The Oxford Student - Week 1 Michaelmas 2022

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the Hall occupying the main building (38 St Giles’), so it seems fitting that the Hall reached this anniversary be fore its end. Sources suggested that there was a wide amount of interest in the sale and that St Hilda’s were not thought likely to purchase both buildings.

In a press release, the college announced that “St Hilda’s College, Oxford has purchased two substantial properties in the city,allowing it to achieve a long-held stra tegic goal of offering accom modation to all undergradu ates throughout their studies.”

St.Hilda’s College buys St.Benet’s Hall buildings for

million

Samuel Kenny News Correspondent

It has been confirmed that, af ter an open market sale, St Hilda’s College has acquired both of St Benet’s Hall’s build ings. The main building is at

38 St Giles’ and the second is at 11 Norham Gardens. While the sale price remains undis closed, 11 Norham Gardens was purchased by St Benet’s in 2015 for £18 million, and the main building at 38 St Giles is esti mated to be likely worth more.

The Academic Office of St Benet’s Hall announced on 2nd June that “following a meeting of the Ampleforth Abbey Trust on Monday, the Chair of AAT has written to confirm the Trust’s plan to place the two properties on the open market and that the

Hall would vacate them before the 7th October 2022.” This co incided with the reallocation process of Benet’s students, which has also been completed. This year marked the 125th anniversary of St Benet’s Hall and the 100th anniversary of

Union President-Elect pushes “Hypocritical” rules change

On the purchase of the build ings, The College Principal, Pro fessor Dame Sarah Springman, said: “When I became Princi pal in February, I thought it would take years to reach this milestone. It is wonderful to be able to announce that we have achieved our objective so much sooner, and I congratu late our team. Our students will have diversity of choice, which will contribute to hav ing a better student experi ence, and it will raise the pro file of the College in Oxford.”

With St Hilda’s College situ ated to the east of Oxford on the banks of the River Cherwell, thenew student residences will give the College a stronger presence in the city centre.

Aheated

Oxford Union governing body passed a rules change this after noon, brought by President-Elect Charlie Mackintosh, on ‘Independ ence from the SU’.

This change would add a new subclause to Rule 34(c) saying, “No Member shall nominate them selves for Standing Committee or for Office if they shall be serving as a Sabbatical Officer of the Oxford University Student Union during

any term in which they would au tomatically be a voting member of Standing Committee.”

It also adds additional clauses within the rules to bar ex-Officers from exercising their vote on the Standing Committee if they are simultaneously serving as a Sab batical Officer of the Oxford Uni versity Student Union. Similarly, if someone is elected to be a Sab

The UK’s incessant rainfall doesn’t mean we’re safe from drought.

Don’t Worry Darling, our entertainment section has the perct review to cheer up after Freshers’week.

OxStu

“

When I became Principal February,in I thought itwould take years to reachthis milestone. It is wonderful to announce that we have achieved our objective somuch sooner

MICHAELMAS TERM 2022 EDITORIAL TEAM

EDITORS IN CHIEF

Jason Chau and Dominic Enright

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Anna Davidson and Blane Aitchison CREATIVE DIRECTORS

Yii-Jen Deng, Andrew Wang and Elias Formaggia

DEPUTY EDITORS

Ayomilekan Adegunwa Adi Kesaia Toganivalu, Chris Collins, Anmol Kejriwal, Ciaron Tobin, Dani Kovacs, Emily Hudson, Joe Sharp, Jonah Poulard, Matt Holland, Milo Dennison, Susie Barrows, Anvee Bhutani NEWS

Ayomilekan Adegunwa Adi Kesaia Toganivalu, Chris Collins, Adi Kesaia Toganivalu, Anna Lee, Anvee Bhutani, Blaise Mcnestry, Charlie Aslet, Ciaron Tobin, Matt Holland, Rose Henderson, Sam Kenny, Samuel King, Sarah Raza, Tim Green COMMENT

Anna lee, Ali khosravi Ciaron Tobin, Harrison Gates, Samuel Kenny, Matt Holland, Rose Henderson PROFILE

Anmol Kejriwal, Ayomilekan Adegunwa, Charlie Aslet, Lay Mohan, Samuel King.

FEATURES

Anna Lee, Anvee Bhutani, Charlie Aslet, Ciaron Tobin, Dani Kovacs IDENTITY Anmol Kejriwal, ebrahim Osman, Emily Hudson, Siddiq Islam

ENTERTAINMENT

Carla messinger, Coral Kim, Duoya Li, Jonah Poulard, Susie Barrows FOOD & DRINK

Duoya Li, Jonah Poulard, Nina Holguin GREEN

Katie Hulett, Milo Dennison, Siddiq islam SCITECH

Emily Hudson, Nicole Hasler SPORT

Dani Kovacs, Joe Sharp, Matt Holland

OXYOU

Milo Dennison, Susie Barrows, Alex Foster COLUMNISTS

Joe wald, Blane Aitchison, Dania Kamal Aryf, Coral Kim

Joe Sharp, Lay Mohan, Nina

Y

es, I’m back. Back with this column. Back with this pa per. Back with the Wednesday lay-in crunches and Friday prints. Back with the repetitive Oxford gossips and politics. In many ways, this university feels very static and perpetually fa miliar. Old traditions persist, old habits die hard. Yet, there is excitement in the air.

This term, Dom and I are lucky to be joined by an amazing group of editors and writers, old and new faces alike, ready to deliver the best news stories, commentaries, features, satire, and of course, investigations

to our readers. OxStu is going through some big changes, from our structure to our events and outreach, and we can’t wait to share the many things we have been cooking up soon. We will go wherever the story takes us – that is the ethos of our paper, and that is what will guide us this term.and Elias in particular who have been the backbone of the paper and make sure it runs. You will undoubtely hear me sing their praises more as term goes on.

With that said, I want to thank the heroes of OxStu this week - Milo and Susie for putting us on a good start for MT. Huge thanks to Yii-Jen, Anna, Blane, Ayomi and Ciaron and the rest of the team for the hard work. And last but least, Dom, my partner-in-crime on this wild and eventful ride.

Jason Chau, St Antony’s College.

Editor’s Picks

Comment

the House of Lords outdated?

I write this in my new College’s library being one of those un lucky few Benetians to be re-al located. It has been a weird way to start the term as both fresher and running a fresher stall, but I can’t wait for 22-23 and know the Newspaper has great things ahead.

While St.Johns (my new college) is a lovely place, the travails of printing off two sheets of paper in the library make InDesign look like a piece of cake. Like my new editorship at the OxStu, I am sure that I will become accustomed to every quirk but strangely enough for my fourth year, it all feels very new. I didn’t know whether to sign up for everything or get everyone to sign up to the pa

Entertainment

A review of film of Don’t worry Darling by the insightful Eliza Niblett

24

From the Editors

per. Hopefully, you saw one of our friendly faces and want to use the QR code at the side of the page.

I have worked for the Oxford Student for four years now (on and off) and I am so glad that I initially took up the opportu nity. it has been one of the most rewarding experiences at the University and I only hope in my Final year, I can do it justice as editor.

What has remained constant is the hard work of the deputyedito rial team who really have made this first edition more than I, and I want to thank them for their work and putting up with the change of SU offices. I want to thank Jason, Yii-Jen, Anna in particular who have been the backbone of the paper and make sure it runs. You will undoubtely hear me sing their praises more as term goes on.

Dominic Enright St. John’s College

Becoming an Associate Editor for the OxStu this term is actually only one of the exciting Oxford-related things to happen to me over the last few months. Other than me being given way too much power over the newspaper for very little reason, my old college died (RIP St Benet’s Hall, gone, yet also mostly forgotten due to my consumption of copious amounts of gin), and so I’ve managed to finagle my way into The Queen’s College, where I’ve become a part of high society and act like a rude background character in a Jane Austen novel. Anyway, despite my appointment to Associate Editor, fret not, because Blane’s Style Files (My long-running column) is back once again. So really, it’s like nothing’s changed!

Yours, stylistically early but fashion ably late,

Queen’s College

Sport

Guide to Unique University sports

SciTech

7 31

Nasa’s new probe smashing comets. 27

Manning the Oxford Student stall for the freshers fair, we were asked by one hopeful graduate student how much we pay per article. Trying to explain why you should want to get involved without being paid - the opportunity to avoid your degree, the chance to read Indesign for Dummies, the gift that is being monitored by the Daily Mail - we seem to come up with a couple of reasons. Among them, we’ve got a great team, interesting pieces, and a real feeling of excitement for things to come. I’m very grateful to Jason, Domi nic and Blaine, as well as everyone else, for their hard work leading up to this issue. As long as working for the OxStu remains this rewarding, Ill be happy to wait until at least week 5 before I start demanding cold hard cash.

Students protest Freshers’ Fair’s anti-abortion stall

CW: Abortion

Last

Thursday the 6th of Oc tober , there was a peace ful protest at the Oxford SU Freshers’ fair in front of the Oxford Students for Life stall (an Anti-Abortion group). This fol lows on from a protest last year in which materials from the stall were binned, and the University condemned the protestors. The Oxford SU this year also made national news for proposing to include trigger warnings on some of the “potentially trigger ing stalls” at the Freshers’ Fair. However before the event, the SU made these trigger warnings opt in, and so there was no trig ger warning on the Anti-abor tion group’s stall.

Last year, protestors at the stall were condemned by the Univer sity for breaking guidance on upholding free speech. On Feb ruary the 2nd 2019, the Govern ment gave updated guidance to Universities on how to protect free speech on Campus which advised that “an SU should make

sure a wide range of views are represented at freshers’ fairs… if the freshers’ fair is generally open to all those who are in terested in having a stall, but a certain group or individual has their application refused based, for example, on their views or beliefs, the SU would need to consider whether the decision to refuse them access discrimi nates against them on the basis of a protected characteristic.” This was interpreted as mean ing that the OSFL (Oxford Stu dent’s for life) stall would have to be present at the 2021 Fresh ers’ fair, given that its forced absence would discriminate against their beliefs. Further, as the society is registered with the Proctor’s Office and not the Oxford SU, the SU did not have the power to prevent their pres ence at the fair. This resulted in the protests mentioned above.

Fearing a similar backlash, the Oxford SU released a Facebook statement in the build up to the 2022 fair : “We want to reassure you that we have put in place

mitigations to support the wel fare of students. These include making stallholder regulations more robust, including material content reviews, trigger warn ings being placed on several stalls with potentially trigger ing content”

Oxford SU’s statement quickly reached national news outlets and tabloids. One article from The Daily Mail noted that an Ox ford University spokesperson expected the Student Union to abide by Oxford’s freedom of speech policy, “which would not include the imposition of trigger warnings or material content reviews for registered student societies.”

Before the event, Hannah Ed wards, the social secretary of OSFL spoke to the Oxford Stu dent on the trigger warnings saying that: “Though Oxford Students for Life is not aware of having received any notice that our stall will carry a trigger warning, we have experienced opposition from the Student Union in past years, including…

the placing of a warning on our stall.”

When asked whether they ex pected a similar backlash, she responded that: “We anticipate facing backlash again, including in the form of a trigger warning, and are prepared to stand up both for everyone’s right to life, and their right to free speech.” When our reporter came to the stall of the anti-abortion group, there was no trigger warning on it

The Oxford Student asked one of the protestors, Emily, a postgraduate from Nuffield, why she was protesting and she replied that:

“I protested because, as a feminist, I wanted to make the case for full reproductive freedom. I wasn’t aware that there would be a stall advo cating against abortion until today. As both a postgraduate student and tutor, I felt it was important that new Oxford stu dents were not intimidated by the unchallenged presence of an

Protests Against The Re-opening of Campsfield House IRC Students protest Freshers’ Fair’s antiabortion stall

Dominic Enright and Anna Lee Editor-in-Chief and News Editor

(Cont) I grabbed some friends and fellow organ isers to join me in taking a stand. I quickly cobbled together a sign s tating my opposition to the stall, as well as my un derstanding of full repro ductive freedom.”

When asked what repro ductive freedom means to her, she replied;

“Reproductive freedom certainly entails accessible, free, safe, and legal abor tions. But, as I explained to those running the antiabortion stall, full repro ductive freedom means se curing the conditions that make a flourishing human life possible for everyone. So it also requires, for ex ample, free and readily available contraception; LQBTQ+-friendly sex-pos itive sex education; free self-managed communal childcare and housework; and commonly owned as sistive reproductive tech nology and healthcare free at the point of access.”

On finally asking wheth er she believed that OSFL should have a stall at fu

ture freshers fairs, she replied that she believed they shouldn’t, given their attempts to curtail female bodily autonomy.

The Oxford Student reached out to OSFL for comment on the protests, and they replied that:

“We regret that a small number of individuals at the fair felt that our pres ence, and our aim to de fend life from conception to natural death, demanded protest. Nevertheless, we support their right to pro test, and maintain our com mitment (regrettably not shared by all) to respectful dialogue on issues of life.”

The SU declined to com ment although sources said that they were glad that the event had been peaceful. While the national media had caused fear about the event, there was no issues when the day came that warranted the previous attention

Image credits: Dominic En right

On 21st September, the Home Office announced that it was inviting pro spective bidders to visit the Campsfield House Immigra tion Removal Centre on the 29th September, with a mind to reopen the centre in order to detain male asylum seekers. They were met by a protest by local campaigners of the Coali tion to Keep Campsfield Closed, who held signs reading “Shame of profits made from misery” and “Local people say no to Campsfield”.

This decision comes as part of a plan by the Home Office to reopen two detention centres – Campsfield House, just north of Oxford, and Haslar Centre, in the Home Secretary’s own constituency of Gosport, which is near Portsmouth. The sites were closed in 2018 and 2016

respectively, owing to previous policies of Conservative gov ernments which lowered the demand for detention centres by trialling other schemes to house asylum seekers. Accord ing to the Guardian, the scheme is projected to cost the Govern ment £399 million and will al low for the housing of 1000 people, thereby increasing the UK’s capacity of detention cen tres by 1/3rd.

Bill MacKeith, of the Coalition to Keep Campsfield Closed, said in response to the Home Office announcements: “Companies like Mitie, Serco, Geo and G4S make money out of locking up innocent people without time limit and without proper legal oversight.” In addition to this, MacKeith reiterated the discon tent among locals around this project and said that his Coali

Matthew Holland News editor

tion are committed to keeping up the “profile of local oppo sition”. The Coalition is sup ported by various local groups, including XR Youth Oxford and Asylum Welcome. Opposition is being directed partly in the immorality of the use of detention centres by profiteering security firms, while the costs on behalf of the Government for renovation of the centres seem steep during a cost of living crisis and on top of other rises in Government expenditure. The campaign is also supported by Layla Moran MP, who stated that the “com munity fought hard for Camps field House to be closed, and we are ready to fight to make sure it stays that way.”

Image credits: Bill MacKeith at https://keepcampsfieldclosed.

Oxford remains best Uni in the world

rankings simultaneously.

The University of Oxford has retained its title as the world’s best university for a record seventh consecutive year, ac cording to the Times Higher Education (THE) World Uni versity Rankings 2023. 1,799 universities from 104 countries worldwide were considered in the rankings, which rated them on 13 cali brated performance indica tors across five broad areas: teaching, research, citation (research influence), interna tional outlook, and industry income.

The news comes shortly after the University took first place in The Times’ Good University Guide 2023. Oxford is the first university to top both The Times’ and the Times Higher Education’s

The outgoing Vice-Chancel lor, Professor Dame Louise Richardson, said: “My col leagues and I are absolutely delighted that for the seventh consecutive year Oxford has been named the top univer sity in the world.

“I am very grateful to those who work on compiling these rankings which prove so help ful to universities. Above all, I am indebted to the extraor dinary women and men of Oxford whose research and teaching continues to excite our imaginations, broaden our horizons, cure disease and explore deeply difficult problems for the benefit of society.

“I am so proud to be associ ated with them.”

The results were announced at the THE World Academic Summit in New York. Harvard

University took 2nd place, fol lowed closely by Cambridge in 3rd and Stanford in 4th. The 2023 list was marked by an increase in participation from Asian and African universi ties, with China having an unprecedented seven univer sities in the world’s top 100.

Phil Baty, Chief Knowledge Officer at Times Higher Education, said: “I think this shift – a global levelling up –is good news for the world. A rising tide is lifting all boats: access to top quality educa tion is opening up globally and helping to diminish the brain drain from developing countries.

“We are also seeing more global diversity in creativ ity and innovation as well as more equal international collaboration. This should be great news for the sector as universities lead on the new

Christopher Collins Senior Editor

Union President-Elect pushes “hypocritical” rules change

(cont)-batical Officer of the SU, they shall be deemed to have resigned at the time of this elec tion.

The motion sparked consider able debate between various members of the governing body.

Proponents such as Standing Committee member Spencer Shia, who seconded the motion in the meeting, said that with out this policy, people who span the line between the Union and SU are likely to side with the SU who pays them and this “puts a real threat to the independence and free speech of [the Union]”.

The motion was also sup ported by Librarian-Elect Di sha Hedge. She explained that “the SU can mandate someone to have to denounce something or release a statement to say they condemn a speaker com ing and that same person would also have a vote on the govern ing body of the Union.”

Hedge is currently the sitting Chair of Oxford SU Women’s Campaign which in Trinity Term 2022 criticised the Un ion’s Fashion Show event whilst Hedge herself sat on the Union’s governing body.

