The Oxford Student - Week 1 Trinity 2023

Columns

Oxford’s Look-‘Book’: The First Visit to the Last Bookshop

Food & Drink

Kasturi Pindar reviews

Ramen Kulture’s “indulgent and comforting” ramen

Term,

1

OXFORD S TUDENT The

Eleanor Luxton News Editor

On the 3rd April 2023, it was reported that Mansfield College has closed its gender pay gap.

This means that, taking a median average, men and women are paid the same at the college. The University of Oxford’s last report stated that slow and steady progress had been made in reducing the University-wide mean gender pay gap, falling from 20.1% to 18.1% in 2021. However, these averages mask significant differences between the 33 Oxford colleges we analysed.

Revealed: gender pay gap disparities amongst Oxford colleges

colleges’ equality reports, others were hidden on their websites, appeared not to have been updated recently, or used confusing diagrams. In addition, the University does not have a requirement for colleges to use a standardised template to present their findings, meaning that reports vary significantly in structure and style. This is because colleges are entirely independent from the university.

… while St Hilda’s has a negative mean gender pay gap St Hilda’s pay gap for 2021, the most up-to-date version, was -8.9%, meaning that the mean hourly rate of pay for women was 8.9% higher than that of men.

Read more on page 3

Brasenose has the largest mean gender pay gap Standing at a 29.5% gap between men and women’s pay at the college, Brasenose has the largest gap between its male and female earners. However, the only available gender pay gap report was from 2018, illuminating a key issue across the colleges.

While it was easy to find most

UCU marking and assessment boycott to go ahead

rom 20th April the University and College Union (UCU)’s plans for a marking and assessment boycott will go ahead after discussions with its members.

The union first announced the boycott on 5th April subject to consultations with members known as the UCU Rising. The consultations closed on Monday 17th April at 10am, with the results of those discus-

Charlie Bowden News Editor

sions announced the same day. The boycott is organised as part of the UCU’s disputes over pay and conditions for university employees. It would have also included disputes related to pensions offered by the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), but 85% of the members voted to ‘note’ the agreed proposals on pensions, wanting to move back to negotiations and prepare for future action.

56% of members rejected the

Read more on page 5

Although we cannot isolate any one reason for this, St Hilda’s was a women’s-only college until 2008, which may have encouraged more female academics to apply for senior roles in the college (in fact, 50.8% of those earning in the highest quartile at Hilda’s are women).

Read more on page 4

Eliza Smith gives us her thoughts on “Race Across the World”

“[the Union is] disregarding the welfare of its LGBTQ+ members under the guise of free speech

- The Oxford LGBTQ+ Society on the invitation of Kathleen Stock to speak at the Union

Trinity

Week

| Friday 28 April 2023

The University of Oxford’s Student Newspaper, Est. 1991

Read Amanda Li’s interview with Daniel Dipper on P16

TRINITY TERM 2023 EDITORIAL TEAM

EDITORS IN CHIEF

Rose Henderson and Ayomilekan Adegunwa

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

Emily Hudson and Matthew Holland

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Blane Aitchison

STRATEGY

Milo Dennison (director), Hannah Byrne-Smith, Susie Barrows, Priya Mahan

DEPUTY EDITORS

Martin Alfonsin Larsen, Tara Earley, Frankie Coy, Matt Holland, Charlie Bowden, Jasmine Wilkinson, Niall Hall, Sami Jalil, Haochen Wang

NEWS

Martin Alfonsin Larsen, Charlie Bowden, Anvee Bhutani, Canqi Li, Gabrielle Thompson, Daisy Outram, Eleanor Luxton, Milo Dennison

COMMENT

Tara Earley, Leon Wheeler, Vedika Rastogi, Jack Arrowsmith

PROFILE

Matthew Holland, Vedika Rastogi

PINK

Blane Aitchison, Daisy Outram

IDENTITY

Sami Jalil, Farrah Bergstrom, Georgia Ferris, Anna Ashkinazi

FEATURES

Frankie Coy, Haochen Wang, Grace Rees, Purav Menon

CULTURE

Charlie Bowden, Johannah

Mathew, Jennifer Robinson, Lukas Seifert, Miracle Kalonga

FOOD & DRINK

Jasmine Wilkinson, Kasturi Pindar

GREEN

Jasmine Wilkinson, Eliza Smith

SCITECH

Emily Hudson, Nicole Hasler, Tymoteusz Syrytczyk

OXYOU

Niall Hall, Milo Dennison, Lukas Seifert

SPORT

Haochen Wang, Patrick Groves, Bradley Beck, Eleanor Luxton

COLUMNISTS

Blane Aitchison, Amina

Lounas, Jonah Poulard, Amanda Li, Tasneem Jodiyawalla

Last term a friend asked me if I was considering applying to be Editor in Chief. I don’t think so, I replied. Too much work, far too stressful, and I want to enjoy my final idyllic Trinity term of being a second year before the reality of finals hits.

It’s been down to the work of our wonderful editorial team that preparing for our first week edition hasn’t been as stressful as I was worried it might have been. A huge thanks have to go to all of the Deputy Editors who braved the SU offices to come in and prepare for print - with some skill considering that for many it was

their first time using InDesign. Matt and Emily put Ayomi and I to shame with their Adobe prowess and expert tutoring.

A special mention also to last term’s Editors in Chief, Anna and Milo, for all of the advice and help they have given over the last month or so. Milo is sticking around as Supreme Leader of the OxStu (Director of Strategy), so we will be gleaning more of his endless wisdom over this term, but Anna has also provided some extremely valuable tips, such as it being okay to ignore Milo.

And of course, finally, thanks to Ayomi. The fact we have tutorials together this term does imply we’re going to be spending a worrying amount of time together, but I can’t wait to see what Trinity holds for the Oxford Student.

Rose Henderson, Worcester College

Editors’ Picks

Profile

In Conversation with Cuppy

In the Easter vac, I almost died.

This may sound like hyperbole, and to be fair, it probably is - but I really did come much closer to death than I had ever been before. It all started with a ‘walk’. I had clambered up this hill in the Lake District, wading through water and scrambling up rock – at which point I reached the summit. This may seem like a moment of euphoria – but it was not, for as I had gone up, I had to come down.

So with the wind whipping, and the rain pouring, we trudged our way back down the other side of the mountain. It was at this point I found myself in grave danger.

Culture

Elena Buccisano sends us a postcard from Rome

From the Editors

For some reason unknown to any of us, the path on our map seemed to be leading us to walk beside a gorge. Stood before us was a path, barely a metre across – with a hundred metre sheer drop on the other side.

To say I was afraid would be an understatement. I inched – and I mean inched – my way along this path, wearing a battered old pair of Adidas trainers and trying my very best not to slip. Eventually I made it to the bottom – my body intact, but my sanity not.

Since that fateful day on the mountain, I have come to value every day life more and more. With this new perspective, it brings me great joy to spend my time at The Oxford Student – there’s no place I’d rather be. The team have been amazing so far – thank you to everyone for your hard work. We would, quite literally, not be able to do it without you.

SciTech

Artificial wombs and the future of pregnancy

Sport

A look into the world of WNBA

Istarted university in lockdown and my mornings would usually be a cup of tea and a healthy dose of browsing on the OxStu website. A year ago I worked on my first edition of the paper; it’s been a joy to watch how it changes as time goes by.

We’ve kicked off term in the best possible way: a newsletter, a union scandal and two afternoons lounging around at lay-in. What more could a third year wish for?

The OxStu has a cracking team this term, and I’m grateful to be able to help out in such a relaxed and friendly environment. That’s all from me – til next time!

Every day I remind myself about how extraordinary it is that I’m at Oxford, something I never thought would be possible. Before anyone else, I owe so much to my amazing girlfriend whose support and devotion has been invaluable. Olivia, thank you for being such a constant source of happiness and love.

I promise that my future editorial will be less serious than this; more jokes about Portsmouth and Exeter College to come. I want to take this opportunity to thank all the Deputy Editors and others who helped lay-in this week, you have been so impressive and all learnt your new roles so quickly.

Up the OxStu!!!

Matthew Holland, Exeter College

Emily Hudson, Oriel College

Contents

News - p. 3

Union invites controversial gender critical feminist

Comment - p. 8

Pink - p. 14

Columns - p. 16

Culture - p. 22

Green - p. 26

OxYou - p. 20

Invitation of Kathleen Stock prompts criticism

Profile - p. 12

Identity - p. 15

Features - p. 20

Food & Drink - p. 24

SciTech - p. 27

Sport - p. 31

The Oxford Union has invited Dr Kathleen Stock to speak on her views about gender identity theory at the end of May, prompting controversy over accusations of transphobia.

Stock is a philosopher and former professor at the University of Sussex, a role she left after significant backlash towards her gender-critical views.

The controversy began in her workplace as peers denounced her opposition to proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act in 2018, which would allow people to self-identify their gender without diagnosis.

In response, colleagues criticised her on social media, and organised an in-person protest.

In April 2021, graduate students held a trans solidarity event to compete with her simultaneous research talk,

which 40 of her colleagues attended instead.

Stock has also contended that her beliefs don’t prompt her to fight against laws protecting trans people, supporting their right to “live their lives free from fear, violence, harassment or any discrimination”.

However, she became a trustee for the organisation LGB Alliance in May 2021, which has opposed trans rights issues such as gender-affirming care and legal gender recognition reform.

This year, she also denounced the government’s plan to ban conversion therapy, saying trans children may need a “chance to think again”.

Stock resigned from the University of Sussex in October 2021, a decision that she attributed to attacks from colleagues and student movements such as Anti

Daisy Outram News Editor

A local collective called the Oxford Feminist Union, a nonpartisan group who work ‘to encourage open debate and ensure women’s voices are heard’, celebrated Dr Stock’s invitation.

They tweeted that they are “delighted to hear that [Stock] will be speaking at [the Oxford Union] this term”, holding that the event will be vital in “enabling free speech” and #EncouragingDebate”.

These views are not shared by some students. Clay Nash, a former Co-Chair of Oxford SU LGBTQ+ Campaign, told The Oxford Student that “it’s shameful and irresponsible for the Oxford Union to have invited Kathleen Stock ”in what is currently a dangerous climate for trans people in the UK”.

Nash pointed out that “hate crimes against trans people reported to the UK police have increased by 56% over the past year”, and highlighted that trans people themselves are increasingly at risk and “the Oxford Union is contributing to this”.

In comments made to The Oxford Student, The Oxford Union stated: “Stock has agreed, as per our guest policy, to be challenged by our membership”. The Union also emphasised a need to “[burst] the echo chamber often provided by social media” and make the event “a ‘mini-debate’, in which views and beliefs may be questioned”.

The statement mirrors previous comments made by for-

mer Union President Charlie Mackintosh during a debate on same-sex marriage in the Church, where he stated that not debating LGBT+ issues was ‘Anglocentric’.

Nash also told The Oxford Student that the issue “isn’t about restricting freedom of speech or cancel culture, it’s about harm reduction” due to the potential danger of views like Stock’s.

The Oxford University LGBTQ+ Society stated that it was ‘dismayed and appalled’ that the Union had decided to platform Stock. It also added that the Union was ‘disregarding the welfare of its LGBTQ+ members under the guise of free speech’.

In comments made exclusively to The Oxford Student, the society stated that they “stand by the opinions expressed in our statement”, adding that “Stock has a history of insulting trans people, campaigning against their rights, and defending the abusive practice of conversion therapy, and it’s an insult for the Oxford Union to give her the special treatment of a platform to preach and legitimize this intolerance.”

The society also added that Stock’s retweet of their statement, in which she also alleged that the group had defamed her, had resulted in them “receiving over a thousand hateful, threatening, homophobic and transphobic messages, making clear that the movement she represents is driven by hate.”

Dr Stock is one of many prom-

inent guests speaking at the Union this term, with figures such as David Baddiel, Stormy Daniels, and Mia Khalifa scheduled to speak. These speakers feature alongside debates on issues such as class in British politics, the commercialisation of Pride, and net zero.

IHH joins national student action against sexual assault

On the 14th March, a day marking the 153rd anniversary of the first admittance of women to English universities, students from the Universities of Oxford, Bath, Liverpool John Moores, Liverpool, Lancaster, Plymouth and Brunel delivered a co-signed letter to their Vice Chancellors and the Secretary of State for Education, Gillian Keegan. The letter calls for each university’s support in launching a national student experience survey on sexual misconduct, harassment

and assault. The survey will test student knowledge of what sexual harassment is, awareness of university systems, and confidence in reporting incidents of sexual misconduct.

This united effort exemplifies what could be perceived as a national failure to work to prevent and respond to sexual misconduct in Higher Education.

The letter also aims to create a meeting by inviting the University Vice-Chancellors and

Secretary of State for Education to meet with the students to gather “an accurate picture of the student experience and ultimately to improve prevention and response strategies relating to sexual harassment and assault”.

The action is being coordinated by Empowered Campus, a not-for-profit project of the feminist organising group ‘Love and Power’ (long-listed for a UN women’s award), which has been meeting with student leaders who were

already campaigning about their university’s lack of progress in relation to violence against women. It Happens Here forms one of these student groups and has joined the other campaign groups across the country to contextualize their university work and identify national failings. This involvement comes after a Cherwell investigation in 2022 reported 93 formal complaints of sexual harassment across the University of Oxford since the 2017/18 academic year. On a national level, a 2021 investigation by UN Women UK found that 97% of women aged 19-24 have been sexually harassed, with only 4% of women reporting incidents of sexual harassment. The letter also quotes the findings of an earlier student survey that only 2% of students reporting sexual misconduct feel satisfied with their university’s process. Each group photographed their delivery of the letter to their Vice-Chancellor. On the 21st of March, Empowered Campus tweeted a picture of their delivery to Gillian Keegan outside of the Department of Education: “Hi, @GillianKeegan we are so excited to deliver this letter to you. Over the past week, student groups from 8 unis united to campaign for better sexual violence prevention and response in HE. Will you meet with us to discuss and to celebrate the launch of a new student survey?”.

Martha Jephcott, a co-founder of Empowered Campus,

said: “As a nation we send more than half of all under18s into Higher Education, but often they arrive in a hostile environment. Research shows that over half of sexual assaults happen on campus”. She believes that the “first vital step will be the launching of our survey that will lead to the first-ever Students Charter on Sexual Violence”.

Nicola Sharp, Co-Chair of IHH, stated: “University leaders, including our Vice Chancellor, are ready to start the conversation. Our message is clear: together, we can champion a nationwide movement towards transparent, accessible reporting processes and unwavering support for all survivors, no matter where they study.”

She added: “If you want to help our cause, you can fill out the Empowered Campus National Student Experience survey (https://cwk0kyjl4yn.typeform.com/to/Wg4gndx7). You do not need to be a survivor to take part.”

If you are in need of support, please consider consulting It Happens Here’s support guide: www.ithappenshere. co.uk/need-support.

If you live in England and Wales, are over the age of 16 and have suffered from sexual assault or rape, confidential 24/7 support is available from the Rape Crisis hotline at 0808 500 222.

Investigation: Gender pay gap disparities revealed amongst Oxford colleges

St Catz, Mansfield and Worcester all have median gender pay gaps of 0

A median gender pay gap of 0 suggests that there is no difference between the middle hourly wage for men and women in a college, i.e. when they are arranged from the lowest earner to the highest earner.

There was no data available for two colleges

After changes to the Equality Act came into force on 6th April

2017, companies in Great Britain with over 250 employees must report their gender pay gap figures at the end of every financial year. It is likely that Harris Manchester and Regent’s Park are small enough that they do not have to do this.

Wycliffe Hall has the largest percentage of high-earning women

63% of those in the upper quartile of pay at Wycliffe were women in 2021, ahead of Somerville’s 52.3% in second place. Founded in 1877, Wycliffe Hall, a permanent private hall

(PPH), provides training to men and women who wish to enter Church of England or Anglican ministries. It has a strong equality statement, including requiring that:

“Teachers will make every effort to use examples of women in biblical passages, to reference the work of women theologians and historians and to speak of the role of women in the church, wherever possible and practicable”.

Only 29.3% of the highest earners at Teddy Hall are women…

… followed by Corpus Christi’s 30.2% and Magdalen’s 31%. This suggests that less than a third of the most senior positions in college are held by women, reflecting the university-wide statistics that 71% of staff on University senior grades are men. Women still comprise 1/3 of leadership roles across the university overall, although ViceChancellor Irene Tracey is keen to boost equality and diversity, being the first VC to come from a state-school background.

69.8% of the lowest earners at Oriel are women

Women are overrepresented in the lowest pay quartile across the Oxford colleges (with exceptions being Queen’s, Keble, Lincoln, St Peter’s and Trinity). Oriel, Balliol, Brasenose, Lady Margaret Hall, and Exeter are the colleges with the most women in the lowest pay quartile. What this likely means in practice is that catering, cleaning and administrative roles are dominated by women in thsese colleges.

Cont. from page 1

Rosalie Chapman

Eleanor Luxton

News Editor

Oxford University urged not to return Benin Bronzes

Gabrielle Thompson News Editor

The University of Oxford has been urged not to “reward slavery twice” by returning the Benin Bronzes to Africa, after plans to repatriate the artefacts have ground to a halt.

The Restitution Study Group (RSG), a legal team campaigning for slavery reparations for US descendants of enslaved people, have asked the University to use delays in plans for repatriation as a chance to scrap the proposal altogether. Deadria FarmerPaellmann, founder of the RSG, described the plans as “morally indefensible” and asked that the University “immediately suspend [their] plans”, adding that the proposal was “against the express wishes of those of us in the UK, the US, and the Commonwealth whose ancestors literally gave their lives so the Bronzes could be created.”

Ghana first to approve Oxford developed malaria vaccine

the profits it had garnered through the practice. They maintain that the kingdom of Benin traded in slaves, and used the profits from this to produce the Bronzes, so the artefacts should remain in British museums for educational purposes.

