Palatinate 832

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Friday 6th November 2020 | No. 832

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Indigo looks back at Bill Bryson’s career as he announces his retirement

Profile speaks to first female Principal of Castle, Professor Wendy Powers

Chad’s raise £90k for Covid-19 emergency fund Durham fails Ella Bicknell News Reporter St Chad’s College has raised over £90,000 to fund changes to allow the College operate under national and local coronavirus regulations. The money was raised

through online donations.

Dr Margaret Masson, Principal of St Chad’s College, launched the donation page in early August 2020 with the hope of raising £60,000. Donations surpassed the initial target, fundraising £90,000 for the college.

In the appeal, the Principal announced that the College lost half of its income and despite the College’s “financial prudency”, donations were necessary to counter the unexpected costs caused by the pandemic.

Without the changes, the College

said it would be unable to separate students into household bubbles of 18 people to “balance maximum safety and maximum opportunity” for students to have an enriching university experience.

Continued on page 6

to cover legal costs for year abroad sexual assault victim Richard Waters News Reporter

▲ The Assembly Rooms Theatre reopened after a seven-month hiatus for live performances, but is closed again during lockdown (Mark Norton)

Students’ Union to hold referendum as part of “democracy review” • Documents reveal plans to spend up to £7,000 on top of £2,000 spent last year • Campus-wide referendum will ask students to accept or reject a new model of democracy for DSU

Max Kendix and Martha McHardy News Editors In the final stage of a year-long review of its governance and democratic processes, Durham Students’ Union plans to hold a campus-wide referendum in

Easter Term. The referendum will ask students to accept or reject a new model of democracy.

Plans seen by Palatinate show that the DSU plans to spend up to £7,000 on a “democracy review”.

This includes £5,000, not including expenses, which will be spent on consultancy firm MiraGold, which will carry out the review

to “inform the co-creation by students and the Students’ Union of new democratic structures, and the removal of old ones that aren’t fit for purpose” and to rebuild “trust and partnership with the student body”.

A further £1,500 has also been budgeted to pay a student researcher and ten student ambas-

sadors. The researcher will receive £750 to conduct focus group consultations with Durham students and deliver analysis on student consultation data, and ambassadors will “promote the various student consultation methods across the student body”.

Continued on page 4

Durham University has faced intense criticism for telling a student, who was raped on her year abroad whilst teaching in a school in Peru, that she would have to cover her own legal costs.

The University’s policy means that people accused of committing a crime whilst studying abroad are entitled to legal assistance. Victims of a crime, however, are not. This means that a man accused of rape would have defence costs covered, even as victims are left without support.

This incident occurred at a school where the woman was volunteering. The attack left the woman covered in bruises. It was reported swiftly and the suspect, a teacher at the school, was arrested.

The male teacher had offered to drive her back to her host family after a night celebrating the end of the student’s placement.

He instead took her back to his own house where the assault happened.

In a report in The Times, the victim described “telling him to stop and telling him ‘no’ and not being able to move at all”. She was interviewed by police the following day and denied access to an interpreter. Some days later she learnt that the suspect had been released without charge.

The student’s legal costs for the case totalled around £1,000.

The University, which had arranged the placement along with an NGO, has now severed ties with the school.

Continued on page 3

Friday 6th November 2020 | PALATINATE

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Editorial

This term is hard enough as it is

S

ometime last week when we were getting the newspaper together, some of the editors started asking if I had any ideas for my editorial yet. “I’ll think of something,” I said airily, “see what’s going in the news, you know.”

Clearly 2020 has taught me nothing, because last week I didn’t expect to be writing this editorial during a second lockdown, or for the Presidential election results to be undecided 24 hours after polls closed. I’ve deliberately been putting off writing this actually, partly because I’m a lifelong procrastinator, but mostly because everything is changing so often that I feared it would go out of date before it made it to print – so I’ll leave the lengthier discussons of current affairs to Politics and Comment.

University, especially final year, is difficult enough without a pandemic to contend with There’s only so many times that student journalists and University executives can throw around phrases like “this is far from the term we expected”, “online teaching is a new experience for all of us” or, heaven forbid, “we’re living in unprecedented times”. Yet, a second lockdown has come as an unpleasant surprise to us all. The prospect of a month with no cafés, bars or restaurants, no meetings with more than one person (which must be outdoors) and no option of going back home remains a bleak one.

The truth is that university, especially final year, is difficult enough without a pandemic to

contend with. Between reading, seminars, my dissertation, Palatinate and everything else, the middle of Michaelmas Term is hitting me hard. And that’s not even factoring in the difficulties of both online and in-person teaching right now (reading glasses and a mask are not a good combination), the fact I haven’t hugged my friends since March and the other, myriad ways that Covid-19 necessarily complicates our lives. As a finalist, I’d like to have my essay crisis in the Billy B without needing to book a study space there first.

A lot of the ways in which students usually mitigate the stress of it all – trips to the pub, movie nights at a friend’s house, big social events and so on – are totally unthinkable now. We can only hope that this lockdown doesn’t send us back to the days of Zoom quizzes.

In all seriousness, though, if there was ever a time to look out for each other, it’s now. Message that friend you haven’t spoken to for a few weeks, even if it’s just to ask how they’re doing; arrange a FaceTime with your friend from home; organise an evening in with your housemates. There’s so much going on for everyone at Durham, not to mention in the rest of the world, that being kind to each other is the very least we can do.

There’s so much going on that being kind to each other is the very least we can do And, of course, as anyone on their college welfare team will tell you, it’s always important to practice self-care, but surely

now more than ever. During the first lockdown, there were a lot of comments going around about using the time stuck at home to be ‘productive’, to write a novel, learn a new language or take up running.

We have so much time ahead of us - it doesn’t feel like it right now, but one day we’ll get past this This time, in the chilly depths of November, surely we should recognise that a global crisis is enough pressure to put on a person, without expecting them to produce the next King Lear at the same time. Every day, when a lecturer starts their email “I hope this finds you as well as it can at this difficult time”, I’m reminded that, however much we have normalised the Covid-19 era, it remains an extraordinary and, frankly, scary time. We’ll get through it, just like we got through the last one – it’s going to be hard, but we’ll write those essays, go to those seminars (in person or on Zoom), and continue to look out for one another.

It’s not a great time to be anyone right now, and it’s definitely not a good time to be a student or young person. This week, as Thursday’s lockdown loomed, town bustled with students trying to squeeze in their final brunches, pints and last-minute shopping trips before everything except essential services were closed. We’re so young, and we have so much time ahead of us – it doesn’t feel like it now, while the pandemic offers no end in sight, but one day, we’ll get past all of this.

Inside 832 News pages 3-6 Comment pages 7-9 Profile pages 10-11 SciTech pages 12-14 Politics pages 15-17 Sport pages 18-20

indigo

Editorial page 2 Film & TV page 3 Features pages 4-5 Stage page 6 Visual Arts page 7 Fashion pages 8-9 Music page 10 Books page 11 Travel pages 12-13 Interview page 14 Food & Drink page 15 Creative Writing page 16 When the lockdown blues inevitably get to you this month, I’d urge you to take a moment to commend yourself on everything you’ve achieved since March.

Support services like Samaritans, SHOUT and Durham Nightline are here for you. Whatever happens in the next month, take care of yourself and those around you.

Imogen Usherwood

Palatinate Editorial Board Editors-in-Chief Imogen Usherwood & Tash Mosheim editor@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Editors Toby Donegan-Cross & Tim Sigsworth deputy.editor@palatinate.org.uk News Editors Martha McHardy, Patrick Stephens & Max Kendix news@palatinate.org.uk News Reporters Richard Waters, Keziah Smith, Kiara Davies, Sophie Garnett, Saniya Saraf & Ella Bicknell Investigations Editor Luke Payne investigations@palatinate.org.uk Comment Editors Hazel Laurenson & Cerys Edwards comment@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Comment Editor Abigail Brierley Profile Editors Will Entwistle, Isabella Green & Izzy Harris profile@palatinate.org.uk Science & Technology Editors Ewan Jones, Faye Saulsbury & Elise Garcon scitech@palatinate.org.uk Politics Editors Sophie Farmer & Aisha Sembhi politics@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Politics Editors Anna Shepherd & Lilith Foster-Collins Sport Editors Matt Styles & Luke Power sport@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Sport Editors Ben Fleming & James Reid Indigo Editors Hugo Millard & Millicent Machell indigo@palatinate.org.uk Features Editors Elle Woods-Marshall, Immy Higgins & Aadira Parakkat features@palatinate.org.uk Creative Writing Editors Meadbh Ni Mhorain & Jemima Guerney creative.writing@palatinate.org.uk Stage Editors Harrison Newsham & Isabel C. Davis stage@palatinate.org.uk Visual Arts Editor Emma Tucker visual.arts@palatinate.org.uk Books Editors Sol Noya & Millie Vickerstaff books@palatinate.org.uk Fashion Editors Emily Potts & Abbie Cooper Davis fashion@palatinate.org.uk Food & Drink Editors Meghna Amin & Constance Lam food@palatinate.org.uk Travel Editors Gracie Linthwaite & Emma Johnson travel@palatinate.org.uk Film & TV Editor Madeleine Rosie Strom film@palatinate.org.uk Music Editors Katherine Pittalis & Martha Lily Dean music@palatinate.org.uk Interview Editors Claudia Jacob & Aimee Dickinson indigo.interview@palatinate.org.uk Sub-Editors Chloe Waugh & Naomi RescorlaBrown sub.editors@palatinate.org.uk Photography Editor Mark Norton photography@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Photography Editors Beatrice Law & Amana Moore Illustration Editors Amber Conway, Verity Laycock & Samantha Fulton illustration@palatinate.org.uk Social Media Officers Sophie Dove & Theo Burman social.media@palatinate.org.uk

Palatinate is published by Durham Students’ Union on a fortnightly basis during term and is editorially independent. All contributors and editors are full-time students at Durham University. Send letters to: Editor, Palatinate, Durham Students’ Union, Dunelm House, New Elvet, Durham, DH1 3AN. Alternatively, send an e-mail to editor@palatinate.org.uk

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PALATINATE | Friday 6th November 2020

News

University drastically cuts art spending Toby Donegan-Cross Deputy Editor

Seun Twins

Durham Students’ Union President

Okay so, we have gone into a second national lockdown and to be honest, I foresee a tsunami of mental health issues for many students. The Government has decreed Universities will remain open, but there remains much uncertainty around the quality of our education and maintaining an enriching Wider Student Experience. We have no option but to get through it together. It is also important to acknowledge the fantastic work of student leaders, volunteers, and the general student population to get the rate of infection down after the initial spike following induction week.

In other, non-covid news, you may have already heard by now that I am commissioning a report on Durham’s culture from a student perspective. For the past few months, I and many others have been particularly vocal about the state of our university. There are certain behaviors and attitudes that should be encouraged and there are some that should be challenged. There is yet to be a substantial investigation on this culture or as I call it “this Durhamness” that shapes the student experience. This Commission relies fundamentally on mass student engagement and therefore the student voice is essential to the success of this commission.

In the methodology, we have centralized capturing the student voice, but you will hear more on that very soon- just keep an eye out for it.

Final thing - your SU officers have been working extremely hard to continue to secure you with the most flexible, engaging, and accessible education as well as navigating the Covid guidelines. We have Nailah making fantastic progress with ‘Decolonising Durham’; Ewan’s successful ‘Take time to sign’ campaign with college welfare officers; Anna’s hard work with the Democracy Review and encouraging students to actively engage in their SU; and last but not least, Sarah’s ongoing work in bolstering postgraduate student communities.

That is all from me but you will hear from me very soon.

Stay safe, Seun x

A Freedom of Information request submitted by Palatinate indicates that Durham University has significantly reduced its spending on artworks in the 2019/20 year, spending a total of £36,559.33 on 32 new works.

The new pieces include works by female, international, refugee, local and LGBTQ+ artists. According to the University, they represent “the University Library and Collections department’s commitment to actively challenging and expanding its collecting practices.”

The average price of each new acquisition was just under £1,150, with the most expensive piece – ‘Conversation II’ , a painted steel sculpture by Nancy Frankel - costing $15,000, and the cheapest – a digital collage

called ‘Lawrence’ by Zaina El Said – costing just $110.

These pieces will join Durham’s vast 6,000-piece collection, which includes works by Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Henry Moore, the Guerilla Girls, Victor Pasmore, and Eric Gill.

It is understood that of all UK universities, Durham ranks third on its spending on art, behind only Oxford and Cambridge Universities.

The pieces include work by female, international, refugee, local, and LGBTQ+ artists Investing in art has tended to be justified by the University in order to support teaching. According to the Freedom of Information request, the new acquisitions will “be used to support

teaching and research, particularly within BA Visual Arts & Film, MA Visual Culture and MA Museum & Artefact Studies, widening participation, widening student experience and public engagement.”

While many works are on display in buildings such as the Palatine Centre, the majority of Durham’s art collection is archived in the College behind Durham Cathedral.

The new acquisitions include several from the same artists; three by Mohammad Awwad, Adnan Sammam, Farbod Mehr, Rabee Baghshani and Hani Amra, and four by Mouad Aboulhana.

Durham University’s art collection has attracted controversy in the past. Last year, Palatinate revealed the £2 million unaudited art bill between 2008-2015.

It was found that £1.5 million worth of artwork was purchased

Durham announces scholarship for students from India

Kiara Davies News Reporter Durham University has announced scholarships for a range of courses for students from India.

The scholarships, which will start from 2021, are for undergraduate and taught postgraduate courses in Engineering, and taught postgraduate courses in Law and Data Science. Recipients will receive £4,000 over the course of their programme.

The scholarship will be awarded to all international fee-paying applicants from India and will be given in the form of a tuition fee

scholarship. Students must be completely self-funding to be eligible for the scholarship.

The terms and conditions of the scholarships stipulate that students must be willing to participate and cooperate in public marketing and internal marketing activities that the University may organise.

“We have proud links with India” Professor Stuart Corbridge, Vice-Chancellor at Durham University, said “We have proud links with India, including through energy, environmental and bio-

(Beatrice Law) sciences research, extensive business networks and a thriving alumni group based in Mumbai.

“India has been a lifelong passion for me personally, working with colleagues on issues around governance and empowerment in eastern India.”

The scholarship comes at a time in which India is the fastest growing market for British universities, with nearly 27,000 Indian students coming to the UK in 2018-19.

However, relatively few students currently studying at Durham University are from India, with just 216 students attending the University in 2019-20.

through Henry Dyson Fine Art Ltd – the private business of the university’s Keeper of Fine Art (a position that has since been removed) – and therefore not properly scrutinised.

In response to these findings, Henry Dyson Ltd told Palatinate: “Henry Dyson Fine Art Ltd purchased works of art on behalf of the University according to a program agreed with the ViceChancellor.

“Henry Dyson Fine Art Ltd acted as an agent of the University and not as a principal. All purchases were approved by the Treasurer and the Vice-Chancellor.”