People with reservations such as Chief of Staff Israr Khan ex plained that, given the Union is a private members’ club, this change would place undue lim its on people’s private lives and what they choose to get them selves involved with.

An objection to the motion wasventually lodged by Treas urer Joshua Chima and after contentious speeches back and forth, the motion passed with 9 votes in favour which consti tutes a majority. It will now be brought to a Public Business

Meeting on 13th October to be voted on by the wider member ship.

After the meeting, several high ranking Union officials spoke exclusively to The Oxford Stu dent about their thoughts re garding the motion.

One governing body member said, “It seems entirely hypo critical that the President-Elect would bring this motion given he is actively working with the SU in hosting the annual Freshers’ Fair stall and raising thousands of pounds for the membership drive. In fact, there are Union governing body mem bers who sit on Student Council and make high level decisions within the SU, so it seems mali cious to restrict the contrary. He clearly intends on targeting certain individuals and carries a political vendetta. ”

A member who was in favour, however, said, “After several people have gotten involved in both the Union and the SU in recent terms, this is a much needed change.”

This motion comes to the Un ion after a similar motion came to Oxford SU’s student council in Trinity Term 2022 regarding conflict of interest. That motion stipulated that those running for a position in the SU must ‘declare to the Returning Officer any roles within any relevant organisations to which they were elected or appointed since their matriculation’. Further to this, sitting Sabbatical Trustees now ‘must publicly declare any current roles within any rel evant organisations as well as any new roles they take on’.

Oxfordshire County Council’s new transport plans

Ayomilekan Adegunwa Senior Editor

TheOxfordshire County Council has put out a request for consulta tions on two transport-related plans – for traffic filters in Oxford and for the Central Oxfordshire Travel Plan (COTP). These plans have been proposed with the intention of reducing traffic, fighting climate change and promoting more sustainable travel.

Traffic filters mean that private cars cannot go through certain locations without a permit, which would have to be applied for by residents or those that live locally. They would generally oper ate 7am to 7pm, seven days a week. The fine for cars that go through despite not be ing exempt would be £70. Cars would be monitored by automatic number plate recognition. The aim is to

reduce travel levels across the city, allowing for a better bus system and more incen tive to walk or cycle, as well as helping tackle air pollution. If approved, there would then be a six month trial in the sum mer of 2023.

The Central Oxfordshire Travel Plan is part of a wider, county-wide plan (the Local Transport and Connectivity Plan. This has ambitious aims, such as delivering a net-zero transport network by 2040. Other aims include a ‘compre hensive, safe cycle network, to rival the best in Europe’ and ‘a travel hierarchy prioritising sustainable travel…20 min ute neighbourhoods where everything people need for their daily lives can be found within a 20-minute walk’. The aforementioned traffic filters will be just one part of this

overarching plan.

The Council have made a plea for students to get involved, with Duncan Enright, the cabinet member for transport, saying “students are very un likely to have cars and instead depend on buses and bikes more. That different perspec tive is very important in mak ing sure our plans work. In the past perhaps students haven’t been asked for their views, but that’s changing under the new Labour, Green and Lib Dem Cabinet”.

There are surveys on the Oxfordshire County Council website where you can give your opinion, and also find out more information about the proposals. The deadline to respond to the consultation is Thursday the 13th of October.

St Hilda’s college buys St Benet’s Hall’s buildings

(Cont)- Senior Tutor, Dr Sa rah Norman, said: “Being able to offer all undergraduates accommodation for the full period of their degree will make the College more at tractive to prospective stu dents. Firstly, they will not have to find costly private accommodation for their sec ond year. Secondly, we will be able to offer them the best of both worlds with a tranquil riverside campus and the op portunity to live in and enjoy the city centre.

The College’s Bursar, Chris Wood, said: “Importantly, the

College has secured these properties Through a real location of its endowment as sets, rather than by taking on additional debt. In addition to providing student accommo dation, the properties are ex pected to provide long-term financial returns.”

The press release made no mention of the previ ous occupants of the build ings, and how much reno vation would be needed.

Cont. from page 1

Cost of living crisis affecting University of Oxford

Correspondant

Anewly revised University of Oxford estimated cost of living shows that the University has been greatly affected by the cost-of-living crisis in the UK this year. The University estimates, which were in coordination with the SU, showed how living costs are continuing to rise in Oxford at an alarming rate which could have significant detrimental effects on the stu dents currently living here and deterring those who want to come to Oxford in the future.

U K wide inflation stands at 9.8% in August 2022 with signs it could continue to in crease well into the new year. The estimate also suggested that on the upper end of liv ing in Oxford for 12 months, students could be expected to need over £21,000. How ever, the more shocking find is it’s expected to cost be tween £10395-£15795 to live in Oxford for 9 months. This means that the lowest esti mate exceeds the maximum student maintenance loan. Thus without supplementary income, like the Crankstart

scholarship, those from the lowest income households wouldn’t be able to study and live in Oxford. Relevant bodies have responded with measures to combat the negative effects of this: the Government have increased the full maintenance loan by £300 and Oxford have increased the Crankstart bursary by £500. However this only accounts to a 6% increase in support, significantly below inflation.

General cost of living increas es will not be the only issue facing Oxford students. Oxford colleges, in response to infla tion increasing, are increasing their own rent and utilities costs . The University have stated in the past that rent increases shouldn’t exceed 6% annually or more than what the rate of CPI is (Consumer price index stands at 9.9%).

However, many colleges are increasing their utilities and rent above this metric. There were also proposals of higher rent and utilities increases within colleges. For exam ple, Worcester College rent is increasing by 10% but this figure was originally sup

posed to be higher with the initial proposal being 12.8% (above what inflation was). Similarly, University College are increasing rent by 9.5% with the JCR negotiating them down from 10%. There have been some Colleges that have not bended to student protests like St Catherine’s College who are still going ahead with an above CPI rent increase of 11%. However, this change is not uniform. For instance, St Hugh’s is one of the few colleges to keep rent increase below the 6%, increasing rent by 4.5%.

Year on year, it is becoming more expensive to live and study in Oxford and this will

affect not only student from lower income backgrounds but middle-class backgrounds. For example, a student with both parents on the average wage of £30,000 a year would have a household income of £60,000. This would mean that they only qualify for the minimum maintenance loan of around £4800 and no additional sup port from the University. With minimum living costs at over £10,000 for 9 months, this student would need significant support from their parents or supplementary income from work which might not be pos sible.

A student working a mini mum wage job would need to

work 577 hours or 15 weeks full time to make up the dif ference between the expected costs and the maintenance loan. Given the difficulty for students to find employment during term time, this would mean that without parental support, an Oxford student would have to work for over half of their three vacations and find the extra income for three months out of University. This will cause a problem of inequality in grades based on household income since those students with more parental income support, will gain more time to study during vacations.

Popeyes® Oxford Opens Doors

store is the chain’s fifth in the UK, with sites already success fully opening in Gateshead, Romford, Chelmsford, and Stratford. This comes as part of a trend of American fast food chains crossing over to the UK, and more specifically to Oxford. Almost a year ago, the US burger chain Wendy’s opened its store on Magdalen Street during Freshers Week 2021.

stores have the perfect oppor tunity to flourish in Oxford’s city centre, to our great for tune.

public

On the 17th September, Popeyes® opened its doors to the Oxford

36 – 37 Queen St, of

fering customers the chance to experience a taste of US fried chicken.

Popeyes’® 50 year his tory has seen them open over 3700 stores in 12 countries, with 350+ stores opening in

Europe, the Middle East, and Africa as part of the chain’s global expansion. Their plan, should the Oxford store prove successful, is to open dozens more stores across the UK in the coming years. The Oxford

This Oxford expansion by American chains adds even more to the highly diverse food scene in our city, which offers hungry students and residents tastes from across the world. Given the lack of kitchen or cooking spaces in much Uni accommodation, cheap and accessible fast-food

A spokesperson for Popeyes told our reporters, “With 3,700 restaurants around the world, the UK represents the 11th new market for Pop eyes® across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, where the chain has already opened more than 350 new sites as part of its global expansion.

Popeyes® UK Oxford is locat ed at 36 - 37 Queen St, Oxford, OX1 1ER and will seat up to 90 people with the following opening hours: Monday – Sun day 10:30am - 10pm.”

Samuel Kenny

Comment

Liz Truss: The Chameleon Prime Minister

Freddie Foulston

You could be forgiven for thinking our new Prime Minister has all the conviction of a flip flop who’s flip flapped her way to Number 10. In 47 years of shapeshifting, she’s managed to roam the entire political spectrum: avid Remainer to staunch Brexiteer,‘disruptorin-chief’ to figurehead of the es tablishment. She claimed to ‘rip up’ treasury orthodoxy despite herself being Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2017-19. Liz Truss appears to be an amalgam of opposites.

Born to left-wing parents whom she described as ‘to the Left of La bour’, the first sparks of Liz’s politi cal activism were ignited when her mother took her to campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in a ‘ban the bomb’ protest. It was there that she railed against the government and chanted anti-Thatcherite slogans. This is perhaps surprising given her efforts to channel Margaret Thatch er throughout her campaign, being photographed atop a tank during NATO exercises in Estonia to mir ror Thatcher in the Falklands War.

She also emulates Thatcher in her plans to enforce low regulation, low tax, free-marketeering, small state policies, keeping corporation tax low and vowing (for now) not to introduce a windfall tax on energy

companies. But how do we reconcile such a libertarian leaning with chan cellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s proposal of £150 billion in handouts, designed to freeze the average energy price at £2,500 per year? Or plans to raise defense spending to 3% of GDP?

The enigma continues when one examines her past. As President of the Oxford Liberal Democrats, she campaigned to decriminalise marijuana. Truss joined the Con servatives in 1996 just two years after a speech she gave at a Liberal Democrat conference calling for the end of the monarchy.

These progressive leanings seem firmly in the past since she now frames herself, or is being framed by the media, as a hardline rightwing Conservative.

She’s also transformed from square and squawky student to zealously curated self-publicist and ‘Queen of Instagram’. Given the frequency and scale of such metamorphoses, it is difficult to know who she truly is and what she represents. Her belief systems change like the wind; Neil Fawcett, Lib Dem Councillor told the Washington Post, ‘it’s very difficult to tell what she actually believed. She took strong positions to play to whatever audience she was speak ing to’. It seems she’s adept at har nessing all the populist instincts of Johnsonesque demagoguery.

Though we can’t be sure what she believes in, she did a good job of

telling Tory voters what she thinks she might believe in and what she thought they seemed to want her to believe in. To the Conservative party members, ‘the golf club boors’ as Alistair Campbell gaudily refers to them on the Rest is Politics, her purported policies went down like honey-glazed duck leg confit and chateau lafîte. It’s no wonder they eagerly sucked up the razzmatazz about ‘conservative values’ of lib erty, freedom, and personal respon sibility.

This populist seduction is nothing new. Since she shares so much of his unruly duplicity, perhaps she should be seen as the Boris Johnson conti nuity candidate. Like Truss, Johnson was a self styled ‘libertarian’, though his enforcement of authoritarian Covid lockdowns proves he was not.

Like Truss, he was once a remainer and a brexiteer, though his infamous double column for the Telegraph in 2019, in which he transparently toyed with the arguments for both, proves that really, he was neither.

Like Truss, he framed himself as a pragmatist who would deliver in times of need and get things done. Brexit and thoroughly trumpeted vaccine rollout aside, he largely did not.

But what do principles matter? It is a politician’s job after all to sniff the air of public opinion, whisper the winds of democratic demand, and change tack accordingly.

In fact, a lack of steadfast politi cal principles is in many ways a strength. It has been for Truss throughout her career. She plays on this elusive, mercurial nature to constantly redefine herself. She car ries an air of mystery, but it doesn’t always pan out well. You’re more gaffe prone when dissimulating, jesting, or hiding opinions, as re vealed by the Emmanuel Macron ‘friend or foe?’ question to which Truss playfully replied, ‘the jury’s out’ . It could be tactful to equivo cate where personal beliefs are concerned, but perhaps not when dealing with the UK’s closest ally in Europe.

For all her caprices, she does sometimes present well as a selfprofessed ‘plain-speaking York shire woman’, the foil to Johnson’s overelaborate, bumbling bombast. Though lampooned in the press and on Twitter for saccharine remarks in her first speech to the Conserva tive party, her words are simple and clear. In PMQs her retorts were sharp, quick and decisive, unlike her predecessor’s. Starmer will struggle to attack bluster and boosterism on the opposite bench where he can no longer find any. He will have to adjust to a lower level of buffoonery to face a Prime Minister who has camouflaged to present a veneer of competence.

For now, Truss and her newly ap pointed cabinet will pursue this new

brand of ostensibly practical politics following on from the chancellor’s mini budget to combat the energy crisis.

This necessary proactivity is re freshing on the back of the Tories’ recent inertia. But will it continue? There is an obvious friction between her desire for small state govern ment promising low taxes and her desire to increase spending on the NHS and the armed forces, to name a few.

The Chameleon Queen will need to scheme how best to plot her way through these conflicts of interest. Time will tell if she can effectively strike the age-old balance between being opportunistic and delivering practical change, these being the key to re-election in 2024.

Is she simply another of David Aaranovitch’s (as quoted in The Times) ‘faux-populist, promisemuch deliver-nothing wheezes’? Perhaps her greatest strength is that we don’t really know who she is or what she represents. Only a decade ago did she burst onto the political scene and her meteoric rise has been a surprise to all of us. She’s unpredictable. Her true plans and machinations are disguised. But the old adage may prove to ring true: “Power is at its most effective when least vis ible”.

Is Democracy The Only Way?

Labour’s Proposal To Reform The House of Lords

Aquestion concerning the function and com position of the House of Lords is a question about the British constitution. Aside from the Monarchy, the upper house “of Lords” is the oldest institution in our society and is, unsurprisingly, the most ar chaic too. The function of the upper house, by and large, is to check the actions of the cur rent government and if needed, veto bills. Since the turn of the 20th century, the powers of the Lords have largely diminished from absolute veto power over bills to a more limited delay ing power, with the only failsafes being vetoes to prevent the formation of a dictatorship. Since the Lords blocked Da vid Lloyd George’s “People’s Budget” in 1909, the House of Lords has undergone numer ous reforms and, in the process, been the subject of lively public debate. This debate concerns largely the purpose of the up per house and how this must change as the composition and source of legitimacy changes. As such, though it is one of the most static aspects of our governmental system, it is in a

slow state of flux. Yet again, the Lords has reached public dis course, as a leaked document hints at significant reform un der a new Labour government. These proposed reforms have not been elucidated in full as they are yet to be officially announced. However, the consti tutional re view, written by former PM Gordon Brown, rec ommends further devolution of powers to “regions and na tions” granting them independ ent control over taxation, edu cation, research funding and transport. This builds on the devolution work of the Blair government in the 90s and ear ly 2000s, which saw the intro duction of the Welsh Assembly (Senedd Cymru) as well as a major Lords reform in 1999. One cannot help but think, upon reading this, that Starm er is trying to invoke some of Blair’s spirit, and perhaps in doing so will another landslide victory for Labour into being. In fact, this is hardly surpris

Though it is one of the most static aspects of our governmental system, it is in a slow state of flux

ing – the writer of the report is Gordon Brown, no shock then that he is urging Starmer to continue where he left off. This proposal must be ana lysed in the context of two things: twelve years of Con servative government and Starmer’s strat egy as leader of the opposi tion. Under the consequent governments of Cameron, May, Johnson and now Truss, the faith of the people in a democratic mandate for government has eroded. May and Johnson held a “snap” general election soon af ter their appointments in order to secure this democratic man date; Truss has not, and has announced no plans to do so. Longitudinally, it rather ap pears that Brexit has thrown our government into seven years of chaos, the conserva tive party haemorrhaging its more moderate members with each iteration. This has exposed a very right-wing economic skeleton of Truss and Kwarteng, surrounded by

successively fewer experienced cabinet members. This is a de viation from the economically socialist policies enacted dur ing the Covid-19 pandemic, where, with the conservatives behaving in this way, Labour had few corners to run to: this new government is the sort of conservatism that Labour, under a more Blair-like lead er, knows how to fight. This is evidenced in the now thirty percent lead Labour now has over the Truss govt in the opin ion polls—it is therefore likely that if an elec tion were to be held soon, La bour could ob tain a sufficient majority to push through ambitious legislation.

This proposal must be analysed in the context of two things: twelve years of Conservative gov -

Labour had few corners to run to: this new government is the sort of conservatism that La bour, under a more Blair-like leader, knows how to fight.

So what does this have to do with the House of Lords? It is the question of democracy and legitimacy. The House of Com mons has long held its legiti macy from its democratic rep

Emily Hudson

resentation, an expectation that Truss, having been voted in by only 80 thousand conservative members (in a national popu lation of millions) has since subverted. The House of Lords traditionally represented the interests of the aristocracy, and this has been a major argument for its reform: in today’s age, it is generally considered unjust to give landowners (and espe cially those with hereditary titles) political pre-eminence over the inter ests of the wid er population. Thus the ques tion of reform ing the House of Lords is to find a source, alter native to the individual rep resentation of the commons, from which the upper house could derive its legitimacy. One route, which the US has achieved, is to represent ter ritories: something workable within a federal system. With the increased devolution La bour is suggesting, Labour has concluded that the next logi cal step is to reform the House of Lords to represent regions

in the quasi-federal state we would find ourselves in. In this way the Lords reform is handin-hand with wider national de volution, which would radically change the purpose, function and composition of the upper house.