The plans form part of a pledge made in July 2022 by the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge to return the artefacts held by their museums, a move which would constitute a total of 213 Bronzes being returned. This move required approval from the Charity Commission, which was to debate the “moral” case for handing back the statues and whether it would have a detrimental effect on the university charities.

Cambridge’s plan was approved in December, but a similar plan from Oxford to return the Bronzes currently held in the Pitt Rivers and Ashmolean Museum collections has been delayed, pending a resubmission from the University about its justifications for repatriation of the objects.

Previously, RSG brought a lawsuit against the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. to prevent the return of 29 further Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. They argued that a return of the statues would prevent US descendants of enslaved people from being able to experience their heritage. However, the order was eventually denied, with the court documents stating that “The Smithsonian does not appear to have acted beyond its statutory authority by reaching an agreement with Nigeria to transfer some of the Benin bronzes.”

The Oxford-developed R21/Matrix-M vaccine to combat malaria has been cleared for use in Ghana amongst children aged 5 months to 3 years old. This age group are most at risk of developing serious complications, as high temperatures, irritability, tiredness and sickness can quickly develop into respiratory issues and dehydration.

The complex lifecycle of the malaria parasites – of which there are 5 known to cause malaria in humans – mean that efforts to develop widelydistributable vaccines have so far failed.

The Oxford vaccine is not the first of its kind, with pharmaceutical giant GSK receiving WHO endorsement for Mosquirix last year. However, the company can only produce 15 million doses per year. By contrast, the Oxford vaccine makers have partnered with the Serum Institute of India to produce up to 200 million

doses annually.

This is a critical development, as patients must receive 4 doses for long-term protection. After a single booster dose, given a year after the first inoculation, efficacy levels for the drug remain at 77%, exceeding the WHO’s targets for vaccines.

The results of ongoing clinical trials involving 4,800 children in Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mali and Tanzania are expected to be published soon, but appear promising. Professor Adrian Hill, founder and director of the Jenner Institute and tutor in medicine and biomedical science at Magdalen College, told Reuters that this marks the first time a major vaccine has been approved first in an African country (rather than rich, or highly developed, nations). Hill added that he was surprised that a regulatory authority in Africa had reviewed his team’s data quicker than the WHO.

In Ghana, there are around 5.3 million malaria cases a year, and 12,500 deaths were recorded due to the disease in 2021. Insecticide resistance and parasitic resistance to drugs have perpetuated malaria cases in Ghana and many other sub-Saharan African countries.

This region is particularly vulnerable due to human migration, pools of standing water caused by poor sanitation and drainage, and high temperatures. There are fears that, as climate change causes more irregular and intense weather patterns, cases of malaria could rise, particularly among the poorest and most vulnerable groups, and spread to new locations.

It is anticipated that each dose of R21 will cost $2, with scientists hoping to secure more international funding for further vaccine production and distribution.

UCU marking and assessment boycott to go ahead

pay and conditions proposals after the consultations, meaning the boycott will go ahead with respect to this dispute. Following a series of strikes, these proposals were put forward by the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA), the representatives of university employers, on 15th March. The UCU Rising consultation came after an announcement of renewed strike action on the 3rd April 2023.

This was preceded by university staff voting 85.6% in the pay and conditions ballot and 89% in the pensions ballot, choosing to continue striking over both disputes. Members also voted overwhelmingly to continue action short of strike (ASOS) on non-striking days in both ballots.

According to UCU’s website, the marking and assessment boycott (MAB) will see UCU members cease “all summative marking and associated assessment activities and duties (such as exam invigilation) until further notice” across 150 universities, including the University of Oxford. This is not the first time the university has faced a MAB as disputes over staff pay and pensions have been ongoing for almost a decade.

The university’s website page dedicated to industrial action

notes that around 12% of eligible university employees are members of the UCU, meaning it is likely the majority of marking will not be affected by the boycott.

The MAB covers any and all forms of assessment of university work completed by any student, from undergraduate to postgraduate level. It not only includes final examinations involved in the awarding of a degree but also “any form of in-course continuous assessment” that influences decisions about the suitability of students to carry on with their studies. Under the University of Oxford’s assessment system, this would include Prelims for first-year students.

As the boycott is only related to university marking duties, marking for collections will not be affected because they are set by colleges. Regarding formative assessments, assessments not related to degrees or the continued progression of studies, members can “provide general support but should not provide any feedback from which any mark for summative assessments could be reasonably deduced”. The UCU have said that “hundreds” of their members have undergone MAB training to ensure they are prepared for the boycott.

There is no fixed time pe-

Charlie Bowden Senior Editor

riod for the MAB to take place. UCU’s website states that the boycott will last “until the disputes are settled, or UCU calls off the boycott, or at the end of the industrial action ballot mandate”. On the 3rd April, the UCU renewed its mandate for strike action for another six months after re-balloting its members.

In a Twitter video by UCU general secretary Jo Grady, she stated that 35,338 members voted as part of the consultations. She said that the overwhelming noting of the pension proposals shows that the UCU are “on the way to a historic victory” and called it “a victory no UK union has ever delivered on this scale”.

Grady continued by stating that university employers “need to put an improved offer on the table” to prevent disruption to examinations and further strike action. The UCU will hold a special sector conference on Wednesday 19th April to make decisions about next steps in the disputes postconsultation.

The proposals agreed with employers on pensions have received near-universal support from their members. Though dissatisfaction on the pay and conditions proposals has resulted in the MAB still going ahead, Grady declared that the UCU will “fight on” over both disputes.

"Lawyers from the group argued that to hand the Bronzes back would reward the kingdom of Benin for its historical involvement with slavery by returning the profits it had garnered through the practice."

Lawyers from the group argued that to hand the Bronzes back would reward the kingdom of Benin for its historical involvement with slavery by returning

Cont. from page 1

University reports welfare and support services face “increased demand”

The University of Oxford has released its 20212022 report on Student Welfare and Support Services reflecting “increased demand” upon a return to in-person services.

As face-to-face therapeutic support returned in September 2021, demand for the service observed a marked increase. Use of university counselling has risen to 3,595 pupils in the 2021-2022 academic year from 3,440 pupils in the previous period.

Like past reports, anxiety has been shown to be the prevailing issue, with 33.7% of students presenting the condition compared to 30.9% previously.

Higher need for counselling was reported to match up with “increased anxiety in the general population” since the pandemic. However, increasing demand has not led to increasing wait times, with 42% of students being seen in less than 5 working days. In comparison to 35.2% re-

Daisy Outram News Editor

ing the service. These consist of individual recommendations for these pupils, benefitting users with specialised support. Teaching has also become more adaptable, with the new Educational Recordings Policy introduced in Michaelmas 2022 expanding inclusivity by recording teaching.

As people returned to consistent in-person learning, the issue of sexual harassment and violence has risen. This is evidenced by increasing use of the support service, which was up 17.9% on the previous year. 75% of casework pertains to serious sexual crimes like sexual assault and stalking, indicating that the University may be facing a serious situation.

Oriel College

ceiving this quick access in 2020-2021, there is certainly progress to appreciate.

The Disability Advisory Service also reported a rise in demand, from a previous 24.3% to 26.5% of the Oxford student population. The majority of this is those with long-term mental health conditions, making up 5% of the university’s pupils.

In response to these needs, Student Support Plans were made for 64.7% of those us-

Michaelmas 2022 saw a 60% increase in Sexual Violence and Harassment Support Service referrals in comparison to that term the previous year, exemplifying the increased demand. This need has led to pupils receiving online consent training alongside a broader review of different colleges’ strategies.

Rotimi Akinsete, the Director of Student Welfare and Support Services, has acknowledged the “impact of the pandemic” leading to increased use of support by services. In spite of this challenge, he has also welcomed the “return to in-person services” as a better way to “play a key role” in supporting the student community.

DJ Cuppy announces gift to support African students

Gabrielle Thompson News Editor

DJ Cuppy, called ‘one of the foremost DJs in Africa’ and an internationally acclaimed philanthropist from Nigeria, has announced the creation of the Cuppy Africa Scholars Fund. The fund, totalling £100,000, will allow African graduate students at the University of Oxford to access funding for unexpected and urgent financial needs. It will also allow scholars to ‘undertake activities that will ensure the pursuit of excellence’.

Cuppy herself graduated from Oxford in 2022, undertaking a Master’s degree in African Studies. She said: ‘I saw first-hand the variances in university life experiences for students originating from my continent, Africa. The fundamental role that the Cuppy Fund will play is to narrow resource gaps for those who need it the most so they can fully commit to pursuing the education they deserve.’

The fund will support the previously established Africa Oxford Initiative (AfOx), working across the University ‘to make engagement with Africa a strategic priority for Oxford’. The initiative pushes for more African students to pursue graduate degrees at the University, and the gift will allow it to ‘meet the needs of the most vulnerable students’, including students with any form of disability or caring responsibilities.

Dr Anne Makena, co-director of AfOx, stated: ‘We are absolutely delighted that Cuppy is so generously supporting African graduate students here at Oxford. We both share the experience of being African graduate students at Oxford and it is a great honour for AfOx to partner with Cuppy to address some of the unique challenges that African students might encounter during their time at Oxford.’ Makena also expressed her wish that the fund would empower graduate students

to ‘continue on to remarkable careers as champions of development in African countries and globally.’

DJ Cuppy holds a degree from King’s College London in Business and Economics and a master’s degree in Music Business from New York University. She is also a prominent philanthropist, holding ambassador positions at Global Citizen, Save the Children UK, and Lagos SGDs Youth Alliance. Her charity, the Cuppy Foundation, previously raised over 5 billion naira (close to £9 million) for Save the Children, and is aimed at tackling issues surrounding child protection and education for girls and persons with disabilities.

Her prolific music career has resulted in a feature on the Forbes 30 Under 30 List, a performance at the MTV Africa Music Awards, and collaborations with Wyclef Jean and Megan Thee Stallion.

abolishes scholars’ privilege in room ballots

Emily Hudson Associate Editor

On March 8 the governing body of Oriel College voted to remove scholars’ privilege from undergraduate room ballots, marking the end of a gradual policy change across Oxford’s colleges to disengage room choices from academic performance.

Scholars’ privilege refers to the prioritisation of academic scholars above students without scholarships in their year in college room choices. Christ Church was the last college to separate room choices from academic performance before Oriel College, initiating a movement within Oriel that included sustained campaigning from the Junior and Middle Common Rooms across two years and consultation of students receiving academic scholarships. 14 reasons were cited by the motion forwarded to the Governing Body.

The reasons included concerns about scholars’ privilege in room choices serving as punishment for students without scholarships, as well as issues regarding scholarships not reflecting diligence due to differences in the frequency of scholarships awarded between subjects. Accessibility considerations, such as students with disabilities not being able to share in the scholars’ privilege equally and differences in students’ academic performance due to variations in prior schooling, were also among the concerns listed in the motion.

The abolition of scholars’ privilege in room selections aligns with Oriel College’s focus in recent years to encourage an open and accessible academic environment.

“We are so delighted that the College has agreed to abolish scholars’ privilege in the room ballot,” JCR president Phoebe Winter stated. Winter added that the measure has been on the agenda of JCR committees for several years. “It has taken a lot of time and effort to put together proposals and argue for them in meetings, so it’s hugely exciting that we have finally managed to push this change through.”Winter hopes to see the implementation of the change and is extremely grateful to Oriel’s Governing Body for voting to abolish the prior system.

Network Rail confirms plans for Botley Road

Charlie Bowden News Editor

NetworkRail has revealed plans to close Botley Road to traffic from April to October 2023 and March to October 2024 to replace the road’s rail bridge.

The bridge replacement is part of a wider scheme to expand the Oxford Railway Station which will include the installation of a secondary station entrance on its western side. The developments are collectively known as ‘Oxford Corridor Phase 2’ and are intended to accommodate the increase in services planned from 2024 as part of the East West Rail project. These plans are intended to result in a high-speed rail connection between Oxford and Cambridge, with connections between Oxford and Bedford to be completed by the end of 2023.

In addition to accommodation for these new services the expansion will improve passenger safety and waiting times. For example, the level crossings at Yarnton Lane and Sandy Lane will be closed and three high-speed crossovers at Oxford North Junction will be created in their place to accommodate increased demand for rail freight services.

Closing these crossings will also provide capacity for an additional two freight trains per hour and extra services from Birmingham to Oxford.

It had initially been agreed between that Botley Road would be closed to all traffic other than emergency services from 9 January 2023 until December. This closure was delayed in light of the “complexities involved in diverting utilities and feedback from communities”. As Botley Road is the main road into central Oxford from the west, closing it for an extended period would cause significant disruption. The railway station itself is located on the eastern end of Botley Road, north-west of Frideswide Square. The revised bridge replacement programme, jointly agreed between Network Rail, Oxfordshire County Council, and Oxford City Council, will result in the closure being split into two blocks, one from April to October 2023 and the other from March to October 2024.

The 2023 closure will be in effect from 11 April until 31 October to allow utility diversion work to take place on Botley Road. Network Rail’s website states that “11 dif-

ferent utility providers must divert their infrastructure that currently runs underneath the existing bridge” before the replacement can take place. They advise motorists who normally use Botley Road to enter Oxford to use one of the city’s Park and Ride sites (Seacourt being the closest site) or find an alternative route. Bus services will continue but will stop at the Botley Road railway bridge. Pedestrians and cyclists will be able to access Botley Road throughout the duration of the work and local residents’ access to their homes will not be affected. The railway station will continue operating as normal “unless otherwise

advertised”.

The railway station is set to be closed again from 29 July to 6 August 2023 for track and platform work to be completed, and there are plans for further closures in August 2024.

Botley Road will reopen to traffic on 31 October before closing again in March 2024. From March to October, the road will be closed to traffic to allow the bridge to be replaced and highway improvements to be made. As part of the bridge replacement project the road below the bridge will be lowered to allow standard double-

decker buses to pass under the bridge for the first time. A four-metre wide footpath and cycle path will also be installed on each side of the bridge to improve safety and encourage sustainable transport.

The improvements to Oxford Railway Station have been in the works for several years. The project received approval from the Oxford City Planning Committee in November 2021, and its Transport and Works Act Order was approved by the Secretary of State for Transport in June 2022. The improvement programme is set to cost £161 million.

Oxford University a top wildlife-friendly UK university, study says

Gabrielle Thompson News Editor

sations such as the Freshwater Habitats Trust, Heritage Trees, and Badger Trust. The University is also addressing meadow management on adjoining sites in collaboration with its individual colleges and Oxfordshire Preservation Trust.

Bronze, and 19 were categorised as “needing improvement”. Out of the 41 Platinum tier universities, 13 were Russell Group universities.

The University of Oxford was named a top wildlife-friendly UK university in a study conducted by bird provider company Ark Wildlife in January 2023. As a top UK university in wildlife protection, Oxford was categorised as Platinum tier and met 100% of the study’s ranking factors.

According to the Ark Wildlife, Platinum tier UK wild-

life-friendly universities need to have conducted a wildlife survey since January 2021 and hold established policies to protect wildlife. Universities should also provide partnerships or funding for local wildlife causes and biodiversity or wildlife activities, aspects that were factored into the rankings. Universities that were not ranked Platinum tier were categorised as Gold, Silver, Bronze, or “need-

ing improvement”.

As a Platinum tier institution, Oxford promotes biodiversity by constructing multiple plans for wildlife conservation at Wytham Woods, a forest owned by the University. Apart from biodiversity measures, Oxford is establishing a tree policy for its entire estate and has various regional partnerships with environmental organi-

To educate staff and students about the importance of protecting local wildlife, Oxford University offers opportunities to engage in related activities at Wytham Woods that include habitat monitoring and butterfly, bee, and wildflower transects. Oxford also promotes wildlife conservation to the public by providing bee boxes for schools and offering sustainability courses.

Ark Wildlife assessed 122 UK universities on their wildlife protection measures on and off-campus. Among the universities surveyed, 41 were ranked Platinum, 27 were ranked Gold, 23 were ranked Silver, 12 were ranked

“It’s clear that some universities are taking wildlife conservation extremely seriously, and it’s great to see,” Ark Wildlife director Sean McMenemy said, adding that those universities are “really in tune with the local environment, providing invaluable habitats to animals in the area”.

McMenemy emphasised that the top wildlife-friendly UK institutions are actively motivating students to become involved. “This will breed greater awareness of conservation methods and just how vital wildlife is to the UK. Hopefully, it will also instill a lifelong love of animals and the environment in their graduates,” he stated.

Deputy Editor: Tara Earley

Section Editors: Leon Wheeler, Vedika Rastogi, Jack Arrowsmith oxstu.comment@gmail.com

The Problem with PPE: Is It The Subject, Or The Students?

When you tell someone you study PPE (philosophy, politics, and economics – or posh, prattish, and egotistical, depending on your perspective) there’s an expectation of a groan or some sigh of dismay. In Oxford this expectation is rarely disappointed. The reasoning behind this, of course, is that both the subject and its students have a notoriously bad reputation. The expectation when you meet someone studying PPE is that they’re an aspiring politician, someone who’s out to make a name for themselves by ruining (sorry, I meant running) the country. And as such, PPEists are often seen to be miniature versions of the Machiavellian backstabbers they will no doubt one day become.

This reputation is unfortunately well founded. Within the university PPE students can be found occupying positions on the committees of many of the societies and clubs to a much higher degree than any other subject. This presence is felt nowhere more strongly than in those societies that attract the most scandal, rumours, and derision from the rest of the student body – the politically oriented ones. Of the last 16 Oxford Union Presidents, 10 studied or study PPE; of the last 20 Oxford University Labour Club Co-chairs (10 terms worth) this rises to 11. Bizarrely the degree of PPE representation is lowest in the Oxford University Conservative Association, in which only one President since 2020 has been a PPE student (out of a possible eight). When researching these stats I considered trying to find out the PPE representation for the Lib Dems at Oxford, but alas, I couldn’t find anyone who would admit to being one. What this demonstrates is that already within Oxford, PPE students are demonstrating a desire to climb the political and societal ladders in order to occupy positions of power,

by Leon Wheeler

in a way that often results in evoking controversy and ill will towards those involved. Whether that’s rumours of the weaponization of complaints within OULC in order to oust ‘political’ opponents, or accusations of bullying or nepotism within the Union; PPE students are invariably in the middle of it.