Since 2015, Durham University has taken steps to make their process of acquiring art more transparent. An Acquisitions and Disposal Panel was established who have overseen all acquisitions since then.

“deeply concerned” Continued from front

Claire O’Malley, Pro-Vice-Chancellor responsible for the University’s international affairs, said that the student has been given “signposting to sources of counselling”.

She said: “Our travel cover is provided by UM Association Ltd with legal expenses cover provided by Markel. Our travel cover is wide in scope and compares favourably with other commercially available travel covers. Whether the legal expenses cover would apply in a particular situation is always a decision for the legal expenses insurer, rather than the university.”

Speaking to The Tab Durham, Professor O’Malley added: “We were shocked and deeply concerned when the student involved reported this to us. We do all we can to ensure victim-survivors get the right support to report allegations, rebuild their lives, and stay safe and we encourage the student to contact us at any time to discuss further support.

“We are currently reviewing our position on this case and have contacted the student directly to discuss this.”

Durham University reiterated that it provides “full support for students undertaking study abroad placements, before, during and following their period overseas and we have been reviewing our year abroad placements to further enhance the quality of student support”.

Support for anyone affected by sexual assault or sexual violence can be found on the University website.

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Friday 6th November 2020| PALATINATE

News

“Changing the entire way the SU functions” Continued from front £150 has been allocated for expenses for these roles.

This comes after the DSU spent £2,000 on an initial review of democracy last year, called a “democracy health check”, also conducted through MiraGold.

Durham SU was criticised for the limited number of people who contributed to the scoping exercise. In response to the criticism, the SU said that “scoping internal capacity as the first step on the journey was the sensible thing to do”.

The DSU, which received a block grant of £880,000 from the university for 2020/21, has had to make cuts in its budget due to losses incurred by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Several SU staff members have been put on furlough and there has been reduced funding for student groups, including Palatinate, who have been told that there is “no budget for a print edition” for Michaelmas term.

In February, elections were held for several positions, in which 58% of total votes cast were for Re-Open Nominations (RON).

The SU subsequently decided to disqualify RON for campaign rules violations, and all these votes were subsequently deleted, including second and third preferences.

“There does seem to be a general belief among those running this that students who have a negative view of the SU are simply misinformed” The democracy review will be conducted through a mass survey to gauge student views on “the purposes and priorities of democracy”, with over 1000 participants expected.

Palatinate understands that of the 30 questions, none will mention RON or its disqualification explicitly, on the basis that the intention is to “design a system for the future”.

The changes must first be backed by a referendum, then would go to the University Secretary’s Office (USO) or to the Board for a formal sign-off.

Speaking about the democracy review at the recent SU Assembly, Anna Marshall, Durham SU Opportunities Officer, said: “I see this as changing the entire way the SU functions. However, the truth is, we are changing the way that decisions are made within the SU and the ways that

students are represented. This touches on elections, this touches on committees, this touches strongly on Assembly.

“In the long term it will affect the entire way the SU works, but in the short term this means that we are actually only looking at implementing changes to governance.

“So we’re looking at the student voice and how that can be represented. I believe that’s going to have huge repercussions”.

Admitting that the review will be “a long process”, she continued: “This is the reason why I accepted this role and came to this role, to try and change the way that Durham SU works”.

One Assembly member told Palatinate: “One of the Students’ Union’s biggest flaws is its failure to admit that it has made mistakes.

None of the documents explicitly mention or extensively discuss RON “For the democracy review to be effective, the SU needs to acknowledge that it has failed the majority of students who voted in March. Period. Without this admission, and a constant refusal to engage with people who voted RON, this £7k democracy review is just the SU throwing money at the wall and hoping something sticks.”

“There does seem to be a general belief among those running this that students who have a negative view of the SU are simply misinformed”.

“Candidates were harassed, vilified and bullied” In the document, the Students’ Union laid out the reasoning behind the review, saying that the February elections saw “student dissatisfaction and confusion about SU democratic structures”.

It later wrote: “There is deep concern that election rules and campaigns based on democratic principles were weaponised as vehicles for racism in the most recent cross-campus elections.

“Candidates were harassed, vilified and bullied in this election more than ever before – which coincided with more students of colour and international students running for election than ever before.”

None of the documents explicitly mention or extensively discuss RON, or the disqualification of the majority of ballots after the election.

Asked about the money being spent on the review, and why MiraGold was chosen, Anna Marshall told Palatinate: “The Democracy Review is a full-scale assessment, which aims to get a representative sample of Durham students to share their perspective on the representation and

governance of Durham SU. “We want this to give us reliable, concrete evidence which we can use to redesign the structure of our Union to ensure we are as democratic as possible.

“I used to have a misconception of democracy as a simple thing – but if you think about how the UK parliament operates, it is very different to how the US senate operates.

“Even amongst the common rooms of Durham, there is a huge variation in governance structures.

“The key things we’re trying to weigh up are transparency, popular control, inclusivity, considered judgement and efficiency – and so before we’re able to create reform, I want to know what balance of these democratic goods students want to have. That’s not something I should decide.

“I’m glad the SU are choosing to prioritse money on democracy, because if we’re not going to do a good job of it, there’s no point of doing it at all” “MiraGold have been asked to run this review, through a survey and then a series of focus groups, to deliver a reliable assessment of this.

“I’m glad the Student Union are choosing to prioritise money

(Amana Moore) on democracy, because if we’re not going to do a good job of it, there’s no point doing it at all.

With reliable representation and governance, everything else follows suit.”

Anna Marshall also explained that the interviewing panel for the democracy review consisted of herself and three students. The students were selected without a formal application process.

“We received applications from multiple companies but believe MiraGold is the best in the field.

The democracy health check in January had a much smaller scope and this democracy review will be far more comprehensive and in-depth.

“We want this review to deliver reliable, representative results that are as bias-free as possible.

An external company offers the expertise and insight which this review deserves. There would be no point in doing this half-heartedly.

“Where possible, we have tried to use internal talent. We are hiring a part-time paid student researcher and 10 brand ambassadors who will be able to gain quality work experience from working alongside MiraGold.

“Opportunities for part-time jobs and work experience are both significantly reduced this year due to COVID-19 so I wanted to do what we could to offset that, whilst also making sure this was as Durham-focussed as possible.”

PALATINATE | Friday 6th November 2020

5

News

SU launches “Take time to sign” campaign Patrick Stephens News Editor Durham Students’ Union has launched a “Take time to sign” campaign, in response to the time of year when Durham students start looking for housing for 2021-22.

Prior to signing any tenancy agreement, the campaign urges students to explore all options, scrutinise the contract and ensure that they are fully aware of their rights as tenawnts.

In addition, it stresses the importance of getting to know future housemates.

Following this guidance, it is argued, “can prevent unexpected issues further down the line, which could be costly and/or distressing.”

The campaign was set up last year by Ewan Swift, now Durham SU’s Welfare and Liberation Officer.

It is being run in collaboration with College welfare teams.

“Regardless of what you may hear, read or are told, I want to make it very clear that there is no shortage of student housing in Durham.”

The campaign aims to minimise issues caused by the “common myth that in order to get a ‘good’ house for your next academic year, you have to sign early.

“Regardless of what you may hear, read or are told, I want to make it very clear that there is no shortage of student housing in Durham” “As part of the campaign, we’ll be sharing information on the housing market in Durham, what you should be looking for in your contract before you sign it, the things you might want to consider when finding your future housemates, the impact of Covid-19 guidance on housing viewings and the support available to you if you need it.

“We want to make sure that

Collingwood freps told not to disclose positive tests Max Kendix and Tash Mosheim News Editor and Editor-in-Chief Palatinate understands that at least six out of the 45 freps at Collingwood tested positive for Covid-19 during their time frepping, but were told not to disclose their results to all the other freps on the team. This comes after 38 out of 42 households in Collingwood College had to go into isolation.

The frep team were sent the message: “Could we please ask that as a frep team we avoid directly discussing who has tested positive for Corona? Please leave it to individuals to discuss only as and when they feel comfortable doing so.”

Despite the number of cases of Covid-19, the freps were not initially informed if others on their team had caught it, instead being asked to keep this to themselves.

One frep disclosed they were told “not to be snitches”. This resulted in not sharing test results, not being advised to self isolate, and many only finding out about the outbreak in college by “a very casual Facebook group post that the toastie shop was closing”.

According to one Collingwood frep, when “a frep tested positive [and] they told none of us.” They added, “I will never understand the frep mentality. I did it to make friends, not catch covid and be asked to cover up an outbreak”.

The Senior Frep clarified their response, that “it is super important that if you have symptoms or test positive that you tell those who you feel you were close to while you would have been infectious”. They also insisted that they were “just asking that we leave [it] to the individual to disclose and therefore allow everyone else to make the most informed decisions they can.”

“Leave [it] to the individual to disclose and therefore allow everyone else to make the most informed decisions they can” However, for some, “realistically, all 45 freps were ‘close contacts’. We had one room to do all our painting, prep in and eat meals.”

The email received from the college principal on Wednesday 7th October, which acknowledged the ‘serious Covid problem’, came three days after the first confirmed frep cases on the Sunday. It was also the only official communication the frep team received before being told that 38/42 Collingwood households would need to isolate.

The Senior Frep Team did not respond when contacted for comment.

as student tenants, you are empowered to make informed decisions about housing through awareness of your rights and knowledge of the local market.

“We recognise that some of you will feel comfortable and ready to sign early, and that’s okay. However, we ask that if you do make this choice, please don’t put pressure on others to do the same.

“As we now move into a period where housing will likely be a common topic of discussion, I’d urge you all to check out the work your welfare teams and others are doing in this area: attend their housing talks, read their resources, engage with their campaigning and ask questions or seek out your own answers.

“Above all, if you are unsure or hesitant about anything during the house signing process, we want you to feel empowered to take a step back and breath, assess your options, and take time to sign.”

Palatinate has received reports

of signs at letting agents that students needed to get housing before it runs out. In response, Swift commented to Palatinate that “landlords and letting agents use those particular messages to create a sense of panic that the number of houses in Durham is much smaller than it is.

“Time and again you hear the horrific stories of students who signed early, only to live in damp and mouldy houses where the landlords couldn’t” “Letting agents are often under enormous pressure from the landlords whose houses they are signing on behalf to get the properties signed as soon as possible, but it’s definitely true that more housing appears on the market from January onwards.

“Any estate agency will love to tell you that it’s the students which cause the housing rush,

and not the shameful tactics they employ with such messaging, because they want to be absolved of responsibility for the stress this panic places on so many students.

“What’s worse is that time and time again you hear the horrific stories of students who signed early because the pressure these messages apply, only to live in damp and mouldy houses where the landlord couldn’t care less.

“This pressure is artificially created by this messages, and realistically, the effect of the pandemic on the job market has seen a lot of students returning to do postgraduate courses, often only getting accepted onto these courses from May. Funnily enough, they’ve all managed to find housing!”

Further information about housing can be found on the Durham SU Advice Service can be accessed via www.durhamsu. com/advice-and-support.

HEARD ANYTHING NEWSWORTHY? Email news@palatinate.org.uk

SU trustee proposal scrapped Max Kendix News Editor The Board of Trustees of Durham SU has announced that its student trustees will be elected in February 2021, after facing criticism for proposing to replace them with appointed “student leaders”.

All four student trustees resigned last year following SU elections, in which 58% of votes were cast for Re-Open Nominations (RON), and later disqualified amidst alleged campaign rule violations by “a member of the campaign team” for the RON option.

Early last month, the SU proposed to fill the vacant positions by a panel of the Board inviting certain student leaders to join as voting members on Committees.

However, in a report on behalf of the Board of Trustees to Assembly, the SU’s forum for student representatives, Opportunities Officer Anna Marshall revealed that elections for student trustees would be held in February 2021, with no replacement measures in the interim period.

“We will be working hard this term to get the election process right this year” Asked why the elections could not be held this term, Anna Marshall said: “Because this term we don’t have the capacity to be running elections without significant

sacrifices in other key areas and next term we are working to a tight timeline to make sure we can run the elections in as fair as possible a process”.

In a post on the website in October, the SU had written that “It will be very difficult to hold another election in autumn 2020/2021 to fill these vacancies and we want to respond to the call from students to review the election process, including providing better information on the election process and role of a trustee.

We will be working hard this term to get the election process right this year, and make sure that students have the best representation possible on the Durham SU Board.”

“I’m pretty happy with the decision” The post also argued that there was a precedent for its proposal, given that the Chair of Durham University Charities Committee (DUCK) was invited to serve on the Board’s fundraising committee last year.

A wide student consultation was launched, both with student leaders and in open meetings, to discuss the proposals before moving forward. The Board then decided not to move ahead with the plan, following a discussion and the outcome of student con sultation.

One former trustee, who re-

signed after the RON controversy, told Palatinate: “I’m pretty happy with the decision and look forward to fulfilling my promise of rerunning”.

News Online University libraries to stay open during lockdown Durham admits lowest proportion of local students in the UK Durham achieves its highest ever global ranking for Arts and Humanities University cafes to reopen All music and theatre activities between households to cease during lockdown Face-to-face teaching to continue during lockdown despite strike threat

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Friday 6th November 2020 | PALATINATE

News

Award win for tech programme led by Durham

Martha McHardy News Editor A technology initiative, led partly

by Durham University, has won an award in recognition of its efforts to address the under-representation of women working in the technology industry.

TechUpWomen, led by Durham University along with three partner universities and industry, won in the diversity and inclusion category at the recent Dynamites 20 awards for their work in retraining minority groups, including women from BAME and under-represented communities.

The virtual awards were hosted by the not-for-profit group, Dynamo, which aims to grow the North East technology sector.

Women make up just 17 per cent of the UK technology work-

force. Recent figures also suggest that just four per cent of the UK tech workforce is black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME).

Women make up just 17 per cent of the UK technology work-force.

TechUP was launched in 2019

by Professor Sue Black OBE, a Professor of Computer Science at Durham University and founder of #techmums, and fellow Professor of Computer Science at Durham, Professor Alexandra Cristea.

TechUP graduates have found success in areas such as gaming development and content management.

64 TechUP graduates have gone on to find a new job or get a promotion, enrol in further education, or have explored other ca-

reer or education pathways.

Professor Black has also been involved in efforts to increase the number of female students studying Computer Science at Durham University. This year, 45 female students began a Computer Science degree at the University, which is double the number of female students from the previous year.

TechUP brought together women from all different backgrounds and walks of life Commenting on the win, Professor Black said: “We are so proud to have won this award which recognises our hard work, effort and dedication to create more diversity in the technology industry.

“TechUP brought together

women from all different backgrounds and walks of life. Not only did the participants complete the course with new skills to equip them for a technology career, they also grew in confidence, gained self-belief, and formed

(Ali Tollervey) new friendships.

“We started something unique when we launched TechUP and this award makes us more determined than ever to close the women in technology gap.”

