Issue 3 - Hilary Term 2015

Volume 72 Issue 3

Thursday 29nd January 2nd Week

oxfordstudent.com

Bops under threat after flood at Corpus

Profile: Rick Edwards, p.13 »

• Bop ‘out of order’ after glass bottle blocks toilet

Engaging young people in politics

LAURA WHETHERLY NEWS EDITOR

Students at Corpus Christi may be banned from holding bops following a flood during a bop on Saturday night.

In an email to Corpus students, JCR President Bethany Currie described how “someone put a broken glass bottle down one of the staircase 8 toilets and covered it in toilet paper, which someone then tried to flush down, causing the area to flood”.

As well as coming through the ceiling, the water damaged electricals in the college buttery, which resulted in the music failing during the “anything but clothes” themed bop.

Currie stated that this incident “might put our bop-future in peril”, and that “there will be meetings this week between JCR representatives and college on how to deal with the event”.

Students were informed that the glass PHOTO/ Roger Askew

Continued on page 7 »

Outrage over “racist” ‘Arabian Nights’ bop theme at LMH

• Lady Margaret Hall students criticised for perpetuating “patronising stereotypes” with costumes • JCR President, Aadit Shankar, forced to issue apology after accusations of cultural appropriation LUKE MINTZ NEWS EDITOR

Lady Margaret Hall JCR has been forced to issue an apology after numerous students dressed in “racist” and “offensive” costumes at an Arabian Nights themed bop on Saturday evening.

A number of LMH students attended the undergraduate bop as belly dancers, with some wearing towels on their

head, as well as mock turbans and mock headscarves. At least one student wore a hook on his hand, apparently dressing as extremist cleric Abu Hamza.

Responding to substantial criticism, JCR President Aadit Shankar told The Oxford Student: “I would like to apologise on behalf of certain members of the JCR who misinterpreted the theme, and to all those who were offended by some of the costumes.”

Shankar continued: “The JCR Executive is always prepared to remove anyone from a bop who is dressed in a manner that may be deemed offensive.

[We are] proud that LMH is home to people of all race, gender, sexuality and faith.”

The theme, decided five days prior to the event, was intended to refer to One Thousand and One Nights, a classic collection of Arabic folk tales. Numer-

ous LMH students, however, chose to dress in modern day Arabic clothing, prompting accusations of “cultural appropriation” and racial insensitivity.

Writing on the LMH Facebook page, English finalist and former Cuntry Living editor Charlotte Sykes criticised the costumes: “Wearing a towel on your head if you are white is pretty racist. Equally, wearing a belly dancing outfit if you are white perpetuates

Features, p.19

Comment, p.9

Radical feminist Julie Bindel talks pornography and activism

On Murdoch’s misogynistic actions and freeing the nipple

patronising stereotypes of people who live in countries our country quite frequently bombs the fuck out of.”

Sykes later told The OxStu: “Stereotypes of a minority group work to dehumanise said group. This can have extremely tangible consequences, which we are witnessing in the rise of the Islamophobic Far Right across Continued on page 3 »

EDITORIAL

2 Editorial

W

PHOTO/Howard Stanbury

hat is the point of student media?

This question, often posed by our detractors, is worth considering. Many accuse the student press of being a force for self-aggrandizement, perpetuating the overinflated importance of university societies and figures which have little to no impact on the outside world. It is certainly true that our focus can be rather insular, and stories can sometimes be downright ridiculous. Our answer to this is: what would you rather read? A dry account of a new campaign, produced by churning out a press release (this style being commonly known as ‘Churnalism’)?

Or an amusing and original piece about a fresher getting smashed and reciting Latin? We pride ourselves on being factually accurate, but equally we recognise that our primary function is to interest you.

If we can’t have a bit of fun doing that then what, indeed, is the point of student media?

This week’s front-page articles both feature that mainstay of Oxford partying: the bop. Its combination of costumes, drinking, and the inherently ridiculous Oxford-ness of it all makes the bop a frequent source of controversy.

We may be at a university which is full of students who are remarkably engaged with wider political issues compared to the average person of our demographic (something which we discuss with broadcaster Rick Edwards on page 13), but we still want to know what’s going on in our little bubble of colleges. It may be slightly silly, but so are a lot of things here. After all, you only need

29th January 2015 three years and a bad idea to create a tradition.

This week has been one of arguments amongst the student body. Unsurprising as this may be for a place which values debate – whether that’s in tutorials, at the Union, in JCR meetings, or on Facebook – it can sometimes feel that we aren’t all that united. That’s why it’s nice to have a place where we can compile all sorts of stories from around the university, along with articles and artwork by a range of students. This week we have once again an outstanding culture section, with my favourite OXII cover yet: a Blake-style masterpiece, courtesy of our wonderful Creative Director. There’s also discussion of various issues, from Page 3 (confusingly, this piece is on page 9) and the lack of diversity in Oscar nominations (OXII page 12). As ever, you will probably find the names and faces of people you know in these pages, whether that’s in the latest student drama (OXII page 15), or featured in OxStuff. It’s all part of the inward-looking nature of student journalism, but hopefully it’s all pretty good-natured stuff.

There are so many things going on here, and so many different people, it goes without saying that we won’t always agree on everything. But why not embrace the differences? If you asked me to define our purpose as a paper, I would say that it is to unite the different strands of Oxford life, even at times when we all seem to be a little disparate.

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News 3

29th January 2015

OUSU executives debate over exclusion in LGBTQ spaces

• Over 130 messages posted after Oxford “gaytriarchy” criticised for not being welcoming enough LAURA WHETHERLY NEWS EDITOR

A post on the online zine No HeterOx has opened up mass debate over issues within Oxford’s LGTBQ community.

OUSU VP for Welfare and Equal Opportunities Chris Pike and OUSU LGTBQ Officer Jenny Walker were among those active in the discussion.

Walker’s post to the Facebook group No HeterOx on 24th January, recommending a Cherwell Comment piece by Pike concerning ableism was challenged by group members, particularly for a reference to “the ‘gaytriarchy’ of quiche and plush and being super ott exuberant all the time”. At the time of writing, the thread has over 130 messages.

Concerns were raised over several ideas, primarily those concerning issues of exclusion within Oxford’s LGTBQ community. Recurring themes included the LGTBQ Society, ableism and the idea of the “gaytriarchy” referenced in Walker’s initial post.

Among the participants were several ex-OUSU sabs and prominent members of the LGTBQ community, including ex-OUSU president Tom Rutland, ex-OUSU Disabilities Officer Will Neaverson, and editor of No HeterOx, Annie Teriba.

Several individuals had comments directed towards them, including Chris Pike and Tom Rutland, and others have expressed their unhappiness at the tone of comments.

Alice Nutting wrote on the thread that: “As a non neurotypical, disabled person I’m really upset by some of the responses here.”

Chris Pike told The Oxford Student: “I never expected my article to be the tinder box for such an enormous discussion. I think unpleasant comments and misunderstandings were made by both sides, and I also believe both sides have learned something both from the article and from the discussion.

“My hope now is that we can turn the negative into a positive: opening up a conversation, which I know the society’s committee was already having, about how to make the LGBTQ scene in Oxford more inclusive and welcoming. Not just for autistic people, not just for disabled people, but for all LGBTQ people.”

A further post made by Walker two days later said: “I want to make sure something good comes out of the very long, confusing and intense thread below. I don’t mean this as a justification – I made a mistake with the way I posed my point and I’m really sorry that that upset so many people.”

She then went on to clarify certain points she had made, saying: “I never actually said confident people need to tone it down: that was inferred by people commenting. In fact, I didn’t have any clear solutions. Neither, as someone voicing their concerns, did I have to. Demanding a clear solution from someone who is already saying something quite scary and potentially

PHOTO/Flickr user skittledog

isolating, can feel pretty aggressive from the receiving end.

“I suppose what I should have said right out was this – I think people in the queer scene (evidently myself included) could all work at being better listeners.”

The latest post on the debate at the time of writing dates from 26th January, although new posts have been made on the group page, inspired

by concerns raised over the course of the debate.

On 27th January, Otamere Guobadia, President of Oxford LGTBQ Soc, published a Facebook status on behalf of the society saying: “I would just like to briefly say a few words before tonight’s drinks. The last few days have been pretty precarious, and have brought to the front of our minds problems with the nature and

scope of our events, as well as with the atmosphere and inclusivity of our society and our community.

“I would just like to reiterate that we are stepping back and listening, and we want this society and everyone who wants to be a part of it, to feel completely and utterly safe and welcome, and we are fully aware that some things must change for that to happen”.

LMH forced to apologise for students’ “offensive” bop costumes

• Belly dancing outfits, mock turbans and headscarves featured in college’s controversial ‘Arabian Nights’ bop LUKE MINTZ NEWS EDITOR

» Continued from front page Europe.”

She continued: “A bop that leads to people dressing as belly dancers or with a towel on their head is perpetuating lazy, one-dimensional stereotypes about Arab culture at a time when we really need to work against this.”

In its description of the theme, an LMH college newsletter stated: “For our first theme this term, we will be transporting you to the world of magic flying carpets, genies, jangly bangles, and outrageously paisley trousers.”

Third-year English finalist Alvin Yu also voiced disapproval of students’ costumes: “I don’t think it was a particularly ‘racist’ or ‘offensive’ theme because it’s a group of folk tales […] the problem was that people just didn’t really think about it properly.”

According to student publication Versa, LMH’s social secretary was reduced to tears after being publically confronted by angry students at the bop.

Several LMH students defended the theme. Theo Heren wrote on Facebook: “The day we ban belly dancing costumes is the day we really lose it”, with undergraduate Clara Davis accusing the critics of “conflating race, colour, and culture”.

Davis went on to write: “I have no reason to feel guilty about my costume last night […] I am white.

I am also Arabic. Does this mean I have been racially insensitive to myself and my family? My ‘belly dancing’ costume I wore last night was made by my Lebanese family.”

Sultan Kara also defended the costumes, commenting: “Arab here.

Is it not equally racist to assume that all people in the Middle East dress the same […] I’m not quite sure what you expected to happen when most people’s concepts of Arabs are terrorists or Aladdin. I don’t personally mind what people wear.

It’s just a manifestation of their own ignorance.”

Previous college bop themes have provoked similar controversy, with a St Hugh’s bop in April 2013 attracting criticism after two firstyear students ‘blacked-up’, a decision described by then-JCR President Thomas Pope as displaying a “severe lack of judgement”.

PHOTO/Flickr user Kat Selvocki

4 News

29th January 2015

Pembroke gains living wage accreditation Hebdo newsagent retreats • College members "delighted" at announcement of accredidation MATTHEW COULTER DEPUTY NEWS EDITOR

Members of Pembroke College have expressed support for their College’s decision to accredit with the Living Wage Foundation.

The decision was announced on the Pembroke website on 23rd January. It explained that the College has been paying the living wage since 2012, and has now decided to accredit following a meeting of the governing body last week.

Dame Lynne Brindley, the Master of Pembroke, told The Oxford Student: “I am delighted

that Pembroke is to become an accredited Living Wage employer.”

She called the decision “a signal of the value we place on our staff and of the vital role that those who are the lowest paid play within our community, and especially in relation to the lives and College experience of all our students”.

Pembroke JCR have supported the Living Wage Campaign since a motion passed in 2011.

JCR President Ben Nabarro, who also spoke at last week’s meeting, called the Living Wage “one of the issues that really commands unanimous support in the JCR”. “[…] many have been working

PHOTO/DJR XI

on this for a long time. I spoke in the debate on this in governing body to that end and clearly we're delighted the college has decided to accredit.”

He added that “the decision to accredit is key. We've been paying the living wage since 2012 but to give our lowest paid staff the security of a fair wage is incredibly important.”

Another student, Pembroke fresher Charles McGrath, said that he was “very pleased” at the decision, and expressed his hope “that this cements and solidifies the ethos that all employees should be paid a wage on which they can survive”.

However, he also mentioned his belief that “there remain considerable issues in regards to low-paid employees around the university” and that “this can only really be considered a first step towards the fair treatment of catering staff and scouts and the protection of their rights as employees”.

The living wage is calculated annually based on the UK cost of living. Currently, the living wage is £7.85 an hour, considerably higher than the £6.50 national minimum wage.

Oxford University has also recently been accredited as a Living Wage employer, along with Wadham and Oriel.

• Wendy's News removes stock after threats LAURA WHETHERLY NEWS EDITOR

Local newsagent Wendy’s News has withdrawn from selling the latest edition of Charlie Hebdo magazine, following threats to their shop.

Despite initially ordering 500 copies of the magazine, and then an additional 500 copies in response to consumer demand, Wendy’s News made the decision not to sell the paper.

This comes after threats were made towards the shop over the phone and on Facebook.

Owner of Wendy’s, Adam Esmail, told The Oxford Mail: “We have been unable to get hold of copies yet and because of threats we have received over the last few days from around the UK we won’t be selling the magazine.

“We don’t want to provoke Muslim people, I am a Muslim myself”.

Five million copies have been printed of the latest edition of Charlie Hebdo, following the terrorist attack on their offices on 7th January in which 12 people died.

One critic of Wendy’s original decision to sell the magazine was founder of the Oxford Islamic Information Centre, Dr Sheikh Ramzy. On the evening of 16th January, Ramzy lead a protest in Bonn Square against the magazine, which was attended by around 20 people.

Ramzy told The Oxford Student that the magazine’s cover, which depicts a sobbing image of the Prophet Mohammed holding a sign with “Je Suis Charlie” written on it, “insults

all 3 million of the world’s Muslim population”.

In Islamic tradition, it is forbidden to portray a likeness of any prophet of God, including Mohammed.

He continued by saying that it was “totally wrong” to sell the magazine anywhere, and that he was “very pleased” to learn of Wendy’s News’ decision.

Ramzy also condemed the “aggressive, extremist” Paris attacks and concluded by saying that now the matter was over it was a chance to “pray for peace”.

Zahra Rumani, Media and Politics Officer for the Oxford Islamic Society, said: "I am horrified that anyone would threaten the newsagent based on their decision to stock the magazine. It never fails to surprise me that anyone could think that the apropriate way to deal with offence is to resort to violent means. If the decision to cancel the order was influenced in any way by the threats, it was clearly the right thing to do; obviously the safety of employees is of paramount importance".

First year student and previous employee of UN, Amelia Cooper, commented: “Do newspaper shops have the right to sell the magazine?

Wholly, unequivocally yes. The cartoons did not contravene laws regarding free speech, or nuanced international guidance. No idea should be protected from criticism, and people do not have the right not to be offended”.

Thames Valley Police did not respond to our request for comment.

Al Sharpton withdraws from racism debate at Union

• Reverend refuses to participate in highly charged debate concerning institutionalised racism in the United States • Opposition speaker Charlie Wolf draws condemnation for inflamatory remarks about America's black population DANIEL CUNNIFFE NEWS REPORTER

Controversial political activist Reverend Al Sharpton withdrew from participating in a debate at the Oxford Union this week.

Sharpton was meant to debate on Friday in proposition of the motion “This House Believes The United States is Institutionally Racist”, but refused to participate.

Instead of speaking in the full debate as previously agreed, Sharpton gave a prepared 20-minute speech beforehand. He justified his decision not to debate the motion by claiming that the United States is “in transition” and he felt unable to comment.

David Webb, a speaker in opposition of the motion, criticised Sharpton on Twitter, saying that he “dodged honest debate”.

Alice Skinner, a first year History student, said: “It's a shame he [Sharpton] refused to debate as he is an interesting figure with first hand experience of the inequalities in his country, but I understand why he didn't feel he had to.”

Sharpton hosts the programme

Politics Nation on American cable channel MSNCB. Their website makes no allusions to the scrapped plans to debate in its report on Sharpton’s address.

Charlie Wolf, speaking in opposition, also caused controversy during the debate when he described the US Constitution as a “nearperfect document”.

Wolf later told one speaker from the floor: “I have suffered racism as a Jew, you have suffered racism. It’s bad. It happens”.

Sam Sussman, a Pembroke student who denounced Wolf during the debate for misusing their “shared Jewish heritage” commented: “In last Friday night's debate, including in his exchange with me, Mr. Wolf repeatedly assured those of us concerned with institutional racism that we no longer need be. Racial achievement gaps need not be explained by institutional discrimination, as they are simply attributable to the insufficient work ethic and family norms of black Americans.

“The keystone of this misguided argument was that Jews had also

faced discrimination in the United States, but now enjoy affluence.

As the child and grandchild of Jewish civil rights activists, I see the leading role of American Jewry in fighting against racism as one of the great accomplishments of our people. Mr. Wolf's use of our shared Jewish heritage to advance his racist condemnation of black Americans was offensive, and I told him this. Judging by the comments of about a dozen Jewish students who approached me afterwards, I was not the only person embarrassed by Mr. Wolf's remarks.”

During the debate, another student spoke in opposition of the motion on the grounds that “the United States isn’t racist, it’s evil”.

Sharpton’s space in the chamber was filled by Annie Teriba, Editor of No HeterOx and ex Access and Admissions Officer for OUSU. In an interview with Fox News, Webb elaborated on Sharpton’s decision to withdraw, saying: “for once, Sharpton would have to face, in a Parliamentary-style debate, questions and opposition… he would have to face facts. He can’t do that”.

PHOTO/DAVID SHANKBONE

29th January 2015

Union debate left in naked terror

News 5

Last orders for Oxford pub

• Man interrupts to yell “Full transparency” • Far From the Madding Crowd to close CONOR HAMILTON DEPUTY NEWS EDITOR

Oxford Union members expressed shock when a near-naked man barged into the chamber during an event about youth voting.

Disrupting the event by yelling “full transparancy!”, the man was dressed in only a skin-coloured cod piece.

He was later revealed to be Heydon Prowse, from BBC Three’s political comedy show The Revolution Will Be Televised.

The event on 21st January, described to members on Facebook as “a televised debate looking ahead to the future of democracy in the UK,” featured a discussion between television presenter Rick Edwards and two comedians from the BBC Three show, with the debate intermittently disrupted by Prowse’s recurring comedy sketch.

The sketch featured a fictional Liberal Democrat MP, Barnaby Plankton, who becomes tired of the endless lies in politics, and decides to ‘lay everything bare’.

Union President Lisa Wehden later informed members that the audience were not informed of the sketch beforehand in order to keep their reaction more genuine for the show.

Jenny Venables, a first-year History and Politics student, said that while “heavy confusion ran through the audience for most of the night” and “at times, the event tended to drag,” the “discussion was actually pretty enjoyable”.

The event received some complaints, with one student claiming he felt “patronised” by the three speakers. Meanwhile, Somerville student Natalie Milner tweeted her disappointment that it wasn’t Rick Edwards who stripped.

One source at the Union said they “hoped we were going to have more of a comedy sketch at the start, followed by a more structured talk

by Rick and the guys.”

They continued: “It could have been better perhaps if the advertisements were more focused on the filming.”

The Union was, however, happy with the event overall.

The only clue given to members was in the Union’s description of the Facebook event, which stated the discussion would feature “VERY SPECIAL guest speakers” and “is not suitable for the easily offended or faint hearted.”

The episode of The Revolution Will Be Televised will hit screens on 8th February .

BERTRAM BEOR-ROBERTS DEPUTY NEWS EDITOR

Popular Oxford pub ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’ closed its doors for the last time on Saturday evening.

The pub, located near The Randolph hotel in a side street named Friars Entry, has long been a popular retreat for Oxford students and locals alike, and has developed a reputation for its wide selection of real ales.

The news of the pub’s closure was only widely known a week beforehand, as landlord Charles Eld, 63, decided that the rent costs and changes to drinking culture no longer made the pub viable as a business. Mr. Eld told the Oxford Mail: “What has caused a massive issue is minimum alcohol pricing, which puts a great strain on pub owners. The culture of drinking has changed too and we can’t compete with supermarket pricing of alcohol.”

Voted Oxford Pub of the Year in 2009, 2011, and 2012 by members of the Campaign for Real Ales (CAMRA), the pub played host to four beer festivals and two cider festivals a year, as well as being a popular meeting point for groups such as the Oxford University Real Ale Society.

President Ben Clough commented: “One of OURAS’s favourite pubs in the

city centre, the Madding could always be trusted to serve a good pint, and its constantly changing range of ales was one of the best in the city – we hope it may bounce back in another form.

Whilst its closure reflects the current difficult environment for landlords, the beer scene in Oxford has actually seemed to be improving over the last few years, and is currently pretty strong in Jericho and East Oxford.”

Online forums have also seen outpourings from fans. One member commented: “FFTMC was the best pub by far in Oxford, sensible price, no hassle and a great atmosphere, mainly thanks to the great regulars and the fantastic beers.”

CAMRA estimates that pubs are closing at a rate of 31 a week, up from 26 in 2013, and two a week are turned into supermarkets. The House of Commons held a debate on earlier this month on tightening up planning laws, which currently allow pubs to be converted without permission, unlike buildings such as nightclubs.

The name ‘Far From The Madding Crowd’ was a reference to Thomas Hardy’s 1874 novel of the same name.

It was chosen to reflect the difference in atmosphere between the narrow lane Friars Entry and the bustling nearby George Street, the location of many of the city’s restaurants and bars.

Oxford celebrates 'Museum Selfie Day' Last week was ‘Museum Selfie Day’, with people worldwide encouraged to photograph themselves in museums and upload the results to social media.

On January 21, Oxford University’s museums hosted hundreds of selfies uploaded to Twitter with #MuseumSelfie.

The internet event was inaugurated last year by Londoner Mar Dixon who runs a website about museums.

She came up with the campaign having visited several museums in London with her daughter.

Dixon said: "The hashtag is about the museum, but it's really about the people who are going to the museum. You took that picture, and you will remember that picture."

To see some of these museum selfies, follow @MuseumSelfieDay.

St Peter's triumph over Brookes The St Peter’s College University Challenge team have beaten Oxford Brookes in the quarter-finals of University Challenge, aired on Monday evening.

They won with a convincing majority of 280 to 40, lead by captain Gabriel Trueblood.

St Peter’s students gathered in the JCR to support the team, with members John Armitage, Spike Smith and Ed Roberts joining them.

Earlier in the series, Jesus College were knocked out of the running by Brookes’ team.

Several comments were made regarding the episode on Twitter.

Miles Evans tweeted: “Armitage of St Peter’s is a man trapped in the body of an Ealing comedy stockbroker”, while Ben Lyons shared an image of the team with the caption “Go slytherin”.

OULC introduces ID checks for drinks

PHOTO/Roger Askew

Oxford University’s Labour Club has introduced a policy to check age identification at future drinks events, after an underage student was served alcohol last week.

Co-Chairwoman Hannah Lovell told the BBC that she was “really sorry” and OULC had “learnt a lesson.” She added: “Hopefully other student societies will follow suit."

The Labour MP for Oxford East, Andrew Smith, who was at the event, denied that he knew drinks were being served to an underage student and told the BBC that OULC will “need to be careful in future about how they advertise events and check the ages of those who are coming.”

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29th January 2015

News 7

Oxford MP expresses opposition towards Campsfield House expansion

• MP Nicola Blackwood lends support to OUSU's campaign against planned growth of controversial detention centre LUKE MINTZ News Editor

A local Oxford MP has voiced support for OUSU’s recent statement on Campsfield House, in which the Executive Body expressed opposition to the immigration detention centre’s proposed expansion.

Responding to last week’s OUSU statement, Nicola Blackwood, Conservative MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, told The Oxford Student: “I am fundamentally opposed to this proposal, as I have told both the Immigration Minister and Home Secretary.”

Blackwood went on to say: “Increasing Campsfield House to 566 beds more than doubles the size of the detention centre.

Like many local people I believe we should be focusing on finding alternatives to detention and improving the speed of decision making within the asylum system, rather than simply increasing our detention estate.”

Blackwood also voiced her “specific concerns about the design of the plans and traffic implications”, stating: “I have formally objected to the planning application for this expansion and I am petitioning the Home Secretary to withdraw the plans immediately.”

OUSU’s Executive statement, released last week, said: “Campsfield House should not be expanded: it should be closed down. Detainees at Campsfield report frequent abuse – just last month, the detainees themselves staged a protest against the violent treatment of one of their number

– and are systematically denied their basic rights.”

The statement goes on to write: “Migrants are not criminals. Many of the detainees in Campsfield faced persecution in their countries of origin and came to

Britain needing our help.”

Sally Copley, the Labour candidate for Oxford West and Abingdon for this May’s election, stressed the “strong humanitarian reasons” for rejecting Campsfield’s proposed expansion.

Speaking to the Oxford Mail last year, Copley stated: “It’s clearly wrong to detain at all people who are not criminals but instead are fleeing conflict, let alone indefinitely.”

She continued: “The Home Office

PHOTO/ITV

have not made a satisfactory case for why they want to extend Campsfield House, and it’s a shame the District Council are only allowed to consider this on planning grounds, as there are strong humanitarian reasons for rejecting it.”

Commenting on last week’s statement, OUSU President Louis Trup told The OxStu: “OUSU has historically had strong links with the campaign to close Campsfield, primarily through the BME and Anti-Racism Officer. I am glad that this link is continuing with Nikhil (the current BME and AntiRacism Officer) and the current executive.”

Campsfield’s proposed expansion has also faced criticism from Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who stated last week: “The Home Office needs to improve the speed and accuracy of immigration and asylum decisions. This will reduce demand, help save money, and mean we can eventually close centres such as Campsfield House.”

Campsfield has provoked considerable student activism in recent years, with criticism focusing on the detention centre's treatment of detainees In December 2014, around 30 students organised a demonstration outside Campsfield, to protest an alleged assault against a detainee

by Mitie-organised security staff Earlier in Michaelmas 2014, 61 senior Oxford academics signed an open letter to the Prime Minister urging the closure of the centre, and last year, student group Oxford Migrant Society arranged a demonstration to mark Campsfield's 20th anniversary.

Bops in jeopardy at Corpus after broken bottle leads to flooding • The incident on Saturday night caused damage to electrics and the porter dealing with the bottle was put at "significant risk" • JCR President Currie says "college have been pretty understanding", but future of bops at Corpus remains in the balance LAURA WHETHERLY News Editor

» Continued from front page bottle posed a "significant risk" to the porter who had to unblock the toilet. There was also mention of a Balliol "guest" attendee who was "really rude" towards junior deans whilst they were in the process of cleaning up.

First-year student James Bruce commented: "It's really out of order. I hope we're still allowed to have BOPs in the future."

Saskia Mondon-Ballantyne added: "It's really out of order – just like the toilet."

The Oxford Student understands that no individuals have yet come forward with regards to the event, despite Currie's email that, "If the person who did it came forward that would make our lives a lot easier, and ensure that the whole JCR does not get the blame for the

drunken antics of one person, or a small group of individuals."

Currie further commented: "The JCR are discussing ways to ensure that bops are just as fun but perhaps a tiny bit less destructive.

Not that it was actually that destructive in the end as the areas we were worried might be affected by water damage were back in use today.

"JCR reps are meeting with college later in the week, but college have been pretty understanding of hte whole thing."

This is not the first ceiling-related BOP incident to be recorded.

Back in 2012, a bop at St John's had to be halted by college porters after students caused damage to wooden ceiling panels in the then newly-created "Events room".

Meanwhile, the ceiling of St Peter's JCR was similarly damaged during a bop last year.

Corpus Christi did not respond to our request for comment.

PHOTO/Tony Hisgett

29th January 2015

8 News

Veg-nesday at Regent’s Park

• College-wide ballot votes for meat-free Wednesdays

Disruption as female bishop ordained • Protester interrupts Oxford alumna’s ceremony LAURA WHETHERLY NEWS EDITOR

A “serial protester” interrupted the ordination service of Reverend. Dr. Libby Lane, the first female bishop of the Church of England and St Peter’s alumna.

During the ceremony on 26th January, Reverend Paul Williamson stepped forward, shouting “not in the Bible” after the Archbishop of York asked the church if Mrs Lane should be ordained as a bishop.

Despite Reverend Williamson’s attempts, Lane was consecrated as Bishop of Stockport at Yorkminster, in front of 1,000 people.

A spokesperson for the Church of England said that the disruption had been “expected”. Williamson has spoken out several times against the ordination of women in the church, and sued the Dean and

Chapter of St Paul’s Cathedral in 1997 for appointing a woman as a minor canon.

The announcement of Lane’s appointment came during the vacation period, following the decision of the Church of England this summer to allow women to take up the post of bishops within the church.

At the time, Reverend Dr. Pikethly, St Peter’s College Chaplain told The Oxford Student that “everyone at St Peter’s” was thrilled by the news. In an email to the student body, Master Mark Damazer said: “St Peter’s place in history has been given a massive jolt forward” Lane studied Theology at St Peter’s and matriculated in 1986, just seven years after women were first admitted to the college. Her tutor, Billy Watson, is still active around St Peter’s today.

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STEPHANIE STAFFORD NEWS REPORTER

STAFF

Regent’s Park have introduced a new initiative to go meat-free one day a week.

Following the result of a ballot proposed in Michaelmas Term, the College’s catering team will now only serve vegetarian meals on a Wednesday. This applies to lunch and dinner, affecting students and staff.

This move is in line with the Meat Free Monday campaign, strongly supported by Sir Paul McCartney and Jamie Oliver.

This campaign advocates avoiding eating meat once a week in a bid to improve personal health and global sustainability.

Regent Park’s scheme comes as the result of a ballot proposed by PPE finalist Will Yates in Michaelmas 2014. He expressed his satisfaction with the decision: “It’s not often that we get to gauge the feelings of the whole college community on a matter like this, and I think that the community has made a firm statement of its values and beliefs. So far, the scheme Editor Deputy Editors Creative Director Online Editor Broadcast Editor News Editors Comment Editors Features Editors Fashion Editors Arts and Lit Editors Music Editors

seems to be going down well with students and staff alike.”

Regent’s Park is now the third College to go meat free once a week, alongside Wadham and Queens. Other colleges, including Balliol, Brasenose, Lincoln and Oriel have welcomed various motions to reduce the number of meat options offered at meal times.

As part of the ballot, Regent’s Park students were asked to vote for their preferred meat-free day, opting for the unconventional choice of Wednesday, rather than Monday. This has led to a flurry of Twitter suggestions from staff and students regarding an appropriate name for the event.

Proposals so far have so far included: “Meat Free Midweek”, “Wheaty Wednesday”, “Veggie Vednesdays” and “Vegdnesday”.

Clena Donor, a visiting student at Regent’s Park commented: “A lot of the time vegetarians like me only get one option. There’s not much to choose from and it can be hard, so what’s really great is having more choice. I haven’t heard anyone complain about it yet.

“Movements like this are starting to get more respect in the UK Alys Key Nasim Asl, Sachin Croker, Asya Likhtman, Rupert Tottman, Alice Troy-Donovan and Sid Venkataramakrishnan Thomas Barnett Ed Roberts Nasim Asl Luke Mintz and Laura Whetherly Richard Higson and Hugh McHale Maughan Marcus Li and William Shaw Augustine Cerf and Demie Kim Alice Jaffe and Stephanie Kelley Kate Bickerton and Henry Holmes

certainly, and in Canada. A lot of people eat meat all the time just out of habit, but this gives people a chance to try something new.”

The Meat Free Monday (MFM) campaign argues that removing meat from your diet once a week improves personal health and animal well-being, reduces green-house emissions and lessens expenditure.

MFM’s website states that “eating less meat is a compassionate step that helps prevent cruelty and suffering”, arguing that the slaughterhouse industry is responsible for significant cruelty against animals.

According to a study carried out

by Oxford University’s Department of Public Health, eating meat no more than three times a week could prevent 31,000 deaths from heart disease, 9,000 deaths from cancer and 5,000 deaths from stroke, saving the NHS £1.2 billion each year.

Regent’s Park will continue to serve vegetarian-only meals once a week for the duration of Hilary term. At the end of term it will be decided whether to adopt the meat-free day permanently.

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26th February 2015

COMMENT

Comment 9

CARTOON/Harriet Bourhill

We deserve a fifth week break, not blues I write this as outside, it pours with rain. It’s a dull Wednesday in fifth week, approaching 4am in the morning, and the three translations for tomorrow are becoming less of the faint prospect they were a couple of days ago and more of a threatening reality. The only reason I haven’t managed to do them has been because of the intensity of this past week, which caused me to eventually cave in and miss a day of lectures to manage to finish some work.

Terms at Oxford are a blink-andyou’ll-miss-it type of short – intense to say the least, combining attempts and failures to equalise a work and life balance, and squeezing academic work into a length of two months.

Only last week, speaking to a friend at Exeter University, did I realise that whilst we heroically slogged along to get through fifth week, the rest of the UK students were enjoying a break from their own terms at that time, catching up with work in their assigned reading weeks.

I also realised, having followed last term’s Cambridge Union president on Twitter for a few weeks, that

Cambridge seem to be far more concerned with the lack of a reading week than our own institution. The Other Place have, in fact, started a campaign called #endfifthweekblues, which has reached 445 signatures as of today – only 55 away from its target – in a very short amount of time. Cambridge students seem to be of the same mind-set as many of us here: that it is unfathomable that other universities should be allowed to take a week off in the middle of term, whereas we simply have to accept the harsh reality. Endurance, we are taught from the moment we set foot here, is key to reaching the end of each term.

The consequences of the University’s attitude towards the workload is, without doubt, having a terrible effect on a large percentage of those attempting to thrive academically at Oxford. Attempts are being made to detail the impact which this has upon the lives of real students, such as the newly founded blog welfarecrisis.tumblr. com (which recounts the experiences of rusticated Oxford students). Yet too many are still suffering in silence

with problems connected to mental health, brought on (in an alarmingly high number of cases) by the sheer intensity of stress and pressure.

Our terms present problems, which first and foremost must be considered by examining the effect they are having on students’ health – however, the academic aspect also fits into the equation in which despairing students find their work suffering from the lack of time. A

Terms at Oxford are a blink-andyou'll-miss-it type of short

second year at Queen’s reflected upon the urgency that many of us sense looming over us: “I do certainly feel like Oxford encourages a kind of rush mentality whereby handing in anything, as long as it meets a deadline, is acceptable; I’d rather take the time to make a piece of work really good”.

His words lead us to question ourselves, and the system – how

can we perform to the best of our academic abilities, if we are constantly deprived of sleep and overworked?

On a far broader basis, the intensity and brevity of Oxford terms often disguises how wonderful a place it is to live in. These truly are the dreaming spires: the beauty of Christ Church meadow, the richness of student theatre, and the serenity of punting – even having a social life!

– could all be drawn on in an essayfree week. In particular, it seems perverse that there is a real and palpable tension between having the latter, and fulfilling one’s academic obligations.

It may be difficult to agree to alleviate the stringent academic standards which Oxford expects of us; we are all here to receive intense and focused teaching. But there is also no denial that there is a very significant difference between high standards, and standards which are simply ignorant of student wellbeing. Let’s try to put this into concrete terms – the introduction of a reading week for the average PPEist is equivalent to being let

CAROLINA BAX

St Hilda's College off two essays: in the grand scheme of things, that's not that much at all. This does not devalue an Oxford degree in the slightest – it is simply a step that needs taking if we are to expect students to be able to face continuing their studies, whilst simultaneously not damaging their physical and mental health.

Alternatively, if tutors genuinely insist that every essay is vital, there do not appear to be many barriers to simply extending term length.

Oxford and Cambridge have shorter terms than any other UK university; in terms of time in formal study, we spend less than half the year at university. There are also implications for potential applicants.

The more students express negativity about the extreme time constraints an Oxbridge degree entails, the less likely it is that students who lack self-confidence – or who simply see our university as a mysterious web of gowns and essay crises – are to apply.

There is nothing to question, nor any doubt about it – a reading week is key to making our university an improved, healthier, and more accessible place of learning.

10 Comment

F

YES

racking. Drop it into conversation, and sleeves are likely to be rolled, knuckles cracked, and various statistical anecdotes assembled in preparation for an environmental sparring match. Yes, such fierce debate is healthy, though I can’t help but feel the looming presence of the ‘energy trilemma’ – the need to find fuel sources which are secure, environmentally and economically sustainable. It is not necessarily a problem that the battle lines drawn around fracking are slowing its progress – flaws in the process need to be identified. What is frustrating, is that the juxtaposed camps pitched on either side of the technology are producing a stalemate.

Whilst each strand of the energy trilemma is important, we must place priority on environmental protection.

Chief among global concerns is climate change. It is exacerbated by the cumulative amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which means that until these emissions are eliminated, the problem is only going to become more grave. Therein lies the most severely inhibiting element of our environmental predicament. We, at present, do not have the capability to generate power with renewable resources at an appropriate scale or cost to reduce emissions to zero.

In the absence of effective renewable technology, we must make every effort to switch from oil to gas as our primary fossil fuel source, given the significant reduction in carbon emissions this can achieve. It is not a long-term fix, but it is a necessary one if we are to make any headway in the near future towards reducing our emissions.

Global environmental protection, however, is not the central issue for those experiencing fracking operations in their backyard. The bureaucracy involved in fracking regulation is complex, involving

LUKE WALPOLE

St Hugh’s College

A

s May’s General Election approaches, the issue of televised debates has once again made an appearance. Having previously endorsed the idea, David Cameron baulked at the prospect of debates involving UKIP, but not the Greens. However, with new proposals for a seven-way debate involving the Greens, as well as the SNP and Plaid Cymru, it looks like TV debates are back on the agenda.

So why has Cameron been so unwilling to take part in the debates? The simple answer is that for the incumbent, there is a lot to lose and not much to gain. An incumbent will be forced to defend their record in office, warts and all, while a challenger has no such millstone around their neck. In government, any leader will have had to make compromises and take unpopular decisions – an outsider who has not held office can more easily stand on principle. If he participates in the debates, Cameron will be open to attack from Farage. knowing he will never get into power and have to deliver on them, Farage can make outlandish promises and appeal directly to the public’s grievances without the need for serious policies. Moreover, Cameron will be constantly bombarded with reminders of his broken promises: something only

29th January 2015

GEORGE BEECHENER

AMY HAMMOND

Brasenose College multiple agencies. In scientific circles, the evidence for local environmental damage caused by fracking is conflicting, which makes it difficult for the public to decide who to believe. What is certain, though, is that the development of fracking in the UK will not mirror its history in the USA. The current sluggish progress toward permitting fracking is testament to the care being taken by regulatory bodies to ensure effective legislation is put in place.

One can also cite the economic and security benefits from fracking. Estimates vary, but a recent analysis by Pöyry suggests fracking by Cuadrilla in the Bowland Shale area could result in an 11 per cent reduction in gas import dependence, and bring tax revenues of £2.7 billion. I applaud these benefits, but find them of secondary importance to the environmental imperatives of our energy production. Which leads to my final point. Critics of fracking make the argument that investing in this technology is merely putting off investment into renewables. It is clear that fracking should only be supported if it is one of a portfolio of initiatives directed towards making energy production environmentally sustainable. Fracking is not the silver bullet to slay our energy challenges; indeed, there is no silver bullet. In the UK, research and development spending in the energy industry is equivalent to levels in 1980. This is unacceptable. Investment needs to be increased dramatically, especially in the renewable sector.

In an ideal world, we would cease to burn fossil fuels tomorrow. But we do not live in an ideal world. The reality of the situation is that our renewable capabilities are not going to make significant environmental impacts for decades. In the mean-time, switching to gas is imperative. Well-regulated fracking provides part of the solution.

Brasenose College

IS FRACKING THE ANSWER TO OUR ENERGY NEEDS? PHOTO/greensefa

C

urrent energy consumption is clearly unsustainable and solutions must be found. With wellpublicised disasters reducing the appeal of nuclear energy, and widely available renewable technology still a way off, many identify natural gas, facilitated by fracking, as the ‘lesser of many evils’.

However, this is not a welcome step and one which must be opposed.

Pro-fracking arguments tend to centre on the economy, thanks to the undeniable monetary benefits resulting from fracking in the USA. It is true that US gas prices have crashed from $13 to $4 per cubic foot, and associated employment opportunities have soared.

However, in reality we must question fracking supporters’ argument that these benefits would necessarily translate to the much smaller and more denselypopulated UK. Of course, the majority of anti-fracking arguments rest on environmental concerns and it is certainly on these grounds that I believe caution must be exercised. Fracking has a severely detrimental impact on local air quality, due to methane leakage. Incredibly, the rural Sublette County in Wyoming now suffers from lower air quality than downtown Los Angeles. Fracking operations can also contaminate nearby water sources, resulting in one of the most evocative images of the debate: the now photographs of water being set alight as it runs from domestic taps.

Both air and water pollution as a result of fracking are linked to serious health concerns, many of which are not yet fully understood. It is wholly unacceptable to gamble with the health of local populations, in a scramble for ever more, and cheaper, fuel.

Whilst natural gas does have a lower carbon footprint than other fossil fuels, there is no logical reason to assume

NO

that a large supply of cheap natural gas resulting from fracking will replace other sources of fossil fuel, rather than merely adding to them. Surely advocating increased exploitation of gas on the grounds of its slightly lower carbon footprint entirely undermines the overarching message of the environmental movement that energy use must be reduced?

Worse than this, attention and money will be drained from development of genuinely sustainable fuel options to the no doubt ever more lucrative fracking industry. The arguments that fracking will enable more natural gas to be used as a “bridge fuel” to long-term sustainable solutions will merely result in a delay to genuine progress. With an urgent climate change crisis looming, this bridge needs to be skipped.

We no longer have options on climate change: we have to act dramatically and immediately.

Clearly this is a controversial debate, where positions are the result of a broad range of wider motivations. It is easy for facts to become obscured by scaremongering on either side. It is undeniable that there is a clear link between cheap energy and development leading to improvements in living standards.

Therefore, it is not useful to reject fracking outright, without a consideration of alternatives. However, it is vital that we do not rush to use cheaper fossil fuels at the expense of the environment, when so many of the coming century’s social and economic concerns will be linked to environmental problems. Even with greater regulation, fracking is not a viable long-term option. Promoting it as some kind of magical answer will merely delay the development of technology and policy leading to genuine solutions It is for this reason that fracking development in the UK must be opposed.

Giving TV debates the Green light Nick Clegg will see more of.

However, refusal to participate smacks of cowardice, and the public will latch onto that. It is truly a catch-22 situation, but Cameron needs to be brave. He cannot avoid participating, especially if the Greens are now invited. It is a damning indictment on the Tory leader that he has essentially admitted that he has less public appeal than the deeply uncharismatic Ed Miliband.

But should the Greens even be involved at all; are they a relevant entity in the political machine? Well, if recent polling is anything to go by, then the answer is undeniably yes. Recent YouGov polls put them at 11 per cent, ahead of the Liberal Democrats. Moreover, the party has announced a major bump in membership.

They now boast more members than UKIP. They may only have one MP, but the Greens are undoubtedly a party to be reckoned with.

The Greens have been called many things, ranging from Communists to the ‘UKIP of the Left’. Either way, they are now a serious force in British politics, who may well hold the balance of power in a hung parliament. If broadcasters covered the political diversity of the country – ranging from the left of the Greens through Labour, the Lib-

eral Democrats, the Conservatives and UKIP – it could not be a bad thing. We need representation of the whole political spectrum.

However, I for one am not so sure about the admittance of the SNP and Plaid Cymru to the national debates.

During the 2010 election, the SNP polled 1.7 per cent of the national vote and Plaid Cymru took only 0.6 per cent.

Although they have a strong support base in Scotland and Wales respectively, these parties by definition lack appeal to the rest of the country. These nationalist parties are simply not relevant to the vast majority of people in the UK and should not be involve in nationwide debates.

One solution to these calls for admittance would also be to set an arbitrary polling threshold for admittance to the televised debates, either from opinion polls from the start of the election year, or from the previous election. Similarly, there could also be a requirement for participants to have candidates in a certain proportion of constituencies.

For if it is to be a seven party panel – or even eight if the DUP keep the pressure up – the debates cease to be a meaningful exercise; having too many parties involved will prevent any real discussion of the issues and will reduce

policies to sound-bites.

Televised debates are not perfect – results are mixed and we cannot be sure they any real effect on how the election pans out. However, in a time as politically fluid as this they are a necessity.

Britain is entering a period of multiparty politics, and disengagement has never been more pronounced. To get

people interested in politics and feeling part of the process you have to give them something to watch and learn from - not the Punch and Judy politics of Westminster to which we have all grown so accustomed. Televised debates representing the whole spectrum of British politics at least give us a chance to boost engagement.

PHOTO/Dominic Tristram

29th January 2015

After Charlie, what about Baga?

T

he first seven days of 2015 saw the Charlie Hebdo attack, the car bombing in Sanaa, Yemen, and the Boko Haram massacre in Baga, Nigeria. The fact that the 17 deaths in Paris have dominated headlines and world politics whilst the 2000 reported (but not yet confirmed) dead in Baga have been almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media has, rightfully, caused indignation.

That almost all of the discussion about Baga is still not about what actually happened in Baga is deeply ironic. Whereas the Charlie Hebdo attack has invited complex discussions regarding European Islamo-

phobia and freedom of speech, Baga has been conspicuous in its absence in the international media. A massacre’s invitation to mainstream news coverage seems to be on a strictly ‘plus one’ basis: admittance only if accompanied by a Western subject.

Thankfully, there has very recently been one exception to this – a relatively detailed briefing provided by The Guardian. Still, Baga remains largely absent from the headlines.

The BBC’s Will Ross has explained the challenges of getting accurate information about the event.

While initial witness statements report that 2000 may have been killed, the Nigerian government

PHOTO/Diariocritico de Venezuela

MAX LEAK

Wadham College

M

itt Romney is running for President again. Though technically unannounced, the news effectively became public on the 16th of this month: Romney just happened to let slip that he was “seriously considering” another campaign, having previously said that he would make a decision within “weeks, not months.” When a US politician purports to be “considering” a run, it usually means they’ve already started buying up White House-width curtain rails.

The fact is that the man is clearly labouring under a heavy misconcep-

Goodluck Jonathan, President of Nigeria, and his administration have been criticised for their inadequate response to Boko Haram, and the Nigerian media appears to be frustratingly quiet on the issue.

However, it is startling how easily this has been conflated with the accusation that Africans have been unresponsive. Although Cameroonborn and London-based journalist Eliza Anyangwe may be accurate in her assessment that civil society in Nigeria is “vibrant, but weak”, there are nonetheless a number of

The customary narrative says that brutal things happen in Africa, not Paris deaths is still enormous.

The apparent lack of response from Africa is another explanation given for the sidelining of the issue, particularly compared to the response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre. South African journalist Simon Allison, for example, expressed frustration at the lack of political and media attention which the massacre has been given within Africa: “Our outrage and solidarity over the Paris massacre is also a symbol of how we as Africans neglect Africa’s own tragedies, and prioritise western lives over our own.” Likewise, South African blogger William Saunderson-Meyer has similarly called for Africans to “shake off our African passivity” before criticising the West. However, this is not simply an issue of African passivity.

organisations that have been engaging with the threat posed by Boko Haram for years: both the Center for Democracy and Development (CDD) and the Federation of Muslim Women’s Associations in Nigeria (FOMWAN) have been vocal in public debates and appeals against Boko Haram. That the attack is a political issue relevant to the upcoming election is indicative of its importance in the Nigerian public eye. The assumption that Africans have been passive or uncaring should be treated with caution, lest the focus of the issue should become the psyche of a people rather than the Nigerian social and political institutions, which have failed to check the spread of Boko Haram.

A number of commentators have framed the lack of coverage in terms

DAVID JEFFERY

St Anne’s College of the international media not caring for black or African lives. This is too simplistic. While it is true that there is no shortage of catastrophes or successes in Africa that the Western media has failed to adequately respond to, there are a handful that have received dramatic, if shortlived, coverage – consider the viral campaigns around #bringbackourgirls or Kony2012. African lives do seem tom matter in the West, but some apparently more than others.

I am clueless as to what the criteria are. It seems some atrocities simply capture the attention of the Western public more than others.

This is not to imply that the silence around Baga is inexplicable.

Although Amnesty International has described the massacre as Boko Haram’s deadliest attack, it is safely within the narrative that brutal things happen in Africa, but not in Paris. We should also not be surprised that the international media is dominated by companies which cater to the interests of Western media consumers, however mercurial those interests may be. CNN Military Analyst Major General James Marks has been surprisingly candid in his assessment that unless the threat spreads to “white Africa” (i.e. North Africa) or the Middle East, “frankly, and sadly, we’re okay with it”. The discourse about Baga should nonetheless give reason for pause, as each contribution reveals more about our assumptions about Africa. We must question these assumptions.

Romney and the follies of privilege that Mitt Romney feels entitled, or even destined, to become President oneday?

People from certain backgrounds have the luxury of believing that, with hard work and talent, the reward always comes. People from other backgrounds do not. Mitt Romney’s own life – wealthy white son of a business tycoon, heir to a political dynasty – might almost have been designed to inoculate him against the notion that, sometimes, for all your persistence, it just isn’t your day. Perhaps the former private equity man is still learning, as he at-

Why does Mitt Romney feel entitled – or destined – to become President? tion. Romney is faced with a country that is trending demographically towards his opponents, an economy that it is recovering solidly under Democrat stewardship, and an electorate that has already rejected him twice (he also ran in 2008, when he failed to even secure the Republican nomination). Only a spectacular degree of misunderstanding can possibly have convinced him that this is his moment. But maybe the more interesting question is why this misconception persists – why is it

has put the figure at 150; the exact numbers may elude us for quite some time. The government’s efficacy in dealing with Boko Haram is an important issue in the upcoming election, and so any information about the scale of the attack is politically contentious. It is possible that officials have sought to minimise the official casualty figures.

However, this fails to truly explain the lack of coverage – one would expect reports of a massacre to be sufficient to warrant attention. Even the conservative estimate of 150

Comment 11

tempts to cheat the vast, structural trends that have ruled against him.

This is the sort of glum little lesson that most people learn by the end of childhood.

Whatever the root of Romney’s personal bewilderment, his never-ending campaign for the White House is an interesting study in privilege, ambition and the pursuit of office.

For me, the biggest thing to take away is that someone so blinkered – so ignorant of, and uninterested in, the systemic processes which shape

the country he so desires to run – would surely have made a poor President in any case. And in this respect, Romney should serve as a wake-up call to other privileged individuals who fall prey to the same unjustified assumptions about their own utility or relevance in public service.

The brutal truth is that Western politics, at every level, needs fewer people like me. I’m (hopefully) not malicious, feeble-minded, or callous (unlike Mr Romney, I’ve never been caught on tape disparaging ethnic minorities as welfare junkies). But my basic identities – middle-class, white, male, cisgendered, heterosexual, able-bodied, English, Southern – are already over-represented to saturation point throughout the political sphere. Of course there are some individuals who, despite this background, do just happen to have a unique idea or perspective to bring to politics. But if your formative experiences have been very similar to those of the people already in power then you start at a severe disadvantage in this regard.

If the next generation of Camerons, Cleggs, and Milibands want to do more than just pay lip service to the idea of greater representation, they might consider not seizing the reins of power in the first place. This line of

PHOTO/Gage Skidmore

thinking, like positive discrimination policies, has the potential to come across as patronising – but then, privilege also patronises its beneficiaries, devaluing their achievements by skewing the playing field in their favour. The genie of non-meritocracy has long left the bottle, if indeed it ever inhabited the bottle at all.

It’s not my intention, of course, to imply that being privileged should be a disqualification from office, either legally or in terms of electability. But

I do believe that people in my own socio-economic niche should always think more carefully than others before assuming that they constitute the breath of fresh air that politics needs.

Just as freedom of speech is not an obligation to bellow racist slogans at passers-by, the freedom to vote and run for office is not a mandate to hoard political power among the already empowered. In politics, as in so much else, the rule is simple: try not to be Mitt Romney.

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29th January 2015

MUSIC

Three is a magic number for The Staves A

s the saying goes, “three is a magic number” and this could not be truer about the ethereal band of singing sisters, The Staves. Reminiscent of past sibling bands like The Jackson 5 and Oasis, Camilla, Emily and Jessica use their sisterly bond to create heartfelt and honest music.

Like many things in the music industry and indeed in life, the band name was created out of a beautiful accident of fate. Originally known as The Stavey Taylors - their family name - an unknowing friend chalked them up as The Staves. And that was it.

I spoke to Camilla, the youngest of the sisters. The PR rep introduced her as “the one with the long hair that plays the ukulele”. The phone line is crackly and Camilla apologises profusely about the lack of phone reception. I can hear her walking around what sounds like a kitchen, repeatedly asking me “can you hear me better now? And now?”.

The thing that strikes me most about her is her kindness. She didn’t treat me like just another journo who had

15 minutes with her before lunch.

You’d be forgiven for not having heard of The Staves. They’ve been solidly touring North America for nearly three years, supporting giants like Bon Iver and with their own headline tour. I’m impressed by their commitment to live music, in the age of lip-synching and instant ‘fame’ TV talent competitions. Camilla tells me you can have too much of a good thing, though. “We’d reached the end of our tether in terms of touring. We love doing it so much and it’s where we’re most at home.

But it got to a point where we were really tired and desperately wanted to create something new.”

In their spare time, they secretly created their sophomore album, If I Was. Travelling to Wisconsin an impressive five times, they holed themselves away in a log cabin in snowy Eau Claire with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver fame. “We didn’t tell our label and we didn’t want anyone to get too excited or have expectations.” We talk about how liberating it was to just create music without the expectation of record la-

bels: “We just wanted to go to Wisconsin and play around with Justin.

All this stuff came pouring out that we’d obviously been holding in for ages and we needed to let go of.”

Like all of us, sometimes we don’t realise how much we’ve been holding inside until we step back for a moment. She describes the subject of the next album as “heartbreak and growth that comes from being away from home. Ultimately kindness, and positivity. Moving forward.”

Camilla reminds me that you don’t have to move forward on your own, though. I wonder what it’s like to be constantly working with your sisters.

“We were talking about it the other day and I think most bands have to work at becoming a family; learning how to speak creatively to each other. Being sisters, we’ve practiced at that.” I think that this is where the root of the beauty of their music lies. They have an inseparable, blood bond which facilitates total honesty. She reassures me that, like all families, they do argue. “I think we feel more comfortable to disagree.

We know that it will be fine,” she

pauses, “eventually.”

The topic of conversation begins to drift around the idea of growing up. I ask her the admittedly cliché question about if she’d call the new album ‘more mature’. We both wince, but she laughs it off and tells me that although it’s a label they’ve resisted – it’s true. “I think there are certain periods in your life where you grow up more than others. I think that over the last few years we have and it shows in the music. We feel more confident to write transparent

Music 3

KATE BICKERTON

Regent’s Park College flies undone the other day. It was so funny!” She guffaws through the crackly phone connection. Camilla laughs with a musical tone that tells you that it was funny at the time.

The kind of moment you had to be there to understand how funny it really is.

It illustrates what I think is special about their music. There are personal moments of sheer emotion, but they’re peppered with humour and an ironic look at their lives. At being young women. At being sisters.

“We didn’t tell our label and we didn’t want anyone to get too excited or have expectations.” lyrics and to sing out about what we feel. Be a bit less tentative. Be more grown up.”

As the interview comes to a natural conclusion, I am envious that I am not one of the sisters. I ask her for an anecdote about their life at the moment, and Camilla responds immediately with “Emily had her

They have this relatable, familiar quality in their songs which makes you feel like you are the long lost fourth sister of The Staves. Frank and authentic, their music sounds like they secretly read your diary.

And you don’t mind because from your idle scribbles and hurt they something beautiful.

PHOTO/THE STAVES

29th January 2015

4 Music

Clearing up misconcenptions of opera in Oxford A

PHOTO/ JEFFREY BOYER

PHOTO/ CLUB TRANSATLANTICO

dmit to liking opera and prepare to be judged. If only at a subconscious level, the stereotypical opera enthusiast comes from a privileged background and has deep pockets because opera is classed as an elitist and expensive hobby. This stems from the genre’s origins as courtly entertainment that was supported by royal patronage.

Yet from as early as the seventeenth century, opera has served as a form of popular entertainment for the masses; the annual opera festival in Venice during this time was a spectacularly lively affair attended by a wide cross-section of society.

Nevertheless, opera in the twentyfirst century still has a serious image problem. British politicians are unlikely to be seen enjoying a night at the opera for fear of how the media may link their artistic preferences to issues of social class. A completely different attitude is taken in countries such as Germany, where funding provision for artistic institutions like opera houses forms a vital part of politicians’ election campaigns.

The cost of enjoying opera is not as high as you might expect. Tickets for opera productions often cost less than those to see more mainstream forms of entertainment such as pop concerts, West End musicals and football games. For example, a ticket to see Taylor Swift’s ‘1989’ tour costs upwards of £60, whereas it is possible to book standing places for Royal

Opera House productions for £9.

In addition, many opera companies offer special deals to students.

The Royal Opera House’s ‘Student Standby’ scheme releases cut-price tickets for designated performances throughout the season, English National Opera’s ‘Access all Arias’ initiative offers reduced tickets to students and Glyndebourne’s ‘<30’ programme enables people below the age of 30 to enjoy a evening at Glyndebourne for £30.

Myths surrounding the experience of going to the opera also need addressing. Despite the imposing stature of the buildings, audience members are invited to attend performances wearing casual clothes, and you are more likely to receive smiles of mutual enjoyment from the person sitting next to you than snobbish, condescending glances.

Although it might help to be in easy reach of London, accusations of opera being centred in the capital ignore the success of regional opera companies like Opera North and extensive tours undertaken each year by companies such as Glyndebourne on Tour. This term alone, a huge variety of opera is on offer in Oxford that can easily be enjoyed on a student budget.

Oxford’s New Theatre welcomes Opera and Ballet International for Ellen Kent’s productions of three monumental Romantic operas. Verdi’s Rigoletto and La Traviata and

Mindswept away by Enter Shikari’s new album A

t this point, I could easily fire off all the old clichés about Enter Shikari. Yes, they’re fearless genre pirates, no respecters of boundary, who’ve proved their utter fearlessness over the course of three stunning albums. And yes, they’ve got a staunch political conscience, powerful and art-defining particularly in their later work, which is sorely absent from music in the modern public focus.

The themes of universal human solidarity, and the evils of capitalism have been rightly and explosively expounded in their work, no more so than in 2009’s phenomenal Common Dreads. I’ve followed them from the beginning; in my wayward younger days, I found my lower lip sundered in the mosh-pit, during ‘Sorry You’re Not A Winner’, in a grimy Bristol venue. However, it seems to me that, the only valid criticism of their last effort, 2011’s A Flash Flood Of Colour, was that the lyrics, while masterful, came before the music.

However, in their latest offering, the band have reminded us once again that these ‘cliches’ are, like it or not, what define them; while the lazy labels of ‘fearless innovators’ and ‘political firebrands’ certainly have become hackneyed in relation to Shikari in isola-

tion, they remain important crucially for their opposition to all else, and they remind us of this amply in The Mindsweep.

Initially, the album strikes the listener for its lyrical positivity. Contrasted with the more apocalyptic, doomy picture of the house, teetering on the edge of

oblivion presented at the opening of A Flash Flood Of Colour, the theme of ‘The Appeal & The Mindsweep’ is one of strength; in numbers, in resolve, in conviction. I will confess I did feel hairs crawling on the back of my neck during the shout along ‘you are not alone’ refrain.

In addition, their political message is refined; the delicious groove and convincing rapping of ‘The Anaesthetist’ propels lyrics full of bile at the privatisation of the NHS, and the financial monopolization of all our health. The metaphor of financial ‘investors’ ‘sucking the blood of the afflicted’ is viscer-

PHOTO/ JOSHUA HALLING

CHARLOTTE PARR

Jesus College

Puccini’s tragically beautiful Madame Butterfly are being performed in February.

In the coming weeks, two Royal Opera House performances are being streamed live to cinemas nationwide.

Both the George Street Odeon and The Phoenix Picture House are participating, with student tickets costing £13.50 and £15. On Thursday 29th January at 7.15pm, the lesserknown opera Andrea Chénier by Umberto Giordano will be shown, while Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman wings its way to the cinemas on Tuesday 24th February at 7.15pm.

Due to imaginative filming, cinemagoers can enjoy the performances from a better perspective than the Royal Box! Oxford University’s lively student opera scene promises a wealth of exciting productions this term. New Chamber Opera is staging Michael Nyman’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, a one-act chamber opera, in New College Ante-chapel. St Peter’s College Chapel is the venue for three performances of Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.

This year’s ‘Turl Street Arts Festival’ culminates with a performance of Handel’s pastoral opera Acis and Galatea.

With so many cost-effective opportunities to experience top-quality opera in Oxford this term, surely it is time for everyone to accept that opera is available to all.

ALEX BRAGG

St. Hilda’s College ally effective. The odd time, jagged riffage of ‘There’s A Price On Your Head’, further disguises a laser-targeting smack down of the class system, the deft halfrhyme of ‘I am upper-middle-class, I am living in the past’ had me smiling.

In addition, even as the band’s politics has been refined, utterly silencing those who might smack them down with the inevitable ‘ignorant lefty’ labels, the variety has also been expanded. There are a few songs here that are testament to the bands renewed unpredictability in the wake of A Flash Flood Of Colour; ‘Myopia’, in particular, moves from spacious, Radiohead-esque tranquillity to a barrage of double-kick courtesy of drummer Rob Rolfe. The brief interlude shows Rou Reynold’s renewed knack for orchestral arrangement, and the final reprise of ‘Appeal/The Mindsweep’ eventually descends into glorious chaos.

The band have utterly succeeded in restoring my lapsed interest in them; this album is less predictable than A Flash Flood…, and more politically cogent than Common Dreads. And to think that I originally lost interest, in thrall to some contrived, self-regarding notion of ‘growing up’. Heartily, rabidly recommended.

Music 5

29th January 2015

3 Blind Mice OxStu’s 3rd Week Playlist

Dead Battery The Coathangers Suicide Squeeze Records

All For The Taking Meanwhile Fiction Records

Drown So I Can Watch The Twilight Sad Fat Cat Records

Gold Chet Faker Future Classic

Mark Ronson won’t give up the funk I

n Mark Ronson’s newest record, Uptown Special, we’re confronted with a barrage of old school funk, fabulous hair and psychedelic guitars. From beginning to end we’re immersed in the sounds of the past, taking us right back to the 60s and 70s of funk’s heyday.

The first single from the album, ‘Uptown Funk’, featuring Bruno Mars and the Hooligans, was an ubiquitous smash. It’s a showy number laden with a slick, unapologetic funk swagger, fully realised by Mars’ impressive voice and persona. No other song on the album quite reaches those bombastic heights, but there are still other musical gems. One of the most exciting collaborations on the album is with funk legend Stevie Wonder.

With a blow of his harmonica, he injects some real soul into the opening and closing tracks, ‘Uptown’s First Finale’ and ‘Crack in the Pearl, Pt. II’, and listening to them, it’s as if Ronson had walked in on an improv session at Motown studios.

Ronson appears to have all the bases

PHOTO/ COLUMBIA RECORDS

covered when it comes to creating funk and disco that will get anyone on the dance floor going. However, it’s in this that we can also see the faults in the album because, to be honest, it’s all been done before. That’s not to say Ronson isn’t a good producer – given that in his fourth album he’s managed to go in a more assertive direction without making it sound too

much like some gimmick is evidence enough. In the hands of anyone less skilled the whole album might just sound like a copycat tribute set of songs.

That being said, I don’t doubt that Uptown Special will do well. Whilst his recollections of old style R&B might turn off many who don’t want to just hear the same old spiel, it’s

AIMEE KWAN

Magdalen College been a while since some sexy disco music has come from a mainstream artist, especially after the car crash that was Robin Thicke.

Songs like ‘In Case of Fire’ and ‘I Can’t Lose’ showcase the breadth of influences he manages to cover; we’re pulled along through all the different variations of R&B Ronson could find. For example, the former might suit those with a more rock n roll sensibility, while the latter caters more towards the Europop crowd.

After the success of ‘Uptown Funk’, it was a tall order to pull off an album on that level, but Mark Ronson has managed it. The album isn’t perfect, and one almost feels that on occasion he restrains himself too much within the rules of the genres he pays such homage to. But considering that the single is hardly the most interesting track out of the 11, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if we saw much more of these tracks when summer comes round. I for one will be spinning Uptown Special a couple more times in the lazy July and August days.

The magic of mashups Of The Night

Kate Bickerton

Don’t lie: we all have a secret passion for 80s dance music. Why else do we all flood to the Park End cheese floor on a Wednesday?! For me, Bastille’s reworking of ‘The Rhythm of the Night’ by Corona and ‘Rhythm Is a Dancer’

by Snap! is the epitome of what a mash up should try to achieve.

Rework and create something unique whist retaining a sense of the original tracks.

Interestingly, for songs that sound so poppy, so energetic, they have dark undertones which Bastille exploit expertly.

Sonically, they use haunting xylophone melodies mixed with low booming drum beats to create an eerie feeling. In true Bastille fashion, the chorus is anthemic, but still retains an element of unsettling emotion. The band has given a new, gloomier slant to the lyrics that in an original context would sound hopeful. Now they sound desperate and pleading.

I think this is why I like this mashup so much. It manages to change the whole mood of the original and take what I like so much about 80s dance pop and turn it around on itself. You can still dance to it, but it has a darker, clubbier feel.

Swing The Mood

William Shaw Girl Talk and Sam Ryel are all very well, but to truly understand mashups, you need to go back to the source, and see how three maniacs from Rotherham managed to get to number one by stitching together bits of aging bubblegum pop to form ahead of their time musical masterpieces. I’m talking of course about the seminal Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers, whose huge success in the late eighties and early nineties marked the mashup’s first real break into the mainstream.

Listening to the first track on their first album (imaginatively titled The Album) it’s not hard to see why. An invigorating cocktail of early rock’n’roll hits and Glenn Miller’s iconic jazz track, with a rock-solid bass line forming a reliable backbone as the song skips between genre highlights, ‘Swing the Mood’ does a wonderful job capturing the infectious, youthful energy of that period of music.

Mashups are pop music’s own form of alchemy; disparate sources, wantonly forced to occupy the same space, creating something more than the sum of its parts. And here it is, all the way back in 1989. As above, so below.

Blank Space/Style

Emmanuelle Testudine

As a long-time fan of Taylor Swift, I feel I am qualified to say that after four albums, some of her songs are beginning to sound the same. Although some would say that is a hallmark of a singer reaching their creative peak, I think that it is perfect material for mashups. This is illustrated most keenly by the ‘Blank Space/ Style’ mashup that went viral on YouTube by Louisa Wendorff.

A duet, Wendorff is accompanied by her friend Devin Dawson. Their voices harmonise with a fragile magnificence which complements the subject matter. They weave the lyrics to sound like a conversation between two lovers, trying to figure out their differences.

The use of acoustic instruments creates a stripped back, honest feel which you don’t get with the originals of the songs.

This beautiful mashup captures what we love so much about Taylor Swift. Her songs, although at times sad, can be turned hopeful and sweet with the inclusion of another voice and an acoustic guitar. It is reinvention and reimagination, after all, which keeps music fresh and current.

Numb/Encore

Henry Holmes Back in the dark dark days of 2004, people still thought that Linkin Park had any cultural value whatsoever. Several of these severely misguided people apparently worked at MTV, and persuaded Jay-Z to be associated with them. They released the mashup EP Collision Course.

I was, I confess, one of these people back then, and ‘Numb/ Encore’ blew my tiny little mind back then. The combination of Nu Metal angst and the uplifting, boastful flow of Jay-Z led to the epitome of early noughties rage blasting out into the world, it was in fact the first rap song I learned all the words to, and so it lives on in my heart. Many may knock it, and their criticisms will be very valid, but given the cultural context of the mashup, there’s not a lot more you can hope for.

So I will live on with Linkin Park in my mind and in my soul, thankful that I managed to move on, via Jay-Z, to a much better music taste. We must accept our past mistakes, and so I shall never deny my roots. ‘Numb/Encore’ is the mashup that grounds me, and of course, I still know all the words.

6 Fashion

29th January 2015

FASHION

Talking cashmere with Demy Lee

DEMIE KIM

Exeter College

N

ew York-based designer Demy Lee wanted to design what she most appreciated in her own closet, something she reached for just about every day: sweaters. After emigrating from Korea to the U.S. as a high school student with close to zero knowledge of the English language, she graduated with awards from Parsons School of Design and held key positions at Calvin Klein and GAP Inc. and later pulled a key role in launching Tory Burch’s debut collection. In 2007 she struck out on her own and launched Demylee, which began as collection of cashmere sweaters designed for the modern, on-the-go woman Today, her brand has expanded to include knitwear, wovens, and accessories as well as a menswear line, LAD by Demylee. Her luxurious yet practical sweaters, constructed of the finest cashmere sourced from inner Mongolia, sell in boutiques and department stores around the world — from her home base in New York to London, Paris, Tokyo and her native city, Seoul. OxStu Fashion spoke to the designer about her collection, her career, and her specialty, cashmere: Describe the Demylee aesthetic.

Understated, effortless, tomboy chic.

What inspires you?

I am surrounded by inspiration in my everyday life: my family, espe-

PHOTOS / Demylee

cially my cheerful daughters; the hustle and bustle of New York; the art that fills the galleries surrounding my Chelsea studio; people on the street; and the amazing architecture I see on my travels.

What sort of challenges did you face breaking into the fashion industry as a Korean-American immigrant?

Today, I don’t feel necessarily challenged as a Korean-American immigrant in the fashion industry, as Asian Americans are now widely recognized in creative industries, fashion and beyond. Of course, it is still challenging in certain ways to live in

America, which is not my native country. But it’s also a privilege to live and work in New York, the most diverse city in the world, and so full of creative energy.

Before launching your own collection, you worked for Calvin Klein, GAP, and Tory Burch. What did you learn from these experiences, and what made you want to break off on your own?

I learned pretty much everything I know about the industry from these experiences. Learning from school and learning from the real world are two completely different things. I was very fortunate to work with all

these brands; at each company, I learned how to apply my creativity from a different angle. I started my own because I reached a point where I wanted to explore my creative interests with complete freedom and independence.

What pieces should every woman have in her closet?

A white shirt, classic blazer, and — of course — a comfortable classic cashmere sweater that you can wear and tear.

Are there any differences between your personal style and the clothing you produce for your brand?

No. I’ll be the first to admit that I

An ode to try-hards

I

have a few cigarette cases. Cigarette cases are, let’s face it, pretty fucking cool. When I whip mine out, we both know that I’m pretending not to know that they’re cool. The facts behind my cigarette case are this: I have taken my straights out of an ugly Camel blue pack and transferred them into said case. And I haven’t done this because it’s practical; I’ve done it because I think it’s trendy. Now, the thing about the cigarette case is that it’s only actually awesome if you deny, against all evidence, that you have actually done this. You have to pretend that you came out of the womb brandishing a gold-gilded case filled with fags. And that’s the direction we’re all heading in: desperately trying to appear as though we hadn’t actually tried at all.

The ‘I woke up like this’ fad is at an all-time high. Ripped jeans are back on the scene, Adidas are selling trainers with ‘handcrafted mud’ already on them and ‘normcore’ has taken the world by storm. The debilitating – and quintessentially English - fear of being ‘keen,’ has found its sartorial voice. The word ‘try hard’ is being

thrown about left, right and centre – and we’re all trying very hard to avoid being labelled as such. We’re living in an age in which you can buy trousers with paint pre-splattered on them, to masquerade as an artiste without ever coming into contact with paint. It’s a foolproof hoax.

We can all recognize those Topshop ripped jeans from a mile away: the completely straight, neatly frayed symmetrical tears are hardly convincing.

basically live in Demylee 24/7 — but I love coordinating my sweaters and knits with my favourite designers, including Dries Van Noten, Martin Margiela, CELINE, and The Row. Your collection is centered around cashmere sweaters. What are some tips for caring for these worthy investments?

You can hand wash them or send them to dry cleaning, but my approach is to just wear and tear. They might get raggedy and stretched, but so what? I think you get the most out of a clothing item when you wear it comfortably and as often as you can.

AUGUSTINE CERF

St. John’s College Yes, you didn’t wake up like that – and what? Those ‘edgy’ sportswear jackets and sweatshirts that have crawled out of the woodwork aren’t random items you picked off your floor this morning.

Neither do you care so little that you forgot to change after hitting the gym.

You probably went to Urban Outfitters and paid £30 for them. And so did we all. I’m sorry to say that the ‘I just rolled out of bed’ look is very much put together. While we’re at it

I’m sorry to say that the ‘I just rolled out of bed’ look is very much put together.

And yet they still manage to generate the illusion that you went to the Ruskin art show, had a really MENTAL night at cellar, ended up at a Cowley house party and woke up in the kitchen saying “how the hell did this shit happen?”

Oh, and you just forgot to take that choker off after that 1999 house party, that time you were five and still didn’t give a shit. I’m gonna just bite the bullet and say it: if you look like you’re ‘cool’, it almost certainly isn’t effortless.

- not one of us accidently slipped their socked feet into sandals without giving that decision a lot of careful thought.

And I know the holes in your t-shirt are all fake. We are spending a lot of money on looking like we found our clothes in our grandparents’ attics and pretending we couldn’t care less what we matched them with. I think it’s time we came out and admitted it: we are all ‘try hards.’ And it’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Fashion 7

29th January 2015

FACIAL EMBELLISHMENT Guerlain L’or Radiance Concentrate

Faux fur: fake it to make it

SARAH SHONE

Brasenose College From a faux fur reimagining of the classic mink coat to luminous fluffy skirts, this winter and early spring is set to be the season of ethical softness.

Make up Base, which contains real pieces of 24 carat gold, will set your make up routine off to a dazzling start.

Luxury Diamond Range by Judith Williams moistures, conceals imperfections and gives you a golden shimmer. The products are refined with diamond powder for a radiant complexion.

Chanel Sublimage Essential Regenerating Mask is a cut above the rest. Take a moment out of your hectic week to relax and rejuvenate your skin.

PHOTO / Polyvore

PHOTO / Glitters for Dinner

PHOTO / Glitters for Dinner

F

aux fur has exploded onto the fashion scene and it’s making us wonder why the real deal was ever preferable. In the past few months, it has been almost impossible to avoid the sheer range of faux fur products in all areas of the fashion industry. From a faux fur reimagining of the classic mink coat to luminous fluffy skirts, this winter and early spring is set to be the season of ethical softness.

In an era where you cannot scroll through Facebook or Twitter without seeing horrific videos of animals being skinned alive, a large portion of the fashion industry seems to have taken the requests of the public to heart, giving 90s babies like me the widest array of faux fur goods they’ve seen to date. The change from real to fake indisputably reflects a growing consideration for animal rights: the cruelty of the fur industry is increasingly being set aside. But this trend is not solely fighting for animal rights, it’s battling against armies of monochrome dullness, rooting for funner clothing in the fashion industry. And the sartorial quest for fuzz is not a limited one – from earrings to handbags, coats to jumpers, the world is your furry oyster.

My Achilles heel being just about anything cuddly and bright, I bring you a list of the best retailers to supply your furry fix: 1. Rokit: Whatever floats your boat fluff-wise, Rokit has it. From an enormous collection of faux fur jackets, coats and gilets to the Rokit Recycled faux fur backpacks, skirts, bags and jumpers; this vintage giant has it covered. As far as I can see, their Rokit Recycled faux fur collection is unrivalled, with cropped

PHOTO / Isolated Heroes

furry jumpers ranging from black to bolder multi-coloured ones. If you are feeling particularly garish, you could even pair your fluffy top half with one of their faux fur colourful skirts. For the best selection, go to Rokit at 107 Brick Lane – it’s fluffy heaven in there.

2. Tunnel Vision: This American site is my new favourite for many reasons, and it does not disappoint on the fur front. The description of the style is ‘Grunge clothes, hippie clothes, and general weirdo clothes! Tie Dye, Patched, Fringe, Holographic, Lace-Up, Bell Bottom, Bad Vibes -- we got it all’, so essentially everything to make you jump up and down shouting ‘HOLLA!’ With an enormous range of clothes from vintage to new, their collection is saturated with faux fur, but nothing surpasses their fluffy halter-tops.

3. Glitters For Dinner: This Bangkok based retailer is perfect for fans of Clueless, Heathers and The Spice Girls. Their Faux Fur section allows for a truly furry look, or a hint of softness, with two-piece sets in multiple colours including pink, purple and blue. My favourite has to be their glitter skirt with a white faux fur hem. Think Baby Spice meets Cher.

4. Isolated Heroes: Isolated Heroes is a Scottish brand that is making waves, having been named Best Scottish Independent Online Retailer 2014. If sequins, mesh and faux fur get you going then you need to check their collection out – they have some of the most awesome clothes I have seen in a hell of a long time. Their multi-coloured fuzzy coat may actually win the prestigious award of the most exciting coat that I have ever seen.

Suede styles from fringe to frock

PHOTO / @marinalondon

INSTAWORTHY @marinalondon is Marina Guergova’s 100% silk basics brand. Their collections are sports-chic, minimal and not trend-driven. Each piece has the potential of a timeless classic: the designs are simple, well-cut and artfully foreground the sheer quality of the silk. Marina is a true Instagram artiste: we’re not entirely sure how the hell she’s managed to create this social media masterpiece, but she’s totally nailed it.

Many of us can only associate suede with the hideous cowgirl boots we begged our mums to buy us at age nine and have regretted ever since. In 2015, suede is set to make a comeback — so let’s be sure to do it right this time.

Runways all over the world have introduced suede back into our wardrobes with a refreshing new take — no longer reserved for boots, its smooth, soft texture and refined finish will make it perfect material for transitioning into spring/summer.

What’s more, a new range of colours means that although the classic tan and pastel tones remain the most popular choices, there are also more vibrant options for the bolder amongst us.

In suede, structured dresses, pencil skirts and trench coats carry an air of authority and confidence. In other items such as maxi skirts, suede designs have become more breathable for the summer months.

The fringed effect has also made a comeback in bags, skirts and tops.

Ideally these should ideally be paired with something simple so that the fringe detailing becomes the focal point of your outfit.

Here are four ways to incorporate a soft touch of the luxurious yet versatile fabric in your wardrobe:

KATE TUOHY

Jesus College

1) Go all out in a suede shift dress in a pastel or vibrant tone along with a pair of chunky heels or ankle boots.

2) For daytime, embellish your outfit with a suede satchel.

3) A touch of suede will instantly transform your classic A-line skirt, making it more versatile; it can be a casual everyday piece as well as evening option if paired with a dressier top.

4) For the bold amongst you go for the total suede look: shirt, skirt and shoes in varying shades to create a high fashion look. Make sure to keep the patterns plain and let the texture do the talking.

PHOTOS / Polyvore

8 Fashion

FAUX FUR Photographer: Sakura Xiaomei

Models: Mahoro Seward & Emmy Everest-Phillips Concept and Styling: Sarah Shone

29th January 2015

29th January 2015

Fashion 9

8 Fashion

i n k e d

5th February 2015

Photographer: Sakura Xiaomei | Model: Merri Leston | Concept & Styling: Augustine Cerf & Demie Kim

5th February 2015

Fashion 9

10 Arts & Lit

ARTS & LIT

William Blake: Apprentice & Master at The Ashmolean “A

nd there, right in the middle of his life, is this machine: this large, lumping, huge, wooden, heavy machine with its great star wheel that takes enormous pressure to turn and it creaks like a sailing ship and is absolutely at the centre of his life.”

So says Michael Phillips, the curator of ‘William Blake: Apprentice and Master’ (Ashmolean, until March 1st).

And right in the middle of the exhibition, inside a detailed reconstruction

with his own correspondence to provide context. His biography and the spirit of the time are made to inform our viewing of his art, and vice-versa.

A huge number of loans to the Ashmolean have made it possible to display many of the most famous of Blake’s works (the Ancient of Days, Newton, two copies of the Songs of Innocence and of Experience), but there are rich selections from the less well-known prophetic books too, as well as works in media other than copper-plate

A quietly radical re-evaluation of William Blake

PHOTO/WILLIAM BLAKE; ASHMOLEAN

of Blake’s study, looms the great machine, a reproduction of the copperplate press Blake used to create his stunningly and painstakingly illustrated books. This exhibition is a quietly radical re-evaluation of William Blake, who is often written and talked about as an artist, a writer, an intellectual, a man who struggled with mental illness, but almost never as a craftsman.

The exhibition elegantly presents a large number of Blake’s works in chronological order, using contemporary writings and paintings together

printing, like the woodcuts of Virgil’s Pastorals.

But, as its title suggests, the central focus of the exhibition is Blake’s development as a technician, from his apprenticeship under James Basire through the years at the Royal Academy, his career, ambition, and technical breakthroughs in copper-plate printing. This new approach to Blake allows us to consider his life and work without letting the eccentricities of his life and thought dominate. It’s the story of a man honing his craft over a

I

n 7th week of this term, the Pembroke College JCR Gallery will open its doors to the public for the first time in history. In doing so, it will join the coterie of Oxford’s ‘secret galleries’, most of them hidden within colleges, or down side alleys across the city.

The unusual genesis of the Pembroke art collection is the product of a series of happy accidents. Its origins lie in an Italian prisoner-ofwar camp, where a young British soldier, Anthony Emery, was held during World War Two. During his incarceration, Emery staged a parody of the 1938 ‘London International Surrealism Exhibition’ which, perhaps understandably, fell rather flat among his audience of fellow prisoners. Yet upon arriving at Pembroke in 1947, the bruised pride of the young soldier was impetus enough for him to establish an undergraduate art collection, to correct what he believed was an “ignorance about the art of our time”.

Perhaps the happiest accident of all was the acquisition, in 1950, of Francis Bacon’s Man in a Chair. Art buying had been entrusted by the JCR to a small committee, who after traipsing across London galleries for hours, happened upon the studio of a then little-known artist, Francis Bacon. So taken were the commit-

29th January 2015

Alexander Hartley

Queen’s College long career, and it turns out that this story is the perfect starting-point from which to consider his poetry and his radical ideas. The link between the craft and the philosophy is made most strongly in one striking corner of the exhibition, where we are told about Blake’s innovation of ‘painting’ with varnish on the metal surface, which allowed him to draw the positive (i.e. inked-in) forms, while letting the acid eat away what would become the negative (empty) spaces. Michael Phillips, an expert in Blake’s printing methods, has triumphantly recast the artist’s story, giving the fantastical work of this difficult genius a “human heart”. I give him the last word: “He’s not a Shelley, or a Wordsworth or a Keats, with a fine quill pen and ethereal thoughts, staring up to heaven and glancing through his manuscripts and leisurely leaning back and contemplating what he’s written and then passing it to his publisher to print it into press. Blake is a mechanic … he was enormously strong, enormously powerful, yet the creator of these extraordinary ideas and these extraordinary poems that go right to the quick of our imagination, of our heartthrob as human beings.”

College have taken on Paul Hobson (Director of Modern Art Oxford) as a Visiting Fellow to advise them on their impressive contemporary art collection.

By another strange and happy accident, Emery’s system of art buying means the Pembroke JCR Art Col-

“Who on earth would want that in their room!”

The secret galleries of Oxford

tee with Bacon’s paintings that they resolved to spend the entire year’s fund (approximately £150) on Man in a Chair. This was much to the dismay of their fellow students, one of whom commented, “Who on earth would want that in their room!”. Sadly, the Bacon painting can no longer

be seen in the Pembroke Gallery.

In 1997, the committee realised that they could no longer meet the rising costs of insuring the painting, and it was sold to a private collector for £400,000.

The public opening of the Pembroke Gallery comes at a time when

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Claudia Zwar

Pembroke College Pembroke, and other art committees in colleges across Oxford, are beginning to reassess their role in the contemporary art world. Lincoln College have agreed to lend Pembroke a painting for their upcoming major exhibition, and Nuffield

lection, now worth nearly £1 million, is controlled solely by undergraduate students. This gives students a sense of agency over our collection which is unique in Oxford. As Chair of the Art Fund Committee, I collaborate with our curator, Sarah Hegenbart, to develop our collection, as well as organise art-related talks and events throughout the year. In Trinity term, Pembroke will hold its first major public exhibition, with works loaned from the Royal Academy. To celebrate our public opening, Penelope Curtis, director of Tate Britain, will be giving a talk in the college.