But of course, this heavy involvement of PPE students isn’t just restricted to university life. PPE graduates have become commonplace across the political scene in multiple countries. Within the UK, three of the last five prime ministers studied PPE – in the 2014 General Election your choice of PM was effectively a PPE graduate from Brasenose, or a PPE graduate from Corpus Christi – multiple figures within both the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet studied PPE, from Oxford East MP Anneliese Dodds to Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt, and PPEists occupy high up positions across the media world, as BBC presenters, newspaper columnists, and political pundits.

This perversive presence of PPEists in the apparatuses of state control is not just restricted to the UK. PPE graduates have gone on to rule countries across the globe; four Pakistani PMs and one President, three PMs of Australia, and leaders of Myanmar, Ghana, Peru, and Thailand have all studied PPE at Oxford. As such, both PPE graduates and students participate in society in a way that leads to them embarking on ambitious avenues towards the corridors of power.

The issue with this is that it results in political leaders who all come from distinctly similar backgrounds, and have their viewpoints shaped in broadly the same ways. Additionally, flaws with the teaching of the PPE course result in leaders who do not have the insight, experience, or awareness required to truly handle these

roles in a responsible way. The result is a world and country run and formed by Oxford educated PPEists who far too often lead us towards economic crash, social malaise, and political disenfranchisement – to the extent that Spectator columnist Nick Cohen wrote in 2014 that PPE grads “form the largest single component of the most despised governing class since the Great Reform Act” (ironically Nick Cohen also studied PPE). The crashing of the pound under PPE graduate Liz Truss and the welcoming of Brexit and the ensuing racism and xenophobia this enabled under PPE graduate David Cameron with the formulative media influence of PPE graduate Rupert Murdoch are just a few examples of such failure.

But why is it that PPE grads play such a formative (often for the worst) role in the UK and across the world? Why are PPE students so involved in Oxford political and debating societies and why does the degree have such a bad reputation with other students? What’s to blame – the subject or the students?

PPE was first established as an Oxford subject in the 1920’s on the belief that an understanding of philosophy, politics, and economics was vital in aiding the understanding of social phenomena, as such students had to originally study all three subjects for the entirety of their degree. The degree quickly became the ideal training ground for individuals looking to pursue a career in politics or government.

In the modern era PPE students must study all three subjects for their first year. After that point they can – and the vast majority do – drop down to just studying two. Due to this, the founding tenet of all three being required to understand social phenomena is lost. This is only compounded by the fact that philosophy, politics, and economics are all taught

separately. There is no encouragement for philosophical musings or political ideologies to be applied to the study of the economy, and as such the teaching remains formulaic, with few students exploring original ideas or applications of theory.

It is currently compulsory for students who continue with philosophy after first year to study ethics. The departure of the tripartite model of study has resulted in those students who pursue just politics and economics to lack a grounding in various moral perspectives. One can only wonder how the UK would differ if individuals such as Liz Truss, David Cameron, or Rishi Sunak had had some ethical backing for their political and economical thoughts.

Throughout their degree most PPE students have to complete two essays, or one essay and a problem sheet, per week. As such, many of the topics they explore don’t have the required time to be studied in depth, and students instead emerge with a surface-level awareness of the issues. Not only does this give students a false sense of academic superiority, but it also prepares them for the life of a modern-day politician – constantly skimming over briefs and reports just enough so that one can appear to know what they’re talking about when speaking in parliament or to the media.

The way the degree is structured not only trains students for political life, but it trains them for it poorly, such that they can easily appear to have a firm grasp and understanding of the issues at hand, but in reality, lack the insight and depth of knowledge to help resolve the problems that arise.

Before addressing the students, it needs to be noted that despite PPE grads’ high presence in the world of politics and the media, most PPE students do not end up looking

for careers in politics. Only a few want to run the country. However, PPE still attracts far more students interested in a political career than other subjects – partly because one of the subjects is politics, but also because PPE has a reputation for aiding someone who wants to stalk the halls of power. The extreme popularity of PPE is evidence of this. With around 250 students per year, it’s one of the largest single degrees. What’s more, applications for the course rose by 28% from 2007-2015 as awareness of the degrees’ heavy presence in UK political life rose, suggesting that this was what drove applications.

Furthermore, PPE students are not empty vessels who arrive at Oxford and are transformed by their degree into power hungry, ladder climbing egoists. Instead, they apply and arrive with their own aspirations, and the heavy presence of PPE students in the Union and the political societies demonstrates this. As such, it seems that the students themselves play a key role in the formulation of both the degree’s negative reputation within the university, and its negative impacts upon society and politics outside of university.

Ultimately, enough PPE students arrive at Oxford with intentions of assuming positions of power that their presence can be noticed in both university life and out in the wide world. The subject itself then confers upon them the confidence and slight skill needed to give these aspirations a chance at fruition. However, this ‘training’ for political life fails to impart the true skills and awareness that are needed to do a good job of running the country. This all gets us to where we are now and likely will be for some time. Screwed.

Signed, Leon Wheeler - Keble PPEist.

French Pension Reforms Are Flagging Democratic Failures

by Maya Lemaire

Your Degree Might Not Save You From AI

by Jack Arrowsmith

In 1779 Ned Ludd, a weaver living in Leicester, broke two stocking frames in a fit of rage. The frames, designed to replace traditional hand knitters, had become emblematic of the technological development that was sweeping Britain, making centuries-old practices redundant. Years later, Ludd’s story would be repurposed into the folkloric character of Captain Ludd, inspiring the Luddite rebellions and resulting in the destruction of textile machines, which were seen by workers as threatening their craft.

problems surrounding Britain’s economic competitiveness, but the changes were also driven by automation.

As hundreds of thousands continue to protest across France against the pension reforms, Macron stands firm. In a controversial move, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne made use of article 49.3 of the constitution to pass the pension reform without a vote in the Assemblée Nationale. Despite two and a half months of heavy protests leading up to the decision, the financial risks of MPs rejecting the law seemingly outweighed social pressure in Macron’s eyes. Leftwing politicians have criticised the government’s actions, calling it a sign of weakness and a democratic failure.

The pension reforms involve moving the retirement age from 62 to 64 by 2030, with the additional requirement of having worked for at least 43 years, instead of 41, to qualify. A long career system is already in place for those who have worked for five quarters before turning 20, allowing them to retire two years earlier. The government have argued that as the number of people who have retired increases alongside life expectancy, the current pension system in which workers’ taxes are paying for pensions is unsustainable, and thus changes are necessary.

According to polls, two-thirds of the French population oppose the reforms, with trade unions stating they will unfairly penalise those in low-income manual jobs who started work earlier than graduates. For those in jobs involving heavy labour in dehumanising conditions, it is adding on 24 months of gruelling work in their later

years. There have been additional concerns that the reforms will make it even harder for women to access a full pension if they take maternity leave and work part-time during the early years of childcare.

The power of protest and the movement of workers appears to no longer hold the same weight in politics.

The debate has moved from focusing purely on pension reforms to the greater issue of democracy in France. Macron’s government is waiting for strikes to subside instead of listening to the movement, further reinforcing the idea that he and his government of plutocrats are fundamentally disconnected from the public. Since being elected, Macron has been reluctant to listen to the opposition and has often disregarded them. Despite only 20.7% of those registered voting for him in the first round, Macron has undermined the strikes in parliament in stating that “the crowd, whatever form it takes, has no legitimacy in the face of the people who express themselves through their elected representatives”. It seems the President has changed his tune since being elected, when he recognised that a significant proportion of his votes in the second round were not in support of his ideas and policies, but a move to block Marine Le Pen on the extreme right. The power of protest and the movement of workers appears to no longer hold the same weight in

politics. A strike is no longer a means through which democracy can be upheld but a nuisance to be ignored and diminished.

The shift of power from the people to a disconnected elite is a trend which has been mirrored in the UK following the implementation of the police, crime, sentencing, and courts (PCSC) bill in April last year. Macron’s sentiments towards strikes have been echoed by the likes of Priti Patel, who urged MPs to support the fundamentally autocratic bill by stating that “we do not make policy through mob rule in this country”. The disruptions caused by workers’ strikes and campaigns on the climate crisis are of greater concern to the British government than the issues being campaigned for. Fearmongering about the inherent violence of crowds has served to legitimise their repression both through increased policing and the introduction of authoritarian policies. Unsurprisingly, the greatest source of violence in crowds stems from a brutal police force rather than nonviolent demonstrations.

Historically, the importance of protests in social liberation cannot be denied, and they have remained the backbone of democracy. Their suppression and dismissal is not something to take lightly, with potentially significant consequences on the trust people have in their governments. As tensions rise in response to our global energy, cost of living, and climate crises, having faith in the people and systems that lead us will become increasingly important.

It is debatable whether Ludd actually existed, but his status is a recognition of the sense of helplessness workers in industrial England felt in the face of rapid technological change. They saw their only source of help as coming from a mythical figure.

Reflecting on recent developments in Artificial Intelligence, I feel a similar sense of helplessness. The success of ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot produced by OpenAI, has showcased AI’s power and scope. The Chatbot was estimated to have reached 100 million monthly active users in January, just two months after its launch, making it the fastest growing consumer application in history. Trained from data found on the internet, it seeks to understand and respond to written prompts. In this regard, it’s incredibly good: it can craft resumes, solve maths problems, and even help to write code. Its successor GPT-4, able to respond to image prompts, is even better. One user showed a photo of the inside of a fridge to the bot, enabling it to suggest possible meals that could be made from the ingredients. Others have used the software to build functional websites, solely based on a hand drawn prompt for what the website should look like.

This technology has the potential to impact the job market in a fundamentally different way from anything we’ve seen previously. In the past, periods of automation involved the introduction of physical labour-saving devices on the factory floor. In 1970, manufacturing had a 32% share of the British economy: by 2010, this was down to 12%. Undoubtedly, this decline may have partly been caused by

In response, British governments prioritised sending people to university. Tony Blair set the now infamous target for 50% of young adults to progress to higher education, with the idea that degrees would be able to better equip the country to deal with the rapidly changing economy. With AI, however, it seems that the skills offered by those degrees might be the most under threat. After all, GPT-4 performs exceptionally well in exams. It scored in the 90th percentile of the Bar exam, the 88th in the LSAT, and the 89th in the Maths SAT (I refuse to write the word math).

The software has all the cognitive skills that are supposed to make university students competitive in the job market, and it can deploy these skills independently. An analysis by Goldman Sachs estimates that a quarter of current work tasks in the US could be automated by AI, with particularly high exposure in administrative and legal professions, at 46% and 44% of tasks respectively.

This paints a pretty bleak picture for university students; we’ve bought into a view of the economy that might completely break down when we actually enter the workforce.

By contrast, it is the jobs that universities typically don’t serve to prepare their students for, and the ones that were most affected by previous waves of automation, that seem to be safe. Construction, for instance, faces AI exposure in only 6% of tasks. It’s easy to see how AI could analyse legal documents, but it’s not going to come and build you a house anytime soon.

This general view of AI might be a bit bleak, and OpenAI’s software definitely isn’t perfect. In a post-collections essay crisis, I was hoping ChatGPT might take care of this article for me. When asking for the word count of a piece I got it to write, I first got an answer of 390 words (it was actually 537). Further dialogue prompted ChatGPT to keep changing its answer, before deciding that the article was in fact 11 words. It was sure of this. Suffice it to say that counting is not

It’s not a question of French laziness - it’s a question of democracy.

its strong suit.

And even if ChatGPT excels at a task, there are some things that we just want humans to do for us, no matter how good the digital alternative is. OpenAI’s CEO has used chess as an example. Since IBM’s DeepBlue beat Gary Kasparov, computers have been better than humans at chess, yet it’s more popular than ever. And nobody is tuning in to watch two computers go at it on a chess board: our fascination with humans doing that has survived automation. We also remain integral for displaying creative talent. Youtuber Casey Neistat recently set out to make a vlog written and directed entirely by GPT-4. The result might just be the worst piece of filmmaking I’ve ever seen. Neistat diagnosed this as being GPT-4’s lacking a “soul” in its creative expression. A part of consuming great art is that it allows us to connect with the creator, and the emotions they were feeling as they made it.

AI is clearly going to get better at many things. GPT-4 is already 40% more likely to produce accurate responses than its predecessor. But sometimes it just can’t replicate the impact of a real person.

Sadly, we can’t all become chess players and artists. The majority of us will be forced to reckon with the emergence of a new economy, where the skills that we thought set us apart can now be done cheaply and more effectively by a machine. This might require a societal change in direction. The UK economy is chronically short of skilled tradespeople. It seems those jobs will be golden in a world of AI-based automation. A shift towards training for them would pose a serious threat to the years of high rates of attendance at British universities. But if those institutions are no longer able to prove that they can properly equip their students for the world economy, that might not be a bad thing.

Like the Luddites, there does not seem to be anyone coming to save us from our plight. Of course, in their case, Britain’s industrial revolution was able to make jobs as well as take them away, offering a consolation to those whose jobs faced automation. AI will undoubtably create some new job opportunities, but it’s not clear that this will be sufficient to meet the needs of the new army of unemployed. Without a genuine realignment of our economy, we might find ourselves looking for our own Captain Ludd.

Work hard, or hard work?

by Tara Earley

Writing this article on the train ride back from Thorpe Park, I can safely say that there are worse ways to spend the first official day of Trinity term. When I shared a photo of the amusement park with my friends back home, however, they were surprised. “Didn’t you only get back to Oxford a week ago?”

“Why are you not in the library?”

“Do you actually do any work at that university, or just skive off and sit around drinking with your tutors?”

Whilst that last point may bring an uncomfortable truth to light, this does beg an important question. Why was I feeling so burnt out by the end of noughth week, to the point where a thrill-packed day trip (complete with no less than two rides on Stealth and five Gs of gravitational force) was the only thing I felt could cure my woes?

This may only have been my second ever round of collections, but I am already becoming exasperated with them. The last two vacations (remember, they are not holidays…) have been spent stewing in anxiety over the sheer amount of work on my plate. Unfinished reading lists from the previous term, new materials to look over before the next begins, and a healthy dose of exam stress (albeit irrelevant to one’s actual degree), all on top of trying to wind down from eight or nine weeks of intensity and madness. This is not accounting for part-time work, catching up with friends from home, or any other activities students might need to make time for, either. It would seem these feelings of stress are not unfamiliar. Countless panicked Oxfesses have been rolling in over recent weeks, with posters citing feelings of guilt, worry, and ex-

haustion. Despite the cheerful weather and beautiful flowers popping up around the city, students have resigned themselves to spending the term in a grim, darkened corner of the Glink. As prelims and finals approach, the tenor more than ever is that we need to be buckling down and just “getting on with it”.

To distract from the overwhelm of the workload, many students enrol in sports teams, societies, and other extracurricular events. But these can present their own set of problems. I recently spoke to a student who was feeling absolutely crushed by his executive responsibilities. “Running a society takes a great deal of effort. Without us constantly chipping in our own time, little gets done,” he commented. “Don’t get me wrong - I love what I do. But there are days where it feels like a chore, rather than a passion.”

As prelims and finals approach, the tenor more than ever is that we need to be buckling down and just “getting on with it”.

In fact, the number of students who seem to be juggling multiple exec roles and societal commitments alongside a full-time degree is somewhat unnerving. Don’t get me wrong - university is absolutely the place to be trying new things and throwing yourself wholeheartedly into creative, athletic, and liberating endeavours. There is arguably no point in coming here if your plan is to hole up in the library for three or more solid years. Getting involved with the community on a wider scale is

a must, particularly when inside a collegiate system that can sometimes make one feel a little isolated.

However, when these activities go beyond enjoyment, and cross over into headache-inducing obligations, or worse, box-checking exercises merely to pad out CVs, it becomes a greater issue. The “work hard, play hard” culture of Oxford is deeply ingrained in the fundamental character and structure of the university. Two years on from a startling insight as to the hidden problems and dangerous coping mechanisms that students use to get by in this relentless environment, it feels like very little has changed. Virtually everyone arrives at Oxford suffering from being a chronic overachiever. Having spent our final years in high school likely with a jam-packed schedule of super-curriculars and impressive but time-intensive commitments on top of exam revision, it can be hard to detach from such a full and hectic lifestyle. Old habits die hard. But maybe it would be a good idea for us all to take a breather every now and again.

At university, where the pressure to succeed and make everyone back home proud is immense, it can be draining to try and perform at the top of our game all the time. And all of this is without considering external issues we might be facing. In a survey published in February 2023, 91% of students said that they were either somewhat or very worried about the rising cost of living. This is news to no one - but a harsh reminder that for students, it can often feel like we are low on the priority list to those in charge. Yet nowhere is this more evident than in Oxford itself.

The truth is that we are living in a system that feels at times as though it has been designed to make life as difficult as humanly possible. Nothing can ever be simple. We must barter with our college bursars and JCR presidents to engineer even the smallest of changes. Arranging tutorials can quickly become a hassle with multiple conflicting schedules to contend with, when faculties can no longer be bothered to liaise between themselves. And after even just a few minutes of conversing with someone new in hall or on Cornmarket Street, it becomes apparent that most students here feel they are behind, whether that be in their academic, social, or personal lives. This goes beyond scholarly imposter syndrome - there is an underlying sentiment of permanent inadequacy running rampant in this institution.

Until we can push for some meaningful systemic change, it seems as though we must settle with allowing ourselves some time to be free. Whether that be experiencing the adrenaline rush of a trip to Thorpe Park (as I did today), or an afternoon eating ice cream and playing Animal Crossing (as I will tomorrow), not every moment must be spent with others, or with work. Not all relaxation has to be productive. And not every minute of the day needs to be spent in silent suffering.