Chad’s raises over Durham University admits lowest £90k in donations proportion of local students in UK Patrick Stephens and Max Kendix News Editors

Continued from front The fundraising has been used to provide households with selfcontained bedrooms with studying facilities, bathrooms, kitchens and social spaces.

“The love, concern and open-handed genrosity from our alumni and friends has been remarkable in these difficult times” As well as household areas, public spaces have been made Covid-compliant. Changes to the dining room, Cassidy Quad and Bar were carried out to reduce the risk of cross contamination between households. The College has also erected a marquee on their croquet lawn to be used as

(Mark Norton) another social space for students.

The donations were largely from past and present St Chad’s students. Dr Masson said “the love, concern and open-handed generosity for St Chad’s from our alumni and friends has been remarkable in these difficult times and this has proved a huge encouragement as well as a practical necessity for us.”

As of 20th October, 13 liversin at the college tested positive for Covid-19 As of 20th October, 13 liversin at the College tested positive for Covid-19. The college has said it has maintained “virtual touch with these students during their lockdown” and ensured students “are well fed – including two hot meals a day from the Chad’s kitchens delivered by a team of student food-deliverers.”

Durham recruits the lowest proportion of students from its region of any UK university, with just 10.1% of UK first-degree fulltime students coming from the North East of England in 2018-19.

The analysis from Times Higher Education, based on unpublished figures from the Higher Education Statistics agency, comes as the treatment of Northern students at Durham is highlighted in a report by student Lauren White, publicised in Palatinate and The Guardian last week.

Second lowest were the University of Warwick and Loughborough University, followed by the University of Cambridge. Just over 13% of their first-degree UK students are from the region in which the university is situated.

Only 7.8% of total students at Durham University over the previous 5 years were from the North East A Palatinate investigation from November 2019 revealed that, on average, only 7.8% of total students at Durham University over the previous 5 years were from the North East.

In 2019, Durham University confirmed that the majority of their students are from “the highest participating in higher education neighbourhoods”, on average 52-55% over the past five years,

compared to 5-7% from the Low Participation Neighbourhood group, measured by “POLAR4 quintiles”.

Durham University’s ratio of quintiles 5 and 1 is currently 10:1, while the average ratio among high tariff institutions is currently 5:1. They recognised that what “makes this ratio particularly problematic” is that “quintile 5 includes the postcode areas for many of the best performing schools in the country”.

Other universities in the North East have a much higher proportion of local students Other universities in the North East have a much higher proportion of local students. 23% of Newcastle University’s admissions in the 2017/18 academic year were from the North East

and a Centre For Cities study reported that half of the students at Northumbria came from the region.

“We have a large number of programmes to encourage students from the North East of England to apply to study here” Stuart Corbridge, Durham’s Vice-Chancellor, said to Times Higher Education that the North East was the region “with the lowest rate of participation in higher education in England”.

He continued: “We have a large number of programmes to encourage students from the North East of England to apply to study here, or indeed to go on to study at another university, and we are constantly building these programmes and the financial support that underpins them.”

(Mark Norton)

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PALATINATE | Friday 6th November 2020

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Online learning: what’s the verdict?

Meghna Amin

As a ‘stale’ third-year, Sunday night Klute has been replaced with endless hours of job applications, summatives that finally do count, and the impending fear of no longer being a student. Whilst this is almost becoming too much to handle, the trials and tribulations of online learning may tip us over the breaking point.

I am in no way suggesting that I long to be amongst the crowded Elvet corridors, scouring for a seat in the library, nor racing a Fresher for the last bag of Doritos in Tesco. I don’t miss the crowds, and wouldn’t dream of them in a pandemic world. I do, however, like most, miss the regularity and normality of lectures that aren’t over Zoom, tutorials that don’t involve breakout rooms and contact hours that actually involve face to face contact.

There are just too many things to think about: frantically untangling headphones because all my housemates are also in virtual tutorials, not being able to hide my yawns from the camera, and worrying

about the judgement I may get from the pile of clothes that are weighing down my chair. Especially whilst I’m trying to balance the switch between my notes, the Zoom session and the recommended reading on an overheated laptop.

terial that I can re-watch without having secretly recorded, and gaining a clear view of the PowerPoint from the comfort of

Being able to study from bed, all the time, is an everlasting novelty Despite this, as an English student, it is refreshing to finally have access to recorded lectures. To be able to pause and go back, or just not turn up and catch up a little while later, and finally focus on everything the lecturers are presenting – as opposed to zoning out for four seconds before you’ve entirely lost track of their monologue and succumbed to scrolling through Facebook instead.

The ability to take notes at my own pace, revise from lecture ma-

my bed seem too good to be true. It’s something I hope, for the sake of future students, the English department (and

other anti-Encore departments) will continue to do in future.

Breakout rooms are the epitome of virtual learning torture Having said that, what I pray will end sooner rather than later are the dreaded breakout rooms. As my lecturer oh-sowisely revealed earlier today: philosophers study philosophy because they don’t like groups.

And ain’t that the truth.

Breakout rooms are the epitome of virtual learning torture. The competition of who can remain silent the longest as the tutor enters your virtual group to observe what you’ve been discussing, or rather, if you’ve been discussing. That one person who’ll just type in the chat instead of turning their mic on. And the dread of turning your mic on only to find someone else’s Zoom has

just been highlighted in green as they make the point that was on the tip of your tounge, only you didn’t click the button in time.

And what’s worse is that everyone will have seen your little face light up by now. Because there is no hiding on Zoom. You can slink into the back of a lecture with a face from the night before, pyjama bottoms and no notes. But it’s only the pyjama bottoms that remain for online learning. You can’t hide from anyone – students and lecturers alike, because you just don’t know if your face and photo-wall-immersed-in-fairy-lights-background is at the top of someone’s screen, and you’d never risk having your webcam off and the tutor calling you out to turn it on.

All in all, online learning has its perks. Being able to study from bed, all the time, is an everlasting novelty. And the Encore English lectures are a dream that did come true. But are the perks worth the breakout rooms? It’s a no from me.

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Comic relief: white saviours to the rescue Sarah Matthews On 28th October, Comic Relief announced that they would not be sending celebrities to African countries to film for their show next March. This comes after the organisation faced backlash for showing the likes of Stacey Dooley and Ed Sheeran reacting to impoverished children. While this was common practice in the charity industry, producers of the show have questioned its wider implications.

We all know the routine – a tear is shed by a celebrity as their voiceover tells us a tale of a helpless African child who desperately needs our help. Then, as if by magic, we’re transported back into the flashy comic relief studios where Paddy McGuinness introduces the next act of entertainment for the evening. So the cycle repeats, and it is all broadcast for us to see from our comfy couches halfway across the world.

On the surface, this appears to be an engaging way to raise mon-

ey, but deeper contradictions between the dirty, poverty-stricken images of Africa and the glossy television studios strengthen stereotypical racial binaries. In the long run, these representations of celebrity ‘white saviours’ contribute negatively to Western notions of race, reinforcing the ‘them’ versus ‘us’ binary that pervades charity advertising.

Comic Relief’s decision to eradicate this section of the wellloved show indicates a newfound change to industry standard, one which is conscious of representations of ethnicity and race in Western media. Media theorist Alvarado published an extensive study on racial stereotypes in Western mainstream media, identifying four key categories which BAME characters fall under. These were the exotic, the dangerous, the funny, and the pitied. The lack of BAME representation in TV, film and advertising speaks for itself. However, when it comes to charity advertising, the ‘pitied’ stereotype remains common.

Therefore, diverting the attention from ‘white saviour’ celebri-

ties by using local African production companies and voices allows us to hear directly from the people who rely on Comic Relief. In essence, the people featured can be represented wholly, with their own voices – not just displayed as pitiable faces next to shiny celebrities. We can hope that their stories and talent will not be mediated by a British voiceover, and also that this will mark a shift in the way in which we think about voluntourism.

Celebrity ‘white saviours’ contribute negatively to Western notions of race Sending celebrities to Africa for Comic Relief is a microcosm of the broader problem of voluntourism. Everyone at Durham will know at least one person who ‘found themselves’ doing charity work abroad on their gap year. While it’s certain that these people volunteered in part for the benefit of charity, volunteering is seen by many as an enriching task of generosity and self-development, as well as something

to plug into a CV. Social media makes this act of selflessness incredibly easy to talk about, too – it’s hard to miss selfies with African children, often paired with somewhat condescending captions. When we look at the aforementioned racial stereotypes, it’s easy to see how this perpetuates the same narratives of BAME helplessness as charity adverts so often do.

Instead of using volunteering abroad as a rite of passage, we should be thinking of the broader effects these gap year schemes have on the communities they claim to help. Take volunteering as a teacher in orphanages for example; many gap year companies take payment to ship unqualified young people over to teach basic lessons in literacy and maths.

Wouldn’t this money be better used to train a local teacher? One who could work at the organisation full time and provide not only a quality education for the children, but also stability.

Another large problem with voluntourism is its superficiality – many volunteers claim to connect with the people they’re

helping, and are affected by their departure for many years. Gap year schemes give vulnerable young people abroad a support network of volunteers they can confide in and bond with. It’s no surprise that many of these orphans develop attachment issues - having bonded with people only for them to leave after a fortnight or two.

We should think of the effects gap year schemes have on communities Therefore, it’s important to recognise that gap year schemes exploit both affluent Western teens, while damaging the lives they promise to help. Perhaps instead of going abroad to fulfil personal needs, donate the money you would have spent to a reputable charity. Or if you must, make sure you research the charity you’re volunteering for thoroughly, considering the wider implications of your work before you go. Otherwise, it’s best that, like the Comic Relief celebrities, you stay at home.

Friday 6th November 2020 | PALATINATE

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Forget Halloween, I’ve got career fear Lara Moamar

What are your plans for the future?

This one daunting question casts a permanent shadow on students’ time at university. Whether you’re a law student stuck in the fierce competition for an internship, a finance student aiming for the Big Four, or even an overwhelmed first year

English Literature student like me, we’ve all felt this surging sense of anxiety as to what our future holds and wondered what we need to be doing to ensure that we get on the right path. In these isolating times, spending all day glued to a desk, this is especially true.

It is difficult to know what you want to be or where you want to work so early on. More often than not, even those who have mapped out their ten-year career plan end

up working in sectors they would not have expected. That isn’t to say that we should abandon planning altogether; rather, remember to retain an open-minded approach as we attempt to navigate the fog of the future.

The only way to soothe our fears for the future is to stop avoiding them. Our minds are cluttered by all the different goals we want to achieve. Excitement is replaced by angst and fear of failure: 79% of

(Amana Moore)

university students worry about getting a job, while 72% worry about debt. This anxiety manifests itself in two polarised responses: students either want to throw themselves into extracurriculars and any online skill courses that have the potential to ‘look good on a CV’, or we are frozen into a state of inaction and choose to ignore the looming responsibilities ahead.

The behemoth task of ‘figuring out your life’ is a learning experience we all undergo While stress has become a permanent fixture of the university experience, there are a few ways we can combat it. Before aimlessly scrolling through internships and job opportunity pages, we need to seriously reflect on what it is we could envisage ourselves doing. Taking an hour or two from your weekend to write down your strengths, weaknesses and inspirations is a great first step. Setting short-term goals along with the practical steps to achieve them allows you to feel that sense of gratification without getting lost in the bigger picture. Ask yourself what your priorities are in a job. Do you need something that pays well?

What type of work environment do you prefer? Do you want something

creative? Once you can see your thoughts in writing it is easier to incorporate a few career-oriented tasks into your weekly agenda without feeling overwhelmed.

These tasks are dependent on what year you’re in or what discipline you’re aiming for. Starting points like setting up a LinkedIn profile or taking a look at online sample CVs gives you the confidence to seek out more opportunities. Taking advantage of the university’s career service, talking to people who work in your dream career field, engaging in networking events and mentorship schemes all help you to refine your interests and plant a seed of excitement for the future rather than fear.

Plans for the future cast a permanent shadow In this productivity-crazed age we need to be conscious that we do not have to join everything under the sun to be successful in the future. The behemoth task of ‘figuring out your life’ is not something that will be resolved by a simple career test or to do list: it is a learning experience we all undergo. The social and economic bleakness of current times means that it is important for us to remain optimistic and support each other.

Is satire dead, and do we need it?

George Simms

Satire is an art form. As all art is, it is inherently subjective and its invitational openness to interpretation is one of its key features. Much like a painting, song or sculpture, satire has to be judged on a value scale starting around ‘outstanding’ (Chaplin’s The Great Dictator) and ending somewhere like ‘almost poignantly pointless’ (The remake of Spitting Image).

Satire is often derided as offensive or unfunny. If it is offensive, it tends to just be poorly written, using lazy stereotypical tropes rather than genuinely ‘satirical’ ideas. If it is unfunny, it will fall into one of two categories. Firstly, there is again poorly written, which speaks for itself. But alongside that, there is ‘hits too close to home’ satire.

This is where it is often at its best, sparking genuine reflection in either a singular person or an entire social group through a perfectlywritten joke.

A common misconception about satire is that it is a reflection of an opinion or fact and can be judged as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. This failure to understand what satire is, or in-

tends to do, is perhaps the biggest cause of its mooted death. Satire is the use of humorous techniques to highlight flaws within society, in the hope that it inspires correction of these flaws. It is often politically charged, which sparks the misconception that it is simply pushing political opinion.

Satire should be virtually apolitical. It should be keyhole surgery for society, targeting flaws to rebalance and improve humanity, regardless of political leaning. Of course, depending on where the most obvious flaws are, one side or the other tends to become more of a target – but that is a result of the society as opposed to the satirist.

Failure to understand satire is perhaps the biggest cause of its mooted death Now for some recent examples of satire, starting with the Spitting Image remake. The stars are, as expected, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, who are lampooned by, well, being themselves. As the proverb goes, imitation is the highest form of flattery. This destroys what I assume is the message that they are both ‘self-satirising’ enough that nothing the writers could

imagine really seems like satire.

The ‘edgiest’ the show gets is Trump and Johnson seducing Covid-19. This is criminally lazy; almost too far removed from their horrendous histories with women to be satirical. Dominic Cummings is portrayed as an alien, which lets him off the inexorable fact that, as much as he, or I, may not like it, he is human. Its lazy tropes are neither thought-provoking nor conducive to self-reflection and, as such, aren’t really satire.

The startling satirical relevance of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is impressive. Maria Bakalova as Tutar, Borat’s daughter, is a real highlight, with the masterful juxtaposition between her wide-eyed innocence and the genuine sincerity of the American figures she encounters a true satire of their general ridiculousness. This is satirising the supposedly ‘self-satirising’ done right, by simply holding a mirror up to their flaws.

The greatest modern criticism of satire is the damage it can do to people’s lives if they target groups who will defend the subject matter enough to take physical or legal action against those involved. There are examples of this within most modern dictatorships, from Venezuela to Turkey. Yet this is where

satire is most useful: a subtle and disarming way to deliver subversive messages without simply yelling them from the rooftops.