The composition of House of Lords as it stands today was shaped in a major way by two acts of government: the Life Peer ages act 1958 and the House of Lords Act 1999. The former ena bled peerages to be made by ap pointment, instead of solely via the hereditary system, and also enabled women to enter the up per house for the first time. Tradi tionally, Labour politicians were far less likely to accept hereditary peerages (aristocratic titles, pass ing on to the firstborn son after death) so this Act laid the first stones in giving the Lords more political balance. Even so, before 1999 Conservative peers outnum bered Labour by a large majority.

It is worth noting that the com position of the house of Lords is not solely Labour or Conserva tive; a large number of peers are “cross-bench” (independent or affiliated with neither party), a smaller number represent less dominant political parties such as Greens or Plaid Cymru, and some are notable bishops. The consequence of this imbalance is that regardless of the party in government, the dominant party was Conservative. As this upper house has delaying power over government bills (sometimes up to a year), this led to calls by some that we had in effect a one-party state, where Labour actions are subject to the ap

proval of Conservative peers. It comes as no surprise, then, that in most influential Labour govern ments since the early 20th cen tury, there have been attempts to reform the House of Lords.

This is also valuable on a sym bolic level. As was touched on earlier, the House of Lords is an archaic representation of the aristocracy and, above all, a separation between “Lords” and “Commons”. This two-step class system is effectively entrenched into the very fabric of our politics.

Gaining entry via a Life Peerage is only a small step from being born into it: with the majority of our government’s senior figures being career politicians from privileged backgrounds, this system is still quite a way from being a true meritocracy. Additionally, the presence of bishops undermines the separation of church and state. Does our constitution really serve everyone in Britain when its protectors are the gilded hango ver of a more feudal age? Per haps Labour is onto something.

The second reform, the House of Lords Act 1999, slashed the number of hereditary peers by about 80 percent. Blair had aimed for a full removal of hereditary peerages but this would never have got through Lords, hence a considerable number remain. That said, this built on the impact of the Life Peerages Act to further balance the political map of the Lords and shift its composition from a crowd of ageing nobility to something more like a legitimate company of experts. This shift has allowed the Lords to fulfil more function than simply scrutiny of

Did Putin Save The Liberal World Order?

government bills: since the foun dation of the first Select Commit tee in the late 1970s the Lords has committees across a wide range of areas which, by the nature of the House of Lords, are able to operate for far longer terms than we have in the Commons.

It is primarily through this that the Lords does work to hold the government (and the European Union) to account. Select Com mittees also exist in the House of Commons, but are purely de partmental, so are slightly more limited in their scope. A general conclusion is that an entirely democratically elected upper house is too transient in nature to effect long-term change, and that there may be some experts worth keeping in valuable roles for far longer than a five-year term. This begs the question: would a new, reformed House of Lords, with its representation based on “regions and nations”, be able to pull together the same expertise? Would it fulfil the same func tion? When the upper house is also democratically elected, and intended to represent regions, there is the risk of being far more effective at representing the in terests of dominant political par ties as opposed to the interests of the region itself. As we await Labour’s official announcement of this plan, there are a few ques tions to keep in mind. How will this new upper house avoid being a second Commons? Will Life Peerages remain? What does this mean for future government? A full analysis of Labour’s ideas would be unfair at this stage— so I eagerly await the full detail.

Ali Khosravi Investigates

I

f you were a Liberal thinking about the ‘liberal world order’ back in 2019, you could have been forgiven for being quite worried.

A cynic may have recycled Vol taire’s quip on the Holy Roman Empire that it was ‘neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire’ and asked ‘What Liberalism? What World order?’ Yet up until that point in time, you could have confidently replied that a dis tinctly rules-based world order had been established after the Second World War, which was underpinned by international institutions which seek to pre vent the horrors of the early 20th century. A former UN GeneralSecretary, Dag Hammarskjöld, once said of United Nations that it was “not created to take man kind to heaven, but to save hu manity from hell” which perfectly captures the rationale behind the liberal world order.

Yet by 2019, those post World War II institutions like NATO or the European Union seemed to be under attack or in retreat. Donald Trump, at that point still in the White House, seemed to have no love lost for NATO or America’s other engagements around the world, seeing them not as prices for being the world’s hegemon but as examples of ‘America be ing ripped off’. The European Union, having just survived an

economic crisis in the eurozone, and still grappling with a migra tion crisis, was by 2019 in the pro cess of losing the second largest contributor to its budget after Britain’s vote to leave.

In July 2019, Vladimir Putin felt bold enough to tell Financial Times readers that ‘Liberalism is becoming obsolete’, whilst being gleeful about a wave of national populist backlash. Looking across to the United States, he could see a President and the governing Re publican party which far from its tradition of antagonism towards Russia had softened its rhetoric to talk of détente. Later in the year, France’s President Macron shocked The Economist’s liberal audience by describing NATO as ‘brain dead’, perhaps attempting to echo Charles de Gaulle whose ghost still overshadows French politics.

With these snapshots placed to gether, you could view 2019 as a so-called ‘post-liberal’ moment where liberal economics had re mained discredited since 2008. Free-trade was replaced by a trade war between US and China, and social liberalism seemed to expe rience a populist backlash across the western world. Fast forward to August 2021, following the United States’ chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, Joe Biden de clared in a televised address that “Americans should not fight in

wars other people wouldn’t fight for themselves”. That remark sig naled the beginning of the end of America’s post World War II role as the custodian of the liberal world order. It was a role which at times involved what may have appeared to American isolation ists like Joe Biden as ‘fighting other people’s wars’. America’s allies and liberal international ists around the world may have wondered: so much for ‘America is back?!’.

Yet with the tragic invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federa tion in February 2022, Western leaders were presented with a clear and dangerous threat to the values and institutions they had perhaps taken for granted. Hav ing lacked strategic coherence since the end of the cold war and having missed a common cause to unite around, the United States

and her allies found themselves having to unite and focus. Rus sia’s invasion changed Germany’s foreign policy almost overnight from (effectively) pacificism to pledging to spend billions of euros on national defense. This marked an extraordinary turning point. For years, many NATO member states had spent below the 2% of GDP requirement. That will change. In retro spect, it seems at best ex traordinarily naive if not reckless that France and Germany’s policy towards Russia was one of Rapprochement, even after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and despite EU sanctions. Even worse, Germany planned to go ahead with the Nord Stream

2 gas pipeline, having inaugu rated Nord Stream 1 in 2011 thus further appeasing Putin’s expan sionism. Having subsequently phased out its nuclear power in the same year Germany became heavily reliant on Russia for en ergy and now faces a difficult win ter ahead. Like other European leaders, Olaf Scholz, now faces the task of reminding Europeans what is at stake and what sacrific es may be required in the coming months.

The Euro pean Un ion having set out a timetable for transition ing away from Russian gas by late 2022 and early 2023 deserves some credit. Whilst NATO re ceived application from Sweden and Finland for accession. For

these hopefuls NATO does not spell ‘No Action Talk Only’, de spite an old French joke, but as an insurance policy against Russian intimidation. If Vladimir Putin wanted a smaller NATO, he has now helped to recruit two new members, albeit inadvertently.

Putin’s latest assault on the lib eral world order with the invasion of Ukraine has clearly highlighted why such an order emerged in the first place and what the world may look like without it. His in ternational campaign against lib eralism has in fact injected moral clarity to the liberal project which may have been lacked since the fall of the Soviet Union. The Ukrainian people in their bravery have shown the world that there are still principles worth fighting and making sacrifices for. They have clearly shown that despite talk of a post-national hyper-glo

balised world, the nation-state, national sovereignty, and selfdetermination remain relevant. That freedom matters and it isn’t free of cost.

The United States also faces a conundrum on Taiwan. The European Union will have to work out how to deal with Or bán. NATO may face further freelancing from Erdogan. But despite all these challenges, the liberal world order will continue to survive for as long as there are people left who are willing to fight for it. And having been reminded of liberalism’s reasons for exist ence, for now, liberals around the world have reasons to be slightly more hopeful!

Samuel Kenny

What’s Coming over the hill?A Labour Government

It’s September, which can only mean one thing, it’s conference season. Over the last four days, the Labour Party has held its annual conference with the slogan “A Fair er, Greener Future” in comparison to last year’s “Stronger, Future, To gether”. Going into the conference there was the backdrop of a new Tory leader in Liz Truss but also the pursuit of a completely differ ent economic direction to contrast the alternative. The economy is in turmoil and the pound is crash ing, a Government with spiralling polling numbers and the end of the reign of Britain’s greatest monarch. This is Keir Starmer’s second con ference as Labour leader and how much has changed since his first?

Labour was on average 5% be hind in the polls last September, the party seemed as divided as ever and suggestions of a no-confidence vote against Kier were present. This year the story couldn’t be more dif ferent; Labour is on average 11% ahead in the polls, on track for a majority government and the party as a whole is far more united, with Keir far more popular. However, the biggest thing that was abun dantly different in this year’s con ference is the feeling of hope. Argu ably for the first time since Labour was last in government, there is now a feeling amongst members and supporters at large that power is in the clutches of their fingertips.

Starmer has been criticised for moving away from the ten pledges he made when running for party leader and has been accused by

the left of taking labour back to the Blairite/Brownite ideologies. However, this conference has completely thrown that out of the window and has proved what Kier was supposed to be, soft left but pragmatic. A flurry of new, exciting but also radical policies has been announced. Labour would beef up renters’ protections by introduc ing a mandatory four-month notice period for landlords and creating a national landlord database. While not being as radical as rent controls it’s a big step in the right direction.

Keeping in line with the previous three manifestos, Labour have committed to nationalising Rail and creating an “Elizabeth line of the north” another commitment as a clear olive branch to the left of the party. More medical school places, doubling district nurses and 10,000 more nurses overall. 13,000 aadditional police and PCSO’s in community teams to help rebuild neighbourhood policing. Keep ing in tune with the con ference’s overall slogan, Starmer is promising to get off fossil fuels by 2030.

Keir is perfectly bal ancing the necessity of showing the elector ate that La bour has now changed on things like law and order and

has moved to the centre ground, while also showing that Labour is keeping its radical credentials and will truly change Britain. Further policies included: being the party of home ownership and increasing current levels from 65% to 70%, here Starmer is seizing typical Tory territory and even channelling Mar garet Thatcher on home ownership. Finally, in keeping with the themes of last year’s con fer

ence, La

bour is remaining a party of patriotism, pro-monarchy, proUkraine, pro-NATO, and pro-west.

Keir Starmer has moved Labour back to the centre ground but that ground it now inhabits is far more left-wing than it used to be.

Keir Starmer gave his key note speech to conference and the nation at 2 pm on Tuesday. Last year’s speech was dominated by themes of change and rhetoric that very much only appealed to the Labour right. This speech kept many of the same themes, but Keir expressed far more significantly his left-wing credentials and his vision for Britain under his leader ship. Kier opened by expressing his desire to implement the Hillsbor ough law, with a very supportive Liverpool crowd in front of him. He emphasised themes of aspira tion and opportunity while also wanting to enact real change and a desire to create a new Britain.

Starmer talked about the Queen’s life of service and learn ing from her, this will chime well after the immense outpour ing of grief after the late Queen’s death.

A very well-re ceived and well –grafted line was

“Fresh start, New priori ties, New way of govern ment”.

Keir wants

sense of collective hope and ac knowledged that people are cry ing out for change. According to Keir, the first term of a Labour government would: stabilise the economy, save the NHS, get peo ple believing in Britain again, and restore aspiration and hope. The big flagship policy that Starmer announced during the speech was the creation of a publicly owned energy company named “Great British Energy” and the de facto semi-nationalising of the energy market. Kier finished his speech by reminding the British people and conference of the achievements of the big three Labour governments of 1945, 1964 and 1997, this next election is what Kier Starmer called a “Labour moment”. Labour rep resents the political wing of the British people and will win in 2024.

This Labour conference may be noted in political history for when people finally saw Labour as a party ready for government and the be ginning of Kier and the wider party setting out its true vision for a fu ture Labour government. Taking in spiration from the last four Labour leaders in some way, Keir reached a near-perfect blend of radical poli cies combined with the centrism of pro-growth, economic compe tence, and patriotic sentiments. It appears Starmer has been playing 4D political chess this entire time. Appeasing both the left and right factions and transforming the im age of the party. Starmer hasn’t just made Labour ready for govern ment but made it ready to win big.

That remark signaled the beginning of the end of America’s post World War II role as the custodian of the liberal world order.

Britain’s Monarchy and theNew ‘Puritans’

Adam Arnfield Discusses the challenges which facethe monarchy amid the rise of republicanism

As a student at St. John’s College, I can hardly avoid pride in Oxford’s Royalist past. As I walk through the Can terbury Quad, I am struck by stat ues of Charles I, King and Martyr, and his wife Henrietta Maria. The quadrangle was gifted to the col lege by Archbishop Laud, an alum nus of St. John’s who was executed for his support of King Charles. But this Royalist heritage is not unique to St. John’s. Nearly every Oxford college has simi lar accolades – in the Civil War King Charles held court at Christ Church, with the Queen Consort staying at Merton. Magdalen boasts among its alumni a King of England and other royals, and even the unconventional Catz had Prince Philip as their ‘official Visi tor’ for nearly 60 years.

However, once again, the monar chy is under threat from Puritans. The fundamentalists that eventu ally beheaded King Charles were named Puritans for their concern with purity of symbolism in reli gion. The Puritans of today like wise have an unbounded concern with symbolism – one which leads them to attack the monarchy as representative of the hierarchy which their worldview opposes. This despite the fact that the mon archy actually does egalitarianism a lot of good.

As the historian Nigel Saul has

argued, Britain’s Royal Family has outlasted almost all of its Euro pean peers by virtue of its relative equality with the people of Britain and concern for their plight. Since the 13th and 14th centuries, he ar gues, the concept of the “commu nity of the realm” has bound the monarch and the subjects togeth er. Unlike in France, the British nobility were not exempt from tax ation. In contrast to other Europe an mon archies, the Brit ish monarchs have always main tained a commonality with their subjects, unafraid to engage in activities thought ‘beneath them’. One thinks of Prince Harry found ing the Invictus Games and Prince Edward’s numerous trips around the world to promote British trade. It is the British monarchy’s recognition of their equality with the people that gave them their longevity.

the treasury. Brand Finance esti mated that every year, the monar chy costs the public £292 million, but generates £1.766 billion – a huge net surplus.

Moreover, the Royal Fam ily doesn’t receive any taxpayer money. Our taxes do fund royal visits and police protection, but these costs are low and could be expected, in a re publican Britain, to carry over to the inflated office of Prime Minister.

The Puritans of today like wise have an unbounded concern with symbolism – one which leads them to attack the monarchy as representative of the hier archy which their world view opposes.

tive, the Prime Minister. In 2013, the Succession to the Crown Act again asserted parliamentary au thority over the monarchy. Other examples abound and the point is clear – the Royal Family does not undermine democracy. Besides, are we so committed to the ideal of democracy that we would rather sing ‘God Save Liz Truss’ than ‘God Save the King’?

bestowed upon politicians is far worse for democracy than honour bestowed upon Royals – there are legal safeguards to prevent Roy als from abusing their popularity, while politicians can change laws that constrain them. So, the remov al of the monarchy would not only damage the country’s spiritual, but also its political, well-being.

‘Perhaps,’ our Puritan might re ply, ‘but abolishing the monarchy would allow us to redistribute so much wealth!’ This isn’t necessari ly true. The Crown Estate gives the majority of the revenue it makes to

‘Ah!’ says the Pu ritan for abolition, ‘but the real issue isn’t equality, it’s democracy! The monarchy is anti-democratic – it was in the Civil War and still is to day!’ Not so. Fol lowing the Glori ous Revolution, in which parliament forcefully assert ed its control of the monarchy by putting William and Mary on the throne, the monarchy has become quite the democratic institution, ever sensitive to the ‘will of the people’. In 1937, Edward VIII abdi cated partly due to public opinion, and even more because of the in fluence of the people’s representa

Besides, are we so committed to the ideal of democracy that we would rather sing ‘God Save Liz Truss’ than ‘God Save the King’?

That (or something quite like it), is really what we would be sing ing, according to Univ graduate, C. S. Lewis. He argued that with out a monarch to admire, people would look to alternative figures of renown. ‘Where men are forbid den to honour a king they honour millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead -- even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bod ily na ture, will be served -- deny it food and it will gob ble poi son.’ We can see this in America with the idolisation of political figures like Donald Trump and Doctor Fauci. No doubt, those not inculcated from birth with a strong sense of patriotic duty would not serve so well as Queen Elizabeth as objects of adulation. Furthermore, honour

Besides the exhortations of one influential graduate, Oxford has plenty of other unique reasons to support the monarchy. A univer sity so tightly bound to the An glican church would be shooting itself in the foot if it supported the removal of the head of that church, the Defender of the Faith which the Oxford Movement fought so hard to preserve. The university and the monarchy have clearly developed a symbiotic relationship through out their long histories, so much so that it is undoubtedly part of the Oxford tradition. And Oxford is nothing without its traditions. Moreover, an insignificant uni versity on the river Cam once pro vided refuge to the parliamentar ians of the Civil War. And nothing is more Oxonian than opposing Cantabrigians. So let us sing, (with heart and voice), ‘God Save the King!’

Editors: Ciaron Tobin, Dani Kovacs

Anna Lee

Poetry: Dead Or Alive?