The “work hard, play hard” culture of Oxford is deeply ingrained in the fundamental character and structure of the university.

of the week Profile

Meet the Editors in Chief for TT23

Ayomilekan Adegunwa and Rose Henderson in conversation with Matthew Holland

Ayomilekan Adegunwa and Rose Henderson are our Editors in Chief for TT23. They are both second years at Worcester College studying PPE. I sat down with them to discuss their paths in student journalism, their opinions of the student journalism scene, and their plans for the future of the Oxford Student this coming term.

MH: What made you want to be Editor in Chief?

AA: I enjoy student journalism and I’ve been doing it pretty much since I started Uni, so the natural progression was to keep on going and eventually when you keep on going you run out of roles and you’re Editor in Chief. I enjoy it and I do think they are things where I’ve thought this could be done better, and so I want to actually try and make some of those things better.

RH: I really enjoyed being Head of News. I found it really fulfilling having a large section and being in charge of doing that. Similar to what Ayomi was saying, as I learned more about the paper, there were more things that I didn’t necessarily want to change but that I also wanted to have a say in how it’s done and be involved in how these things are run. So when I reached the end of Head of News, I thought it would be a really fun challenge to have a go at Editor in Chief.

MH: So far, what has been your favourite section to work on?

RH: Mine is an easy one, since mine is News. I started as a section editor for News and Comment, and then became Head of News which I really enjoyed. I think it’s quite fun how none of the articles are very long, so it’s not the same as like when I was writing Comment articles and you’re spending days on it.

AA: Not to be a copycat, but I think I’d also say News. I’ve done bits of other sections but it’s the section I’ve spent the most time with and it’s the section I have the best idea of what I want it to look like as well. It is also the

backbone of the paper, obviously it’s at the start of the paper, and I just think it’s important to have a good News section and that’s like the foundation of the paper.

MH: What, in your opinion, sets the OxStu apart from the other papers and magazines in the student journalism scene?

RH: News wise, not to bang on about News, but I think we’ve done a really good job at being first to a lot of big stories and reporting on them in an objective way, which is really important that we can continue that. Martin, our new Head of News did a good job at this last term, with doing deep dives into things people might not be aware of, so we did that with the Killer Robots campaign. I also think we’re really strong with the other sections of the paper, so I think we were the first Oxford paper to have an Identity/Pink section and I’m really keen on getting the Identity section back up and running this term. So I think we do a great job of having a really wide range of other things and whether that’s people’s opinions of Oxford things or on international things, we have a really wide range of topics.

AA: Obviously I would say this, but I think our standards are quite high, and I genuinely mean that in a good way. The things that get published in the Oxford Student are good journalism and good, quality writing. It’s very rare as well that we have issues with our stories, which is a testament to our editors and our writers, that we write good stuff and very well-researched pieces, that aren’t just thinlyveiled attacks. I do think as well, our vibes are just pretty good. I’m sure other papers probably have good vibes, but our vibes are better.

MH: How did you get into student journalism and what made you choose the OxStu?

RH: For me, I’d randomly met one of my old teachers from school, and when I was at school I’d done quite a bit of debating

but I’d come to Uni and the Oxford Union wasn’t really for me, so I stopped doing that. My teacher suggested that I should really think about doing student journalism, saying it was a very equivalent thing of learn- ing new skills and meeting new people. Sometimes I’d get a copy of Cherwell or the OxStu, and I just thought that the OxStu had slightly higher editorial standards and then there were already a couple of people at Worcester who were involved. So I applied over the summer for News and Comment and now here I am.

AA: When I was younger I’d been interested in journalism and writing, so it was one of the things that when I came to Uni, I told myself I really wanted to do. I joined all of the contributor groups just before arriving. I wrote for the Oxford Blue a couple of times but didn’t take an editor position because I didn’t really know how it worked or anything. Then I wrote a piece for the Oxford Student and just in Trinity of my first year decided that I was ready to actually be an editor. I chose the Oxford Student just because it felt more well-organised. It also of course has a print edition, which I think is quite cool to have and I appreciate more the more involved I’ve become in it.

MH: What has been your favourite article to write so far?

AA: Off the top of my head, I think it’s got to be my “Falling Out of Love With Economics” article from the end of last term. Because it’s a topic quite close to my heart in a very superficial sense and it was just fun compared to doing News pieces or Profiles or the Sport pieces I’ve done. Writing a feature about why I dropped part of my degree was just quite fun, and also something I’d been intending to write at some point, because I have quite a lot of strong opinions about economics and getting to say some of those was definitely why it was my favour-

ite piece so far.

RH: I think my favourite was probably my Comment piece, which was about career pressure to get internships and get this high-flying career. It was quite cathartic to write and really nice to have random people who I vaguely knew message me saying they really enjoyed my piece, like that feeling that this has actually gone out into the world and people have read it. My favourite sort of journalistic piece though was the one about the SU VP for Women resigning, which involved obtaining the transcript sheets from student council meetings, and that was just quite exciting and timepressured making it feel like it was going to be big breaking news.

MH: What has been your proudest achievement in the OxStu so far?

RH: This is a recent achievement and this is maybe speaking too soon, but I am very pleased with the amount of social media pieces that have gone out in the past few weeks, because that was something I was really keen on changing and last term it was only mainly News pieces which went on the Instagram. Everytime I see an Instagram post, it’s just a minor victory and I’m so proud.

AA: Maybe just being Editor in Chief itself. It feels like a good culmination of all the things I’ve done before and all those evenings spent doing stuff and the interviews and everything. I think that has to be my proudest achievement, like being in a position where I can actually help the paper even more and have more influence over the direction and stuff.

MH: What changes are you planning for this term?

AA: What are we planning, Rose?

RH: Social media for me has been a big thing. I really wanted to regulate how often we do that stuff. Then, something else which I wanted to do and has already happened with Martin being so good, is having a News team with more clearly defined roles and people knowing what they’re supposed to be doing. That happened without really having to do much, so Martin was a great appointment by us. I think the difficulty with having termly editorial roles is that people have great ideas and we can implement them for a term, but then new people come in the next term and over the summer there’s a big turnover and all these great ideas don’t really go anywhere. So I suppose, making sure as well we have processes in place to make sure that these ideas can stay in a meaningful way.

AA: I think there are also some nice little changes, so the design of the paper will be tweaked and adjusted. We’ve also just changed our banners for social media and made sure the colours for social media match up with those in the print edition. Massive shout out to Blane for basically doing all of that. I think these little design tweaks add up to a more coherent design for the whole paper. In terms of big changes, one thing I’m really keen on is hopefully creating a newsletter, as something that can be improved is that there is a lot of good writing in the paper but it could be more widely read than it is now. Something I’m passionate about is getting more people reading our stuff, which is kind of what the idea of the newsletter is for.

Full interview on our website

Deputy Editor: Matthew Holland Section Editor: Vedika Rastogi oxstu.profile@gmail.com

Florence Ifeoluwa Otedola, more commonly known as Cuppy, is a Nigerian producer and DJ – as well as an Oxford alumna, graduating this year with a Masters in African Studies. A few months after her graduation, she has decided to set up the Cuppy Africa Oxford Scholars Fund, which has promised £100,000 to support African graduate students. I spoke to her about her time at Oxford, her experiences in education and what she hopes to achieve through this initiative.

AA: Why did you want to study here?

C: That’s a great question. When people ask me this, I ask if they want the truth or like, some sort of theoretical ambitious answer. I like to say I just love studying, but then the truth really is that as a DJ, I was completely unemployed because Covid happened and I was sitting down gig less. Would I have studied again if not for Covid? No. But was I always regretting not going to Oxford? Yes. I remember as an undergraduate, I could have gone to Oxford, but I chose music and DJing and I needed to be in London. And so, I believe Covid gave me this amazing opportunity to slow down my DJ career and focus on building myself.

Oxford is a place that I had visited several times and I’ve always felt like, apart from it being a competitive uni and just so highly academic, I wanted to see the like-minded people that are asking questions outside the box, the energy and the international community. I just wanted to know what it was like to be a pink head Nigerian girl walking around!

AA:How did you find studying here?

C:It was the most difficult year of my life. I was very honestI’m quite against the celebrity

Cuppy in conversation with Ayomilekan Adegunwa

culture of perfectionism. And so, I wanted to come across as very authentic and real. As a 29 year old international DJ that already had a career, it was really tough to focus - I’d be in the two hour lectures and I would kind of switch off. It was hard.

Adult learning is very difficult and you have to be prepared for it. It was amazing learning African politics, but the actual activity and the process of learning as an adult is harder because we’re not like sponges anymore.

I always refer to when I was younger - I could listen to one song and quote the whole song lyric by lyric. And now I’m like, ‘What? Wait, what did they say?’ It’s the idea of your brain, not necessarily being slower, but having to deal with adult life and responsibilities.

Being in Oxford was nice. It was nice to be away from London, nice to be away from Pink Penthouse. My favourite part of the whole experience was my college, Lady Margaret Hall, and also my actual faculty. I was in the faculty of African Studies, so I got to connect with people from around the continent and spend time with Ugandans and Zimbabweans and Ghanaians and South Africans - it was kind of like a home away from home.

AA: What about studying here made you want to give back?

C: This whole Cuppy Africa Oxford Fund was birthed from an experience. You know, I think we started as 28 students and we graduated as 27. And the pure fact was lack of resources. And it broke my heart because one of my classmates worked so hard to get into Oxford and couldn’t continue, not because of his academic levels and not because of his abilities, but just because of his resources. People talk about the hardest thing about Oxford being actually getting in, but a very hard thing for many people is staying in.

Academia is more than just

books. It’s a support system. I really want to provide a cushioning to allow people to ease the experience and allow them to focus on what matters - really getting down to the demands of academia. I empathise with students that really don’t have that support, especially when you’re coming from back home, from Africa, and you come into the winter. Michaelmas Term is harsh! It’s cold and it’s tough.

AA: Considering your familial background, and your own impressive music career - why are you interested in education?

C: First of all, I’m obsessed with learning. I love the idea of learning. I don’t think anyone should ever stop learning and developing, but I think it’s more to do with me as an individual. I’ve always felt like a rebel in every environment. When all my friends were getting married and kind of doing what a good Nigerian child is supposed to do, I decided I wanted to be a pinkhaired international DJ.

When my album dropped and it was time to go on tour, I was like, ‘oh, actually I wanna go back to school’. And I remember my label saying that you’re gonna ruin everything we built. I always love being unpredictable and I always feel like no matter what room you’re in, if you have a different lens on, it’ll give you an advantage. That means not only being someone that is educated but has a very creative career, it also means someone that is creative and has a bit more of an intellectual approach to things. In the classroom in Oxford, I was the DJ and backstage at the festival, I’m the academic and it’s a nice marriage because I always feel stimulated mentally - neither one side would kind of satisfy my curiosities.

I think the best way of applying my intellect, but also my creativity is through philanthropy. I do philanthropy in a very

different way. And that’s kind of where I’m headed towards now. I turned 30 and thought ‘I’m finding what feels good’, because I’ll be honest with you, I thought, ‘Oh, okay, I’m gonna get a degree from Kings, then I’m gonna get a degree from New York University, then I’m gonna get a degree from Oxford’. And it’s like, nothing feels good. You kind of graduate and you’re like, okay, I’ve done this. Or I was like, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to DJ here’, or ‘I can’t wait to earn this amount of money’, or ‘I can’t wait to be on the cover of this magazine’. And then you’re like, okay, done. What I realised personally makes me feel good and fulfilled is actually helping people.

AA: What are your hopes for this AfOx initiative?

C: The idea behind this is really me trying to leave something behind that is sustainable - hence we decided to commit to a 10 year fund. I set it up because like I said, there’s so many vulnerable and neglected students, particularly for people of African descent coming from the continent.

This is a very flexible fund. It could be a maximum payment of 2000 for each of the 5 students. It’s going through AfOx so students can apply through AfOx. It can be for anything outside academia, it can be for mental health, it can be for learning, it can be for disabilities - it can be anything that helps you achieve that course, to finish that course to, you know, go past the finish line.

AA: Why do you think that education is important to Africa?

C:I think education is important because it’s what makes the big difference, the reason I’m so ambitious, the reason I’m so confident. Education is not about academia, it’s about the values of it. It’s not about what you learn, it’s the fact that you’re opening your brain

to learn and that is a skill you need in life.

I can think about so many things I did – like I did this calculus class and I hated it. Am I now sitting down punching numbers all day? No, but I can understand the basics of how money works. Education is really the only thing that can unlock knowledge, and knowledge is power. If you wanna go anywhere in life, you need those skills. Nigeria, has a population of over 320 million people. It is one of the biggest economies in Africa, and the majority are young people. And when we look at some of the bigger problems of unemployment and of equality, education has the tools in order to solve this kind of disparity.I personally think one of the worst things for me that I think I’ve experienced living in Nigeria is ageism. There’s a, ‘you are young, you don’t know anything’ attitude,and education is the only thing that can allow us to bridge those gaps. Another reason I think we need to learn, particularly as Africans, is that we must make sure that we have structure. When I think about some of the things that frustrate me about being back home, it’s the lack of structure, it’s the lack of governance. And I think that this is something that we can actually learn from from other environments.

In Nigeria, we recently had a massive presidential election, and the Cuppy Foundation was able to support that. What we did was completely neutralwe weren’t telling people who to vote for, but we were telling people to educate themselves enough to know who to vote for. You have to know to make a decision and in a world with social media and a world with so much going on, when you know you can make a better decision and it’s less overwhelming.

These comments have been edited for clarity

“Oxford was so beneficial for me as a person, and this is the least I can do to make sure that my experience can be planted and spread to other people”

On Sam Smith:

Why has the public turned its back on them?

SamSmith has now been in the music industry, and therefore the public eye, for over 10 years now, collecting numerous awards including 5 Grammys and an Oscar for best original song. Even though they were almost universally adored at the start of their career, why has public opinion on Smith changed so drastically in the last few months?

Despite being openly gay since the start of their career, it was only in 2019 that Sam Smith came out as non-binary, stating “I’m not male or female, I think I flow somewhere in between. It’s all on the spectrum,” in an interview with actor and activist Jameela Jamil. It was also around this time that Smith was releasing singles ahead of their third studio album Love Goes. These singles had a new, pop-like sound that differed greatly from the ballads that had featured on Smith’s first two albums. Smith later confirmed that the that the majority of their new album would be sonically similar to the singles and feature fewer ballads and slower songs.

Then, in August of 2022, Sam Smith released Unholy, a synth-pop collaboration with transgender German popstar Kim Petras. Despite both artists proclaiming their love for the song, Smith came under fire for the sexually charged lyrics and burlesque-style dancing and outfits in the music video. This argument was, rather predictably, reignited when Sam Smith and Kim Petras performed the song at the 2023 Grammys, with Smith wearing a red top hat adorned with horns, leading tabloids to describe the performance as “satanic”.

Smith’s tour for his latest album “Gloria” has also sparked controversy for the extensive use of bondage and fetish gear in the dancer’s outfits, as well as Smith themselves performing a burlesque-type number during the show.

of the backlash Smith has faced has stemmed from their desire to be who they want to be in their music and their personal expression

As true as it may be, it still feels paradoxical that Smith faces so much criticism for their self-expression in a society that claims to value individuality. Could this, perhaps, point to a different reason?

In contrast, Harry Styles has been credited with normalising men wearing feminine clothing, jewellery and nail polish, and yet he doesn’t face this type of hate.

The main differences between Smith and Styles are the things that Smith has always admitted to – their identity as part of the LGBTQ+ community, and their struggles with body image issues.

Effectively, the hatred that Sam Smith receives is derived from transphobia and fatphobia, whether that’s intentional, or unconscious bias against non-binary individuals and larger people that has been conditioned through media.

dom of expression is only deemed acceptable if society sees you as acceptable in the first place, and with anti-trans laws on the rise (especially those in The USA that seek to prevent trans people from wearing gender-affirming clothing) it is not surprising that someone like Sam Smith, who expresses themselves to their heart’s content and is also very successful, is the target of such venom, perhaps if not only for causing people to reassess how they view non-binary people.

The antidote to this, I think,

is to simply continue as before. The more we see nonbinary people and people who go against society’s rules for expression in media, the more normalised it will be, something I can only hope will happen sooner rather than later.

Image Credit: pitpony.photography, via Wikimedia Commons.

Overall, it seems that most

What we can ultimately learn from this is that free-

“Overall, it seems that most of the backlash Smith has faced has stemmed from their desire to be who they want to be in their music and their personal expression”

Deputy Editor: Blane Aitchison Section Editor: Daisy Outram oxstu.pink@gmail.com

Kirk Ringwald

Deputy Editor: Sami Jalil

Section Editors: Farrah Bergstrom, Georgia Ferris, Anna Ashkinazi oxstu.identity@gmail.com

‘An Irish Goodbye’

Identity

Georgia Ferris discusses Irish identity in media through the short film ‘An Irish Goodbye’

Formany years, media has inaccurately represented Irish people, whether that be through awful Irish accents (sorry Tom Cruise!) or through leprechaun-Darby-O’Gill-like portrayals of Ireland and Irish people alike.

That was until the Northern Irish BAFTA and Oscar-winning short film ‘An Irish Goodbye’ was released in March of 2022 and changed Hollywood’s outlook of Ireland, making the country seem less clichéd and stereotypical and more authen-

tic and realistic.

This short film is based in Templepatrick in County

Antrim, where two estranged brothers, Turlough (Seamus O’Hara) and Lorcan (James Martin), are forced to reunite on their family farm in rural Northern Ireland after their mother’s death. However, upon discovery of a bucket list belonging to her, the mood of their reunion and their relationship with each other change for the better.

But what does this short film

We’re now accepting poetry and creative writing for our section, so get in touch if you’re interested!

really do for the Irish identity?