“

As often quoted, we have a freedom of speech, not a freedom of consequence

”

The most publicised recent satirical crises have been the 2015 Charlie Hebdo massacre and the machete attack last month, after they published cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in 2012.

Given the prevalence of Islamic fundamentalism and France’s significant Islamic population, this was poorly thought through. They

should not have received this retribution for exercising their right to free speech, but after riots across the Islamic world for a Danish cartoon house’s portrayal of Muhammad in 2005, it was somewhat poking an already angry bear. And not really satirical either. As has often been recently quoted, we have a freedom of speech, not a freedom of consequence, and common sense will always be a virtue.

But no, even considering these attacks and the remake of Spitting Image, satire is not dead. When most modern politicians and their politics are so crass, it often takes on a subtler form, woven into wider works rather than being exclusively satirical. Modern satire tends to be intelligent enough to realise that targeting figures like Johnson or Trump, although shockingly easy, has little impact. It is satirising the societies and groups that enabled them to come to power that is needed. Using satire to force these groups to consider why we are all in the mess we are is deeply, fundamentally necessary.

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A London-centric Covid-19 response Emma King

It was difficult not to be stirred by the speech given by Greater Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham, as he lamented the government’s imposition of Tier 3 restrictions on the city. He claimed the restrictions were certain to increase “poverty, homelessness and hardship” without proper financial support from the government. In the wake of these failed negotiations, there is an ever-growing picture of blatant double standards when it comes to the government’s Covid-19 policy-making in the North versus the South.

There is an ever-growing picture of blatant double standards in the North versus the South A more localised response to Covid-19 was the only way out of the national lockdown we found ourselves in earlier in the year. Restrictions in hotspots like Manchester and Liverpool are vital, life-saving measures. But the way these “local lockdowns” have been communicated and imposed shows a total disregard for local leaders and the livelihoods of the cities’ four million residents.

When London was put under

Tier 2 earlier in October, Rishi Sunak immediately announced cash grants of up to £2,100 for businesses hit by the new restrictions.

But Manchester and Liverpool have been quietly suffering under the equivalent of Tier 2 restrictions since the very start of August. Next, the region was put under the even tighter restrictions of Tier 3, and the government still hadn’t provided the necessary financial support to protect furloughed workers.

The breakdown of negotiations in Manchester hardly paints a picture of national unity in a time of crisis. The government fell £15 million short of the £75 million requested by the city’s leaders (enough to pay furloughed workers 80% of their salary rather than the two thirds mandated by the government.) And, as Andy Burnham himself pointed out, it is the already low-income workers in the hospitality industry (such as bar staff and taxi drivers) who will suffer the most.

where cases were still relatively low.

No one can provide a definitive explanation for why Covid-19 outbreaks have been more widespread in the North than in the South. But a very probable explanation is that the national lockdown was simply lifted far too early in the North.

Public Health England statistics have shown that 24% of Covid-19 deaths in Manchester occurred after the easing of national lockdown, in contrast to just 9% of deaths in London. We needed to get the economy up and running again, but since then the North has taken a huge economic hit to prevent another national lockdown.

As concerning is the way these local restrictions have

been communicated to the public.

At the end of July, a late-night announcement on Twitter: “LOCKDOWN IN THE NORTH”. No press conference, no warning, no explanation (and the strong sense this headline was written by a journalist yet to venture outside the M25, clearly considering Greater Manchester and some parts of Lancashire as the extent of “the North”).

The specifics of this lockdown were only clarified in a press conference from Boris Johnson

The national lockdown was lifted too early in the North When all of this started back in March, cases in London were considerably higher than in the rest of the UK. But a national lockdown was the only responsible way to curb the rapid spread of the virus.

We had to protect those most vulnerable, even in areas of the UK

the next day (with almost 24 hours of confusion and anxiety in the interim). And the list of regions affected by these restrictions (fairly crucial information for the 15 or so million people living in the North) was published on Twitter in the form of a screenshot from the Notes app on Matt Hancock’s iPhone.

Confidence can only be generated from proper communication As the pandemic continues to unfurl, it is not just a case of imposing restrictions top-down, but ensuring people have the confidence in government to follow them. This confidence can only generate from proper communication between central government, local leaders, and the general public, and must come with adequate justification.

At a press conference at the very start of June, Andy Burnham stressed the importance of “a new relationship with government to manage the risk in the North West”. Almost five months later, this relationship has only deteriorated. We will have to wait and see whether the government can rectify it as we approach the winter ahead.

(Number 10 via Flickr)

Should we listen to past political leaders?

Bartosz Maj One does not have to hold the position of Prime Minister to voice a political opinion. Memoirs or books by past national leaders are not a new phenomenon; leaders or key figures from previous administrations have not simply faded into irrelevance, and for good reason.

A democracy does not consist of a single job, and we should not tie one’s ability to contribute to the political atmosphere to the arbitrary metric of whether they previously inhibited a leadership position.

Leaders leave behind legacies, and these legacies will shape how history looks at them However, even though we should not simply erase them from the political world, we should consider the relevant biases in their writings or messages. World leaders leave behind legacies, and these legacies

will shape how history looks at them and how future generations judge their governance. Therefore, we should acknowledge that what they say may be a mere attempt to shift the narrative.

There is no reason to ignore the experience of past leaders simply because they no longer hold the position Nevertheless, the need to judge people according to their supposed biases is not a reason to send them into political exile. After all, in a society of parties and representative democracy we must all pay at least a little attention to every political figure’s many biases and self-interests, current or past.

Previous leaders were elected for a reason. These may be their long list of competencies, legislative successes or a message which resonated with the public. These don’t simply stop being relevant because eight years have passed, or the electorate lost faith. Past leaders offer their pre-governmental qualifications and all the expe-

rience they amassed during their time in office, and there is no reason to ignore these, simply because they no longer occupy their central position.

That being said, not all ex-leaders should be listened to. Not all declines are equal. Sometimes key political figures leave due to term limits or personal reasons, but others are voted out, pushed away by the public or their parties because of their failures. A past leader should be judged on the basis of their deeds and their ideas. We should be looking at who this person is, and what they bring to the table, and if the nature of their exit from a leading position offers reasons for exclusion, then so be it, but the simple fact they once inhabited the job is not enough of a reason to ignore them.

This highlights a wider issue in modern politics: the constant need to stand behind someone. The outstanding individual who will look good on the campaign poster and give good soundbites on the debate summary uploaded to YouTube the next day. The media and the public need to have a single person to

look up to, and a single person to bring down when everything goes wrong. The spotlight doesn’t have room for the thousands of advisors, policy planners, academics and civil servants who contribute to the running of governments, meaning we think we need a strong individual to lead us, and any other voices don’t deserve consideration.

We fail to appreciate the plurality of politics and how many voices are involved The historical trend of defining politics by the “great men” of history continues to rear its head as we fail to appreciate the plurality of politics, and how many different voices build campaigns, governments, agencies or slogans. Our need to pin vast policy infrastructures and governmental frameworks on an individual and throw them away into obscurity shows how our relationship with democracy is not one which appreciates the significance of plurality in our system and how much we need it.

“

Key figures from previous administrations have not simply faded into irrelevance, and for good reason

”

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“If you don’t speak out, nothing will change” Labour MP Richard Burgon on life as a northern student at an elite university and being a ‘Metal Head’ interesting experience”, he says of his three years as an undergraduate there between 1999 and 2002, adding, “it wasn’t very representative then.” He then goes on to imagine how hard it must have been for his friend and colleague Diane Abbott who studied at Cambridge in the 1970s having the added pressure of intersectionality—being a black, working-class woman.

He notes that his politics was formed majorly during his time at Cambridge. He reflects on the fact that his first year at university coincided with the introduction of £1,000-a-year tuition fees.

“Even when you take into account inflation, was significantly, significantly less than the fees paid now.” As well as this, he recollects the diversity of Cambridge as being a big moment in his political awakening. He does, however, argue that working-class students should not be put off applying for places at prestigious universities: “it’s important that people understand that they do have a right [to go to university], that they shouldn’t be put off from going there, and that by going there as somebody from an ordinary background it helps to be part of that change that’s necessary to make it a better environment.”

“We need to go further than just exposing the government’s incompetence” (Richard Burgon) Josh Nichol Richard Burgon, MP for Leeds East, is on the surface what you’d expect to see and hear from a late 2010s Labour politician: sharply dressed in suit and tie, a calm sense of relatability in his anecdotes, and a politics deeply rooted in the working-class experience.

It was Burgon who deputised for then Labour leader Corbyn in the ITV Election Debate in December 2019, such was his trustworthiness within the shadow cabinet at that point in time. Indeed, Burgon presented himself as a candidate for the Deputy Leadership of the Labour Party in 2020, following the resignation of then Deputy Tom Watson prior to the 2019 election.

The Leeds East politician, however, is no different to many music lovers in the north of England.

“We all miss live gigs”, he leans forward to tell me with a hopeful longing on his face. “I’ve seen

in New Zealand”, he continues, “photos from rugby stadiums filled with thousands of fans… because they’ve managed to get coronavirus rates down to such a low level. It made me think about all the gigs we’ve been missing out on!”

“Students have been treated appallingly throughout this crisis” A self-confessed ‘metal-head’, his first experience of Iron Maiden came as an eight-year-old, borrowing the headphones from a boy who was holidaying in the same Maltese hotel as he was.

“I bought a bootleg tape from a market in Malta and I never looked back!”

Burgon’s music taste isn’t the only thing that has formed him.

He looks fondly back at his time spent as a working-class student at Cambridge University studying English Literature. “It was an

When asked to reflect on the recent Guardian and Palatinate reports on the experiences of discrimination faced by northern students at Durham University he sits back, takes a momentary pause and a noticeable shift in tone is palpable. “The accounts and the testimonies are appalling”, he states with a grave look on his face, adding, “the Vice Chancellor and others need to tackle this… it’s important students speak out about it. If you don’t speak out nothing will change. I do understand the ways in which people’s experience and working-class background clash with some of the conceited attitudes you find from a minority of students or even the institution itself.”

He rocks forward towards the camera as he reflects longer on the working-class experiences of prejudice at universities that he witnessed at Cambridge, which have now become a topic of intense scrutiny for those in the Durham hierarchy. “I pity snobs”, he says triumphantly, “I pity posh

people who look down at people from working-class backgrounds because at the end of the day what kind of life do they have?

What does it say about their worldview to view working class people, northern people, in such a way?”

We move on to chat about his campaign for Deputy Leadership of the Labour Party, a campaign which saw Burgon finish third behind now deputy leader Angela Rayner and Dr Rosena Allin-Khan. I ask about the experiences he took from running that particular race in the aftermath of a disastrous General Election campaign for Labour, which saw many northern ‘Red Wall’ seats fall to the Conservatives for the first time in decades—some even for the first time in history.

“The left must move on and focus on bringing concessions from the government, proposing the correct policies and rallying around them” “It was an experience I certainly enjoyed”, he mentions as he sips from his can of cola. For a politician like Burgon whose politics is steeped so firmly in the human experience, it has been a difficult year of being physically separated from his constituents and Labour members up and down the country. Burgon’s strong socialist campaign is something he is proud of: “it was openly Bennite, if you will.” He mentions that his support in the voting process—83,000 votes in the first round of voting which had him initially in second place before votes were reallocated in line with the voting process used—is indicative of the “advance in the position of the left”, especially “if you consider the position of the left before Jeremy [Corbyn] took over as leader.”

“It’s important that people understand that they do have a right [to go to university]” When he reacts to the disappointment of Labour members who wanted to see a leadership team that resembled that of Corbyn’s era, he says simply, “the left must move on and focus on bringing concessions from the government, proposing the correct policies and rallying around them to help to save thousands of lives and many more livelihoods

as well.”

He doesn’t think that the case for socialism is completely eroded though. He states his pride in the manifestos of 2017 and 2019, arguing that the leadership bid of Rebecca Long-Bailey and his own bid for the deputyship have influenced the direction of Sir Keir Starmer, whose ‘pledges’ to the party are, as Richard notes, a product of Corbynism.

“We need to go further than just exposing the government’s incompetence”, Burgon suggests as he ponders the effectiveness of the party’s performance in opposition since Starmer’s leadership began in April. “[The government’s] incompetence is plain for all to see! We need to set about proposing the policies that we believe have the solutions to the problems people are having as a result of the public health crisis”, he says. He goes on to suggest that a good example of the party doing this is in the recent Opposition Day motion on Free School Meals.

“I pity posh people who look down at people from working-class backgrounds” “We’re not going to win the next election by just tinkering around the edges or by managerialism”, he suggests as he talks through his role as secretary of the Socialist Campaign Group (SCG) of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

Several members of the SCG resigned their frontbench roles on 15th October as a result of a disagreement of conscience on the so called ‘Spy Cops’ bill that sought to grant immunity to spies who commit crimes.

As we wind down the interview, Richard leans forward towards the camera again, ever so slightly, as he sympathises with the hand that has been dealt to students up and down the country. There’s emotion in his voice now as he wraps up by saying, “students have been treated appalling throughout this crisis and what we’ve seen at many universities is the natural and abhorrent conclusion of what happens when you treat education as a commodity and students as consumers.”

He smiles, nods, and then leaves the Zoom call. He has a constituency appointment to travel to, noting earlier that constituency casework has multiplied as a result of the precarious position Covid-19 has left the country in. I am left wondering how grave the pandemic’s repercussions may be.

PALATINATE | Friday 6th November 2020

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Profile

“No university community is fully inclusive” Profile speaks to Wendy Powers about her new role as Castle Principal and the importance of diversity

Isabella Green Profile Editor Professor Wendy Powers joined University College this August as Principal, the first woman to permanently take on the position, previously entitled ‘Master’.

Before moving to Durham, Professor Powers held the position of Vice President of Student Affairs and Dean of Students at Alverno College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

She said, “It was my first women’s college. It was wonderful.”

Her next logical step may have been to consider a presidency at a small private college. But, she explained, “I believe that takes me too far away from students. That’s another reason why this position really felt great to me. I’m leading University College which means I still get to be connected with students, but I also get to do some other things like fundraising and working with alumni.”

Having previously lived in Germany, Professor Powers was already considering employment opportunities in Western Europe.

The Durham position was one of the first that appealed to her and, after a series of zoom interviews and a campus visit, she was scheduled to start in June. Covid-19, of course, had other ideas.

Due to Visa delays, Professor Powers had to wait three more months than she originally planned before moving to Durham. “I would say it was some of the most stressful months of my life. Knowing that I was needed here - not that the world was falling apart, everyone was doing fine - but the new Vice-Principal had started, and I wasn’t able to support her or the team in person. We were waiting on two governments to come back to life and get the visa processes going, with very little communication. Never knowing, from one week to the next, whether we were going to hear anything. It was very frustrating and stressful. There was a lot of sitting around and spending time with family. It was nice, but when something that big is out of your control, it’s really challenging.”