More details will follow for these events; but in the meantime, as the Pembroke Gallery moves decisively onto the Oxford art scene, perhaps the Collection will be not so ‘secret’ anymore.

29th January 2015

Arts & Lit 11

RUSKIN PROFILE: Ruth Spencer Jolly

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Atul Gawande: Being Mortal

Daniel Amir

Wadham College

Ruth Spencer Jolly, second-year Fine Artist at the Ruskin, talks about what it means to make contemporary art in Oxford.

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medic’s moving treatment of mortality offers us ways to improve the bedside manner.

This is a thoughtful, and thoughtfully written, book; the prose is crisp and easily digestible, and Harvard Professor of Public Health (and giver of last year’s BBC Reith lectures) Atul Gawande is an absorbing story-teller, never making his personal anecdotes (his favourite form of delivery) too long or too moralizing. His subject: “the modern experience of mortality”. In this book, part-memoir, partinformative non-fiction, he records his own challenges in dealing with patients facing old age or terminal illness, describes the successes and failures in (mainly American) policy to bring purpose and satisfaction to the lives of such patients, and outlines his criticisms against the wholesale “medicalization” of mortality, how we are going wrong in our healthcare in preparing people for death.

A pathologist friend of mine recently remarked how hard it is to die nowadays. Gawande would agree. Society is becoming “rectangularized” (think of the demographic pyramid: young at the bottom, old at the top.) Or, less affectionately, there looms on the horizon a “silver tsunami”, and ours is the generation which will have to face it. Gawande doesn’t expressly address this burden, but he does set out through both endorsement and

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critique the kinds of geriatric service which provide patients with spiritual nourishment and homely freedoms and the kinds which do not. His tussle is with the limits and possibilities of medicine as a discipline, as he returns to several times. “This experiment of making mortality a medical experience is just decades out. It is young. And the evidence is it is failing... The problem with medicine and the institutions it has spawned for the care of the sick and the old is not that they have had an incorrect view of what makes life significant. The problem is that they have had no view at all.”

Lastly, in the epilogue: “We’ve been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable wellbeing.” In describing his own father’s late life, he records the opportunities given to him: surgery followed by chemotherapy, the choice of ten new doses or combinations of drugs, and a later, different form of surgery followed by chemotherapy. At no point is a patient who faces a definitely or nearly definitely curtailed life-span given the option of walking away from the hospital without fear of abandonment. The choice, as Gawande has it, is “between neglect and institutionaliztion”; the problem is the “confusion of care with treatment”.

Doctors and surgeons, you realise when reading, are not just prescribers of drugs and diagnoses; they are the modern-day psychopomps, and they require empathy and emotional judgment. Gawande candidly shows how difficult their jobs can be, and regularly are. He reveals his own struggles in learning how to deliver unwanted news both sensitively and clearly; he refers on more than one occasion to Tolstoy’s great novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich (where the profound question is: how, if at all, can one die well?), in which the physicians all mutually and silently deny the medical reality: “the deception, the lie, which for some reason they all accepted, that he was not dying but was simply ill”.

Gawande fights fiercely against this lie and self-lie, holding that though “a sense of mortality re-orders our desires, these desires are not impossible to satisfy”. Perspective, not age or illness, matters.

This is a persuasive and at times comic, not sober or melancholy, read, recommended not just to all medical students (who, I’m sure, would find it instructive) but to anyone interested in exploring the contribution science can and cannot make to life (and I emphasise “life”) at the end.

Being Mortal is available from Blackwells bookshop for £12.99.

ave you been to an art exhibition in Oxford staged by the Ruskin students? If so, I hope you found it interesting and enjoyable (hopefully for reasons other than just the free alcohol), but you wouldn’t be alone if you found it a slightly disorientating and baffling experience.

The complaint I hear most often when I take friends and family to see shows is “I don’t get it”: incomprehension seems to lie at the root of disengagement. However much art school has equipped me with a set of tools which aid my ‘reading’ of an artwork, sometimes, I don’t “get it” either. Without that training I would find it completely impenetrable too and my appreciation would be inhibited.

Is it a valid approach to make the sort of art only accessible to the artistically literate?

So is it a valid approach to make the sort of art only accessible to the artistically literate, or is it the responsibility of artists to produce work widely accessible to the public? I feel that while many expect (or at least hope for) the latter, I’d like to moot the suggestion that within an educational context we ought to tolerate and support the former. Universities are primarily about traversing the cutting edge of knowledge in niche fields comprehensible to only those well-versed in the subject.

Groundbreaking innovations might be so abstract that it may not be clear for years what their practical applications are; however, the hope tends

to be that time and teamwork will break the filters down into accessible formats and into common consumption. If one looks at Fine Art as an academic discipline, then perhaps we ought not to expect to ‘understand’ it all - just as we would not expect to understand a new abstract mathematical formula or find a DPhil’s thesis particularly penetrable.

If we excuse the esoteric nature of some art, particularly that produced within an academic institution and accept that it is too ‘avant-garde’ to be accessible, then the question is this: why do we artists seek an audience for our work (in a way that most other subjects do not actively seek to exhibit their research to people outside of their discipline) and why do you visit art exhibitions (excluding the strong motivational factor of free booze always available at art shows)?

Firstly, why do we seek an audience? Each artist has a different attitude towards their audience and the importance they play in ‘activating’ their artwork=. I can only offer personal justification: I make artwork about the time and environment in which I live. An example is a video piece I produced last year called ‘Tinder Eggs’, inspired by the dating app frenzy I found all around me in 2014.

I like to take my art back into the world which inspired it, enthusiastically seeking an audience who can associate with my work and who are interested in my artist’s perspective on a matter close to their hearts; I was therefore really thrilled to be able to exhibit ‘Tinder Eggs’ to the student community attending the First Year Exhibition 2014.

And in answer to the latter question, why do you come to see our art? Well I’m not sure I’m qualified to hazard a suggestion; I just hope you do keep on coming.

Ruskin Degree Show 2015: End of 8th Week, Trinity Term. ruthspencerjolly.com

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29th January 2015

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2015 sees the “whitest” Oscars since 1998 T

here are always surprises in the long history of the Academy Awards – films that don’t receive the recognition they blatantly deserve, films that blast their way unexpectedly into the race at the last minute, and this year has proven that the Academy still knows how to get critics chin-wagging. In what has been condemned as the “whitest” Oscars since 1998, many are questioning the Academy’s sense of diversity (in this modern world) after it was clocked that every nominee in the acting, directing and writing categories is Caucasian.

Nobody’s going to argue that people of other races should be nominated purely on the grounds of their ethnicity, but the upset has hit particularly hard given that one of the major films of the year, Selma, concerns the black civil rights movement of the 1960s, and that – though it received a warranted Best Picture nomination – its lead actor, David Oyelowo, and director, Ava DuVernay, were left out in the cold. DuVernay of course raises another of the Academy’s repeated controversies: its recognition, or lack thereof, of women. Only one woman has ever won the award for Best Director (Kathryn Bigelow, for The Hurt Locker), and only three others have

been nominated in its history. The media backlash, however, is not the most helpful of reactions. How are the Academy to bounce back from this next year? Whatever they do, they’ll now inevitably be accused of overcompensating. You just can’t please everybody – it’s as simple as that. But enough about politics The race itself this year is still a very complex and intriguing one.

Alejandro González Iñárritu’s spectacular satire Birdman and Wes Anderson’s deliciously eccentric The Grand Budapest Hotel are leading this year’s Oscar nominations, with nine nods each. Closely following behind are The Imitation Game with eight, and Boyhood and American Sniper with six.

Typically, some films have been criminally overlooked in areas which they were largely expected to dominate.

Gone Girl is a good example. Rosamund Pike has secured a Best Actress nod, but Gillian Flynn’s adapted screenplay and David Fincher’s direction have been snubbed. This brings us angrily to the case of Mr. Turner.

Timothy Spall has now been kicked not once, not twice, but three times – right where it hurts – for his grittily disarming lead in Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner. How is it that one can receive the Best Actor gong at Cannes, and

yet fail even to be nominated for a Golden Globe, BAFTA, or Oscar?

The entire film has been shamefully neglected. It would be some small comfort if BAFTA had honoured the film (you’d think they would welcome such a prestigious British biopic), but instead, they chose to fill up their “Outstanding British Film” category with the likes of Paddington and Pride, none of which come close to rivaling Mr. Turner’s brilliance. It’s some small consolation that cinematographer Dick Pope (not “Dick Poop”, as he was unfortunately labeled when his name was announced), has received recognition from the Academy, but let’s not even get into the absurdity of how Mike Leigh failed to secure a directing nomination.

Every nominee in the acting, directing and writing categories is Caucasian Arguably the most shocking of all snubs came in the Best Animated Feature category, which failed to acknowledge the delightful inventiveness of The Lego Movie. Perhaps

it was just a bit too much “fun” for Academy members, but it had a darker Orwellian feel and a stronger message at its heart than it’s been given credit for. It seems now that solid sequel How To Train Your Dragon 2 is leading the race in this category, which is a shame because it hardly compared to the immensely amusing brick-based comedy.

In the acting categories, the biggest surprises were Bradley Cooper’s rather inexplicable nomination for American Sniper (also equally inexplicably nominated for Best Picture), and Marion Cotillard for Two Days, One Night.

Cooper’s nod has little basis, especially considering the abundance of talent on display in the category this year (Jake Gyllenhaal, Ralph Fiennes, David Oyelowo and Timothy Spall were all excluded from the coveted five), whereas the addition of Cotillard is actually quite refreshing considering that she hardly campaigned, and that the Academy often overlooks fantastic foreign language performances. The Best Actor award should be Michael Keaton’s, unless the Academy are swayed by BAFTA’s decision to give it to some home-grown talent like Eddie Redmayne (which would be a mistake, but it arguably happened in 2010 after The King’s Speech wiped

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ANTHONY MASKELL

Trinity College

the floor with The Social Network at BAFTA). Julianne Moore appears to have her Best Actress gong firmly in the bag for dementia drama Still Alice, and J.K. Simmons and Patricia Arquette are sitting very comfortably on their Supporting awards. It’s also great to see Laura Dern acknowledged for her role in Wild, but Rene Russo certainly also deserved a nomination for her meaty support in Nightcrawler; the cosy nest Keira Knightley has somehow built in the category is still baffling.

The real nail-biter is, as ever, the Best Picture award itself. Early on in the season, it was almost a “done deal” that Boyhood would swallow the entire category, but its pedestal has been somewhat shaken of late by Birdman, a film that shares its technical prowess (Boyhood was filmed over twelve years; Birdman is filmed as if it is one continuous take). However, it just seems unlikely that the Academy would ever get away with snubbing Richard Linklater (and his entire crew) after he spent so much of his life on the project. At a stretch, Iñárritu may be able to snatch the Director gong in an unanticipated but understandable move by the Academy, but Boyhood is still the firm and likely favourite to win Best Picture.

29th January 2015

Whiplash will get your heart racing

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t’s a film about a drummer. That’s the easiest way to sum up Whiplash.

A film about a drummer. It’s hard to sell a film on that premise, and the easiest way to do so is to not make the film about drumming at all. True, you do see a sweaty Miles Teller (playing protagonist Andrew) turning his fists to bloody ruins in an isolated room as he drums for seemingly hours on end (beautifully shot and overseen by relative newcomer director Damian Chazelle), but this is but a nuance of wider themes that sporadically reveal themselves as the film goes on.

The plot is quite simple – Andrew wants to be ‘the best’ jazz drummer, up there with the great Buddy Rich among others. Being a freshman at the prestigious Shaffer Conservatory, he is scrutinised by the infamous conductor Terence Fletcher (played by J.K.Simmons, more on that performance below) and the ride goes off at a madcap pace from there. On the whole the plot moves with vigour and

keeps you in a tight-knit snare-filled ball for a good hundred minutes.

Of course, Whiplash isn’t about the plot, just as much as it isn’t about drumming. It’s about the destructive nature of ambition and the sacrifices made to reach our goals. During a perfectly poised scene, a deliberately inexpressive Teller explains to his girlfriend the reasons why his lofty goals would never permit him to enter into a relationship. She was just

delivers a strong performance as Andrew. We see his innate fears quickly spiral into extreme manic frustration before being held being a mask of supposed optimism as he performs at Shaffer. His drumming is equally impressive though its inclusion is perhaps one of Chazelle’s best touches.

The performances become their own soundtrack as it were; they can create tension within a few seconds, before delivering jubilation with the rest of

a distraction, and would simply hold him back from achieving his dreams.

The setting – two late teens sat in a bar discussing relationships seems like the twin of the opening to The Social Network, and here too Andrew’s singular drive is both admirable and relatively horrifying.

Miles Teller may well be overshadowed by his co-star Simmons, but he

the jazz orchestra’s entrances. The content of the film organically develops its own character. When Andrew is forced to start over because of his supposed incapacity to keep tempo by the overbearing Fletcher, the brief spasms of music reflect the frustration of the young drummer. When he is finally correct the release carries itself alongside the music. This all makes

Simmons is the turbulent foundation that the whole film is based on.

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ALEXANDER WOOD

Wadham College

the ride more thrilling. Seeing the film get a nod for Best Picture (which, against Birdman, The Theory of Everything or Boyhood, it is unlikely to win) was a welcome addition for a less, for want of a better word, mainstream film.

Finally one has to give credit to J.K Simmons for excelling in a part that may far too easily have turned into a Full Metal Jacket parody. Simmons is the turbulent foundation that the whole film is based on. He is the dark side of Andrew’s ambition, the architect of the destruction that a singleminded drive can cause. Oscillating between a cold fury and fake joviality, Simmons controls both the orchestra and the audience in the palm of his hand. His receiving a Best Supporting Actor Oscar seems a surety after the Golden Globes. If there’s one reason to go and see Whiplash, even if you hate the idea of sitting through a film about drummers, do it for Simmons.

You won’t be disappointed.

COUNTDOWN THREE BOLLYWOOD FILMS SHOT IN OXFORD

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Salaam-e-Ishq: A Tribute to Love A romantic drama film released in 2007, Salaam-e-Ishq is the unofficial remake of the British film, Love Actually. It is directed by Nikhil Advani, the same man who directed the critically acclaimed and financially successful, Kal Ho Naa Ho. However, unlike the aforementioned film, Salaam-e-Ishq was said by one critic to be “an ode to mediocrity, not love or cinema”.

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Bhagam Bhag A silly comedy murder mystery film that still manages to entertain audiences. Critics proclaimed this film as a “leave-your-brain-athome comedy” - though the validity of that genre is still to be determined.

It’s shot in several of Oxford’s most famous landmarks and follows the story of a theatrical troupe in India that is offered the chance to perform a show in London.

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NASIM ASL

Somerville College

’m somewhat late to the Geordie Shore party. Hailing from the region myself, throughout my school years I miraculously managed to avoid the Tuesday night MTV mush that so many of my peers watched and discussed. I didn’t know who Charlotte was or why my friends were so excited about seeing her in our local Home Bargains, and for weeks I didn’t understand why Geordie legend Gazza was making such a comeback with teens across the country. I’m still not sure why my friends love Instagramming pictures with the cast or why Southerners are so excited about them turning up to club nights.

Fast forward three years and the gang have made an impressive 77 episodes following their drunken debauchery, appearing at the National Television Awards most recently.

Oxford’s a good 270 miles from the heart of my homeland, so as the traditional first-week Greggs withdrawal symptoms started to show, I made the

plunge and allowed myself to watch the first ever season of Geordie Shore.

Yes – season. I seemingly have an uncontrollable need to vegetate when I should be working, and Geordie Shore really allowed me to do that.

However, that was the absolute highlight of the series itself. The show starts with the main lads and lasses

I was genuinely impressed, if not envious, that Holly was able to hold a drink in her cleavage I’m sure that if the group cut their make-up/gym time and put their talents to a more constructive outlet, they’d definitely be in the running for a Nobel Prize of some sort.

I think the biggest issue I had

GEORDIE SHORE introducing themselves to the camera in various states of fashion disaster and shades of orange. Proud of their pulling talents and banter, the gang blew their own trumpets quite impressively.

As any true northerner, I was somewhat taken aback by Holly’s claims that she was, in fact, a true Geordie gal – Middlesbrough is a long way from Newcastle, pet. And although

with the show is that, quite simply, I couldn’t figure out what was going on. There was a lot of alcohol and there was a lot of sex, but not much else in between, aside from the occasional slanging match and snidy comments. I found myself bailing on nights out so that I could watch people going on nights out. The logic itself is baffling.

One thing going for Geordie Shore,

Mohabbatein This is a musical romance drama that was filmed in both India and the UK. It follows six people studying or working at Gurukul, a university where the strict headmaster forbids open romance. It stars Bollywood’s infamous duo Shahrukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan and is most notable for being the first time that Khan and Bachchan appeared on screen together. Mohabbatein did well both critically and commercially, and was declared a blockbuster after it became the highest grossing film overseas in 2000.

It also won several awards including the Filmfare Award for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor. however, is this lack of plot and staging. It misses the faux-coincidental and metallic methods of so many of its sister shows, giving it a much rawer and down to earth edge that warms my heart. Documentary-like, I was intoxicated with the high school drama on which the show thrives.

Be that as it may, I still just don’t understand the principles of the show. I don’t understand how it can be so fascinating to watch a group of people I don’t have anything in common with live their lives and I don’t quite get and why shows like this exist. Maybe I’m living in a bygone age, but I’m not too impressed with the tarnishing of the names of good Geordies everywhere. We already get enough stick as it is.

Geordie Shore is a British reality TV series set in Newcastle Upon Tyne that is broadcast on MTV . It is the British spin off of the American show entitled Jersey Shore and was first broadcast in May 2011.

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29th January 2015

PHOTO/Max Lacome-Shaw (Sebastian Torkia)

Sebastien Torkia talks Top Hat The Musical W

ith Top Hat The Musical coming to Oxford later this month, we caught up with actor Sebastien Torkia who plays fabulous fashion designer, Alberto Beddini, in the show. Based on the film starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, the production won the Olivier award for Best New Musical in 2013, and is now part-way through its national tour.

Having trained at the London Studio Theatre, Torkia has had a successful career in the theatre world.

He has been in a complete range of shows from The Lion King in the West End, Singin’ in the Rain and even the film of the much-loved musical, Mamma Mia. For anyone hoping to do the same, he recommends complete commitment and dedication to survive in what he calls a “competitive and insecure industry”. “It has to be the only thing you want to do,” he says “and there will be times it won’t go well.”

To sustain a career in musical theatre he advises mastering as many skills as you can: “Try to have as many strings to your bow as possible,

different types of dance and several instruments to give yourself the best possible chance.” For those of you considering musical theatre after your degree, Sebastien thinks attending a performing arts college can help as it gives a good insider knowledge of the theatre industry.

As a younger boy he “always knew he wanted to go on stage,” and he was inspired by the likes of Travolta and Fred Astaire, so his role in Top Hat is apt. He says he was also inspired by Gene Kelly, but from the interview I can tell you for sure Torkia’s a much nicer guy and would be far easier to work with!

Torkia tells us that Top Hat’s plot is actually very similar to the original film starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. It follows an American dancer, Jerry Travers, who comes to London to be in a show and falls in love with local girl Dale Tremont.

Jerry pursues Dale all the way to Venice where she is visiting her friend Madge and modelling for designer Alberto Beddini, which is where Torkia comes in.

Sebastien plays this fantastic Italian

designer, who becomes a rival for Dale’s affections due to a series of comic misunderstandings. The characters are given much more depth in this musical version, which Sebastien thinks is actually much funnier than the original film. The musical is set in 1935: “It’s a beautiful and glamorous period” and “the story doesn’t feel stayed or dated,” he adds.

Having dabbled in films in his career, Sebastien says that he finds it fascinating seeing how the scenes all

“This touring production has all the values of a full West End show.” come together, but that as an actor you are much less in control of what is shown.

He finds he’s much more removed from the final product as you don’t get the immediate response from the audience. Having said that, for him,

it is not the reactions but “discovering a character” that is his favourite thing about acting onstage. He says he enjoys playing Alberto because he is so different from himself and is a very “over the top and flamboyant character.”

Having had a long career onstage he has been lucky enough to have been proud of all the roles he’s had. For Sebastien there has been no worst role he’s had to play onstage; whatever he’s done he just throws himself completely into the character. “I’ve been very fortunate,” he says.

For him, every part that he has had the chance to play has had an element of fun to it, especially playing the bad-guy. He played Scar in The Lion King, a role that he found particularly enjoyable.

His current character Alberto is very high energy. Torkia does not dance in the show but he says that it is a very physical role and he has to keep fit to keep up. “This touring production has all the West End values,” he tells us, adding that “sometimes touring productions scale down sets but not here. It feels like a full West End

HARRIET FRY

Somerville College show.” With a cast of over 30 people Top Hat certainly does sound like an impressive spectacle that is highly entertaining and energetic.

Going on tour means that naturally the cast members become very close and they share entertaining moments together as they travel around the country.

However performing in different theatres can have some problems, as each one has a different layout backstage. Sebastien recounts one theatre with a particularly confusing layout that meant one actor couldn’t find the stage and missed his cue because he got so lost! The actors on stage were wondering where he was and had to keep going but he came out on stage in the end.

The interview with Torkia certainly convinced me to want to go and see the musical, a fun and larger than life show. As for joining the performing arts industry, however, I think I’ll give that one a miss.

Top Hat The Musical is coming to the New Theatre in Oxford from the 28th January to 7th February.

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29th January 2015

The Effect: science and love

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he Effect is intense. The play deals with a number of people involved in a clinical trial of mood-altering drugs. A relationship forms between two of the participants, and events spiral out of control as emotions run high, and it becomes harder and harder for the characters to distinguish between their own emotions and those induced by the drug.

The play is a crescendo of confusion and fear, culminating in a denouement which is as shocking as it is poignant.

The first production of Lucy Prebble’s award-winning 2012 play outside the National Theatre, director Freya Judd’s

ambitious staging will premiere in third week, and will (Judd hopes) start a few important conversations.

The Effect is difficult to summarise, but Judd says that the play is about “the struggle for identity in the modern era, and what love really means when you can medicate your emotions.”

The Effect “deals with some really important issues, and in Oxford, actually, we have a lot of problems with mental health. About 30 percent of the student body will be in counselling at any one time, and for me, therefore, depression is really important.

“I wanted to do a play that meant

MATTHEW CLARKE Merton College

Popat and Pease both do a good job with their respective roles, and work well together in evoking a relationship that is at once casual and intimate.

Their interactions are at times sweet and heartfelt, but are also punctuated with humour and awkwardness.

They’re helped in this respect by the dialogue, which is refreshing, both in its pace, and wit, but also in its honesty.

Oakman – who both wrote and codirected the play – tells me that he wanted to downplay the political aspect of the subject matter, focusing more on the ordinary, lived experiences of the two characters. “I wanted to write something that was natural, and personal,” he says. It’s an effective strategy, ensuring that the script never feels moralising or heavy-handed.

But as Pease puts it, the play is also “unapologetic” in its representation of queer experience. It insists that the relationship between the two characters is something already familiar to us, that their story is not different, but very much the same as those we have seen before. In doing so, the play takes its own kind of political stance, one which reaffirms that these sorts of stories not only exist, but that they deserve to be told. Thought provoking, yet intimately human, this is not a production to be missed.

Potosí looks promising J

onathon Oakman’s new play Potosi is set entirely in one room. The bedroom to be exact. James (Shrai Popat) and Matthew (Tom Pease) have just met in a club, and decide to go home together. James is 17, and still dreaming of leaving school. He wants to travel to Bolivia and see the mountains and the salt flats. He talks excitedly about wanting to go out into the world and “do it all”.

Matthew is only slightly older (he’s in his first year at university, studying English) but affects a more experienced, more knowing persona. Part of what the play explores is how these roles shift and change – how the feelings of confidence and vulnerability blend, turn back on themselves.

Yet it’s also interested in the idea of intimacy. In the closed, private space of the bedroom, these two characters advance and withdraw, embracing, dancing, pushing away from each other, sometimes lying quietly sideby-side. Their physical negotiations become a way of speaking about a different kind of intimacy – about our attempts to cautiously, but also hopefully, move nearer to the other people in our lives.

WILLIAM SHAW

Christ Church

something. The message of the play, talking about antidepressants, de-stigmatising mental health, putting it on stage for people to see, that was really important. For us, it’s important to not just say that as a marketing gimmick, but to actually do something, so we’ve invited people from the counselling service. We’re in association with Mind Your Head, which I think is really good.”

Judd talks about finding the right actors for the lead roles: “Sarah (Mathews) turned up in the audition. She had this real calmness, but she had this very deep emotion, and I thought that was an amazing piece of self-possessed acting.

Calam (Lynch) was just really cheeky, really funny, I think he’s really good for his character.”

The Effect is an example of a particular type of story which has caught on in recent years; Judd says that “a lot of modern plays are a bit of science with a love story thrown in. That’s essentially what The Effect is about, keeping the science in, whilst making it intelligible to an audience.”

Judd hopes that audiences will “really engage with the debate on stage. I would love to know what people think at the end; I’d be interested to know what side the audience comes down on.”

Judd and her team look to have created a complex, disturbing and riveting piece of drama, and when it comes to starting debates, it looks set to make quite an impact. You might say that it will have a real effect on its audience.

Furthermore, with a rumour that Max Irons of Riot Club fame will be attending, this is clearly not a play to be missed.

The Effect will be playing at the Keble O’Reilly from 4th-7th February (3rd week).

W

LET’S DANCE

hether you have been dancing since the age of five or have decided you would like to give dance a go for the first time, The Broad Street Dancers talk to us about getting involved with the dance scene at Oxford. They recommend the dance society as “the place to start”, a great source of classes and opportunities, with a varied timetable catering to many different styles from ballet to hiphop. It is also a “good first port of call to meet other dancers,” says Fiona, the show coordinator. Treasurer Charlotte confirms this, saying that for her, it was through meeting people at Dance Soc events that she found out about the group.

The Broad Street Dancers themselves are an “established troupe” of around 20 dancers. Formed in 2010, the troupe is a “creative outlet” , accordng to their president, Ed, experimenting with a diverse range of styles and their own choreography.

With annual auditions, the group work together to choreograph dances - everything from tap, to burlesque to a cancan! Members are “obliged to be quite diverse,” Charlotte tells me, as the troupe learns dances in a range of styles, depending on the niche specialities of members of the group who want to choreograph.

Performing at balls across the year, the group also have to cater to the themes of each ball, an oppotunity to push them in interesting directions.

They have even performed at various Itchy Feet events, doing flashmobs and swing-style dances to help create an atmosphere. Ed says he has

Short and not-so-sweet LAURA CACCIA St Hugh’s College

PHOTO/Potosi

Potosi

9:30 - 3rd Week Burton Taylor Studio

PHOTO/Brief Interview Press

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men B7:30 - 3rd Week Burton Taylor Studio

particularly enjoyed improving his choreography skills. He is currently responsible for choreographing the upcoming Playhouse production of West Side Story, something he says he “wouldn’t have been able to do” before his experience with the troupe.

Student-run, “we get to organise everything,” says Ed. It is “a lot of teamwork,” adds Fiona, as they are the dancers, the production team and stage managers all in one, organising shows and performances aross Oxford.

It is not without its challenges though. The short terms place limitations on how much choreography can be learnt and retained, and Oxford offers very few suitable rehearsal spaces. 7am rehearsals leading up to their show, and ball perfomances next term which will have them “ballhopping” between three balls in one night, make it quite a commitment.

However by the sounds of it, the hard work is definitely worth it.

They have big plans to make dance more visible at Oxford, including goals such as organising a dance cuppers or a dance varisty. They aim to get dance “more on the map, says Charlotte, developping “more of a hub” between Oxford dance groups.

Specialist dancers are also welcome to approach the group with ideas for a new dance. “We’re always looking to learn,” says Fiona.

They recommend interested parties to come along to their show at the Old Fire Station in 6th week. For budding dancers this is the perfect opportunity to see what you would be getting into.

H

ow do we watch people? How much can we really see beneath the mask of a familiar scene? What is hiding beneath the banality of the everyday?

David Foster Wallace’s collection of 1999 post-modern sexual and darkly comic trasncripts and short stories does all it can to smash our preconceptions with painfully accurate pictures of vice. What we see in a book that, according to the New York Times, is “possessed by a … vandalizing spirit … that exults in tearing up, stripping down and breaking apart everything it can get its hands on” are the “hideous” silhouettes behind everyday performances.

This is a modern hideousness, playing upon unconventional sexual idiosyncrasies and the disquieting secrets which lurk behind closed doors in the world around us.

By treating the multitude of stories in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men as a point of departure, directors Josh Dolphin and Penny Cartwright have drawn a narrative together from fragments of the comic and deep anxieties that man, woman, psychopath and sex addict share. These are linked to

the backbone of the city landscape, in which we feel a shared sense of urban isolation.

There is no one single story line, as the directors are not looking to contain or fit Wallace’s multitude of diverse narratives into a series of teaspoon sized sketches. “Don’t come expecting a series of monologues,” Josh warns.

They are trying to remove the boundaries between audience and character imposed by the rigid interview format used in previous productions. Josh even prefers not to block scenes, since the cast’s involvement actively shapes the tableau of urban hypochondria and vanity they are hoping to create.

So much texture and significance is held in the text’s literary sphere that a loyal theatrical recreation has proven itself to be difficult. However even after a week of rehearsals their group cohesion and enthusiasm is astounding.

It feels presumptive to say it’s all we can expect from such an experienced cast and crew, made up so many Oxford drama scene regulars.

However, their performance – offscript, riotously choreographed and organic – proves that this cast has all the skill and enthusiasm needed to bring the original texture of Wallace’s prose to life.

29th January 2015

PROFILE

Profile 13

PHOTO/ROGER ASKEW

Rick Edwards: too hot for parliament?

R

ick Edwards went to Cambridge, but we shan’t hold that against him.

Despite his Cantabrigian roots, he is keen to see fewer Oxbridge graduates in politics, and it is on this sentiment that he ends his event at the Union; a bold claim in a room teeming with Oxford PPEists. Nevertheless, his point is somewhat proven by the fact that the vast majority of the room put up their hands when asked who is definitely going to vote in the General Election. This group is far more politically involved that your typical 18-25 year old, and perhaps part of that is down to their ability to see themselves and people like them in government.

In his more recent work – including collaborating with The Revolution Will Be Televised and presenting Free Speech, a BBC Three discussion show – Rick is keen to tackle the apathy with which most young people greet politics. I ask if he thinks comedy is a good way to go about this, and he nods, noting that you can get people interested “by stealth”.

“Get people to watch something that’s about the topic they wouldn’t necessarily gravitate towards if it was

kind of front and centre. But if you can do it in a way where someone’s watching a show and it’s almost as though, as an afterthought, they’re picking up some information.

“I think that’s useful for any subject, not just politics. If you do it directly, you’ll alienate people who think they’re not interested. Whereas if you do it indirectly people might just kind of come across it and stay watching without thinking ‘oh this is a subject I don’t like.’”

With shows like T4, Tool Academy, and Freshly Squeezed under his belt, Rick is no stranger to presenting with a young audience in mind. Now that he’s using this experience to try and increase voter turnout, I have to wonder whether he views this as a kind of duty.

“I don’t know if I feel like it’s my duty,” he says, his emphasis on the final word indicating a desire to move away from its onerous connotations.

“I think I feel that not enough people are trying to galvanise young people and engage them. Whilst there is this kind of absence of people doing it, I might as well do it. I don’t think I’m necessarily the best person to do it but

for now I sort of have to. I think it’s really important and I think maybe it’s a shame a TV presenter is having to do it.”

This prompts us to discuss the role of broadcasting in the upcoming election, and of course we cannot touch on this topic without mentioning the question of the leadership debate and whether the Green Party ought to be included. Rick calls it a “slightly curious decision by the broadcasters” to exclude Natalie Bennet. But

"Not enough people are trying to galvanise young people"

whilst he sees plenty of reasons for the Greens to be included, he can’t help but admire the way they’ve handled the situation.

“It’s given them more press attention than they have had... ever. And, you know, people like supporting an underdog, in Britain in particular.

And the Greens have been cast here as the underdog.” He mentions the

‘What are you afraid of, boys?’ posters featuring Caroline Lucas and Natalie Bennet as a particularly good move: “They’re using it to their advantage.

With something that could have been quite damaging, it’s working out quite well for them.”

He certainly seems to have an eye for a successful political move. Despite his own confession that he wasn’t a very politically active student and has only become more aware in the last few years, I can certainly imagine him going into government. The Right Honourable Rick Edwards MP has a certain ring to it, but Rick himself is less keen.

“Not because I wouldn’t want to do it, but because I think the way that politics is sort of covered now, the scrutiny is such that I would find it invasive and intrusive. I wouldn’t feel comfortable with it.” I ask whether he thinks he’s just too good-looking to go into the profession known as “showbusiness for ugly people”. He laughs and says “yeah, you can quote me on that one”, though cunningly doesn’t actually say it, crushing my dreams of the front page hook ‘Rick Edwards: “I’m too hot for parliament”.’

ALYS KEY Somerville College Our interview now drawing to a close, I want to let Rick get back to London and to bed (he later apologises to me on Twitter for being a bit “dozy”). However, since he is the host of a show called Free Speech, I feel I can’t see him leave without seeing what his take is on the whole no-platforming debate following last term’s cancelled OSFL debate at Christ Church.

“I think it’s rarely beneficial to just stop debate. I think debate is healthy.

It’s good to talk about everything really,” he says in reference to the abortion debate, though also as a more general rule. “But then in terms of giving people a platform to deliver their views, so less a debate and more just someone coming up and espousing their ethos and their take on the world, I guess then you might need to be a little bit more careful. And of course you have the problem then of who makes that judgment – who decides that this person is a little bit too far to the right, to say this person’s view on immigration is just a little bit too uncomfortable... I wouldn’t want to be the one making those kinds of calls.”

your key to understanding access

Why should we work towards an Oxford that opens its door to the best candidates? What are the things that you as students can get involved in during your time at Oxford and after?

Join OUSU at Merton College, on 6th February, for some inspirational talks and workshops on access.

With experienced speakers from the field of access, this is the perfect opportunity for you to learn more and meet other people who feel as passionately about access as you do.

Book your ticket at www.ousu.org

PS. The event is FREE but there is limited availability.

29th January 2015

OXSTUFF

OxStuff 15

COME DINE WITH ME: ST JOHN'S FOOD AND DRINK 5/10

I'll grant you this: when your college has formals every night, I suppose there isn't so much need to make as much of an effort as those which only do it once a week. However, I was still a little disappointed. The soup, salmon, and finally creme brulee were all fine, but they were nothing special.

Furthermore, it irked me that we were only allocated one measly slice of baguette to accompany our soup, with no obvious butter. St. John's, you own the land my college is built on, and even we can afford to supply diners with proper bread rolls and butter.

ATMOSPHERE 6/10

I completely misjudged the formality of the occasion and came in a rather nice dress and heels, only to find most

The Effect 4th-7th Feb Keble O'Reily

Evening of Music etc. with Huck 30th Jan 7pm Modern Art

Lou Lou's Vintage Fair 31st Jan 12pm Town Hall

people had opted for jeans under their gowns. Despite this, the long Latin grace at the beginning and the dimness of the room made it recognisably an Oxford formal.

PRICE 7/10

I'll be honest, I have no idea how much the meal cost. The trick is to have a nice friend at St. John's who will happily treat you. I can however make a judgment on the extensive wine list prices, which started at a rather reasonable ÂŁ5. A word of warning though: that old trick of ordering the second-cheapest bottle so as not to look miserly will, in this instance, yield you a dessert wine.

WOW FACTOR

4/10 I suppose my real problem is that,

Isis presents Twist and Shout 3rd Feb 10pm Warehouse

knowing of the college's wealth, I expected peacocks to parade the floors and gold-plated cutlery. Instead, I found myself sharing a bench with some strangers. I mean seriously, even Somerville can afford chairs.

CONVERSATION AND COMPANY 10/10

This was a night for small groups, as it felt like quite an intimate setting, and my party of four certainly seemed the ideal people to be with. An enjoyable evening all round.

TOTAL SCORE FOR ST JOHN'S: 27/50

State schools debate 29th Jan Oxford Union

PHOTO/OTTS

Dido & Aeneas 4th Feb 8pm St Peter's College

PICK OF THE WEEK Brief interviews with hideous men 3rd-7th Feb Burton Taylor

Dodgeball Cuppers Signup All Week Facebook Event

Deep Cover Trapped in #2 29th-30th Jan Cellar

Rob Walker 2nd Feb 8.30pm Trinity College

Alexander Darby, New College

Live Friday: Heaven and Hell 30th Jan Ashmolean

Varsity Jazz Off 31st Jan 8pm Magdalen Auditoirum

16 OxStuff

CLITERARY THEORY PHOTO/Flickr user Piers Nye PHOTO/ Jack Matthews

You could say Jack Matthews is going up in the world – you could also say that he’s standing still: with his latest announcement that he’s “Throwing [his] hat into the ring” to become VP Graduates at OUSU, Matthews is aiming for his 23rd OUSU position in his neardecade long time at Oxford. He may look like he’s still in Year 8 (even though he’s been here since we were all in Year 8 – well done Jack), but Matthews is promising “a safe pair of hands to defend the rights of Graduate students”.

Here’s to “The Experienced Candidate”.

Jack Matthews

BOPS

After years of unconstrained fun and debauchery, the Oxford Big Old Party (yes, that’s what it stands for) has finally got its comeuppance: the ceilings are quite literally caving in on this abomination of student decadence and the flood is imminent (or already been and gone). Some say a glass bottle foolishly flushed down a Corpus toilet caused this moral purgation; others claim it was LMH’s borderline racist theme of ‘Arabian Nights’ that angered the powers that be. Others say those amongst the revellers with foresight prophesied this catastrophe and wore towels on their heads – was it cultural appropriation, or was it just practical? As one Corpus student put it, “It’s really out of order” – we don’t know whether he was talking about the toilet or the costumes, but we agree. Unlike that blasted glass bottle, the bop is going down: who will step up and save it from eternal damnation?

PHOTO/ James Rothwell

L.IBBY DO Depussy Editor

T

his week saw the return of one of the great loves of my life: shower sex. Although logistically somewhat more challenging than bed/floor/desk escapades, the shower remains a favourite of many. And so, while basking in the glory of its return, I started to consider what it was that made it such a treat.

Firstly, I must state the obvious: we all love hygiene… And so, student intellectuals that we are, we can’t help but be tempted by the juxtaposition of the perfectly clean with the perfectly dirty. While there are some additional logistical worries unique to the experience, some of the usual concerns are definitely eliminated as well.

For example, all happy endings can simply remain happy and very much endings; there need be no post-coital clean-up or additional showering.

Having said all this, I must admit that after some time apart from shower sex, it did return to my life with quite the literal bang.

You know those times when you’re looking for somewhere anywhere - to hold yourself up for just another minute, and, in your feverish distraction, you grab onto the shower curtain rail? You know it’s not going to end well, and yet there’s nothing else you can think to do; somehow the water and steam make your brain more fuzzy than usual… So you hope, pray, and cling on for dear life.

But alas, this particular fixture was not what one would call loadbearing, and the inevitable happened. We took a tumble, curtain rail and all, and as we landed with the most impressive of thuds we both thanked the lord for allowing us the house to ourselves for that hour.

Was I bruised? Yes. Were our shenanigans interrupted at an inopportune moment? Yes. But was it worth it? Oh so very much, yes.

Especially since the shenanigans were concluded in due course. I mean, it’s not like we were going to get fixing the rail immediately…

This got me thinking about the various other injuries we accept and endure all in aid of this, our most honourable of pursuits.

Showers alone are a minefield. Oh, the stories I’ve heard of the unhinged shower door, not forgetting the showers themselves that have been violently dislodged from walls. It’s almost enough to start thinking we need those handles on shower walls that the elderly use to hold themselves up, but I’d rather not entertain this possibility, because the idea of shower sex is rapidly sounding much less appealing. Plus the idea of a handyman coming in to install your sex-grip handles is far too closely reminiscent of an 80s porn script.

Of course, even in more traditional locations, we’re not totally safe from harm. Rolling off of our sad, student, single beds is almost unavoidable. Being slammed against a wall – while, let’s face it, being something we’ve often dreamt of while watching Sex and the City – will very rarely hit the exact balance between pain and oh-my-god-fun.

The bottom line is, if you’ve had sex, you’ve probably also had a sex injury. If you haven’t, you might currently be congratulation yourself on your particularly neat and careful sex skills. But who has ever wanted neat and careful sex?

In reality, the injuries so often become a reminder to us of the ways in which we went mad and wild for a moment and lost control. I can definitely say that later seeing a bruise from a two-person shower is somehow much more fun than seeing one from a shower in which I simply fell over. So bask in the glory of your own sex injuries, and use them as a reminder of the good times when writing your next essay on the history of power within the British Labour Party.

They may be your only chance at something resembling happiness in that moment, so let’s celebrate them all.

Apart from that one dislocated rib I heard about… That’s probably too far.

29th January 2015

ONE TO WATCH

PHOTO/BBC

GABRIEL TRUEBLOOD

P

eople have been raving about Gariel Trueblood’s name as much as his quizzing prowess. On Twitter he “sounds like he should be in a Thomas Hardy novel”, and “has a name that is screaming out for its own adventure series.” Some are even questioning whether he’s a real person.

Admittedly, there is something superhuman about Trueblood, but that’s not just because his name (and appearance?) reminds us of that show about vampires.

His charmingly boyish/vampiric self is rapidly looking like the next quizzing phenomenon. On Monday night the St Peter’s University Challenge team which he leads blasted into their second quarter final, beating Oxford Brookes by an incredible 240 points to 80.

He’s rumoured to be the next Uni Challenge superstar, pulling out a hall of fame performance with 10 correct starters in the round one heats. Paxman has called him and his St Peter’s entourage (Ed Roberts, John Armitage, Spike Smith) “a very strong team,” and described their Monday night victory as a “very convincing performance”.

He even got a mention from the Peter’s college master, who wrote on his blog that Trueblood’s degree, on the basis of his outstanding performances, “could have been in multiple subjects”.

Perhaps less impressively, he was lauded on the quizzing blog ‘Life After Mastermind’, in which he is “the impressive Gabriel Trueblood”.

He is also South African and has a girlfriend.

His hoodie-twiddling is positively famous now.

OxStuff 17

29th January 2015

Chess Challenge

A

ccording to the University website, “Tutorials are central to study at Oxford...

They give you the chance to discuss your subject with a world leader in the field,” it continues, rather too merrily.

Before you read on any further, I want to make clear that there are two kinds of people at Oxford.

There are the elite few – those of you who complete everything on your reading list and then ask for more. The kind of people who are actually correcting their partner, or their tutor, or both. The sort of overly-competent, devastatingly efficient folk who are just two steps away from Patrick Bateman. I have two things to say to you.

One, stop reading – there’s nothing in here for you. Two, I hate you smug gits so, so much.

If you’re the second kind of person – i.e. normal – I just want to confirm with you that tutorials are, in fact, Hell. Well, Hell if the Devil, between thrusts of the pitchfork, asked you to expand your responses beyond “please stop”, and “my face, my face, my beautiful face” There are a number of possible arrangements which a tutorial might take, but the virtually unbreakable rule is that there must be at least one normal student in the room at all times. The dream outcome of having a tutorial populated purely by the elite few is impossible – a feat only marginally more plausible than getting an essay back with more than faint praise (or is that just me? Please don’t say yes).

You thus have a choice of poisons.

If you end up with a fellow gormless sod, you at least have the camaraderie of ignorance and terror.

You also get silences which go on for longer than the DFS sale, where you can alternate between looking at the bullet points of gibberish you call your essay, gazing wistfully out

the window whilst regretting going to Cellar last night, or – for bonus points – attempting to beat your tutor in a staring contest, in the vain hope that they might give you the answer you so badly need.

Alternatively, you could be sat next to the human equivalent of Wolfram Alpha. You glare at them when they’re not looking, trying desperately to find something to judge. They’re dressed well – better than you are, certainly, since you forgot about laundry in the middle of the all-nighter. You try to

ished the primary text. The difference is that in the (limited) time you spent working, they were mixing partying with Wiki-ing obscure ideas. It’s basically hipsterism for academics: “Oh, you haven’t heard of Wendigo Psychosis? It’s toootally relevant for this essay on Chaucer.”

You’d call them out because you’re pretty sure they’re making it up as you go along, except that a) you don’t know what they’re talking about, b) your tutor doesn’t know what they’re talking about, c) if you did call them out, you’d have to come up with a better alternative, and d) the utter confidence in what they’ve said is making you doubt your judgement.

It’s not worth the risk, you tell yourself. Still, every time you finish, they chortle and confide they had no idea what they were saying either. You curse them, but then you curse yourself more because actually, it’s a great plan.

There’s one more potential mishap: your partner could be late, and, lo and behold, you could find yourself trapped, alone, with an academic.

These are people who have literally dedicated their lives to dealing with ‘pure maths’, or the pillow talk of fruit bats, or the history of irrigation in early ninth century Outer Mongolia. Conversations outside of these topics are usually limited – partly because you realise that no matter how quirky and eccentric they are, they could probably crush you with their mind, and also due to the fact that there are literally no shared interests beyond the vague remits of your subject.

In the end, then, tutorials aren’t a test of what you know – they’re a test of how long you can withstand the realisation that you don’t know as much as you thought you did. An extended exercise in masochism, with extra lashings of awkwardness and self-loathing. So, just like a night at Camera…

Puzzles by Chuckles

PHOTO/Rosie Shennan

You are playing as white and it is your move. Find a way to guarantee checkmate in two.

Stimulating Sudoku

I just want to confirm that tutorials are in fact Hell. If the Devil interrupted tortue to ask you to expand on your screams. judge them for not having a social life, then remember that your idea of a ‘night out’ oscillates between paying to be sandwiched between drunk, sweaty freshers, and using the delightfully subsidised college bar to try and get the record of youngest ever victim of cirrhosis. As your tutor nods, smiles, and agrees with your partner, you ponder if you could acquire their knowledge a la Sylar, head-cutting at all.

“So, what do you think?” your tutor says suddenly, turning their pitiless gaze upon you and the essay ‘plan’ you’re grasping, which now feels about as handy as a chocolate teapot. But you haven’t thought, that’s the point – you’ve spent the tutorial figuring out if your text books are heavy enough to kill your partner, and if you have the skill to make it look like an accident. Cue the obligatory blagging: at least there’s a 50/50 chance your partner might step in to stop your academic hara-kiri.

On the note of blagging, there’s one more type of student you might find yourself sitting next to: the smooth criminal. You know they haven’t read more than you – in fact, they’ve probably not even fin-

Last week’s quiz answers 1(a) Michael Gove - Unlike Boris Johnson and Benazire Bhutto, it only took the current Chief Whip one try to win Union presidency.

2(c) Jordan College - Whilst Lady Matilda’s and Wolsey College appear in the Inspector Morse series, Jordan College is from His Dark Materials 3(b) Thandie Newton - Fellow actresses Kate Beckinsale and Rosamund Pike were at Oxford, but Newton attended Downing College Cambridge 4(b) St Hilda’s College - After LMH went mixed in 1979, followed by Somerville in 1994, Hilda’s was the last all-women’s college until it admitted men in 2008.

5(b) The White Horse - Sadly, The Crown and The Half Moon are yet to be Taylor Swift songs. We can only dream.

6(a) Oxford - Infamous Tab Stephen Fry plays General Melchett, who proclaims in Blackadder Goes Forth that Oxford is “a complete dump” 7(c) University College - Christ Church is the Great Hall, New College is where Draco gets turned into a ferret, but Univ unfortunately wa not used in Harry Potter.

THE RAG NAKED CALENDAR 2015 FT. THE OXFORD BLUES This years best Christmas present is

out now!

photography: liberty king

all profit raised goes to charity

out now www.ousu.org rrp ÂŁ10

29th January 2015

FEATURES

Features 19

PHOTO/SALLY TRUSSLER

Julie Bindel on pornos and platforms

N

otoriously outspoken columnist and radical feminist Julie Bindel is a woman of fearsome reputation. She agreed to talk to The Oxford Student about some of the most recent hot-button topics in feminist circles, the first of which was the mistreatment of women by the porn industry – an issue against which she has rigorously campaigned.

For Bindel, what happens in porn does not stay in porn. “Men are masturbating to women being strangled and gagged.

Real women are being abused by men on the porn set; men ask their girlfriends to replicate it. Somebody has to be the powerless bitch. It genders it in a way that is highly relevant to the subjugation of women.”

Statistics from a survey of 487 male college students by researchers at the University of Arkansas revealed that the more young men watch pornography, the more likely they are to be influenced by the acts performed and request it from their partner.

Bindel attended the Pornography

Awards in Los Angeles last year, and expresses disgust at an industry where women are “masturbatory aids for men, used and spat at.” Her disapproval is spurred by the fact that the awards were financed by a company called Fleshjack, which manufactures sex toys based on the body parts of "the hottest porn stars.”

According to Websense, a company specialising in online security and filtering of explicit content, the online porn industry has experienced staggering growth in recent years. It went from 88,000 pornography sites in 2000 to nearly 1.6 million in 2004, and has only grown since. Bindel also questions the willingness of female porn actors: “Many are pimped, pressured and coerced into porn.”

The discussion becomes more intense as the conversation moves onto the socioeconomic implications of women’s “free choice” to make porn. “It is a neoliberal point of view that it is their choice. If you were given a choice between cleaning McDonald’s toilets or being penetrated by ten different men for money, being

told to [perform sexual acts] that you have no desire for, the way your body is being used is very different. Scrubbing toilets is not as horrendous as having to open up your body to be invaded and used as if you were unconscious.”

Some might argue that there are positive aspects of porn, too. A survey of 8,000 girls and women from India re-

"Many are pimped, pressured and coerced into porn." vealed that 49 per cent said they learned about sex from watching pornography.

Is it pornography itself we should be criticising, or the horrible attitudes it represents and perpetuates?

When Bindel criticises society for enjoying the spectacle of women performing demeaning acts, is it really a chicken and egg situation?

Discussing the direction of the feminist movement more generally, she addresses some of the perilous paths she feels it has taken recently. There appears to be a growing trend of avoiding debates on sensitive topics for fear of causing offence; Bindel herself has been no-platformed at a number of British universities. “It’s silly. We should have good and proper debates. This is how I learnt my politics.

It is also how those we find offensive learn from us. So let’s scrap all this safespace nonsense.

“There is no such thing as a safe-space.

Women walk around seeing images that tell them they are lesser than men on a regular basis. What is a safe-space for women? Our own bedroom with the door locked? It just doesn’t exist and its simply babyish. I just think they should pack it in and get back to some proper debates.”

Bindel wants to create gender equality in her own ways, as disputed as that may be. For her, it is the duty of the revolutionary agitator to convince the opposition of their argument and at-

MARCUS LI Magdalen College tempt to change their mind. Bindel is attempting to do this through feminist action group Justice for Women, as well as raising awareness in her writing for The Guardian and other media outlets.

Her works discuss the most important issues of the day, including gay rights and mental health, and how they relate to feminist topics.

In Bindel’s view, thanks to no-platforming and attacks on individuals, the work of activists such as herself does not translate into material, progressive change. She argues that we should take every opportunity to challenge opposing viewpoints.

Bindel is seldom heard. She proved to be a confident and outspoken individual with a very admirable integrity. There is much to agree and disagree with her about; say what you will about Bindel, she has never been afraid to speak her mind.

We are left with a question: are we really devoting enough energy to helping disempowered and disenfranchised women outside of the ‘Oxford Bubble’?

29th January 2015

20 Features

Cracking the Bletchley Code

LUKE WALPOLE St Hugh’s College

I

f there’s one word to describe Bletchley Park it has to be ‘unassuming’. Rows of uninspiring ‘huts’ provide the backdrop to a Mansion at the top of the Park that has no real delusions of grandeur.

Yet rewind the clock some 75 years and this was arguably the most important compound in Allied Europe. Bletchley Park was home to the code-breakers, the men and women who intercepted messages from the Axis powers and toiled to crack them in order to save as many lives as possible. We all know the name Alan Turing, some of us know the name Dilly Knox, yet these were just two men amongst 12,000 people, including some 8,000 women.

Indeed it is the women who receive the limelight in the contents in Michael Smith’s new book The Debs of Bletchley Park and Other Stories.

Smith discusses this fact with real pride, stating with aplomb that “only three men are quoted in the whole book; Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill and the husband of one of the female code-breakers”. Clearly, this is a book that outlines the brilliant work of Bletchley’s women as opposed to the foibles of WWII’s men.

The panel at the day’s Press Conference featured six female veterans, each with incredibly impressive résumés.

Lady Marion Brody worked on Japanese intel and recently briefed the Duchess of Cambridge on what the Duchess’ grandmother and great-aunt contributed to the war; Jean Pitt-Lewis was one of ‘Dilly’s Girls’, Betty Webb worked on German police messages and even uncovered what became the start of the Holocaust; Marigold Freeman Attwood worked on ‘Colossus’, the world’s first digital electronic computer; Margaret Mortimer also worked with the computer, and Jean Tocher was a Wren who helped work on the ‘Allied Plot’.

This brief explanation sadly cannot do the ladies justice, yet as the conference panned out it became perfectly clear that these ladies didn’t crave adulation or fame, although after their time in

PHOTO/ Adam Foster

such a pressurized environment they were equally clearly unfazed with a few reporters and cameras.

As they spoke you began to realise the monumental sacrifice that these women have made. The intense secrecy of Bletchley meant that life became a case of “own building, own room, own job”. The webs of confidentiality that developed ensured that no one person knew the whole truth. Betty Webb deftly stated “It wasn’t until long after the war that I was able to even start to piece the whole picture together.”

For some, the whole experience put incredible amount of pressure on relationships, not just at the time, but

years after. It was at this point that the ladies were gracious enough to accept my question from the floor; “after a lifetime of secrecy, is being able to talk about your experiences a relief?”

The answer, inevitably, was that keeping this information under lock and key had become second nature.

Even when the government allowed veterans to discuss Bletchley publically in 1975 there was an invisible barrier for the veterans involved: “I knew I was allowed, I just didn’t want to,” reasoned Marion. Indeed, when Jean Tocher saw discussion of Bletchley on the news, she almost involuntarily found herself shouting “No! No! No!”

at the screen.

Where did this intense adherence to secrecy come from? Well, a common theme is that these women were acutely self aware of the risks of idle talk; a story is relayed about how a woman who worked at Bletchley divulged details of her job to an American GI and was never seen on the compound again.

There was, of course, one Benedict Cumberbatch shaped elephant in the room throughout: had they seen the excellent film, ‘The Imitation Game’?

Well, only one had, Marion Brody.

Her evaluation of it was, in many ways, perfect, “Well it was overly dramatised

Distant Voice: little slice of Georgia W

hen I’m buried beneath book stacks at the Bodleian, or curled up in the JCR at Regent’s Park with a cup of tea, and I feel that tightness in my chest called “homesickness”, I think fondly on my southern home. Georgia is a fair-sized state on the eastern coast of the United States just above Florida. A lovely, warm place, Georgia is where the best peaches in the country are grown, where pecans are regularly shelled and baked into pies or roasted with salt and eaten by the handful, and where sweet honeysuckles grow thick on vines across the faded red-brick buildings and along the dull white of picket fences.

When I’m home, I can feel the sunshine on my skin, the hot sunshine that washes over me and darkens the freckles on my arms and cheeks. Dusty Georgia clay cakes the soles of my flipflops and my toes as I walk along the

side of the creek bank, bluegrass and dandelions tickling my feet. There are fruit stands on the side of the highway in front of the flea market, the cluster of stalls in a dirt lot selling worn clothes, old toys, and newborn chicks. The fruit stands are bulky, boxes made of cheap wood with rusted tin roofs and handpainted signs. Fresh Fruit. Pick Your Own Strawberries. Boiled Peanuts $5.00.

During the Georgia summers, weekends are divided between afternoons at the lake and evenings inside my grandparents’ screenedin back porch, sipping sweet, iced tea from sweaty glasses, slick with condensation, as the clouds darken and lightning strikes across the velvet sky warning of the thunderstorms to come.

Andersonville, the quaint, antebellum town my grandparents call home, is so small that the entire town is comprised of a single street on which there is a

post office, a Civil War museum, an ice cream shop, and an old school house that now hosts an antique store. My sister and I would walk the two miles from my grandparents’ house to Church Street. We would follow the train tracks that ran through the countryside as far as Triple Creek, before doubling back to grab a strawberry cone at Patsy’s ice cream shop. Every summer we would meander through the antique store, and every summer there would be a few new pieces - a wooden jewelry box that plays a tune, a set of silver utensils, a pair of glass Coca Cola bottles - and a few pieces would be missing, but overall, the school house antique store would always remain unchanged.

On those weekends at the lake, the day is spent boat riding. The boat speeds across the surface of the water before stopping in a little alcove beneath a red and white striped lighthouse - the

perfect swimming hole. My family and I linger in the hidden cove, swimming and playing, music bursting from the boat’s radio, a cooler full of water, sweet tea, and cold cokes open and available, until the sun begins to set. Then, we climb back into the boat and retreat to shore for a summer barbeque. We dine on picnic tables covered with checkered cloths, scented candles lit to keep mosquitoes and gnats off the food. There are fried pickles and coleslaw and sweet, cream corn. There is tangy, pulled-pork barbeque that has been slow roasted in a crock pot overnight.

This is served on toasted, buttered buns with a slice of pickle and a fresh glass of tea. For dessert, there is apple pie and peach cobbler with a scoop of Blue Bell vanilla ice cream. We eat there, at our picnic tables by the water, until the moon is high above the lake and the crickets and cicadas begin to sing.

in my view,” she stated with a disdain for nonsense symptomatic of wartime Britain.

But that represents Bletchley and its inhabitants to a tee, modest and unassuming with a dislike for hyperbole. Yet when you scratch the surface you uncover one of the most remarkable triumphs womenfolk has made to history. In a world saturated with social media and technology it seems hard to believe that there wouldn’t be one slip up, one misplaced tweet or a Facebook message. This may be facetious, but it almost underlines the incredible self-restraint that these women showed under extreme duress.

CAILEE DAVIS

Regent’s Park College The winter months do not bring much change for the South. The summer rains pass and a cold chill settles over the Appalachian Mountains in North Georgia. Rather than journey to the lake, I gather with my family in the back yard for nightly bonfires. Lawn chairs and porch swings haphazardly form a circle around the roaring fire. Tree branches are used for roasting rods, hot dogs and marshmellows crammed on the ends and cooked over the red-orange-yellow flame of the bonfire.

Now that I’ve returned to Oxford, I have traded those cool nights around a bonfire for freezing walks between pubs, and sporadic summer rainstorms for a constant winter drizzle. While I miss my southern home, I’ve found these differences not unwelcome, and, I suspect, when I return to my sleepy Georgia town, these are the little things that I will miss about Oxford.

Features 21

29th January 2015

Oxford, west of Bohemia I

Keble College

WILLIAM SHAW

day. At some point grades come to matter more than experiences, jobs matter more than friends. Or, to continue the metaphor, the Bohemian VISA expires and the door is closed forever.

This, surely, is a travesty. It should be a duty on the part of every student to never forget the novel world that is the student life. The commensality of the dining hall, the comradeship of the classroom, the friendship of the stress support group – these are all qualities and skills that each student is trained in and they are far more valuable than any degree or qualification that can be reduced to a piece of paper. These are the tools of life and they should be preserved and valued, not thrown away in the pursuit of conformity and expectation. The liberal outlook and the carefree spirit of Bohemia should never be sacrificed in the name of what Oxford expects from us. Instead, we should strive to appease both worlds.

But how should one go about maintaining their dual residency of Oxford and Bohemia? That, unfortunately, is where this article stumbles and the reader must pick up the banner.

Perhaps it’s sufficient just to spare a thought each day and ask oneself, “What would 19-year-old me do?”

However, if one is asking that question then the transformation has already occurred, and one’s Bohemian passport is lying in a drawer somewhere gathering dust, long since expired.

PHOTO/ Ben Whyles

PHOTO/Philip Babcock

t is an important but little considered fact that the university student is a figure who stands astride two very different worlds.

The student, especially the Oxford student, is told to be disciplined, organised, regimented and respectful.

He should be polite, intelligent and just a tiny bit smug. He should wear glasses to read The Times in the week and watch Marr on Sundays. These are the expectations and the demands placed on the student by the titular ‘Oxford’.

However, that very same student is also a resident of ‘Bohemia’. Here it is the norm to sprawl across bean-bags discussing the rights and wrongs of Russell Brand and not see daylight for weeks. Bohemia is blocked off from the rest of the world by an Iron Curtain forged from posters of Che Guevara and stacks of the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. This is also the land to which each and every student is issued a VISA upon entry to the strange world that is University.

The metaphorical ‘Oxford’ is the inevitable destination for many successful graduates – the realm of the white-collar job, the nice car, the three-bedroomed house with spouse plus dog. However, through becoming overly wrapped up in this model life, we neglect the other side of our university-selves. Somewhere along the way many people forget that it’s okay to stay up until three in the morning to complete an essay for the following

Oxford etiquette

JOSEPH CASCOIGNE

ROSIE SHENNAN

St Peter’s College Door 74 is, quite simply, an inconspicuous, candlelit gem of the Cowley road. It’s easy enough to base yourself firmly in the centre during term time, and limit your culinary adventures to the fine establishments of Cornmarket and the High Street, but Door 74 is reason enough to stray into the potential unknowns of Cowley.

Celebrated for its local food, it masters the impossible: serving a wide variety of truly excellent dishes, at student prices.

A place I’d take my father for dinner, but also hang out with pals over brunch.

The waiter was jolly and clearly proud to represent, suggesting the dishes he thought were done especially well. The restaurant itself is a cosy affair, and on a chilly Tuesday night was surprisingly busy. Candlelit, it had attracted what were clearly both students and locals, and all in all, the atmosphere can only be described as cute. They also managed to tailor the music perfectly – a gentle jazz tinkle, as opposed to the wholly inappropriate volume that frequently accompanies a meal out, uncomfortably forcing you to feel like a granny (I came

here to chat not dance.)

The food was really something special. As well as being local, fresh and delicious, the menu boasted unusual and creative options. To start, I had basil and ricotta dumplings with a roast tomato puree and Parmesan.

Although resembling little more than gooey blobs, they were positively meltin-the-mouth, and I would have happily had an entire plate. Fortunately I resisted, as the main course was to die for as well.

I like to think that fish bones are a

sign of fresh, real fish. According to this then, my fish was both, and accompanied by samphire, potatoes and onion puree, made for an exquisite host of flavours. Pudding was the perfect finale.

Recommended by our chirpy waiter, I tried a ‘semifreddo’ of a dark chocolate variety, with vanilla ice cream. It wasn’t what I would usually understand a semifreddo to be: a combination of cold ice cream with what is essentially a hot chocolate mousse. Nonetheless, it was simply sublime and an ambrosial end to the perfect meal.

Corpus Christi College

T

he tutorial is a cornerstone of the Oxford student experience (by which I mean the experience of being a student at Oxford, rather than the experience of reading The Oxford Student, though both are equally vital to one’s intellectual well-being).

Cleverly designed to resemble intellectually stimulating discussions among equals when presented to outsiders and prospective students, the tutorial experience is, in reality, something more along the lines of a combined intellectual assault course and an academic interrogation not helped by the fact that most of the participants are usually in a state of supine lethargy, having been up until the small hours writing the essays which are currently under unforgiving scrutiny, and thus not in the ideal state of mind for a nuanced and lively discourse on The Economic Impacts of Refinements in Shipbuilding Techniques. 1750-85. I have seen students drop from exhaustion as soon as their tutors’ rooms are out of sight, still clutching their battered copies of The Language, Society and Power Reader (which unfortunately does not describe a combined politics, fitness and lifestyle self-help course), or else simply collapse in a pool of tears and torn notepaper after a few trick questions too many.

The results of a bad tutorial are not a pleasant sight to behold.

The most important piece of advice when dealing with stressful tutorials is that it is important to keep the long-term health of one’s friendships in mind. Deflecting a difficult question about Quantitative Easing onto the person next to you may be an excellent short-term solution to the problem of your brain being currently unable to do much more than spasmodically flail at the concept of independent thought, but doing so tends to lead to all sorts of tensions when the tutorial is over.

If this has never happened to you, try and imagine being in a tense combat situation, a comrade producing a hand grenade, throwing away the pin, and tossing it to you with a cry of “Let’s play pass the parcel!” Imagine it, and never do it again.

Beyond that, just stick together, keep a stiff upper lip and soldier on. Who knows, you might even enjoy it.

22 Sport

Blues women’s football team make winning start to New Year The women’s Blues managed to overcome a typically aggressive Worcester 1sts side to record a 2-0 win that will no doubt fill the team with confidence. The Blues showed no signs of faltering in their first match back after a six-week long break from football, managing to hold off the strong Worcester side with some clever passing and intricate forward play. Kat Nutman and Mary Hintze were named joint Player of the Match.

Success across the board for Oxford Tennis squads The Men’s Blues started the term with a tough fixture at home against Imperial 1sts. Some close matches ensued, resulting in a 3-3 draw.

Next wee they face LSE, where OULTC old boy Dave Malcolm will be gunning for a big win.

The Men’s 2nds put in a fantastic performance in beating title contenders Birmingham 1sts 4-2 yesterday. Performance of the day must go to Lukas Feddern, who annihilated the previously undefeated Birmingham number 1.

After being robbed of their epic victory in the cup from last term, the Men’s 3rds were forced to replay their match against Warwick 2nds. The Women’s 3rds had their longawaited first match against Coventry 2nds yesterday at Iffley. A fine performance from the team resulted in a 3-3 draw, almost clinching the victory.

Blues football grab convincing win against Kent in cup Goals from Will Smith, Peder BeckFriis and James Tunningley saw the Men’s Blues take a 3 - 0 victory over a strong University of Kent. The win ensures the Blues go one step further into the cup competition.

The OxStu sports team wants you!

Want to see your club feature on our new University sports side-bar? We would love to hear from you. Please send in your brief team reports and news updates to oxstu.sport@gmail. com or get in touch with one of our esteemed editors David and Alex at david.barker@some.ox.ac.uk and alexandra.vryzakis@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk

29th January 2015

Are sleeping giants Valencia waking up?

• Valencia hope to return to the Champions League after a debt ridden decade in the wilderness For the weaker and poorer clubs, La Liga can be a dark place. The famous duo, Real Madrid and Barcelona rule Spanish football with an iron fist. Taking 85% of TV money allocated to the league and routinely poaching the best players from every other club in Spain, together they have divided up every league title since 2004, with the single exception of last year’s title, won by an Atletico side led by the Joker-esque evil genius of Diego Simione and his band of anti-footballers.

However, this season perhaps promises the start of something different. Yes, the usual suspects look set to contest the title between them, but there will be no repeat of the 2011-12 season that saw Barcelona finish 2nd, 30 points ahead

promising however are Valencia. With a new billionaire owner, an exciting young manager and a talented and improving squad, could ‘Los Murcielagos’ (‘the bats’) be the ones to topple the robber barons of Real and Barca? Could they be the heroes La Liga needs and deserves?

Valencia, one of Europe’s classic clubs and the 3rd best supported in Spain, have had a turbulent recent history. After getting to 2 successive Champions League finals in 2000 and 2001 and winning La Liga in 2002 and 2004 under club legend Rafa Bentiez, there has been precious little to cheer about in recent years. Barely staving off relegation under Ronald Koeman in 2008 the club have been battling with almost crippling debts of over €400 million and have, in recent years, had to sell a procession of stars, from David Silva to Juan Mata, just to stay afloat. Along with this was the absurd suing of the club

of Valencia in 3rd. Sevilla, Valencia and surprise packages Villarreal are, with half the season gone, still within touching distance of the leading pack and, more than merely promising an exciting battle for the final Champions League place, look set to continue to have a stake in the title race for months to come. Villarreal and Sevilla, as is too often the case with upstarts in this league, look set to have their teams dismantled, with Villarreal centre back Gabriel having already joined Arsenal and vultures the size of Liverpool circling around Sevilla’s lethal Colombian forward Carlos Bacca. Much more

by DC comics last year for the use of a bat symbol on their proposed new logo too similar to that of Batman. Valencia, perhaps fearing the wrath of the caped crusader, quickly redesigned it.

However the acquisition of the club

by Singaporean billionaire Peter Lim has seen a complete turnaround in fortunes. Clearing the club’s debt, the new owner has sanctioned a spending spree with ambitious signings with centre back paring Argentine international Nicolas Otamendi and Germany star Shkrodan Mustafi coming in along with Manchester City’s Alvaro Negredo and January

RUPERT TOTTMAN DEPUTY EDITOR

The acquisition of the club by billionaire Lim has seen a complete turnaround in fortunes

PHOTO/ VICTOR NAVARRO

signing of the prodigiously talented playmaker Enzo Perez for the princely sum of €25 million. While the poaching of defender Jeremy Matthieu and wonderkid left-back Bernat, by Barcelona and Bayern Munich, respectively is a stark reminder of just how far Valencia still have to go to regain their place at European football’s top table, Valencia’s spending this season has already topped €85 million, a splurge comparable to that made by Chelsea and Manchester City during their first seasons under billionaire ownership. Peter Lim, Valencia’s very own Bruce Wayne, has certainly put his money where his mouth is.

One area where Valencia eschewed their new found wealth over the summer was, however, with the manager.

Complete unknown Nuno Espirito Santo was plucked from Portuguese also-rans Rio Ave amid howls of derision from the Valencia faithful. If the appointment was a gamble, it has come off spectacularly.

The young Portuguese has moulded his numerous new signings and inherited players such as talented young striker Paco Alacer, a Michael Owen-esque diminutive poacher and goalkeeper Diego Alves, the world expert on penalty saving having incredibly saved over 50% he has faced during his career, into an offensively flexible and defensively organised outfit, This new found menace was best seen in his side’s entirely deserved 2-1 victory over Real Madrid earlier this month, ending their run of 22 consecutive victories.

With his charming, gentlemanly manner, any comparisons with his compatriot Jose Mourinho are wide of the mark. Instead he has been christened by sections of the Valencia media as the heir to Rafa Benitez, a moniker that fits in more ways than one.

Valencia will keep spending, keep improving, and as the grip of Real and Barcelona loosens, reassert their rightful place among Spanish football’s aristocracy.

What does the future hold for test cricket?

• Declining crowds and press interest in the five-day format leave purists worried for its survival PRANNAY KAUL STAFF WRITER

With the meteoric rise of T20 and the wave of franchise competition sweeping through the cricketing world, is the time of test cricket and the purist almost up?

Watching test cricket today, the aggression seen by the likes of David Warner and Brendan McCullum as well as the unorthodoxy of Steve Smith and AB de Villiers, must make the cricketing purists of yesteryear turn in their graves.

The limited overs game and especially T20 cricket has come a long way since Sunil Gavaskar batted a full ODI innings for 36 runs at a strike rate of 20.68 at the first cricket world cup in 1975. If such an innings were to recur at this years world cup the innings would be declared a farce.

The carrom ball, dil-scoop, knuckle ball, ramp shot, palm ball and the switch-hit would be total unknowns in cricketing terms at the turn of the millennium, but the innovation and improvisation required by the condensed game has forever changed the way cricket will be played. When Kevin Pietersen showed the world

PHOTO/SRINIG

the switch hit back in 2008, there was a real debate about whether or not the shot is legal, a question rarely asked before in its previous 400 years.

This revolution of cricket will forever be the hallmark of the T20 game.

Test cricket is now rarely sold out over all five days unless played in an Ashes series, and the story for test cricket in the sub-continent is

dire to say the least. The first day of any test cricket in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and the UAE is never sold out.

The simple problem is with all the monetary power of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the Indian market is set to dictate which forms of cricket prosper and which decline. Unfortunately the Indian

market is firmly set on T20 cricket, the root cause being economic more than anything else. The average person in India simply cannot afford to take a whole day off to watch test match day let alone the full five days.

The story is similar in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The damage T20 has done to the world’s appetite for test cricket may mean the revival of the longest and oldest format to its former glory during the 20th century may prove an impossible task.

Five match test series are an infrequent occurrence aside from Ashes Series and much how international T20 started as a one-off at the beginning or end of a tour, if a one-off test match becomes a reality is yet to be seen, but it is likely.

In my book, a enthralling test match session is more entertaining than any limited overs game, but the impetus is on the ICC, India England and Australia to keep test cricket above water and to help it capture the imagination of the youth around the world much as it did to my father in the 70s and 80s.

Anyone who thinks test cricket is set to continue for the next 200 years is living in a dream world.

Sport 23

29th January 2015

Former student at LMH, James Allen took over from the legendary Murray Walker and provided the voice for some of F1’s greatest moments

PHOTO/DAVID BARKER

James Allen: F1 commentator and alumnus interviewed • Formerly ITV’s lead F1 commentator, Allen now leads the BBC’s radio coverage and manages an award winning F1 blog DAVID BARKER SPORTS EDITOR

We sat down with LMH alumnus James Allen to talk about his time at Oxford, the greatest moments of his journalistic career and what the future holds for the world’s premier motorsport.

On Oxford: I loved LMH and had an absolutely brilliant time there. I wouldn’t have wanted to be at any of the older and windier colleges in the centre because the rooms were modern, comfortable and there was a fantastic spirit there as well.

We had our own punts on which I went out, maybe, three or four nights a week.

We loved to grab some food and a few bottles of wine, and just went chugging about. For me, it was the perfect place.

Hockey was always my sport. I played for the college and we went up from the third division to the first division while I was there. I can remember playing a college rugby match against David Kirk, former All Blacks captain and World Cup winner, and I couldn’t get anywhere near him. I got involved at the Vincent’s club when I started playing lacrosse, essentially three-dimensional hockey, with my friends from the US. I found I could play it quite well, even though I had never played it before, and ended up playing and winning against Cambridge. Sport was always a big part of my life here.

On sports journalism: Without a shadow of a doubt, Oxford helped me with my career. Before I came here I knew exactly what I wanted to do, which was to become a Formula 1 broadcaster and do what Murray Walker had done. My father was a racing driver so I grew up in motor racing and I knew that side of it. What I got from here was

a rigour, discipline and from my study of English and French, an ability to take in enormous amounts of material and information and condense it down into what really mattered. I still think today that that is the most important skill for a journalist, beyond knowing your sources and your contacts.

On taking over from Murray Walker: It was difficult. You don’t fill his boots and you’d be a fool to think that you were going to be able to. It was what I wanted to do and I had the confidence to believe that I could do it to the best of my ability. I never really worried about

to time. He is still in great form and yes, a great man.

On the 2008 season finale: The reason I got into this job is because I wanted to be in the moment. I knew I wasn’t going to be the driver and protagonist in the sporting story and never really wanted to be. I was very happy to be the chronicler of it, the person to put a soundtrack on it if you like. All of that was perfectly summed up by that race and that final lap. It was a very complicated situation, there were changing conditions from wet to dry, cars out of position, cars that hadn’t changed tyres and some that had. Hamilton had to get past Timo Glock, who was running in

Without a shadow of a doubt, Oxford helped me get to where I am in my career it too much, but at the same time obviously it was difficult because you are following somebody who was a legend.

It coincided with a tricky period initially. Schumacher was dominating and it wasn’t necessarily that interesting for people to tune into. Hamilton came in, who was an exciting talent and most importantly British, which made things a lot more exciting.

Murray has a unique character. I spent a lot of time with him and I travelled with him a lot. He didn’t like driving abroad so I used to drive him about.

When we were in Germany, he would give us a running commentary of rivers that he had crossed in a tank when he was heading towards Berlin at the end of the Second World War. His stories, particularly his war stories are just legendary. He never really gave me any advice, beyond watching out for the Italian national anthem because it’s twice as long as you think it’s going to be! I went and had lunch with him just before Christmas and see him from time

fifth place, and if he could finish fifth he was going to win the championship.

Massa won the race, which is what he needed to do, it was then down to what Hamilton could do. We spotted that he passed Glock on the last corner of the last lap and it was like the ‘they think its all over... it is now’ moment. It was such a dramatic conclusion to an amazing season. From our point of view it was very poignant, it was the last race on ITV. The BBC had taken the rights over and I wasn’t a part of that. Politically it wasn’t acceptable and I knew that would be the last one for me for a while. I was completely at peace with that.

On Bernie Ecclestone: He’s laid a lot of golden eggs over the years and made them a lot of money.

Just over Christmas, they had lined up an alternative plan involving the former CEO of Diageo, Paul Walsh and, at the last minute, they backed down.

Bernie has taken it from what it was,

essentially, a bunch of amateurs driving around to a multi-billion pound sport.

Clearly, and by his own admission he doesn’t really get the connected world and doesn’t really see where the value is despite always having been able to do so. Unless someone does something dramatic then I think it’s going to take its natural course

On Russia and Bahrain: Where do we draw the line? It’s extremely unfortunate that the first Russian Grand Prix coincided with the invasion of Ukraine. It’s very hard to justify when on one hand you’ve got sanctions going on and on the other you’re bringing a multi billion-dollar motorsport there. Bahrain is another interesting one as nothing has really changed; it’s a Sunni country with a Shia minority government. They had a big uprising which was brutally suppressed which was a huge mistake by the regime that runs the place. It’s not for me to say whether we should go racing in Bahrain, it was fine racing there until the uprising and then since the uprising it’s been problematic.

On costs in F1 and Formula E: Motorsport has always been a laboratory for the automotive industry. F1 has gone to hybrid turbo engines where the automotive industry has very much moved towards. At the same time the idea of it is to use the high-pressure environment of competitiveness to drive technological innovation that then finds its way back into the automotive industry. That justifies the spend for Renault, Mercedes and the others. Formula E is the same; they need to have Toyota and Audi amongst others pushing the boundaries of innovation to improve the technology.

You have to say it’s completely out of balance in F1, but it would be impos-

sible to make it have a completely equal budget cap. Is it fair that a new team such as Marussia or Caterham should get the same money as Ferrari? As Ferrari is Ferrari, it will always be able to attract more sponsorship because brands wants to be involved with Ferrari as they can do more with that sponsorship. Equally, Red Bull has got a bottomless pit of money from a privately owned company that turns over billions a year. There needs to be a joint effort to sort it out.

On the 2015 title race: Hamilton will win it with a few races to spare. Hamilton had a few wobbles in qualifying after Rosberg mentally undermined him in Monaco and he took a long time to adjust after that. Once Rosberg drove into Hamilton at Spa, the mentality shifted and Hamilton went on a run to clinch the championship.

He consolidated his Saturdays and his Sundays to put together a number of complete weekends. That’s what you need to do to win titles.

Car-wise, Mercedes if anything might be further ahead this year than they were last year. They’ve made tremendous gains on the engine side and on the chassis front they have always been very strong anyway.

On 2015’s biggest surprise: I don’t think it will be a surprise if Ferrari struggle because they have essentially turned everything upside down and started again. I’m interested to see how the Honda engine goes. They’ve had a bit of good fortune in that they are now allowed to make developments in the season, which they perhaps weren’t expecting. McLaren are long overdue a good chassis, and Alonso is just an animal. I think the biggest surprise for most people is that Red Bull will struggle to win a race. I just think Mercedes will be hugely dominant and Williams will build on where they were last year.

FOOTBALL

Are sleeping giants Valencia finally awakening?

Page 22

SPORT

FORMULA 1

Interview with Alumnus and F1 fanatic, James Allen

Page 23

PHOTO/TSUTOMU TAKASU

Giant-killings galore in ludicrous FA Cup weekend

• Chelsea, Manchester City, Southampton and Tottenham toppled in most shocking weekend of football to date • Minnows Bradford City became the first ever team to put four goals past a Mourinho side at Stamford Bridge ALEX VRYZAKIS SPORTS EDITOR

This past weekend was a strange one for football. Big teams fell while little teams prospered, and the Special One had to admit his shame at seeing his team destroyed by a League One side that should never have had s chance.

The top three in the Premier League all lost at home, while Manchester United and Liverpool were both held to scoreless draws, in the most bizarre weekend of FA Cup football in living memory.

While José Mourinho did rotate his squad for the game against Bradford, perhaps with one eye on the game against Liverpool in the Capital One Cup, no one could have foreseen the second half collapse that befell his Chelsea side. They seemed to start strongly, going 2-0 up quite quickly and proceeding to sit back in the complacent manner that football fans have learnt to dread. Bradford’s

response was swift, scoring a few minutes before the break, and yet Chelsea still took no notice of the Bradford forward line’s sparky stirkers.

In the second half, the Bantams came to life, making Chelsea rue their earlier arrogance. The Portuguese midfielder Filipe Morais slid in the equaliser in the 75th minute, followed quickly by a brilliant Andy Halliday shot in the 82nd minute to give Bradford a well-deserved lead.

Mark Yeates made Chelsea’s exit a reality in stoppage time. Suddenly Mourinho didn’t look quite so special anymore.

Manchester City were handed a similar humbling against Championship side Middlesbrough. While Mourinho’s Chelsea had featured a host of changes, Pellegrini’s City were more or less at full strength, and they never looked like progressing to the next stage against their highflying opponents. Sergio Agüero, David Silva and James Milner all tested Tomás Mejías’s goalkeeping

skills on a numbers of occasions, but there was no real urgency or desire in their play.

When Middlesbrough went 1-0 up at the beginning of the second half, it was clear that it was game over.

Perhaps Boro sensed that Dedryck Boyata and Vincent Kompany were vulnerable in defence, but they began pressing high up field, all the while defending sensibly when they had

Chelsea branded "a disgrace" by an embarrassed Mourinho to. City looked defeated, and Kike’s stoppage time goal was nothing but the icing on top of a perfect away day for a sparky Boro team.

Elsewhere, Southampton were undone by the interesting double act of Marouane Chamakh and Yaya Sanogo. Arsenal fans will probably

be amused by the mayhem the duo caused the side who currently occupy third place in the Premier League.

Perhaps the Arsenal manager will be proved right on the issue of the polemical Sanogo.

Incredibly, all the goals at St. Mary’s came in the first 40 minutes.

It was a furiously contested game, ending 3-2 in Crystal Palace’s favour, after a wonderful attacking display by their two Frenchmen.

Tottenham were sent crashing out of the cup after losing 2-1 to Leicester right at the death. Both of Leicester’s goals came in the last ten minutes of the game, after Spurs had begun to drop deeper and deeper, inviting pressure on their vulnerable defence. Leonardo Ulloa finally equalised for the Foxes in the 83rd minute, and Spurs seemed ready to accept a replay. Then, in the 92nd minute Jeff Schlupp struck, breaking already fragile Tottenham hearts.

Manchester United and Liverpool must be counting themselves lucky to have replays to look forward to af-

ter so many upsets. Their respective matches against Cambridge United and Bolton Wanderers were, in comparison to the thrilling goal-scoring displays of Bradford and Middlesbrough, quite subdued, featuring no goals or particularly eventful passages of play to speak of.

Surprisingly, Arsenal were the only team in the top six to emerge victorious from round four. Playing against a plucky Brighton side in the late kick-off on Sunday, the Gunners scrapped and passed their way to a well-deserved victory at the Falmer Stadium. Arsenal started well, the returning Theo Walcott and Mesut Özil scoring a goal each early on in the first half, and dominating possession as they so often do. Brighton had the better of the second half, where play became more scrappy, with Chris O’Grady and Sam Baldock both grabbing good goals for the Seagulls. In the end though, it was Tomas Rosicky’s incredible volley that sealed another impressive win for the Gunners.