As a Northern Irish woman, I believe it excels in promoting a realistic version of the Irish identity, presenting Irish people not as the stereotypical pot-of-gold leprechauns which Hollywood claims them to be, but as real people with a gift for hurling borderline abuse or ‘slagging’ as a means of showing affection. People from countries where showing affection in this way is not a cultural norm would be shocked by the streams of insults between the

two brothers, but this love language is extremely common in my home country.

We also hear traditional Irish folk tunes being used throughout the short film, such as John McCormack’s ‘Little Town in the Old County Down’ and the nostalgic favourite ‘Belle of Belfast City / Tell Me Ma.’ These Irish folk songs are particularly important when it comes down to the Irish identity, as music in general evokes memories and prompts us to reflect on the past. It helps to identify the

Irish culture, whilst also reaffirming a true representation of the Irish identity. Overall, the short film does wonders for Irish representation, and it is worth a watch if you would like to have more of an insight into Irish culture and what it means to be Irish or if you would just like to watch for the craic*!

‘Just Keep Making Noise’

Sami Jalil discusses how music interacts with their identity and mental health

I mean it when I say music saved my life. In the darkest hours of my past, the wire of my headphones became my only lifeline. Music is often able to do something that words can’t, and though we don’t quite understand why, it has become a form of relief, self-expression and therapy in many communities. There is debate around this so-called “power of music”,

and whether music itself has any power outside its con§text. Nevertheless, music has become something I completely embody: every breath, movement and word is entwined with melodies and rhythms, and for once in my life, I have found something that makes me happy. This is an insight into how music showed me the meaning of my life, and how through the terrors of coming to terms with my identity, it became the light at the end of my tunnel.

I was a late bloomer as a musician, so I was always one step behind everyone else. All these people had been practising since they could barely walk, and here I was with a cheap keyboard and some shoddy skills. Things got

tough and I came close to quitting altogether, but this little part of me kept me in the game and I’ve been grateful for that ever since. My childhood was very unstable, and I’ve gone through my life having loved and lost a lot of people. But music never betrayed me.

I’ve been grateful for that ever since. My childhood was very unstable, and I’ve gone through my life having loved and lost a lot of people. But music never betrayed me. The perfect song was always there for me whenever I needed it: it would quieten the noise in my head and make the pain go away just for a little bit. It was that little bit of relief that kept me afloat.

Identity is such a complex thing,

The Identity section is keen to interview students about any aspect of identity and how that has affected their experience at Oxford. We hope this will be a way to make student journalism more accessible, so if you have a story to tell, please reach out!

and I think it can cover a range of topics that we may not initially realise. My identity is quite complex: I’m brown, working class, queer and have struggled with depression and anxiety. But throughout my life, I think music has become a part of my identity too. It has acted as a way for me to communicate my struggles and cope with them when nothing else seemed to work. In some ways my musical identity is separate from my actual identity, but in other ways they can overlap.

Sometimes we neglect parts of our identity because we think they’re not as important as others, but it’s essential to celebrate all aspects of your identity and cling to what you love. Having things to enjoy and places to escape to

is really important for wellbeing, so sometimes it’s good to take a step back and think about what makes you truly happy. For me, that happened to be music - for you, it could be anything you want it to be.

*craic = an Irish slang term for entertainment

Dallying with Dipper

Hello dear friends, and welcome to another term!

I decided to take a deep dive into people known around the Oxford community–whether for their advocacy, positivity, or large social media presence. So of course my first stop had to be the one and only DJ Dipper, Daniel the History and Politics finalist at Magdalen. Besides his stint DJing for events around Oxford, Daniel has been a vocal advocate speaking out for people of low socio-economic backgrounds and disabilities, as well as doing charity work, being librarian of the Oxford Union, and a year as president of the Magdalen JCR. We met at Cafe Creme and had a long chat over a smoothie and hot chocolate– two hours that were only broken by the fact that I had to leave for dinner, filled with chat about music and work.

Our long conversation was split between the two activities he was most well-known for– his social advocacy and his DJing skills. On his ad-

vocacy, we chatted about his work. He said, “If I see a change, I want to make it… If you see that you have the ability, you should put yourself forward. I could manage those commitments and I learned things from each of them.” Some of it was through making changes to help disabled people during events in the Union as Librarian, some of it through writing (like an article in our paper from last year!), and some outside of Oxford. He in fact was going to London for charity events a few times in the future, which I admired, especially while studying for finals. He told me about an event two terms ago speaking about Magdalen environmental protections while he was JCR president–Magdalen’s planning on being carbon-neutral by 2035, which many other colleges should really take on.

Then came DJing. Daniel and I talked about his upcoming events: a stint at the Varsity Club, a birthday party, and many a Magdalen bop. When asked about his residency, he said, “Magdalen, they sometimes see me three weeks in a row. Trying to change things up while bringing joy at the same time is challenging,

because I go with the flow each time and don’t plan it.” Daniel’s Aviici fanhood is certainly a sign of good taste, and people certainly agree– he’s been to around a hundred balls and events, something he didn’t think was possible before arriving. “Coming from a low socio-economic background,” he says, “allowed me to enjoy a lot of things… every term I’d be getting sometimes hundreds of pounds worth of tickets or drinks or dinners by doing these things so I could go to these events I couldn’t otherwise.”

How much sleep does a guy who does so much get every night? Considering how I only get six-ish on a good night without having done much charity work, I was surprised when Daniel said he gets seven to nine hours on a good night. It was only during 2022, especially his stint running for Oxford Union president, that he didn’t get much sleep. “I was so tired I did not sleep in my own bed… I was on random sofas and random floors.

They once found me asleep, on the floor, with my laptop on top of me… it was brutal, in some ways…but ultimately I enjoyed the experience.”

Enjoying what you do seems to be Daniel’s key to success. He’s doing well in his degree, has built strong friendships, keeps himself relatively healthy, and makes a visible difference in the community around him, so perhaps the enjoyment route would be the way to go for all my procrastinators stuck in their rooms.

Photo Credit: Maya Lemaire

Columns

Columns

The Trend Cycle

The trend cycle is a term used to describe the phenomenon of styles returning. Traditionally, the trend cycle has thought to have been around 25 to 30 years long, with trends re-emerging about this long after the original peak in their popularity. Recently though, websites like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar have reported on the return of ‘Indie Sleaze’ a trend that is only around 10 years old.

Is the trend cycle really getting

shorter?

Around 2019, fashion magazines started picking up on the return of Y2K fashion. The style, which started in the mid-to-late-90s and continued well into the new millennium, is most notoriously characterised by denim (especially low-rise jeans), shiny silver accessories, and pastel, frosted makeup. Y2K style is often interpreted as a reaction to 80s maximalism being blended with societal fears around the rise of technology (hence the name), blending together to create a type of digital minimalism.

The return to Y2K style has been so far reaching that it has affected more than just fashion. In fact, several of the popstars and socialites that are seen as the poster children of the time, such as Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Beyoncé, have also made their return to the public eye, often with people re-examining how those stars were treated at the time, leading to the Free Britney movement and discussion about how the limelight can affect child stars like Lindsay Lohan.

These issues surrounding the most iconic public figures at the time are just as likely to be forgotten due to the severe nostalgia the trend cycle operates on. This nostalgia also allows people who lived through the original stint of the style to make content based on their real experiences - something becoming increas-

ingly possible now that the fashions of tech-literate generations are being repeated.

This nostalgia also creates a feeling of security – a return to the “good old days” – that was desired unsurprisingly during the chaos of the pandemic.

In contrast, Indie Sleaze is dark, chaotic, and is inspired by the cokesniffing exploits of bands like the Arctic Monkeys and The Strokes, as well as models like Kate Moss and Alexa Chung. The manifestation of this is easily interpreted as a post-pandemic desire to return to the crazy music festivals of yore.

However, did the Indie Sleaze revival ever really happen? News outlet Vice reported that Indie Sleaze may never have actually made it out of the digital world and onto the streets, we simply assumed that it would because of how much we’d all heard about it on TikTok.

Of course, social media is to blame for so many things these days, and the shortening of the trend cycle is almost certainly one of them. Microtrends surrounding certain dresses and patterns (like cow-print, or that malachite patterned dress) run rife on TikTok, and anything (or anyone) can be forgotten about in a matter of seconds, all for the sake of being trendy.

This obsession with being on top of trends and trying to find new trends to participate in could easily mean we run out of styles before the end of the decade - I mean what’s next? Roman togas and gladiator helmets?!

The First Visit to The Last Bookshop

I feel like it’s probably universally agreed that Oxford students have very little time to read recreationally in term time. Or, alternatively, we just have very little will to read — most people, after finally finishing that essay or problem sheet at 2am, seem to turn to rewatching a Netflix show for the sixth time to limit any extra mental exertion, even if it would simply require understanding the plot of a new show.

I think it’s a shame, though, that despite Oxford’s rich literary culture and history, we don’t have a lot of opportunity to visit the various independent bookshops around the city, and find hand-selected, carefully curated selections of books to enjoy in our free time. The only bookshop I had visited so far was Waterstones, and that was for the purpose of sitting in the café, attempting to romanticise the prospect of reading six articles about Book 23 and 24 of the Iliad within the next two days.

So, as a post-collections treat, I decided to indulge myself in the ‘dark academia’ aesthetic of Oxford – the reason all humanities students applied in the first place – and armed with a Daunt Books tote bag, I ventured out to Jericho to an independent bookshop twenty minutes away from LMH (why is everything twenty minutes away from LMH?), called Last Bookshop.

From the outside, it already looked very inviting: a quaint little store, painted red, on Walton Street. As soon as I stepped in, I was greeted with a warm smile by a lady arranging some books, and I was taken aback by the sheer selection of genres within such a small space, which were also alphabetically ordered. These were all new books, which seemed to all be £3-4, and I noticed a deal where you could get two books for only £5.

I also ventured downstairs to the basement, which completely defied

my expectations of its size based on the room upstairs, where I found an expanse of second-hand books – these were individually priced, and some of them even had handwritten inscriptions on their covers. Outside, there’s even a seating area where you can sit and read with a drink – unfortunately the April showers deprived me of that experience.

Since I had a train to catch in an hour, I was unfortunately unable to spend hours perusing the seemingly limitless selection of books (they also sell vinyls and postcards!), and I finally resolved on buying a £4 copy of Angela Carter’s Heroes and Villains. The lady at the till was lovely, and upon asking her about the history of the store, she referred to the origin story on the back of a free bookmark she gave me with the book.

The store is owned by Bill and Ben Books, an Oxford-based independent bookseller run by Jake Pumphrey and Nick Walsh, which aims to recycle overstock in their stores from warehouses, and also second-hand books from local homes. Their first store, Pumpkin Books, was opened in Gloucester Green in 1994 – ever since then, they have been growing their business through wholesale and have also started a website (www.billandbenbooks.co.uk).

Despite The Last Bookshop’s almost apocalyptic name concerning the state of the bookselling industry, which was apparently a reflection on the pessimism which came about with the release of the Kindle, I hope that people will continue supporting these businesses which provide unique experiences which simply can’t be replicated at larger retailers. I know it definitely won’t be my ‘last’ time visiting this bookshop (sorry), as I’ll definitely take advantage of that outdoors space when the weather finally improves.

Eastern European Expeditions:

Baby Towers in Prague and Roundabouts in Bratislava

Right, where were we? Something kitschy about Klodzko I think. Anyway, moving on from Wroclaw, I arrived in Prague. You’re probably already overly familiar with the usual suspects there, like the nice bridge, the nice square and the nice castle. Similarly so with the mismanaged pub crawls and nightclubs filled with hen dos carrying inflatable dolls, one of whom’s dancing to Lay All Your Love

On Me was genuinely impressive. Geppetto lives on wondrously in Prague. As fun as it is, this isn’t the side of the city I’m going to talk about here, although it’s well worth the visit.

As I disembarked the Flixbus at Florenc bus station, sadly departing with the chick magnet that I spoke about last time, I looked up to see the vibrant façades of Zizkov in the distance. Admittedly, a behemoth of an urban freeway obstructed the view a fair bit, but I could still grasp its beauty without getting too upset about the inhuman town planning. In a groovy twist of fate, it turned out that my hostel was in this very neighbourhood, and so I set off thither.

Hostel Elf was a good place to be, although the giant elf mural that confronts you upon entering is a shock. After a couple of days using it as my base to explore Prague’s centre by day and by night, I decided to venture in the other direction, into the depths of Zizkov, in order to dispel a particularly punishing hangover. Wandering up through the zigzag of terraced streets, their multicoloured fronts greeting me cheerfully, my aesthetic sensitivities were well pleased. Compared to the thronging crowd in front of that needlessly complicated clock, the peace in Zizkov was a pleasant juxtaposition in a setting no less beautiful. Cringe phrasing, sorry.

After a good bit of a walk amidst the aforementioned pretty houses, I made it to the hill’s peak, proudly signified by a radio tower. It was one of those pieces of infrastructure that look a bit space-age that people loved building in the 80s. According to Wikipedia it’s an example of structural expressionism, so there you are. It was a cool sight, although not quite in line with the quaint beauty that led up to it. There was also a fairly dishevelled minigolf course at its base, if you needed to know.

Upon closer inspection of the tower however, I noticed little black metal sculptures adjoined to the tower’s shaft like ants going up a tree trunk. Upon even closer inspection, I realised that the sculptures were actually of babies mid-crawl. Any clear reason for or meaning behind the installation eluded me, but it still left me unsettled yet vaguely intrigued. Just why? The babies didn’t have faces either. They had slots. Maybe something about DVDs and wider televisual entertainment, I don’t know. Deeply strange, but such is modern art. See the photo to get weirded out yourself.

I was so disconcerted that I departed Prague shortly after in search of Bratislava, although the train only made it to a town called Breclav. From there a coach kindly delivered me to Bratislava itself. It’s a pleasant city, lacking in the grandeur of Prague, Vienna and Budapest who all corner it, but making up for it in subtle charm. The Blue Church is an Art Nouveau delight and the views over the Danube from the castle are good, there’s another space age-y tower too at the end of a bridge, although it’s sadly baby-less. Tesco is big there as well.

As always, the follow up to a heavy day of exploring a

city is to find somewhere sufficiently local to have a drink in order to complete the cultural imbibe. It was a Sunday, so proper options for getting lit were fairly limited. After dinner in the Old Town (they’re everywhere aren’t they), my companions and I turned to Google Maps™ to give us a heading. A brief consultation came up with a bar called Steinplatz that was cheap, well-reviewed and open late on a Sunday. We strolled the five minutes to its location but became puzzled when nowhere within a 100m radius appeared to be open. Then, we heard a scream and the sound of glass breaking, emanating from a little hut in the middle of a roundabout. It had to be it.

The hut was a TARDIS of sorts, as all it contained were stairs down into a large, smoke-filled room, decorated in a way not dissimilar to a country pub, into which a good number of merry drinkers were packed. We descended and stuck ourselves onto the end of a table occupied by some middle-aged Slovaks. The ambience was highly enjoyable: the aura of cigarette, rock’n’roll tunes at a sensible volume, and good beer – all beneath a roundabout! The glass smashing incident that had alerted us to its location in the first place was thankfully a one-off, and it was overall a very neat experience. That is, until the Slovak couple were replaced with two annoying Americans, onto whom we tried to foist the bill when it came time to leave, but we were sadly thwarted by a traffic jam on the stairs.

Fun times indeed, but that’s it for now. Until next time, when I’ll either be talking about how overused the Instagram caption “Budababes” is, the Zagreb rave scene or something else quirky. Bye.

Jonah Poulard

Columns

Columns

Deputy Editor: Frankie Coy Deputy Editors: Haochen Wang, Grace Rees, Purav Menon features@oxfordstudent.com

By Eleanor Luxton

It was reported last month that four Oxford professors won an age discrimination case against the University, after being forced to retire the September before they turned 69. The policy, called the Employer Justified Retirement Age (EJRA), was reportedly established to help early career academics, but the tribunal argued that it was “about the most extreme discriminatory impact possible in the realms of employment”. And this isn’t the first time the courts have ruled in Oxford professors’ favour – in December 2019, Prof Paul Ewart – former head of atomic and laser physics at the University – won his case, arguing that forced retirement is fundamentally unfair. Despite receiving a sizeable sum from Oxford, his old post was filled by a younger academic. And not everyone who has appealed has been compensated – former Oxford don Prof John Pitcher lost a similar claim after he was made to retire at 67, in May 2019. Whilst it may be expected that professors have an older average age - due to the reputation needed to reach such a position - if Oxford is to retain its status as a world-leading institution, surely it needs to attract and retain younger talent? These repeated court cases, which are undoubtedly costing the University millions of pounds, has

Is Oxford Too Old?

Professors aren’t retiring, and junior academics are leaving

made me believe that Oxford has an age problem.

Oxford University’s most recent Equality Report (2020-21) revealed that almost half of academic staff were over the age of 50, with 18% over 60. At first glance, this appears broadly in line with national figures for the same time period, with the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) reporting that almost half of professors in the UK were aged 56 and over in 2020/21. This is not an overtly ‘bad’ thing, however professors are often the ones leading the development of their disciplines and shaping what and how future academics will study. Hence, a diversity of ages (as well as ethnicities and genders) is beneficial at higher pay grades, as it can prevent complacency and help older staff adopt new technologies and teaching styles more smoothly.

The inability of younger people to progress to senior academic positions is perhaps most evident in the University’s Staff Experience Survey 2021.

Of 8597 respondents, only 44% agreed that “there is a fair and transparent way of allocating work in my department”, whilst 43% agreed that “management and decision-making processes are clear and transparent in my department”.