Now that she is finally here, Professor Powers is effusive in her praise of Durham. “It is such a beautiful city. The North East region – although we haven’t been able to explore very much at the moment – is just gorgeous and there’s so much to see and do. My partner and I are probably more country people than city people anyway, so we just can’t wait to get a car, learn the train system and go explore.”

Professor Powers and her team are navigating an influx of new challenges on a daily basis. “It is constantly changing,” she explained. “Every day there is something new, from the government, from the University, from our students, from parents and families.

This is an amazing team, and I’m not just saying that! I have been so impressed. The administrative and front-line staff here at Castle are so good.”

“I feel blessed to inherit such a wonderful community. It’s not perfect - no community is - and we’ve got our challenges. My hope is that, in time, we will lead the way around current issues of diversity and inclusion, and we’ll work toward that goal. But, for right now, in unprecedented times and unprecedented circumstances, we’re doing remarkably well and so is every other college.

Everybody is working so hard.”

Professor Powers emphasised that the role has been challenging in good ways. She said, “I just love working with college students.

It’s been my whole career. This community seems so tight-knit.

Everyone here - from the housekeepers, to the catering team, to the porters, to the professional staff in the office, to the administrative staff - loves working at Castle. I haven’t always experienced that. Sometimes people just work somewhere because they need a job but the people here seem to really do it because they love Castle and they love the students. That’s really refreshing.”

“The University has more work to do around access and participation” Professor Powers is the first woman to hold the permanent position of leader of the Castle community. Understandably, she feels pressure to be a voice for other women in Higher Education.

“I would say it’s always in my mind, wanting to represent the various identities that I embrace.

Being a woman, being gay and being from outside the UK. I’m married to a woman and I’m very proud of that. Same-sex marriage hasn’t been legal across the entire US for very long. It’s not always comfortable for everyone, but it’s who I am. I think about modelling or representing that community in a few different ways: if more women and more gay people can see role models in leadership positions, then I hope it is empowering.”

Generally, Professor Powers strives to be a role model of “strong leadership, compassion, and service orientation” for all students. “But, if underrepresented students in any kind of community can feel even a little bit more like that they have the ability, the right, the opportunity to step into a leadership role in whatever capacity they want to, then I’m very happy if I’m able to provide that little bit of hope for people as well.”

Until Professor Powers’ appointment as ‘Principal’, the leader of Castle has historically been known as ‘Master’. Although the decision is reflective of a university-wide shift towards more gender-neutral terms, Professor Powers admits that the original title would have made her uneasy.

“Because I come from the US with a horrific history around slavery, historically, ‘Master’ for me was simply not comfortable. I appreciate the concerns around Master being perceieved as gendered as well, but the connection to slavery was a stronger force against the title. But it’s not really a question at this point, because that is the direction the University is going.”

“It’s always in my mind, wanting to represent the various identities that I embrace” Durham University has recently been accused of fostering an environment which may be hostile towards certain minorities, such as students of colour and working-class students. Diversity and inclusion are guiding issues for Professor Powers, as she explained, “Inclusion and social justice have been at the centre of my moral and professional compass.

At each instituion I’ve served, I’ve been a champion of diversity and inclusion efforts, from interrogating campus culture to developing plans for progress and implementing change.”

“No university community is fully inclusive, and some are further away from that than others.

My core value is that everyone should be treated with dignity and respect, and have equal opportunity. Our systems and services ought to be equitable for everyone.”

“The reality is there is such a long way to go,” Professor Powers acknowledged. “Some days, it’s hard to feel like you’ve gotten any wins. But together we can make progress with each day, with each attack, and with each successful intervention. When the greater

society at large is wrestling with these issues as well, you can’t really create a little Utopian bubble on a college or university campus - you have to keep trying and working at it because unfortunately it’s likely going to be a lifelong, or generations-long, fight.”

During Professor Powers’ period of uncertainty before she was able to travel to the UK and officially take up her position, the death of George Floyd triggered a stream of Black Lives Matter protests and a worldwide call for racial justice. She explained that this helped to put her situation into perspective. “Once the George Floyd situation ignited and the next wave of activism and anti-racism made its way around the world, that became so much more important. I think it reset things. It gave us a new perspective: okay, so we were waiting on Visas; we were going to move to England and we would get there eventually - there were much bigger, more important issues going on in the world.”

Professor Powers has labelled this period “a vitally important time in our history”, due both to the pandemic and the spotlight that has been shone on racial inequalities. “It is, though, a new megaphone for a generationslong challenge. I try to keep in mind that it’s not like this is just starting. These are issues – injustice, oppression, and murder – that have been going on for generations. I’m inspired by the fact that more people continue to get involved, and I have faith that the young people of today will make a better future for us all.”

In her role as Principal of a young community of students, Professor Powers intends to work towards a more equal future for all, as she emphasised,

“I see my work as twofold – doing everything I can to help more more white people learn and grow in this area, because the reality is that systems are often created and fuelled by white people.

So, I want to continue to educate and do anti-racist work. I also want to do everything I can to help as many students of colour, LGBTQ+ and other marginalised students know I am an ally they can trust.”

“It’s not just administration and management, it’s really education” “We know that the University has more work to do around access and participation, and that I have some experience in that area, so I want to help however I can. But my first job is really to ask lots of questions, and listen and learn, and fully understand, as best I can, from my position and privilege, what the current culture and climate is like for people of colour, and other under-represented folks. Nobody is going to come in with a magic wand and make things better, I just want to be one more person trying to help with this important agenda.”

Professor Powers stressed that she sees herself as an educator above all, not just an administrator. “That’s one of the things that I think sometimes gets lost when people talk about college staff or University staff that work in the extra-curricular world. It’s not just administration and management, it’s truly education. We’re teaching and learning with students just like faculty are. In different ways to be sure, but we’re educators in this learning community together.”

(Wendy Powers)

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PALATINATE | Friday 6th November 2020

Science & Technology AI makes Halloween scarier than ever Ewan Jones Science & Technology Editor In the true spirit of Halloween 2020, horror doesn’t just come from the minds of human beings - artificial intelligence (AI) is getting in on the frights as well. Matt Reed, who works at creative agency Red Pepper, used a generative adversarial network (a type of AI) to create a series of profoundly unsettling Halloween masks. In this case, the AI is ‘trained’ on a large set of data (5000 Halloween masks in this case), after which it is set free to produce its own freakish masks using what it learnt of the similarities between the training images.

“What’s so scary or unsettling about it is that it’s not so detailed that it shows you everything. It leaves just enough open for your imagination to connect the dots,” said Matt, in an interview with New Scientist. And they truly are horrifying, evoking a sense of dread and confusion that is difficult to capture in humanmade objects.

Interestingly, humanlike images don’t need to be as featureless and blurry as these masks to evoke a sense of fear; pictures of faces with only a slight irregularity in features can give rise to profound unsettlement and even fear. The reason behind this lies, perhaps, in the Uncanny Valley, a

Not as scary as 2020 (Matt Reed, via Twitter) theory developed by Masahiro Mori stating that “viewers are generally less accepting of a character as the human likeness of that character increases”.

Basically, the closer a character looks to a human, the easier it is for people to notice that something is ‘off’, leading to

rejection.

Robots are designed to look less human-like to avoid negative reactions Many people have remarked online that the human characters in the 2004 animated film The Polar Express are pure nightmare-fuel, inducing feelings of revulsion and horror perhaps similar to those caused by Matt Reed’s masks. Baby Yoda, on the other hand, looks much less like a human, and is therefore insanely cute - perhaps more so than Disney anticipated, given that Baby Yoda toys have consistently sold out as soon as they’re released.

The Uncanny Valley isn’t just

restricted to the realms of movies and Halloween: many researchers in the field of robotics actively design their robots to look less human-like to avoid these negative reactions.

For example, compare your reaction to the two robots in the bottom-left corner: Sophia (left), a robot designed to look extremely similar to a human (and now an official citizen of Saudi Arabia!), and Pepper (right), a Japanese ‘companion’ robot able to read human emotions. I know which one I wouldn’t like to see in the corner of my room at night (although admittedly a large white robot suddenly appearing out of nowhere would probably be fairly frightening as well…).

AI is also being applied to

make other images immensely unsettling as well. Twitter user @ melip0ne posted the image to the right with the caption “name one thing in this photo”, a challenge many found incredibly difficult, frustrating, and profoundly disturbing. This image, once again, appears to have been created using a generative adversarial network (the same as the masks), having been ‘primed’ on thousands of example photos.

The reason we find the result unsettling is because the AI has created objects from composites of the material it was primed on, resulting in a confusing mess that still seems ‘realistic’.

Overall, it seems like rather than taking over the world, AI is much better suited at creating unsettling images. I’m excited to see where the technology takes us in the future, although hopefully it will be a little less scary!

(Left: ITU Pictures, Right: PxFuel)

Diet affects academic and emotional scores

Dasha Scanlan-Oumow

While there’s no magic pill that can make your worries and stresses disappear, the right combination of foods can do similar things. It is well known that three balanced meals a day go a long way for both your physical and mental health.

Feeling stressed? Bulk out on foods rich in omega-3 like fish and nuts; they are proven to reduce cortisol and adrenaline levels (the chemicals responsible for stress).

Meals high in fresh fruit, vegetables and pulses give you longer-lasting energy and reduce your likeliness to get

ill. Nutritional diseases such as kwashiorkor and rickets get lots of media time, but studies around the world indicate that nutrition affects more than just physical development.

Childhood social behaviour has been linked to diet, with higher levels of friendliness, willingness to play and exploratory behaviour linked to healthy diets and sufficient food. The importance of eating well for your body and mind doesn’t just end when you stop growing, with studies showing university students are just as vulnerable to the effects of their day-to-day meals as fiveyear olds.

Continued on next page

Bad food, bad mood (Amber Conway)

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Friday 6th November 2020 | PALATINATE

SciTech Continued from previous The large culinary shift as students move from home into university halls, has even been linked to the increase of anxiety and depression.

Feeling stressed? Bulk out on foods rich in omega-3 like fish and nuts they are proven to reduce cortisol and adrenaline levels Scientists suggest this lifestyle change, and the associated food intake change, can be linked to ‘fresher blues’ – that overwhelming feeling when all you need to cheer

you up is a good Sunday roast at home.

But none of this is rocket science, and chances are your mother has been nagging you for years to eat healthily and stop munching away on those Double Crunch Walkers.

Over the last 50 years, a ‘nutrient transition’ has been heavily documented. Highlyprocessed foods, full of vegetable oil and sugar, now constitute the majority of our diets.

Without even knowing it, all social classes have followed these changes which have high health and ecological impacts. In long running observational studies, children from schools that ran anti-junk-food programmes

reported higher learning scores and better memories.

The importance of free school meals in the UK has always been an acute talking point.

The importance of free school meals in the UK has always been an acute talking point It seems it has never been more pronounced than now, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, with movements such as Marcus Rashford’s urge to continue free healthy school meals throughout holidays when many children often go hungry.

In the middle of a pandemic, movements such as these are even more poignant.

Durham University has itself had its fair share of limelight in the healthy eating debate.

With many students isolating in college accommodation, the food provided by the University was doubly important in keeping spirits high and giving students enough energy and nutrients to fight off the virus.

As stories hit social media of ‘junk-food parcels’ with only a packet of crisps and a sandwich for lunch, colleges quickly took a much needed U-turn towards hot meals, fruit and vegetables.

The push for providing meals

to those who cannot afford or access it, alongside the mistakes of organisations that have a duty of care, highlights the inconsistencies of the modernday world, in which we seem to have forgotten the importance of nutrition and the care we owe to the next generation.

We seem to have forgotten the importance of nutrition GOT AN IDEA FOR AN ARTICLE? WE’D LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU!

Send your thoughts to scitech@palatinate.org.uk

Halloween special: serial killer psychology Phoebe Abruzzese 2020 has been a year of crime obsession. Locked away in our rooms, we all turned to Netflix’s crime documentaries, hoping that serial killers were also staying inside.

But what makes a serial killer? Is there a special blend of psychopathy, trauma and opportunity that guarantees a murder? Is serial killing down to the individual’s genetic makeup, or is it a product of an unstable environment? I’ll try to answer your questions.

Most serial killers have a lower-than-average IQ A serial killer is defined by professionals as an individual who kills more than three other people within the space of a month, with a ‘cooling off’ period between murders (which separates them from spree killers and mass murderers).

Scientifically, they are grouped into four broad categories: mission-oriented (who kill a certain group for violating certain values), visionary (who report hearing voices urging them to

kill), power-control (who derive sexual pleasure from the power they exert over their victim) and hedonistic killers (who kill for personal gain, gratification or thrill).

However, there is some amount of overlap in both psychological make-up and behaviour between groups, meaning that categorising a specific killer is often not as clear cut as that.

Furthermore, there seem to be overarching psychological factors that are reported in the vast majority of serial killer case studies, revolving round physical, emotional or sexual abuse in childhood.

Hickey’s trauma control model explained that early childhood trauma or a negative childhood environment is the main contributing factor for the development of homicidal behaviour later in life.

Peter Vronsky theorizes that abuse may cause a level of psychological underdevelopment later in life, where primal instincts to kill for survival are left unmoderated, due to a lack of decent parenting and socialization in early life.

When viewing this in conjunction

with the diathesis-stress model of abnormal psychology (the idea that we all have an individual predispositional protective resistance to traumatic stress, but once the stress level surpasses the diathesis level, a disorder develops), the suggestion is that, potentially, we are all one traumatic event away from serial murder.

Adolescence seems to be a critical period in the development of a serial killer Adolescence also seems to be a critical period in the development of a serial killer. Formative serial killer experiences involve the McDonald triad in teenage-hood.

As opposed to the McDonald triad of my youth (a Big Mac, medium fries, and coke), they involve bedwetting into the early teens, sadism, and

pyromancy. In addition, most serial killers have a lower-thanaverage IQ (a study found the

mean of 202 serial murderers intelligence test scores was 89).

Partner these factors with the natural cruelty of teens and it is near certain that adolescents who go on to become serial killers would have been ridiculed by their peers -- further inhibiting socialisation and the development of empathy.

That being said, there are still notable serial killer exceptions, who had neither a traumatic nor abusive youth. Harold Shipman, a British GP who killed approximately 250 people, had neither a tumultuous

upbringing nor a low IQ. Jeffrey Dahmer, potentially the most famous American murderer, had an ordinary childhood, marred only by his parent’s amicable divorce when Dahmer was in high school.

Still, a few weeks after his school graduation, he committed his first murder, and subsequently killed 16 more gay men across the US.

The existence of these ‘abnormal’ serial killers, who do not fit the usual stereotype, suggests that there are both nurture and nature-based factors that cause the development of a killer.

We are all one traumatic event away from serial murder

There is no equation that can reliably calculate the likelihood of an individual committing multiple homicides based on the size of different environmental and genetic influences. Researchers in this field face the dual conundrum of serial killers being (thankfully) very rare, and the difficult task of operationalizing psychological factors into workable experimental variables. In all likelihood, serial killers are probably created in a highly individualistic manner through a web of interdependent nature and nurture factors. (vp_png-Myers via Pixabay)

From the editor: we can save science with stories

In a time of polarised opinion, mainstream denial of science, and increasingly high stakes for all, accurate information is more important than ever.

Without information, we cannot understand society.

But simply collecting the data is not enough. It must be analysed, tested, and communicated.

The communication part of science is too often neglected. We like to entertain the stereotype of scientists as antisocial creatures, content to hide behind their thick,

foggy goggles. But scientists spend as much time explaining their findings to governments, children, research councils and the public as they do in the lab.

They have to. Science only thrives when it is communicated effectively — when the case for fact-based plans is made to the people who make decisions.

We forget that some of the best scientists are some of the best communicators, too. Think of David Attenborough, Angela Merkel and Neil deGrasse Tyson.

In other words, in order to be a good scientist, you have to be a good communicator.

One way you can learn to communicate science is to write for Palatinate.

The quality and range of writing produced by this SciTech section meant we were last year nominated for “Best Science Publication or Section” by the SPA, the UK’s largest student media association.

Global climate change must surely be the scientific battle of

our generation. But it is by no means the only battleground on which science is being questioned, criticised and denied.

In the previous edition of Palatinate, we covered genetically engineered crops, and their potential to dominate our food system, while in this this edition, we explore the opportunities and dangers of Artificial Intelligence.

We need to make sure that science stories are told, and that they are told in an accessible way. While drafting this note, we

editors all agreed, “simple words are underrated.”

We want to hear from you, whether you have written for us before or not; whether you know one of the editors or not; whether you think you’re a writer or not. Join our Facebook group ‘Palatinate SciTech Contributors’ or drop us a line at scitech@ palatinate.org.uk.

Faye Saulsbury, Science & Technology Editor

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Friday 6th November 2020 | PALATINATE

SciTech

The story behind the first all-female recipients of the Chemistry Nobel Prize

Helen Wright 7th October granted a single positive headline in a sea of coronavirus updates - the first all-female recipients of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry had been announced, awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna ‘for the development of a method of gene editing’. Looking at past Nobel Prize winners, there is a clear lack of female names, with just 56 out of all 916. Furthermore, of these 56 women, only 19 are scientists, which only heightens their achievements given the challenges of working in such a male dominated industry.

Charpentier and Doudnas’ collaboration led to groundbreaking discoveries surrounding the CRISPR/Cas9 system. CRISPR stands for ‘clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats’, which are sections of a bacterial genome characterised by their distinctive sequence structure. This section is key to a bacteria’s immune system, involved in coding for the Cas9 protein, which works to destroy viruses by cutting their DNA. Interestingly, the bacteria then incorporates the virus’ DNA into the CRISPR section of its own genome, to allow for easier recognition if infected again.

Just 56 out of all 916 Nobel Prize winners have been female Through Charpentier and Doudnas’ research, they discovered its potential for gene editing outside of bacteria.

These ‘genetic scissors’ can and have been used to genetically modify crops to withstand mould, pests and drought. Its other key application is as a medical tool, for example as a cancer treatment or for curing genetic diseases, which has gained significant publicity due to ethical debates surrounding it. A Nobel Prize crediting the research into CRISPR was arguably inevitable, due to its predicted global impact.

Described as a scientific nomad, Emmanuelle Charpentier has worked at nine institutions in 5 countries. She grew up and studied in Paris, before moving to the Rockefeller University in New York where she focused on bacterial infections. However, after 5 years she moved to Vienna in favour of the European way of life. She

Bright minds (Anna Kuptsova) says her aim was ‘to understand how every biochemical pathway in a bacterium was regulated’ and with that passion and determination she received numerous grants to fund her research.

Emmanuelle Charpentier has worked at nine institutions in five countries This resulted in her discovery of an RNA vital for virulence in the bacteria Streptococcus pyogenes.

The coding site for this molecule fell close to a CRISPR region therefore was highly likely to play a key role in the CRISPR system.

She further explored the system and identified its 3 components – tracrRNA, crRNA and the Cas9 protein. This resulted in a surprising hypothesis – the two RNA molecules would guide the Cas9 protein to its target site together, which was unexpected for RNAs. Despite finding success in Vienna, she never felt at home and so moved to the Umeå Centre for Microbial Research in Northern Sweden in 2009, attracted by

the area’s classic Scandinavian architecture and the long dark winters which aided her focus.

That summer, she found out that her experiments back in Vienna had worked and her hypotheses on the CRISPR mechanism were true. She was still unknown in the small world of CRISPR however began presenting her findings in conferences around the world.

It was at the 2011 American Society for Microbiology conference in Puerto Rico where she met Jennifer Doudna, her future research partner.

Their discovery has been used to genetically modify crops to withstand mould, pests and drought Doudna’s involvement in CRISPR research was much briefer before meeting Charpentier, considering it a side project to her other RNA research. Doudna grew up in Hawaii due to her father’s work, however felt out of place there and was happy to leave for Pomona College in California

for her undergraduate degree.

She then went on to Harvard University to assist Jack Szastok, also a future Nobel Laureate, on his RNA research. Despite no formal training, she used X-ray diffraction to determine some of the first crystal structures of RNA. In 2002, she moved to the University of California, Berkeley where she has since become a Professor. Here she began working with another researcher, Jillian Banfield, who had been identifying CRISPR sequences in unusual bacteria and encouraged Doudna to collaborate with Charpentier.

They were able to form a strong team – Charpentier had extensive experience with the CRISPR/Cas9 system, had a personable nature, as well as strong communication skills, whereas Doudna had an immense knowledge of structural biochemistry and RNA. Together they were able to show how the Cas9 system could be adapted to produce targeted cuts in a genome, creating the possibility for gene editing. They also simplified the system by finding a way to fuse the 2 RNA components to create a single, synthetic guide

for the Cas9 protein.

Since releasing their findings, the two of them have gained quasi-celebrity status. They were named by Time Magazine as among the 100 most influential people in the world and are incredible role models for the next generations of female scientists.

They also have both brought up families whilst being dedicated to their job, underpinning how your home life does not limit your career prospects.

The two winners were named among the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME magazine Particularly with the current pandemic, there is the need to boost scientific and medical resources to push for a vaccine and better treatment methods.

Therefore, there is no better time to inspire young women to be passionate and dedicated to their science, and this incredible collaboration between two strong, successful women has done just that.

PALATINATE | Friday 6th November 2020

15

Politics

Durham students backed Biden Lilith Foster-Collins Deputy Politics Editor Ahead the US Presidential election on Tuesday, Durham Polling carried out a poll in collaboration with Palatinate to identify what Durham students think of the presidential race.

Durham Polling is a studentrun polling service, designed to gauge student opinion. It uses weighting to ensure that responses are representative of the student population. The survey had 108 respondents.

The results show that most students predict Joe Biden will win the election (56.5%) with just under a third thinking that

Donald Trump will win.

National polls predicted a strong lead for Biden in the lead up to the election, and Biden was also polling well in key swing states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

These results are reflective of atrendamongyoungpeople and those at university The student poll wholly replicates these predictions.

Students showed consistent support for Joe Biden as the preferred winner. Respondents were asked which candidate they wanted to win the 2020

US election; 84.3% of students wanted Biden to win, with just 5.6% supporting Trump.

These results are reflective of a trend among young people and those with a university education to be more anti-Trump.

Exit poll data from the 2016 election showed that people with a graduate education were more likely to vote Democrat than Republican. Those under 45 were more likely to vote Clinton than Trump, with the effect particularly prominent for those under 29.

The poll has been useful in demonstrating that Durham Students’ opposition to Donald Trump is representative of these demographic trends.

(Image and Data: Durham Polling)

Trump and Biden’s prospective presidencies

These articles were written prior to Election Day in the US.

Oscar Duffy As another fraught Presidential election cycle comes to an end, there seems to be one prevailing line of agreement amongst the confusion of a polarised American electorate: it’s not looking good for the incumbent Donald Trump. As of the time of writing, The Economist gives the President an astonishingly low 5% chance of electoral college victory, with his best case projected scenario lower than his 2016 total.

Yet, one can’t help but notice a general unease in Liberal circles.

All signs point to a Biden victory, and an end to a particularly con-

Alex Marsh Whilst Donald Trump proved in 2016 that all elections come with a certain amount of unpredictability, at the moment all signs point to a Biden victory in the upcoming US Presidential election.

However, the direction a Biden presidency would take is still up for debate; so far the detail of his

(Image: Ekaden, Creative Commons)

troversial presidency, but Democrats are still reeling from Trump’s first shocking upset four years ago. Any range of factors could still fall in Trump’s favour. This could be an overperformance in the Rust Belt, lower turnout in battleground states like Georgia due to voter suppression or problems of spoiled mail-in ballots, or any post-election judicial decisions siding with the president. Anything is possible, but what would a second term look like for Trump in reality?

First of all, the next four years offer a different sort of opportunity to the last: the President need not worry about re-election chances. Indeed, a second-term president is one let loose to do

whatever they want. Not that political calculation has ever really stopped the incumbent from acting on his impulses, but many have suggested that a Donald Trump unencumbered by the spectre of re-election may lead to even riskier and more aggressive domestic, and even more importantly foreign policy agendas.

agenda has been left relatively unscrutinised, with his main pitch to voters focusing far more on what he stands against in the form of Donald Trump, than the policy proposals he would favour once in office.

Biden would be counting on a Democratic trifecta upon inauguration, as his best chances of implementing his agenda rest upon Democratic majorities in both

the Senate and the House of Representatives. Even if this is the case, it is unclear to what extent the Democratic coalition would fall apart in the following months and years – up until now Biden’s supporters have been united more through hatred for Donald Trump, than love for the former Vice-President.

A second-term President can do whatever they want Expect further bellicosity in his exchanges with China, the possibility of armed conflict with Iran, and potentially even a revival of nuclear brinkmanship with North Korea. Despite the unpredictability of where and when Trump be-

Biden might struggle to suppress the appetite for a more radical policy agenda It is likely that Biden would try to govern from the centre, with his past record indicating his views are more closely aligned to the traditional Democratic party establishment, than the more radical wing of his party. His proposals on healthcare are significant but modest, favouring an expansion of the public option by building upon Obamacare, rather than a Medicare-for-All system.

Biden has similarly shied away from embracing more radical proposals to tackle climate change, such as the Green New Deal as championed by the likes of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But Biden might

stows favour on a foreign rival, he isn’t likely to be on friendly terms with everyone.

On the home front, much will depend on how the state of Covid-19 in the US develops, as well as the political makeup of both chambers of Congress. Coronavirus has been arguably one of Trump’s biggest failures, with American having by far the highest number of cases and deaths in the world. He has consistently criticised the scientific advice of popular experts like Anthony Fauci, and unless a vaccine is produced quickly, general unrest due to Covid could eat into his second term policy agenda quite considerably.

On the issue of Congress, Democrats are currently predicted to

keep the House and flip the Senate, meaning a Trump presidency would have a difficult time passing legislation until at least the midterms in 2022. Plans to continue his border wall, reduce taxes, and repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act will no doubt run into severe opposition from Democrats, and, like Barack Obama before him, much of his agenda may be irreconcilably stifled.

Maybe all of this predicting will prove futile in the end. Trump is by his nature an unpredictable man driven by his impulsive ramblings on Twitter. Attempting to chart a course for his second term agenda will likely result in horrifically offpiste policy making. Indeed, if one is to predict anything with certainty, it’s to expect the unexpected.

struggle to keep the appetite for a more radical policy agenda among those on the left of his party in check, as support for more ‘socialist’ policies continues to gain popularity amongst the party faithful, as well as the wider American public.

There is no doubt that upon assuming the Presidency, Biden would first attempt to tackle the crisis at hand – the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. Currently, the Democrats and Republicans in Congress are in the midst of negotiating a stimulus bill to help the ailing US economy, although it is unlikely that the two sides will reach an agreement before the election.

The size of any Biden relief package would depend on the extent to which he bows to the demands of the deficit-hawks within his own party, although the fact Senator Bernie Sanders would likely assume the Chairmanship of the Senate Budget Committee perhaps suggests the stimulus would be larger rather than smaller.

The confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett as a Supreme Court Justice also poses a significant problem for an incoming Biden

administration. Liberals now face a 6-3 deficit on America’s highest court, which would likely be called upon to rule on cases integral to Biden’s agenda over the next four years. Up to this point Biden has remained tight-lipped as to whether he would consider expanding the number of Justices to overturn the conservative majority on the court, but support for the idea has been gaining traction in Democratic circles, increasing the likelihood of such a move.

Support for ‘socialist’ policies continue to gain popularity Even with a resounding victory in the November 3rd election, it is clear that the success of a Biden Presidency is heavily reliant upon a united Democratic coalition in Congress, as well as the elimination of a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. In reality, the only certainty is that Biden would be a very different President to his predecessor, as his campaign has marked a clear shift away from the divisiveness and volatility that has defined the last four

Friday 6th November 2020 | PALATINATE

16

Politics

Feminism forgotten in Polish abortion law

Jake Roberts On Thursday 22nd October, Poland’s top court tightened their already strict abortion laws even further; they ruled that abortions in the event of foetal defects are unconstitutional and are to be outlawed.

Previously, abortions were permitted in the cases of rape, incest, foetal defects, and if the mother’s health was at risk.

Now however, foetal defects are not to be taken into consideration, despite this accounting for 98% of all abortions in Poland.

Therefore, abortions have been essentially outlawed in the predominantly Catholic nation.

the interests of Polish women at heart, instead choosing to prioritise intra-party opinion over the welfare of their people.

Additionally, the majority of the court’s judges were conveniently appointed by Poland’s ruling party, the Law and Justice Party, paving the way for them to push through their pro-life agenda.

Women’s rights have routinely been under threat in Poland. The issue surrounding abortion is not a new one to them. In 2016, a petition – started by anti-abortion groups – raised around 450,000 signatures, prompting a debate from MPs, with notable support from the Law and Justice Party.

Women in Poland have had enough of right beings disregarded and attacked As a counter-measure, some 100,000 women partook in protests, which eventually led to MPs deciding against tightening the laws. Similar protests are taking place today, even in light of the coronavirus pandemic. This goes to show that women in Poland have had enough of their rights being disregarded and attacked, when they are willing to protest en mass even during the worst pandemic in over 100 years.

To emphasise further what Polish women

The government does not have the interests of Polish women at heart This, along with the fact that between 80,000-120,000 Polish women seek abortions abroad per year, shows that the government does not have

have had to experience, in July 2020, Poland’s justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro confirmed that he was seeking to withdraw Poland from the EU’s treaty regarding violence against women.

Naturally, this is in conflict with the understanding of women’s rights within the modern feminist movement.

No rational person would ever want to see their country willingly withdraw from a treaty such as this, but to Polish women this is just another regular roll-back on the rights that they fought so hard to acquire.

However, as the government attempts to continue down this route of forced, “constitutional” suppression of women’s rights, female activists have relentlessly fought back with the tenacity that saw them acquire their rights in the first place.

As mentioned earlier, women’s rights groups and activists have taken to the streets in their thousands, despite blatantly flouting Poland’s coronavirus restrictions. This shows that the feminist movement in Poland is very much alive and well, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to believe that these oppressive moves by their government have

only served to add fuel to the fire.

In an ideal world, of course, there would be no need for these protests, but in 2020, we have seen constant violations of rights of specific identities, such as those within the BAME community, and as we are currently observing in Poland.

The Feminist movement in Poland is very much alive and well Unfortunately, the court’s ruling is final and binding. There is no further legal process that has to be done for this to become law. Once it comes into effect, those 98% of women will either have to carry a defected foetus, or spend time and money to get an abortion through other means - whether that be in another country or illegally within Poland, which is arguably a massive risk to the mother’s life in itself.

Ultimately, the recent ruling shows that the Law and Justice Party care not for the welfare and rights of women, and that they will do almost anything to ensure that their intra-party opinions become law, whether the people support it or not.

(Opole, Creative Commons)

Can civility exist in the House of Commons?

Aisha Sembhi Politics Editor The environment of the House of Commons has always been intimidating. It is a frustrating environment, one in which MPs are expected to deliver impassioned testimonies in favour of their constituents and personal ideological beliefs and be at peace with the potential that a colleague will obliterate everything they have prepared for that day. It is more than enough to put someone off a career in politics for life, contributing to the overwhelming aura of exclusivity associated with breaking into policy. For this reason alone, it is something worth exploring.

We have successfully made a spectacle out of our legislative procedure.

Finally, the topic of Parliamentary civility and Commons etiquette has been subject to some sort of mainstream debate – but for all the wrong reasons. Deputy Leader of the Labour Party Angela Rayner has come under fire for calling Conservative MP Christopher Clarkson “scum” during a Commons debate on imposing Tier 3 Covid-19 restrictions on Greater

Manchester. Over 100 Conservative backbenchers have since signed a letter addressed to Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, calling for a public apology for Rayner’s “unparliamentary behaviour”.

One must beg the question: is this outrage limited only to fellow Tory MPs? The truth is, Parliament, particularly the Commons, has never been a place for politeness. It is a surprise more politicians do not slip up as often as I would expect. Admittedly, it would be inaccurate to describe Rayner’s comment as entirely appropriate for any workplace. But it was a product of rightful frustration.

We have successfully made a spectacle out of our legislative procedure solely through the way we present Parliamentary discourse to the public. Hostility between individual MPs is nothing new, and to sensationalise such an occurrence is simply a deflection from the seemingly endless list of government-headed shortcomings.

This scandal goes further, transcending the discourse regarding Commons behaviour and instead turning public. Clarkson, alongside several fellow Tory MPs, has asserted his belief

that Rayner’s comment has resulted in a wave of abuse to both his office and family, including death threats. Whilst, of course, provocation of external abuse is wholly unacceptable, one must beg the question; is this outrage limited only to fellow Tory MPs? The Conservative’s sudden interest in the wellbeing of MPs after decades of silence despite witnessing their colleague’s trauma is incredibly telling. It is difficult to forget the public testimonials of Labour MPs throughout the last Parliaments, detailing the emotional suffering faced as a result of external abuse.

Considering this, plus the sensible assumption that Rayner’s comment was a product of short-term frustration and was not intended with malice, it is feasible to con-

clude that the Conservative decision to sensationalise the scandal on a public platform is nothing more than political point scoring.

The usual narrative of a longing for bipartisanship and cooperation is defunct.

Tensions between the two leading parties is as high as it has ever been. The usual narrative of a longing for bipartisanship and cooperation is defunct.

It is no surprise that the governing party, shambolic in its handling of the current crises it faces, is desperate to deflect negative attention to its opponents.

Politics has never been civil, and it is incredibly frustrating to watch the governing party manipulate rightful anger at its bla-

tant disregard for working-class areas into a debate on whether or not the opposition is allowed to express frustrations at this consistent and unnecessary defence of the ruling class. The Conservative Party is desperate to paint itself as the institution of the rational, and Labour as unnecessarily aggressive and a champion of partisanship. Its decision to turn Rayner’s remark into a national scandal by hyperbolising the severity of an off-hand comment is a distasteful and divisive political choice, and it is an incredible shame that it is working in every way they had hoped it would.

(Marco Chiesa, Creative Commons)

PALATINATE | Friday 6th November 2020

17

Politics

UN turns 75: an anniversary worth celebrating?

Joseph Lorenzo As the United Nations celebrates its 75th anniversary this weekend, we look back at the successes and failures of the international body.

The UN was ratified on the 24th of October 1945, as a result of World War II. The original 50 countries of the UN wanted to create a body where they could collectively create a more peaceful world, and where disagreements could be settled fairly and calmly, thus avoiding another catastrophe like World War II. However, looking back at the UN’s track record, there is evidence to show that the UN perhaps deserves no celebration after all.

The UN perhaps deserves no celebration after all The UN has been extremely successful in numerous areas, including peacekeeping, having been credited with helping negotiate 172 peaceful settlements. The UN’s main goal upon creation was to be a collective security organisation, an aim which they have succeeded in most of the time.

The UN can also be praised for

From the Editors It would be an understatement to suggest that the past two weeks has seen global governance defined by politicial tension. Pressure builds in the Commons Chamber following debates regarding Free School Meals and geographically-imposed Covid-19 restrictions, both provoking a national feeling of partisanship and spite in the legislative procedure.

International politics has seen the resurgance of popular, and often student-run, grassroots resistance. And, of course, the US Presidential election continues to showcase the division that exists within the US electorate.

This week’s Politics contributing writers explore and assess these growing conflicts and hostile feelings from an optimistic perspective, reassuring us that there certainly is scope for change in unfavourable governance should we seek it.

Aisha Sembhi Politics Editor GOT AN IDEA FOR AN ARTICLE?

Send your thoughts to politics@palatinate.org.uk

their part in coordinating global efforts against diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, Ebola and Meningitis, as well as their role in eradicating smallpox and polio from most of the world.

However, for all its successes, the UN has many failures too. Most notably is probably their mission in Srebrenica, a town in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was attacked by Serbs in July 1995 during the Bosnian War. The UN admits they were aware an attack was coming, yet no UN forces were reinforced, leaving over 8,000 Bosniaks murdered in one of the worst humanitarian crises ever.

The world will also never forget the UN’s failure in the Rwandan genocide of 1994, where 2,500 UN peacekeepers were withdrawn after ten Belgian soldiers were killed, consequently leading to a massacre of more than 800,000 people, in just 100 days.

The UN’s conflict management can also be questioned looking at Palestine and Kashmir, two of the longest-running conflicts over disputed lands, disputes which the UN has so far failed to resolve. Ongoing conflicts and wars in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Myanmar etc. further demonstrate the UN’s failures in conflict management.

Perhaps the main reason behind the failures of the United Nations is the outdated division of power in the principal body of the UN: the United Nations Security Council. The body, which consists of the UK, France, Russia, China and the US, fails to account for the rising powers such as Japan, Germany, India and Indonesia.

The abuse of the veto power has proved catastrophic The abuse of the veto power has proved catastrophic to the success of the conflict resolution aspect of the UN, as powerful members seem able to dictate the agenda of the UN whilst also managing to ignore the UN Charter and resolutions, as seen in the United States’ unlawful invasion of Iraq when they failed to gain authorisation from the UNSC. Covid-19 has further demonstrated how much of a risk the US poses to the success, and future, of the UN. Trump has begun the process of leaving the World Health Organisation, the body of the UN which has been leading the global response to the disease. The US’ withdrawal will have serious consequences for the UN, as they

were by far the largest contributor to the WHO, which relies solely on donations from its member states.

The US has also withdrawn from the UN-backed Iran nuclear agreement and the UN Human Rights Council, as well as the Paris Climate Accord. Climate change is perhaps the most pressing issue we face today, and so the UN’s failure to combat climate change is worrying. Despite the various climate accords of the UN over the years, including the IPCC and the Paris Accord, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to

increase to alarming levels.

If the UN is to continue to succeed, many would argue that the body needs to undergo a complete reconfiguration. Power needs to be distributed according to the 21st century power structures, rather than that of 1945, and the institution needs to adapt itself to be able to combat systemic global challenges, the most important arguably being climate change.

The United Nations has a lot to be proud of, but it is impossible to ignore its failures over the last 75 years.

(Ashitaka San, Creative Commons)

Thai protestors escalate efforts

Laetitia Eichinger Mass demonstrations continue to engulf the streets of Bangkok, even after the lifting of a week-long state of severe emergency. Pro-democracy protesters, most of them students, armed with umbrellas, face masks, and helmets, continue to take to the streets to campaign for a series of reforms. They are calling for change.

Discontent has steadily brewed during the last months.

In September, protesters placed a plaque outside the royal palace, condemning the monarchy and expressing their desire for change.

They displayed a three-finger salute, taken from The Hunger Games franchise, that has since become the symbol of the Thai pro-democracy movement. A state of emergency forbidding large gatherings was announced on 15th October, but despite this, thousands once again took to the streets of Bangkok a day later. They were faced with water cannons, and sprayed with a liquid containing blue dye and an irritant, resulting in further outrage.

The main aims of the movement can be summarised by three words: ‘Resign, Rewrite, Reform.’

This chant has been heard at demonstrations, and refers to

demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, changes to the Thai Constitution, and the reformation of the monarchy.

The age of social media has slowly eroded the efficiency of censorship Grievances against the corrupted monarchy are at the very core of the protests.

The current Thai King, Maha Vajiralongkorn, far less popular than his revered late father King Bhumibol, spends the majority of his time in Bavaria, Germany.

Whilst there, he indulges in a lavish, playboy lifestyle at the taxpayer’s expense, and wields vast amounts of power, raising the eyebrows of German officials.

Despite the fact that Thailand is officially a Constitutional Monarchy, it is governed by strict lèse-majesté laws, which forbid Thai citizens to speak ill of the monarchy. These laws carry threats of up to 15 years in prison for a single offence, and mean that criticism of the monarchy in Thai media is essentially non-existent.

However, the age of social media has slowly eroded the efficiency of this type of censorship. Young protesters are now demanding

a Thailand where criticising the monarchy freely is a fundamental right — a rude awakening for many royalists of the older generation, who still deeply revere the monarchy.

The Thai Prime Minister is a further source of discontent.

Mr. Prayuth first came to power after leading a military coup that toppled an elected government in 2014, and has retained power ever since, being formally elected as Prime Minister in 2019. The Parliament which elected him was created when he pushed through a new Constitution in 2017, which also served the purpose of significantly weakening his political opponents, allowing him to personally appoint a Senate, and ensuring the continued influence of the military in Thailand.

The dictatorial nature of Mr. Prayuth’s rule has sparked calls for his resignation, which he has thus far refused. He is desperately attempting reconciliatory tactics.

For example, he offered to lift the state of severe emergency in Bangkok if there was no further violence. Protesters responded by giving Mr. Prayuth 3 days to resign, and, when he failed to do so, instantly resumed their demonstrations.

These protests are shockingly reminiscent of last summer’s

anti-government protests in Hong Kong. Equipment, such as hard helmets, goggles, and gas masks, and the manner in which these are passed to the front lines of rallies to protect protesters from heavy-handed police action, were all iconic elements of the Hong Kong protests that are now being utilised in Thailand.

Other tactics, such as not looking to a single leader at demonstrations and dressing in black, are also familiar. Prodemocracy advocates in Hong Kong have already displayed solidarity with the people of Thailand through online messages and public events. For example, an online democratic solidarity movement, known as the Milk Tea Alliance, is growing in momentum. It encompasses citizens from across Southeast Asia, and is pushing for democracy and human rights.

A successful reaction has already been reached; an emergency government meeting was held between 26 and 27 October. However, the outcome of this is unlikely to fully satisfy the demands of protesters, and unrest is therefore likely to continue.

The young protesters may yet have some way to go until they achieve true democracy for Thailand.

18

Friday 6th November 2020 | PALATINATE

Sport Sport

Mariners set for FA Cup first round debut against League Two Cheltenham

Sport speaks to South Shields manager Lee Picton ahead of the club’s inaugural FA Cup first round tie against Cheltenham Town James Reid and Matt Styles Deputy Sport Editor and Sport Editor There is a cautious optimism about Lee Picton, joint manager of South Shields FC. “There’s certainly been bigger shocks”, he tells Palatinate ahead of their trip to Cheltenham in the FA Cup First Round.

He has good reason to be, too.

He’s about to lead his side to their first ever appearance in the FA Cup First Round proper since its reformation in 1974. It is the latest in a string of milestones that the club have achieved in recent years under the ownership of Geoff Thompson.

The Mariners have enjoyed a rapid ascent up the pyramid, having been in the Northern League Division Two as recently as 2016. Picton describes things as “going in the right direction”, though that is perhaps an understatement.

Recent years have seen an FA Vase and a Northern League title, as well as having narrowly missed out on promotion to the National League North in the past two seasons, in part due to the impact of Covid-19.

Shields were 12 points clear at the top of the Northern Premier League when football was abandoned in March. There is still a hint of bitterness, with Picton describing it as “a tough pill to swallow”, but is clear that they are in no mood to rest on their laurels.

“We’ve got no option but to just refocus and push on because otherwise the only people that suffer are yourselves”, says Picton. “We made a point around saying that last season counts for nothing moving forward, as harsh as that sounds.”

It is an attitude that underlines the ambition that is clearly at

the core of the club. It has been moving towards a professional set-up over the last 12 months and have a long-term target of reattaining Football League status.

The joint manager, who has been at the helm alongside Graham Fenton for four-and-ahalf years, is pragmatic about what such an achievement will take. “We’ve still got three promotions to go in order to achieve that. You’ve got a whole host of teams with aspirations themselves to achieve the same thing with just as much resource.”

This pragmatism is something that comes through in Picton’s approach to their FA Cup opponents, Cheltenham. The Robins currently sit at the top end of League Two, three tiers above South Shields, and Picton is under no illusions about the size of the task.

“It’s going to be a really tough test for us, no doubt about it.

Going away from home, a long trip for us, league opposition who have got a bit of momentum themselves. The odds will be stacked against us.”

But this is by no means a defeatist attitude. South Shields are a side that are used to winning in recent years and go into the tie having already defeated higher tier opposition, having dispatched National League side Halifax in the previous round.

“The odds will be stacked against us” “We’re very confident and we have a strong belief in the group that we have. This squad stacks up really well against the squads that we’ve been on runs with in the past.”

It is a big occasion not just on the pitch, but off it too. While Picton is aware of the exposure and glamour that can come

South Shields beat National League side Halifax Town 2-0 to reach the FA Cup first round (Kevin Wilson)

with these ties, there is an acute awareness of the financial impact too.

“The financial ramifications for the club are huge. It massively helps us.” The financial struggles of football clubs up and down the country due to Covid-19 have been well documented, and the Mariners have been hit particularly hard. Average crowds are around 2,000 at the 1st Cloud Arena, meaning the current 300 spectator limit has had “a huge material impact on the financial health of the football club.”

These financial woes are compounded by the fact that the decision to deny the Mariners promotion last season has meant that they’ve missed out on financial support from the government. “We’re left, in our opinion, in the lurch because we’ve now got a financial

blackhole to fill, which is unachievable.” The club’s efforts to professionalise have come with greater costs, based upon the strong crowds that are no longer there.

“We’re left, in our opinion, in the lurch because we’ve now got a financial blackhole to fill, which is unachievable” Regardless, those at the club are “determined to work through it”, and the FA Cup has been a major part of that as the club’s “primary revenue source since the season started.” Despite prize money being reduced this year, and the tie not being selected for television, the funds are warmly welcomed on south Tyneside.

It is important, however, that the financial side of things does

not overshadow what is one of the biggest days in South Shields’ history. Despite the lack of crowd, and it being away from home, it is a representation of just how far the club have come in such a short space of time.

Picton speaks with real pride about the “consistent, attractive, winning football” that is served up on the pitch, as well as the “very friendly, community-based feel” off the pitch. It is a combination that epitomises a club that is doing things differently in nonleague and is an approach that may not see them remain there for too much longer.

The club is all set up to give Cheltenham a run for their money at the weekend, hopefully setting up a “special” tie against Sunderland in the next round. All that is needed is a bit of FA Cup magic.

“Many of the lads didn’t realise it happened so often” Continued from back page “Take catcalling as an example, so many of the lads I know just didn’t realise it happened so often. At least with the knowledge it does happen, we can all be more switched on so, when it does happen we can call it out.

Hopefully by supporting RSACC and making a genuine attempt

to educate our members we can at the very least improve people’s understanding of all these issues.”

Awareness will also be boosted by a string of initiatives and fundraising events, with all money raised going towards RSACC’s counselling and telephone service for those who desperately need help.

Covid-19 restrictions have unfortunately delayed their annual 24-hour football match

– which they are hoping to arrange in third term – but the club are looking for alternatives in the meantime such as a charity formal next term. However, last weekend the club were able to embark on a 24-hour continuous run around Durham in fancy dress; smashing their donations target by raising over £3,000.

Deputy CEO of RSACC Isobel Owens is delighted with the partnership, as in the midst of

a global pandemic she worries about the danger of charities such as hers being overlooked.

“Few families and institutions are untouched by sexual violence, including Durham University, so it’s fantastic that CCAFC has decided to fundraise for RSACC. “It is essential that we are able to maintain our outreach work and campaigning. Raising vital issues such as consent, as well as ensuring that our

young people understand the seriousness of rape and sexual violence and the devastating impact it has on survivors’ lives.”

If anyone has experienced sexual violence, they can contact RSACC’s free, anonymous and confidential Helpline for emotional support and advice on 0300 222 5730 (Monday - Thursday 10am to 2pm).

19

PALATINATE | Friday 6th November 2020

Sport

DUHC Men’s 1s dare to dream in Premier Division Ben Fleming Deputy Sport Editor The world of university sport is always a fast-changing, dynamic environment at the best of times and that is something that Durham Hockey’s first-team coach, Jamie Cachia, has learned to accept. “I don’t think I’ve had one year the same as another one”, he tells Palatinate at the start of their new season.

However, this year presents more challenges than most.

With ever-changing Covid-19 guidelines and all of their Squad A first-year students serving periods of isolation at various points during the first few weeks, the team have had to adapt fast.

Cachia admits “it’s been very difficult” but is keen to stress the benefits that have arisen.

“We’ve had four or five guys making debuts that wouldn’t have necessarily played and that’s great to see them perform and get the opportunity to play.”

Durham’s campaign this year, in the Premier Division, comes after a successful campaign in all formats last year, and one which current first team captain, Ben Park, is “extremely proud of.”

The Durham side were crowned National BUCS League Champions and had reached the BUCS final too before its cancellation in late March. Alongside those two feats, promotion in their weekend league and only one loss in total all season, showed, in Park’s eyes, that they were “the dominant force” in university and second-

Durham won promotion to the Premier Division last season, losing only one game all campaign (DUHC)

tier national hockey.

This year with ten or 11 departures from the team and no university hockey for the foreseeable future, the team’s focus has been solely on forging a new side ready to compete in the Premier Division. Their dominant season last year, however, counts for nothing in this higher division and that was illustrated in their first game, an 8-0 defeat against Old Georgians. Ben Park admits the team knew this season was going to be “a sharp learning curve” but, even so, “the magnitude of the first defeat was particularly difficult” to take.

What is noticeable immediately for both coach and captain Park, in particular, is the huge jump

in quality of opposition that the team will have to face this season.

“So far we’ve played teams with multiple GB internationals who have years of experience and read the game so quickly. Some of the mistakes that we could get away with last season are now being punished,” Park notes.

Cachia, ever the optimist, sees the positives of this opportunity to face the best in their sport. “You don’t want to keep doing the same thing” and, if anything, he sees it as “a really good opportunity for our boys to show what they can do and show themselves that they are actually very good hockey players.”

Despite still being winless four games into the season,

there are “good indicators that our work in training and video analysis is really starting to pay off,” according to Park. Their slender 3-1 loss against Beeston and their high-scoring 6-4 defeat to Wimbledon is indicative of a team starting to find their footing amongst the best in the country.

What is clear from speaking to Park and Cachia, more than anything else, is that, regardless of their results, there is no chance they will alter the way they aim to play. “I don’t really know any other way, to be honest: I’m going to attack, I’m going to press really high. We are going to try to be as aggressive as possible,” Cachia states. Whilst there may be some need to add a bit more defensive

focus in training, which Cachia admits to, “I wouldn’t want to go there and change my entire philosophy as that wouldn’t be being true to myself.”

Ultimately, this is not a stable team with a consistent squad.

University teams operate in cycles, as Cachia, a university hockey coach for eight years now, knows full well. And so, it is this finite window that he has with his players which drives his philosophy and ambitions to “make well-rounded players.”

“That is my ultimate goal as a university coach,” Cachia argues and the five current and former DUHC players who featured for GB this previous weekend against The Netherlands, are a testament to the successes of that very attitude and developmental philosophy.

This will be an interesting and topsy-turvy season to say the very least. As Park reminisces about some of his “favourite memories on Wednesdays, spent down at Maiden Castle, playing in front of vocal crowds”, which won’t return in the immediate future, he has put his full attention on the Premier League and is focused on “enjoying the experience.”

“Our overarching goal is to maintain our place in the division and we’re confident we can achieve this.” Yet, whilst there is a mountain to climb, the season is but young, and for a team that has faced so many setbacks early on, it feels like there is plenty of reason for promise and optimism for this young team.

Kévin Reza and cycling’s problem with racism Continued from back page Why the dramatic difference in response between sports? The answer is simply the lack of black cyclists, both professional and amateur. Frenchman Kévin Reza was the only black rider from the 176 who rolled out from Nice at the Tour’s Grand Départ.

This would be shocking in any context but in the biggest event of such a widely covered sport it should be totally astonishing.

Note the word should, because bizarrely, for someone used to watching cycling, it isn’t astonishing. The monochrome whiteness of the peloton is the norm and paradoxically it is more shocking when the TV footage manages to pick out a black cyclist in a major race.

Reza gave a candid interview in September in which he scorned the sport’s efforts to encourage more black riders, saying “there are people who wanted to move

the furniture around in cycling, but they gave up”. He also expressed his reluctance to speak out on the issue, saying “I’m not the spokesperson for an antiracism charity”.

And come on, the man’s a Grand Tour cyclist living a spartan existence to compete around the globe all year round. It shouldn’t be his job to singlehandedly solve the sport’s deep-rooted issues. Nevertheless, he finds himself unfairly cast in the role of the great redeemer that will throw off the burden of cycling’s historical failings.

It shouldn’t be his job to singlehandedly solve the sport’s issues Twice, in 2014 and 2017, the Frenchman has suffered racial abuse from fellow riders on the pro tour. Yet these incidents prompted only a smattering of condemnation, as much of the peloton remained silent,

the issues only existing in the peripheries of their visored tunnel vision.

Reza remarked upon this lack of wider support with a damning numbness. He wasn’t shocked, angry or critical of the reaction, merely describing the lack of vocal support as his ‘observation’.

I found this the most telling feature of the interview.

Thanks to Dave Brailsford’s success with Team GB and Team Sky, British cycling has enjoyed a golden period over the last fifteen years, triggering a rise in cycling uptake amongst the UK population and a renewed interest in professional racing.

Regardless, the sport has remained conspicuously exclusive. Astronomical bike prices and the scientific culture of marginal gains contribute to cycling’s elitism, yet it ultimately comes down to cultural conditioning more than economic circumstances.

A Sport England report found that BAME participation in

cycling as sport and recreation was only six per cent, where in other activities it averages closer to 10 per cent. The chances of seeing a single black cyclist on a spin round the lanes of County Durham are pitifully low.

Maurice Burton, a black British retired track cyclist, observed that the 2012 Olympic Games prompted a visible uptake in cycling from the black community, but that many of the new-found enthusiasts reported feeling “othered” while trying to access the sport. This implies that the real problem is embedded in the grassroots culture and thus meaningful reform must come from the bottom upwards.

The chances of seeing a black cyclist round County Durham are pitifully low There are, increasingly, glimmers of hope in the mire.

The London-based Black Cyclists Network, formed in 2018 to

combat lack of representation, have recently announced the formation of a competitive racing team to debut in 2021.

Whilst this is a step in the right direction, we must work towards a point where exclusively BAME clubs like this don’t have to exist. This will require a longterm nationwide addressing of systemic racism.

In the shorter term, it would be brilliant to see British cycling build on recent victories to lead the way for greater ethnic diversity on the international stage. This must be their next step.

Make no mistake, I adore the sport of cycling. Few things can match the brutality and beauty of elite athletes duelling up hill and down dale against iconic backdrops. But serious proactive conversations must be had to bring the sport out of its vicious cycle of elitism and stop it being left in the dust, or rather the past, in decades to come.

Friday 6th November 2020 | PALATINATE

20

Sport

An interview with Lee Picton, South Shields manager

James Reid and Matt Styles speak to Picton ahead of historic FA Cup tie (page 18)

DUHC Men’s 1s begin maiden Premier Division voyage Ben Fleming chats to coach Jamie Cachia and captain Ben Park (page 19)

Cycling’s problem with race Tom Pyle

Collingwood College AFC have teamed up with RSACC to help fight sexual abuse in County Durham in their annual charity initiative (CCAFC)

CCAFC join fight against sexual abuse Matt Styles Sport Editor CCAFC deserve a lot of praise for their charitable efforts in recent years. Following successful fundraisers for CALM and The Sir Stanley Matthews Foundation, this year the club have opted to pair up with RSACC (Rape and Sexual Abuse Counselling Centre), a charity dedicated to stamping out sexual violence in Darlington and County Durham.

With teams stretching from A to N, many will know that Collingwood are the largest football club in Durham and the biggest association of their kind in the country. It is for this very reason, their sheer size and potential reach, that they feel a moral duty to make a difference and help stamp out societal evils.

“The platform we have at CCAFC and the potential impact we can have comes with it certain responsibilities,” charity secretary Dan Aichen tells Palatinate.

“Firstly, to make sure we don’t

add to the problem, and also to actively try to improve things for all our members as well as others in the wider Durham community.

“I chose RSACC firstly because as a local charity the support and money we hopefully raise will have a genuinely big impact, through offering essential services to many survivors of sexual violence within the local community, as well as offer support for students at Durham.

“The pandemic and the resulting national lockdown only increased the demand for these services, and with a waiting list of between six to 12 months any help we can provide will go a long way to helping RSACC reach many more that desperately need it.

“Given the platform we have, supporting RSACC will hopefully also help make Durham a safer environment through our push on awareness.”

This partnership is pertinent amid a time when the university has once again under the microscope for sexual misconduct among its student population, with Vice-Chancellor Stu-

art Corbridge making a rallying call to end ‘toxic’ behaviours.

It is also refreshing to see the executive of such an influential, predominantly male institution not shying away from the hard truth on this pressing topic.

Aichen is acutely aware that sport can breed a toxic environment, and that Durham generally has a horrendous track record.

For these reasons, he implores all sports and society officers from every college to follow suit.

“Absolutely they should follow in our footsteps. Sports especially can create a toxic culture that may make many feel unsafe or lead to sexual violence, and the only way to improve things is to have an open conversation about the problem and consider what can be done to improve things.

“Stating clearly that we do not tolerate any form of sexual violence is the first step to making Durham a safer environment.

“It’s hard to know exactly why Durham is so bad, but the sense of entitlement many seem to have, whether that be a feeling of enti-

tlement to women’s bodies or just in general life, must play a role.

“This, combined with a deep lack of awareness regarding not just consent, and also lower level issues like rape jokes or catcalling creates an environment that makes sexual violence and rape acceptable for some people.”

Aichen was keen to stress that education is the first vital step in the club’s mission to stamp out sexual abuse. Focus groups have already taken place with club members, as well as serious discussions with executive members who, with the help of RSACC executives, have shared educational materials tailored to student experiences.

The charity’s logo will also feature on the club’s strip this season.

“Awareness of these issues and the very real experiences many women face is the first step to try to improve things and create a safer environment for all.

Education has got to be where to start, with an acceptance that we all have more to learn.”

Continued on page 19

On a nondescript dual carriageway near Versailles, a single black rider pedals tentatively to the head of the bunch. The largely white peloton hangs back a couple of metres, chatting easily amongst themselves as they had been for the previous two hours of the processional stage into Paris.

After several seconds in front of the cameras, the lone rider eases back and is once more absorbed into the mass of coloured Lycra.

This was the Tour de France’s big anti-racism statement, and it was pathetic.

I was watching at the time and was totally oblivious that anything had happened. The Tour de France, according to statisticians, is the third most watched sporting event on the planet. The 3.5 billion viewers who saw Geraint Thomas’ 2018 triumph came just a smidgeon behind the 3.6 billion who tuned into the FIFA World Cup that year – an extraordinary marker of the race’s global attraction.

This was the Tour de France’s big anti-racism statement, and it was pathetic Whilst the two sports’ viewing figures may be close, their recent responses to racism have been light-years apart. Say what you like about the Premier League’s cooperation with the Black Lives Matter movement, you cannot deny its visibility. From kneeling before kick-off to modified shirts and TV adverts, there has been no hiding from football’s support for the black community.

The Tour de France, meanwhile, hastily mustered a few riders wearing masks with ‘Racism is bad’ scrawled in marker pen, muttering their half-hearted condemnation to the media before demolishing a couple of energy gels. It stank of tokenism to the point where you had to ask yourself whether it would have been better doing nothing.

Continued on page 18