Alice Edwards

While the world seems to be morphing stead ily into a technological dystopia alike to that seen in Hux ley’s Brave New World, and words themselves seem to have been re placed with pixels as the basic unit of human understanding, reading, writing and enjoying poetry seems a relic of a past world. Like play ing the harp, writing with a quill, or simply using a mobile phone with a keypad, poetry, it feels, has become a statue reminding us of what once was. Simon Armitage’s Floral Tribute, written to com memorate the death of Queen Elizabeth II, served as a stark re minder to many that verse appre ciated widely by the public in the modern day only takes the form of occasional poetry, published, like to the horse and carriage carrying the Queen’s coffin or the military funeral parades through Westminster, to uphold tradition rather than as a part of everyday cultural practice. Ofqual’s removal of poetry as a compulsory module for GCSE students across the coun try in 2022 seems to highlight how far removed those in power feel it has become from the lives of those shaping our future. However, in a modern world where ‘Poetry Is Dead’ has become a familiar on line phenomenon, verse remains essential to human nature’s com prehension of, and commentary upon, society. As John Keats sug gests ‘The poetry of the earth is never dead’; poetry is the voice that speaks within all of us, the translator of human emotions, words, that in all their complex ity, make sense of the world. While it is perhaps changing as a literary medium, evolving in parallel with the evolution of the world, it will

never be dead. It is central to the human condition.

Poetry is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘Composition in verse or some comparable pat terned arrangement of language in which the expression of feelings and ideas is given intensity by the use of distinctive style and rhythm’. More simply, poetry is language deliber ately formulated in a particular way to achieve a particular effect. Lan guage, as the mechanism by which we communicate, is inherently functional, with every utterance arranged or composed uniquely to reach a particular purpose, empha sise a certain feeling, or convey an idea. Asking a friend ‘Can I use your pencil please?’ demonstrates use of straightforward language arranged deliberately as a polite question, composed with the modal verb ‘Can’ at the outset to emphasise that it is a request and efficiently appease the need for a pencil without seem ing rude. Commenting ‘The stars look super beautiful today’ when on a dinner date shows an adjec tival arrangement constructed to reflect the zeal at being on said date, with ‘today’ placing focus upon the here and now. Merely muttering ‘Damn it’ under your breath with no particular audience is language composed to produce some kind of outlet for frustration. The point is that everything spoken by a hu man is a deliberate arrangement of language with a distinctive pattern and a definite purpose. Therefore poetry forms the very basis of hu man speech; it is alive in all that we say.

The world runs upon deliberate arrangements of language, and as we have already established, de

liberate arrangements of language are poetic. Take Liz Truss’ speech to the UN General Assembly last month - generally monosyllabic, forthright sentences with iambic rhythm composed for assertive ef fect. Use of anaphora, triples, anad iplosis and lengthy pauses to create intensity and emphasis. Both the idea of the United Nations being a metaphorical ‘beacon of prom ise’ and the Queen being the meta phorical ‘rock’ upon which modern Britain was built highlight use of figuration. Take Amazon’s ‘This Is A Man’s World’ advert celebrating its all-female delivery stations in In dia. The use of the paradox of ‘trail blazer’ and ‘mom’ gives intensity to the subversion of typical oppression of third-world women as domestic, secondary figures, with the frag ment sentence ‘And mom.’ only add ing to the connotation of power. Even the Call Of Duty franchise, which many may suggest is caus ing the death of poetry, or literature as a whole, is based on deliberate arrangements of language. The idea that ‘Revenge is like a ghost… It takes over every man it touches… Its thirst cannot be quenched…Until the last man standing has fallen.’ upholds clear poetic construction, with simile, the personification of revenge, and the staccato rhythm with large pauses demonstrating a deliberate attempt at maintaining a suspenseful and chilling tone. The plosive punchy rhythms of ‘Death is no disgrace’ and ‘You’re gettin’ shot up’ further show how even within video games, poetry, if defined as a conscious composition of language, is still present. Computer-mediat ed communication has perhaps even allowed for more distinctive styles of language to emerge, and facilitates the development of new

possibilities and patterns. While ac ronymic coinages like ‘lol’, ‘lmao’, ‘ttyl’, ‘wuut’ and ‘ily’ seem to many like the furthest thing possible from Wordsworth and Blake, these constructions are compositions of language with unique style and particular arrangement, designed for efficient communication on on line platforms. If haiku, three small phrases, are considered poetic due to their consistent syllabic pattern, then consistent acronymic pattern, must also be poetry. What sepa rates Bashō’s haiku ‘The Old Pond’, which reads ‘An old silent pond / A frog jumps into the pond / Splash! Silence again’ and influencer MollyMae Hague’s 2022 Instagram cap tion ‘Not all storms come to disrupt your life…some come to clear your path’ into spheres of poetic and non-poetic? A very dogmatic, pre tentious and ulti

mately outdated idea of what litera ture is, if you ask me.

While it is true, as Robert Graves suggests, that ‘To be a poet is a con dition, not a profession’, and that poetry is in all that we say, all that we see and is all around us in the modern world, it is perhaps the traditional idea of a poem - words arranged in separate lines, lines ar ranged in stanzas, often ending in rhyme, and found in books - that is thought to be dying. Although it is undeniable that people in the twenty-first century are unlikely to pick up a book of poetry and read it, when has this ever been a commonplace public practice? If poetry is dead in the modern world, then it has been dead for centuries. You would have to go back to the Romantics to be able to see poetry used even somewhat widely as an

Alice Edwards Takes Us Through Her Verse

Itis even tenable to argue that poetry is more accessible to all nowadays, and so more alive, than it ever has been. The rise of Instagram poetry is just one example of how technology and social media have facilitated the expansion of traditional verse and given it more of a life than it has ever had. @poets is an Ins tagram account with 4.2 million followers and has posted nearly 10,000 poems, many being photos from books or collections, and many directing followers to purchase said books or collections. Hence, not only does Instagram give the public an acces sible platform to read poetry upon but also encourages the enjoyment of poetry in the conventional form that many feel is dead. Facebook similarly acts as a platform for the reception of poetry, with the group ‘Poetry lovers’ which celebrates poems written by past greats and the average living person, having 2 million followers. Moreover, rap music, which is undeniably a huge part of worldwide culture in 2022, and music in general for that matter, is poetry. Rhymed lines of words in verses

into ruin’, highlights the use of poetry as a means of social commentary. Criticising that ‘School kids are on the hunt for lunch’ and that the government ‘Privatise and pri vatise [and] in private, let the nurses burn’, Tempest shows that the power of poetry is very much alive, with the stereotypically young audiences of Glastonbury rejoicing in her verse. Musical poet and spoken word artist George The Poet’s ‘Black Yellow Red’ similarly offers critical commentary upon the police brutality, civilian deaths, military involvement and the lack of peaceful trans fer of power since colonisation in his home country Uganda, and represents the collec tive dissatisfaction Ugandan people. While it could be argued that this is not poetry in its traditional form, and that classical poetry is dead, there has been an upsurge in modern translations of classics in recent times. Emily Wilson’s translations of Odys sey and Ilead demonstrate an increasing need for accessibility to this kind of tra ditional poetry within the modern world, and so that its importance is expanding rather than dying.

commenting on particular societal mat ters - the definition of both poetry and mu sic. Dave’s ‘Black’ is rhymed verse speaking out on racism and promoting the Black Lives Matter movement. Wordsworth’s ‘London, 1802’ is rhymed verse speaking out on the selfish and inward-looking the people of London were.

What is the difference, other than the same elitist outlook on literature that would separate poetry and Instagram captions?

It seems to me that as much as people are not reading poetry in the modern world, there has been a huge upturn in slam poet ry and spoken word events. This is perhaps even relatable to the Medieval culture of reading and sharing poetry orally, sug gesting verse is returning to its roots, and to a time when it was most alive within common culture. Spoken word artist Kae Tempest’s 2017 Glastonbury performance, whereby she used poetry to attack Theresa May and the Conservative government by telling the public to be ‘strong and stable

Poetry has changed radically. There is no doubt about that. Just like its develop ment from oral to written medium, from inscriptions on trees and walls to paper, and then to print following the emergence of the printing press, it has developed, in parallel with societal change, to be received through technological medium. This is not a sign that it has died but more a sign that it is very much alive. The fact that it changes with the times to suit human nature is proof of its poignance within civilisation, and that it will never die. It is central to the human condition.

“What is the difference, otherthan the same elitist outlook on literature that would separate poetry and captions?”Instagram

Alice Edwards

I am happy to be out of Oxford

Kesaia Toganivalu

It

is the longest summer of your life. The beginning of your life. Everything else has been leading up to this point. It is the limbo period. Family and friends have whispered that so and so is applying to Ox ford, but you’d never actually thought you could do it. And now the offer is in, the grades are being calculated and there’s nothing you can do to stop results day hur tling towards you at full speed. When you get into Oxford you don’t say no. You can’t.

I remember the raw happiness that spilled out of me and flooded my school on that cold January morning, when the notification came through that I had been given an offer. I was obnoxiously happy, and annoying. But it was Oxford, that mythical place that only accepts the “best of the best”, and they had deemed me worth of taking up the space of countless others. I will always look back at that part of my life as full of potential, bright and teeming with joy.

I don’t regret those feelings, and I encour age all students who are waiting for their results to savour the process. This is the summer of opportunity and in-between. I am going into my final year of my un dergraduate degree, one pandemic, one rustication, one failed political career and two relationships later. I have seen most of what Oxford has to offer, and now I am in a different sort of summer. It is still a summer of in-between. That list of items sounds a bit depressing and there are a lot of other fun things that the universe and this university has given me, but it just shows you how formative these years can be. I am much happier out of Oxford than I am in it.

And that feels wrong to admit. I feel like I’m slitting open the dreams of my

younger self and being ungrateful. Criti cising Oxford in any form is often met with shouts of “You should have just gone somewhere else then!” and a lot of that is then internalised within the student population, oozing out in various toxic chants.

Take rustication, for example. Rustication more recently has been interpreted as a ‘Get Out of Jail’ free card, but often this is by people who have never actually gone through the process themselves. Rustica tion is itself a loaded term, with debate as to whether this is even the correct words as that usually means being suspended based on the breaking of college or uni versity codes of conduct. The University itself refers to a break from studied as a period of “suspension,” and so students who take time out are therefore “sus pended.”

Many students take time based on medi cal grounds. Mental health falls under that, and many students suspend on the grounds that their physical and mental health cannot cope under the strain of their studies. Oxford’s terms are designed to condense information learning within a very short period and so a brief period of sickness can result in an entire term’s schedule falling out of kilter.

If studying your degree is negatively impacting your physical or mental health and you need to suspend then that is nec essary. That seems logical. I suspended my studies after having a nervous break down halfway through my second year. I had to do that. It felt my degree was killing me and I was killing myself and everyone around me. I felt like a complete failure, and that I was not smart enough for my degree and that the University had made a mistake. I was a fraud, and I

had finally given up my real identity. All pretence was gone, and I was alone. Rusticated students are not allowed onto college grounds unless they are given prior permission. I was an estranged ‘Independent Student’, meaning I was completely dependent on my college to fill the role of parents.

When I suspended, I felt like I was socially cursed and left on my own to battle with the very thoughts and feelings that had made me drop out. The process and culture of suspension is a problem that needs to be fixed, but even this comes with another big buzzword, the ‘collegiate system’. Do not worry, this article is not going to be an unoriginal hot take on the problems of Oxford in its entirety. No, the core of this essay is that as much as I love Oxford, as do many of us, I am healthier and happier out of it.

I thrive off the manic insanity of Oxford, and the niche traditions, and superficial networks of children we ourselves create. But it just isn’t good for me, and I think that hesitation, if not shame, to say that sometimes Oxford can be damaging to your mental and physical health is some thing to be worked on.

What does happiness outside of Oxford look like, if measured?

For me personally, I have fat on my face for the first time in my life. I eat now. That sounds silly and is obviously quite a me-centric way to measure stability but it feels alien. When I am in Oxford I am constantly scared and on edge, and a slight inconvenience can lead me to spiral uncontrollably. The geography of Oxford, and the atmosphere can feel brilliant and homely, but it can also feel claustropho bic. That sounds extreme. And, maybe it

is. My university experience is never go ing to be the same as anyone else’s, and that is not the point.

Oxford has improved the future quality of life in a way going to any other univer sity just would not have.

I am the type of student who should be grateful to Oxford. I came from a singleparent family, lived in social-housing in Central London and attended a stateschool (though for transparency’s sake it was a single-sex, semi-posh one). I attended an Access and Outreach trip to my college when I was fifteen and fell in love with it. I was estranged the day I moved up to Oxford and landed in my college’s administration office saying that I had no money, Student Finance hadn’t arrived and I was down one par ent.

And I am grateful for my college, who has gone over and above to support me. But just because I am lucky to be here, as are all of us in many ways, doesn’t mean we can’t criticise it or feel happy when we’re out of it.

There are always a flurry of Oxfesses when someone sticks their head above the parapet and points out a broken cog in the Oxford machine. Comments refer ring to the figures that for every one of us that matriculated there are countless others who have been rejected.

I don’t regret applying to Oxford. But I do think there is an unwillingness amongst students, driven by institutional apathy for change, that makes it hard to admit when it isn’t working sometimes.

Adegunwa, Anmol

Aslet, Lay Mohan,

FRESHERS

Meet: the team behind the paper

Jason’s journalistic experience primarily lies in journals and magazines, especially those that relate to law and politics. In terested in a career in journalism, Jason joined The Oxford Student and has self-evidently climbed the greasy pole. As an editor, he prizes transparency and account ability. When I inquire into the role of newspapers in society, he pro fesses his belief that they ensure citizens have accurate information and function as a crucial checks and balances instrument in our political system.

Dominic points out that he and Jason form a successful partner ship because their goals for the paper lean in slightly different directions. He describes himself as a ‘basics man’. While focus on new possibilities or plans can drive a sense of progress for the publication, Dominic is keen to perfect crucial journalistic skills. In his words, ‘make The Oxford Student more like a paper’. In particular, Dominic wants to work towards a standardised

writing style, especially for sec tions like News. As he puts it, ‘people don’t read the paper for a journalist’s opinion’ and few ‘care about their opinion per se’; ‘reporting is the most impor tant function’. Students turn to publications to ‘hear an objective voice tell us the facts’ of a situa tion.

Dominic prizes objectivity and aims to clarify uncertain stories which mainly travel through gossip and rumours. The Oxford Student’s role, for him, is to take topics restricted to the periphery and position them centre stage. Quick to admit its ostensible lack of glamour, one story which he cites was about sewage leaks from a water plant north of Ox ford and into the Thames which, by extension, affects the river in Port Meadow. Dominic points out that although the subject is ‘literally sewage journalism’ the importance of such a news item should not be underestimated for students, many of whom swim there regularly during the summer.

I turn the conversation towards the big changes the pair hope to make over the course of the term. The investigations team is a priority for both of them.

After a period of inaction, Jason and Dominic have restarted the group which, Jason says, has only reminded him how fun the work is. Investigative reporting is an increasingly important tool with which newspapers can convince readers of their value. Social me dia monopolises breaking stories and analysis found in the pages of a paper risks polarising and turning people away more than it functions to increase reader ship. The most valuable weapon in their arsenal is the slow, thorough and dedicated research into stories about which the facts are not immediately apparent. Investigative reporting is a prod uct which other media platforms struggle to provide.

The editors tell me that the paper’s news section works well for short pieces which aim to inform the readership, but inves tigations presents the possibil ity of long-form articles which reveal information that would not otherwise be in the public domain. Alongside increasing the number of people on the team, the editors want to improve the team’s resources to ensure due diligence. Above all, protecting the identity of people provid ing the paper with tip-offs is

their main concern. The editors decided that the identity of the journalists on the team would not be revealed, unlike all other sections, for whom the editors are displayed on the website. I am only able to squeeze out the information that the investiga tions team is currently working on five to six investigative stories and collaborating with one na tional newspaper. When we discuss the business model for The Oxford Student, it becomes clear they hope to make some tweaks. The paper’s financial structure is currently built around its relationship with the Student Union. In a break from previous terms, they have established a team solely dedicated to outreach and ac cess. Part of their responsibility is to explore the possibility of circulating the paper beyond the colleges. Specifically, they are in talks with several companies about stocking the paper in their establishments. Although the editors are not able to disclose specific establishments, they cite Pret a Manger and Costa as examples. In addition, discus sions are underway with major banks and law firms about the inclusion of advertisements or

sponsorship. Another prong of the outreach strategy, they tell me, is to approach sixth forms across the country both as a way to increase awareness of the paper and drive recruitment among incoming students each year.

I ask the editors to pitch the newspaper to a budding writer. Aside from the huge readership, print as well as online capacity and the passion of its journalists, Jason tells me it’s a particularly exciting time to join the paper. Alongside investigations and outreach, the senior team are working on creating a board of trustees. They are aiming to tap into the stream of illustrious alumni and persuade them to join the board. The editors hope this will provide strategic advice, recommendations and legal support when needed. Dominic recognises the initiative as a brilliant idea because a more permanent group, responsible for helping the paper, would improve continuity and make the rapid termly editorial takeover a little smoother. The BNOC duo have big plans for The Oxford Student, time will judge their success.

Samuel King chats to Dominic Enright and Jason Chau about editing The Oxford Student

Jason Chau and Dominic Enright, Editors-in-Chief of The Oxford Student this term, are manning the paper’s Freshers’ Fair stall when I meet them.