Although 57% of those sur-

veyed felt that they had “the opportunity to develop and grow here”, these seem to be shockingly low numbers for a University which proudly boasts it’s accolade of “Apprenticeship Employer of the Year” (2021), and has one of the most generous family leave schemes in the Higher Education sector (including its own nurseries). According to this, younger female academics - who are more likely to require parental leave or leave for family responsibilities - should feel supported by their employers. I wonder if this is true, considering that only 19% of Statutory Professors at Oxford were women, between 2018 and 2021. Part of the reason why younger people can’t achieve senior roles may be due to their contracts. The University and Colleges Union (UCU) states that almost 77% of academic staff at Oxford are on fixed-term or atypical contracts, meaning that they are constantly searching for new roles and cannot invest ample time and energy in their research. Although the casualisation of the academic workforce is a national problem, such high figures for Oxford suggest that Statutory Professors are significantly more secure than their younger colleagues. This is because, according to the University’s website:

“The majority of professorships (also known as “chairs”) are statutory, for example, they are permanent posts within the University’s staff structure, although occasionally a fixed-term professorship may be created in particular circumstances.”

Just because junior academics are younger and less experienced, should they really be forced into the “really tough” conditions that Prof Irene Tracey promised to investigate when she became the new vicechancellor in January? Even Cambridge employs a significantly smaller proportion of its staff on fixed term contracts, compared to Oxford. And this pressure is having massive impacts on women, ethnic minorities and those from less affluent backgrounds, according to Emma Irving’s recent Economist article. Opaque hiring practices also abound at Oxford, according to Irving’s sources, and having spoken to academics myself, the confusion produced through the multiple scales of authority here (college vs department vs university) can make it easy to conceal biassed hiring decisions. As well as lending itself to employing friends of friends or older academics, arguably having staff on fixed term contracts is bad for student experience too.

Tutors being forced to hand over supervision of dissertations after only a year of working with a student, students having to adjust to different teaching styles every year and burn out across the university is something which we’re just expected to deal with at Oxford. Whilst I’m careful not to bite the hand that feeds - and I’m still glad that I came to study here - the structure of the university makes it easier for some academics to prosper, whilst others cannot. If most staff feel that work isn’t allocated fairly in their department, then they’re bound to feel underappreciated, and their insights po-

tentially go unacknowledged. In addition, they may - unwittingly or overtly - discourage undergraduates from pursuing further degrees. Having witnessed the stress levels and high expectations placed on lecturers’ shoulders, I certainly have no desire to enter the education sector.

As I mentioned earlier, old white men dominating longterm academic positions could be negative for the discipline more broadly too. As there is a turn towards queer epistemologies, decolonial methodologies and listening to marginalised voices in subjects ranging from geography to English and biology, it is often the young who are among the frontrunners in their field. Restricting academic knowledge production to a privileged minority can and never will be a good idea, if we want our research to be robust and interesting.

The University must consider what it can do to support young academics. From a student perspective, being forced to vacate our accommodation every term as if it is a hotel, WiFi issues, college bureaucracy and expensive meal costs in hall - as well as the price of living in one of the UK’s most expensive cities - certainly don’t compel me to complete a Masters or DPhil here. I believe that Oxford is focusing too much on flexible retirement, rather than acknowledging the competing responsibilities that junior academics face. If the university doesn’t up its game, then there risks being a ‘brain drain’ from the sector, as young adults are forced into non-academic jobs due to their pay, and older academics retire.

A statement from the University on this article’s claims reads:

‘The University has been notified of the tribunal’s ruling. We are currently reviewing the detail and considering our next steps, including the option of appeal.

Behind the statistics: How the Russian invasion of Ukraine affected the average person.

In recent months, due to a lack of Spotify Premium, advertisements in between songs has made me aware of a new podcast by The Economist – titled Next Year in Moscow. This podcast, like the name suggests, is about Russia, Ukraine, and the conflict that began more than a year ago. However, unlike many earlier podcasts, articles, and journalism about the topic, Next Year in Moscow penetrates into the livelihoods of Russian citizens, past and present, and how their lives were irrevocably changed by the events of February 2022. Listening to the episodes has me thinking: Since February last year (and, to be honest, years before that), the news of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or, as some idealists in objectivity call it, the RussoUkrainian War, has dominated the headlines, but do we really know how the average Joe in Russia or Ukraine is affected?

Now, more than a year on, leaked documents, nuclear threats, and military strategies still manage consistent headlines across almost all of the world’s major news sources. Yet, beneath the grand geopolitical narratives of war and invasion that we are so frequently exposed to lies two countries with a cumulative population close to 200 million, almost all of whom have been touched by the unending conflict. Perhaps it would not do to commemorate the struggles of the everyday people with only superficial social media posts and ceremonies on the 24th of February. Perhaps it would be better to visit, through a piece of writing that’s nowhere near thorough enough, the lives of the people living under the smog of war.

The history of the RussoUkrainian tension is long and rich, and Ukraine’s modern era seems to feature the recurrent theme of struggling for independence, sovereignty, and national dignity. To worsen the tension, history seemed to have blurred all lines of individuality by hiding them beneath the ill-defined categorisations of Cossacks and the like. Al-

most one century ago, Mikhail Sholokhov published his Magnum opus, And Quiet Flows the Don – an epic that offered some comprehensive insight into the livelihoods of the peoples near the river Don (bordering modern-day Russia and Ukraine). Though published in the 1920s, Sholokhov’s characters are hauntingly similar to those currently living under the shadows of the Russo-Ukrainian war.

An anonymous Ukrainian soldier wrote:

ately before the invasion and concluded that while not all Russians supported the invasion before the outbreak, “a majority of about 60% did.” At first glance, these statistics seem to support a rather bleak outlook: Russians are a violent people.

more diverse, global, and independent, see a different picture, one that pushes them to disapprove, disagree, and protest with the Russian state.

Since the start of the war, diaries and first-hand accounts of soldiers on the front-line have frequented major news. An anonymous Ukrainian soldier wrote: “I was afraid our goodbyes would be too final, too fast, too brutal. I tell them that I’m going to be away for a while. That I’ll be studying. I try to find a way of doing it that’s less painful.” The rapidity with which this soldier said his goodbyes is not a one-off. All in Ukraine were fleeing from the unending shelling and artillery fire. One journalist reported that he “found an old man’s cane, a bouquet of flowers by a tyre, a surgical glove with a stroller.” Evidently, the war had taken its toll on the Ukrainian people. Of course, however, with Ukraine not being the instigator of the conflict, it is easy to empathise with the anti-war sentiments of the thousands of Ukrainians struggling in a fight they never wanted to be a part of.

However, behind the unforgiving missiles and attacks of the Russians lies a similarly troubled and disillusioned population also seemingly eager to return to the pre-war era of general tranquillity. Interestingly, one month into the formal invasion, the LSE compiled survey results taken immedi-

But the majority concluded by the data isn’t necessarily an objective indicator. The day before Putin’s official declaration of war on 24th February last year was Russia’s Defender of the Fatherland Day – a day dedicated to celebrating the efforts of the Russian Armed Forces. This chronological coincidence expediently set Russian state media, namely Channel 1, up to hearken back to the Soviet days of bloody military conflict, evidently inflaming a sense of national military pride. For months after that, mainstream media in Russia, consequent of being set in the backdrop of a strong, interventionist state that grew increasingly authori-

To many, it might seem such ardent subscription to the “archaic” modes of media – television, radio, and the like – is, simply, childish. However, while the post-1991 (dissolution of the Soviet Union) generations, particularly Generation Z, may be highly individualistic, post-materialistic, and desiring a career promising personal happiness, the generations that grew up in Soviet-era Russia subscribed to a different set of values that propels them to typically endorse state military action. Moreover, the atomisation of the older generations caused by the dissolution meant a rigid breakdown of inter-generational ties which facilitated the re-emergence of the Putin-led authoritarian regime – its reminiscence to the Soviet days unmissable. Finally, the reliance of the older generations on state-provided benefits such as retirement pensions also explains their adherence to state media.

tarian, expertly reshaped the narrative in Ukraine by not showing (almost at all) Russian violence and offensives in the cities of Kyiv, but rather portraying Ukrainian dissent, neo-Fascism, and, quite overtly, a need for Russia to wipe-out the burgeoning “Nazification” in Ukraine. As such, it is becoming increasingly evident in Russia that a division of opinion surrounding the righteousness or necessity to be at war with Ukraine is not only rooted in personal beliefs, but also set along generational lines – the older generation who grew up subscribing to the belief of the truth of television and radio are more likely to be in support of or agreement with the statedirected direction. In contrast, the younger generation, whose sources of receiving news are

The divide in opinions which now plagues inter-generational households is prevalent. Arina, a 25 year old resident of Moscow, who hasn’t watched TV in 7 years and relies on internetbased sources of media, says that she and her mother, an ardent subscriber to televisionbased news, had a “fierce argument” surrounding the necessity of war. She reflects that her disagreements with her mother were not an anomaly between the “young Russians… with their parents and others.”

Even two people of the same generation, living under the same roof, have been torn apart by the war. Galina, a violinist from the central Russian city of Samara, is highly critical of the Russian move against Ukraine. In contrast, her husband, Vladimir, a former criminal investigator, supports the war. The two spoke of their marital difficulties caused by a disagreement in the righteousness and necessity of the war in the documentary Broken Ties, which explores the devastating impact the war has had on many Russians. In the grand narrative of the Russo-Ukrainian War, the anonymous Ukrainian soldier, Arina and her mother, Galina and Vladimir, and countless others are nothing but specks in the masses affected by the conflict. But their unique circumstances reveal stories more nuanced than the statistics of 60% public approval for the war. They reveal generational differences and the entailed differences in habit, values, and beliefs; they unveil, to an extent, the penetrative influence of the state, the media, and other political, social, and economic factors in shaping the narratives of war to those indirectly affected.

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” While Tolstoy may have written this in the context of marriage and familial well-being in Imperial Russia, it similarly rings true in 2023. The myriad of factors which disrupt the life, dreams, and families of the average person in Russia and Ukraine is much more nuanced than statistics suggest.

“I was afraid our goodbyes would be too final, too fast, too brutal. I tell them that I’m going to be away for a while. That I’ll be studying. I try to find a way of doing it that’s less painful.”

Haochen Wang , editor

CultureCulture

Flo: new fly girls of British R&B get Missy Elliott co-sign

Thecraze for western pop groups seems to have died down in recent years. While K-pop collectives like BTS, Blackpink, and Twice continue to storm up the charts globally with every release, the American and British music markets have lacked the home-grown outfits that dominated the hearts and minds of teenage fans in the 2000s and early 2010s. The dissolution of One Direction in 2016 left a boy band-shaped gulf that has yet to be filled and though their The X Factor compatriots Little Mix lasted longer, only going on hiatus last year, record labels haven’t been scrambling to push a new generation of loveable pop idols into the big leagues. There is one new girl group, however, that might be able to usher in a new wave of western pop power.

Flo is a three-piece British girl group which formed in 2019. The group consists of Stella Quaresma from Kingston upon Thames, Jorja Douglas from Hertfordshire, and Renée Downer from North London. The trio signed with Island Records ahead of the release of their breakthrough single and are poised to make a splash on the UK charts with their upcoming debut album.

Flo have already made a substantial mark on the music industry in the year since their debut single “Cardboard Box”,

produced by MNEK, dropped. July saw the release of their first extended play, The Lead, which Rolling Stone predicted was “sure to launch the three girls into R&B stardom”, comparing their style to that of TLC. Flo made their television debut in October 2022 when they performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and performed at their first award show, the MOBO Awards, a month later. In December 2022 they received the Rising Star Award at the Brits. A few weeks later they won the BBC’s Sound of 2023 poll, an annual survey of upand-coming talent whose past winners include Adele, Sam Smith, Ellie Goulding, and PinkPantheress. They are the first girl group to achieve both in the same year.

The future is looking bright for this trio judging by the cosigns they have received from prominent artists in the UK and beyond. R&B powerhouses like SZA and Victoria Monét have shown appreciation for the group on social media but their collaborative partners are even more impressive.

Chart-topping rapper Stormzy featured Flo on a remix of his top-ten single “Hide & Seek” in January 2023. Their most recent single “Fly Girl”, released on 23 March, not only interpolates Missy Elliott’s iconic hit “Work It” but also includes a verse from the acclaimed rapper. Missy’s bombastic presence seems to have had an impact since “Fly Girl”

accrued over 1 million Spotify streams on its release day, becoming the group’s first single to achieve this. The song also became the group’s first top 40 single, debuting at number 38 on the UK Singles Chart.

Some fans might be concerned that Flo are simply attempting to cash in on nostalgia by interpolating a Missy classic and getting her on board as a featured artist. After all this strategy has produced charttopping hits on both sides of the Atlantic in the past year, seen in Nicki Minaj’s sampling of “Super Freak” on her creatively-titled reimagining “Super Freaky Girl” and David Guetta and Bebe Rexha’s appropriation of Eiffel 65’s iconic dance hit “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” on “I’m Good (Blue)”.

Many music journalists and commentators have raised concerns that it has become all too easy to ride an iconic sample straight to the summit of the charts, especially in the era of easily recognisable melodies becoming viral TikTok hits at the drop of a hat. Flo’s methodology on “Fly Girl” is definitely in a similar vein to these recent sample-heavy singles, drawing its title and chorus from an iconic “Work It” line: “if you’re a fly girl, get your hair done / get a pedicure, get your hair did”. However, the trio add their own flavour to the Missy classic and Elliott’s rap verse feels like she’s providing a fresh take on material she first rapped

about two decades ago. Additionally and most crucially, unlike “Super Freaky Girl”, “I’m Good (Blue)”, and about a million other recent hits, “Fly Girl” does not simply take the instrumental of an existing hit song and insert new lyrics over the top. The song’s beat is entirely original, co-produced by Flo’s frequent musical partner MNEK. The breezy and flirtatious guitar adds a new dimension to the original hypnotic synths of Missy’s “Work It” rather than cashing in on a recognisable bassline.

Flo have all the makings of a modern powerhouse girl group akin to Little Mix or the Saturdays, filling a niche that has been empty for a while. Their focus on R&B allows them to stand apart from their western predecessors or their peers in K-pop, making their work feel fresh and unique. With the backing of some of the biggest names in music both in Britain and across the pond, if “Fly Girl” is anything to go by, Flo are gearing up to reach the very top of the stratosphere of western popular music.

Image credit: Atlantic Records via a Creative Commons AttributionShare Alike 4.0 International license.

Image description: Missy Elliott. 2015.

Deputy

Editor: Charlie Bowden.

Section

Editors: Johannah Mathew, Jennifer Robinson, Lukas Seifert, Miracle Kalonga

Charlie Bowden

Max’s new Harry Potter series: flop-to-be or exciting new chapter?

Haochen Wang

Harry Potter, Hogwarts, The Boy Who Lived. These, and countless others, are most likely, especially for our generation, terms that we grew up with. And despite the common criticisms of cringe or overuse, Harry Potter and Oxford’s association with the films was one of the reasons that I applied to Oxford.

Of course, recently, the Harry Potter franchise, and especially its author, J. K. Rowling, has been in public attention for another reason: the latter’s outspoken, and, to many, simply outrageous comments towards transgender people and the wider LGBTQ+ community. With such a recurring, prominent presence in our society and generation, it is hardly a surprise that only a few days into the announcement, the new series has already established itself in the conversations of Potter fans and critics alike. The question now is, can the new series grow beyond the shadow cast by its enormously successful film-series older sibling and the disadvantages set by Rowling?

The new series, simply titled

Harry Potter (and retaining its iconic lightning bolt shaped font), has been ordered by the streaming service Max (up to now known as HBO Max) and will, reports say, be released in the US sometime in 2025 or 2026. To the excitement of many (and the disappointment of some), the series is set to be a decade long with promises to be “a faithful adaptation of the iconic books.” As of yet, details are few and far between: we will have to wait for the announcement of the cast and other key elements. However, one thing is for certain: despite her recent controversies and criticisms, J.K. Rowling will be an executive producer on the series. Even with so few details and only a few social media posts that barely qualify as a teaser, the series has already generated intense conversation amongst both ardent fans and dedicated critics of the franchise.

Iconic is perhaps a fitting adjective to describe the Harry Potter franchise, particularly its film and cinema aspect. With the Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson’s Golden Trio so permanently tattooed into the mind of fans, many have called into

Postcard from Rome

question the survival chances of this presumably new cast. However, more polarising perhaps is not so much the visual aspects of the series, but the auditory. “Hedwig’s Theme,” the theme song of the Harry Potter films, is, to say the least, similarly iconic. For many, it would take mere seconds of listening to “Hedwig’s Theme” to know that they’re listening to something Harry Potter related. And by Harry Potter related, it means films starring an unforgettable cast which consisted of some of the biggest and most respected names in cinema. Thus, when the announcement of the new series was accompanied by an almost exact replica of the Harry Potter openings of old, complete, especially, with John Williams’ iconic soundtrack, many fans took to social media to express their displeasure.

“So this ‘new,’ ‘original,’ and ‘faithful’ adaptation is going to use the same John Williams Harry Potter theme and Hogwarts designs of 20 years ago? Huh,” was one fan’s remark on Twitter, an apt summary of the general issue raised by Potterheads: surely the producers realise the irony present in a “new” series with

old designs, logos, and music? The criticism didn’t just come from fans, however. Mashable’s Bob Al-Greene similarly expressed outrage at the blatant ripping off of the classic Harry Potter films, calling the move “truly wild.”

However, the criticism didn’t just arise from the reuse of old material in a supposedly new series. As expected, many were immediately sceptical of Rowling’s prominent position in the production due to her recent controversy. While Rowling herself seemingly avoided any comment on her divisive position in a statement issued where she declares her excitement at “being part of this new adaptation,” the head of HBO, Casey Bloys, declined a journalist’s question regarding Rowling’s controversial position, stating “No, I don’t think this is the forum.” In another statement, Bloys gave a deliberately crafted remark, stating “Our priority is what’s on the screen… Obviously, the

Harry Potter story is incredibly affirmative and positive and about love and self-acceptance. That’s our priority, what’s on screen.”

Max’s Harry Potter series has already weathered significant obstruction and scepticism. While I hope that the series will live up to the legacy of its incredibly successful film predecessor, the series’ marketing probably hasn’t hit the ground running. And to the generations that grew up immersed in an environment of Radcliffe’s Potter, Alan Rickman’s Snape, Tom Felton’s Malfoy, and Williams’ soundtrack, the new series might never be hope to catch up to the film franchise, but only time will tell what image is conjured up to future generations when asked about the magic of Harry Potter

Legend

has it that if you throw a coin in the Trevi Fountain, one day you will return to Rome – in my case at least, that came true. 5 years ago I came to Rome for a few days with a friend on my first holiday without my parents –it was an eventful trip full of sunburn, awe, and bus fines.

My stay in the “Eternal City” started a few months ago when I arrived to begin my Italian soggiorno as part of my Year Abroad. In the space of a few months, I’ve learnt a lot about la vita romana – that is, about food, football and the distinct Roman attitude to life which could be summed up by the phrase I’ve heard so often: “in un modo o nell’altro ci si può fare (in one way or another it can be done.)”

I’ve started to explore the city gradually, day by day, fitting in walks around the historic centre and visits to its many history-filled monu-

ments. With every alleyway corner you turn in Rome you always find something worth pausing over – it seems to be a truly inexhaustible city of beautiful artefacts, buildings or simply quintessentially Italian Vespas parked next to rustic doorways.

On one of my walks, I was trekking up a hill to reach the sprawling greenery of Rome’s biggest park, the Villa Borghese. Head down, I was focused on simply making it up there, but when I looked up I came face to face with Matt Hancock, the infamous former British Health Secretary. He was casually strolling hand in hand with his former aide. My face must have been one of pure bewilderment – seeing a man whom the entirety of the UK saw everyday on TV during the pandemic engaging in romantic Roman activities was very strange.

I read somewhere that part of the charm of Rome is the mismatch of “elegance and cha-

os” which I do believe holds some truth. Rome is certainly chaotic – the city is loud, bustling and there is a fiery driving culture. When I arrived in Rome car-less and entirely reliant on public transport I was definitely disappointed with the measly two metro lines. A family member of mine’s favourite Roman anecdote to explain the less than sufficient public transport system is that “whenever they dig into the ground to lay down some new tracks, they stumble across some ancient ruin and the works have to stop!”

Another notable element of la vita romana is Roman pride – which is strong in almost every sense from pride in their food to pride for their football team. (I’ve managed to find myself on the metro post-AS Roma victory many a time – I’ve practically learnt the victory chants off by heart now.) The pride in their local cuisine is something which I must admit is very justified.

From pizza romana al taglio to porchetta, I’ve been on a delicious culinary journey. The price of said food was also a happy surprise given my student budget. I was recently in a supermarket looking for wine to bring to a dinner when I saw my friend reach for what looked like a carton of juice. “€1.50, perfect, grab two,” she said. I went along with it, slightly apprehensive, but this was my first reminder that somehow everything tastes good in Italy – even freakishly cheap wine…

When it came to choosing a location for my Italian soggiorno, I have to admit Rome wasn’t the first place that came to mind. I felt more drawn to Florence or Siena but one thing led to another and circumstances put me in Rome. But I’m glad I ended up in this city – its history and soul have kept me highly entertained and I feel like I’ve still only scraped the surface off what it has to offer…

Elena Buccisano

FOOD&DRINK

R amen Culture, Ramen

at 52 St Giles’

Kasturi Pindar

Kulture is a small, intimate eatery, tucked into St Giles and a stone’s throw from the bustle of Little Clarendon Street. Catering to individuals as well as couples and small groups, it is the kind of restaurant where you wouldn’t feel out of place eating alone on a weekday evening, acting the main character in the movie of your life whilst slurping your noodles and people watching at one of the window seats.

Ramen Kulture serves up bowls of warm, rich ramen, curries, rice dishes and delicious sides. If you visit Ramen Kulture however, you should be prepared to queue, as the restaurant is small and only walk-ins are accepted. Luckily, queuing times are usually short. You may have to wait between 10 and 20 minutes depending on the size of your group, before you’ll be invited in and shown to your seat. In-

side, the shop is narrow and the lighting is soft, whilst the decor recreates the feel of an evening spent in one of Tokyo’s yokochos, or narrow alleys packed with bars and restaurants. The room is filled with sounds of JPop and anime music, and the scent of the 12-hour tonkotsu broth will whet your appetite and give you a preview of what’s to come.

Starters range from miso soup and chicken gyozas, to chicken karaage and prawn katsu. Edamame beans make for a wonderfully savoury appetiser to be shared with friends, whilst the takoyaki — balls of deepfried octopus liberally topped with gravity-defying bonito flakes — will make a more filling start to your meal. Also on the menu are okonomiyaki skewers. Though okonomiyaki is usually served in flat, pancake form in teppanyaki restaurants, here the popular dish is reformatted into skew-

ers, removing the need for a hotplate on the table on which to make them. Stuffed with cabbage and octopus, before being covered in Japanese mayonnaise and bonito flakes, these are an equally delicious starter. Where Ramen Kulture really shines is, of course, the ramen. The tonkotsu ramen is rich and warm, served with a cut of chashu pork belly, which according to the menu is slowbraised for at least three hours before serving. This ramen is indulgent and comforting. It tastes like a warm hug, a weighted blanket, or the feeling of pulling the duvet over you when you wake up cold in the middle of the night. It is not one to be missed. For vegetarians and vegans, the miso tofu ramen made with miso broth is fresher and doesn’t quite reach the richness of the tonkotsu ramen. But, topped with fried tofu, broccoli, mushroom and sweetcorn, it is nonetheless

a satisfying meal. Extra toppings, such as a nitamago egg — a soft-boiled egg marinated overnight so it takes on extra flavour and the yolk reaches a jammy consistency — can be added, and are well worth the extra cost. What’s more, if you go into Ramen Kulture with long hair, when your ramen is served you’ll usually be offered a hair band by the waiter to prevent your hair falling into your food, a thoughtful touch and an example of the restaurant’s friendly customer service.

For dessert, there is one option: mochi. The mochi in Ramen Kulture is served cold, small balls of frozen ice cream covered in the typical chewy rice flour wrapper. Flavours include strawberry ice cream and mango. These are small, but after a large helping of starters and ramen, a small dessert is the perfect way to finish your meal.

Ramen Kulture is one of Oxford’s unmissable spots: a delicious introduction to ramen for the uninitiated, and a fantastic place to eat for those looking for a bowl of familiar comfort.

T he Handle Bar: The Perfect Brunch Spot

Alexis McCaffrey

Aquaint

two-story building off St. Michaels Street with a bicycle stuck to the front of it is home to the Handle Bar which officially opened its doors in 2015. The name ‘Handle Bar’ came from Oxford’s oldest bike store, which is on the first floor of Handle Bar to the right of the restaurant.

Inside the cozy two-story building you will find the smell of freshly poured espresso hitting your nose alongside friendly staff greeting you as you walk in. Each table in the Handle Bar has a cozy atmospheric vibe that compliments the fantastic food offered.

The owner of the Handle Bar is 45-year-old Celine De La Roche, a strong independent French woman who inspires everyone with her hard work and fun attitude.

When Handle Bar first opened back in 2015 it was far from being the go-to brunch spot it is today.

“It was really organic actually. This space used to be a bike showroom. This big room was

all bicycles and there was a tiny little coffee shop in this room. The guy who owned the lease to the building came to find me at my pop-up coffee shop off in Ports Meadows. He said the pop-up coffee shop was going well and that they wanted to do some food and offered for me to come to cook lunches,” said De La Roche. She further explained how she had never cooked professionally, “ I came every day to prep early in the morning since I wasn’t a proper chef”. This experience would lead to the creation of the iconic brunches. This opportunity opened the door and made the options for Handle Bar endless. This has led to an impact on the community and students here in Oxford.

“Handle Bar has really brought a community to the streets of Oxford which is based around good food, good drinks, and very chill vibes. I think this city centre has always been a struggle for small independent businesses; there are big outlets and rent is super expensive.

I am blessed with very good landlords who have given me this opportunity to flourish,” said De La Roche.

“The mission behind Handle Bar is to create a social atmosphere for people to have these “exchanges” of ideas, listen to music, and gather in a way that allows them to leave their worries at the door.”

“On Thursday we have the Catweazle night which is a wonderful music club that’s been going on for 25 years. It’s like a folk, jazz, and poetry evening. They started back here in November- December and it’s

just completely wonderful –they are bringing new breeds of people to the place,” said De La Roche.

De La Roche further explained, “We are in the city centre and there are students everywhere of course and they are our bread and butter. We come to work and we want to interact with you guys. We don’t just deliver food.”

Read the full review and interview on our website.

Deputy Editor: Jasmine Wilkinson

Section Editor: Kasturi Pindar

CAMPAIGN BY-ELECTIONS

Nominations open 1st week , Monday 24th April 8am

Nominations close 2nd week, Friday 05th May 8am

Voting opens in 3rd week, Tuesday 09th May 8am

Voting closes in 3rd week, Thursday 11th May 6pm

Any student that identifies with one of the Campaigns is able to join as a member. Find out more about each campaign and their elections below:

Deputy Editor: Jasmine Wilkinson Section Editor: Eliza Smith oxstu.green@gmail.com

Green

“Race Across the World” and the problem of sustainable travel

“The desire to explore our planet has never been stronger, but in travelling over, are we missing the joys of journeying through?”

This is the premise of the hugely popular BBC 2 reality show, Race Across the World, which returned to screens for its third season in March of this year. The programme challenges 5 pairs to travel thousands of kilometres from one ‘checkpoint’ to another, across various landscapes, with each team given a sum of money equal to the price of a flight of the same distance. The vital catch, however, is that the contestants are prohibited from travelling by plane. Underpinning the undeniable entertainment of watching an adult father and daughter bicker over camping in a forest, or a pair of friends fruitlessly attempt to navigate their way to a remote train station, is the crucially important, and increasingly pertinent idea of ditching air travel for other forms of transportation.

The crucially important idea of ditching air travel

Recent research by Hannah Ritchie, of Our World in Data, reports that in 2018, an estimated 1.04 billion tonnes of CO2 were emitted due to global aviation. In fact, CO2 emissions have been found to account for only one third of the harmful impact that aeroplanes have on global warming, non-CO2 factors, such as water vapour

trails from aircraft exhausts, also generating significant environmental damage. Though only contributing to 3.5% of the world’s carbon emissions, scientists at London School of Economics (LSE) predict it to become the largest single source of carbon emissions in the UK by 2050, not to mention that it dominates individual’s carbon footprints, making renouncing recreational travel a seemingly obvious form of ethical life-style change for climate conscious Britons.

But what are the options? Is abandoning foreign travel altogether the only solidly environmentally ethical solution? While this would certainly have a positive effect for the fight against climate change (LSE scientists found there was an estimated 41.5% reduction in carbon emissions from the aviation sector in 2020 because of reduced air travel), it is utterly inconceivable in the world we live in. ‘Summer Holiday’ culture can be seen as a significant aspect of many Briton’s lives, the Association of British Travel Agents reporting that 64% of British people took at least one foreign holiday in the 12 months up to July 2019. To imagine a ban on overseas travel evokes clear images of outrage and protest in the name of personal freedom. Even from an environmentally conscious perspective, there does seem to be an obvious paradox in ‘sav-

ing’ a planet, of which we are only able to see and experience a minute proportion. What Race Across the World appears to champion is the concept of ‘Slow Travel’, an approach to travel that emphasises more ‘journey-based’ holidays, where travellers interact at a greater level with the cultural and environmental phenomena that they encounter, transporting themselves from one place to another through

travellers, learn the unique customs of locals from the areas they visit, and find themselves moved by the natural beauty of less frequented locations, those not deemed ‘holiday destinations’ by flight companies.

The personal benefits of slow travel are plentiful

the medium of trains, buses or car shares, ultimately promoting a much more sustainable means of seeing the world. Rail travel particularly, has been shown to be significantly more environmentally friendly than other forms of transportation, with the European Environment Agency reporting that while aviation represents a share of 13% of all the EU’s transport-caused greenhouse gas emissions, rail represent only 0.4%. But, aside from such promising statistics, the personal benefits of slow travel are plentiful, and well exemplified by RATW – as each new episode sees the contestants forge connections with fellow

However, there are a number of issues surrounding a total switch from air to ground transportation, that cannot be ignored in conceiving of a realistic future of ethical travel. Firstly, and arguably a problem which gets to the crux of the climate crisis, is the human lack of willingness to deviate from that to which we are habituated and with which we are comfortable. A 2010 study published by the UK Government website indicates that the proportion of respondents who agree that they should be allowed to travel by plane as much as they like ‘even if this harms the environment’ was steadily increasing (17% in 2006 to 25% in 2008 and 29% in 2010). Admittedly, climate consciousness has significantly improved amongst the British population over the past 13 years, suggesting such figures may now be more optimistic, but this attitude of unwillingness to implement personal change, fostered by the belief that one should not have to sacrifice individual comforts in place of governmental action remains symptomatic of many of the sustainability is-

sues central to the climate crisis today, such as fast fashion, or meat consumption. The longer journeys and potentially higher expenses of alternative travel may act as deterrents which supplement this attitude. Another problem is the fundamental unfeasibility of the RATW model of travel for the general working population, whose employment contracts would largely preclude such lengthy periods of time devoted to slow travel.

All in all, while evidently a successful basis for a TV show, and an attractive model of what sustainable travel can look like, UK society seems to have a long way to go before such ideals can become reality. Evolution in UK working culture, expansion of overseas rail travel, money invested into alternative ‘clean’ modes of transportation, such as electric vehicles, and many other changes are imperative to truly reduce of aviation emissions. Renouncing air travel, as with many of the sustainable changes individuals can make to ‘do their bit’ for the climate crisis, seems to lead us back to the increasingly frustrating paradox of individual effort having little consequence unless a more fundamental upheaval of our current lifestyle is enacted by those in power.

By Eliza Smith

“The desire to explore our planet has never been stronger, but in travelling over, are we missing the joys of journeying through?”

Editors: Emily Hudson, Nicole Hasler, Tymoteusz Syrytczyk oxstu.science@gmail.com

Artificial wombs: the future of pregnancy?

The idea of growing babies in pods has long been limited to dystopian science fiction such as the Matrix movies. But recent scientific developments could mean that this fiction will become reality within our lifetimes.

In 2017, a research group reported that they’d successfully removed a premature lamb from its mother’s womb and grown it in a plastic bag until it was ready to be born. The socalled “Biobag” has two main components. One of these is the fluid environment, a bag filled with warm, sterile fluid, which mimics the womb with its amniotic fluid. The other component is the circulatory system, which involves connecting vessels from the lamb’s umbilical cord to an oxygen-supplying device. This part of the system also removes carbon dioxide from the lamb’s blood and delivers nutrients, thereby acting as a replacement placenta. The lambs were removed from their mothers’ wombs at an age equivalent to about 24 weeks’ gestation in humans. This is the age at which a baby may just be able to survive with a lot of medical help. Even with doctors doing everything in their

power to help babies this premature to survive, only around 50% of them live. Of those that do survive, 90% have severe complications such as blindness, brain damage, or lung disease. Improving medical care for these babies is therefore a priority, especially in higherincome countries where preterm birth is the leading cause of death and disability in children under five.

Artificial wombs like the Biobag may in future provide a way to improve survival and long-term health of babies born at around 24 weeks. Despite this being good new to anyone who has suffered the loss of a prematurely born child, the potential uses of such technology have implications for women’s rights and reproductive equality.

The age at which a baby is able to survive outside its mother’s womb is called the threshold of viability. Humans are typically born at about 37-42 weeks’ gestation, and the threshold of viability used to be around 36 weeks. But as our technology to keep babies alive improves, the viability threshold is coming down, and is currently around the 24-week mark. Although

the threshold of viability sounds like a medical term, it is also a legal one: current laws around abortion are centred around it. In many places, a foetus’ right to survive supersedes a woman’s right to bodily autonomy when it becomes viable. This means that if technology such as the Biobag started to be used for babies younger than 24 weeks, bringing down the abortion threshold, legal abortion limits could drop. So

out that if artificial wombs become used in humans, abortion law could be restructured to be centred around reproductive autonomy in order to protect access.

far, the viability threshold of 24 weeks has meant that both a woman’s right to bodily autonomy and the foetus’ right to life have been somewhat balanced. The concern is that if the threshold is pushed lower and lower, continuing to use foetal viability as a criterion for allowing abortion could impinge on a woman’s ability to choose what happens to her body. Advocates of abortion rights have pointed

Solar energy spotlight

Solar cell technology is one of the most well known and ubiquitous renewable energy sources. It works by “capturing” the energy in the sun’s rays and converting it into an electrical voltage, a phenomenon referred to by physicists as the “photovoltaic effect”. Since Edmond Becqurel’s 1839 discovery of the photovoltaic effect, technology has advanced leaps and bounds, being employed as an integral part of energy infrastructure across the world.

Solar cells can be found everywhere, usually for any smallscale device such as a garden lamp or handheld calculator.

Recently, France has legislated that all large car parks must be covered by solar panels: a

public design choice which benefits car uses twofold. Firstly, cars are all shaded from the sun. Secondly, the solar panels can provide energy for charging electric cars and are therefore a big step in making cities liveable in a green future. France’s rationale mainly concerns energy generation, predicting that the move could generate up to 11 gigawatts. For context, the average household consumes 3,000 kilowatts per annum, so this measure could power around 4 thousand houses for a year.

But how about the UK? Former Prime Minister Liz Truss incited controversy by attempting to block all new solar farms on agricultural land. The wider picture of governmental

Besides having implications for abortion rights, ectogenesis (the growth of babies outside the mother’s body) would also affect reproductive equality. Many effects could be positive: the option to have a baby grow outside their own body could allow women with epilepsy or other conditions that make pregnancy very risky to still have biological children. For women with infertility or same-sex couples, artificial wombs would enable having children without the difficulties associated with surrogacy. Even for healthy women, the technology has the potential to reduce the risks associated with pregnancy, which are still significant. However, ectogenesis could also reduce reproductive equality if it becomes privatised. People with fewer financial means would be less able to afford it, meaning they would be excluded from the benefits listed above.

All these thoughts are very hypothetical. Realistically, any use

By Emily HUDSON

investment demonstrates this as an exception, not the rule: the government Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is investing around £117 million alone, not to mention research councils such as the UKRI and private funding bodies. A report from the BEIS in 2021 demonstrates the growth of the solar energy sector since 2010. In 2021, solar energy contributed more than 10% of renewable generation. This is impressive in the context that a large proportion of solar energy installations in the UK (of which there are over 1 million) are on the scale of small households, each individually producing less than 50 megawatt hours for the national grid per annum.

The next step for solar energy is to move into new materials territory. Current photovoltaic (solar power) technology is dominated by purified silicone, which although efficient is highly energy intensive to produce. Research funding is now being poured into a class of crystals called perovskites, which are far easier to make. Once commercialised, they could revolutionise the industry, but for now they are still in the testing stages.

of artificial wombs in humans, even for research purposes, faces huge regulatory hurdles and will take years, if not decades. But past experiences have taught us that it is worth addressing such ethical and regulatory issues earlier rather than later. In vitro fertilisation was once hailed as a technology that would improve reproductive equality; instead, unequal commissioning has limited access for those living in more deprived areas. In the area of trans rights, reproductive law has also not caught up with reality, with trans men still having to be listed as “mother” on the birth certificate. If we want to have discussions about how ectogenesis would be used, we should start before it is too late to make the changes to the legal and political system that enable their being used in an equitable manner. Artificial wombs have the potential to improve the lives of thousands of babies and their families. We need to ensure that whenever they arrive, we’re ready to use this potential in a positive way.

By Nicole HASLER

“The potential uses of such technology have implications for women’s rights and reproductive equality.”

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Oxford Union Transcript acquired

The Oxford Union’s term card is here - we got a copy of the transcript of the meeting behind it.

“What ideas have we got for the term?”

“How about we have no debate in week one, but then two in week five?”

“Why would we do that?”

“For a laugh.”

“It would give us longer to find proposition speakers for week two.”

“And come up with a topic for week three.”

“Have we decided on week six yet?”

“We could do something topical. Like Star Wars day, or pride.”

“Yeah let’s talk about how it’s everywhere.”

“Star Wars?”

“Pride.”

“But who can we get to say that?”

“We could let Peter Tatchell out of the basement.”

“Didn’t we do that last year?”

“And?”

“There’s the policy that guests only come once every three years.”

“We have no week one debate, no proposition for week two, no theme for week three…”

“Point taken.”

“Let’s move on, we need about 25 guest speakers.”

“Let’s get, say, 20 men. And five women.”

“Do you think five is representative?”

“Depends who we ask.”

“Two starred in adult films, one is known for her husband and one is Kathleen Stock.”

“OBE.”

“That’s perfect. Who else should we try?”

“What about former presidents?”

“Obama’s book is like 800 pages so don’t ask him.”

“We could just get random ones.”

“Let’s try the former president of Estonia. From 2006.”

“Smart. Say three more countries.”

“Switzerland, South Korea and Taiwan.”

“We’ll get their ambassadors to the UK.”

“Well that’s one week sorted. Who else?”

BEST OF THE ROAST

A PLACE IN THE SUN

With Trinity upon us, Rordon feels things heating up. Talk swarms around trashing, Hinksey and, regularly, the term “punt” –at least that’s what Rordon hopes that he is hearing. He noticed that ChatGPT-4 left most with unlimited free time, and energy they can redirect into pushing at Bridge. Rordon even

noticed biology students out of their rooms, allegedly undertaking research. Whilst Brits celebrate a warming planet, the French have decided to protest on behalf of the sun. They claim it has earned its right to retire by now, after being informed of its increased pension age. Rordon spoke to many students who disagreed with the protests, however it became clear that they

“We could get someone from the Apprentice.”

“Lord Sugar came last year.”

“Karren?”

“She’s at the football.”

“Oh, well like get whoever came seventh in 2019.”

“Yeah, that should be fine.”

“I got a response from Derek Jacobi.”

“Who?”

“He was in Titanic.”

“Oh cool, see if he knows DiCaprio!”

“No, the 2012 series about the construction of the Titanic.”

“Oh must’ve missed that, anything else?”

“The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

“Oh, that’s a certified Disney classic!”

“No, the 1982 live-action version.”

“Wasn’t he the narrator of In the Night Garden?”

“Oh yeah. I used to love that show.”

“I saw we got Bugzy Malone, but I think we could get another Northerner.”

were simply not pro-tests, where test is a collection not revised for. Rordon defended collections, at least the ones seen in advance.

OUT OF OFFICE

Rordon read that, like student housing, the Pentagon has suffered leaks. Widely reported to be two classified documents, he was disappointed to find that neither were his collection

by Niall Hall

“Yeah, we already have John Bradley so one more should be enough.”

“I heard that the Mayor of the Tees Valley was on LBC’s ‘Top 100 Most Influential Conservatives’ list once.”

“You better pick us to ask him a question.”

“I was thinking that we could remove the Q&A feature.”

“What would we do instead?”

“We could reverse it and make the speaker ask people questions.”

“We could all play that game where you close your eyes and try to count to ten.”

“We could just start singing and see if the speaker joins in.”

“No let’s make them debate.”

“Their favourite people? I prefer the second idea.”

“But we could give a box of cookies to the best debater.”

“What if they don’t like dairy?”

“Give them 5% off when they spend £80 on pasta at Bella Italia.”

“Where are we with drinks? Cocktail ideas?”

“Just got one for Stormy Daniels.”

“Let me guess, Pornstar

papers. For the first time, Rordon had not seen his paper so, for the second time, he decided not to sit them.

He has since been contacted by tutors, informing him of “the need to work.” In unrelated news, tutors have decided to stop marking.

Rordon pointed this out in his brash responding email:

“Bit hypocritical Sean.”

It was quickly identified that the strikes are not of

Martini?”

“imPeach Vodka Cocktail?”

“Oh, they make more sense than mine.”

“Do we need coronation drinks?”

“No, we can just reuse that old bunting, and chuck a couple of quiches at people.”

“I have the blanket Peter Tatchell was using to keep warm in the basement.”

“Ok well that’s one event sorted.”

“What others do we want?”

“We need to do something with another society.”

“Yeah that’s true, strengthen our reputation.”

“Maybe asking Conservative Society will help.”

“Yeah, and people could pretend they are politicians in parliament.”

“Is that not what this has been all along?”

“No, this is a celebration of free speech.”

“The last bastion of empathetic dialogue.”

“Oh right, I must’ve missed that part.”

college concern, but reflect a university-wide concern over pay, working conditions, money and pay. “Everyone kept talking about some boy’s cot”, Rordon told us, “I just presumed that they were going to get toddlers to mark stuff.” It is clear that Rordon is misinformed, since most toddlers are on strike after realising the toy cars of local nurseries are all dieselfuelled.

Deputy Editor: Niall Hall Section Editors: Milo Dennison, Lukas Seifert

Rordon Gamsay

Controversies, clothes, and coaches: A look into the world of the WNBA

Over the past few months, some impeccably dressed women have been popping up on my for you page. Clad in dramatic suits and pink leather trousers, it took me a minute to realise that these stilettoed powerhouses were, in fact, American basketball coaches. Truthfully, I have never watched a game of basketball, but these TikToks fascinated me – I love women’s football and, following the Lionesses’ Euros win last Summer, more girls are being encouraged to get involved in the sports they love. So why do most of us know so little about women’s basketball, its transatlantic cousin?

The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) was not the first major women’s professional basketball league in the US, but in 1996 it became the first to receive the full backing of the NBA. By the start of the season in 1997, the WNBA already had TV deals with everyone from ESPN to the Walt Disney Company. This was a surprise to me, considering the Women’s Super League (WSL) signed its inaugural commercial broadcast deal in 2021, over a decade after it was established. This shows the power of funding for women’s sports –last year, the WNBA’s regular season games were watched by an average TV audience of 379,000 people (compared

to the WSL’s 125k in 2022).

The WNBA is composed of 12 teams, divided geographically (and equally) into an eastern conference and a western conference. Unlike in the WSL, most WNBA teams play at the same venue as their NBA counterparts (if they have one). Each WNBA team has a maximum of 12 players, which makes it difficult for many college-level basketball stars to break through into the league.

In 2022, each team played 36 games (half at home, half away), and the top 8 teams qualified for the postseason playoffs. These involved 3 rounds of play – best of 3 (round 1), best of 5 (semifinal) and best of 5 again (final). The 12 best players in the whole WNBA that season – as selected by fans and coaches – also play in an annual eastern conference vs western conference AllStar Game. Still with me?

I’ll spare you the pain of going into further detail, but will mention that many teams haven’t survived due to a lack of funding and willing owners. Teams including the notorious Houston Comets have been relocated, renamed and their players shuffled around (in socalled ‘dispersal drafts’). This didn’t stop huge names from emerging in the game though –by the end of the 2000 season, the Houston Comets had won their 4th championship, led by the “Big 3” of Sheryl Swoopes, Tina Thompson and Cynthia Cooper. By the 2013 draft, they’d

been succeeded by the “Three to See” – Elena Delle Donne, Skylar Diggins and Brittney Griner.

Chances are that you will have heard of Griner, although not for her prowess on the courts. In February 2022, Griner was detained on smuggling charges by Russian customs officials due to possession of a small quantity of (medically prescribed) hash oil. She was returning to the country to play for UMMC Yekaterinburg – Griner has been with the team since 2014 to supplement her income from the Phoenix Mercury. The WNBA’s salary cap – and pay inequity with the men’s league – means that many players are forced to earn additional dollars abroad. After her release in December 2022, the New York Times declared that this marked a “new wave” of WNBA activism.

Previously nicknamed “the most socially progressive pro league” by the same paper, the WNBA has become famous for its activism. Sheryl Swoopes set a precedent after returning to the court just 6 weeks after giving birth in 1997 – decades before Nike released an advert featuring pregnant and breastfeeding athletes. In 2005, Swoopes made history again by becoming one of the highestprofile athletes to come out as a lesbian. It wasn’t until 2014, though, that Nike endorsed its first openly gay athlete. The face of the campaign? None other than WNBA icon Brittney Griner.

Whilst I was digging for this article, I looked up Griner’s former coach Kim Mulkey. Frequently seen agonising on the sidelines, dressed in sequins, feathers and large earrings, Mulkey is the only person in basketball to have won a national championship as a player, assistant coach, and head coach. This makes her amongst the most powerful individuals in women’s basketball. Before she transferred to Louisiana State University in 2021, Mulkey led 21 seasons as the head coach at Baylor – a private Christian university in Texas. Whilst there, she is said to have enacted a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy in relation to players’ sexualities, with Brittney Griner encouraged to downplay her relationships and identity. Baylor not only explicitly forbade homosexual acts, but also endured a sexual assault scandal – which Mulkey did little to address.

Aside from this (and her controversial opinions about COVID-19 and Donald Trump), Mulkey remains a wellknown and well-loved figure in the US. And her style has brought women’s basketball to Gen Z through TikTok. Less controversial is coach Sydney Carter, currently the Director of Player Development for women’s basketball at the University of Texas. Carter posts her gameday outfits on social media and, unlike Mulkey, receives online abuse for doing so. Her glorious bubblegum-pink, Fashion Nova

trousers brought attention from some who labelled her “unprofessional”. As a young Black woman who has lived much of her adult life in the spotlight, Carter is well-versed in dealing with haters, and has received support from the likes of Nicki Minaj. But the differential treatment of Mulkey and Carter is noted – the former is rapidly forgiven for her sins, whilst the latter is picked up for the tiniest deviation from the norm.

So, the WNBA is certainly not short of drama. Whilst it played a major role in protesting the treatment of African Americans at the hands of police – the 2020 season was dedicated to Breonna Taylor – it faces its own issues with equality. The WNBA needs more female coaches, even as high-profile women like Sandy Brondello join. The players may be unapologetically themselves, and undoubtedly great role models for girls across the pond, but they won’t soar without the support of like-minded, forward-thinking coaches.

Image credit: Traci Lawson via WikimediaCommons(CCBY2.0)

Image description: A WNBA game being played at Mohegan Sun Arena

Eleanor Luxton

Deputy Editor: Haochen Wang

Section Editors: Bradley Beck, Patrick Groves, Eleanor Luxton email: oxstu.sport@gmail.com

AJ: The beginning or the end?

Anthony Joshua has already cemented his legacy as a British boxing legend. Starting boxing at 18, winning Olympic gold just five years later, confirming his greatness by winning the world heavyweight championship, twice. At 6’6” it would be difficult to characterise his 2017 bout against Wladimir Klitschko as a “David vs Goliath” story, but in the boxing world at the time, Wladimir Klitschko was not just the heavyweight champion, he was the king. Klitschko’s record before the bout stood at 64-4. The fight before Klitschko lost to Joshua? A defeat at the hands of Tyson Fury.

Klitschko had inadvertently set the stage for the future of British heavyweight boxing. Before the Joshua-Klitschko fight, Fury would be forced to relinquish his heavyweight titles, struggling with depression and addiction. In 2016, Joshua would beat Charles Martin for the IBF title, but not without controversy –Mickey Vann accused Martin of having no ambition to win. But the bell had rang, the dust had settled, and the IBF belt was in Joshua’s hands. The amateur boxing hero was at the pinnacle of heavyweight boxing, now he just needed to get the rest of the belts. By the time of their fight Klitschko held the WBA (Super) and IBO heavyweight titles, and soon they were Joshua’s. After winning the WBO title in a fight with Joseph Parker, Joshua was an undeniable force in the heavyweight division. With IBF, WBA (Super), IBO and WBO titles Joshua was second only to the royal family in the number of letters associated with his name. All that remained was the WBC, then Joshua would be the first undisputed champion in nearly two decades since Lennox Lewis. The WBC lay in the hands of the “Bronze Bomber” Deontay Wilder. Eddie Hearn and Shelly Finkel held talks for a unification bout between the two. However, talks repeatedly

Sport

Kian Jepson

broke down, and before any possible matchup two fights had to happen: Wilder vs Breazeale, Joshua vs Andy Ruiz Jr. What happened next was arguably the biggest upset in boxing for 30 years. The JoshuaRuiz fight should have been a card-filler, bookies giving Ruiz Jr 25:1 odds. The hulkingW Adonis of Anthony Joshua loomed over the four inches smaller, twenty pounds heavier Ruiz Jr. Joshua was the heavyweight division. Fury was gone, Wilder could only punch. Joshua was the true boxer, the true champion. Then the unthinkable happened: Ruiz Jr scored a double knockdown and Joshua was out by TKO.

Joshua was still an Olympic

withRuiz Jr blaming partying and weight, but Joshua’s record was not x-0 anymore, it was x-1. He was no longer unblemished, his meteoric rise to the top had faltered. Joshua has not seemed the same fighter since.

Then the unthinkable happened: Ruiz Jr scored a double knockdown and Joshua Wwas out by TKO.

Bad turned to worse, Fury was back, he was champion, proving himself to be one of the most

big task, especially for someone who was so commanding in his career up until then. First, however, Joshua needed to fight the number 1 contender, the compatriot of his foe Klitschko, Oleksandr Usyk. The former cruiserweight stepped into the ring with Joshua and gave one of the most technically gifted performances in recent heavyweight boxing history. Joshua was taken back to school; Usyk’s massive amateur record of 335-15 showed. Most great amateurs need rhythm, speed, and footwork. Since knockouts are incredibly rare, winning on points is the only option. AJ, as an amateur, was the exception proving the rule. Was this a lack of

second Usyk fight, and Joshua’s strange rant, confirmed it –Anthony Joshua was no longer the biggest force in heavyweight boxing, his confidence was gone. The Ukrainian reasserted his technical prowess. Tight, quick footwork had him darting around the ring. Intelligent and considered boxing pestered Joshua for 12 rounds – Joshua had no response.

Then came Joshua’s most recent fight against Jermaine Franklin – an American with a fine record, one loss against Dillian Whyte. Franklin wasn’t a heavyweight leviathan, but Joshua seemed different: he stood confidently, moved boldly, and capitalised on his greatest asset – physicality. This was a glimmer of the old Joshua, who never faltered, but now more intelligent, more cautious. Fury and Usyk are technical boxers.

Fury is the awkward giant, clever footwork, constant movement, speed that belies his sheer size. Usyk is pure technique, perfect footwork, perfect jabs, but he cannot compare in size and power to Joshua or Fury. The Anthony Joshua who beat Franklin cannot beat Fury; he could never go toe-to-toe with Usyk. But the Anthony Joshua who beat Wladimir Klitschko at least had the potential to.

champion, still the giant-killer, but now he was only the former unified heavyweight champion.

Joshua blamed his legs, but legs are just as important as arms.

David Haye, in two bouts with Tony Bellew, had the same problem, his legs wavered and sure enough, he lost – two TKO’s.

Joshua soon won his titles back

skilful, technically gifted big men in the ring. Joshua scored a soft win over the nearly 40 year old Kubrat Pulev, and his eyes turned back to reunification. His appearance on Graham Norton suggested a confident, rebuilt Joshua. But regaining charisma, and dominance after such a slip was always going to be a

technical skill and historic overreliance on size, or the demons of a now-tarnished record playing on the mind of Joshua?

Perhaps his media appearances belied the state of his mind, now less comfortable in his style, less willing to use size to overwhelm his opponents. The

Joshua’s career was perfect. When Joshua fought Ruiz Jr, he was the villain in the underdog story, now he is the hero. If Joshua can search his soul and fight with that confidence that marked his early career, he can get back to the top. Ali lost his prime years under conviction, yet remains the greatest heavyweight fighter ever. Ali never lost his sting, in his words or his punches, Joshua needs to find that sting again. Joshua needs to find the Olympic champion, the unified world champion – Joshua is a legend, he just needs to remember it.

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