Issue 8 - Hilary Term 2015

Volume 72 Issue 8

Thursday 5th March 7th Week

oxfordstudent.com

Labour promises tuition fee slash

Make your mark, work for OxStu p.8 »

• Some students remain unconvinced by the impact of fee reductions LAURA WHETHERLY NEWS EDITOR

was later prevented from re-entering the club after arguing with the bouncer on Cornmarket Street.

Cellar has denied all allegations of homophobia.

Tim Hopkins, Venue Manager at the club, told The Oxford Student that the students were asked to stop kissing because they were “standing directly in front of the stage”, and not because they were both men.

Ed Miliband has promised to cut University tuition fees to a maximum of £6,000 per year if Labour wins in May’s General Election.

The significant reduction from the current £9,000 fee point was announced by Miliband on Friday at a speech in Leeds.

In his speech, Miliband said: “These changes are fully funded, protecting the universities so they can continue to offer the best education. Britain needs the best educated young people in the world…Britain mustn’t penalise the young if we’re going to prosper in the future.

“In our politics, we must restore people’s faith, not further undermine it. This is an issue we cannot ignore”.

However, some students have criticised the move for not being radical enough.

David Ceaser-Heymann, Co-Chair of Oxford University Labour Club, commented: “OULC welcomes a commitment from the Labour Party to reduce tuition fees to £6,000 per year. This is a far better deal for students than offered by any of the Labour Party’s credible alternatives.

“However, OULC is dedicated to campaigning for free education. We believe that education is a right, not a privilege, and are working through organisations such as the NUS and Labour Students to achieve this aim”.

Chris Pike, OUSU VP for Welfare and Equal Opportunities, similarly argued that the reduction was not enough, saying: “As a representative of students, and in particular of students from liberation groups, I will fight for no tuition fees and no

Continued on page 5 »

Continued on page 5 »

Cellar nightclub denies allegations of homophobia • Students react with outrage to claims that Cellar bouncer asked two men to stop kissing LUKE MINTZ NEWS EDITOR

Cellar nightclub has denied accusations of homophobia, after two male students were allegedly told to stop kissing by a bouncer on Thursday evening.

The bouncer reportedly said that their kissing could “provoke” other attendees.

The students also received homophobic abuse from other attendees at the club, with one student headbutted

by an older man.

This incident has sparked outrage across much of Oxford’s LGBTQ community, with a “kiss-in” protest planned at Cellar for Thursday evening.

A 20 year-old Magdalen student, who preferred not to be named, told The Oxford Student that he was kissing another man in the corner of Cellar at around 01:30 in the early hours of Friday morning, when an older man grabbed his shoulder, telling the pair “this is not a gay club”.

After a verbal altercation, a different attendee allegedly headbutted one of the students.

Later in the evening, the Magdalen student reported that he and the other man were kissing on the dancefloor when a bouncer told them to stop, warning that their actions could “provoke” other customers.

The bouncer allegedly added: “I’m not looking for trouble, but you might make some people angry”.

The student went on to claim that he

Profile, p. 13

Features, p.19

Anna Wintour talks about adapting to change in the fashion industry

Emily Brothers on politics, coming out and voter engagement

EDITORIAL

2 Editorial

5th March 2015

Spring Clean Another term comes to an end.

Spring is finally here, flowers are budding, birds are singing, and finalists are slowly weeping into their fourth latte of the day. Here at OxStu Towers it’s time for us to say goodbye and let a fresh batch of budding journos in to make their mark on the Oxford scene. Working at OxStu has been unbelievably enjoyable, right from our days as contributing writers through to now, when we are able to interview people like Anna Wintour (page 13) and to put together issue after issue of something which we are immensely proud of.

If you’re thinking about getting involved, there’s something to suit everyone in the team, whether that’s just as a casual music reviewer or fashion commentator (roles which are familiar to these two editors), or putting in the hours in the senior editorial team sub-editing or depping.

Turn to page 8 to find out how to apply or go online at oxfordstudent. com/apply. This newspaper office is undoubtedly the most fun one in Oxford. Amidst the deadlines there’s always time to revert to our 2000s selves, playing games on the CBBC website while listening to Ms. Dynamite and Mika.

We are indebted to the hard work of our wonderful team across every section. We wouldn’t have been able to pull it off without their dedication to working hard and producing top notch content. Our news team in particular has hounded stories relentlessly, whether that’s following and live-tweeting a protest for over

four hours or selling out their own college for a front-page scoop. Inside the office our Deputy Editors have sacrificed an unholy amount of time to make sure we actually have a paper to print, with only the brief respite of making disturbing Photoshop horrors to hang on the office wall.

Any discussion of this term’s issue though has to lead us to Creative Director Tom Barnett’s incredible work on our culture pullout OXII. It’s been a genuine pleasure to feature his art, previewed every week with the banner on our front page. We’re eternally grateful that when it came down to writing his essay or drawing beautiful covers for OxStu he chose us time and time again, much to his tutors’ chagrin. His marginalia piece this week on OXII pages 1 and 12 have to be seen to be believed.

Further thanks need to go to Laura Kennedy for leading the paper through the first half of the term, and without whose invaluable work we could not have had such a great paper for you to read.

Freely Spoken The inescapable buzzword of this term has been ‘Free Speech’ and contrary to what some corners of the press might be saying, it has actually been a wonderful term for discussion and interesting conversations across Oxford. Max Leak’s comment piece on page 9 expresses a similar view, and even a cursory glance over our news stories this week shows the vibrancy of debate in Oxford. The BDS movement continues to divide people regardless of their position on

the political spectrum (page 3), and at the time of going to press OUSU council is bracing for a tense vote.

Undoubtedly a lengthy discussion will have ensued surrounding the issue, and we hope that everyone attending OUSU council enjoyed themselves while we were having our post-deadline OxStu party.

Students will be out in force this week, whether it’s fighting against homophobia with a kiss-in at cellar (page 5) or regaling the world press with stories of what it was like to actually see Yeezus himself (page 7).

In our OXII section, aside from the wonderful marginalia, we have interviews with Fat White Family and Ed Hall (OXII pages 3 and 14). Some of Oxford’s myths are examined on page 21, while Music has delved into the secrets of the College song on OXII page 4.

Our last goodbye As our time at The Oxford Student comes to an end, we can only look back on a year and a half well spent, and look forward to a new generation whose time with the newspaper is only just beginning.

If you have any comments or questions, email editor@ oxfordstudent.com

News 3

5th March 2015

Debate over Oxford support for NUS BDS Israel sanctions • JCRs vote on controversial ‘Boycotts, Divestments and Sanction’ movement against Israel after motion presented opposing it LAURA WHETHERLY NEWS EDITOR

A motion has been brought to OUSU Council proposing that Oxford’s delegates to the NUS Conference will vote against any motion aligning the NUS with the BDS (Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions) movement against Israel.

The proposed motion states that the BDS movement “includes a commitment to a full academic and cultural boycott of Israel” which “indiscriminately targets all Israelis regardless of their political position, rather than targeting action against those involved in the illegal occupation of the West Bank”.

The motion was proposed by Lincoln student Ben Goldstein, and seconded by Magdalen student Adam Dayan.

Goldstein and Dayan commented: “After extensive consultation with JCRs and MCRs, Oxford said a resounding no to BDS in 2013, voting it down 69-10 in OUSU Council.

“It is thus quite surprising that a number of our NUS delegates, who were elected unopposed, would decide to ride roughshod over that democratic decision and impose their own radical anti-Israel politics on the rest of Oxford. BDS is a deeply unpleasant movement that rejects the two state solution, the only internationally-supported plan for peace. BDS is so extreme that many Palestinians reject it, including the President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas.

“The Occupation is a blot on Israel’s

record but BDS is not the right way to fight it. Don’t let our NUS delegates misrepresent our views and align the NUS and Oxford with a highly-politicised fringe movement.”

In addition to the main proposal, a further amendment will be debated proposing that the delegates instead abstain from voting on motions concerning BDS. Nick Cooper, who proposed the amendment, said: “I know that discussion around BDS is often contentious, and wanted to offer students in Common Rooms an option other than sending the delegates to Conference all voting against any potential BDS motion, or leaving the delegates to vote as they personally wish.

“I will be voting for the amendment because I believe binding the delegates this way better reflects the range of views of Oxford students they represent, but that an abstention on BDS at Conference avoids undue tension and is more appropriate and representative than a forced vote against.”

There will be five NUS delegates from OUSU Council representing the student body of Oxford University at the next NUS Conference, to be held in April.

Although the full agenda for the meeting has not yet been announced, it is anticipated that there will be a motion about whether the NUS will align with the BDS movement.

The issues around BDS have also been heavily debated in JCR meetings, with the Somerville discussion on this matter described as “over 90 minutes of extensive

debate, heated tempers, and moving round, and around, and around in circles” by their JCR Secretary. A similar meeting held by Balliol JCR lasted over three hours.

These discussions have been further complicated by considerations over the exact position of NUS with regards to the BDS movement, with some students pointing out that the NUS does not currently subscribe to the most radical version of the movement.

The complexities of the motion and the relationship between JCR representatives, OUSU Council, and NUS delegates has also been criticised by some students as overly opaque.

John Paul, a first-year student at St Peter’s, described how: “The intention of the motion in the St Peter’s JCR General Meeting to mandate our delegates to OUSU was lost in a debate on the internal politics of OUSU in general.

“Those present were caught up in issues further up the democratic hierarchy, possibly due to the ease in which the OUSU motion (and therefore JCR motions relating to that motion) can be misconstrued by those outside the union, as well as the convoluted and opaque nature of the current system”.

As students in St Peter’s JCR were voting on the motion, following half an hour of discussion, one student was heard to say: “does anyone even know what we’re voting for?”.

The Oxford Palestine Society and Oxford University Arab Cultural Society did not respond to requests for comment.

PHOTO/RAFFAELE ESPOSITO

Balliol students in rainbow flag protest after college remove it for dinner • Outraged students hang pride flags from front quad and library windows after college refuses to fly the flag due to alumni event LUKE MINTZ NEWS EDITOR

PHOTO/TONY HISGETT

Balliol college members have flown rainbow flags across the quad and library windows in an “act of peaceful resistance”, following the college’s decision to fly the LGBT pride flag a day earlier than planned.

Some students have claimed that the day was changed in order to avoid upsetting “wealthy donors” at an annual alumni dinner, an idea described by Balliol College authorities as “untrue” and “frankly silly”.

Balliol originally agreed to fly the rainbow flag from its college flagpole on Saturday, the final day of LGBT History Month.

However, college authorities shifted this to Friday, after realising that its original planned date clashed with the annual Snell Memorial Dinner.

The college claims it was important to have the Balliol flag flying instead during the dinner, as “many returning to the College

appreciate seeing the flag they remember – that is a mark of respect to our alumni and guests.”

The student protest was described on Facebook as an “act of peaceful resistance” to the college’s decision.

An anonymous Balliol student commented: “The college claim they had to fly the College flag for the special Snell dinner, when in fact they just made a decision that this carried priority over the rainbow flag on the last day of the month.

“I would not be surprised if the College weren’t also motivated in their decision by a desire not to anger any of the wealthy donors with a display against heteronormativity.”

Balliol’s Domestic Bursar, Jo Roadknight, rejected these claims, telling The Oxford Student: “We discussed with the JCR the question of the flag, and they suggested we fly it instead on the 27th (which we did), and we took it down at 11am on the 28th. There is no question of ‘being ashamed’ of flying the flag – that is untrue and frankly silly.”

Roadknight added that the Snell Memorial dinner is “not a

fundraising dinner”.

Balliol’s JCR President Duncan Shepherd also defended the college’s decision, claiming that “there was no attempt to silence LGBTQ voices.”

Shepherd commented: “The college fully supports flying the flag, but sadly this year there was a clash with an annual historic benefactor’s event, and because this was accidentally only realised late there was a great deal of confusion among the JCR, which led some students to hang flags out of windows. We will make sure there is no such misunderstanding in future.”

The issue of rainbow pride flags has provoked controversy across the University during LGBT History Month, with some students in Brasenose and Regent’s Park flying their own rainbow flags in order to protest college refusals to officially display the flags from their flagpoles.

Other colleges, including Wadham and Exeter, have flown rainbow flags for the whole month.

4 News

5th March 2015

Oxford Hub hopes for poll support in funding BERTRAM BEOR-ROBERTS Deputy News Editor

Members of the Oxford Hub have expressed continued hope that their poll will reach 2,000 signatures, to persuade the University to continue providing 40 per cent of their funding.

The University have said they are unable to find financial support elsewhere, after the ViceChancellor’s discretionary fund pulled funding, and a three year pledge from the Van Houten fund came to an end.

Despite “ongoing and drawn out” negotiations, and a poll that has garnered over 1,000 signatures, Oxford Hub president Makena Löhr fears that the university will fail to live up to social obligations: “We need to secure long term funding and, out of principle, believe that the University should support the organisation that benefits its own students and relationship with the local Oxford community, in the same way that other universities across the UK support student volunteering and social action.”

Although conceding that “we need to find other funding sources”, Löhr pointed out that “core funding [as previously provided by the university] enables staff to apply for funding from grants and trusts that directly fund the projects. These grants very often stipulate that their funds cannot be used for core costs, but without covering core costs, we cannot run the projects.”

The organisation currently employs three graduate places and one full time staff manager, operating out of rooms above the Turl Street Kitchen, who conduct administrative and training jobs, as well as interacting with the university and community figures.

A spokesperson for the University said: “It was always made clear that this money came from funds that

were strictly time-limited. We also have to prioritise other areas of student support such as the UNIQ summer schools, teachers’ conferences, National Scholarship Programme, and the Access to Learning Fund, as well as respond to projected reductions in the Disabled Students’ Allowance.”

Löhr conceded: “[I] wholeheartedly agree that these are worthy causes as well, and are pointing out that the Hub addresses different but equally important issues.”

The University has suggested instead that there is now an “opportunity to work closely with other areas, including the Careers Service and OUSU, to identify how a collaborative approach might reduce costs, particularly in those areas where there is a degree of overlap in terms of services provided to students. This might reduce some duplication of effort and enable more limited resources to be focused on those areas with the greatest impact.”

The Oxford Hub, however, maintains that: “We are an incredibly cost effective organisation at a total cost to the university of £4 per student who comes to Oxford.” Löhr is hopeful the wide support base will help the petition: “It gained 600 signatures in 3 days, and motions are being passed through JCR common rooms already. I think we will reach the 2,000 mark before the end of term, and I hope that the deciding bodies will take note of this overwhelming student support.”

Activists have been vocal in their praise. Worcester first-year Ronja Lutz said: “It has been the epicentre of my social activity here, a place where I can connect to people sharing visions similar to mine.

The Hub has changed my outlook on life, leaving me more positive about what I can do myself to make the world a better place.”

PHOTO/NCVO London

Lunchtime and Sunday closings amongst major changes to St John’s Bar • College's Domestic Bursar takes steps after bar "incurred massive annual losses", but students say they will miss bar staff LAURA WHETHERLY News Editor

“Massive annual losses” at St John’s Bar have resulted in a major cut to opening times and student concern over bar workers’ jobs.

In an email sent to students earlier this week, Domestic Bursar Joel Ouaknine outlined the new changes, including closing the bar at lunchtimes, reducing the staff members serving, and closing the bar entirely on Sundays.

These measures will also mean that the bar will stop serving hot food.

Ouaknine reported in the email that the bar had “incurred massive annual losses” and it was unsustainable to continue running in the same way following a Bar Review

PHOTO/Lawrence PHOTO/Lawrence OP OP

initially carried out in Trinity 2014 and a survey of the JCR. JCR President Christina St Clair commented: “The bar will still be open six nights a week and we have found a way to mitigate most of the changes.

"The College Domestic Committee has agreed to our proposal that it review the changes within the year. Domestic Committee has also agreed to install security shutters and a coffee machine so we can use the space for work and socialising during the daytime.

“At our last JCR meeting on Sunday, we looked into ways to communicate our concerns to college respectfully and constructively. We will obviously miss the hot food and will miss going to the bar after Sunday formal.

“The majority, however, will be

most saddened by the loss of the bar staff. They currently provide great company and conversation – comparable to a welfare role. One of my friends has even described them as “John’s answer to your Mum/Dad”.

We’re in the process of pursuing an open letter to college regarding the staff which I encourage students to sign.”

A student Facebook group under the name ‘SJC Bar Action Group’ has also been set up in order to discuss “the Bar Review, the college’s finances, and the most recent rents and charges agreement” at the college. At the time of writing, this group has 120 members.

Despite student concerns, Ouaknine has stated that the changes to the bar will “will not lead to redundancies” and that “job losses are not planned”.

News 5

23rd April 2015

Blaze engulfs iconic five-star Randolph Hotel

• Most recent evidence suggests the fire began after chefs used too much brandy to flambé beef

LOUIS MERCIER DEPUTY NEWS EDITOR

The Randolph Hotel in central Oxford caught fire on Friday 17th April in one of the highest-profile emergencies to have taken place in the city for several years.

Fire crews remained at the site of the five-star hotel for several days following a blaze which began around 4:30 on Friday afternoon.

The fire is thought to have originated from chefs flambéing beef in a ground floor kitchen.

The club’s Thursday night event “Half of Beaumont Street, where the hotel is located, remains closed.

Simon Furlong, assistant chief fire officer at Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service, said: “We were working overnight to damp down the embers. There was a wedding party we were liaising with them and we went back in and got the rings and the floor plans. Those are small things but it’s someone’s special day today.”

Furlong continued by describing how the fire had, “spread up through some voids” through the building to the roof which would have protected much of the interior. The extent of the damage is not yet fully assessed, but the top peak of the middle tower has been visibly damaged, and blackened beams poke through the damaged parts of the roof.

One student bystander at the event commented: “The smoke was really heavy and black - it spread as far as Gloucester Green and you could smell it everywhere. People had been evacuated from the

Ashmolean Museum opposite the Randolph as well as from the hotel itself, and it was just chaos really.

The fact that nobody was hurt is obviously really lucky, and it’s fantastic that the emergency services were able to do their job so well.”

Regent’s Park student Kate Bickerton was also present. She added: “It was obviously sad to see such a prominent Oxford landmark being destroyed. I’m glad no-one was hurt during the incident. The road being closed was a major issue in my life, and it took me ages to get home”.

Three people were assessed by South Central Ambulance Service due to concerns of smokeinhalation, but did not require hospitalisation or further medical treatment.

Buildings in the local area, including the OUSU headquarters, were exacuated when the smoke level was at its highest level.

A Thames Valley Police Spokesperson stated: “The hotel and other buildings adjoining it have been evacuated as a precaution and there have been no reported casualties, nor has anybody needed to be rescued.”

Rodney Rose, the Deputy Leader of Oxfordshire County Council, praised the firefighters at the scene, saying: “The county council is very proud of its fire and rescue service and yet again our firefighters have responded magnificently - this time to a very high profile incident at one of Oxford City Centre’s most well known hotels.”

The Randolph Hotel was a regular feature in the TV series I​ nspector

Morse​, and has, according to the MacDonald Hotels & Resort Website, “played host to world leaders, Prime Ministers and Presidents” for almost 150 years. P ​ assports and luggage were delivered to tourists needing to catch flights and the Randolph Hotel has provided alternative accommodation while recovery work continues.

Scaffolding was being erected around the building on Saturday

morning for repairs, and will remain for the foreseeable future.

The Randolph hotel has estimated that the fire may have caused millions of pounds of damage, particularly in the kitchen.

In an interview with The Oxford Mail, Michael Grange, the hotel’s owner, said that the damage had been “devestating”.

However, the hotel may be able to reopen as early as Saturday.

Oxford Mail

Oxford West MP defends fox hunting OXSTU NEWS TEAM

» Continued from front page

Oxford Mail

Bridgen continued: “Nicola Blackwood is a prime example of the risk of fox hunting being used as a form of electoral leverage: not only does she vocally support the promised repeal, but she is receiving backing from pro-hunting lobby groups in [her constituency].”

Blackwood is currently fighting a hotly contested election race to regain her parliamentary seat, with Oxford West and Abingdon considered one of the closest constituencies in the country. She was elected in 2010 only 176 votes ahead of her Liberal Democrat rival.

Liberal Democrat candidate Layla Moran, Blackwood’s main opponent, also criticised the MP’s stance and voiced her own disapproval of fox hunting: “There is no appetite to bring back the sport of fox hunting in the public and the Tory obsession with repealing the Hunting Act is a waste of Parliamentary time. As the MP for Oxford West and Abingdon I would oppose any repeal.”

Blackwood has provoked student anger on previous occasions. In 2013, her vote against same-sex marriage was criticised in a letter written by 38

JCR Presidents, as well as then OUSU President Tom Rutland.

Bridgen went on to describe Blackwood’s stance on fox hunting as a “ridiculous proposal” that will “lose [Blackwood] as many conscientious voters as it gains them blood sport fans”.

Bridgen went on to describe Blackwood’s stance on fox hunting as a “ridiculous proposal” that will “lose [Blackwood] as many conscientious voters as it gains them blood sport fans”.

Sally Copley, the Labour candidate in Oxford West and Abingdon, also implied criticism of Blackwood’s support from Vote-OK, telling The Oxford Mail: “The important thing is to take your lead from what consituents tell you rather than particular groups.”

A PPE student at Brasenose voiced his support of Blackwood’s stance, commenting: “Foxes are pests that cost the rural economy hundreds of thousands of pounds a year as well as causing untold disruption to the farming community.

“Agriculture already faces a myriad of threats and difficulties and it’s right and proper that the government does everything it can to support the community. Moreover, foxhunting is an integral rural tradition.”

Laura Whetherly and Kate Bickerton

6 News

5th March 2015

Women's Studies MA under threat • Ruskin's programme is under threat following funding review LAURA WHETHERLY AND LUKE MINTZ NEWS EDITORS

PHOTO/Wikimedia/Omassey

A Women’s Studies academic course at Ruskin College is under significant threat following a review in light of direct funding changes.

The move has been criticised by those both in and outside the student community, particularly as Ruskin College’s Women Studies MA is the only in the country which does not require any formal qualifications.

An online petition addressed to Ruskin College writes: “The stated reason [for the potential closure of the course] is financial, but figures shared with our student rep at a recent meeting show that just two additional places are needed to make the programme self-funding.”

Saskia Richie, a mature student on the course and Chief Executive of charity Cheshire Without Abuse, criticised the potential closure, commenting: “There appears to have been no consultation or

involvement of tutors or students at all. Our course rep asked about the two panels that have to ratify the decision, and found out that the same people sit on each panel, which seems strange.”

Ritchie, who describes herself as a “feminist and domestic abuse activist”, continued: “The finances for the programme are not fantastic but with only two more students the course would be fully self-funding. Myself and my fellow students believe that a strategy for promoting the course should be developed and that wider consultation should be undertaken.”

Ritchie went on to describe the Women’s Studies course as “life changing”.

“Access to a Masters Degree, access to the Bodleian Library, tutors from Oxford University, and links to Oxford students are all something I would have never expected to be possible. My career has developed on the back of lifelong activism but I have never had any formal post-16 qualifications.

I strongly believe that the closure of this course will be to the detriment of many other mature

students who come from a background of women’s activism.”

According to the course brochure, the Ruskin College Women’s Studies course “focuses on women’s lives, in contemporary society, historically and globally.

It attracts people from a range backgrounds and recent experiences – work, community, family – who can demonstrate the ability to study at postgraduate level”.

The course is also said to challenge “long held masculine traditions, leading towards a broader culture of diversity and inclusivity”.

Students of the course have since gone on to work in education, social work, and trade unions. The online petition to save the course has 528 signatures at the time of writing.

A Ruskin College spokesperson told The Oxford Student: “The college is undergoing a curriculum review in the context of change in direct funding. In relation to the MA Women’s Studies no final decision has been made as the curriculum review process is not complete.”

Voting opens for OUSU VP graduate • Polls are now open for the Vice-President by-election SCOTT HARKER NEWS REPORTER

STAFF

Voting for the vacant position of OUSU Vice-President for Graduates commenced on Tuesday of 7th week, with only one candidate in the running.

Jack Matthews, an experienced former OUSU executive officer and former President of the University’s Conservative Association, hopes to be elected this week.

Voters can make the choice between Matthews or re-opening nominations for the position.

This by-election follows the resignation of Yasser Bhatti in January, who cited “family reasons” for his departure. The successful candidate will serve for the final four months of the academic year until the end of Trinity term 2015, upon which the Vice-President Editors Deputy Editors Creative Director Online Editor Broadcast Editor News Editors Comment Editors Features Editors Fashion Editors Arts and Lit Editors Music Editors

Graduates elect for 2015/16, Nick Cooper, will step into the role.

Under current OUSU electoral regulations, the VP Graduates elect is unable to run in the by-election.

In his manifesto, Matthews has pledged to work to rebuild Common Room support for MCRs, make further progress on the issue of accommodation, have an open dialogue with the community to prevent further incidents such as Castle Mill, Matthews has also pledged to apply pressure on welfare issues, graduate funding and student visas.

At the central hustings held at St John’s College, Matthews also confirmed that, if elected, he will seek to work with the VP Graduates elect on some of the issues that they have a mandate to be working on from Michaelmas 2015.

Alys Key and Sachin Croker Nasim Asl, 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

Speaking on the by-election and graduate participation in general, Francisco Camargo, a graduate student at Brasenose College, said: “It is important that we have representation in OUSU! However, it is a shame that most graduates don't know enough about it to engage in the by-election and make their vote count, making use of the fact that OUSU is well established as a means of communication between students and other organisation within the city and the university.

"Often people have concerns and don't realise they can be heard”.

Matthews, an Earth Sciences student at University College, led the No campaign for last year’s University-wide referendum on NUSaffiliation, and is a regular fixture at OUSU Council meetings.

Voting closes at 6pm on Thursday 5th March.

Screen Editors Stage Editors Sport Editors Deputy Online Editors Deputy Broadcast Editor Deputy News Editors Deputy Comment Editors Deputy Features Editor Deputy Fashion Editors Deputy Arts Editor Deputy Music Editors Deputy Screen Editors Deputy Stage Editors

Laura Hartley and Srishti Nirula Amelia Brown and Harriet Fry David Barker and Alexandra Vryzakis Philip Babcock, Yuki Numata Philip Babcock Bertram Beor-Roberts, Matthew Coulter and Conor Hamilton Kate Plummer and Kathryn Welsh Felicity Blackburn Ella Harding and Charlotte Lanning Eleanor Trend Alex Bragg and Naomi Southwell Thomas Bannatyne and Robert Selth Anthony Maskell and Charanpreet Khaira

PHOTO/JACK MATTHEWS

Chief Sub-Editor Sub-Editors Associate Editors Creative Team

Elle Tait Jae-Young Park, Daniel Haynes, Jennifer Allan, Sam Sykes Jack Myers, Jessica Sinyor and Rosalind Brody Harriet Bourhill, Hannah Ross, Alice TroyDonovan, Megan Thomas, Natalie Harney, Srishti Nirula, Anna Bellettato, Phillip Babcock, Daniel Cunniffe, Zoe Goetzmann, Yujin Chung

Editors can be contacted at editor@oxfordstudent.com and section editors can be contacted at the emails listed above each individual section.

We follow the code of practices and conduct outlined by the Press Complaints Commission.

Address complaints to The Editors, 2 Worcester Street, Oxford, OX1 2BX, email: oxstucomplaints@ousu.org.

News 7

5th March 2015

#KanyeBelieveIt? Kanye West gives surprise talk to Oxford students

• The Oxford Guild announces the over-subscribed, balloted event less than 24-hours in advance LUKE MINTZ AND LAURA WHETHERLY NEWS EDITORS

Students reacted with amazement to the visit of internationally acclaimed singer Kanye West to the Oxford Guild on Monday afternoon.

Kanye gave a lecture at the University’s Natural History Museum, telling the 350-strong audience that “there’s still something you’re taught every day, especially in the UK, and that’s division by class.” He also told the student audience that if he was “going to do fine art” he would have liked to have been “Picasso or greater”.

The event, organised by business society The Oxford Guild, was heavily over-subscribed, with £4 tickets allocated by a random ballot.

The international rap star, who has sold over 21 million albums and received 21 Grammys, also told the student audience he is called by Barack Obama on his landline.

Speaking prior to the event, Guild Chairman Abbas Kazmi said he was “very excited to be hosting such an inspiring and high profile speaker. It is great to see the hard work pay off after having spent many hours negotiating against the odds and keeping things under wraps to secure this event which is a real coup for the Guild.

“We have been working industriously

behind the scenes and would recommend you watch this space!”

Third year Law student Aled Jones described the event as “totally surreal and brilliant”, and a “45-minute long stream of consciousness”.

“He couldn’t be stopped,” Jones continued, “not even when someone’s phone went off and OneRepublic started playing. It was the first, and probably the last lecture I’ll ever go to where the lecturer wears Fendi. As a finalist, I particularly appreciated the bit when he said ‘time is the only luxury’”.

Kayne also urged students to think of others, saying: “Imagine a world with no war, and imagine if everyone’s main focus, more so than going out to a club, their main focus was to help someone else.

“You guys have been taught, without you knowing, ways to separate yourselves from each other. If you’re separated, you can be easily controlled. If you’re too busy pointing fingers at each other, rather than holding hands, you can’t get anything done”.

However, not all audience members were convinced. One student who attended the talk said: “To be perfectly honest, it was all quite bizarre and somewhat underwhelming. There were several awkward pauses, the venue felt like a lecture theatre, and Kanye said some really interesting things but he didn’t seem to have planned what to

say.”

They also added to other student suspicions over inconsistencies in the ticking system, saying: “It was quite notable that in a random ballot taken from over 5,000 people, there was someone from every student media outlet there, as well as a crop of Union hacks. A couple of people near me commented that it was interesting, given that only about 250 people got tickets”.

The Oxford Guild has denied any allegations of ticketing bias, commenting: “The random ballot for tickets had no bias toward representatives of student media outlets.

“There was also no bias towards those active in communities such as the Oxford Union, with only two active Oxford Union committee members in attendance – which was purely by coincidence.”

Kanye finished his speech saying: “People say to me ‘you’re successful, what are you crying about?’ I’m crying about the people. I’m crying about their daughters. Our daughters, as one family. What is good is it? What good is anything that everyone can’t have?

Every ism. They think we’re done with racism. What about elitism, what about separatism, what about classism? That’s all”.

Kanye’s visit also attracted national publicity, with reports in The Telegraph, BBC and the Business Insider.

Jeremy Paxman cleared of accusations of University Challenge “bias” • The most recent allegations concern “bias” towards the St Peter’s University Challenge team, in an episode aired last August CONOR HAMILTON DEPUTY NEWS EDITOR

Jeremy Paxman has been cleared of showing bias towards St Peter’s College during an episode of University Challenge.

Paxman, University Challenge presenter and an alum of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, gave points to the St Peter’s team after they answered a question without a completely correct answer.

During the programme, aired in August last year, the former Newsnight presenter asked: “What links Winston Smith’s residence in 1984, May 8th 1945, and Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar?”

When the St Peter’s team responded with “The letter ‘V’.”

Paxman awarded points and remarked “Yeah, we were looking for the word but you’re quite right, V does link them all, V for victory, well done.”

One outraged viewer complained to the BBC last August, claiming that Paxman had been biased towards the St Peter’s team.

The current master of St Peter’s College is former BBC News Executive Mark Damazer, who was responsible for all of the BBC’s news output, including Newsnight, and was thus likely to have worked with Paxman.

The BBC’s audience services

department rejected the complaint, stating: “We should stress that Jeremy didn’t say he was looking for the whole word until after the answer was given, so the answer was acceptable. We don’t agree that this was a display of bias as you suggest.”

The complaint was later taken to the BBC Trust, who also rejected any further consideration of the claim, stating there was “no likelihood that there had been a breach of the editorial guidelines on impartiality”.

Damazer told The Oxford Student: “I am delighted that my two favourite institutions, St Peter’s and the BBC, emerge unscathed from this intriguing, if somewhat disproportionate, complaint.

Jeremy, whether or not in full frown mode, is many things – combative, kind, clever and much more – but certainly incorruptible. It had not crossed my mind to pass him a bundle of 20 pound notes – nor even the St Peter’s choir CDs or cufflinks.

It would not have worked.”

St Peter’s beat the University of Sussex by 55 points, and are still in the competition, having also beaten the Oxford Brookes team.

Paxman, who will be fronting Channel 4’s General Election coverage in May, has been accused of bias on numerous occasions.

In 2007, University Challenge fans complained of a bias towards all Oxbridge colleges. In 2011, Paxman, as a Cambridge alum, was accused of favouring colleges there.

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Comment 9

COMMENT

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Free speech is not under threat in Oxford A spectre is haunting Oxford, apparently – the spectre of censorship. Gangs of leftists burn the works of Edmund Burke on college quads; censorious feminist politicians are passing sweeping restrictions on debate; such persecuted minnows as the leaders of the Oxford Union are being shut down by violent socialist street mobs.

And if you haven't noticed any of this, that's only because “they” – the shadowy Marxist puppet-masters who control every aspect of campus life – have pulled the wool over your eyes.

The notion that university campuses are suffering a wave of illiberal bullying has come from nowhere in recent months to become the established consensus in national press and media. But it's curious that almost all of the alleged examples of this, when examined closely, turn out to be no such thing. A case in point: last week, veteran commentator Nick Cohen took to The Guardian to shriek that an anti-sex work comedian, Kate Smurthwaite, had been “banned” from speaking at Goldsmith's College in London. In

fact, as the Comedy Society clarified themselves, the event was cancelled due to woeful ticket sales and the paranoid claims of Smurthwaite herself that she would be endangered by a picket outside. There is no indication that there would even have been a picket, and Goldsmith's Feminist Society had voted against holding one.

Let's say for a moment, though, that there had been a protest outside. And let's say for a moment that the recent protest against Marine Le Pen outside the Oxford Union had indeed resulted in that event's cancellation. Would that really have been censorship? It's a genuine question, but if the answer is “yes”, then a very broad swathe of views – essentially, any expression of disagreement with the granting of a platform to somebody – will be branded as censorious. For example, conservative media has been complaining for decades that the BBC has too many left-wing commentators on the air – is this an attempt to “censor” the BBC? Or does this kind of criticism only become “censorship” after it has the

gall to actually be successful?

If campuses have a problem, it's a problem with the rampant overuse of the language of prohibition. Last year, motions against Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines were widely described as “bans”; in reality, it's hardly a “ban” for a group of people to take a vote on which songs they do or don't want to play on their jointly-owned stereo system. Campus libertarians

We need a mature debate, but instead we get heckling and derailing tactics

and anti-feminists were arguing, in essence, that there is a human right to have a specific song played to one by one's peers, through communally owned equipment, despite most of those involved not enjoying the aforementioned song. It's hardly Voltaire.

Much of the hyperbole expended in supposed defence of liberal values is, in fact, pure reactionary opportunism. Rights that do exist

are twisted and exaggerated ad absurdum, while brand new “rights” are fabricated from scratch: in the national media, we have recently seen pundits rally around convicted rapist Ched Evans and his totally non-existent “right” to get one's old job back after leaving prison no matter how unsuitable that occupation is rendered by one's criminal record. The defence of Evans – a man who still, today, runs a whole website dedicated to bullying and threatening the woman he raped – demonstrated that some on the Right will contort themselves into any position imaginable to avoid agreement with feminists.

Most thinking people understand that liberties have limits – that, in fact, they are only sustainable because they have limits. Nobody wants to pardon the Al-Qaeda officers who verbally directed the Charlie Hebdo massacre (but didn't physically take part). We need a mature debate on those limits more than ever, but instead we get heckling and derailing tactics.

Indeed, there are now whole publications centred on those

MAX LEAK

Wadham College derailing tactics, such as the lurid magazine Spiked. Oxford has acquired its own version of this in Versa, a puerile website which peddles free-speech fundamentalism without professionalism or nuance.

Neither of these publications, incidentally, has been shut down by powers that be.

It is not an attack on free speech for opinions that have traditionally been marginalised to be expressed in Oxford. Freespeech fundamentalists are peddling conservatism and reaction under a liberal blanket. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from criticism; there is no right to an uncontested platform. Your freedom of speech isn’t being censored, people just disagree with you.

Debate on campus isn't dead, whatever the free speech alarmists might say. The alarmists are right about one thing: we are indeed witnessing a decline in the civilised, meaningful exchange of views. It's just ironic that they themselves, with their hysterical accusations and tortured logic, are the ones who are responsible.

10 Comment

W

YES

illiam Wilberforce, in 1807, was applauded by all sides of the chamber of the House of Commons. He had finally achieved his long-term ambition: abolition of the slave trade. It marked a significant step forward for the British constitution, a positive affirmation that the British were pro-liberty and equality.

Wilberforce was a man informed first and foremost by his Christian principles.

His famous book, A Practical View on the Present State of Christianity, was a searing attack on people who professed faith but did not take Christianity seriously.

It provided the suggestion that the love of others “has been distinctly stated to be the indispensable, and indeed, the characteristic duty of Christians.” Abolition occurred because a core of men and women like him, similarly motivated by this faith-based love, spent two decades striving with unity of purpose for that goal.

It is only one of many instances where Christianity has had a positive, reforming influence on British law making, Shaftesbury’s campaigns for factory reform in the nineteenth century being another obvious one. This is a positive role it should continue having today.

It is important initially to recognise that at their core, the Christian principles which are actually applicable to law-making are fundamentally humanitarian. There have been times in history where Christian doctrine has been contorted into an oppressive force that is not particularly Christian. Before the Revolution of 1789, France was a nation governed by a ‘Christian’ regime.

Corrupt clerics there wielded power in a distinctly un-Christian fashion. Rather than obeying Biblical commands to “act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8), they laid emphasis on outward conformity, not inward conversion. They oppressively imposed strictures on the actions of those whose only crime was to have

CHARLES MCGRATH

Pembroke College

T

he simmering conflict in Eastern Ukraine began almost a year ago, but the 11th February 2015, the leaders of some of continental Europe’s largest states met to agree the terms of a peace deal which aimed to bring it to an end. The events of the past year have changed the face of European politics for the foreseeable future. For one thing, the European Union, and more generally the West, will find it very difficult to interact with Putin’s Russia until, indeed, Russia is no longer Putin’s. Furthermore, supposed outsiders in the European ‘scene’ have come to the forefront as peace-brokers in the diplomatic arena, with the Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko coming out of the Minsk talks better than the other participants.

But perhaps the greatest change of all is that war (and, indeed, a new kind of war) has arrived in Europe for the first time since the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s. This time the stakes are much, much higher.

The consequences of the past year’s events in Ukraine, and the scale with which the conflict between the Kiev government and the pro-Russian rebels has damaged the industrial heartland of the

5th March 2015

JOHN PATTERSON

RICHARD HIGSON

St Hugh’s College different perspectives. Such ‘Christianity’, if it can even be called that, is not the Christianity that this piece is suggesting should inform British law-making. It is quite obvious that in a pluralistic nation, there is no valid reason (even in Christian doctrine) for our laws to mandate conformity to a Christian ethic.

The Christian values which are really relevant to contemporary political debate are values most of us agree are important. At the core of the faith are values of justice, mercy, liberty, and equality; this means that Christians still have something to bring to a debate which is framed around similar paradigms.

This is not all that is offered by Christianity. In addition to these humanitarian ideas, Christianity has a characterforming capacity: it develops people who have a sense of calling to act out the life of justice mandated by scripture. A sense of the immediacy of the divine is profoundly motivating; Machiavellian trade-offs are less acceptable as a result.

Hence we see Wilberforce remain rigorously independent despite great ridicule and calls to compromise his cause for the sake of partisan politics, or we see Justin Welby providing challenges to corruption in the city which our politicians are often reluctant to make.

It would seem odd, therefore, to say that Christianity has no role to play in British law-making. Christian values of mercy, justice, and liberty are so resonant in our society that they are no longer controversial. Christians should be able to provide relevant perspectives into a debate framed around what is effectively a Christian value system.

Furthermore, Christians motivated by the perceived reality of God should be encouraged to continue engaging with politics. Evidently you do not have to be a Christian to engage in this way but it would be beneficial for our nation if Christians, motivated by integrity and justice, engaged with law making in the way that Wilberforce did.

Somerville College

T

SHOULD CHRISTIANITY PLAY A ROLE IN BRITISH LAW MAKING?

PHOTO/Stephen Tierney

here is nothing wrong with religion. Sincerely held personal beliefs have often been a great force for good. But personal beliefs should be just that, personal. The law should not reflect any religious viewpoint.

Britain has a long Christian heritage, but although Christian denominations may be a nominal majority on the census, church attendance figures tell a different story of our nation’s religiosity. Only two per cent of the population go to church each week, only three percent go once a month. Appeals to Britain’s Christian past are decidedly out-of-step with modern society. The argument from Britain’s Christian tradition has little merit; the fact that things have been a certain way in the past should have no bearing on how they should be today.

In an increasingly plural society with a multitude of religious views, secularism is more important than ever. Injecting Christianity into our laws fosters division, not unity.

There are plenty of aspects of Christianity that most people would consider positive for society; charity, forgiveness, and loving-thy-neighbour. The issue here is that these principles aren’t good because they’re Christian, they’re good, and are also Christian. Removing Christianity from law making does not mean we should remove compassion from the welfare system, for instance. Any Christian principle that is near-universally agreed upon to be positive is, almost by definition, not an exclusively Christian principle. Christianity (or for that matter, any other religion) has no monopoly on virtue; morality is more than possible without God. Indeed, the values that many of us prize the most, individual liberty, democracy and equality are not Christian in origin, but are products of ‘pagan’ Classical philosophy and the Enlightenment.

But even if we accept that these principles are somehow inherently Christian, the trouble is that, far from espousing

NO

these principles, Christian influence in politics is most often a vehicle for conservatism and resistance for change.

From abortion and contraceptive rights, to same-sex marriage, to euthanasia, the push has been to restrict the freedom of the individual on the basis of religious teaching. For the most part, Christian influence on the law is an obstacle to gender and sexual equality. Challenging the role of religion in the law is an essential precondition to achieving real equality. We must reject religious exemptions to laws; sincerely held religious belief is no justification for discrimination.

It is high time that Britain disestablished the Church of England and embraced a separation of church and state; the state should not be in the business of promoting or endorsing any religion.

Having a ‘national church’ with a legal obligation to perform marriages, and a strong belief that marriage should be only between a man and a woman, is clearly incompatible with marriage equality. If we allow the church to maintain religiously motivated discrimination in its private affairs, we cannot allow it to remain an organ of the state.

The defining principle of liberal secularism is that we should not seek to impose our values upon others; making Christian teachings part of the law does just that. Secularism protects everyone’s freedom of conscience to believe, or disbelieve, whatever they please. The right to freedom to practice religion must always be balanced with the right to freedom from religion.

To remove Christianity from its privileged position in the state is not to say that people should not be Christian, nor that Christianity has nothing to offer. Nor does it mean we must endorse French-style laïcité and exclude religion from any public display. It simply extends the tolerance and pluralism that lie at the heart of modern Britain. We should embrace secularism and keep Christianity out of the law.

The war in Ukraine is far from over

Donbass, make any attempts at durable peace highly optimistic. For one thing, the kind of war that is being fought in Eastern Ukraine is one which does not appear to invite an easy and peaceable resolution. It is a civil war, a war between Ukrainians (though eastern Ukrainians are certainly culturally distinct from their western counterparts), yet a civil war that has been hijacked by greater powers – namely the European Union and Russia – for their own purposes.

A civil war as a type of conflict in its own right is difficult to resolve peacefully, but when the oppositions are mapped onto an international level then the chances of soothing tensions and restoring peace – regardless of the diplomatic pleasantries that are apparent in the language of Britain and the US – are extremely slim.

A conflict that seems to have its roots in the internal politics of a relatively young nation has become global; even if peace can be achieved at a ground level in the Donbass, any ‘peace’ between the West and Russia is looking more and more distant by the day.

The very fact that the EU (with the US) and Russia have locked horns, and Ukraine appears in a state of national

turmoil, has made it very easy for the socalled ‘last dictator of Europe’, President Lukashenko of Belarus, to appear in the best possible light. Having been in power since 1994, and holding elections from time to time that are deemed “flawed” by international organisations, Lukashenko is hardly a bastion of democracy or the ‘good guy’ in the West’s eyes (although the same charge can be levelled against many of the West’s allies). Yet in this crisis, Lukashenko has appeared to take the role of said ‘good guy’, hosting the peace talks in Minsk and appearing openly enthusiastic about a positive and peaceful outcome to the crisis in Ukraine. Admittedly this may have more to do with Lukashenko’s own interests – namely, his and many other Eastern European leaders’ fear that Putin is gradually getting too big for his boots and poses what might soon become a direct threat to their national sovereignties – but it is still evidence of a role change for the Belarussian President and for Belarus as a nation.

The 13-point peace plan agreed in Minsk this month is allegedly holding, although there are apparently isolated outbreaks of fighting between Ukrain-

ian troops and the rebels. Both sides are meant to be pulling back their heavy weapons, although accusations abound on whether either side has actually started doing so. This reveals another dimension to the conflict – the role of hearsay.

No-one is quite sure what’s going on

the conflict, bar one or two prominent figures. And that seems to be why Putin has become the new bogeyman for the West – the media continually suggests that he, somehow, knows more than he’s letting on. Whatever happens next, one thing seems for certain – it’s not over yet.

PHOTO/K. Aksoy

5th March 2015

It’s time for us to defeat smoking

H

ere in Oxford, I’ve noticed that a lot more people smoke than in the United States. Smoking here seems to carry creative and intellectual connotations. There is a casual acceptance of the status quo of tobacco in university and wider society. It is so common and such an engrained part of the culture that there is very little questioning going on about the industry. But the status quo here is unacceptable, immoral, and in need of immediate change.

The tobacco industry is the scourge of modern society. According to a recent Australian study, two-thirds of smokers will die early as a result of smoking triggered illnesses. Tobacco

companies sell a product unlike any other. A cigarette can only be used to provide the user with gratification, for their addiction. And unlike fast food or alcohol, smoking is not something that can be safely enjoyed in moderation.

Having a burger once a month will not decrease your life span: only an abuser of fast food will likely experience negative health effects. For the regular user of tobacco, there are terrible health effects, while for the abuser they are even worse. There is no ‘normal’ user of tobacco, who will not likely experience negative health effects. The life expectancy of a smoker is ten years shorter than that of a non-smoker.

I want to argue for the destruction

PHOTO/Curran Kelleher

CASON REILY

Trinity College

L

et’s get this out of the way first: President Barack Obama loves America. Anyone in his right mind who didn’t love America would have fled the White House long ago.

New York Republican Rudy Giuliani does too. He wants the best for his country, and though I am of the opinion that he’s chosen a crowd that won’t achieve that aim, he has every right to work with them.

Hell, even I love America. Perhaps it’s just the brute force of the culture that beat into me the idea of the USA being a great place to be, but I can’t think of anywhere else I’d want to spend most

means that next year’s 100,000 would cause another £7.3 billion in lost tax revenue. So for a decade of smokers, that’s £73 billion. Plus the annual £13.8 billion a year in productivity losses and NHS costs is an additional £138 billion over a decade. The next ten years’ worth of smokers’ deaths cost the UK £211 billion. And compared to how much tobacco contributes to the economy, £12.3 billion in tax revenues plus £2.01 billion in economic output equals a sum of £14.31 billion a year. Times ten years, we have £143.1 billion. That means those 5,700 jobs will cost the UK £67.9 billion over

The massive loss of life cannot be justified illnesses. Smoking costs the British economy £13.8 billion a year from productivity losses, healthcare costs, and forest fires due to smoking. There is a heavy economic price for allowing the tobacco industry free reign in our society.

Are 5,700 jobs worth 100,000 lives cut short each year? No. It is in the state’s long-term interest to eliminate this industry. We must acknowledge the opportunity cost of smoking.

100,000 people alive for just one more year in the UK would mean they would pay taxes for that additional year. The average UK citizen pays £7,300 in tax. Multiply that by 100,000 and you get a total of £730,000,000 per year.

Times ten, the average number of years smoking takes away from a person, and you get £7.3 billion in lost tax revenue per every 100,000 annual deaths. This

the course of the next decade. Even if you were to divvy this up amongst the 5,700 people right here and now for the end of the tobacco industry, you would still have one million UK citizens alive over the course of the next ten years as a result.

The moral argument for prohibiting tobacco is equally compelling. The ideas that I have heard from friends largely focuses on liberty and freedom.

“Yeah, man. But I have the right to smoke.” Currently, the government has allowed you this freedom. Stating that it would infringe on your liberty for the government to ban the tobacco industry is true. It most certainly would infringe on your ability to choose to smoke. But the government exists primarily to protect the lives of its citizens. The government creates laws that require you to wear

JAMES GADEA

Mansfield College a seatbelt for example. These infringe on your liberty. “You should have the right to not wear a seatbelt, if it makes you feel good, it’s your choice!” Alas, the government has deemed that the value of your life and the people you could affect by not wearing one is too costly to justify. Eliminating the tobacco industry can be thought of as a seatbelt law. It’s perfectly reasonable for a government to cut out garbage like tobacco to protect its own citizens.

The government infringes on your liberty all the time, the question is how much of an infringement is it? Wearing a seatbelt? Not smoking? Do you live a less full, happy, and meaningful life as a result? No. When corporate interests can convince a country that it makes sense to allow an industry to exist that feeds off of hooking its citizens to a drug that kills them slowly, you know there’s a problem. The massive loss of life cannot be justified. Tobacco abuses the body, however it is used. No, this is not like Prohibition. Alcohol can be abused, but it can also be consumed in moderation without negative health effects. With tobacco, there is no moderation And there is hope my friend, if you put down that cigarette. I invite you to take another step: quit now. If you are under 40, the CDC states that, quitting “reduces the risk of dying from smoking-related disease by about 90 per cent.” You have time to allow your body to recuperate and heal from the damage. If just one person decides to quit smoking as a result of this article, I have done my job. Together, we can defeat tobacco.

Of course Obama loves America

What is different about America is that, to our detriment, we place a much greater degree of focus on the patriotism and nation-directed emotions of our public figures, and apply a mistaken standard of love. The overwhelming volume of ad hominem attacks across the political spectrum detract from our ability to achieve political progress and focus on what matters if we really do love our country.

Americans are not unique in love of country. The vast majority of Brits I’ve encountered seem just as enamoured with the UK as most Americans are with your lost colonies. They enjoy the

Why is this adulatory conception of patriotism so popular in America? of my life.

What I don’t love is when political theatre and off-the-cuff accusations become more important than actual politics. For those of you who have not been following the most recent bit of ‘Mean Girls’ drama to come out of American politics, here’s a brief rundown. Giuliani, former mayor of New York, was speaking to a group of high-powered Republicans in February when he said “I do not believe that the president loves America”.

American patriotism is not fundamentally different from the rest of the world.

and total utter elimination of the tobacco industry. We must spark a debate on an important and too often ignored aspect of modern society.

First off, economics. “Sure, tobacco use kills – but shutting it down would cut a lot of jobs!”, one argument goes – but it does not stack up. 5,700 people in the United Kingdom are employed by the tobacco industry. The industry also brought in £12.3 billion in tax revenue to the UK from 2012-2013. The tobacco industry adds £2.01 billion to the UK economy every year after costs.

At the same time, 100,000 people die each year due to smoking related

Comment 11

place, culture, and opportunities this nation provides. They empathise most directly with their fellow Britons, and care deeply about the state of their nation. The same is true of citizens of other nations. Whether Chinese, Canadian, Israeli, Cuban, or German, most people care deeply about the welfare of their nations and countrymen.

If such sentiment is so natural in us, why does the political sphere, especially in America, so often involve hurling about polemics around public figures’ patriotism? Inigo Montoya expressed the

answer better than I could hope to: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” Love for one’s country is a deep and cultivated personal sentiment towards one’s home, not a political statement or a standard of judgment.

Giuliani’s versions of patriotism, which is shared by many, requires unending accolades and unlimited praise. It requires belief that the real America is some Platonic ideal of liberalism and democracy. It requires that we ignore the influence of a history filled with both great accomplishments and tragic missteps. It demands a violent response to any group which purports to despise our country. In short, it calls for the adoption of a ridiculously uncompromising and idealistic worldview when it comes to politics, policy, and international relations. It calls for unthinking, unquestioning love of country.

If this is the standard of love that we must hold our representatives to, we are in a bad way. On this picture, the job of a politician is simply to make clear his unflagging commitment to belief in the perfection and power of the US. This sort of attitude fails our citizens. When we ignore the real problems that real people face in the rabid fight to defend our nation’s perfection and reputation we defeat its reputation, and slow our progress to whatever perfect ideal we seek.

Why is this adulatory conception of

PHOTO/transplanted mountaineer

patriotism so popular in America? It’s largely because we’re perhaps the only nation that can sustain such a state of self-deception. Our enormous economy and military render us immune to challenge. While we can scoff at Venezuela’s narrative of achieving a socialist ideal as their economy collapses and international support wanes, America’s position in the world allows us to keep up the pretence of perfection. Giuliani and others, seem to be utterly convinced of what they’re saying.

In order to combat this, politicians in the US, and the world over, should explain what their love entails. It must involve a commitment to consider the lives of citizens, contend with flaws, exercise discretion in the domain of national security, and work as much as possible to place one’s country before oneself.

There are few politicians without this commitment, and it is thus useless to argue over love of country. Condemn Obama’s policies all you like, but at least give him some love.

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Music 3

Not the most dangerous band in the world

HENRY HOLMES

hen I was first told that I’m going to be interviewing Lias Saoudi, singer of the punkyalt-country-sleaze band Fat White Family, I was apprehensive. First, because their 2013 record Champagne Holocaust was one of the best debut albums of the last 20 years; secondly, because Fat White Family was recently labelled by the NME as The Most Dangerous Band In The World. The group is infamous for their unhinged stage presence, obscene lyrics and general chaotic image.

However, when I ask about that sort of coverage they get, Saoudi is decidedly unimpressed.

“For them to say that about us is just testament to how truly tame and boring everything else is right now. I mean, it’s not like we’re breaking any boundaries or anything, y’know? People got naked and covered themselves in shit on stage like thirty years ago. It’s nothing new… I don’t think we’re doing anything unique or special.”

That last statement isn’t really said in a self-deprecating way; it seems like he’s genuinely tired of exactly that sort of hackneyed sensationalist journalism.

It’s an unexpected start, and indicative of the rest of the interview. His opinion of the general music industry is very low, especially for the other big ‘rock’ bands like Kasabian, Royal Blood or The Arctic Monkeys. “All those guys have gotta go man, for Christ’s sakes, how long are we

comparing Iggy Azalea to Elvis by the way, just in case that came off wrong.”

These are the words of someone used to being misrepresented.

Although, there’s still the truth behind it that leads to the group’s sensationalised image, “It also feels that it could end at any moment because it’s so turbulent within the group. But it’s always the case of, we better do well, give it a good fucking bash, because it all feels like it could fall apart at any minute.”

I ask why and he’s pretty nonchalant about it; “Everyone in the group is a fucking headcase. We’re really short on like normal people in the group, myself included in that I guess. But yeah, it’s not smooth – it doesn’t run smoothly – there’s a lot of friction and a lot of tension and y’know, all that other stuff that makes a band actually sound good I guess when you get them on stage.”

Despite Saoudi’s despair at the fact, Fat White Family are genuinely doing something new and exciting – in the simplest terms, they write songs that don’t sound like what other people are doing, they do it authentically and they do it well. Any vitriol they’ve developed from being treated as the latest edgy trend in music is totally understandable, but we can at least hope that they manage to survive the industry onslaught for as long as possible, as they’ve managed to shake things up a lot so far, and that’s exactly what music needs nowadays.

W

gonna tolerate that kind of thing y’know?

It’s despicable – it’s an insult to humanity that those guys are allowed to trace the borders as often as they do.”

This aggressive humility of his is present in a lot of what he talks about, here again when we discuss the political aspect of the band: “I don’t consider myself overtly politicised or even particularly well informed in that area you know, but it just seems to have become something you should maybe be embarrassed about, to have an opinion, and I thought that was kind of disgusting and irresponsible… [it’s] the attitude that people should have as responsible human beings, it’s all a bit shitty y’know. How can you not bring an element of that into your work? It’s like these people are dead inside.”

The band have been involved in protesting against gentrification, largely focused around the ‘Yuppies Out!’ group, and so their opinion on the state of London is pretty low, I think it’s fucking in decline, yeah. I moved here ten years ago and between then and now it’s definitely gone to the fucking dogs man, nobody can afford to live anywhere. You end up paying like £500 a month to live in a room in like West Norwood, and it’s not like you can bust into a squat any more either because that’s fucking illegal.”

The band’s music is pretty unclassifiable, and although they’re frequently labelled as being a punk band, it can seem forced on a lot of their output, and this

is something they do actively aim for. “I don’t think we have a particularly strong allegiance to any genre really, I think that’s one of the best things about the group, is that we’re not particularly tied down to anything, y’know? I guess there’s definitely elements of [punk] in there but I wouldn’t say it was that through and through, more the approach and the attitude, especially when we first started, you could definitely call that a kind of punk thing. It was very much a DIY kind

kind of what ‘I Am Mark E Smith’ was about in that sort of way, it’s like it is ok to rip these people off, maybe that’s what they want? But yeah, how your identity can kind of slip out of your own hands without you even realising it.”

This last statement applies to the band in a more than musical sense. With all the coverage they’ve been getting, they’re a band that’s been co-opted as ‘cool’ by hacks in business, journalism, and wherever else, and this is evident from

of approach… It’s just a case of you don’t really have any money and you can’t really afford to do things in a certain way so you just do them whatever way you can. What comes out is sometimes compromised in a nice kind of way, and it’s nice to see a bit more of that coming through.”

So while he’s cynical about the business side, Saoudi does seem to have faith in the actual music itself coming out nowadays. “I think people get really cynical about the fact that things don’t sound new enough or whatever but y’know, you take what’s old and make it your own, whatever you want, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with process, that’s kind of the way it’s always worked in a way...

It’s a tricky one, it’s a minefield, but that’s

his slight reluctance to talk too much about some more controversial issues, like the recent debate about race and appropriation in rap, even though it’s pretty relevant to ideas of authenticity that he is interested in. “I’m not sat at home listening to Iggy Azalea therefore I’m not reading about Iggy Azalea.

I wouldn’t really wanna throw my two bits in on any side of that argument to be honest. She’s like incredibly successful and she’s white doing something which is essentially black. I mean obviously there’s gonna be feathers ruffled. But that’s always what they do, it’s the same fucking thing with like Elvis, they say the same sort of stuff about him. I mean I quite like Elvis, y’know, there you go. Not that I’m

“People got naked and covered themselves in shit on stage like thirty years ago. It’s nothing new”

Wadham College

PHOTO/Incubate Tilburg

5th March 2015

4 Music

Chanting, cheese and chugging: Oxford’s anthems B

PHOTO/WADHAM COLLEGE

efore coming up for my first term at Oxford, I received a letter from my college father.

Aside from informing me about the workload, college life and a general “don’t worry about it” mentality, I was told that the best piece of preparation I could do for Oxford was to learn the lyrics to ‘Park Life’ by Blur. When I asked him exactly why this was relevant, I was met with a mystical “you’ll see”.

And indeed I did. First bop of term at the end of Freshers’ Week, a drunken hokey cokey was performed to the chants of “Regent’s Park Life!”, with the whole undergraduate mass colliding together to the tune of “all the people, so many people.” When our novice ladies team won the Christ Church Regatta in Michaelmas, we shouted the lyrics of ‘Park Life’ on the banks of the Isis – much to the confusion and stares of Wadham who had lost the race.

College anthems, sports team songs and raucous drinking chants are a central pillar to Oxford life. They reflect a shared identity and encourage already strong college solidarity.

Often, 80s hits like ‘I Want You Back’ by the Jackson 5 and ‘Gold’ by Spandau Ballet have been adopted by the undergraduate populace over time.

Songs which everyone knows the words to but are not quite sure how are understandably anthems for colleges. Not only are they easy to

remember when drunk, but their suitably cheesy tone is bound to get everyone singing and dancing at the end of the night.

However, college songs have evolved from something much more than simply an expression of pride.

Somerville College turned Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Cecelia’ into a drinking game: if you fail to ‘tap out’ your glass when empty you will be ‘Cecelia’d’: meaning that you will be required to drink whatever drink and detritus that is poured into your vessel.

Not all songs that are representative of college solidarity and identity are complete drunken debacles. Moving on from their support for anti-apartheid activities in the 1980s, Wadham have adopted ‘Free Nelson Mandela’

by The Specials as their go to chant.

It’s the official marker of the end of each bop, and sees students climb on each other’s shoulders to sing along, - a move called ‘Mandela-ing’ Henry Holmes of Wadham College describes the student body’s reaction to Nelson Mandela’s death in 2014: “The night Nelson Mandela died we all went out onto the front quad, Mandela’d like we never had before, singing and dancing. Even though Wadham is such a big college, it’s moments like that when we were all totally unified.”

This is not to say that college songs all have origins in camaraderie and fun. The St Peter’s chant of “don’t

When women become a token minority in music

I

imagine most of you will have seen, at least in passing, the lineup announcement for this year’s Reading and Leeds Festival.

Much like last year, the yellow page has somewhat failed to live up to my expectations – you couldn’t pay me to watch Bring Me The Horizon – but there’s a bigger reason why I won’t be decamping to Richfield Avenue this August.

If you follow social media, you might have seen another, rather more minimal version of the lineup, one where only nine artists appear.

Nine. The version I’m talking about is that where all the bands that don’t include women have been removed.

The result is, frankly, upsetting.

One of the biggest festivals in the UK season puts out its announcement, where there will be a single woman – Marmozets’ Becca Macintyre – on the main stage during the entire weekend. A celebration of the biggest things in alternative music, and they can only muster nine bands including women across six stages. With only one of the paltry few billed as a headliner – Azealia Banks – the rest seem like a token gesture.

It’s 2015 and women in music are being displayed as a minority.

Would it have killed them to consider a few more diverse bands: replace the white-boy folk of Mumford and Sons with Tegan and Sara, say, or bring in La Roux instead of one of the other generic synth bands? Even as I write that, I’m questioning my terms: when on earth did the female gender become a question of token diversity, of meeting minority quotas? I didn’t sign up for this.

While this lineup is poor on grounds of gender inequality, it’s a symptom of an endemic problem in the industry. Music, and in particular alternative music, is a maledominated arena. Women have to do much more to stand out than men: you can name any number of jangly guitar bands fronted by skinny men in tight trousers from say 2006, but how many including women?

The 2009 indie bubble was filled with white boys making bleeps on

their keyboards and singing incomprehensibly, but the smaller number of female artists getting hyped were ones doing something a bit different. Like the harp-twanging, lung-busting anthems of Florence and the Machine, or the astonishing primality of Fever Ray. I’m forcibly reminded of the saying that women, to get anywhere, have to be not just as good as men, but better. Equality’s not come yet; I can see that on the pages of my NME.

PHOTO/ JASON PERSSE

KATE BICKERTON

Regent’s Park College surrender to the Teddy Hall scum” is rooted in a longstanding rugby rivalry with St Edmund Hall.

There is an even darker side to college chanting, which its origins spread back into the racism and discrimination of Oxford’s past. The infamous Trinity/ Balliol rivalry took a decisively racist tone in the early 20th century, with the chant from Balloil known as the ‘Gourdouli’ and the response from Trinity. In Thomas Weber’s book, Our Friend “The Enemy”, he poses that the Gourdouli began in a chant against the admission of an Italian ethnic man to the college, with Trinity soon responding with “Balliol bring out your blacks!” Whilst this is not at all reflective of the current attitude towards minority groups in Oxford today, it must be considered that songs we sing in light hearted jest were not always intended in that way.

Whatever your college anthem is – a cheesy 80s track or a handme-down chant – it is something that you will inevitably remember long after you have graduated from the university and left the hallowed halls of Arzoo and At Thai.

It will come on the radio midday whilst you are stuck in the congested commuter traffic on a Monday evening after a long day at work, and you’ll smile at the memories of your university experience which will come flooding back.

LUCY CLARKE

Regent’s Park College Women in particular branches of music – metal, indie rock, post-punk stand out immediately – are treated as highly unusual. The odd female singer in a male-dominated band – Paramore, Wolf Alice, London Grammar – is treated as a quirk, a unique selling point: because, of course, music is a man’s world. Savages created hype not because they were a post-punk band about 30 years too late, but because they were an all-female post-punk band.

They say there’s no accounting for taste: one friend of mine told me that he just didn’t like female singers on aesthetic grounds. But isn’t that just product of the society we live in that’s constructed women as inferiors? Music’s normalised as a male domain, where women have to go above and beyond to be heard and seen, and to be critically recognised.

And along with being a symptom of a wider problem, the Reading and Leeds lineup is an issue in of itself: visibility. It is hard to imagine yourself as something you never see – try to think of being a young female musician in that crowd on August bank holiday this year.

Demoralising doesn’t cover it.

Music 5

5th March 2015

We Eight Got Time OxStu’s 8th Week Playlist

White Trash Wedding Dixie Chicks Columbia Records

Yoko Pegasus Bridge LAB Records

Infinity Jesu Avalanche Recordings

Edge of Seventeen Stevie Nicks Modern/Alto

A Guide to Helsinki for the Perplexed M

arch 2015 is looking like a good month for music. The part of my heart which still beats for the noughties has been doing 130bpm for new releases by The Cribs, Cold War Kids and of Montreal, but mostly, I’ve been getting excited for Helsinki’s A Guide for the Perplexed, which comes out on 2nd March.

Helsinki is mainly the project of Babyshambles’ bassist and well-known roaming creative spirit Drew McConnell. Drew has been the steadiest and most reliable member of Babyshambles, but has simultaneously managed to keep alive several side projects, including Helsinki and a supergroup called Mongrel. Drew has spent the last decade making music with a series of indie greats – The Strokes’ guitarist Albert Hammond Jr, former Arctic Monkeys’ bassist Andy Nicholson and Jon McClure of Reverend and the Makers, to name but a few – occasionally playing gigs for Love Music Hate Racism, putting together playlists for the London Occupy protests, and magnanimously

PHOTO/ HELSINKI

releasing little packages of his songs for free online. His creative output is vast and impressively varied.

Despite the lack of a formal release until now, over the last few years I’ve managed to put together a decent iTunes folder of Helsinki tracks, ripping YouTube videos or hungrily devouring free downloads. Because of that, I know that many of the songs on the new album have been gracing Drew’s guitar for years. Nevertheless, the clean, restrained, lo-fi production

of these new recordings has reinvigorated the songs and unified their sound.

Beautifully understated ‘Brideshead’ is livened up in its new form, the harmonies of ‘Cologne Hotel’ are sharper and richer, and the production places Drew’s thoughtful, melancholy lyrics at the forefront of the mix.

This isn’t particularly experimental music, and it probably won’t capture the attention of 2015’s cool kids. Drew can do cool – Mongrel proves that – but Helsinki’s output is more subtle

KATE BRADLEY

Oriel College

and grown-up. Many of these tracks are slow-burners. When you’ve forgotten the hooks of 2015’s big chart hits, Helsinki’s melodies will still be there, quietly insistent, in your mind. I keep returning to the gorgeously unnerving, Radiohead-like middle eight in single ‘Rising Heights’, and five years since I first heard him play it, the contrast between the chirpy guitar chords and the melancholic breathiness of Drew’s voice on ‘Brideshead’ is still arresting.

Though all of the tracks on this album have their unique charms, ‘Ribtickling’ is still my highlight. It has persisted on my iPod in many versions through many stages of my life – between its cadences, I can hear a thousand moments in my teenage years. Not all music has the power to get inside your mind like that, but Drew has a particular skill for tuning into the mood between sadness and neutrality which I think pervades a lot of people’s lives. If you recognise that in yourself, I encourage you to take a few listens to A Guide for the Perplexed.

TERM TIME MUSIC HEROES 69 Love Songs Henry Holmes

Whenever you tell people that The Magnetic Field’s seminal 1999 album 69 Love Songs is literally that, a 69-song album, all of which are about love, they tend to get quite confused. But Stephin Merritt’s outpouring of 69 very different songs is exceptional. There’s no real sense of filler in any of the songs that you might expect from such a project; each song offers a totally unique perspective. He’s a master of the melancholically upbeat, especially in songs such as ‘No-One Will Ever Love You’, as well as the genuinely joyful ‘When My Boy Walks Down The Street’ and the outright bizarreness of ‘Wi Nae Wee Bairn Ye’ll Me Beget’ or ‘Love is like Jazz’. Merritt’s voice is instantly recognisable in its bass-drenched misery that inspires so many of the drony altcountry voices of John Grant and Father John Misty nowadays, and his pure songwriting ability is cited as an inspiration to so many contemporary artists such as Alvvays and Amanda Palmer. But why have I been listening to it all term? Merritt’s attitude towards the world and love is still incredibly refreshing; there’s so much variety within this one album that I’ll definitely be listening to it for years and years.

1989

LP1

Kate Bickerton

Naomi Southwell

If it hadn’t been for a well-timed Taylor Swift release, I don’t know how I would have survived this term. 1989 was released at the end of last Michaelmas, and I can honestly say that it could not have come sooner. My first term at Oxford had truly worn me down.

Tired, worried about collections and wondering how I was going to get my entire first term over packing home, it was the pop tones of Ms Swift which saw me through.

This term, it has been a godsend.

‘Shake It Off’ was my go to track to walk back to college to after a long and terrible tutorial. ‘Blank Space’ made great RAG Talent Show karaoke, albeit very drunken.

‘Out of the Woods’ was perfect to accompany my oft-happening essay crises. 1989 has become the soundtrack to my life, even if it is just walking around Tesco. I sometimes wonder if Taylor Swift is actually just the code word for some kind of music mogul hive mind which has tapped into the psyche of all young women – expressing their thoughts and emotions through a package of pop melodies and witty lyricisms. I don’t know how she does it, but Taylor Swift has managed to write an album which has piqued my interest for a whole term. Here’s to Taylor Swift Trinity term!

FKA Twigs album LP1, released in August 2014 by Young Turks, was nominated for the 2014 Mercury Prize (which it arguably should have won) and for best recording package at the 2015 Grammys. After listening to the main tracks of the album, ‘Two Weeks’ and ‘Pendulum’, it was this term that I fully delved into the entire project. When listening to any FKA Twigs record, it’s hard not to become fully immersed in the world of the artist.

With complex lyrics and ethereal vocals awash with hypnotic beats and stunning visuals, the album is a mammoth undertaking. LP1 is Twigs articulating her vision.

A complete and total expression of identity and all that it encompasses. The original choreography in her music videos, the production of the album, for which Twigs was heavily involved and her distinctively soft, otherworldly voice come together as a complete expression of Twigs’ experience. This authenticity and daring exploration of the self that characterises the work of seminal artists such as PJ Harvey and Bjork, is becoming increasingly hard to find. With LP1, Twigs joins this pantheon of artists, with her eccentrically expressive debut.

Honeyblood

Sachin Croker Honeyblood’s self-titled album has been one of those records that slowly and stealthily becomes an obsession. While in my head it’s still a small, quaintly interesting album, to my housemates, neighbours, and people I pass by on my bike, it has been a continuous racket for the whole eight weeks.

What makes it so good is surprisingly contradictory. Honeyblood are two Scottish women, whose album offers a neat blend of modern Indie Rock and ‘90s Riot Grrrl punk, managing to neither be throwback, nor zeitgeist-jumping. Similarly, the songs aren’t finely honed masterpieces, but neither are they rough and ready demos.

Instead, the band really perfectly capture the pure enjoyment of making music. It’s an album that, much like early Riot Grrrl music, relishes the ability of just expressing oneself musically and lyrically. The way their songs draw on the past and the new without prejudice is a perfect mirror for the modern listener.

It’s an album that just unpretentiously enjoys music, and that kind of unbridled joy is perhaps the type that it’s easiest to lose sight of in a hectic term. Little wonder then, that it’s been such a consistently rewarding listen.

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5th March 2015

PHOTO/AMC

Better Call Saul breaks the spinoff curse B

ack on 20th January 2008, a relatively low budget series received its premiere on American network AMC. The premise was to put Brian Cranston (hitherto known as Hal from ‘Malcolm in the Middle’) on a journey that would, in the words of executive producer Vince Gilligan, transform him from “Mr. Chips to Scarface”. However the series made an inauspicious start, and was threatened with derailment with the writers’ strike later that year.

Yet fast forward the clock seven years, through five seasons and 61 more episodes, polish off the 120 (yes, one hundred and twenty, count them) awards and you are left with one of TV’s greatest series: Breaking Bad. Few series have gathered such a cult following, nor have they attained such a high level of drama.

But it had to end at some point, and now, some sixteen months later, we are graced with its almost inevitable spin off, Better Call Saul.

Could it really be as good as BB? Could it even come close? And could it break the seemingly common trend that spinoffs are never as good as the original? Well, ladies and gentlemen, the early signs suggest that all three of these boxes have been ticked. Of course,

it would be foolish to count our meth profits before it’s even set – there have indeed only been four episodes to date – yet the vital signs are certainly good.

People often forget that the first two series of Breaking Bad certainly weren’t vintage; they were good, of course, but the difference in quality between Episode 2 and Episode 62 was worlds apart.

Thankfully, Saul hasn’t suffered from such a slow start.

To offer some context, the series follows the journey of James McGill (Bob Odenkirk) from honest, small time lawyer, to Saul Goodman, the morally flexible lawyer of Walter White et al. And it is with Odenkirk that the initial strengths lie. “Oh, to be 19 again” a flamboyant McGill claims as he enters the courtroom to defend some college kids who had got themselves into something of a scrape.

Yet this flamboyance is just one layer to Odenkirk’s fabulously nuanced performance. He exudes charisma when necessary, yet that’s just the beginning to a multi-layered performance: indeed, Shrek may concur that McGill, like an ogre, is like an onion. He’s the doting brother of Chuck, the frustrated professional in a seemingly dead end job, the thorn in the side of major law firm

‘Hamlin, Hamlin, McGill’, as well as reflecting an overt moral tussle within the first two episodes.

But what about the rest of the programme? Well the tone has been nailed very early on. The first episode felt very Breaking Bad both in terms of cinematography and content, but since then it has carved its own feel. As Odenkirk once relayed the series is perhaps “85 per cent drama, 15 per cent comedy”;

When you set the bar so high so early on, you’re a slave to your own success. and let’s be fair, the comedy stakes in Breaking Bad seldom rose above two per cent. It is lighter than its predecessor, mainly due to the comedic protagonist, yet it is still first rate drama.

The scripting is sharp and some scenes are delightfully layered with music – something that Breaking Bad always did so well.

As you may have noticed, this is a McGill-centric review, and this is per-

haps where a tiny, miniscule problem may arise. Walter always had Jesse, Skylar, Hank and Marie to bounce off, but McGill is a bit more isolated.

Although it is brilliant to see the reprisal of everyone’s favourite curmudgeon Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks), as McGill concedes, he certainly isn’t “the loquacious type”.

I’m probably nit-picking, but the problem is that when you set the bar so high so early on, you’re a slave to your own success. As good as Odenkirk is, it will be incredibly difficult for him if he has to try and go solo the whole time, although I’m sure that as we get to know the other main characters this will cease to be an issue.

However, McGill can allow himself a sigh of relief. He isn’t the ‘Joey’ to Breaking Bad’s ‘Friends’ (I’m sorry Joe, it just wasn’t the same), more like the ’Frasier’ to his predecessor’s ‘Cheers’. The art of making a sequel or prequel is always very hard. Expectations are ludicrously high and there’s a fine line between paying homage to your heritage and then trying too hard to simply be it.

The best spinoffs master this balance, but it certainly isn’t a formulaic process, with much of it simply coming down to good luck. For example, CW’s The

LUKE WALPOLE

St Hugh’s College Flash is an almost carbon copy of the station’s other superhero show; Arrow.

On paper, you would have thought that most audiences would have seen this and panned it. There’s the hero, his trusty team, the ‘big bad’, the unrequited love interest, and similar-style villains. However, a slight change in tone, in this instance a more humorous one, enables the show to reflect its origin yet also create its own personality. Whilst Arrow revels in being grittier, The Flash enjoys its lighter remit. But even changes in tone don’t guarantee success. Doctor Who went in two separate directions with its spin offs. Torchwood was darker and critically successful, but the more child-friendly Sarah Jane Adventures simply didn’t work as well.

Drama is incredibly hard to replicate, spin, or alter, which makes Better Call Saul’s compelling start all the more impressive. There’s enough Breaking Bad to please fans of the show, yet also enough originality to carry its own weight. Seldom do shows get commissioned for a second season some seven months before their premiere, but seldom do shows, especially spinoffs, start so auspiciously. Indeed, I for one am glad we called Saul.

5th March 2015

Review: Leviathan T

he movie Leviathan by Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev, funded by the Ministry of Culture in Russia, retells the story of Job in modern Russia. It portrays the expropriation and slowly creeping destruction of the simple man, Kolya, by the local mayor. Kolya is a car mechanic, living on the peninsula Kola in the Russian hinterland.

The sky seems to have lost all colour here, its grey uniting with the bleak sea and dull faces. He is a good man, grumpy and nervous at times, but loving with his wife Lilya and son Roma. His quaint house right on the seafront is a safe haven; neighbours come to have their cars mended and a drink for the journey.

Then Vadim, the corrupt and alcoholic mayor decides that this spot is too nice for ‘an insect’ to own. He offers a ridiculously low sum for the real estate and the infuriated Kolya calls his former army buddy Dimitri to help him sort out the matter. Dimitri, now a lawyer in dark suit, arrives from Moscow. His briefcase contains incriminating material that is supposed to serve as proof in court of Vadim’s debauchery, but they both soon learn the harsh lesson that in these regions, those with power and money govern the law. After a two minute long monotonic reading of the verdict, Kolya’s property is rightfully Vadim’s.

Vadim spends the evening drink-

ing with his friend, a clergyman of the Russian Orthodox Church, and their unholy alliance against Kolya is sealed with bottles of vodka and fatty food. On his way back home, Vadim decides to pay his new property a visit and confronts the equally drunk Kolya. As they stare each other in the eyes, the whole misery of Russian politics becomes apparent - Kolya has no other option but to withdraw.

Kolya clutches onto his life, but is soon washed away by the cruelty and malevolence of the world surrounding him.

Leviathan portrays a cosmos defined by vodka, egoism and depression. It also depicts the decay of the Soviet Union and the rise of the Russian government that has taken its place. In a brilliant scene, Kolya and his compassionate neighbours decide to go on a hunting trip. They take bottles of vodka and some guns along with them and for the targets, they decide to put up pictures of the Russian leaders, Gorbachev, Lenin, Brezhnev. “Don’t you have any newer ones?” Kolya asks.

The sombre mood in which this movie depicts its alcoholic and broken characters creates a cynical and sinister atmosphere. As the plot moves on at its unsettling slow pace, one cannot help but feel the sense of the futility that surrounds these tragic figures.

Their dark humour and drinking hab-

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COUNTDOWN

PAUL OSTWALD

Regent’s Park its are merely an attempt to rid themselves of their shattered dreams and helplessness.

The title is a reference to Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, in which the author describes the hazards of giving up individual autonomy for a greater, political structure and just society.

Kolya is the victim of such greater forces: the slick lawyers, perverted politics and treason. And just like Job in the Bible, all he can do is succumb to his unjust fate.

The controversy surrounding this film has already spread throughout Russian society and social media networks around the globe. Many claim it to expose everything that has gone wrong since 1990, others believe it to be a portrayal of the Russian soul itself. Originally, the plot was supposed to be set in America, but the directors decided to return to their own nation that had generously provided the film’s funding.

Leviathan is much more than a movie about the degeneration of Russian politics; it is a story about the immense endurance of the human spirit. Its characters might breathe the Russian soul, but they are much more than just an incarnation of vodka and depression. Although Kolya cannot defeat the demons that have taken hold of him, he keeps on fighting simply because it is the right thing to do.

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TOP THREE FILMS TO WATCH THIS EASTER VAC

Get Hard Millionaire James King (Ferrell) is nailed for fraud and bound for prison so he turns to Darnell Lewis (Hart) to help prep him for a life behind bars. Two of the biggest comedy stars today, Will Ferrel and Kevin Hart, team up in this comedy that will undoutedly be a big hit when it is released.

It is evident that these two comedians have great on screen chemistry from the trailer and Get Hard will no doubt have audiences in stitches.

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PHOTO/Way To Blue

Cinderella A live-action retelling of a classic fairytale about a step-daughter/ servant who wins the heart of a prince at a ball. Less CGI heavy than it’s Disney remake predecessors, there are high hopes for Cinderella. It’s star-studded cast including Cate Blanchett as the wicked stepmother and Richard Madden as the prince almost guarantee success.

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PHOTO/Disney Enterprises

It Follows After a seemingly innocent sexual encounter, 19 year-old Jay finds herself plagued with strange visions and cannot shake the feeling that someone is following her. Jay and her friends must find a way to escape the horrors that seem to be shadowing them. This throwback horror movie should hopefully avoid all the horror movie clichés that we’ve seen time and time again, and leave audiences with a lingering feeling of terror long after they’ve left the cinema.

PHOTO/Icon Film Distribution

PHOTO/Allstar

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ALYS KEY

Somerville College

t ought to be noted upfront that I love Broadchurch. The acting is superb, the plotting elegant, and the cinematography enchanting. Any criticism comes from a place of deep affection, but there is nevertheless something very silly about this show.

It could be the fact that approximately half of the cast have appeared in Doctor Who. I keep wondering when Peter Capaldi is going to turn out to be the local postman, or if John Barrowman is going to pop up as a greengrocer or something, doing an appalling West Country accent.

Then again, perhaps the real silliness comes from the format as an ITV show, which demands a mini-cliffhanger every 15 minutes so that you don’t switch over to Crimewatch during the ad break.

Subsequently, the roaring low notes of the score are used to add drama to even the most mundane

lines. “He was cleaning the whole house” only really sounds exciting when you underscore it with a loud DUUUUUUN (cut to break).

If they can’t think of a suitably random line on which to end the scene, there’s always the typical Broadchurch fallback: a shot of someone standing and looking out to sea, deep in contemplation.

church are broodily contemplating their many dark secrets. You would think that they might have learned their lesson from Series 1, in which the uncovering of secrets proved to be the undoing of a whole community. Apparently though, they have taken no such wisdom from these experiences, and this time round we’ve had a child lie in court, a

This could signify anything from illicit scheming to inner conflict to a new revelation, and probably seemed like a good idea when they began the series. Now though, its overuse reminds me of the 2004 film Troy, in which the only real character development came from the actors gazing enigmatically into the distance.

Normally, the residents of Broad-

husband forced to confess that he was planning to leave his wife, and a barrister literally almost die because she wouldn’t admit that her vision isn’t what it used to be.

At the centre of all this is the moody-broody Alec Hardy, whose demeanour and appearance give the impression of someone who has spent the last three days on a friend’s sofa. He resembles Greg-

BROADCHURCH

ory House in his manner of popping pills constantly and hiding his inner turmoil with a general displeasure with the world. Often he verges a little too close to the stereotpyical manly angst character; you can see why the Americans were so keen to pick up the series and make their own version, as they do love their tragically heroic male characters (see: Homeland, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, House of Cards, the list goes on). Much as Tennant’s performance is intergral to the show, one can find this sort of thing a little wearing sometimes.

People of Broadchurch, learn from your mistakes. Stop lying to each other, stop keeping everything in, and for god’s sake stop standing on cliff edges to have your intense moments. If you fall and die in suspicious circumstances, we’ll just have to go through this whole palava all over again.

8 Fashion

Ballternatives Model: Lauren Miles Photography: Amber Larkin Styling: Charlotte Lanning Editing: Tom Reynolds

23rd April 2015

23rd April 2015

Fashion 9

Balltenati

Photographer: Sakura Xiaomei | Models: Rosalind Brody, Lucy Thraves & Re’em

Moskovitz | Concept & Styling: Augustine Cerf & Demie Kim

10 Fashion

FASHION Litographs: the best book you’ve ever worn

5th March 2015

AUGUSTINE CERF

St John’s College

O

xStu Fashion spoke to Jack Neary and Danny Fein from Litographs, the Bostonbased company founded in 2011

by Danny himself and his brother Corey. The company creates art and fashion from the books you’ve read and loved.

Their posters, t-shirts, and tote bags are all created entirely from the text of classic books. From a distance, the artwork illustrates a theme, character, or setting from each book. Move closer and the text becomes fully legible.

In a digital age which threatens the future of reading, this initiative has revitalized the reading experience by placing it into an entirely new context. And for the die-hard bookworms who need no further encouragement, you can become a walking, talking version of your favourite texts – and look bloody good whilst you’re doing it. Litograph’s newest products are literary tattoos, which also follow their mission of celebrating the connection between reader and favorite book.

Where did the idea for Litographs come from? Why do you feel this is a particularly interesting or important project?

Litographs has always been a means for celebrating the relationship between a reader, authors and the books that brought them together.

We felt like there was no better way to do so than by using the actual

text of these books and we want each design to act as a conversation starter around that book and literacy more broadly.

What is your creative process?

How do you create the designs and ensure that they are the most appropriate for the texts they represent? Is it difficult to find a design that will represent an entire work?

We’ve been privileged to work with many talented artists in the past, artists who care just as much as we do about the books they’re illustrating. Even more exciting is the recent addition of Benjy Brooke as our Creative Director. He’s one of the most well-read people on the team

and he’s an even better illustrator.

How do you choose which texts to use?

We started with classics as a way to build our collection initially and now we’re incorporating more contemporary works and forming relationships with these authors. Licensing can be a long process that prevents us from carrying everyone’s favorite book, but we’re committed to making sure all parties are on board and that authors benefit from our service.

What are your best-selling products? Which ones are your personal favourites?

I love the simplicity of designs like Walden and Leaves of Grass, and I also love our bestsellers like Gatsby and Sherlock.

so many different designs and color choices. The shirts are hand pressed using a process called dye sublimation. Posters and tote bags are also printed and sewn on site.

What is the ‘tattoo chain’ and what inspired this particular project?

What kind of responses has the project provoked?

Inspired by Shelley Jackson’s SKIN Project, we decided to break the text of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland into over 5,000 unique temporary tattoos. Via Kickstarter, we found more than enough willing participants to receive one unique phrase, snap a photo, and upload it to our tattoo app, where we’re “printing” the story in full.

How does the production work?

Are you ever concerned that you might be commodifying art?

We work with a great local printer in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who’s allowed us the flexibility to provide

We’re in this business because we love books and we all have favourite authors who are heroes to us.

We’d never produce anything we felt wasn’t a tribute to their great works and that’s why the majority of our products are rooted in the original text.

What tips do you have for aspiring designers or entrepreneurs looking to set up their own brand?

If you’re not happy each and every day to see your team members and get back to work on what you put down just a few hours before, you’re in the wrong business. We’ve also learned a lot from our customers.

They’re passionate about their favorite books and they let us know if we’re not doing them justice.

What’s next for Litographs?

We’re focused on adding more titles to the products our customers know and love. We’re especially excited about working more closely with contemporary authors and finding more ways for them to connect with fans.

PHOTOS / Litographs

5th March 2015

FASHION READING LIST For words of wisdom: Edith Head, How to Dress for Success Nina Garcia, The Little Black Book of Style For cultural enrichment: Kristin Knox, Culture to Catwalk Heidi Julavits, Leanne Shapton, and Sheila Heti, Women In Clothes For designer inspiration: Diane von Furstenberg, The Woman I Wanted to Be Jéromine Savignon, YSL’s Studio For the visuals: Lisa I. Vreeland, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel Shoichi Aoki, Fresh Fruits

PHOTO / Instagram @womeninclothes

From well-read to well-dressed

INSTAWORTHY @olympialetan literally makes book bags. Bags out of books, that is.

Clutches that look like bags. The absolute dream for all you bookish – yet stylish – Oxonians out there. All the bags are handmade and limited to only 16 of each design. Le-Tan is inspired by vibrant book-covers from the 1940s and 50s.

“I just felt that some of them were so amazing that they had to be turned into something even more special,” she says. Keep up to date with these ‘intellectual’ sartorial creations by following on Instagram.

COLETTE SNAPE

St. John’s College

I wanted to look – and feel – like I was following the American Dream; searching those neverending highways for the moments that make a life.

PHOTO /pitoucat

O

n many occasions I have been told I have style. Looking at the intense bundle of confused colours, shapes, patterns and textures in my wardrobe, I’ve never been able to detect any one style in particular. There’s no unique or regular combination that defines my outfits. Instead, I float from day to day, through the seventies, back to the nineties and back into the modern day again.

In the past year my investment in shoes varied from over the knee black leather boots, to bright pink Nike trainers. An eclectic mix, some might say. It was only recently that it suddenly clicked. My lack of a true sartorial direction or of a synthesizing principle that would explain me to myself was troubling. But the struggle is over. I figured out where my random influences spring from: books.

Yes, my dressed down punk aesthetic certainly comes from my mother’s love for Blondie, Souxsie and the Banshees, and Joan Jett, but it really is literature that has fuelled my love for styles from every era. The beat generation’s jazzy feeling which seeped out of the pages of Jack Kerouac’s nostalgic verses gave me (and my impressionable wannabe-Beatnik 15 year old self) my love for blue jeans and Doc Marten boots. I wanted to look – and feel - like I was following the American Dream; searching those never-ending highways for the moments that make a life. It’s probably also the reason I am utterly incapable of resisting a young lad wearing a white t-shirt wrapped in a plaid shirt.

The amount of glittery, silver, over the top, floaty ensembles that flooded my wardrobe after studying The Great Gatsby at the impressionable age of 17 was enforced by that insurmountable desire to be the cynical Daisy Buchanan, a desire I’m sure is familiar to most who studied the notorious text at school. The desire to be the girl who knows all the cruelties of her privileged world, but just

PHOTO /Andy Field

parties away in fabulous gowns anyway, because, well, what else is there to do?

Compared to the hit and run shenanigan, emulating the clothes was clearly the safer option.

The draw of sequins never needs additional allure, but after venturing into the world of Eva Luna via the imagination of Isabella Allende, allowing one to live alongside the transvestite community in the backstreets of South America incensed a need to be bejeweled from head to toe. A collection of sequined crop tops and shimmering dresses ensued.

For most, the 1970s evoke images of flamboyant flares and outlandish shirts, but for me the era has more of a sludgy brown and grayish green feeling. It’s the drab paisley shirts and corduroys, no more dully manifested than in John Le Carré’s quietly unsettling reports from the spies of the Cold War. I find myself entering the world of Holly Golightly when I’m getting ready for any kind of formal occasion. Not the trumped up innocent Hollywood Holly of the movies (though I love Audrey deeply), but the raw prostitute of Truman Capote’s short novel, shielded from the judgmental eyes of society by the array of fifties dresses. A black lace shift dress covers all manner of sins, and if paired with black eyeliner, you will be seen as nothing more than the height of sophistication.

Great authors describe us better than we ever could, putting into words the feelings we can never say the way we’d like to ourselves. George Orwell professed that “you may have three half pence in your pocket and no prospects in the world… but in your new clothes you can stand on a street corner, indulging in a private daydream of yourself as Clark Gable or Greta Garbo”. That’s exactly how I feel each morning as I stand before my wardrobe: who am I going to be today?

On language, literature, and fashion

PHOTO / Instagram @olympialetan

Fashion 11

F

ashion and literature are two creative fields which, superficially, appear quite disconnected. How are we to place together a quite visual and tactile manifestation of art (albeit one often accused of frivolity or shallowness) with something altogether much less so?

Yet upon closer inspection, it is clear that there are a variety of ways in which the interplay between fashion and literature comes to the fore.

Roland Barthes’ Système de la mode is an early example of the application of linguistics to fashion, and from it we see clearly how literature and fashion may be linked. Barthes argues for a view of fashion as semiological, akin to language, with an underlying ‘grammar’. That is, fashion conveys meaning – the miniskirt is a sign which tells the society things about the person who chooses to wear it.

Barthes argues that clothes become ‘fashion’ when words are applied to them: in his view, right from the offset we can only consider ‘fashion’ as the interplay of clothing and language.

Naturally, much of the language applied to fashion is to be found in fashion magazines, and it is perhaps such texts to which Barthes primarily refers. However, literature too, insofar as it is a representation of human life, necessarily comprises

fashion, including it both as ancillary and fundamental parts of narrative.

Literature can play three roles in fashion: first, it can function as a depiction of fashion. Through presentation of clothing in literature, an author might exploit Barthes’ semiotics of fashion to indicate aspects of a character which might otherwise go unsaid; or equally that the reader might, especially in the case of texts written in another era or place, learn about, and experience something of, the particular fashion(s) characteristic to them.

Secondly, literature may function as a means through which fashion is created: not only through application of words to clothing, but also through the creation of characters and worlds with which clothing becomes inextricably linked. Novels such as Vanity Fair and The Portrait of Dorian Gray, which include intricate depictions of clothing, may help – especially in a different era – to popularise fashion trends.

Lastly, literature, in a reverse process, serves as inspiration to fashion. In all areas of fashion production, literature can be seen to be present: from nods to Lewis Carroll in Zac Posen (Pre-Fall 2010) and Miss Havisham-inspired dresses at Chanel (S/S 2013) to editorials of Gats-

JACK HAYES

Wadham College

by-esque 20s couture (Paris, je t’aime, American Vogue September 2007) and a modernised Jane Eyre (Thornfield in Flame, Vogue Italia July 2013), fashion is heavily indebted to literature as a source of much inspiration.

Whilst fashion is sometimes disparaged as a lesser form of creative art, it too can be equally complex and convey meaning, albeit in a different and more particular manner as compared to literature. We must consider fashion and literature not separate but rather unmistakeably intertwined — the two art forms are in a state of fruitful and productive symbiosis.

PHOTO /François Dominique L

PHOTOS / Polyvore

PHOTO /Wikimedia user Joergens.mi

12 Arts & Lit

5th March 2015

5th March 2015

Arts & Lit 13

In conversation with Nigel Warburton

LAURA HAMILTON

or a number of years now, philosophers and defenders of spoken-word philosophy David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton have been creating a warm cocoon of soft-spoken intelligence, available to download for those who otherwise would not have been able to dabble in the world of philosophy. According to Warburton, their original vision was simple: “to see if we could make some interviews that would be of general interest with top philosophers.” This might seem ambitious, but the pair has only encountered success: their following has grown immensely and they have topped 23 million downloads on iTunes. Is there a limit to how far their chosen format can go?

Not according to Warburton: “It can keep on going, just like Desert Island Discs or Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time. It’s extendable – there’s no reason it can’t go on in the same format.” The shorter length is also preferable to the excessively verbose manner of many philosophers: “There’s an advantage to keeping some philosophers succinct, because some of them are used to

I’m somebody who’s very much on the side of free expression…and when people are prepared to engage in debate rather than merely spouting propaganda, that’s an excellent opportunity to have their views challenged in public.”

As can be expected from any good philosopher, Warburton’s views here tie in with his views on other areas of life. His love for lively debate and good conversation come through when I ask who would be chosen for a “Philosophy Bites: deceased philosophers edition” and he chooses Socrates. “Socrates would give a good conversation I suspect, seeing as that was his metier. He liked debate and argument and to and fro – many of the good philosophers were good at monologue and so wouldn’t be good at dialogue, but some of them would have been.”

And when choosing a topic for his own Philosophy Bite? An examination of spoken-word philosophy, of course. “Philosophers spend a lot of time talking, and there are things in the quality of somebody’s voice and the intonation, the rhythms, the passion, the non-verbal implications that I think are important in communicating philosophy for many philosophers.”

Speaking to Nigel Warburton was a valuable reminder that philosophy does not have to be caught up in the dry and arduous textbooks to be found in the Bodleian, nor does it have to reduce you to tears in tutorials as you are made to feel inadequate by both traitorous tutorial partner and bemused tutor. Instead, philosophy can exist outside of these often suffocating contexts, in lively dinner party conversation and heated debate. David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton have gone to fantastic lengths to restore this socially stimulating yet loyally academic facet of philosophy, and I can only feel gratitude towards them for doing so.

F

PHOTO/NIGEL WARBURTON

having an hour and a half to explain their ideas without interruption, and that’s not necessarily good for them. We’re not purporting to give the last word on anything we discuss, the purpose of it is to explore ideas and open up questions and possible directions that people can take, to stimulate people to think, it’s not meant to tell them everything that could possibly be said about the subject.”

“Socrates would give a good conversation I suspect, seeing as that was his metier” Having been given the opportunity to have a conversation with Nigel Warburton, I was of course going to put him on the other side of the table and quiz him myself.

The obvious topic was the recent controversy surrounding French Front National leader Marine le Pen’s visit to the Oxford Union: does the author of the Very Short Introduction to Free Speech support her visit and open platform?

Warburton was cautious in his reply, generalising the issue to “a disconcerting readiness amongst many universities in Britain and in the States to prevent speakers airing their views, and even to stop certain university clubs discussing certain topics. I’d hope that universities can debate things – when people are prepared to debate, it can be useful to refute their positions rather than simply prevent them speaking at all. In the case of Marine le Pen, I think the issue is partly that she’d been given a very long slot in the agenda…I would prefer to see somebody like that given the chance to debate in more of a Question Time format, than a preaching one.

Tanya Harnett at the Pitt Rivers Museum

T

he colour red symbolises the paradoxical state of modernity. It is love, it is death, it is Communist uprisings of the last century, and coffee cups of the present day – an overused, yet evocative cliché. Tanya Harnett’s photography exhibition draws on unmistakable colour imagery to present the degradation of Canadian First Nation’s water sources. The collection is the

PHOTO/PITT RIVERS MUSEUM

result of a 2011 project that saw food colouring being poured into the water of problem areas of five First Nation tribes.

Conceptually the project is one of vast artistic potential, yet as H.P. Lovecraft once stated ‘from even the greatest of horrors, irony is seldom absent.’

Seven seemingly innocuous tributaries, shorelines and lakes make up the collection – harmless apart from the stream of red, which marks every picture. Without the symbolism provided by the dye, the pictures would provide little visual stimulation, encapsulating the modern-day consumer’s nonchalance to nature. They are not necessarily well-balanced shots, in either framing or colour composition, but they are not intended to be so. They are meant to present bleak reality for the Canadian Indians of Northern Alberta, who have increasingly experienced the contamination of their water, as a result of resource extraction.

The exhibition is certainly not a quest for the perfect image, or at least, if it is, it’s fallen far short. Despite the dimlylit romanticism of the main Pitt Rivers’ collections, the atmosphere of the Long Gallery significantly let the collection

RUSKIN PROFILE: Angus Steele

Regent’s Park College

JESSICA GOULD

Jesus College

down. The fluorescent strip lights of what is – quite literally – a corridor, broke what should have been a reflective experience on the detrimental nature of mankind.

The framing was arguably wrong, mirroring warped plastic notice boards of secondary school corridors. In what one can only presume was unintentional irony, the collection was also sound-tracked by the whir of the hand-driers, and the flushing of water, from the toilets which come off of the collection. Harnett’s work is subtle and unpretentious, and required a softer, more intimate setting. The Long Gallery lacked the ambience required to carry the ungainly charm of the pictures, failing to evoke the nostalgic, vulnerable quality that the grainy photographs could have brought.

It’s not a visually stimulating art exhibition, as of yet. The imagery was, for me, too obvious, the setting wrong, and the shots poorly balanced. It is unlikely to be a honey-pot instalment for the Pitt Rivers. Harnett sets out to raise important questions about the sustainability of resource extraction, and does achieve this, to a degree – that is, of course, if you ignore the irony of the toilets.

PHOTO/ANGUS STEELE

A

ngus Steele, second year Ruskin student, talks about a sense of self in art, the meaning of perspective, and the importance of the artist’s methodology.

What are you doing?

Maybe I’m making something beautiful to put up on the wall, maybe I just want to make you think, maybe this, maybe that, and so on. Everything falls apart under close scrutiny in a subject that lacks a methodology. It seems the same problems that art works with are solved and explored creatively and intuitively by people outside the art world.

The emotions it attempts to capture are naturally present in all of our daily lives and ‘beauty’ is a subjective interpretation that more often than not perpetrates damaging and harmful stereotypes, or idealises into abstraction. I can’t help but feel these problems, although by no means new, are becoming increasingly hard to ignore, as a student, but also as a consumer (pejorative) of art, the lack of any clear structure is both alienating and frustrating. It can be so hard to see what art actively achieves in the 21st century – besides its use as a currency.

Why does it matter?

Well, this floating free from prevailing epistemological frameworks is clearly positive in some ways. The dominant reductionist outlook which has led to the most spectacular advances in human history, right down to the atom bomb, cannot solve the most pressing problem of all in the networked present – us (if indeed we can be solved). Our subjective experience is just not comprehensible through an entirely reductionist lens. It is therefore limiting to study the conscious

mind in a conventional sense. It is this limitation that necessitates the humanities (the clue is in the name). Contemporary arts’ dilettantism can become a cutting tool of exploration. Working in an informed, coherent, positive way, refining and integrating different strata of methodologies and ideologies with the fundamentally objective acceptance of the unavoidably subjective self, Art, and the art institution – wherever it springs up – can become the harbour space of knowing cultural exploration and construction.

So what’s the point of it all?

Maybe it’s time for the art world to join in fully with the disciplines and methods that have defined it. This could range from the media it uses, through to the fabric of the world that frames it. It could be seen to act as a bridge between disciplines, actively seeking to criticise - but also to illustrate, to explain, to collaborate, to create links between an overtly demarcated world. Art could also be critical therapy, a celebration of the self, even the rejection of it, and above all a way to realize myriad structures and methodologies. These can be both removed from their source (and therefore personal investment) and also not distorted by a need for immediate success (the prerequisite of commercialized creativity, which is dependent on cultural norms). In reinstating a function, even if that function is to render a function meaningless, at least one aspect of the implicit exclusion that pervades the art space is removed. Making sense of the world is not – and cannot – be a didactic process. So we’re left to ask ourselves: why is it presented as such?

PHOTO/ANGUS STEELE

14 Stage

STAGE

5th March 2015

PHOTO/Dominic Clemence

Shakespeare, gender and unorthodox rehearsals with Ed Hall D irector Edward Hall is best known for creating the allmale theatre company, Propellor, who perform Shakespeare plays, re-imagined to relate to a contemporary audience. However, when I ask him about it, he describes the iconic Propellor as an “accidental theatre company”.

Having initially approached the works of the ‘bard’ with trepidation and “a degree of fear”, his first production of Othello made him realise that he didn’t want to fit into such traditional constraints. “Why can’t we cut loose a bit?” he asks. His production of Henry V was his first foray into this, and by the time the group were onto their third all-male Shakespeare, they thought they might as well put a name to what was becoming a company. “It’s a company that was created by the work.”

Touring is an intrinsic part of the company, flying between nations as far apart as Bangladesh and Sweden.

I ask about the different performance experiences that must breed, but Ed

is quick to tell me that “it’s not the difference of the audience, it’s the similarity. You get the same laughs in Jakarta as you get in Plymouth.”

The company often tours two shows simultaneously alongside each other.

There is no specific method to how Ed chooses the two plays, though he prefers to focus on their differences rather than their similarities. Sometimes pairing a better known title with a more obscure one is a good way to encourage people to see the lesser known play. “They come back to see the actors,” he says. Doing two plays alongside each other also has implications for casting, meaning that actors can end up playing two very different roles on alternate evenings – certainly one way to keep performing interesting from night to night.

The company has a very loyal ethos.

Once an actor has worked for the company, they are automatically offered a place in the next production.

When recruiting new actors, Ed looks for people who are “willing to bring as much to the table as possible”.

The all-male nature of the cast is “a nod to the original practises of the day, but only a nod,” he assures me, and it is combined with a “modern aesthetic”. The rural pastoral setting of the latter half of The Winter’s Tale is turned into a bohemian festival reminiscent of Glastonbury, with wellies and guitars peppering the landscape.

“You get the same laughs in Jakarta as you get in Plymouth.”

I ask him if he thinks an all-female company could do a similar thing but he reminds me not to generalise.

“That’s how that group of human beings did that play at that time,” he corrects; no female company or male company is the same as any other.

What the single gender nature of the company does allow is a “deliberate reminder to the audience that what

they’re watching is not real”. The imagination must work harder and there is a greater emphasis on the process of acting, of playing a part, of suspending disbelief.

Rehearsals are a very collaborative process, and the actors are afforded a lot of creative freedom. “I want to know what everybody’s ideas are,” Ed tells me. He and the designer will work on the general concept, so the actors are given “an arena to play inside”, and rehearsals can veer between noisy chaos and meticulous textual work. “Every little shift in the text involves the rhythm of the actors,” and so their complete comprehension of every textual detail is essential to their understanding of their characters and the atmosphere and world they are creating onstage.

One play demanded five weeks of daily army training for the actors out on Clapham Common. It was hardly an orthodox rehearsal technique, but they were “exactly where they needed to be to do the play”. Richard III is a particularly good memory for Ed and

AMELIA BROWN

Jesus College one of his favourite productions. “We found how we wanted to do it in the first rehearsal,” he tells me, and it was “really quite extreme in the collision of comedy and intense violence.”

As well as his work with Propellor, Ed is the artistic director at Hampstead Theatre in London. Working with new writing, this is a very different side of theatre but one which he enjoys just as much. However, it doesn’t stop him dreaming and he has a very specific vision in mind – “I would like to do the late plays on an uninhabited island off the west coast of Scotland”. Playing inside and outside, he envisions the audience being shipped over on boats for the weekend.

With such an extensive career I ask what advice he has for budding directors who might want to follow in his footsteps. “The best way of learning is by getting in the chair and doing it,” he says, advocating making the most of every opportunity you can get. “Listen,” he finishes, “because you never stop learning.”

Stage 15

5th March 2015

Crossing into a fairytale

IMAGE/ Shannon Smith and Steven Doran

“T

hink of all the tales you’re going to discover…”

Arriving on the BT stage this 7th week is As I Crossed A Bridge of Dreams, a new adaptation of an 11th century Japanese text. This play includes the elements of what student drama does best: it has an original score, a new script and includes ballet sequences. In short they’re doing something new, interesting and a little experimental.

As I Crossed A Bridge of Dreams follows the life of Lady Sarashina as she travels through Japan. She is passionate about stories and finds refuge in the tales she is told. The stories are such a significant part of her identity that this mystical play obscures the boundaries between dreams and reality.

Impressively, director Laura Cull adapted the original text into a play

with help from her friend Harriet Rowe, who studies Japanese. The original does not give names to many characters but Harriet was able to find appropriate ones; she also gave cultural advice, having read the original in Japanese and being familiar with the customs. Working with her own script meant that Cull was able to develop and change moments as they rehearsed; the characters and script could be developed during the rehearsal process with the input of the actors. She also had the liberty to emphasise moments which she found particularly important from the original; it is her interpretation of the ancient Japanese text that we will be watching in the play.

What I heard from the script was skilfully done; the language maintains the ethereal mood of the piece with lines such as “I continued to

HARRIET FRY

LOOKING BACK

Somerville College bathe in the tales”. Cull has managed to sustain an authentic tone when writing this script. It has a complicated structure as the plot flits between the real and the fantasy worlds; the result is a beautiful mix of stories woven together.

The stories are presented in a range of ways too. Cull wanted it to be an “immersive, multimedia project”. including live music and ballet. The music was written especially for the play by Marco Galvani who also wrote the score for His Dark Materials which enjoyed a successful run at the O’Reilly last term. It certainly adds atmosphere to pivotal moments of the play.

Ballet adds to the fairy-like qualities of some of the characters and the dance is used to illustrate the stories on stage. The ballet I saw in the preview was of particularly high quality and I loved the idea that they are mixing so many different techniques in one play. The drama scene in Oxford is very strong but I like that this play is giving dance a platform too.

It makes the piece much more varied and I like that they are experimenting with the different ways a story can be communicated.

Whether you are interested by avant-garde ethereal music, some expressive dance, or a new translation of an ancient text, this play provides different aspects which will appeal to a range of people. I look forward to seeing how it all comes together.

As I Crossed A Bridge of Dreams is playing at the Burton-Taylor Studio from 3rd - 7th March.

I

t’s the last issue of term, so we thought it was only fitting that we reflected on the wonderful and varied theatre that Oxford has had to offer us this term. Comedy, dance, musicals, and new writing have all played alongside each other across Oxford. A garden play in the rain for Macbeth; a student takeover of the Sheldonian for The Crucible; the list is endless.

Beginning with Pinter is never a bad thing, and the BT gave us a healthy dose with the darkly comic production of The Dumb Waiter.

The BT continued to impress Brief Interviews with Hideous Men was a particular highlight. Of course we can hardly forget West Side Story and Noises Off which took over the playhouse in 3rd week and 5th week respectively.

The work of West Side Story’s choreographer Ed Addison was not yet done. As President of the Broad Street Dancers, he played a significant role in putting together their latest show Dynamica, which combined a huge variety of dance forms incredibly successfully.

The return of the Audrey’s nights has been a particular comedy highlight. Furthermore, touring around the colleges, ‘College Comedy Nights’ are new to the scene and have been raising money for ‘Mind’, by making people laugh.

This has also been a great term for new writing. The OUDS New Writing Festival offered the chance for four winning playwrights to

Why do we do it? The purpose of student theatre

A

ny poor soul who has tried to coordinate their cast and crew’s timetables will, through the haze of Google Docs and Doodle polls, almost definitely have screamed, “WHY?!”

Between this ‘non-negotiable’ class and that ‘compulsory’ lecture, we might start to think that putting on a play was nearly impossible at university. Yet, each term, tens of productions make their mark on the Oxford University drama scene.

From exciting new writing projects at the Burton-Taylor Studio to phenomenal musical spectacles at the Playhouse, there is a wealth of determination among the student body. We are ready to juggle degrees with funding meetings and forgo Bridge for late night rehearsals, but why?

Perhaps the obvious answer is ‘fun’.

Certainly, few who have taken any role in an Oxford production would deny the incredible feeling of finally pulling it off, or of the brilliant friendships forged along the way. The exhilaration of performance is rarely matched and the cliché that it is “something we will always remember” seems to ring entirely true.

Or, maybe it is ‘practice’, an odd sort of CV building exercise for our future theatrical careers. Oxford has produced some of the top names in British theatre, television and film today and most would attribute their success to skills cultivated in their time at university. Indeed, to have grappled with budgets is an impres-

PHOTO/Oliver Robinson Photography

sive skill to show a future employer, and the improvement of age-old merits like organisation, teamwork, and confidence all seem to give student theatre a solid foundation.

However, to merely consider the purpose of student theatre as ‘having fun’ and gaining experience is simplistic and, frankly, patronising. Beyond this basic level, student theatre can be an excellent tool for promoting causes, generating debate and offers a platform for investigating ideas outside of lecture theatres.

New writing in particular can be a brilliant instrument for novel conversation, as can more controversial script choices or collaboration pieces.

The capacity student theatre has to inspire discussion of new ideas is unparalleled, and what we choose to produce has the potential to break down

taboos and stimulate dynamic discussion.

Nonetheless, this potential is not always realised and there remains concern over the diversity of the scripts selected for production. Student theatre is less ticket sales-driven than its professional counterpart but such factors still remain prominent throughout the production process: the danger of not breaking even can dominate decisions. On the other hand, the various venues available to accommodate productions facilitate experimentation and encourage development without too strong a threat of ‘failure’. Funding can be terrifying and confusing, but it ultimately feels a bit like Monopoly money and the fall is never so hard as it would be ