilst there may be some third act drama based around this behaviour, the message of these films is not “This person seems insane; I must leave,” but “Now we’ve been through these trials we will be stronger than ever”. If you grow up with these films, you internalise some of the rhetoric they spout that no one is too broken for you to fix. Even if Heath Ledger lies to you, as long as he buys you a guitar it’s probably fine to take him back, because this time will be different.

Is there nothing worth saving, then?

Recently, rom-coms like Crazy Rich Asians, The Big Sick and Palm Springs have moved the genre beyond these questionable tropes, with more diverse characters, inventive storylines, and more realistic portrayals of love. Crazy Rich Asians, for example, starts with the main couple already together, and follows them struggling with prioritising relationships and communication over familial expectations. Palm Springs explores the fear of making yourself vulnerable, and how much more comfortable emotional isolation is. The Big Sick shows its audience how cultural differences can cause real problems for love, and what you have to be willing to sacrifice to make a relationship good. These films are good.

Not just good rom-coms, but quite good films.

Admittedly, they are not the only rom-coms I was watching. I mean, I was scraping the bottom of Amazon Prime’s

selection, not cruising award tables for new options.

I still think those other, less fashionable films are defensible, too. They aren’t Great Films. They probably won’t be sweeping the Oscars any time soon, and indie film critics probably aren’t going to suddenly change their minds and fall in love with Justin Timberlake’s performance in Friends with Benefits. But if you look close enough they show a lot of facets of modern-day womanhood, and the pressures of growing up in it. There is no other genre that revolves so much around the female gaze, and that is their hidden strength.

Take a look at 27 Dresses, a fairly typical late-2000s rom-com. The story revolves around Katherine Heigl’s attempt to unlearn the people-pleasing mechanisms that have come to govern her life. Leap Year is about a woman who realises that constantly seeking perfection is not going to make her happy. Even My Big Fat Greek Wedding shows the pressures that are put on single women to fall in love and settle down.

And most importantly – they’re fun.

They are joyful films to watch. I hatewatched Something Borrowed with one of my best friends a year or so ago, and we still quote lines from it back and forth. I have (badly) reenacted the singing scene in Ten Things I Hate About You so many times I think I could probably play the part in a sequel or unnecessary reboot.

Just because these films aren’t doing anything new doesn’t mean they don’t make people feel good. Curled up in front of my laptop screen after a day of tearfully boring online school, I felt better when I watched rom-coms. And I don’t care if that’s for some reason a cause of embarrassment, because I think we might need to grow up from that.

Why is there such a double standard here?

Yes, some rom-coms set bad examples for women, but how many action films set terrible examples for men? If I made fun of my male friends for their enjoyment of James Bond or Jack Reacher, I think I’d be labelled judgemental and snobbish.

They’re just having fun, and granted (as

FILM You’ve Got Mail Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks fall in love via email. Watch for the clunkiest computers, leafy NYC, and a really cute golden retriever..

Flora Dyson

FILM In The Mood For Love A bittersweet love story set in a beautifully filmed rendition of 1960s Hong Kong.

Wang Sum Luk

with everything) you consume the content mindfully, the films are fine. As far as I know, no guy really gets shamed for going to watch the new Marvel film, or for enjoying the Transformers universe. And I think that’s great. I don’t think they should be shamed. But somehow we have convinced ourselves that traditionally ‘masculine’ films are allowed to be flawed or mediocre. Yet if women enjoy the films that are explicitly marketed towards them, they’re being silly and embarrassing themselves.

Rom-coms deserve to be valued on their own terms, as films that can be good and bad and mediocre. They don’t deserve shaming, and neither do the people who watch them.

Artwork: Wang Sum Luk Image Credit: (top-bottom): Ron Lach/ Pexels, Florian Klauer

THE SOURCE

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Sisyphus

By Jing Jing Yang

T HE S

OU

I see, as I sit on a wall 7 feet above the mountain and the sea, a little worm-faced man pushing a spinning top up.

He reaches me, he trips, the spinning top rolls down.

He chases after it with thoughtless glee.

RC E

Nothing seemed amiss, and following a furious blur of motion three puppets twitching along, attached to the cranes suspended within the clouds.

(I swear that there are strings attached to my back?)

But I do not move, the leering moon shines through me.

They laugh, and they leap, high and then low, a grotesque giddy grin on their faces as they fly and a groan when they fall.

A lighthouse rises rapidly from the wine-dark ocean, and then it recedes.

I feel real- look, take my hand, feel the calluses of my fingers, the way the muscles bend as I will them, right?

I feel my memory slipping away in that sickly light.

Somewhere a bell tolls. a flock of ravens cross the sky, hiding the sun. the puppets twitch and they collapse in a heap of wooden limbs.

How do I know, you ask?

The clack-clack-clack sounds.

A scrape of metal, they are burned.

The cranes turn (180 degrees), with a louder creak The strings wear thinner and the show begins again.

17

THE SOURCE

Terrible Calm

By Glenn Armstrong

A growing, deep rumble Of wind-shaken windows In grand buildings.

No knowing eyes inside, just Passing over others Missing the columns’ rust Upholding that mighty, Ripening façade that must, Some day, fall or else be picked.

Above chattering birds joke Destiny for there must be fire Given all this smoke.

Even higher, Fate’s crier circles the dead, Those self-made prisoners Leaving the warning on read.

‘Our heroes, death throes’ phantoms’, He whispered down to me, ‘But not wrong to follow imagined lanterns When none laid out for thee.’

That voice flies, or it hides, Either way, it’s gone away, And what’s left is the stench Of rotting words, I want to say.

Those words with meanings Gnawed to bone By that trade We thought we owned.

When reached for now They slip between, And that dawn we thought had been Was a passing comet Trailing wailings from it, Ignored, but maybe seen.

Submit your creative writing to The Source at: cherwelleditor@gmail.com

Not gone, but moving on, Back to where we started from.

After all, that is what sold, We’re told, So recreate what we ought to do, From managed memories of ages past Of people we were told were true.

Watched high by hunter bird, The river flows with those undeterred.

Who’s unplugged the alarm?

None; just silent, shouting madmen Sinking back to terrible calm.

BOOKS

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Recommended Reads SHORT STORIES As February is the shortest month, why not read some shorter fiction?

This week our Books team recommend their favourite short stories, ranging from dystopian horror to Twitter controversies... Why not dip into something short in between your essays or problem sheets this week?

The Lottery

By Shirley Jackson A classic of dystopian horror, this famous short story caused an uproar when it was published in The New Yorker in 1948. The story of a small town with a disturbing annual ritual, this suspenseful and haunting story influenced the horror genre for decades to come.

- Eliza Browning, Books Editor

Cat Person

By Kristen Roupenian I hadn’t heard of Cat Person until this time last year, when it blew up on Twitter for the second time. The short story deals with an uncomfortable relationship between a female college student and an older man that starts at a cinema. Do I think it’s that special?

No. But the discourse surrouding it is fascinating - in 2021, an article was published entitled ‘“Cat Person” and Me’, where the writer claimed that Roupenian copied aspects of her real life. The discussion raised some really interesting questions about plagiarism and about whether we are allowed to use the details of other people’s lives in creative writing.

-Katie Kirkpatrick, Deputy Editor

The Bloody Chamber & Other Stories

By Angela Carter In this collection of reworked fairy tales, you are brought face to face with some of the best-known stories in Western literature, reminiscent of childhood and yet Carter gradually contorts these traditional tales in a way which is distinctly unique and unsettling. Carter disrupts expectations of genre and gender in her work, placing the uprooting of tradition centre-stage. The collection twists the fairy tales and myths you know so well into new literary shapes!

-Elena Buccisano, Books Editor

The revival of the print book Ella Myers celebrates the specific pleasures of physical books, and why they seem to be having a resurgence.

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his summer my friend and I went on about the book as an actual, physical object. books become yours, an extension of yourself. holiday together. Her bag was lightThe rise of the internet has meant saying That isn’t to say that there isn’t something weight, full of clothes and swimsuits, goodbye to a lot of the physical paraphernalia magical about other forms of reading too. The whilst mine was half-packed with of our hobbies. Our music, our books, our audiobook, for instance, can envelop you in a books. At the beach, she would whip out her films, our TV shows are all now online. I fictional world in a totally different way. I can Kindle, whilst I was balancing a weighty tome think people want to have actual things that still remember listening to David Tennant’s in my hand, trying not to drop it on my face represent the art and culture they love. They fantastic reading of the How to Train Your and probably injure myself in the process (I want to be able to browse through their Dragon books as a child. He would roar was reading American Wife by Curtis Sittenown library of books, reminded of to mimic the dragons’ cries, bellow field, which at over 500 pages, could have done the time they read that book and for the Viking chief and whimper some damage). Smugly, my friend pointed out the person who gave them that “The physical book in fear when the protagonist that she could read basically any book in the novel for Christmas. Just like was afraid. Audiobooks can be has a certain smell, magical too. world on her tiny Kindle whilst I lugged about with vinyl, people want to be a miniature library in order to entertain myself able to see and touch the art But in a world full of podcasts margins to scribble during the many days we spent sunbathing. that inspires and moves them and background TV, it’s quite in, pages to dog-ear She had a point, of course, and for the last rather than just be able to nice to have an entirely nondecade or so many people have made the access it invisibly through the electronic hobby. Just you and sentences to swap from physical books to their electronic Cloud. and the book. Try and think of underline.” cousins.

There is also the showy element your favourite book right now.

Last year, however, saw 212 million print of owning print books. A book in Chances are, it’s not one tucked books sold in the UK, the highest your hand as you wait at the bus away in the corners of your electronic number of sales in over a decade. stop and a bookshelf crammed to library but rather one you can picture in your But why are people returning the brim with classics are both mind’s eye.

“I think there’s to print books despite the fact signs of curiosity and intelli- Loving reading is, of course, loving the words just something that they are more expensive, gence. If you walk around with on a page. Loving the print book is something more inconvenient and less a copy of A Little Life under a little more complex; it’s loving the turning of special about portable than e-books? I’m your arm, you’re declaring the page, the lending of your battered copy to holding a book in sure the lockdowns and that you’re emotional, complex a friend, the placing of the book on a bookshelf people’s whole-hearted atand clever enough to read super which encapsulates your interests. Even if, on your hands. ” tempts to get back into reading long books. A copy of Pride and that beach with my friend, her Kindle was played a large part, but why did Prejudice and you’re a sentimental- more practical, it was also less joyful. After she the general public decide to buy ist, an old soul, and a romantic at swiped the last page, she was finished with her print books specifically? I think there’s heart. The shiny, grey rectangle of a Kindle book. When I opened American Wife again a just something special about holding a book is anonymous – you could be reading anything few months later, at a café table, a tiny little in your hands, something unique and timeless from Eat, Pray, Love to Crime and Punishment. stream of sand trickled out from between the that isn’t replicated in a e-book.

Print books make it so much easier to an- pages, immediately taking me back to where I There is, of course, the opportunity reading nounce your bookish snobbery loud and clear. first read it and the memory of being on holiprovides to escape the glare of a screen for a The print book also allows you to have a differ- day with my friend. Print books become artewhile. Getting lost in the turning of pages is ent sort of reading experience to one you would facts of our lives, tied to specific places and also a nostalgic act for many whose reading get with an e-book. The physical book has a people and forming a physical representation habits have probably petered out since childcertain smell, margins to scribble in, pages of who we are and who we want to be. hood. But there’s also something to be said to dog-ear and sentences to underline. The

Reading for pleasure: The joy of re-reading Ciara Beale explains why she loves revisiting her past reads in the third instalment of the series.

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hen your subject comprises of reading, reading, more reading and the occasional essay, the last thing you want to do when you have some time away from it is, well, read.

The reason any English or MML student chose their subject, a love of books, seems to dissipate when (what should be) a relaxing hobby is warped by stress. When I came home after Michaelmas term all I wanted to do was sleep, watch TV and gawp at my phone while my siblings bickered in the background. I did not want to tackle the reading list that I had so generously already been sent for the next term’s work. When, however, I did eventually glance at it and pick a novel at random, I read about 5 pages a day, trawling through complicated German syntax and compound nouns that are unfeasibly long, and wondering: why am I putting myself through this? So, this vac I made it my mission to find joy in reading again.

Rereading is always frowned upon by those who think we should be using our precious little time on this earth to expand our minds and always seek something new. Rereading is lazy.

It’s comfortable. But this is exactly why I like it.

Rereading brings me back to the comfort that reading gave me when I was younger, when I read John Green and Suzanne Collins and Cassandra Clare instead of staggering through a novel I only understand every other word of.

There’s nothing wrong with comfort, especially when any kind of intellectual stimulation begins to feel like a daunting trial.

One of my friends recently turned 21 so I bought him a copy of my favourite book, The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. In the novel, narrator Tony Webster, now an old man, is forced to reopen a closed door to his past and face the troubling actions of his young self when the diary of a sixth form friend is inexplicably left to him in a will. He is steered into reflection on his own memory and its wilful obscuration of a reality that is far less glamorous than desired.

Underneath all the distractions, like fiction itself, he is forced to ask: “What did I know of life, I who had lived so carefully? Who had neither won nor lost, but just let life happen to him?”

After my endless pestering, my friend texted me over the vac that he was going to read it.

That evening I got another message from him: he’d just finished it. I thought, this is unbelievable. A biochemistry student has just read more literature in a day than I have in weeks.

So, naturally, I dumped my German tome, broke in and entered my uncle’s house, dug out his copy of this same book, and began to read.

And I learnt something new: rereading isn’t always comfortable – especially not this time around. I first read The Sense of an Ending when I was fifteen, four years ago, and the four years of distance was somehow transformative. I was too young to really understand it the firsttime round (of course, at nineteen, I am at the peak of my wisdom), and though the key plot points were still embedded in my mind as internal spoilers, this gave the whole thing a really horrible but new sense of inevitability, as if the seed of the eventual crushing disappointment, a life not lived fully enough, all began in the early days of ‘adulthood’ in sixth form, the clichéd hope replaced by the sense of everything ending already (see what I did there?).

Read the full story online at cherwell.org.

STAGE

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‘The modern cult of the Girl Boss’: She Felt Fear Neily Raymond reviews new writing play She Felt Fear, discussing female hysteria and manic pixie dream girls.

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he Felt Fear - Kirsty Miles’ new play, which premiered at the Burton Taylor Studio in Week 4 - made me think of a Yeats poem. Or the beginning of one, because for the life of me I can’t remember the rest of it: “I have heard that hysterical women say They are sick of the palette and fiddlebow, Of poets that are always gay.”

You’ve got to love the resonance: She Felt Fear has a fiddle, a poet, and a hysterical woman who is sick of them both.

The plot is uncomplicated. Kathy (Juliette Imbert) is a single university student living alone. A prickly perfectionist, she pours all her energy into her work and an occasional visit with her only friend, Peter (Jules Upson), who is quietly in love with her. When Peter drags Kathy to a party, Kathy meets the lovely Lily (Bethan Draycott) - and finds that she likes to spend time with her. For a misanthrope like Kathy, it’s as if the sky is falling in.

As Kathy hurtles into a relationship with Lily, and Peter tries to express his secret love, it becomes clear that nobody will escape with their emotions intact. At any moment, Kathy could snap.

This is all accompanied by Nina Halpenny on violin, while a mysterious poet-narrator (Emma Starbuck) looks on, offering some delicately written verse now and then.

She Felt Fear proceeds in the way of a traditional narrative, which is a relief; it’s easy to understand what’s going on, even when surreal elements creep in.

And they do creep in. When the narrator isn’t looming over the corner of the stage, she’s inserting herself into the tale with no regard for the fourth wall. And that’s not to mention Kathy’s scenes of mania.

There’s a point in the play’s latter half, when Kathy, devastated and lonely, writhes on a table like some diseased lab animal.

Even through these strange images, the audience remains firmly situated in the story - no easy feat.

This is a testament to the quality of Miles’ script, which is tied tight as a bow.

Yes, there are plenty of aphoristic passages - “Listening and saying the right thing in response is some kind of witchcraft,” says Kathy at one point - but they are wellbalanced by the earthier sections. Many jokes had audience members snorting.

The awkward banter between Kathy and Lily is compelling, a portrait of first-date discomfort that manages to string itself out across an entire relationship. Miles is a playwright to watch.

Adam Possener composed original music for this show, and although the pieces are short, often lasting only a few seconds between scenes, they are outstanding.

Possener’s use of alternative violin techniques - like jittering the bow across the strings and tying a windchime to the bow’s end - makes the melody sound like it’s about to fall off the edge of a cliff. It’s unsettling. Lizzy Nightingale’s set design doesn’t draw attention to itself, which, for this show, is ideal. The tables and chairs are easy for cast members to move on their own. Lighting and sound design,

by Ava van den Thillart and Luke Drago, and Valerina Tjandra, respectively, is also streamlined - it fleshes out the story without being distracting.

Imbert brings Kathy to terrifying life, in a performance so authentic that you sometimes fear for Imbert’s own sanity (don’t worry, she looked fine at curtain call).

Imbert is particularly believable because of her fine control of microexpressions those facial expressions that flit across one’s features for a tenth of a second.

Upson is a lovable wonder as Peter, leaning hard into the friend-zone blues. Draycott as Lily is the stereotypical manic-pixiedream-girl, and quite a convincing one.

Halpenny, our violinist, is clearly engaged with the story, while our narrator, played

by Starbuck, defies description; I’d come close by likening her to the best Oscar Wilde fever dream you never had. And, of course, there’s the flamboyant Alfred Dry in a variety of background roles. Together, this ensemble brings the heat.

She Felt Fear sets out to prove that the hysterical woman trope is not dead. To the modern viewer, this might seem distasteful. Why can’t we leave Mrs Rochester locked up in the attic, where she

belongs? The modern cult of the Girl Boss has no place for unhinged women.

But Miles’ play recognizes that female empowerment can come at the price of vicious self-criticism, and that female and female-identifying individuals bear a disproportionate amount of the mental health burden. The hysterical woman used to be born crazy; nowadays, she’s driven crazy. Surrounded by the pressure to be beautiful, to craft a beautiful life, and to appreciate beauty, is it any wonder that Kathy goes a bit crazy? She Felt Fear is a portrait of hysteria in the twenty-first century. It’s more progressive than you might expect.

Besides. For all of Kathy’s wild moods, nobody once asks her if she’s on her period.

If that’s not an affirmative experience, I don’t know what is.

Image Credit: Aaron Hammond Duncan

‘Mortality and the human condition’: Wednesday, Death Meditation Clementine Scott reviews Wednesday, Death Meditation by Shaw Worth, diving into the characters’ relationships.

CW: mentions of death, surgery.

L

ike many students at a loose end during the first lockdown, Shaw Worth joined an online yoga class.

However, unlike many others, he stayed in that class, and has now written and directed a one-act play, Wednesday, Death Meditation, performed at the BT Studio throughout 4th Week, using yoga as a device to explore issues of mortality and the human condition.

The play has a bipartite structure, centring around a suburban yoga class, followed by a much darker conversation between yoga teacher Sandra (Rosie Owen) and her husband Doug (Michael Yates), the night before a major surgery which will remove his ability to speak.

This uncomplicated plot provides Worth with rich opportunities for philosophical musings, with ideas explored in the piece ranging from the abrupt (“do you think sleep is practising for death?”) to the more profound, ruminating on the experience of yoga itself (“when you get to let go of all your crap on the mat…you have to deal with what it might be like to not be you anymore”).

Worth’s script leaves the audience with much to reflect on, but sometimes

one wonders if the powerful ideas explored come at the expense of effective characterisation. The opening scene is populated by intriguing yet believable archetypes of yoga class attendees - the over-intellectual Buddhist who tries to take over the running of the class, the renunciation of worldly attachments, the newbie over-exerting an injury - which are initially exploited for their comic potential without detracting from the show’s philosophical ideas. However, these supporting characters are never fully interrogated beyond brief introductory dialogues, and after a point just appear to be mouthpieces for the musings of the writer. This issue is somewhat remedied about two thirds of the way in by the tense confrontation between Sandra and Doug, during which their crotchety relationship and differing approaches as yoga teachers are intimately linked; still, one wishes that Doug’s upcoming surgery, as the central tension of this conversation and of the whole piece, had been introduced slightly earlier on.

Nevertheless, the play is strongest when Worth’s obvious passion for yoga shines through. Through the characters of Sandra and Doug, he articulates clearly two very different types of yoga practitioner: the

former a control freak focussed on the physicality of the poses (“you’d set up your body with CCTV if you could”), and the latter a sardonic intellectual who accuses Sandra of being “allergic to insight”.

Credit here must also be given to Owen’s acting performance, which fluctuates easily between the confident, didactic demeanour of Sandra during class - here is the familiar yoga teacher, correcting the class’s poses and directing them to feel the fingers and the toes - and her more vulnerable reality at home with her husband. Furthermore, the show’s lighting and sound, designed by Luke Drago, is unsubtle yet emphatic. The stark contrast it produces between scenes of yoga and of speech, particularly Sandra’s closing monologue, serve to highlight how yoga can be both an escape from one’s emotions and something that enhances them.

One wishes some of the ideas could have been integrated with a slightly betterstructured plot and stronger characterisation, and hopes for potential future refinement.

Nonetheless, Wednesday, Death Meditation clearly centres on a topic that its writer is deeply passionate about and has considered at length, which makes for thoughtprovoking theatre.

Image Credit: Riya Kataria

FASHION

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ExperiMENTAL: How to define the elusive style Ciara Beale is back to describe contempoary fashion. Catch her in town and you will see bold eyeliner, mismatched patterns and knitted hats. Here she puts what her experimental dress sense means for her into words.

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am about to say something very as trying too hard, as pretentious and selfembarrassing that will make me hate important people who consider themselves myself as much as you will: I would say far above what Vogue has to say. Every that my sense of style is experimental. time I say, when prompted, ‘I don’t buy I’m not saying edgy, quirky, unique, ‘pick new clothes’, there are more than a few me’, not-like-other-girls, though that is eye rolls. I don’t blame people for being precisely how it sounds. Most of the outfits frustrated with the fashion industry’s I put together are a random amalgamation levels of moral and stylistic superiority of different pieces that catch my eye that – I wouldn’t ever shame someone for day. I am, however, so desensitized to their fashion choices, there is no need to my own style that I don’t even realise bring anyone down. But I really do believe that what I’m wearing would be seen by fashion should be about experimentation. most as ‘loud’ or ‘out there’. I have been It’s so BORING otherwise, to tell the truth. shocked when asked if ‘I’m really going Even the Euphoria High outfit TikToks to wear that’ on more than one occasion. that have clogged up my feed are getting I wear a leopard print coat (which I never repetitive – ‘experimentation’ that seems stop banging on about) with everything, intent on making people look physically including orange heart print trousers and attractive, rather than having fun and a patchwork dress made from a blanket. trying something bold.

I put brightly coloured make-up If you’re looking for experimental in my eyebrows whenever I inspiration, you need to start “I don’t blame filling your Instagram feed get the chance to do fancy dress (something which my people for being with fresh fashion faces. friend Luke describes as Without exaggeration, I frustrated with want every single thing ‘genuinely upsetting and difficult to look at’, though that Mira Al-Momani (@ the fashion this makes it all the more miraalmomani) wears. industry’s enjoyable for me). I spent She sums up her account £7 on a Shrek Jibbit (is that as centred on ‘Emerging levels of moral the singular for Jibbitz?). designers, slow fashion and stylistic I wear a scratchy home& a little luxury.’ Small superiority.” businesses send her their work crocheted hat daily which is sort of an odd-looking knitted to post online and, as advertising, it pillbox hat that all went a bit wrong when really works – most of my recent favourite constructed. designers have been found through her. If I I think we have a problem nowadays that could justify the price I would instantly buy when people are seen as trying to ‘buck something from TORA-LILY (@toralily _) the trend’ and look beyond what is popular – a much more interesting version of and fashionable at the time, they are seen the photographic screen prints that

I just take something small from it and have been imitated in Shein. Constanca give it a go.

Entrudo (@constanca_entrudo) is another All this talk of experimental fashion favorite, with one dress that Mira wears is very timely with the KOMUNA club in particular, a full-length white dress night on this week. The Facebook bio of with a green screen print of a naked the night describes it as such: ‘KOMUNA woman, embodying what is so beautifully presents Oxford and London’s finest subversive about experimental fashion. experimental musicians, artists, and DJs Tyler McGillivary (@tylermcgillivary), on for an immersive night of Queer funk, the other hand, reignites the psychedelic jazz, contemporary classical and colour scheme I always loved in the techno music. This is not your brand OMIGHTY when I pined over average club night.’ I’m their $50 baby tees as a mid“But how do we currently writing this and teen. planning So, that’s some fashion bring low-key simultaneously my outfit for the evening inspo.

Tick.

But how experimentation because the dress do we bring low-key experimentation into the into the everyday code is, you guessed it, ‘experimental’. everyday without feeling without feeling Nothing could be vaguer. self-conscious? Start small. very own For example, clay jewellery self-conscious?” Cherwell’s deputy editor, Flora Dyson has been around for a while, has informed me that she’s I know, but every time I wear opting for an all-black look – my huge brown and warm-toned 70s black turtle neck, black velvet skirt – and floral earrings from GROOVY BUGS (@ then going wild with her ‘crazy glitter groovy _bugs), someone compliments me eye make-up’, a combination which will on them (my usual response is to talk be just as sophisticated and cool as she them through the traumatic experiences is. Sounds like the sort of thing that of having nearly lost them on nights out so would get you into Berghain. I think many times). You could also dip your toes I’m going to opt for a patchwork corset in the experimental waters with make-up which I made in a lockdown long long instead – experimentation doesn’t have to ago and have never had the chance to cost an arm and a leg or be unsustainable, wear. It is what people might call ‘loud’, as purchasing new clothes often is. I spend but then when else will I get the chance? most of my procrastination allowance My friend Eilidh will be rooting through watching make-up artists reels, with Mei my wardrobe for something later – I have Pang (@meicrosoft), @poppyellah and plenty of experimental, well, just outright Martha Lyn (@marthalynnn) being my outrageous clothes to go around. personal favourites, though don’t ask me to recreate any of their looks accurately –

The good, the bad and the average: BRIT Awards 2022 Rosa Chalfen explores her fashion favorites and fashion fails of the UK’s most prestigious music ceremony in fashion’s awards season special.

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h, the BRIT Awards: the most important moment of the year for fashion and culture. Well, except the Oscars…and the Grammys… and maybe the American Music Awards…

OK, so, maybe the BRIT awards is slightly more toned down than its US counterparts. But it’s refreshing to see a nominee list of home-grown musical talent, with the likes of Adele, Little Simz, Ed Sheeran and Wolf Alice dominating the awards.

There were also some amazing moments for British fashion. Adele stunned audiences in a sweeping Armani Privé gown that stole the red carpet and, post-awards, a tuxedo-inspired dress by Marianna Senchina (which you yourself can model for a cheeky £664 when the student loan comes in!). I’m less convinced about her performance look, an off the shoulder Valentino number that looks like what would happen if you put sequins on a Forever 21 dress—but she won 3 awards and has a net worth of several millions, so she prob-

ably isn’t too fussed about my opinion.

Artist, modelled a characteristically casual Other looks that impressed were Griff’s look on the red carpet, with a Prada trench statement checkerboard dress, designed by coat, oversized sunglasses and a neon Anthon Raimund, and Joy Crookes’ amazgreen turtle neck for a pop of colour. Pering gold cape and skirt combination from forming her hit single Woman, Simz wore British designers Kate Walker and Natalie full Gucci, including chunky loafers and a Roar. Olivia Rodrigo generously took statement teal blazer with featha break from making drunk girls ered cuffs. She was also joined cry and studying for her drivunexpectedly on the stage by “A bit like the ing theory test to sparkle in Corrin, who looked dazzling Alexandre Vauthier and win music, the artists in head-to-toe Harris Reed.

Best International Song Men’s fashion was (perencompassed the with Good4U. Although haps predictably) a little absolute best and more ropey. Harness blazblack cut out dresses were a popular choice, Maya ers, from avant-garde Danabsolute meh of Jama’s homage to Cher’s faish designer Heliot Emil, British fashion.” were big on the red carpet, mous Oscars outfit of 1986 was the cream of the crop. worn by both Dave and KSI Little Simz and Emma Corwho, with the standout look of rin, who played Princess Diana in the the evening, styled his with purple Crown and performed spoken word for leather gloves from Prada. Others kept it Simz’ album Sometimes I Might Be Intromore classic, like Ed Sheeran’s cobalt blue vert, formed a dynamic style duo as well as suit custom made by Etro. Some kept it musical one. The rapper, who won Best New a bit too classic, like up and coming indie

singer Sam Fender, who made the most of his second ever appearance at the Brits by wearing… a grey suit. Revolutionary, mate.

Fender’s boring ensemble was saved only by his plan to turn his award for best rock/alternative singer into a beer hand pull at the North Shields pub where he worked and was discovered, which is just really cute, to be honest. The night was a bad reflection on indie artists in general: Bring Me The Horizon rocked red Hawaiian shirts that belong solely at an Angrid Thai crew date, and Glass Animals dressed a bit like your mum’s favourite crockery set from the 80s. Certainly no heat waves in the middle of June radiating from those outfits. Do better, lads.

The best word to describe BRITS fashion this year is probably: representative. A bit like the music, the artists encompassed the absolute best and the absolute meh of British fashion, and I, for one, can’t wait for the opportunity to judge them all again next year.

FASHION

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Eurofashion! How rock music can learn from Måneskin’s style Iustina Roman loves the downplayed I-just-walked-the-dog-look of today’s male pop stars. Just kidding! Roman discusses how Eurovision 2021 winner Måneskin could revamp and refresh the music industry’s dress sense and, perhaps, your own.

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ince making history with their win in the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest, the popularity of Italian rock band Måneskin has skyrocketed. Not only is their music amassing quite literally billions of streams, but they have also made a name as fashion icons. During the Eurovision Song Contest final, they captured the hearts of viewers with a charismatic stage presence and powerful performance. Another unmissable aspect of the show were their outfits: burgundy metallic leather suits by Italian brand Etro were coordinated with chunky black boots and smudged eyeliner, stealing the show in every way.

“We like to experiment, have fun, mix it all up,” explains bassist Victoria Di Angelis in an interview with GQ. Indeed, it’s clear they don’t hold back when it comes to style.

Inspired by 70s glam rock both musically and sartorially, a quick scroll through their official and personal Instagram accounts shows why they’re one of the hottest groups in the world right now. Previously, they have been pictured in Vivienne Westwood, head-to-toe Gucci, or even bondage gear, pulling off looks which Harry Styles could only dream of.

Though they’ve cited Styles as a model, it appears that they’ve actually outdone him

– rather than looking like they’re trying too hard to push boundaries, the four members of Måneskin exude a genuine, effortless ‘cool-kid’ vibe in even the most extravagant outfits.

Måneskin’s personal styles have evolved along with their music, though that’s to be expected since they began their career in 2016, busking on the streets of Rome in exactly the kinds of outfits you would expect from a group of European teenagers. The radical transition from skinny jeans and denim shirts to flared trousers and embroidered suits happened along with their musical transition from funk/ pop-rock to alternative hard rock. Måneskin’s fashion sense and impeccable coordination are a blessing for fans of rock, as the fashion side of this genre has been a let-down in the past decades. Yes, Fall Out Boy did fill my childhood with amazing songs, but their outfits left much to be desired (who let Patrick Stump get away with those fedoras?).

However, outside of the west, things do look different. Japanese rock bands have been influenced by 60s American and British rock since the late 1980s, with various movements emerging based on a combination of sound and appearance. One of the most notable genres is known as visual kei, featuring punk, glam rock, and heavy metal music. Bands belonging to

this movement are characterised by elaborate hair; extravagant costumes referencing gothic, steampunk or even rococo styles; and heavy make-up. By comparison, Western hard rock bands such as My Chemical Romance seem tame. Such a heavy focus on appearance and expression has called into question whether visual kei is a music genre or just an expressive fashion movement. I make this parenthesis to show how Western rock bands could do better with their image – though you could argue that rock is about the music, Måneskin has proven that it is possible to elevate a group’s popularity by looking good too.

Nowadays, it is often female music artists who put effort into their fashion style. This has created an imbalance where female performers usually must work much more on their looks, often switching between several outfits in one concert, while their male counterparts can sell out the Wembley Stadium in just jeans and a plaid shirt (I’m looking you, Ed Sheeran). Of course, there are exceptions, with artists such as Lil Nas X upping the game through expressive and bold outfits at shows and in music videos. Yet when male artists do put in some effort, it is deemed as revolutionary. This highlights a somewhat frustrating double standard amongst music performers where many try too

hard, and others not at all, receiving various amounts of degrees based on popularity. Fortunately, Måneskin shows that straight men can dress up too. Frontrunner and vocalist Damiano David has become a fashion icon in his own right, often sporting some of the band’s most daring looks. The band’s coordinating outfits make no difference between the male and female band members, and you can sometimes see them all go topless on stage (Di Angelis having to cover up slightly, but that’s another issue altogether).

Måneskin could be changing the image of today’s Western rock artists again by highlighting the importance of combining visual and musical aesthetics, nodding to icons of the past such as David Bowie and Fleetwood Mac. They have also struck just the right balance between great music and a powerful image, which you do not get to see all the time. One can only hope that their popularity will inspire other rock bands to take a similar approach. It is very clear that fashion and music go hand in hand; as seen in Måneskin’s case these evolved together, and through this they have elevated their popularity - rightfully establishing themselves as one of the biggest bands today.

Image credit: Valentina Ceccatelli, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

FOOD

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Table D’Alix: Classy, classic, but never pompous Oliver Hall reviews a French Oasis in Great Hasely.

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tepping into Table D’Alix, you are immediately aware that you are somewhere special. Antoine’s wife, Camille, runs front of house and controls the show alongside other family members. The name of the restaurant itself belongs to Antoine and Camille’s young son! The head chef has gained past experience at Oxford’s famous Pierre Victoire on Little Clarendon Street before opening his own Michelin Star establishment in Marseille. Now he’s back with his favourite style of food: classy, classic, but never pompous.

The atmosphere is calm but not stale, the food is exceptional but not pretentious, and the prices are premium but not eye-watering. This is even more the case on Wednesday and Thursday nights when the restaurant hosts its ‘Tour de France’ evenings. On Coq au Vin Wednesday, customers pay just £21 for two courses and a glass of wine, whilst Thursday sees the price fall to £19 for Moules Marinieres Thursday. This has meant that the local community has welcomed the family with open arms, but also that getting a table at short notice can be near impossible!

And that is all without describing the food. Upon visiting, we were lucky enough to sample seven different dishes and drinks pairings: each and every one blew us away. We were welcomed by a Kir Royal and warm bread straight out of the oven. The butter was, of course, also local.

The first appetiser was the Foie Gras dish.

Rare in England, it is sourced from Périgord and served on top of a slice of homemade toasted brioche. It was then topped by a bruléed slice of clementine, port, and a citrus reduction. All of this matched the sweetness of the Muscat Beaumes de Venise served alongside faultlessly.

Next up was the signature ‘Oeuf Parfait’.

Slow cooked for a full hour at 63 degrees, it was served a top a bowl of garlic wild mushrooms, black truffles, and drizzled with a parmesan emulsion. The crisp of the accompanying sourdough toast contrasts the whole dish

perfectly, as did the oaky Chardonnay from the Loire that we tried alongside it.

A slight pause followed before our ‘Trou Normand’ pallet cleanser. A homemade apple sorbet was offered to us swimming in the Calvados Château Dubreuil VSOP (apple brandy).

It was certainly cleansing and enough to blow your socks off!

Then onto the main courses. First, we tried the moules as they are presented on Thursday evenings. The portion size was more than ample and the mussels cooked in the creamy sauce found in Normandy but with a dash of champagne and some Isigny crème fraiche to finish off the traditional onion, celery, and wine sauce. Crispy triple cooked chips accompany alongside a homemade mayonnaise that avoids tasting too much of egg – a trap many self-made creations fall into.

The duck is the speciality for Table D’Alix and it didn’t disappoint.

Beautifully presented, the breast, also from Périgord, was served pink and adorned by a seared foie gras. Alongside was a butternut squash puree with crunchy seeds that provided a much-needed contrast to the rich smooth puree. The dish is finished with a blackberry gel and raspberry jus that jump out even more besides the light, salty gravy. A glass of Cotes de Rhone Syrah compliments the dish perfectly.

Finally, the deserts! Every French restaurant has its own Crème Brulée and in classic Table D’Alix style, this one was simple yet stunning.

Served perfectly shallow, it dodges the bullet of being overly creamy and is finished off with raspberries. To conclude was a chocolate dessert. It had a base of croquant (dark chocolate) praline, a Valrhona chocolate mouser centre, gold leaf, and that same Isigny Crème Fraiche.

Table D’Alix has everything. The food is superb and the price tag means that even for students it is an option for a special occasion.

Antoine and his family present an entire package that makes you feel at home and leaves you wanting seconds as soon as you step out of the door.

Feel Gloucester seen at Gloucester Green The Food Editors take Gloucester Green on a cold Friday lunch and give you their best recommendations.

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ituated in the middle of the Playcluding veggie/ vegan stews, chicken, lamb house, ODEON, and Student Union or halloumi wraps, all for £6. If you’re a dumpling fiend you can head to Gyoza Oxtrifecta, Gloucester Green Market is a staple of the Oxford street ford, who serve what they term ‘Japanese food scene. Open from 9am to 4pm from tapas’ from 60p, including Spring Rolls Wednesday to Friday, and until 5pm on and fried prawns..

Keeping it in Europe, there’s always Saturday, it has long been an excellent Italian pasta and gnocchi, and sometimes place for a post lecture lunch and this is exactly what your food editors did last Hungarian food from Transylvania DracFriday. ula’s Kitchen including goulash, langos (a Rose headed to the Java Laksa deep fried flatbread with toppings including sour cream, cheese, Co, and went for a chicken bacon and parsley) and Hunlaksa for £7- they cook your noodles right in front of garian trifle. Tippan Tappan you, add chicken, then “The stalls change do nepalease food - we ladle over the warming recommend the Tippan coconut broth. On top every day, so there’s Tappan plate for a little bit of everything: including go crispy onions, spring onions, Serundeng (a always something rice, marinated chicken, spicy coconut crumble), black chickpeas, seasonal veg, plenty of chutneys and hot sauce and a lime new to eat.” lots more. Also on the Nepawedge. Hearty and warming, lese scene is Momo King, who it’s a wonderful lunch to perk up your day. For a thrifty £4, Mildo various steamed and fried momos lie’s beef fried rice was adequately nice, (dumplings) If you want to stay in that part of the but sadly lacking any level of interest or spice. A chunk of egg roll on the top was world but fancy something a little different, head to Tibet Stove, for curries and an unexpected touch.

Maisie chose a stall fronted by great stews including Bhutanese Ema Datahi .

If you’re feeling a little dirtier, head pans of steaming curries and golden rice, over to Hurricane Huggies for pulled pork, and nothing seems more tempting coming from weeks of college curries which leave charcoal-flamed chicken, and double cooked Dirty Fries, as well as some Ausa lot to be desired. For £6, she got a large box crammed with rice and vegetable trian meatball Dampfers every Wednesday and Saturday. The Jerk Box does a boneless curry – potatoes, peas, beans, carrots, and jerk chicken box for £8, with coconut rice topped with some chilli oil and crunchy and slaw.. bits. It was nothing revolutionary, but Vespa Coffee has got you covered for totally delicious, and on a cold January your caffeine fix, and if you’re after someafternoon it was exactly what was needed. thing sweet, there are plenty of options.

So what else is on offer? Well the first thing to know about Gloucester Green is Second Serving do brownies and cookies, but depending on the day there are stalls that the stalls change every day, so while serving millionaire’s shortbread, cannoli, an Oxford favourite might make repeat flapjacks or baklava. appearances throughout the week, there’s Street food is a competitive market, but always something new to eat. the very best ascend to the heights of a If you’re wanting curry, head to Signaconcrete restaurant, as in the case of Lula’s ture Curry, who do Goan curries includEthiopian, which is now near the station, ing fish curry and pork vindaloo, as well or Taste Tibet in Cowley. With all this on as lots of vegan options. Authentic India offer, remember to take a bit of cash in case do exactly what they say on the tin - we the stall doesn’t take card, bring your recommend the Samosa Chaat (smashed samosas over a chickpea curry and plenty friends and come away feeling a hell of a of toppings) but if you’re just after a snack lot happier than if you’d had a Tesco Meal deal. you can get 2 Kachori or Pakora for £2.

There’s Persian food from Mitran, in-

Floppy Dumplings Jing Jing Wang lovingly details her family dumplings for Lunar New Year.

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ooks and dogs have floppy ears, but I have floppy dumplings.

During the Chinese New Year, our family always gathers together to make dumplings. It’s a custom in Northern China, and more about the ceremony than the preparation of food itself.

As a child, I used to mess around, spill the minced ingredients, and use flour as war paint; I knew nothing of the process, and any of my actions would invariably lead to disaster. A few gentle remonstrances later, and I was soon pacified by the promise that I’d get a chance to prepare “next time”.

I grew from watching my parent’s careful preparation, to executing the basic procedures such as mincing the filling myself, to

creating the whole dumplings by my parents’ side.

Just like father taught me, dumpling skin must be homemade. Perhaps it is a sense of additional agency in moulding the texture. If the skin is too hard, then it will hardly bend for the filling and set poor mother’s teeth on edge. If the skin is too soft, then it would fall apart in the boiling waters that await. Take the middle road, they urged. Not too hard and not too soft; do all things in moderation only.

And as I measure out each spoon of flour, each drop of water as meticulously as I would in a lab experiment, they look on and approve of how I’ve remembered these steps.

The kneading process is easiest. Flatten, fold over, and repeat. Flatten, fold over and

repeat. It’s a little exhausting at first, but soon I’m lulled by the warmth of the kitchen and the quiet murmuring of conversation; the back and forth motion becomes almost like the rocking of a boat.

I’d always found the wrapping and sealing process the most difficult. Again, one has to keep the balance in mind; don’t spread the filling near the edges too much but don’t place all of it in the centre either. I always somehow managed to mess up the distribution. This time it’s too much towards the front, and the dumpling executes a rather impressive forward roll; the next time it’s a backflip. And careful though I am, I could never seal it properly- some small gap would prove to be my dumpling’s bane, and some of its ingredients

would spill into the boiling water.

And then you see the final results. Mother’s dumplings, standing tall and proud Father’s humble dumplings, almost squatting. And mine, flopping over more often than not. My parents ruffle my hair and insist it would taste all the same.

After the cooking is finished, we’d sit together at the kitchen table and enjoy them with a bowl of dumpling soup.

I always blushed to spot some stranded leaf from my leaking dumplings floating about in the soup, and father, seeing my consternation, would always take a big sip and say: “I love the delicious flavouring you added here, Jing Jing.

Why, what an interesting artistic choice!”

And we would laugh.

LIFE

23

Culture shock from across the pond Dominy Gallo details her experience as an American visiting student.

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n the U.S., my home university is considered old—indeed, it predates the founding of our country by a couple of decades—in Oxford terms, we’re still in our teenage years. It should come, then, as no surprise that the Columbia friends I told about the spring I’d be spending abroad in England responded to my news with encomiums to England’s “Old-World charm.” People thrilled at the thought that I’d be studying Shakespeare at a thousand-year-old uni, mere miles from his home. Sure, they warned me not to come back snobbish, to guard my garish accent at all costs, to cling to my coffee over my tea. But their eyes flashed with envy at what they imagined would be a semester cut from an episode of Downton Abbey, with lace tablecloths and long velvet overcoats and centuries and centuries of history seeping from the walls.

The first week here felt like a dream. Your streets are cobbled, your coffee shops small and delicious and treasonously expensive (and why are all of the baristas hot?). Every college building has a personality, tempered over centuries. You bike everywhere, and cars don’t try to run you over. There’s an intimacy, a smallness, an ease about the place that felt refreshingly different

from my steely home.

I was shocked by how easy it was to make friends here. I felt such a powerful relief from the isolation we all seemed to be feeling at Columbia, where Covid had all but obliterated an already faltering social scene. “Night life,” for our lovely campus troupe of sexually repressed stressmaniacs, consisted alternatingly of watereddown $8 G&T’s at the local bar co-owned by a sex offender, cheap Svedka consumed out of bottle caps on a dirty dorm-room floor to earlyaughts Beyoncé, and very-much-forbidden frat parties that would be rightly termed a health hazard, pandemic or no.

Unless, of course, one could sufficiently propitiate the moneyed cabal of Veuve-sipping snoots with a crypt in the basement of their brownstone to snag an invite to a “secret society” party, themed variously on Foucault texts— none of which the membership have read but all of which have titles loosely interpretable as having to do with bondage.

I say this, now, with the utmost love. For I really do adore my American school, more than I did when I left it. I adore the overpriced pizza

we used to eat at the end of every night out, adore the hours we’d spend texting from across the library tables, adore the few, fierce friends I have who’d die for me.

This is where the biggest shock arrives. After the first heavenly week or two of pub-crawl invites and Plush/Hank’s/Bridge excursions, my body could barely keep up. Everything at Oxford, it seems, has alcohol involved. If you go drinking in the U.S., there are certain built-in hurdles: the law, for one—I’m but a spritely 20!—and money. If you go drinking here, there are onepound shots and bars in the JCRs and a pub on nearly every corner.

At “pres,” as I’ve learned their called, people will hand you glasses of things and you will down them, other people will pass you bottles of things and you will take swigs from them, still other people will offer you handrolled cigarettes of things and you will take heavy puffs from them and wheeze. It doesn’t take much effort to get marinated.

Loaded up with my body weight in alcohol and tobacco, my freshers’ flu lasted ten days.

Nearly every club event listed on Facebook had

Horoscopes...

SCORPIO

23 Oct - 21 Nov Your emotional connections with your friends will strengthen this upcoming week. Lean on those around you and lift them up in return. Life is good and so are you.

CAPRICORN

22 Dec - 19 Jan The post-Valentine’s Day emotional hangover is still around. That’s completely okay, don’t be so hard on yourself. The stars are feeling misaligned so how do you expect yourself to find inner balance? Time heals all.

“drinks” in the title, and when the other visiting students and I spent a Saturday night on the town, it inevitably ended with me slurring my words. In a new country, with new rules of the social road, surrounded by new people who barely knew me, I needed more wits about me than the near-bottomless wine would allow.

There’s a command that comes with a familiar place that I suddenly realized I had lost, having spent twenty years in the same city, walking the same streets, now somewhere entirely new. I felt lonely for the first time, not because I had no one to go out with—indeed, perhaps I had too many people, went out too often—but because every morning I’d wake up in my bed and feel somehow unmoored. That we speak the same language conveniently conceals the fact that Oxford is an ocean away from New York, and our cultural expectations are just as far apart.

I’ve settled in here now. Made friends I’m comfortable with, learned to say no to another drink, developed (moderate) fluency in English politesse. But the jarring differences made me aware of how much there is to love about my home; made me excited to return to my city and university in a way I never was before; made me appreciate having friends who know me well enough to love me, and a city I know well enough to love. But I think I have a lot to learn from the way you do things here, and certainly a lot to learn from the journey of adjusting. Now that I’m halfway through the bottle of wine I’ve been nursing as I write, I’m off to the pub with my new friends. Wish me luck.

CANCER

AQUARIUS

21 June - 22 July

20 Jan - 18 Feb

Be more like a plant today.

I don’t know what that means, but this is what I’ve been told. If you are mad with his horoscope, don’t take it up with me. This is how you’ll ground yourself during the turmoil that are 5th/6th week.

Now I know that this is the best astrological sign (no, I am not biased) so it is always difficult to determine the trajectory of your week. The stakes are too high! I honestly wish you the best, and I am manifesting good things for you.

LEO 23 July - 22 August

GEMINI 21 May- 20 June

TAURUS

Your controversial opinions re hot beverages— of the chocolate variety— will cause potential conflict in your life. People say that some opinions are best kept secret. I completely disagree. Ravage the world with your hot chocco-related controversy!

20 April - 20 May The stars have informed me that you have not been listening to my advice. A sage once told me to listen to the universe. I am your lifeline with the universe, and I have been told to instruct you towards mindfulness. You sometimes chose violence, but it is time for peace.

LIBRA

SAGITTARIUS

23 Sept - 22 Oct

22 Nov - 21 Dec I know you have a lot of work, but my late-night telescope excursions consoling the stars have let me know that you need to prioritise life. Please don’t stress yourself out, there will always be people around to help.

Go out and smell the flowers. We don’t do that enough. Wake up in the morning, take the day off and spend it doing nothing in particular. If you happen to pass by a flower shop, listen to your urge and buy a flower.

You are feeling loopy. Life is loopy.

Accept the imperfection of life and be expectant of good things to come.

VIRGO 23 August - 22 Sept The past will come knocking on your door, with unexpected news.

Be receptive. I don’t know about the outcome, but whatever it is, you will find peace afterwards.

ARIES PISCES 19 Feb - 20 March Even though Valentine’s Day is over, that doesn’t mean you need to abandon love. Everyone is sensitive, we all just need to hear something kind. In the spirit of love, go out there and spread some.

21 March- 19 April It has been a busy few weeks for you. Life is hectic, I know, and this will reflect on your relationships this week. 5th week blues have nothing against the 5th week quarrels. Remember that people miss you, that’s all it is.

Artwork by Ben Beechener

LIFE

24

Solving the dating dilemma: A catered guide to dating spots in Oxford

Katerina Lygaki gives her reccomendations for the best places to take your date this Hilary Term.

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ot Girl Hilary is halfway over, and Valentine’s Day has come and gone, leaving me to wonder the meaning of love, lust, and obviously, the best date spots in Oxford.

Apart from that extremely smooth segway, nothing about dating is smooth, so I am here to do God’s work and create the best, most legitimate, guide to date spots in our city of spires and chaotic, sleep-deprived 20-something year olds.

vibes. If you like fauna as much as flora (I can’t relate), you might also be content to see loads of birds chirping overhead.

For the coffee lover that’s not like other girls I have to preface this section by saying that a coffee date is extremely basic, and people who think that they are quirky for grabbing a coffee need to get a life. But if you have exhausted all your normal coffee spots, Green Roots in Cowley is such a refreshing change. Granted it is quite far For the socially distanced dater away from central, but the walk there and With the pandemic being very much back can be part of the date. Or if it’s going present, it is completely understandable horribly, it can be a time to decompress that some people are still weary of miss by yourself after a Union hack has tried to Rona (like excuse me miss, I would like hack you for an hour straight, making you my first year of uni back). For all those contemplate getting that don’t want to back together with become spinsters in the process of being “If this is the date spot your toxic ex. Then, the 30-minute walk health-conscious, a for you, then you are back to central will walk along the park is like other girls and give you the time to very basic, but basic for all the right reasons. very much enjoy that, realise that love isn’t dead, it truly was a A sprinkle of nature, because what’s wrong them problem, and that a dash of fresh air and with being basic?” your toxic ex is better a pinch of cute dogs left out of your life. make up the recipe for a cute little date. Now, I For the coffee lover that is like other know I’m about to cause some controversy, girls but my favourite Oxford park has to be The Missing Bean by the rad cam is such Christ Church meadow (sorry not sorry a shout for a chill, cosy and fuss free date. I to Uni parks). The cows will melt your have intel that they give away free pastries heart and the rowing-obsessed students at the end of the day if they have not sold on the water will definitely become a all of their stock, so that’s just a nice little talking point for you and your date. bonus. Not only is this a neutral zone where For the nature lover you can enjoy your date but also have a Now, let’s not confuse a nature lover for safe escape if things start to go south. It a social distanced dater. These are two is also an Oxford-based business, and we different categories. If looking at a pretty love to support our local enterprises. If tree brings tears to your eyes, and if you want this is the date spot for you, then you are to connect with nature in spot where you like other girls and very much enjoy that, are not likely to bump into ten people that because what’s wrong with being basic? you know, then the kidneys in Iffley is the spot for you. This spot includes a reservoir For the food-oriented dater and some impeccable mother nature

Your anticipation should be maxed! Not The first time I stepped foot in a proper to say that I am a bit of a love expert English pub I was 18 (I’m an international (Cupid for those who know me well), student, not a recluse), but I have to say but my date spot will blow your mind. that it gave me the strongest date vibes!

My criteria for a good date include This is such a versatile spot: if you are not dressing up a bit, putting on some makeenjoying your date, this is a neutral-enough up, feeling a bit special, and having the spot where you can quickly change your least amount of awkwardness as possible. vibes from romantic to platonic without There are no elephants anyone batting an eye. invited to any of my But I do have to say that “My criteria for a good dates. Anyways, a there is nothing better than bonding over a date include dressing up spot that makes me feel all the feels is fish and chips to make Red Star on Cowley a bit, and having the least me feel like I’m finally a #Englishdater. A more amount of awkwardness Road. It has amazing food, open-plan Oxford-specific food as possible.” seating, and really stop has to be Hassan’s, cosy vibes.

The where you and your pressure of a first or date can salivate over fifth or a hundredth some hummus and fries, date dissipates in there, where you are just contemplating the larger questions of life. focused on picking something from their deliciously-long menu without changing For the drinker your mind about a million times. I dare Ignore the over-priced pubs and bars in you not to experience a mental breakdown Oxford, and instead, revel in the magic during this cut-throat selection process. of college bars (because we are not made On a very important, but kind of of money sweetie). Not only are college irrelevant, sidenote, the Tesco Superstore bars cheap (shout out to the Regent’s in Cowley also gives me butterflies Park College bar with £1.90 pints), but and is a perfect spot to chat some shit they are also a safe space to get to know and get some errands done during someone new. Dating can be so nerveyour date.

We love a productive queen. racking, so being in a familiar spot can do And on that deliciously, yummily sexy wonders for you (this, paired with cheap note, I will leave you to ponder what type alcohol makes for the perfect situation). of dater you are. Whether you want to endure the painful vibes of a first date, For me treat your significant other to a fun little Right, I’ve saved the best for last. I time, or take yourself on a special date, am about to reveal to you my personal I hope that this guide has favourite date spot in Oxford. I’m trying helped you gain a deeper to increase the suspense, so take a coffee understanding of yourself break before continuing with this article. and of Oxford.

John Evelyn

An inside look at the Oxford Union Well, it’s been more of the same filth in the Union, but John Evelyn did promise that this week’s entry would be a little less raunchy. So, wild tales of the sexual deviance of committee will have to wait for another day.Instead, we turn to the second most important thing in the Union: politics, ugh.

But with elections just two weeks away things are hotting up for our lovely hacks.

The Univ Queen’s crown has been slowly slipping, as after finally finding a rather Rad(ley) final officer candidate, disaster struck as he had a change of heart. The Garbage Collectors are now digging deeper and deeper into the bin, checking each piece of trash again and again to see if it could make a good officer candidate.

Rumour has it a particularly stinky Fish carcass has been inspected somewhere around 8 times.

After a slow start to their hacking, forgetting to host any dead library bops or attend any Hayek not-sex parties, Connect 2.0 have launched themselves into the game with a huge play on the pages of this very publication. John Evelyn can

confirm that with the assemblage of Union hacks and student journalism we are now officially at the very centre of hell.

Secretary’s committee is always a fun place to hang out in the weeks before an election, as senior hacks attempt to convince junior hacks that, no, it is really worth going into your social capital overdraft to earn the honour of sitting in endless meetings all Monday. Here too, it’s been more bad luck for the Univ Queen, with the LMH Enforcer going full Clyde Barrow and snatching her only seccie.

Rumour has it he has found his Bonnie somewhere on seccies committee.

Meanwhile, the Ultimate Bromance has had to make the crushing decision to have one half pull out of the contest, as their love was too strong to bear competing with each other. This term has seen the usual number of spiritual awakenings on secretary’s committee, as most choose not to run on. John Evelyn hears there are some cushy appointed positions from which to collect great gossip, if anyone is interested.

Just a bit more to come. John Evelyn x

LIFE

25

Cherpse!

Kelvin and Amelia

Kelvin First impressions?

She was nice. Clearly a very accomplished and talented person, but she wasn’t my type and I found her a bit boring.

Did it meet your expectations?

Honestly, never been on a blind date before, so I had no idea what to expect.

“It was a pretty dry date. No offence.”

What was the highlight?

There wasn’t one. It was a pretty dry date. No offence.

What was the most embarrassing moment?

Nothing particularly embarrassing came up to be fair.

Describe the date in 3 words.

A little boring.

Is there a second date on the cards?

No, there wasn’t really much attraction there and I didn’t have that much fun that I’d want to see her again

Looking for love?

Amelia First impressions?

Seemed nice, put together, not my usual type, black and navy in the same outfit was a choice.

Did it meet your expectations?

Yes, I had a nice time.

What was the highlight?

Leaving the missing bean to go to the black sheep instead.

What was the most embarrassing moment?

When he looked at me and said “you’re quite tall for a girl” when I’m really not.

Describe the date in 3 words: Chill, calm, low-key.

Email cherwelleditor@gmail.com or message one of our Life editors!

Is there a second date on the cards?

No.

Overthinking dating: Am I more in my head than he’s into me?

Daisy Clague describes how insecurities interfere with the possibilty of a new relationship.

I

t went well with Isaac. It went well when he asked if I’d had a tour of the house; when we stood alone in the upstairs bedroom and he leant across to kiss me; when I pulled my cardigan tight around me in the alley beside his house and he mumbled “are you ok? Are you cold?”, as the rectangle of sky above us hardened into an abrupt and chilly grey dawn.

Isaac is creative, clever, and he wrote his dissertation on feminist philosophy.

After so many drinks I stop trying not to get excited about us; I am exuberant, attentive, bubbling. Leaving the party in an Uber, I am confident - “let’s go for drinks soon?” - he nods, smiles, we kiss again. The next afternoon, I sing in the shower, hangover miraculously mild - what a difference a day makes.

A week later, my Guardian-reading, music-sharing, dry humour coupledom fantasies are increasingly interspersed by spikes of bad stomach butterflies. Why hasn’t he messaged? Was it a bad sign that he asked me to stay over that night?

Was it bad that I said no? Had it been just a bit mechanical, like he maybe only kissed me because my eyes were visibly swimming with desperation? Had he rushed downstairs a bit too quickly when his flatmate called up about a spillage in

the kitchen? The spark of connection from facet of my personality, I note that I haven’t our evening together begins to dull and felt like this for a long time - I haven’t a familiar shame spiral takes its place. I cared. It makes me sad because it is so rare recall sidling up to him earlier in the night to meet somebody with whom I feel the while he was mid-conversation with a click, so rare to feel anything other than smooth-haired brunette; lingering far too temporarily entertained or dismissively long at the party; literally screaming into contemptuous towards prospective his face: “I’m an introvert too!” I remind romantic suitors. It makes me sad in case myself of the I never see Isaac again. needy protagonist I remind myself to be in He’s Just Not grateful - that there “I’m scared to reach out That Into You; I are still people out into the ether with a resent myself for there who I might like; taking such a toxic casual WhatsApp because people who might like movie to heart. me back; that I’m free I’m simply not casual: I My attitude to go out and meet to Isaac’s am fragile, afraid of being those people; that my radio silence batted off, it always feels stomach still has the oscillates with latent capacity to make more personal than I my self-esteem. the good butterflies know it’s supposed to.”

I remember as well as the bad. that he’s Another week passes. notoriously shy I continue to bore my and renownedly passive. It doesn’t mean friends, my mum, and my brother with he didn’t like you! I seethe silently at the what-ifs and the what-should-I-dos our mutual friend for failing to get intel, of my non-relationship with Isaac. I’m presumably because she knows that he scared to reach out into the ether with a found me repulsive and can’t bring herself casual WhatsApp because I’m simply not to relay it. You were definitely too much. casual: I am fragile, afraid of being batted As the condemnation of my bickering off because it always feels more personal thoughts gradually encroaches on every than I know it’s supposed to. I’m scared

because I like Isaac, and if Isaac doesn’t like me back my mind joins up the dots that no amount of candle-lit self-care baths can rub out: you will never be enough.

The fool-me-once trauma of heartbreak keeps me from stepping into the ring for another round. I milk memories instead, replaying the patchy, alcohol-stained reel of a six-hour evening, stitching moments this way and that, turning words and glances and smiles over and over in my head until their edges begin to blur. If I keep on ruminating, maybe I can clarify exactly what happened, who felt what, whether he’ll want to go out with me if I ask. Maybe the polluted building site of my mind will manifest the potential that was sparked between acquaintances in a student-y house party on a muggy Saturday night and in the sudden predawn temperature dip of an adjacent alleyway.

Amongst my stubborn self-doubt and hamster-wheel thoughts, the only thing I can be certain of is that my romance with Isaac will remain forever nascent. Better kept safely, eternally unfulfilled than invited out for drinks; welcomed into the lab for trial, testing, and probable error.

Never mind. I’d rather imagine what might have happened than know that nothing could.

FEATURES

26

What’s in a name: Buildings and the politics of nomenclature

Elena Rotzokou discusses the culture wars surrounding the naming and renaming of buildings in Oxford and beyond, and examines the meanings that these names carry.

CW: Racism, colonialism.

W

hat’s in a name? Fourteen cutting words marginally appended to an essay penned in the heyday of the British Empire, according to the Black Lives Matter protesters who in the summer of 2020 hung, in pillory-like fashion, over the neck of David Hume’s statue in central Edinburgh a cardboard sign reading, “I am apt to suspect the negroes to be naturally inferior to the whites.” Belonging to a footnote to an essay by Hume published in 1758, the words’ association with a Scottish luminary whose intellectual legacy partakes of a celebrated national culture rather than being merely a shibboleth enshrined in academe was enough of an incentive behind a 1,700-signature petition to rename a University of Edinburgh building named after him.

David Hume Tower was renamed 40 George Street in September of 2020, but not without causing debate around the politics and value of name change – increasingly prominent over the past two decades – to flare up. Stating that the David Hume Tower is “the most prevalent building on campus,” the petition qualified that “Nobody is demanding we erase David Hume from history,” but that

the university should not be promoting a man who championed white supremacy.”

News articles to YouTube commentary videos to Reddit posts, brandished the word “cancel” to allege the Scottish philosopher’s hapless victimhood to the snares of “cancel culture”: a call-out form of sociocultural ostracism wielded primarily by left-wingers that does not blush to spread its miasma over centuries-dead figures like Hume.

Such, of course, is the common view held by conservative sympathisers. An American Republican interviewed by the Pew Research Center in 2020 as part of its survey of public concepts of cancel culture defined it as “trying to silence someone that does not have the same belief as you. Basically, [it’s] taking their First Amendment rights away”. The plan to rename the tower did not of course attract criticism solely from right-leaning individuals. Centre-left philosopher Anthony Grayling was one of the numerous academics to deplore openly the university’s decision to cease recognising “one of the great figures in the history of philosophy” and thereby to “wipe history clean and start over with a blank memory of the past.”

Coming hard on the heels of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the police

on the cusp of the third decade of the 21st century, the petition and the University of Edinburgh’s subsequent move shed light on the cultural, emotional, and even personal stakes that a name associated with an assortment of concrete blocks may hold for certain individuals and identity groups.

Though naming indexes no intrinsic connection between a material construction and a verbal unit, each name is embedded in an archive of memory whose legacy in the present consists of modes of thinking as much as it does of flesh-and-blood traces.

Lovestruck Juliet may have bemoaned that life and death, felicity and affliction should depend on an arbitrary convention, but in a real world whose actors are no protagonists in a tragic romance plot, a building is decidedly not a rose – an academic edifice named after an apologist (even if an implicit one) for human inequities does not smell as sweet as it would if it bore a different name.

Far from being simply an abstract construct, a name begins as an immaterial convention that acquires a concrete life which proliferates rapidly. A building is newly baptized in 2022: say, “David Hume Tower.” The original decision to associate three words alluding to the most venerable Scottish man of letters with an edifice belonging to one of Scotland’s most prestigious institutions may or may not be arbitrary; the association remains nominal, in any case, as soon as the decision is officially made. A number of concrete steps ensue to legitimate the act of naming; to perform the “baptism,” as it were.

The words “David Hume Tower” thread their

way into the university’s digital inventories, archives, Excel spreadsheet catalogues.

The name morphs into an array of pixels on a computer screen as instantaneously as they can disappear from it. The ritual’s crowning moment arrives as the name becomes engraved into signposts, placards, posters, notices, prints, banners. The “David Hume Tower” reaches its ultimate evolutionary stage as a manifold tactile entity.

The concrete blocks making up the actual “tower” remain a different material entity, whose identity as the “David Hume Tower” is nonetheless as solidified now as it could ever possibly be.

Ours is a particularly ripe time for contention over the politics of naming. It is difficult to imagine Linacre College’s renaming plans, the most recent such incident in the Oxford community, generating as much fury as it has had it transpired a decade ago.

Today climate change appears twice as irremediable as it did ten years ago, producing genuine bewilderment over Linacre College’s decision to rename itself Thao College to honour its donor, a Vietnamese CEO who owns an airline and whose holding company Sovico has invested in offshore oil and gas exploration as well as fossil fuel extraction.

As it has unfolded, the controversy has pivoted entirely on the issue of naming. Maria Kawthat Daouda, a lecturer at Oriel College, wrote in a letter to The Daily Telegraph back in November that through its name in the memory of 15th and 16th century humanist scholar and physician Thomas Linacre, the college remains “rooted in a tradition

FEATURES of learning.” “Linacre was the paragon of a scholar of his time,” she continues, “but a model for ours too,” the college’s name after him serving as “a constant reminder of what scholars should strive for.”

27 on the lives of individuals, families, and whole generations belonging to a particular “race.” It is at the same time prospective because memory (and therefore its politics) is necessarily prospective. Trauma, shame,

The petition and the University of Edinburgh’s subsequent move shed light on the cultural, emotional, and even personal stakes that a name associated with an assortment of concrete blocks may hold for certain individuals and identity groups.”

Despite SOVICO Group’s avowed commitment to reduce its carbon emissions to net-zero by (the not-so-near year) 2050 with the support of Oxford academics, the Oxford Climate Justice Campaign’s comments to Cherwell imply that SOVICO Group’s nominal support of their aims does not compensate for the name’s symbolic gravitas: “[…] it is disappointing to see Linacre embedding itself more closely with those financing this damaging industry.” A triple link chain emerges that is hard to disassemble: a set of buildings and plots of land (Linacre) becomes synonymous with the name “Thao,” itself connected closely with the fossil fuel industry. A part of Oxford University will thereafter be synonymous with environmental hazard.

These two recent incidents exemplify two types of the politics of name change which are intertwined even if distinct. One is retrospective: it concerns luminaries of the past embedded in national or even international cultural and intellectual lore and whose explicitly or implicitly questionable ideological leanings – by 21st century standards – are being newly spotlighted, scrutinised, and reinterpreted, clamoring for re-evaluation.

The David Hume Tower incident is one such instance, as are most naming controversies centred on colonial and racial politics. The other type is prospective: it involves showing allegiance, via the symbolic act of naming, to individuals, groups, or organisations whose lives or activities are sharing and are expected to continue sharing responsibility for current issues, small-scale or global, demanding prompt redress for the sake of national, international, or all-encompassing (in the case of climate change, which concerns the wellbeing of all living things). The Linacre College controversy is an example of this, as it concerns a figure whose professional ventures have been harming and will most likely continue to harm the planet.

My distinction is largely at the service of conceptual convenience, as in most cases the harm inflicted by ideologies in the distant past continues to affect the lives and wellbeing of people in the present in the form of trauma, even if the actual suffering

and indignation are the byproducts of racism persisting through time and gnawing at human minds.

A person casually glances at a building on an ordinary day, their consciousness awakening instantly an inner voice that produces an association between the sense datum and a string of letters (“David Hume Tower”). The association bears no value beyond the convenience of spatial orientation, either breaking off at “Tower” as soon as another datum pops up to generate another short-lived associative chain, or spawning a delightfully absurd string of mental images that are phonetically cognate: “Hume” becomes “home,” becomes “hummus.” The most dreadful thing to result from recollecting David Hume’s name upon glimpsing an edifice is a pang of hunger. A couple of meters away, another person is pacing down the street in a light-hearted mood, their gaze resting on the utmost part of a towering rectangular edifice peeking behind a squat one. The eye takes time to ingest the details: rusty gray color, double-glazed windows, a prominent shaft-shaped structure appearing to have been appended as an afterthought.

The name “David Hume” rings through the person’s mind three times and the inner voice segues into the image of a faintly smiling man in a flower-embroidered waistcoat.

The image retrieves a visual memory of a single sentence in a volume entitled David Hume: Selected Essays; the associative chain ends there as the mind lingers over the last link.

The second person’s experience unfolds much more slowly because it is emotionally involving and less freely associative: the triggering visual datum anticipates the final link.

This description is perhaps overly dramatic and it may be the case that no person has had an experience remotely similar to the second one I imagined. My point is that this may nevertheless be a good exercise in trying to understand why a person would heartily wish to see the David Hume Tower renamed, while someone else would remain indifferent as to whether it was renamed or not. To add to my earlier point, the power

“Opting whether to respect a decision to change a name or not could ultimately be a case of whether we’re eager to exercise empathy, and of how great of a material impact on experience we’re willing to let this compassion have.” could not possibly reoccur in this day and age – at least not on as great a scale, or with as great impunity. The Hume Tower incident is retrospective to the extent that the ideology endorsed in the philosopher’s footnote had for centuries had an appalling impact

of names lies not so much with the tangible form they can take, but with the emotional stakes at work. Opting whether to respect a decision to change a name or not could ultimately be a case of whether we’re eager to exercise empathy, and of how great of a

material impact on experience we’re willing to let this compassion have. And here we happen upon another distinction: there may admittedly be no emotional stakes to consider in the instance of the Linacre College incident – unless you’re inclined to imagine a diehard ecological activist whose eyes well up at the sight of a felled tree (the moral indignation that the particular incident has provoked in numerous people is certainly a powerful emotional response). There are moral stakes, of course, and this may be one of those cases where ethics should trump practical convenience, i.e., where the disinclination to honour a person whose wealth is built on environmental damage exceeds the need to subsidise one of Oxford’s least well-endowed colleges.

Troubling questions arise: isn’t it an academic institution’s primary responsibility to ensure high-quality education and equal opportunities across its entire student body?

Education is after all no negligible financial investment. And how on earth will abstaining from naming a college after someone contributing to environmental damage help mitigate said environmental damage? Isn’t it high time we take some real action instead of dwelling on matters of language that have no effect on whether the SOVICO group will continue making mileage out of offshore drilling in the future? Could fulminating

Existing major facilities originating in industrialists’ sponsorship include the Oxford Big Data Institute, the world’s largest such institute, inaugurated with the support of a £20 million donation from the Li Ka Shing Foundation, whose eponymous owner is a Hong Kong business magnate (recently crowned as the country’s richest individual) with diversified investments that include plastic manufacturing. Plastic production and incineration alone pump millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year. Admittedly, the institute does not bear the donor’s name, but its partnership with the Li Ka Shing Foundation is everywhere advertised, from the institute’s website to its Wikipedia page. Life-saving pioneering research on cancer and Alzheimer’s has been to an extent enabled by one of the planet’s major pollutants. And this is no ethically righteous statement; it’s the expression of a serious moral predicament, to which any immediate answer pegged on either side is bound to be lacking.

An older such instance is the Blavatnik School of Government, founded in 2010 following a £75 million donation by Ukrainianborn investor and Putin ally Len Blavatnik, named Britain’s richest man in May 2021 by The Guardian. Blavatnik accrued his astronomic wealth over the decades by buying out Russian aluminum, metal, and energy

“It goes without saying that Oxford is of course one among the several institutions in the academic elite that is performing groundbreaking research thanks largely to lucrative endeavours that are unbelievably catastrophic for the planet.” against the college’s decision on Twitter be an instance of political correctness gone overbearing, hypersensitive, and silly?

I believe that the first question is a serious one, perhaps turning this into a matter of ideology and values confronting the exigencies of actual experience. But that the way to go about pondering the other questions decides the matter not so much in disfavour of Linacre’s intentions as on the issue of a name’s importance in 2022.

Thao College will not become the sole site in Oxford named after a mogul with interests in natural resource exploitation.

The ambitious project to construct the Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities is currently underway and aiming for completion in the academic year 20242025. The plan is to create a much-needed hub for Oxford’s humanities programmes that will foster a cross-disciplinary spirit by offering research and teaching spaces, exhibition venues, and amenities for the performing arts. The endeavour owes its genesis to a £150 million donation from American billionaire and philanthropist Stephen A. Schwarzman, a staunch Trump ally who served as chair of the former US President’s Strategic and Policy Forum and a CEO of the global private equity firm The Blackstone Group. Blackstone’s investments are believed to have contributed to Amazon deforestation, as two Brazilian companies owned partially by the firm have encroached upon land to construct a terminal highway that facilitates soybean and grain exports.

The comments made by Oxford’s ViceChancellor foreground exclusively the sponsorship’s transformative consequences for the university’s research quality and clout, which are ostensibly the utmost priority: “This generous donation from Stephen A. Schwarzman marks a significant endorsement of the value of the Humanities in the 21st century and in Oxford University as the world leader in the field.”

companies as well as a Texan chemicals and plastics company and founding Access Industries, an American multinational industrial group. Access Industries, the world’s largest aluminum producer in 2017, cashes in on natural resources and chemicals, among other areas. Aluminum production’s carbon footprint makes it a particularly high-risk activity, generating as it does around two percent of global anthropogenic emissions.

And the list goes on. It goes without saying that Oxford is of course one among the several institutions in the academic elite that is performing groundbreaking research - thanks largely to lucrative endeavours that are unbelievably catastrophic for the planet.

Case upon case illustrates that the Linacre incident is the latest among many such episodes in Oxford in particular, suggesting that sparking a furor over the college’s renaming plan is not dismissible as a politically correct posture. Opting for investing in medical research with life-changing potential at the cost of honouring a superman industrial shareholder may be intuitive. Yet, this is no isolated incident but a phenomenon that has become inextricable from an academic institution’s DNA. Names percolate into this DNA through their distinctly creative power: they churn o u tephemeral or enduring material (from a slip of paper to a metal placard), fuel and affect memories, emotions, mentalities.

A legacy of conferring symbolic weight on ethically ambiguous figures via the enshrining act of naming haunts Linacre’s decision.

Refraining, in one single instance and on one single occasion from investing an assortment of concrete blocks with a particular name does constitute a politically powerful act, even if a passive one. It recognises what’s in a name, its rich fabric of history, memory, ideologies, emotions – its ethical onus.

Artwork by Ben Beechener.

COLUMNS

28

South Asian upbringing

Krisha Hirani details the recipes that make up her

O

nce upon a dinner time … no, that’s cringey, don’t use that. I’ll disown you.”

Tea, dinner, munch, whatever you call it, is better when it’s shared – no matter how cringey it is to admit. Some of the best conversations of my uni life have been over a communal munch – some of my hardest laughs too. In fact, it’s where that classy one liner up top came from.

We eat here like I’d eat with my family at home – just without the dinner table and with the cutlery - and every single time the first question to come about is: oh my god, how did you make this?

So, here’s how I make it.

The first layer of flavour of all Indian cooking will always be dried spices cooked in oil.

It can sometimes be poured on top of the dish after it has finished cooking but making it the foundation means that the flavours will infuse into the dish – especially into the ras (sauce).

Reflections on rustication

Zahra Larie discusses dating with untreated mental illness.

I

CW: Depression, eating disorders. t is commonly said that in order to love another, one must love themselves. In fact, loving one-self is somewhat viewed as a prerequisite to becoming involved in romantic relationships.

As someone who has struggled for unending years with eating disorders and depression, accompanied with the typical low self-esteem and self-hatred, this approach to relationships scared me. Although I once could not see a life past twenty, the thought of growing old without anyone to hold, simultaneously frightened me. In retrospect, the thought probably conjured fearful emotions because I viewed it as a manifestation of my isolation. Yet, as a malnourished sixteen-year-old, I lacked such insight and simply knew that dying alone felt miserable.

Thus, a question that chipped at me constantly was whether I could love someone else, when I definitely knew I did not love myself.

At one point, I considered myself an exception

In Gujarati, we call this spice base the vaghar; in Hindi-Urdu, tadka. (N.B. everything italicised will be in Gujarati, because that’s the language my mum taught me the kitchen in.)

Take 2tsp of oil on a medium flame and add ½ tsp of mustard seeds before covering the pot.

If you have curry leaves, toss in a few here. Wait till the seeds start popping before uncovering to add some asafoetida and ½ tsp of cumin seeds.

You have about 30 seconds before it all burns, so you’ll want to move quickly here and throw in your green chilli, ginger and garlic paste. If you’re cooking with onions, add them now and cook them off.

Bhindha nu saak – fried okra Once you’ve finished the vaghar, throw in the bhinda (okra) and season with salt, red chilli powder, cumin powder and turmeric. Keep mixing on a low heat until the slime is cooked off and the okra are left soft. When they’re half cooked, add in some tomato puree for colour.

When they’re three-quarters cooked, add in a shot of lemon juice.

Chana nu saak – chickpea ‘curry’ It’s the same routine here too – vaghar, tomato tin and seasoning. Cook off the tomatoes for around 7 minutes, until it has bubbled all the way through before throwing in some canned chickpeas. Cook off until the chickpeas are soft, before adding lemon juice and kasuri methi (fenugreek).

Daar – lentil stew If we were to be making a daar, which is also a huge crowd winner, we’d start with the same vaghar, tomato tin and seasoning before mixing in some already cooked lentils. To save time, I always pressure cook my lentils – cooking time varies between the types. The cheapest red lentils from Tesco (we look out for our bank accounts here) take 6 minutes in a pressure cooker with a 1:3 ratio of lentil to water.

Laccha Parotha – Layered Flatbread Now we’ve got the mains, we need something to serve it with. Rice is a staple in Indian cuisine, we always back it up with some kind of flatbread.

Like all flatbreads, we start by kneading a dough from wheat flour, salt, oil, and water before leaving it to stand for half an hour. Then, make fist-sized dough balls – and make sure they’re all even.

Take one dough ball into your rolling board, dust it with flour and roll it into a thin disc about 8 inches in diameter before applying some oil onto the surface and sprinkling some more flour on top. From the top edge, start pleating the disc. Roll the pleated dough into a tight circle, flatten it straight down and start rolling it out again.

Once it’s evenly rolled, it’s ready for the tawa (frying pan). Keeping it on medium heat, put the parotha on the tawa to cook the first side, before flipping it after around 7 seconds. This second side should cook completely before you flip it over to the first again. Here, the parotha will rise with some air pockets, which you can gently press down on before removing from the tawa and layering them in some margarine, butter or ghee.

Pista Halvo – Pistachio Dessert This one might be on the spenny side, so

make sure you’re up for the commitment.

Take 1 cup of shelled pistachios and soak them in boiling water for 30 minutes before draining and finely chopping or blending them.

Take ¾ cup of semolina into a bowl and mix in the sliced pistachios. Melt 1 cup of sugar in some water (with vanilla extract if you want to be extra boujee) and gradually pour the hot syrup into the mix while consistently stirring it until it thickens enough to pull away from the sides of the bowl.

Let it cool completely before flipping the bowl onto a chopping board to cut it into pieces and garnish with additional chopped nuts.

Keri nu ras (Mango Pulp) – or Mango Lassi (Mango smoothie) Peel the mangos and chop them into pieces before blending them into a smooth paste and sieving the mixture – or pick up a kesar mango pulp tin that’s already done it for you. Mix in a can of coconut milk, some cardamom and nutmeg and mix to blend and infuse.

to the above-mentioned maxim. Though I did not love myself, my heart was full of love to give to another. On one hand, my compassion, empathy and warmth are traits that I value within myself. I realised these traits are key to a healthy relationship. However, I believed, or rather deluded myself into believing, that my possession of these attributes meant I was adequately prepared for relationships, even though I was struggling with my own inner battles (and losing).

With the deadly combination of a fear of loneliness, untreated mental illness and a big heart, I rushed into far too many relationships. Only in hindsight did I realise that I was probably too emotionally immature for the commitment that accompanies relationships. I was probably wearing rose-tinted glasses, thinking that the right relationship could “cure” my mental illness; love was to be my remedy where all other medications failed. There is a sad truth that underlies the idiom that hindsight is 20/20; there are times where I wish I could broach the wall dividing the past and present, to prevent myself from making certain decisions.

Regardless, the inability to change the past has equipped my present self with profound lessons about love and mental illness, which I hope to anecdotally share here. First, untreated mental illness results in unhealthy attachment styles, usually either avoidant or anxious. I found myself continuously falling into the latter type of attachment style. A mental illness, whether because of stigma or because of the innate vulnerability that accompanies it, is often suffered silently. When dating, you learn more about your partner and indulge in each-others vulnerability. Trust blooms. There reaches a point where you may feel comfortable disclosing your plights with your mental health. However, when that mental illness is untreated, sharing such a private aspect of your life becomes an unduly monumental step. I felt like I had tied myself to my partner. How could this person leave when I had just shared my

deepest darkest secret? From here, it is a slippery slope into dependency, an inattention to the other’s mental health and a lack of boundaries. Untreated mental illness can be consuming, and when that is shared with another, it can be difficult to stop it from engulfing and suffocating them too.

Second, dating with an untreated mental illness is ridden with insecurity. This is when it dawned upon me why people say you must love yourself before you can love another. I was so anxious to lose the person who knew all about my dark secrets, that I convinced myself that they would inevitably leave. Every other person was prettier, smarter, funnier and more caring than me. Of course, they would seem so to me, when I considered myself the equivalent of damaged goods. My insecurity inspired volatility; I would shower partners in affection in an attempt to hold onto them, then turn cold when I had fooled myself into thinking they would leave any minute.

Upon learning these two lessons, I had to swallow a hard pill: mental illness can unknowingly transform you into a toxic partner. As you cling onto the other person as the only source of light in the darkness of mental illness, they become drained of their independence. With each boundary that is crossed, each vile insult that is uttered out of insecurity and each moment offloading mental illness onto another, I grew more toxic without ever knowing it.

These relationships, unsurprisingly, came to an end. With each failed relationship, it became easier to paint a dreadful self-portrait and picture one-self as undeserving of love. It is hard to assure yourself otherwise when such a perception is confirmed by years of mental illness. However, untreated mental illness often does not make you a bad person. Usually, it just means that you have the tendencies of a bad partner. It is difficult to prevent the negative influences of mental illness from spilling into your relationships, romantic or otherwise, when you do not have the resources to self-

regulate and help yourself.

Finally, coming to the question posed towards the beginning; can one love when they have a mental illness? While reflecting during my rustication, I realised the answer is positive.

Dating with a mental illness requires one to take an active approach to improving their awareness and general mental well-being. Mental health issues should not remain untreated, full stop. However, a romantic relationship and an untreated mental illness is a match made in hell, for all the above-mentioned reasons. Only with an active attitude of self-improvement can one avoid falling victim to the unique pitfalls of dating while managing a mental illness.

On the other hand, I have personally found that there is no need to feel “cured” of mental illness. Sometimes, it can feel like one can never free themselves of their mental health issues, even if they have been stifled into remission.

There is a life-long vigilance that needs to be taken to your own mental health, that those who are not neurodivergent do not need to possess; your memory has unhealthy coping mechanisms stored away in a dark cabinet that can be unleashed and wreak havoc like Pandora’s box.

Crucially, loving yourself can be tricky when mental illness distorts one’s perception of themselves. However, challenging this poisonous hallucinogen that our brain feeds itself, through seeking (often professional) help for your mental health can create contentment.

The effects of mental illness become clearer to your trained eye. You can spot how your mental illness manipulates your own actions, and those of others. With this deeper awareness that comes from working on being in-tune with one-self, and partnered with other healthy attitudes towards relationships, dating while having a mental illness is certainly possible.

A better love-guru maxim for those handling mental health issues would be that you cannot love another, if you do not want and do not put effort into loving yourself.

Image Credit: thefoodplace.co.uk, CC BY 2.0 (left), Pelican, CC BY-SA 2.0 (right)

COLUMNS

Brain Freeze

Debora Krut discusses the different interactions she encounters as she shares her story.

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CW: Cancer, surgery. o I’m talking to someone, right. Say I don’t really know them. Well maybe I do, a bit. A friend of a friend. My name’s been mentioned in conversations, I’ve been told I have to meet them.