Deputy

Profile

of the week

Heather Allansdottir, graduate talks about her experiences with Oxford Anti-Semitism

Last year, a colleague assaulted me after spending the evening making derogatory comments about the fact I went to Tel Aviv University. The police don’t seem to think the anti-Semitic context is relevant.

I’ve

been associated with Ox ford University three times, for my undergraduate de gree, my doctoral degree, and last year as an employee. Each time involved an assault by a man. The first cut was the deep est; he was a famous professor, I was a nineteen year old nobody who read everything he’d ever written. I thought for years that if I ever told anyone he’d make the necessary phone-calls to ruin my career, in the power he had over me he may as well have been God. I left England as soon as I could, but I think on some subconscious level I did my doctorate in his area of study and country in order to prove myself on his territory –narcissists are so good at trick ing you into thinking you have to prove yourself to them. The second assault was more infor mal – a colleague, a peer – just before the #MeToo movement but recently enough that our careers became in my mind like twin planets, one always keep ing an eye on the other, affecting each others’ orbit. ‘Who will get tenure first?’ became my way of processing what he did to me.

And then last year. I’d gone for drinks with a colleague to ease myself back into Oxford life last summer, having spent the first year of the pandemic in Iceland, the gen tle, neutral country providing a little sanctuary for me to men tally decompress. The Oxford I returned to was in all ways more intense and more broken. The complex debates around the Rhodes Must Fall campaign had ripped apart friendships and faculties, adjusting to on line teaching had raised huge questions about what we want academia to look like, and a new generation of students was teaching me new ways to think.

I’d grown up, in the meantime, partly by moving away – Israel, Australia, Iceland – and so could look at the parlour games of Oxford social life from the per spective of knowing this is not the only way that things could or should be done. But coming back to Oxford last year, no-one wanted to talk to me about my time in Australia, or my time in Iceland, the articles I’d writ ten or the personal progress I’d made. Returning to the site of my past education and past pain, there was one topic about my life that every old friend and every new acquaintance gravi tated towards inevitably – why had I gone to Tel Aviv for a year after my doctorate?

In the time I’d been away from the UK, the Corbyn/ anti-Sem itism debates had pungently popped up in every corner of public life, kudzu of political discourse, the toxic poison of anti-Semitism seeping in to everything. I, generally, didn’t want to engage. Upon return ing, I wanted to talk about polar law, the Australian constitution, and my new love for space law and exploration. But in the year since I’ve been back in Oxford I could barely go a week without someone asking me why I went to Tel Aviv University, usually followed by an un-asked-for diatribe about their position on the BDS movement. No-one was interested in my experience of Tel Aviv as a lived reality – the recipes, the music, the natural beauty, all the other complexi ties of interpersonal realities and inevitable struggles of daily life – nor in my experience as an academic of law, as they would have if I’d gone to the Sorbonne or Berkeley or McGill. It became an exhausting hurdle at the start of any new acquaintance or meeting an old friend – “so, what’s your position on BDS?

It was four months into this unpleasant re-entering to Ox ford social life that I met with an old acquaintance with whom I’d studied alongside during my doctoral degree five years ear lier. He was also newly back in

the city, suggesting we should catch up to talk about our work. He worked in a similar field, so when he suggested meeting for drinks I told him I’d be happy to catch up. After one drink he started ranting about Israel. Af ter two he started ranting about, well, which ethnicity constitutes the main population of Israel?

This should have been my cue to leave, but I was Bambi-inthe-headlights bewildered at the experience, and so sat it out until, another drink later, we walked out of the pub.

Oxford is a strange ghost-city for me, composed of many years of sedentary layers of memo ries, and it is as disappointingly apt as it is awful that when this man groped me, I was standing metres away from the building where, when I was nineteen years old, the famous professor had given me my most brutal and startling introduction to the worst of what humans can do.

This time, older and more hard ened by the world outside the little academic bubble, I navi gated the situation with more firmness and got him to stop. He left for his home country the next day, and I decided not to file a police report because I wanted to move on and pre tend it hadn’t happened. 2021, remember, was meant to be the summer we’d be rewarded for having made it through 2020 – I decided to focus on my future and reassured myself that, es pecially as he’d left the city, our paths would likely not cross and even if they did, I was hardly that helpless nineteen year old any more.

It was only when I heard he was back in the country at the end of the summer and began having panic attacks at what he’d done to me that I realised how badly he’d traumatised me. I kept remembering the com ments he’d made all evening, as if in preparation for his assault; the dehumanising language he was using about Israelis and Jewish people in general, his sneering face, his thinly-veiled contempt and desire to domi

nate. I filed a police report knowing I had no physical evi dence of the assault, but hop ing his name could be kept on file in case other victims come forward.

The police listened to my concerns with one exception –when I stated clearly that I believed the assault was racially motivated, they seemed to wil fully ignore me. Later, when I followed up to ask if the attack was being treated as a racially motivated assault, they said that the original police officer who’d interviewed me hadn’t noted or categorised it as such. For some reason, this hurt me more than the original unpleas ant experience. To be so ignored and not taken seriously, it felt like confirmation of the back ground music of noise that I’d heard ever since I’d returned to Oxford – well, you did go to Tel Aviv University, what did you expect?

Something I’ve encountered frequently over my last year in this city is the idea that it isn’t anti-Semitic when people say these types of things because they’re criticising the institu tion, not the ethnicity of the people who attend it. The idea is that ‘we’re not anti-Semitic, just anti-Israel’. But a problem arises when people who claim to just criticise the institution spiral into acts of anti-Semitic violence and assault. My experi ence with the man who assault ed me was one such case: after one drink it was Israel, after two drinks it was Jews, after three drinks it was violence.

“a problem arises when people who claim to just criticise the institution spiral into acts of anti-Semitic violence and assault.”

Andrew Wang via Dalle-E Mini

Driftenschriften A Flâneur in Munich: Lederhosen

Columns

Columns

Lederhosen,

leather trou

sers, are a type of tradition al south-German legwear, sported in the first instance by Bavarian hunters in the 18th cen tury, and now, following hundreds of history-laden years, by drunk, male, British, American, and Italian tourists with 150 euros to spare and an unshapely arse. Today, they are seen most commonly at Ba varia’s world-famous beer festival, Oktoberfest.

This much, broadly speaking, I knew. Sat on my bed at home one day before my departure for my year abroad in Munich, surround ed by books, pants, and plug adap tors, I mulled over my father’s of fer that I take his lederhosen with me. Oktoberfest ridiculously, nay, infuriatingly, takes place almost

was travelling to Munich one week before my student halls’ move-in date and living with the family of my former German exchange.

I had lived with David, my Gleichältrigerdeutscheraus tauschpartner*, for a week in February 2018, two and a half years after my first German lesson. Needless to say, I could not speak German. David’s warm, generous, and patient parents did their best to eke German conversation out of me, but to no avail. I followed David to school, to play tennis, to BMW-Welt and the Olimpiaturm in almost complete silence, and we communicated primarily by means of a tennis ball which we threw relentlessly back and forth to one another. The ball was a bond of some sort, and we stayed in touch

looking forward to seeing David and his family, to having my first successful German conversation ever and, of course, to my first Maß* auf der Wiesn*. I have tru ly no idea why my father owns lederhosen; they seem to me to be the sort of item which one needs a good reason to own. In any case, after long consideration I rejected the lederhosen on the grounds that there was something uncomfortable about arriving in Bavaria and slipping straight into Tracht*, which to locals meant centuries of tradition but which was to me little more than a fancy dress costume. That, and also that they alone would have constituted roughly 10% of my luggage weight allowance.

My concern, however, that I would appear out of place as an Unbayerischenlederhosentrager* was wildly misplaced. In fact, I haven’t felt as awkward in denim since the ‘dress as your favourite member of S Club 7’ party at the bingo hall in Amersham (very different event). My Unbereitseinsgefühl* took hold when, ten minutes before we left for the beer fest, David was rummaging through my luggage and sub sequently charging the height, length, and width of his house demanding in panicked ‘Al lemanglish’ that I did not have a shirt that was ‘rustic enough’. My conscience only worsened upon arrival at the site. The cen tral footpath is straddled by food carts serving sausage-six-ways, fairground stalls for broad-shoul dered, sauce-staggering, rifle-tot ing man-babies, and, of course, the famed towering wood-and-canvas cradles of beery debauchery, the Bierzelten*. The flow of revellers to my left and right swept me

along and dropped me with a jar ring thud of clarity: I should have brought the lederhosen.

After half an hour of table-hunt ing, my head swimming with shame and trouser-envy (unex pectedly debilitating), we perched on the end of a table next to a group of 50-somethings, all customarily clad. Following introductions, we discovered that they were all from Munich and had lived there since birth; my heart sank at the realisa tion that my inevitable humiliation was not far away and would come at the hands of those who knew most furiously the sincerity of my legwear misdemeanour, my trou ser transgression. Perhaps they would eat me.

Sheepishly, resignedly, bracing for impact, I could keep it in no longer.

“I’m sorry about my jeans”, I war bled into the ear of the stocky bald man next to me, the German words shattering in the space between us.

“I like them. You look nice.” I landed on his reply as if it were a heap of candy floss. My breath was up and out the door, and in my confused elation for a moment I thought that maybe, just maybe, I loved him. He read my perplex ity and went on. “Your Tracht is your tradition; that is what it means. This is my Tracht, and that is yours.”

I sat back, stunned, a little disap pointed that my Tracht is jeans and a Tommy Bahama shirt, but my guilt and shame turned to steam. In the end, it didn’t really matter; in fact, it never had. For the next four hours I stood on the benches next to my hairless guru, danced and mumbled the words to

songs I’d never heard before, and when I came to, I found I was in a sea of friends, of people just like me, brought together by a love of drunken merriment, and not by a pair of trousers.

So went the first day of a year. I’m sure there’s a lesson in there somewhere, if only I could find it.

*Vokabeln: Gleichältrigerdeutscheraus tauschpartner = German exchange partner of equivalent age.

Maß = a one-litre beer glass (a.k.a. ‘stein’), the principal beer receptacle at Oktoberfest.

Auf der Wiesn = Bayern expres sion meaning ‘at Oktoberfest’. The word ‘Wiesn’ (meadow) refers to a field where horse-racing took place at the first ever Oktoberfest celebration in 1810.

Tracht = literally ‘garb’, ‘livery’. In Bavaria, this means lederhosen with a plaid shirt, long socks and black shoes (hat optional, feather in hat mandatory).

Unbayerischerlederhosentrager = a man who is wearing lederho sen but is not from Bavaria.

Unbereitseinsgefühl = feelings of unpreparedness.

Bierzelten = literally ‘beer tent’ – think more beer hall with a can vas roof, filled with long tables, thronging with drinkers, and crowned by a central bandstand playing Bavarian classics inter spersed at regular intervals with Robbie Williams’ ‘Angels’.

N.B., I take no responsibility for these German words, nor do I claim that they are correct or even real.

By Joe Wald

credits: Yii-Jen Deng

Columns

Columns

Blane’s Style Files: Quiz - What Colour Should You Wear More Often?

Gone

are the days of outrageous 80s neon, funkily-coloured kitchens and patterned curtains.

We are living in an age of beige.

But that doesn’t have to be the case! Despite AI-powered research showing that our lives are becoming less colourful than they used to be, by taking this quiz you can fight against a world of boring outfits.

The Quiz:

You walk past a shop and see an expensive item of clothing. You really love it, but you recently promised yourself that you would be better at saving money this term.

A – Walk past it and forget about it; your wardrobe is already full, and you just can’t afford to buy it

B – Take a picture of it and try to find a cheaper version online

C – Buy it before you can think of another reason not to

You have an essay due tomorrow on a topic that you don’t really understand, but your college is having a bop tonight that you’ve been really looking forward to.

A – Spend the night reading and writing a well thought out essay and don’t go to the bop

B – Write the essay as fast as humanly pos sible and then go to the bop

C – Just go to the bop, who cares about essays anyway?

After a long day of lectures, you come home to find your housemate’s annoying friend has come over again, and they have just criticised you for the last time!

A – Ask your housemate to tell their friend to be nicer

B – Fire back with the most devastatingly rude insult you can think of C – Hit them

Your friend excitedly tells you that they’re going on a date later this week, but you know the person that asked them out is nothing but trouble!

A – Put together a presentation and per suade them not to go

B – Tell them what you know about their date and let them make their own mind up

C – Let them go on the date – what’s the worst that could happen?!

You find out that your housemates are in a relationship, and you’re worried about how this will affect the atmosphere within the house.

A – Leave them to it and hope it fizzles out

B – Have a serious talk with them about your concerns

C – Move out

Mostly As Being a calmer and more rational person than I could ever be, you’d be most suited to calming shades of blue and green. Jeans and denim jackets have practically never not been in style, and brands like Zara and Bottega Veneta have brought out masses of green items in their recent collections.

Mostly Bs

You’re an optimist who’s willing to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Bright yellows, pinks and reds are a perfect match to your sunny disposition. Chanel and Fer ragamo used a range of reds and terracotta tones in their Spring 2023 collections, so it seems that cheerful, rose-tinted fashion could be making a comeback.

Mostly Cs

You picked the craziest, most dramatic, and most fun options. To continue this theme into your outfits, why not opt for deep, jewel toned clothes to express your fiery person ality? Miu Miu and Stella McCartney used a range of burgundy and deep purple tones in their collections last year, and these shades are perfect to wear as Winter approaches.

Apparently

you can’t matriculate twice. The moment I accepted university membership as an undergraduate fresher, three years ago, I was irreversibly matriculated. There appears to be nothing planned for the graduate fresher returning to Oxford, except maybe trying to get their forever Oxonian hands on post-matricula tion brunch. It may be only fitting that this is the case; as a first-year master’s student, I may be a two-time fresher, but stepping into my second fresher’s college room, I do not feel at all the unsuspecting excitement I felt three years ago.

Three years ago, back when such things mattered, I was delighted to find out my room was in the historic main site of my college, overlooking Broad Street. I lucked out big time; the en-suite room was actu ally two rooms, one the bedroom and the other a study room, with a desk, a coffee table and some quite cosy chairs. I went to Whittard’s to buy a teapot and started hoarding mugs and teabags, picturing my self hosting conversation-filled afternoons with future friends and forgetting how quiet and coffee-drinking I could be. The absence of a fridge or nearby self-catering facilities, except for the crusty JCR kitchen across the quad, didn’t bother me just yet. Nor did the placement of the radiator right next to my bed, which eventually led to waking up to the occasional scalding jolt overnight.

I wouldn’t go back to it, but living in a tra ditional, central college room had its perks. I was close enough to most lunch spots to bring still-hot takeaways (A Taste of China, in the Covered Market) to my room during crowded times. I was surrounded by fel low first-year undergrads, and I could walk into the chapel or the 24/7 college library at any time of the day without worrying about going out after dark. I felt deeply the fascinating gap between this historic Ox ford room, sponsored and once inhabited by so-and-so, and my usual ultra-modern habitat in Korea, and turned it into a source of inspiration and impressively unrelenting motivation – motivation that helped me survive 4pm sunsets and the harrowing experience of speed reading Middlemarch and Bleak House.

The Victorians and the radiator’s attempts

at assassination by bedside slow roasting now a distant and too-warm memory, I am once again fresher and settling into another college-provided room, this time at a mod ern block in Cowley. I know the drill: I greet familiar faces at the lodge before collecting my key, give Royal Cars a ring and arrive with the appropriate bedding (single bed sheet, duvet cover, two pillowcases). My boyfriend, whom I met in my third under graduate year, helps me bring boxes over from the storage facility at Botley – no more bursting into tears in the middle of Corn market Street while carrying a mini fridge across town without anyone I knew enough to ask for help.

The room is a nice, standard student room, the kind I am now all too familiar with. Single bed, reasonably wide desk and noticeboard. Tiny bedside cabinet that might use a lamp that I’m thinking of getting from Amazon. I’m not loving the limited view my window offers, but know I will be grateful for it come Trinity term, when blue-skied, big windows will turn rooms into greenhouses. The ensuite bathroom is inexplicably big, with no cupboard and a shower with intensely pow erful water pressure, but I now know not to ask too many questions. It is a bit removed from central Oxford, though cycling is still off the table – I decide to commit some of fresher’s week to familiarising myself with Cowley and the Oxford Bus Company.

Standing among my suitcases and the reasonably-nice-and-reasonably-strangeness, scattered all over this new room, I feel a bit weird. I’m not sure if I should be looking for a sense of continuity or a new start. Some friends are still here, having taken a year off or doing a four-year degree; others have left university and rented rooms elsewhere, probably London. I am in Oxford, and this is my fourth student room here – I find this both comforting and unnerving. I might be irreversibly Oxonian, according to university rules, but I couldn’t really tell you what my status as a person mostly resident in Oxford is, to be honest. I wonder if, after my masters, I will ever get a fifth student room as a three-time fresher. May that one have more reasonable water pressure. And be nearer to a library.

By Coral Kim

Columns

Columns

Feeding your Flat with Nina HolguinVegetable Paella

Serves 4

gette and green bean slices until the courgette browns a bit. Remove the veg and set aside in a bowl.

Ilearnt

how to make paella in Salamanca four years ago, and it has become a firm favourite with my friends and family ever since. I adapted the meat recipe for this vegan one, which has proved popular with my meat free friends! Paella can seem a bit daunting, but as long as you take your time with the rice cooking at the end, it’s a simple one pot dish. Paella is drier than risottos, so be careful not to add too much water when it is almost cooked.

Equipment:

A hob

A wide bottomed pan

Ingredients:

1 large onion

6 cloves of garlic

1 courgette

1 pepper

A handful of mushrooms

2 tomatoes

A handful of frozen peas

A handful of green beans

300-400g paella rice depending on hunger (You can find this in Tesco! Normally it is next to the risotto/arborio rice, which is a good substitute if you are struggling to find it)

400ml vegetable GF stock

A pinch of saffron

2 teaspoons paprika

A pinch of turmeric (for colour, option al)

20ml boiling water

Salt and pepper

Lots of olive oil!

Lemons and fresh chopped flat leaf parsley to serve (optional)

Method:

1) Chop the onion, pepper, mushrooms, and tomatoes into small 1cm pieces. Dice the garlic. Chop the courgette into half-moon slices and the green beans into 2cm pieces.

2) In the pan with some oil, fry the cour

3)

Put 20ml of the boiling water and the saffron into a mug or small glass.

4) In the pan, add more oil and fry the onion, garlic and one teaspoon of the paprika until soft.

5) Add the chopped pepper and mushroom and fry till they are softer but still firm. Add the chopped tomato and fry until the tomatoes are cooked until soft.

6) Add the remaining paprika and the tur meric (if using) into the pan. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

7) Add the courgette and green beans back into the pan and mix.

8) Add the rice to the pan and fry for a couple of minutes. If it looks like it needs more liquid in this time or it is sticking too much add more oil!

9) Add the saffron water into the pan, mak ing sure all of the strands are not left into the pan. Add some of the vegetable stock until the rice looks wet.

10) On a medium heat, occasionally stir the paella and add stock whenever the rice has absorbed all the water. Tip: it’s totally okay for the rice to get a bit stuck to the bottom! There’s a Spanish word for it: socarrat. It’s supposed to give flavour.

11) After 25 minutes, taste the rice to see if it is fully cooked through. Just before it is fully cooked, add the peas into the pan and stir in.

12) Once fully cooked, serve with a wedge of lemon and fresh parsley.

Susie Barrows, Jonah Poulard

Duoya Li, Coral Kim

Entertainment

CW – suicide, abuse, violence

Spoiler warning!

My expectations going in to see Don’t Worry Dar ling were not particularly high. I was expecting it to be awful, but hoping it would at least be aw ful in an entertaining way rather than just being rubbish and dull. It was somehow both better and worse than I expected.

It’s difficult to talk about this movie without spoiling it, so, spoiler warning: the idyllic 1950s town that the charac ters inhabit is revealed to actually be a computer simulation designed by the town’s leader Frank (Chris Pine) where modern-day men kidnap women and insert them into the simulation as their wives, leav ing the women’s physical selves entirely in the care of the men who have kid napped them while they exist in the simula tion unaware of what’s really go ing on.

The movie implies that something is amiss through Kiki Layne’s character Marga ret, whose questioning of the real purpose of the town and subsequent gaslighting by the men around her drives her to suicide, which Alice (Flor ence Pugh) witnesses, starting her on a path to discovering the truth.

There were definitely some things to like about this movie –ma inly Florence Pugh and Chris Pine, who gave fantastic performances. I wish they’d had more scenes together to give Pugh someone to really play off rather than acting in spite of the brick wall of a scene partner that is Harry Styles (more on

I Worried, Darling: Don’t Worry Darling Review

Eliza Niblett

him later!). Gemma Chan (as Frank’s supportive-turned-ran domly-murderous wife, Shel ley) and Kiki Layne were also wonderful but drastically un derutilised, especially consider ing how interesting both their characters had the potential to be. Visually, the film was stun ning, with the gorgeous 1950s aesthetics contrasting the town’s desert setting beauti fully, as well as including some unsettling dreamlike sequences that are revealed to be linked to the process of log

desired. The reveal comes too late, and it doesn’t get explored in a way that feels satisfying or really builds upon anything we’ve seen before that uses the same plot point. It feels like it was ultimately set up to be a cheap horrifying twist, at the expense of doing anything actu ally interesting with it or pro viding any real critique of incel culture past ‘misogyny bad’. It also makes Olivia Wilde’s comments about her feminist female-pleasure-centred sex scenes sound

from Don’t Worry Darling feel ing somewhat cheated.

The other problem with this film aside from its lacklustre ex ecution of a promising concept is its leading man: Harry Styles. He just cannot act. He simply reads the lines with some de gree of appropriate emotion in an accent that I think was meant to be his natural British but keeps bizarrely lapsing into American. The preview scene released where Jack is arguing with Alice that was met with much criticism of his perfor mance is pretty representative of how he is throughout the movie. When that scene came on the entire cinema burst out laughing, which hap pened again several times whenever he attempted to con vey a strong emo tion. And don’t even get me started on his overly long and utterly weird dance sequence! The role of

Jack need ed an actor that could do subtlety and give his character an inner life.

Harry Styles mainly did shouting.

film seemed preoc cupied by its own aesthetics –it could have got to the point much quicker if we didn’t have to sit through so many admit tedly gorgeous show-off shots that did very little to advance the plot.

I found the computer simula tion concept fascinating, but the execution left much to be

and offensive, considering every one of those sex scenes turns out to be nonconsensual on the part of the woman. Ultimately, the ‘trapped in a computer simulation’ plot has already been done, and bet ter, particularly in the Black Mirror episode ‘USS Callister’ which explores similar themes of women’s agency and is well worth a watch if you come away

Ultimately, this film falls apart the moment you start to think about it. An audi ence member who spends more than 30 seconds think ing about this film will be left with many unanswered ques tions, such as: What was up with that plane crash? Why did Shelley stab her husband out of nowhere? Why was Olivia Wilde’s character even in this film? Why did they cut most of Kiki Layne’s scenes? Did Harry Styles really spit on Chris Pine?

First Look from Venice Film Festival

Directed by Todd Field. Starring Cate Blanchett, Nina Hoss, Noémie Merlant, Mark Strong.

I n the midst of all the cheers and jeers at this year’s Venice Film Festival – now in its 79th iteration – ‘Tar’, the latest film from Todd Field in 16 years, has emerged as a film as close to a unanimous critical and audience favorite as one can. No surprise here, as Field has weaved to gether a profound and deeply sensitive piece on the fragility of success that is as calculating and meticulously crafted as a delicate doll house. He presents a sin gular creative vision, unmarred and uncompromising in its fas tidious execution. It demands unwavering attention from its audience and captures it with throat-squeezing intensity as he slowly conducts a crescendo of tension, mystique and control to its rousing, pulsating finale.

I n Tar, Cate Blanchett gives a performance of a lifetime as the titular character, the principal conductor of a world-class Ger man orchestra in Berlin. She is widely celebrated for her ingenu ity and talent, living a jet-setting life of luxury and fame, obscured

from the world’s problems. As we follow her various endeavors at the apex of her career, from her preparation for a live-recording of Mahler’s fifth symphony, to the release of her autobiography, the aptly titled Tar on Tar, we start to slowly detect the cracks in her austere façade, and the walls of duplicity she has carefully con structed around her seemingly immaculate world. Along the way, she has to deal with the danger ous obsession of a former men tee, the pestering of Elliot Kaplan (played by Mark Strong), a parttime conductor whom she has founded a fellowship to promote aspiring female conductors with and the arrival of a new, imperti nent and prepossessing Russian cellist in the orchestra, all with a sense of menace and dread lurk ing in the background amplified by abrupt but spellbinding se quences of dreams, illusions and distortedmemories.

Tar unfolds like a puzzle with dis parate storylines and disparate relationships. How Field slowly glues the pieces together over its protracted runtime is an act of patience and subtlety. He lets his scenes play out, sometimes longer than necessary, to give au diences the space to absorb every

minute detail presented and to allow his actors the maximum expanse for their performances.

Blanchett, in a masterful exercise of emotional control, presents an aura of elegance, authority and high-society hubris, but of fers just the right amount of in consistency to reveal the buried insecurity, paranoia and under stated anger in the character. In her performance, the passionate and the fearful coexist, swaying the character from the likeable to the abhorrent. The support ing cast is also top-notch, with Nina Hoss and Noemie Merlant giving standout performances as Tar’s partner/concertmaster, and her assistant respectively. Aided by studious cinematogra phy from Florian Hoffmeisteren and an engrossing score by Hildur Guðnadóttir, this is an exemplary showcase of cinematic craftsman ship.

The film is replete with sensa tional set pieces, not least of all its expertly staged opening scene. In an onstage interview with the real-life New Yorker’s Adam Go pnik, we are introduced to all we needed to know about Tar’s background, achievements and personality, all through an en

The Banshees of Insherin - Review: 8/10

and irreverent screenplay.

Directed by Martin McDonaugh. Starring Colin Farrell, Brendon Gleeson, Barry Keoghan

Two friends living on a distant, desolate island off the coast of Ireland ends their friendship one day and entangle themselves in an incessant and depressing feud over why their friendship ended. If you think this plot is too simple, banal and uneventful for a feature film, then Martin McDonaugh’s latest black comedy-drama ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ is setting out to prove you wrong.

Very much in the veins of ‘In Bru ges’, McDonaugh’s 2008 sharp and acerbic crime comedy, ‘Banshees’ is a return to Farrell and Gleeson, to the witty dialogue and tonguein-cheek wordplay, and to the hi larious banter. This film is replete with a lot of fecking Irish banter, but it is the banter that gives the film its heart and soul; that is, Mc Donaugh’s caustic, penetrating

Colin Farrell plays Pádraic Súil leabháin, a simple man who lives a monotonous life of tending to his animals, drinking at the pub, frolicking and arguing with his sister and repeat. His dullness defines him and is apparently the explanation for all that ensues. One day, he finds his disgruntled friend Colm Doherty at the pub, played by Brendon Gleeson, who has abruptly decided to cease his relationship with Pádraic, and is so committed to do so that he is willing to resort to self-mutilation. Bewildered and angered by Colm, Pádraic equally devotes himself to the frustration of Colm’s com mitment, as their animosity quick turns from trading abrasive insults to blood-shattering violence.

Farrell shines as the lonesome Pádraic. As McDonaugh likes to repeatedly point out, there is seemingly nothing interesting about this character (aside from his name which he finds blatantly

uninteresting). It is a testament to Farrell’s acting that he makes Pád raic interesting, imbuing him with intense, earnest and exhaustive sense of despair and heartache as he plays out the complete collapse of a man’s purpose, self-worth and ultimately sanity. Meanwhile, Gleeson sells the stubbornness of his character convincingly, reveal ing the solitude and melancholy of a bitter men who has sorrowfully watched the world and time go by and realized the fleeting nature of his own life. In supporting roles are Barry Keoghan and Kerry Condon, both of which deliver respectable performances as the ‘clown of the town’ Dominic and Pádraic’s sister Siobhan that shine a light to the inanity of McDonaugh’s world. The donkey also deserves a shoutout.

There are visual filmmakers, and there are literary ones. There seems to be little doubt that Mc Donaugh falls into the latter camp. His dialogues are his forte, fitting for a playwright, and is what saves ‘Banshees’ from being a tedious,

thralling conversation between the two. Another scene where Tar guest-lectures at Julliard and berates a BIPOC pangender stu dent for expressing a distaste for Bach is also a highlight, featuring some of the sharpest writings and strongest acting on film in recent memory that thoroughly captures the patronizing disposition of the titular character.

Field is not offering definitive messages here, nor is he prone to melodrama. The open-ended epi logue is a testament to that. He is not interested in pleasing the audience, or to provoke certain feelings of empathy and antipa thy in them. This may lend the film a layer of aloofness, aug mented by a high-brow subject matter that can leave viewers cold and unmoved. Many may proclaim to admire the film but find it hard to love. There is much veracity in those assess ments. Yet, Tar is razor-focused in depicting the rise and fall of a great contemporary artist, a celebrity, an icon, a success story, a human being. In doing so, it cements Field as a watch ful observer of the cultural discourse of our times, and a documentarian of the polariz ing and conflict-ridden society that we inhabit, filled with an

antagonistic media, antagonistic politics, and antagonistic human relationships.

At its core, Tar is a slow-burn, multilayered and transfixing character study. It is about the glorification of artistic license and the indictment of cancel culture. It is about cruelty and emotional violence. It is about the loss of our capacity to empathize and to communicate. More importantly, it is about our innate ability to reinvent and revive. The destina tion of the film is secondary, but like the whirlwind nature of life, it is the journey of downfall and

exasperating ‘chamber piece’, filled with deeply irritating and unlikeable characters. Yet, McDo naugh manages to capture surpris ingly sweeping, if not particularly inspiring, visuals, aided by Ben Davis’ lush cinematography of the Emerald Isle (that is Emerald with a big capital E). The loughs, the cliffs and the hillsides provide a rugged and secluded backdrop to the unraveling of the friendship and the violence that follows, ac centuating and aggravating the isolation of these broken, dreary men.

The Irishiness is proudly on full display, from the Guinness to the ‘craic’ at the local pub, but what’s most Irish is its honest, brutal and incisive commentary on the ludi crous, nonsensical, and pointless nature of the never-ending civil conflicts that have plagued the country. More importantly, it is a biting satire about the loss of civility, the toxicity of men and the fragility of peace, all of which are solemnly tragic and univer

sally understood (or as history has repeatedly shown us, mis understood).

As much as ‘Banshees’ explores these weighty themes, its plot and setting limit its ambitions and con strain it to its smallness and stagi ness. It’s a double-edged sword, ensuring that the film is easy to digest but hard to impress. There is nothing too boundary-pushing, awe-inspiring or cinematically ingenuous. Nonetheless, it is a refreshing viewing experience, and stands apart from most of the late-season movie offerings for its originality. Indeed, ‘Banshees’ is so full of absurdity, of irony, of extremities and polarizations, that supposedly the funniest film of the year is also, in reality, one of the saddest. And that in itself is a small act of brilliance.

‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ will be released on October 21st in the United Kingdom.

Editors: Jonah Poulard, Nina Holguin, Duoya Li oxstu.food@gmail.com

Gloucester Green an introduction to Oxford’s best food market

Nina Holguin

One of the best food places in Oxford has to be Gloucester Green. It’s an international food market open Wednesday to Saturday, selling anything from souvlaki to bao, pasta to curry.

It’s a great place to escape college life for a lunchtime, some delicious food and socialise.

I should mention however, before anyone gets the wrong impression, it’s no hidden gem of Oxford, in fact often it is very busy. Nor should you be expecting a cheap lunch.

Generally, lunches here range from £5-10, so I would say most people count it as a treat rather than a regular occurrence.

As I live in Worcester, I do have my favourites, but you’ll have to bear with me, as I never remember the names of the stalls. The Mexi can place is delicious, though small portions and the waiting time is often one of the longest in the mar

ket. In general, I think Oxford is lacking a proper Mexican restau rant, and this is the closest I seem to be able to get to it. There’s a new Korean stall that sells cupbap and bibimbap, which I have only man aged to go to once but was exceed ingly tasty (and surprisingly filling, which is sometimes lacking from the other stalls). All of the numer ous pad thai stalls are great, but as it’s very popular it’s frequently a bit of a wait, so don’t expect to be ready for you in a rush.

One of the most popular places is the Asian snack place, always one of the last (or first, depend ing on your walking direction) stalls, but normally you can spot it by the red lanterns and the ex tremely large queue. Don’t fear though, they serve very quickly so you don’t have to wait awhile. Of course, it’s tasty, but one of its main charms is the £1.50 bao buns and other snacks that range between

Cocktail Time

Where it all began

Jonah Poulard

Helloand welcome to a brand new (hopefully weekly) column focussing in on a different cocktail every week.

In this inaugural edition, it seems only fitting that we commence with the most clas sic of classic cocktails, the oldest of the old, the true es sence of what it is to be a cocktail: the Old Fashioned.

Many of you may have heard of this drink, be it from Mad Men or not, and may know its lofty sta tus as ‘the first ever cocktail’.

The first definition of ‘cocktail’ appeared in 1806 in a magazine called The Balance and Colum bian Repository, saying it is a ‘potent concoction’ of spirits, bitters, water, sugar. Think of al most any cocktail, and these four elements will be there.

If we take a look

ents of the OF (as known amongst the aficionados), we see that the simple mix of whiskey (with an e as usually

gostura bitters, a sugar cube and ice shows that the primitive 1806 definition of the

£1-£2 that fill you up for under a fiver. However, Pie Minister have recently set up a stall that sells pie and gravy for £5 as well, so if you’re feeling like some pastry, as a Northerner I always am, you can satisfy your cravings without breaking the bank too much.

I think one of the beautiful things

spent Gloucester Green visit is one with friends and family, trying new foods you’ve never had before. I would definitely recommend head ing down at some point to explore the varying options while also browsing the secondhand clothes and nick-nacks stalls; it’s a lunch time well spent.

These days, the Old Fashioned has retained its long-standing popularity, a drink for both the Don Drapers of the world, the wannabe hipsters and everyone in between.

It promotes a suave, confident image when in the right hands, and a braggadocious or pathet ic need to show off in others. Either way, it is delicious.

This is my way of making it, but it is by no means the only way.

First, in a short ‘rocks’ glass place a sugar cube and soak in 3 dashes of Angostura bitters and 2 dashes of orange bitters (I like Regan’s). Add a splash of soda water and muddle to dis solve the sugar.

Then the important part, add a generous pour of around 60ml of a nice high proof Bour bon and place a fair bit of ice in the glass.

Stir for around 15-20s. Re member, with ice the bigger the better: dilutes slower, looks cooler.

Garnish with both an orange and lemon twist, aka ‘bunny ears’ and enjoy.

Here’s one I made earlier (fig. 1), but when I had run out of lemons.

Try it for yourself, order it at a bar, buy nice whiskey only to waste it on pres, it’s your choice.

Cheers!

Image credit: Jonah Poulard

Editor: Emily Hudson oxstu.science@gmail.com

SciTech

Playing cosmic billiards: NASA “DART” probe smashes into asteroid

For most space scientists, the thought of their satel lite smashing into an aster oid would make them recoil. But when NASA’s DART probe did ex actly that shortly after midnight on Tuesday, scientists around the globe celebrated their success.

The DART probe wasn’t just any satellite. About the size of a large refrigerator—although somewhat more expensive at £300 million— it has spent the last ten months in space, travelling towards its distant target, Dimorphos. Dimor phos is a small moon, or moon let, orbiting the larger asteroid Didymos. As celestial bodies go, it was relatively inconspicuous and even nameless until two years ago, when it was selected as the first asteroid to be redirected by human intervention. The asteroid itself doesn’t pose any threat to humanity: its trajectory will never bring it close enough to Earth for it to collide with us. Rather, it is the subject of an experiment to assess if asteroids can be deflected in case one should ever threaten Earth.

The thought of asteroids smash ing into our planet and destroying life as we know it has captivated humans for a long time—nobody wants to share the same fate as the dinosaurs. As NASA spokesperson

Glen Nagle put it, “all they could do is look up and go, ‘Oh, aster oid’ [...] we want to have a better chance.” Films have depicted a variety of potential solutions for a celestial body heading our way, most of which involve blowing up the offending asteroid. Rather than blowing up Dimorphos, the DART, or double asteroid redi rection test, involved more of a well-placed nudge. The aim of the collision between the DART probe and Dimorphos was to just change the asteroid’s trajectory slightly— still a daunting task given its size: Dimorphos is about 160 metres in diameter, the size of 1.5 football fields, and is estimated to weigh around 5 thousand tonnes. In com parison, DART is tiny, and weighs only half a tonne. So how can such a light spacecraft shift the orbit of such a large asteroid?

The method of deflection is known as “kinetic impact” and is based on DART transferring both its kinetic energy and its momen tum to Dimorphos on impact. A fast-moving spacecraft possesses a lot of energy, and as DART was moving at around 20 thousand kilometres per hour, over 10 bil lion joules were transferred to Dimorphos at the time of impact. When DART hit Dimorphos, all

this energy led to a crater being formed and matter from the as teroid being blasted out into space. This ejection of material from the crater pushed the asteroid in the opposite direction, further helping to alter its orbit.

All being said and done, the change in Dimorphos’ orbit is still small: it currently takes the asteroid just under 12 hours to orbit the larger asteroid Didymos, and it’s thought that after DART’s impact, it will circle Didymos only a few minutes faster than before. With the deflection of the target being so small, any mission to knock an asteroid on a potential collision course with Earth out of the way would thus have to be done several years in advance for it to work. This project is therefore only one part of the international space community’s efforts to pro tect Earth from asteroids. Both the European Space Agency and NASA track and analyse asteroids that are considered to be close to Earth’s orbit, and reassuringly, none of the big ones are set to collide with Earth in the next mil lennium or so. Nonetheless, small asteroids can also cause substan tial damage. A meteorite around 20 metres in diameter exploded in the atmosphere above Russia in

2013 and caused a shock wave that injured over a thousand people, mainly from shattered glass and collapsing walls.

Such events, although scary, are relatively rare. The publicity around the DART mission has therefore sparked some debate, as scientists argue that the threat posed to humanity by climate change is far greater and more likely compared to that posed by Earth-bound asteroids. The par allels with the film Don’t Look Up, a climate change denial sat ire released only last year, are indeed quite striking. In the film, the imminent danger posed by an asteroid hurtling towards Earth is mostly ignored, until someone discovers a way to financially profit from it. Meanwhile, in the real world, it seems to some sci entists as though the imminent danger posed by climate change is mostly ignored while deflecting asteroids receives large amounts of funding.

Despite the criticism, the DART mission is set to benefit the sci entific community in other ways besides the potential Earth-saving applications. Images of the impact recorded on DART’s travel com panion and photographer, the Italian Space Agency’s LiciaCube,

Switching to renewables could save trillions, new study finds

Emily HUDSON

and on ground-based telescopes will provide data on the amount of dust released from Dimorphos. The dust cloud will depend on the type of rock Dimorphos is made of, enabling the researchers to learn more about asteroids.

Over the next few weeks, scien tists will be monitoring the aster oid from Earth to see if Dimorphos’ orbit has indeed changed. But in NASA’s eyes, the mission is already a success—it has nudged the con cept of defending our planet against asteroids out of the realm of Hollywood and solidly into real life.

Switching

from fossil fuel en ergy to renewable energy sources could save trillions, a recent report involving the Uni versity of Oxford has found. Fur thermore, the faster we make the switch, the more money we will save. This study, first published on journal Joule on 13th September this year, used a probabilistic mod elling technique which predicts how the cost of renewable energy technologies will decrease over time, using the evolution in cost of over 50 other technologies to test the model. This estimate predicts trillions in savings, with out accounting for the savings from avoiding further climate disasters.

The basis for doing this study is that generally, as technologies develop, they become cheaper to produce, more efficient at what

they do, and become far more widespread. We have seen this in our own generation with the evolution of smartphones from bourgeois gadget to everyday essential. In the past, forecasts have underestimated the rates at which renewable technologies are used (deployed) and overes timated the costs, which led to calls for more reliable forecast ing methods, such as the one de veloped during this study.

The switch to renewables has hitherto been put forward as the “right” thing to do, rather than the “cheaper” option. The former uses moral argument, the latter pragmatism. In this way, this study changes the game, because not only does it make moral sense to make this switch, but business sense too. The arguments against going green are dwindling, much like our oil supplies. This study

enables activists and legislators to talk to energy companies in their own language: put simply, switching to renewable energy is the savvy thing to do.

In fact, previous estimates have put the cost of this energy switch to be large (Philip Hammond’s report to the government in 2019 estimated over £1 trillion) which has made climate policy mildly unpopular and dissuaded governments from taking action, the study points out. To contrast, by switching to renewables, the report estimates up to 12 tril lion dollars in savings by 2050, if the change is made very quickly, with this value decreasing with increased transition time. These predictions are based on the cur rent rate of about 10% per year

decrease in price for solar energy, as well as a host of other factors.

These prices are predicted in a different way to fossil fuel sources of energy because unlike oil and gas, solar and wind power are not tradeable commodities.

Also included in the study were predictions for the cost of batter ies. One of the main challenges facing a switch to net-zero re newables is in finding a way to make a constant, stable electricity supply out of the unpredictable weather. This pushes research ers, naturally, into energy stor age solutions that can be dipped into when more power is needed than is being generated. Already, renewables act as a support for the national grid during peak times (and about 43% overall of our grid

in 2022), but this switch would place renewables at the forefront. Currently, battery technology relies largely on chemicals such as Lithium which involve intensive mining to extract, generally under poor working conditions. Strides are being made to decouple en ergy storage from exploitation of earth’s resources in an sustainable way to build a stronger, kinder energy supply system. Accord ing to this new model, the cost of batteries decreases in a similar fashion to that of solar cells: all the renewable technologies con sidered follow almost the exact same pattern. This should be no surprise: many of them have been developing over a similar time scale. As developments in battery technology complement and com pound on savings made by cheaper wind and solar power, this huge figure of 12 trillion is not so in sane after all, and is in fact quite promising for our future.

Nicole HASLER

Editors: Milo Dennison (senior); Ka tie Hulett, Siddiq Islam (section). oxstu.green@gmail.com

Green

Great British Energy = Green British Energy?

Lastmonth’s Labour Party Conference saw Sir Keir Starmer unveil a radically transformative new energy policy, aiming to nationalise Britain’s en ergy supply. If elected, a Labour government would introduce a national energy firm called Great British Energy. This policy comes at a critical moment whereby con sumers are met with great conflict; alarming and often unaffordable increases in their energy bills on one hand, and an increasingly ur gent focus on the climate and sus tainability on the other. This policy could therefore be hugely signifi cant for the UK’s energy landscape, but what will the implications be for the climate, and what lessons can be learnt from other national energy firms?

A key distinction to consider when contemplating Great Brit ish Energy is that it is designed to act as a competitor alongside the incumbent market, providing ad

Why the Rainy Country can

by Siddiq Islam

ditional capacity, rather than sim ply aiming to nationalise energy supplies. Similarities can therefore be drawn with companies like the Swedish Vattenfall or French EDF, given that both operate as state owned companies but compete in a liberalised energy market against private firms. In fact, the UK is currently an outlier in not having a state owned power com pany, whereas the vast majority of large European countries do. The importance of a state-owned energy firm to a country like the UK can be difficult to determine, particularly in terms of ensuring that Britain has green energy. Currently,the UK has the largest pipeline in the world for offshore wind farm projects, outcompeting everywhere but China in capac ity Analysts point out that Britain is currently flooded with invest ment in solar and wind power and private investors are begin ning to realise the importance of

renewable energy, suggesting that investment in green energy isn’t a bottleneck for expanding infra structure and capacity. In fact, it’s predicted that by 2030 wind and solar together should make up 70 to 80% of the UK’s electricity generation. What then is the importance of Great British Energy to the envi ronment? It comes in those final few percentage points, which must be converted to renewable energy sources if Britain is to truly have completely renewable energy. To achieve this, higher risk invest ment opportunities may have to be operationalised , including tidal, hydrogen and nuclear. Whether this is because they are emerg ing undeveloped technologies or simply difficult to finance due to their scale, these technologies are far less desirable to private inves tors and require a much higher risk appetite.

This is where Great British Energy

Britonsbathe in their ha tred for the rain. It rains so bloody much that it is a well-established part of British culture to complain about it. Every time I return from a sunny holiday abroad, the English heavens seem to open up to greet me. So for many it will have come as a surprise to see drought in our wet, wet home nations over the summer. When usually we ache for prolonged spells of dry weather, we now must pray for prolonged showers to help reverse the

Some of us will recall feeling shocked when a hosepipe ban was enforced in 2012 for two months. For many of us this was the first time as kids we realised that the UK could expe rience drought. Back then, though, it was a freak occurrence, some unlikely special event, just

by Milo Dennison

could come in. As a state-owned business, it would have a much higher risk tolerance than pro jects funded by private inves tors can realistically have. This would enable it to invest in the kind of projects that are needed to complete Britain’s transition to renewable energy. In the process this would build Britain up as a world leader, or as Starmer put it a “superpower”, in renewable energy sources. The importance of this is hard to overstate: as a result of its skill in nuclear power, EDF has a massive international business in it, controlling all five currently operating UK nuclear power stations. Starmer’s hope is that one day Great British En ergy could have the same market presence but for renewable tech nologies, extending Britain’s reach worldwide.

All this is certainly ambitious, but with many political and practical issues still unresolved, the time

like the Olympic games that year.

Ten years later, we once again find ourselves turning off hoses to save our rivers and ponds, but this time it comes against the backdrop of a global climate crisis and the whole of Europe simultaneously expe riencing droughts and wildfires. What we have faced this year is called a meteorological drought, meaning it is caused by the lack of rain we have received recently. Last winter was the driest since 1976 (the most famous drought year in the UK), and July 2022 was the driest July in England since 1935, according to the Met Office. Given it’s autumn now, it would be reasonable to presume the drought is over. Drought is strictly a sum mer thing, right? Unfortunately not: whilst some life has returned to the grass in our local parks, re cent rains have done little to refill most rivers and reservoirs. Much of the country (including Oxford) remains under a hosepipe ban as we enter October, and if water us age is not controlled through the winter, the water shortages will continue into 2023. Whilst hosepipe bans wash a tenth off of our water demand, far more water is lost to leaks in pipes across the country. Billions of litres are

may be challenging. He plans to launch the company within his first year of government, yet this urgency is vital. Action on the cli mate must happen fast and Great British Energy has the potential to position Britain at the forefront of the green energy revolution and hence the fight against climate change. Policies like this will not only help the environment but also help Britain take advantage of the huge investment opportuni ties that renewable technologies present.

Image credits: Yii-Jen Deng

leaked each day. Factories such as the Beckton desalination plant in East London (which could supply drinkable water to a million Lon doners daily, if actually switched on) can help the situation, but it is clear that much more infrastruc ture must be put in place if drought is to become a more common state in the UK.

Our perception of Britain as wet and miserable is why we remain deluded about the reality of drought in this country. Too often the British sit at home thinking that floods are for Asia, droughts are for Africa, and wildfires are for America, but as the climate crisis worsens and extreme weather be comes more common all over the globe, the effects of global warming will inevitably reach even this iso lated island. As we continue to heat the planet, droughts will become more commonplace, alongside extreme rainfall – which, as this summer has shown us, does not immediately counteract the effects. As difficult as it is to believe, Britain becomes ever more likely to start running out of water.

OXYOU

Editors: Milo Dennison, Susie Barrows

The you’refreshers guaranteed tomeet in Oxford

Milo DENNISON

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an Oxford student, in possession of a freshers’ week, must be in want of new friends, but to find them you’re going to have to work your way through some odd characters. We’ve put together a handy guide to help you spot five of the most common specimens. Just make sure, whatever you do, that you don’t become one of these.

The one who doesn’t seem to exist

We all know one of these. Back on the group chat they seemed to dominate the conversa tion, suggesting all sorts of plans for when you arrived in Oxford and sending a million messages at all hours of the day. But now that you’ve got here, they don’t seem to really ex ist. You thought you once saw them ducking into a room somewhere in the depths of your accommodation, but you haven’t seem them since and there seems to be a mound of dust accumulating on what you took for their door handle. They’ll invariably appear for one club night halfway through freshers week before retreating into the woodwork again.

The one who applied as a joke Unless you’re at Merton, you’ll definitely run across someone who’s just a little too keen to let you know that they put down Oxford on their UCAS “just for fun”. They’ll tell you how surprised they were to get in, since they put in absolutely NO work on their applica tion, and how they’re sure they were let in by accident. Inevitably they’ll then end up get ting a first in every essay from now until they graduate: just ignore them.

The one who asks what school you went to Everyone tries to make awkward conversation in freshers week, whether it be asking people whereabouts they’re from or the infamous “what A-levels did you study” question. But there’s always one who’ll approach you with slightly greasy hair and a blue linen shirt on (normally from Ralph Lauren) who’ll launch straight in with the “what school did you go to?”. You reply that they probably wouldn’t have heard of it, and before you’ve even been able to ask them back they’re obnoxiously telling you that they were at Radley. The only response is, “Oh I haven’t heard of it”.

The one who’s having an essay crisis already The first time you notice this one will be when they put a vaguely panicked messaged in your subject group chat asking whether the four teen books they’ve read are enough followed by several crying emojis. Then you won’t see them again until you’re getting a tour around your college library, where you’ll find them tucked away in some dark nook on the verge of tears with papers strewn all over the desk.

It’s normal to worry about your first essay, but avoid these people at all costs: you’re meant to enjoy freshers week, you’ve got eight weeks after it to cry about work.

The one who’s just got back from a gap yah Does your college have a fresher who looks just a little bit too old and has a question able fashion sense? Do they talk about how they’ve recently discovered themselves and are now intensely spiritual? Have they got a dodgy looking tapestry hanging up in their room? If so, you’ve got a gap yah studentour apologies. Having been funded on their jaunt around South America by mummy and daddy, these freshers will regale you with slightly too fanciful stories of their travels, all in the most horrendously private school accent you’ve ever heard.

AGUIDE TO CLUBBING IN OXFORD

Susie Barrows

It’s your first term in Oxford, and with that comes many nights spent picking up god knows what on the soles of your shoes from sticky dance floors and getting a little too comfortable around people you met three days ago. But never fear, OxStu is here to provide a full and coherent guide to help you make informed decisions about where exactly to spend these memorable (or not) hours. So sink your last double vodka coke as the college bartender shouts at you to leave because it’s already 11:07 and the bar has to shut at 11, and come along for a journey through the locations of the best and worst nights you will ever have in Oxford.

Atik/Park End

Yes, they’re the same place. The main floor will have you trying desperately to bop to a slightly random 2010s pop song that isn’t quite right because the DJ has a god complex about his ‘remixes’, but inevitably you will reach the point where all you really want is to scream along to the normal, unadulterated version of ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ without some unnecessary bass drop half way through and oontz oontz in the background – at which point you head down the stairs to the holy grail of Park End, the Cheese Floor. Here you will find banger after banger of the music that people claim they hate but will be found screeching their lungs out to when someone actually puts it on, as well as every rugby lad in Oxford inevitably losing their minds when the dulcet tones of Robbie Williams’ ‘Angels’ begin to filter through the slightly too loud speakers. There are other rooms too, I am told – but as a shit-cheesy-music enthusiast, I only ever make it to the cheese floor after trying the main floor and remembering why I don’t like it. Ask someone with better music taste

about the others.

Bridge

A smoking area with a club attached. 2020/21 veterans will remember this was the place to go to spend £10 getting into a club where all you could actually do was sit down (outside) and listen to music so loud you couldn’t even have a conversation with your five friends. As a real club though, the inside bit is odd – two long rooms, possibly the weirdest layout for a club I have ever seen. However, while Park End provides good music (read: ABBA) any day of the week thanks to its many-roomed layout, the lack of rooms means the music at Bridge is incredibly hit and miss. If your taste is anything like mine (read: ABBA), the only decent day to go is on the famed Bridge Thursday, where you will meet everyone you have ever spoken to in Oxford crammed into two glorified corridors. The aforemen tioned smoking area really comes into its own when you want to catch up with that one person you met at interviews and haven’t seen in three years, though. Just don’t go on a Friday – it’s not worth it.

Plush

Oxford’s favourite LGBTQ+ club.

It’s underground, and it’s about what you would expect from an underground club – one tiny dance floor in what looks like an old dungeon which hundreds of students pack into every night, and the delightful accom paniment of wet walls and ceilings, which, if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, might drip on you. The music is eclectic – I once heard Mumford and Sons in there, which worked a lot better than you would expect, somehow – but it’s always fun. Its main at traction beyond being an LGBTQ+ club is the 3 for £5 jagerbombs, a dangerous, but at least cheap(ish), game. Just make sure to thorough ly wash if you accidentally touch the wall (it’s difficult to avoid), and don’t bother going if you’re over 6 foot.

Find even more online!

Rordon Gamsay

SundayRoastissatiricalandshouldnotbetaken as defamatory, nor does it reflect any political stance of the Oxford Student.

CW: Abortion

ACHOO: FRESHERS FLU CASES SPIK ING

It’s that time of year again. A once-peaceful visit to the library is now punctuated by coughs and sniffles as the newest members of the university transfer every germ they came into contact with via the walls of Plush and the sticky cheese floor of Park End to poor unsuspecting second and third years who are too old, and too tired, by now to have spent noughth week within the hallowed walls of Oxford’s handful of clubs.

Rordon went to interview the latest victims of this rapidly spreading disease.

‘Honestly (COUGH) it’s just really (COUGH) reminding me of my glory days as a (COUGH) fresher and making me (COUGH COUGH) feel so much less old, so really (COUGH) I should be thanking the freshers for giving me this illness despite personally not setting foot within fifty metres of Park End, Bridge or Plush for the whole of noughth week (COUGH COUGH COUGH)’ one such third year told Rordon (with some difficulty).

‘I’m honestly not even that ill like -’ – here the interview was forced to end as the interviewee descended into a coughing fit breaking the deci bel record previously set by the bass drop of the Park End main floor DJ’s remix of ‘You

Belong with Me’. Readers can be reassured that Rordon has been snorting Vick’s First Defence like a fresher who has just discovered poppers, although his throat has started to get a little tingly in the last few days…

OXFORD STUDENTS FOR LIFE SACRI FICE BABY

Oxford Students for Life have caused con troversy this week after sacrificing a recently christened baby named Jesus in an attempt to save the souls of all student for life members. Having been recently tarnished by other, less holy, Oxford students at the freshers fair, they felt their souls in need of saving and so resorted to the only option available to them, sacrificing one of their member’s recent babies.

Having posted on Oxfess asking for reactions to vote on the decision and then brigading the page with their members, they made the choice to do it after a meeting of their 12 committee members. Asked about whether the decision would be controversial, one of them simply said “it’s in the bible”.

The Oxford Student recognises the seriousness of the discussions on abortion and the feelings of those affected by the issue.

More information on abortion services can be found here: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/abortion/ https://www.bpas.org https://www.asn.org.uk

Editor: Siddiq Islam

Anmol Kejriwal

Lavender Languages

Emily Lazell-Taylor reflects upon the prevalence of Lavender languages in Turkey

‘Lavender Languages’ are de scribed as languages and slang created by LGBTQ+ plus com munities and serve as a kind of homosexual code with the hopes of avoiding detection. There are myriads of code signs and sym bols that individuals have used throughout history in order to ensure their safety. For example, Polari has been used by gay men in Britain and Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s. As a queer Turkish woman, I wish to devote my atten tion to Lubunca (pronounced loo boonja), a secret Turkish cant and slang, used today by the LGBTQ+ community in Turkey, especially amongst sex workers.

I had only recently become aware of the use of the secret

language of Lubunca and felt in numerable emotions that it is still being used today. As a result, I was called to question my queer identity and be gan to examine what it meant for me to be a queer woman study ing in Oxford. Growing up with a strict religious background, I was surrounded by individuals with homophobic attitudes and so had to hide a huge aspect of my life and iden tity in order to protect myself. However, since coming to Oxford, I have felt nothing but acceptance and love, and I am forever grateful for this. Such acceptance, com

Growing up with astrict religious background, I was surrounded by individuals with homophobicattitudes and so had to hide a huge aspectof my life and identity

bined with my background and a growing desire for me to explore my Turkish roots, means that I have had to confront the homo phobic realities of Turkey today.

Concerning the historical origins of Lubunca, Nich olas Kontovas ex plains that most of the words from Lubunca come from Romani, with some words from Greek, Kurdish and Bugarian. Kontovas goes on to say that ‘Lubunca and the social context that it came from arose from changing Ottoman attitudes towards male-male sexuality.’ There had not been much stigma

surrounding men sleeping with other men, but this changed as the Ottoman empire declined. As a result, by the early 1900s, the notion of same-sex relations was considered as taboo; Kontovas holds that this may have been the root of Lubunca.

To take one example of how Lubunca may be used by LGBTQ+ sex workers, let us imagine that a rich customer has come to a brothel. Upon seeing this custom er, the person might say, ‘That’s bir but baari,’ meaning, ‘it’s a hun dred dollar customer!’ Within this example, ‘bir’ is the Turkish word for ‘one’, ‘but’ means ‘thigh’ and ‘baari’ roughly translates to ‘at least’. These are all Turkish words being used, but they are strung

together in such a way that one would not understand it unless they knew Lubunca!

The function of Lubunca is encapsulated by Gizem De rin, a transgender activist. He saya, ‘Lubunca was born to ur gent need… It was created by transgender women. When they were walking in the streets, they needed to protect themselves from abusive crimes and police.’ I am fascinated by the origins and the intelligent use of this language and the function which it has played in protecting individuals. However, even though I am now in an environment that stands up for my sexuality, I am in fear of the limited rights that I will have when I would like to visit where I

“I am dishearted that Labunca exists because it needs to...”

The unique sports of the University of Oxford Sport

Chess Quidditch

hess is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of sport at Oxford, but it is one of the biggest and oldest clubs at the university. Oxford University Chess Club was founded in 1861 and in 1873 they played our first Varsity match, beating Cambridge 10-3. Now over a century later the club is almost un recognisable, they have gone from a small male only group to a large and inclusive club and now have regular matches, club nights, socials, as well as a variety of other events. But some things have not changed – last year they beat Cambridge in not one but two Varsity matches.

C

The game of chess is more popular than ever right now, over 600 million people play the game worldwide. TV shows such as The Queen’s Gambit have skyrock eted interest in the sport and cheating scandals have peppered the news. “There is no better time to start playing the game and get involved with OUCC!” said this year’s president Max French. “We have three teams which those interest ed in playing competitively can represent. These teams play in the local Oxfordshire league as well as various university com petitions and last season all three teams won their respective divisions, winning all but one match between them. The first team also won the most recent in person British University Championships in 2020

Go-Karting

Michael Schumacher, Lewis Hamil ton, and now you? The go karting club is a fun way to easily get in volved in motor racing!

While it might have been typically per ceived as an exclusively affluent endeav our the newly renamed go karting club is a relaxed, yet exciting opportunity to race in national as well as inter university competition.

Speaking to Club President Anje Sharma he was determined to underline the rea sonably priced nature of the sport. “mem bership is only 10 pounds a year” he said, with a membership to Team Sport, the kart providers, included. He went on to add that pricing for normal days down in Readingwhere the university team race each other

and the tournament will return to its over-the-board format in 2023.

The club is even busier away from competitive chess. We have a club night every Wednesday in Wadham, a chance for players to get to know each other and play some friendly games. We also run coaching twice a week, Monday for be ginners and Tuesday for more advanced players. The most important part of our calendar though is of course the socials. We organise regular pub nights, crew dates, and if you’re lucky you might even catch us in Park End after a club night!

This year we are also planning several one-off events. We have a very strong player coming to give a simultaneous display and also have plans for an overthe-board cuppers blitz competition. The event that we are most excited for how ever is an open rapidplay tour nament that we hope to hold in Hilary term. This will be a great opportunity for university play ers to play in a se rious tournament against chess players from all over the country.

We have a very exciting year of chess ahead of us, both socially and competitively. If you are in terested in getting involved, then check out our Facebook and Instagram pages and consider coming along to a club night or dropping us a message!” concluded French.

First appearing in the Philospher’s Stone, quidditch was one of the more memorable fantasy inventions audi ences were introduced to in the legendary Harry Potter series.

The sport, however, no longer purely ex ists within the fictional realm from which it was born. Rather it is now a wildly popular and ever growing university sport that you can can get involved with here in Oxford!

While there may not be the same number of witches, wizards or flying broomsticks, the intensity and excitement of the quid ditch found on the fields of Uni Parks is all the same as it was in the Pottersphere.

The team’s secretary outlined that “Quid ditch is a that originated in the US in 2005, but is now played all over the world”. They noted that “it combines elements of hand ball, dodgeball, and rugby, with the added challenge that players must be mounted on a broom at all times”.

Moreover, despite typical assumptions, it is not a sport purely limited to the Ox bridge cult. Indeed the team’s secretary

underscored to me that the team travels “round the country to compete in tourna ments against other universities”. With the main tournament of the year being the British Quidditch Cup. Fancy!

While in Oxford the Quidditch team also provides for a lively social scene. “Quidditch is a close-knit community with a friendly atmosphere which is very welcoming to newcomers” the secretary noted, with “fun and varied socials every Thursday”.

Importantly the sport is also extremely accessible. Training is every Wednesday and Saturdays at 2pm in Uni Parks and are typically “fun, casual, no-commitment and always beginner-friendly”.

The secretary was keen to make clear that “There’s no other sport where you can go from zero experience to competing nationally in the space of less than a year!”

To get involved you can find the Oxford Universities Quidditch Club on Facebook & Instagram or simply turn up to one of their trainings. End after a club night!

at the indoor track - only reaching up to 30 pounds.

If your drive for competition (apologies) is even stronger however the team provides access to a selection of national competi tions. The team enters up to two teams for the BUKC, a nationwide outdoor event in which any member can enter, as well as the BIKC, the indoor alternative. Moreo ver, competing in this team provides for a chance at a full blue with a varsity event against Cambridge in the summer.

The go karting provides for a “relaxed and fun” opportunity to get involved in a fairly unique experience. Anyone can participate.

To sign up be sure to fill in the team’s membership form found on their website, join their facebook group where all events are posted, and also sign up to their mail ing list.

Joe Sharp and Dani Kovacs delve into some university sports you didn’t know you could try.

Deputy

Marathon Man Eliud Kipchoge Makes HistorySport

Roger Federer: Goodbye to the GOAT

Jonah Poulard Deputy editor

OnFriday 23rd September, Roger Feder er played his last game of professional tennis in London at the Laver Cup. It was certainly a fitting place to end his 24 year long career. Wimbledon, held in London, is the tournament most synonymous with Federer and his brilliance on court, where he found the most success, winning the tourna ment a record eight times, including a five year stretch of utter dominance between 2003-2007.

The Laver Cup being in essence an exhibi tion event, Federer was surrounded by the other greats that too have defined his career and this era. Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic and of course Rafael Nadal, with whom he played doubles in his final match, were the perfect company for his swansong. The occasion was of course a sombre one, tennis’ biggest ever icon was gone for good.

Looking at the footage, it’s hard to tell who was cry ing more, Roger or Rafa. Naturally outpourings of sadness and remembrance engulfed social media, with pretty much every sport sperson and celebrity alike acknowledging the moment and sharing just their little part of the Federer legend.

than Muhammad Ali.

but also a brand. According to Sports Illustrated, Federer earned $90 million in 2021, good for seventh highest in the world across all sports, despite his rank ing plummeting and him playing few tournaments, winning none.

Federer is a worldwide symbol of class and charisma: where we associate Nadal with underwear modelling, we see Federer with a classy Rolex on his left wrist.

that an older gen eration may re member is a far cry from the con summate gentleman we regard him as now. With a trendy ponytail and flair in abundance, Federer soon knocked the old guard of legends like Sampras, Agassi and Hewitt down from the top, claiming it for his own. In the transitional period of the mid-2000s, he had no challengers and no equals, winning all but one non-Roland Garros Slam between 2004 and 2007. It was at this time that Federer’s image became established and known around the world.

The accomplishments and accolades that lit ter any exposition of Federer’s career are as tounding, but many have been superseded by both of the other members of the Big Three.

Rafael Nadal now has 22 Grand Slams, two more than both Federer and Djokovic, the latter still young and good enough to earn at least a couple more. Both Nadal and Djokovic have won more major titles (Grand Slams, Tour Finals and Masters 1000s com bined), as well as leading their respective head-toheads against Federer. But neither are the GOAT. Although in tennis circles debate is heated, in the public eye there is little contest at naming Federer the greatest, and there’s good reason for this. In almost every sport, to earn the respect and admiration of everyone who follows it, it’s not only what you did but how you did it that counts. Lewis Hamilton has the same number of F1 Championships as Michael Schumacher, and more GP wins, but it’s still controversial to call Lewis the GOAT over Schumacher, sometimes even over Senna too. Lebron James hasn’t come close to Michael Jordan in the eyes of many, and it approaches blas phemy to call Floyd Mayweather as greater

In transcending the distinction between sporting legend and cultural icon, Federer’s charisma, smile, grace and golden personality cemented him as both a tennis god, and also a universally adored paragon of greatness in the wider landscape of our time.

In this period of utter dominance, it was not his grit, speed or power that wowed the world, but his skill, elegance and unwaver ing professionalism. Federer’s style on court was inspirational and attractive to everyone, if they knew tennis or not. In short, all of this is why he is so utterly missed.

In transcending the dis tinction between sporting legend and cultural icon, Federer’s charisma, smile, grace and golden personal ity cemented him as both a tennis god, and also a uni versally adored paragon of greatness in the wider landscape of our time.

Roger Federer has left behind a multitude of memorable moments (for give the alliteration), the Battle of the Surfaces, that 2008 Wimbledon final, the stunning blind smash against Andy Roddick, but I’ll leave you with my personal favourite. His 2017 Australian Open victory over Nadal brought an end to a five-year Grand Slam drought, plagued with injuries and disappointments. The championship was decided on a Hawkeye challenge, the ball lands in and Federer leaps for joy in the most pure and heartfelt expression of emotion of his career. The magic of Federer is that we all felt the exact same way.

Recently

Kenyan athlete Eliud Kip choge made history. Whilst racing around the streets of Berlin, he shat tered the marathon world record by 30 seconds, running the 26.2 mile course in 2:01:09. This race cements Kipchoge as the greatest marathon runner of all time. But who is the Kenyan and why does this record matter?

For those unfamiliar with the sport of long distance running, going on a run for over two hours might sound slow. A plod ding jog.

It was the apparent ease and comfort with which Kipchoge cantered around Berlin while making his kilometre splits of consistently below three minutes which made his run all the more impressive. Run ning each 5km split across the 42km race around the 14:30 mark. That’s lightning fast.

The Kenyan is no stranger to breaking records. Having grown up in Nandi County, he quickly became a distinguished middle distance runner. However, his real success would come after transitioning to the mar athon distance. His time at this years Berlin marathon broke his own record which he set at the same event in 2018. He won gold at the 2016 and 2020 Olympic marathons, and has won the London marathon and the Berlin marathon a record 4 times each. Out of 17 marathons entered in his career, he has only failed to win two of them.

In the 2019 INEOS 1:59 Challenge, Kip

This feat sent ripples across not only the world of sport but across mainstream me dia at the time. However, given this run was so impressive and was faster than his time last week, it per-haps begs the question: why does the recent world record matter?

At the 2019 INEOS challenge Kipchoge was the only athlete competing, doing laps around the same park in Vienna, with a timing car driving in front and, crucially, interchangeable pacemakers. This decision undoubtedly enabled him to run faster for longer, but also voided the time from being official.

This is why the recent world record is so significant. It proves that under regu lar race con-ditions the Kenyan can still perform and make history. He ran the first half with such speed that many com mentators speculated that he might even dip under the 2-hour mark in that race. Unfortunately, Kipchoge couldn’t sustain his blistering pace and slowed slightly in the second half. Perhaps this results from his age: now 37, his days of elite marathon running are numbered, and despite appear ing to bounce along the road with ease and comfort, it remains to be seen whether he can sustain this level of performance in the next few years, or even break the fabled 2-hour mark himself.

Almost all sports have fierce debates surrounding who should be crowned the Great est Of All Time, with partisan views expressed, friendships tested and con sensus rarely reached. Jordan vs LeBron. Federer vs Nadal. Messi vs Ronaldo. Kipchoge is the exception to the rule. Runners such as Haile Gebreselassie and Kenenisa Bekele, both of Ethiopia, are strong contenders, and of course, in the women’s event, athletes such as Kenya’s Brigid Kosgei and

cliffe have each made history. However, last week’s race proves that Eliud Kipchoge should still be held as the GOAT of

Alex Fagan