That kind of thing. So anyway, we’re talking, and I let something slip – mention that I’ve taken a year out of uni, or even worse say something stupid. Something along the lines of “Oh yeah, I tried bran flakes for the first time in hospital”.

Oooooooh shit. Deboraaaaaa. You were doing the normal thing tonight. You promised yourself when you were doing your makeup before the party that you’d be Normal Debora with No Significantly Shocking Medical History. But you did it. It’s hard, to be fair, to pretend it never happened. And you know what, why should you pretend,

Haute Kosher

Leah Mitchell writes on the politicisation of Jewish identity and why ‘sometimes I wish I could care less’.

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CW: antisemitism eing Jewish isn’t an easy gig. Or at least, it doesn’t always feel like it.

That doesn’t mean I don’t also love being Jewish - it’s part of me and of my family history, and I’m fiercely proud of it. But there are times when it feels too hard, too exhausting. I distinctly remember during the escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which occurred last May (and which I’m sure many of those in the West who are neither Jewish nor Palestinian nor Israeli, but who were so keen to throw in their two cents at the time, have already forgotten) that one particularly difficult afternoon, turning on my phone to see more news headlines and viral infographics, the thought flashed through my head that I wished I could just opt out for a day. Or a week.

What gave rise to this feeling, I think, was my sense of the burden of care. I suspect that this is something which many people experience, particularly if they are at all engaged in

29 why should you hide it because it was awful and how can you hide that?

Yeah sure, there’s that whole angle.

Transparency for whatever reason: raising awareness about brain tumours, destigmatising it all, getting clout for your trauma. But I remember very quickly why I wanted to hide my dramatic medical history. Because as soon as the words emerge from my mouth and hit the eardrums of my conversation partner, a cringe inducing, exhausting, I-want-to-scream-into-a-pillow provoking dance begins. An awkward dance, a minefield to navigate. The C Word Waltz. It’s what I call the weird conversation that is initiated when someone realises that an Actual Former Cancer Patient is standing in front of them, and they don’t know how to respond because we don’t exist in a society that has productive conversations about cancer (no, The Fault in Our Stars doesn’t count). Now, dear reader, the preferred choreography of The C Word Waltz varies from person to person, but because I am a kind teacher, I will take you through a few different iterations.

There is the “Doe-Eyed Shock” version.

They genuinely had no idea and don’t know exactly what happened but get the vibe that it was something bad. “You don’t have to talk about it” they say. I truly appreciate the sensitivity, but I know for a fact that they would get an inaccurate retelling of the story from someone else and stare at me from across the room all night in fear. I give in and quickly tell them. They’ll get quite upset and I’ll actually feel bad for them because my trauma is so traumatic, and I’ll end up comforting them even though I’m the one that had cancer. This is overall a harmless interpretation of the Waltz, although I don’t enjoy feeling guilty when they get sad that I had cancer.

Up next, we have one that makes me seethe

with white hot rage. The Waltz performed in the “Oh Yeah, I Know” style. They nod knowingly and play it cool – “Oh yeah, [so and so] told me”. Oh my god. Shut up. Literally shut up. What a great way of telling me that you’ve been gossiping about me, you annoying little – I sound bitter? Sorry, lovely reader. It’s because I am.

Next up we have the “Overfamiliar Arrogance”, and it’s perhaps the one with the highest success rate of making me quite upset. They think I’ll feel more at ease if they add a little bit of humour into the equation, and make a joke about it all. I find that people often do this when they’re faced with something that they can’t really relate to. I’ve seen it happen to a whole range of people who, for some reason or other, have an inherent difference to the person they’re talking to. It’s the kind of exchange that makes me go to the bathroom and dry heave afterwards. Here’s the thing that lovers of this particular interpretation of the Waltz need to understand. If someone has a scab, they’re allowed to pick at it. Make jokes about it. But under no circumstances can you do that if you aren’t familiar with how the person with the injury treats their wound.

I lied when I said that one was the most upsetting, because a very close contender is the “I Knew Someone Who Had That and They Had a Really Painful Death and/or Suffered a Lot” version. Honourable mentions go to the following: “Holy Shit That’s Awful” (fair enough, it was pretty bad), the “But Are You Okay Now?” (I mean I don’t have the brain tumour anymore, but I’m really traumatised, and I know you don’t want to hear about that) and the “Oh Yeah I Read Your Column It Was So Good” (this is great and not enough people say this even though it’s the least you could do).

And it’s weird, to be honest, these feelings that I have around the Waltz. Because sometimes I think that I bring it on myself by being so open about it all. I once asked an oncologist: “How do I explain it all to people when I go back to university?”. She very plainly replied: “You don’t have to tell anyone”. And she was right, I didn’t have to. But the thing is, I did. And I still do. The reason that I hate The C Word Waltz is the very reason why I need to keep talking about it. Someone has to do the awkward dance, so that the choreography runs smoother for the next person. We live in a world where cancer is seen as something so awful that you can’t talk about it, you just furrow your brows in sympathy or say something stupid to mask your discomfort.

But you don’t have to do that. Now, my sweet reader, if we see each other at a party and this conversation comes up – ask questions, show genuine emotion. But don’t tell me about your pet that died from the same type of cancer that I had.

politics, and even more so if they are inclined to follow the news and to use social media.

These days we are bombarded with information all the time on terrible situations we can do very little about directly, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. But what exacerbates this feeling for me is being Jewish, and also knowing the extent to which antisemitism is underreported and misunderstood, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict mischaracterised and politically weaponised by those who have almost no direct connection to or real knowledge of it. Because this isn’t simply another news item for Jews; it’s our lives.

More than that, I think sometimes it feels like our duty to care, and to care more than anyone else. Part of this derives from the antisemitic notion that Jews as a collective are to be held responsible for the actions of the Israeli state (and sometimes also, deplorably, for the antisemitism they experience).

We are not given a choice to stand aside from politics; whatever our personal beliefs, as a group we are treated by left and right alike as simultaneously a conveniently tokenisable talking point and an easy punching bag. However, part of it also comes from the very real sense that we as Jews have a vested interest in our continuity. We have a duty to live for those of our ancestors who could not owing to antisemitic violence, and to ensure that Jews now and in the future can experience the protection they did not have. And, for those of us who owe a debt of gratitude to Israel’s existence for our very lives (which is many of us), we feel (or should feel) the need to make sure that the country which means so much to Jews all over the world is a place which upholds justice and dignity for all. If you love something, if you depend on something, you have to be willing to strive for it to be better.

But at what point will we collapse under the strain?

I am by nature a person who cares about politics, because I care about people. Only the most inordinately privileged among us are granted the option of true apathy; for the rest of us, our rights, our security, our very lives

hang in the political balance. Even if I could care less, in general I wouldn’t want to; what kind of a life is it not to care about the world around you? Not to care about the lives of others and the values according to which society is run? Moreover, not caring feels decidedly un-Jewish. Jewish values mandate that we take care of others, and Jews have been driving activism and social justice movements for literal millenia, from resistance against violent oppression in ancient Judea and 20th century Europe to the fight for better labour conditions for working-class factory employees following the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911, the key allyship of Jews in the American

rise in antisemitic rhetoric, the targeting of Jews, and the sharing of misinformation and gaslighting by Western ‘activists’ who have no relationship to these issues and even less knowledge of them, sometimes it all feels too much.

Being Jewish can be exhausting. Arguably I make it harder for myself than it needs to be; it is true that other Jews don’t always talk about antisemitism as frequently or track it as obsessively as I do. I’m also very outspoken about my political beliefs, and always have been, which I’m sure doesn’t help. But very few Jews can switch off their engagement with these matters, and the emotions they provoke, completely. All of us are bound up in this web of care somehow.

For me, whether owing to some quirk of my personality or something else, the only possible response has seemed to me to be, somewhat paradoxically, resisting by giving the people what they want. You want to politicise my Jewishness? I’ll politicise it myself and reclaim the narrative. You just read up on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict via a two-minute infographic and want to give me your hot take? Joke’s on you - I’m out here talking about it year round. You’re annoyed that I won’t pipe down about my Jewishness or allow you to tokenise it for your political agenda? Tough luck - my Jewishness is mine, it’s beautiful, and it’s here to stay.

Maybe I can’t simply care less; but I can celebrate the joyful parts of Jewish existence and identity, and that’s so much more powerful than any brief moments of tiredness and despair. There is a Jewish blessing which celebrates the rooster, because the rooster tells us the boundary between night and day. The point here is that the rooster knows and confirms, while still in dark, that the light is coming. Jews, like the rooster, know in our moments of darkness that there is still light; we know in our fear that there is still hope.

It’s ok to be exhausted and frustrated; it’s ok sometimes to want a break from the weight of care. Because I know that this is never permanent - light is coming.

“My Jewishness is mine, it’s beautiful, and it’s here to stay.” civil rights movement, and the prominence of Jewish women in leading feminist activism.

Our own experiences of subjugation and discrimination throughout history have, at our best, made us compassionate and devoted advocates for justice. They also, at our worst, have made us fearful to the point of paranoia and bullishly defensive. The impact of intergenerational trauma is enormous; in fact, the concept of intergenerational trauma was developed by studies of the descendants of Holocaust survivors, who have been shown to be disproportionately predisposed to mental health problems. Our pain is literally imprinted on our psyches and epigenetics, with sometimes disastrous consequences. As a result of this and of our own experiences, news regarding antisemitic incidents or escalations in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict can send us easily into a tailspin of stress and very real fear. Compounded by how such events tend to encourage a global

Image Credit: Waltz at the Bal Mabille / CC PDM 1.0 (Public Domain)

SPORT

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UCL 6 - 26 Oxford Lancers Sam Day reports on the Oxford Lancer’s thrashing of UCL.

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s David Ojeabulu sauntered past a string of helpless UCL defenders on his way into the end-zone last Sunday, I couldn’t help but think how easy it all looked. Although I doubt that the American version of football uses the phrase “hat-trick” like most English sports do (it has its very own mystifying language that takes a while to get used to), the big running back – a third year maths undergraduate at St Anne’s – had reached the equivalent milestone by scoring his third touchdown of the day, this time without any opposition players laying a glove on him. More importantly for the Oxford Lancers, his score, worth six points, had put the game well beyond the reach of their London-based visitors, who now trailed 26-6 with just a few minutes of the final quarter remaining. As Oxford’s defence comfortably saw out the rest of the match to seal a comprehensive 20-point victory, I reflected upon my past week of covering the Lancers for Cherwell, and realised that my impression of ease did a great disservice to everyone involved with the team. Ojeabulu undoubtedly oozes the natural pace, power, and dedication which typically characterise top athletes, exemplified by his first touchdown – reminiscent of a bulldozer – which left at least two UCL defensive backs in sorry heaps on the 4G surface of Abingdon’s Tilsley Park. However, whilst the immense talents of players like Ojeabulu should not be taken for granted, this win could not have happened without the tireless behind-thescenes work and oversight of various members of Oxford University’s American football community, who have quietly been putting together a project that appears to be going from strength-to-strength.

Chief amongst these protagonists is the club’s long-serving President, Stewart Humble. As his surname conveniently attests to, the larger-than-life Biomedical Sciences DPhil student from small-town Louisiana retains an air of humility when talking about his twoand-a-half years in charge of the Lancers, as he repeatedly stresses that he does not want this article to focus upon himself. Nevertheless, it would be impossible to ignore Humble’s huge contribution towards the unlikely pro-

Upcoming Oxford Fixtures Oxford Netball Blues beat Baths 1s 39-33.

Women’s Fencing Blues were crowned Prem South Champions after an undefeated league season in BUCS. The BRIT Challenge is underway, with Herford, St Anne’s and Reuben College having entered the 2,0222 miles challenge.

gression of the Lancers throughout his tenure as boss. As we chat in the café by the main entrance to Iffley Sports Centre before the team’s weekly Wednesday evening training session, his vision for the club becomes more and more apparent, and a typically-American ambition shines through most of what he says.

It soon becomes clear that Humble’s exciting plans for the Lancers revolve around three

“Such on-field progress is the obvious outward manifestation of a slick professionalism instilled into the the club over the past few years.” major priorities: 1) on-field performance, 2) financial sustainability, and 3) improved playing facilities.

Happily for Humble, success in the former sphere has not been hard to find recently, as the Lancers’ results this year speak for themselves. Coming off the back of a 36-0 demolition of Cambridge in the Varsity Bowl last Trinity Term, Oxford have now won all four games this season (a “four-and-O” record in American-speak), including comfortable Michaelmas victories against Chichester Spitfires and Kingston Cougars. A fitting illustration of this upward trend, the hammering of UCL Emperors represented a major reversal of fortunes in comparison to the previous encounter between the two sides, when the Londoners condemned Oxford to a narrow defeat in their final outing before Covid-19 ended the 2019-20 campaign prematurely.

Such on-field progress is the obvious outward manifestation of a slick professionalism instilled into the club over the past few years.

Central to this polished set-up is the Lancers’ impressive team of nine coaching staff – led by the amicable Ian Hiscock – who each oversee a separate section of the football team. Before turning up to a session, I had been expecting relatively rudimentary training equipment and well-meaning but low-quality instructors. Instead, I was taken aback by the talent and competence displayed by all concerned.

As unpaid volunteers, the dedication of these men left me in awe, as most seemed to donate huge chunks of their lives to both the Lancers and the sport in general, despite juggling such commitments with work and family life.

First to experience my naïve questions about this alien sport was Pat McAleer, the team’s offensive co-ordinator. Although probably a very busy man in his day job as an actuarial recruiter, McAleer has seemingly found enough time to scour the internet’s entire archive of football coaching forums and Youtube videos, which provide inspiration for his sizable catalogue of training exercises. His enthusiasm is reflected in his piercing attention to detail, somewhat evocative of Dave Brailsford’s famous “marginal gains” approach to the Great Britain Olympics team. For example, before the game against UCL last Sunday, McAleer spent ten minutes in the changing rooms with the gentle-giant offensive lineman Josh Abioye.

As I eavesdropped, I quickly realised that this chat was neither motivational nor tactical.

Instead, Abioye was receiving intricate advice about the relative effectiveness of different thumb angles when grappling opponents.

Very little is left to chance!

Similarly extraordinary is the Lancers’ former head coach, Adam Goldstein, who has undoubtedly helped to facilitate the rapid development of hat-trick hero Ojeabulu in his current position as trainer of the running backs.

Goldstein’s love for American football is indisputable, and must surely brush the fine line between passion and insanity. The man is a self-described National Football League (NFL) superfan who has written two books about the sport’s partisan supporter culture.

Incredibly, he once visited all 32 NFL stadiums in one season – racking up 65,000 miles in the process – as he criss-crossed the United States in a renovated old school bus. A man in the UK with more knowledge about American Football would be hard to find!

Finally, with football knowledge and technical detail exceedingly well-covered, one would be forgiven for wondering whether the team’s health and fitness regimen lives up to the same standards. Fortunately however, the Lancers benefit from the expertise of Ben Wright, a strength and conditioning coach who commutes to sessions from Northampton, where he lectures and conducts research towards a PhD in physiotherapy. By drafting in a qualified physiotherapist to conduct specialist warm-up and warm-down activities, the Lancers have substantially reduced their injury frequency whilst simultaneously improving the physical performance of the squad. Such focus on fitness is further highlighted by the club’s successful navigation of the challenges posed by the Covid pandemic.

According to Humble, no other Oxford University sports team was more active throughout the depressingly regular cycles of lockdowns and social distancing, as the squad kept up their regular schedule of twice-weekly training sessions. On-field activities were replaced

by DIY workouts on Microsoft Teams, which conveyed a huge advantage for the one-off match against Cambridge when restrictions eased. Moreover, Wright’s physiotherapy work is complemented by the club’s recent acceptance onto Oxford Sports Federation’s prestigious Blues Performance Scheme. This development finally gives American footballers access to the same performance, nutrition, and conditioning programmes previously reserved for the likes of the Blues football, rugby, and netball squads.

Off the pitch, the Lancers’ integration into the Blues Performance Scheme represents a giant stride forward in the club’s relationship with the university’s sporting administrators. Humble suggests that whilst American football may formerly have been viewed as something of an outsider in comparison to the more traditionally British sports listed above, their reputation is now growing quickly. In fact, Sports Fed’s generous attitude towards the club’s training programme has been mirrored by parallel developments that support the President’s additional two priorities for the Lancers’ future: financial sustainability and high-quality playing facilities. During his first year in charge, Sports Fed more than doubled the annual funding that had previously been made available to the American football team. Furthermore, with health and

safety of paramount importance, Humble has also overseen the purchase of 50 new helmets – costing thousands of pounds – after a ground-breaking study by Virginia Tech researchers concluded that the Lancers’ previous helmet model failed to adequately prevent concussion and its longer-term impacts. This topic is of particular significance to Humble, whose own DPhil research focuses upon the molecular neuroscience of degenerative brain conditions.

As one would expect, financial issues are also inextricably intertwined with the problem of acquiring a new site to host American football in central Oxford itself, which would be immensely preferable to the current coach trek out to Abingdon’s Tilsley Park complex. The Lancers’ past travails in finding somewhere suitable to play are well recounted by head coach Ian Hiscock, who has been involved with the club since the early-2000s. Back then, the team – known as the Oxford Cavaliers – were composed of a mixture of Oxford University and Brookes students, because the former institution lacked sufficient numbers to field a full squad. In fact, Hiscock himself first joined whilst studying at Brookes. Over the years, the head coach tells me that the Cavaliers/Lancers have variously played and trained in locations as diverse as Brookes’ Wheatley campus, a patch of land behind a community centre off the Botley Road, and on poorly-maintained astroturf pitches at St Gregory’s Catholic School in deep Cowley, which risked serious injury to anyone attempting a tackle. In addition, the Lancers have more recently attempted to play on unmarked fields in Marston, which regularly flooded during winter, and at Wolfson College’s on-site sports pitch, which sadly lacked the posts required to kick field-goals or conversions. Unfortunately, this nomadic existence has posed significant problems for the club’s progression by discouraging potential recruits from making the effort to attend training and matches at far-flung and sub-par locations.

As a result, Humble has devoted considerable time and energy towards establishing a playing facility in the centre of Oxford, which would attenuate many of the issues described previously. Tentative first steps towards this goal were achieved last spring, when negotiations with the central university resulted in the Lancers gaining permission to use University Parks for their Sunday morning training sessions and the Iffley Sports Centre on Wednesday evenings. Nevertheless, the President’s most ambitious venture seems likely to be completed over the coming months, with the anticipated opening of a purpose-built American football field in Uni Parks itself. After discussions with the park’s groundsmen, Humble realised that the south-eastern pitch by the Linacre gate had been severely damaged by mole-hills and therefore could not host any sporting fixtures.

Image courtesy of Oxford Lancers.

Read the full article on cherwell.org

SPORT

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Clubs to look out for this Hilary Cherwell’s Sport Editors review this term’s upcoming Varsity fixtures.

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xford Univesity Amateur Boxing Club Oxford University Amateur Boxing Club are coming off the back of a hugely successful Town vs Gown event at the Oxford Union. The club’s popularity across Oxford has grown enormously, selling out tickets for the Town vs Gown in less than 30 minutes. Tickets for their Varsity fixture on March 5th, which will be taking place at Oxford Town Hall, are priced as low as £18 and have gone live on this week. The event is hugely historic and their biggest of the year by far so with all COVID restrictions on crowd lifted the organisers are expecting the atmosphere to be even more electric.

Oxford University Rugby Football Club OURFC have enjoyed a successful season for both the men’s and the women’s sides. Most recently, the women have seen several games cancelled and got unlucky again this week when their midweek clash against Swansea was called off due to COVID absentees. The Men’s Blues suffered a tough 46-12 loss in Dublin to Trinity College. Going forward, all teams are focussing on their Varity preparations with most of those games coming 12th March.

The Womens Blues welcome Cambridge in their final BUCS league game of the season this week before the men travel to Aldershot on Friday night to play the Senior Army XV. Their games take place at Twickenham on 2nd April.

Oxford University Association Football Club The past weekend marked an important moment in the history of Oxford University Association Football Club. In 1872, on 10th February, the club played Radley College in their first match and came away with a 3-0 win.

Oli Hall’s Oxford United Updates

To commemorate the 150th anniversary of this victory, the university again played Radley College this weekend, with the match followed by an anniversary celebration.

It has been a mixed season for the Blues.

The women have, so far, fared better than the men, even winning one game 13-0 against Warwick’s third team back in November. But Varsity is just around the corner, and one can only hope that Oxford’s success last year puts them in good stead for this March’s fixtures, and perhaps a turnaround in fortunes for the men. They and the women travel to Cambridge on 13th March this Hilary; one can only hope that the 3-0 and 2-0 wins from last time out can be repeated again this year.

Oxford University Rugby Football League Club Oxford’s rugby league club are changing the way they do things. It comes at a good time as

well, having lost to Cambridge last year for the first time in over 10 years. The club has been busy recreating a women’s club and making plans for their summer tour to Ghana. In the meantime, though, the club is getting ready for their “Derby Day” fixture against Oxford Brookes is on Friday 18thth February at Oxford RFC’s ground and Varsity on the 5th March, which will take place at Iffley Road.

Images: OURLFC and OUAFC

Club Update Another week, more drama at the Kassam for Oxford United. The men’s team might have slumped to two disappointing defeats and now find themselves out of the playoff places but the women’s side bounced back from cup defeat and the U-18s secured an impressive victory over league leaders Bournemouth.

The week started full of optimism but that certainly took a hit at the Wham stadium under the lights on Tuesday night. The U’s had hoped to bolster their promotion push but a goal from John O’Sullivan on 28 minutes made things difficult before Ethan Hamilton wrapped up the three points for Accrington in added time.

Ahead of the men’s game on Saturday morning, the U-18s won 2-1 against Youth Alliance league leaders Bournemouth.

Conditions were extremely tough but it was the Yellows who opened the scoring before half-time. Bournemouth did get back into it with an equalizer after the break but Gatlin O’Donkor slotted home a penalty late on to blow the title race wide open.

More than 10, 000 descended on the Kassam for the third time in a row and they saw an electric game. The first half saw Oxford twice take the lead before being pegged back. Things tightened up after the break but Bolton’s Amadou Bakayoko stole three points against the run of play with just a matter of minutes left on the clock.

The women’s side were looking to bounce back from their cup defeat last week and got off to the perfect start three minutes in through Beth Lumsden. That lead would only last ten minutes but Daisy McLachlan headed home from the corner just after the hour mark and the Yellows held on for another three points.

So, the women’s side remains second in the table and now just two points off league leaders Ipswich with a game in hand. They travel to Hounslow on Wednesday night as they look to continue their incredible run of league form. Meanwhile, the men will look to bounce back from their back-to-back defeats when they travel to 14th-placed Charlton.

Oxford United 2-3 Bolton Wanderers A Billy Bodin masterclass wasn’t enough for Oxford United as they slumped to back-to-back defeats in yet another dramatic game at the Kassam that was won in the dying moments by Bolton Wanderers.

The travelling fans sold out their end and were in great voice but Billy Bodin quickly silenced them. He stepped up to take a free kick on the edge of the box and curled in brilliantly at the far post to continue his sensational run of form.

The lead didn’t last long though and after just thirty seconds Declan John, who was mightily impressive all afternoon, found himself with space on the overlap and slotted past Stevens.

Chances continued to present themselves for both sides and Brannagan nearly got himself on the scoresheet yet again but forced a stunning save from Bolton’s debuting goalkeeper James Trafford.

The U’s bounced back on 28 minutes.

Sensational free-flowing football saw Billy Bodin receive the ball from Gavin Whyte and work just enough space to get a shot away and catch out the Bolton keeper again, this time finding the bottom-left corner of the net.

This time the Yellows did manage to hold on for six minutes but after more brilliant attacking football the American full-back Marlon Fossey, on loan from Fulham, brought the ball down inside the box and curled a delightful effort past Stevens in the Oxford net. He celebrated his first professional goal in acrobatic style in front of the travelling support.

The sides went in level at half-time and the second half saw a much tighter affair.

Oxford dominated but neither side was able to must the open style of the first 45 with breaks in play and yellow cards galore making things difficult.

The U’s had plenty of chances but took none and were made to pay four minutes from time. Bolton hit back on the counter with Fossey down the right and a pinpoint cross whipped into the box was swept home by Amadou Bakayoko to steal the three points at the death.

United had scrappy chances late on from a series of corners but couldn’t make the most of them and now find themselves out of the play-off places. They travel to Charlton on Saturday and will look to climb back into the congested race for play-off places in League One. Image: Oli Hall

CHERWELL

32 Medium Sudoku

Pencil Puzzle - Yajilin

Hard Sudoku

Micro Cryptic Crossword

Digits along a thermometer (marked in grey) must increase, starting from the bulb end. Digits may not repeat on a thermometer.

Across: 1. Cash found in overran Somerville accommodation (6) 5. Greed mixed with ministers initially, and became one (6) 6. To start, another large energy drink!

(3) 7. Mythical monster doesn’t end (6)

Down: 1. Downing lager is posh (5) 2. Quick – get up from deep sleep! (5) 3. Gamma outburst is hot (5) 4. Film found showing covid eons ago (5)

Cherdle

Word Wheel

Create words using each letter only once, every word must include the centre letter.

7 letters (1),

Yajilin first appeared in the puzzle magazine Nikoli, its name is a contraction of the Japanese words ‘yajirushi’ and ‘rinku’ which mean ‘directing arrow’ and ‘link’ respectively.

The goal of Yajilin is to form a non-intersecting continuous loop around the grid.

Every cell, except for ones that contain numbers, contain a segment of the loop or is shaded in black. Cells with numbers indicate the number of black cells along the direction of the arrow. Black cells must not touch horizontally or vertically. Not every black cell has an arrow pointing to it.

Find the 5 letter word which satisfies all of the clues. A grey tile indicates the wrong letter, a yellow tile indicates a correct letter in the wrong position, and green indicates a correct letter and position.

6 letters (1), 5 letters (6),

4 letters (10)

Send your solutions to puzzlescherwell@gmail.

Editor’s Corner: Susan Cooper Susan Cooper was the first female Editor-in-Chief of Cherwell. She is a children’s books author, best known for the fantasy series The Dark Is Rising.

I read English at Somerville from 1953-56 and was already a writer, so I joined Cherwell as a reporter in my second term. So did my then boyfriend Patrick Nobes, and we progressed as joint News Editors and Features Editors until becoming editors in Hilary Term 1956. No woman had ever edited the paper before - in those days we made up only a tenth of the university population - and this caused a small stir.

I didn’t report my appointment to my moral tutor because this was the term before Schools and I knew she’d forbid it; fortunately she didn’t read the paper so she never found out.

Cherwell had been a struggling magazine in the 1950s until it was turned into

a newspaper by Clive Labovich and Earl White. They also moved its office to a small building in the grounds of the Oxford Union which had once included a men’s lavatory, leading to a tired office joke, for years: “The Editor will see you at his convenience.” Working for the paper was great fun and comprised much of my social life, since we were all friends. It taught me all the basic skills of a reporter, from persuasiveness to brevity, and a lot about the now vanished arts of the stone and the printing press, since we went weekly to the printers in Aylesbury to oversee the layout and proof-reading of each issue.

I can’t recall any major story we covered (it’s a VERY long time ago) except possibly

the world’s first 4-minute mile, run at the Iffley Road track by Roger Bannister in 1954. As editor of Cherwell I was also secretary of the OU Press Club, which certainly helped my career by introducing me to the assortment of national editors and news editors I invited to come and speak to us. “Contacts” is a magic word.

One of them published my first-ever piece in The Times, another gave me a six-week trial at the Sunday Express (which ended when I failed to climb over a wall to try to interview Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller)and a third gave me my first job on The Sunday Times, working for seven years as a reporter and feature-writer and contributing to the Atticus column written by Ian Fleming. Indirectly, Cherwell helped

keep me afloat in the first few months after graduating, because its founder Clive Labovich and Michael Heseltine had set up Cornmarket Press, publishing something called the Directory of Opportunities for Graduates, and until I went to the ST I worked for them in a little office off Piccadilly Circus.

Cherwell remained a mini-newspaper during my three years on it, and I’m afraid I knew nothing of its later evolution because in 1963 I married an American, moved to the USA and became novelist and screenwriter instead of journalist. My coeditor Patrick, who had never been in love with newspapers as I was, became a teacher and ended up as headmaster of Bedales.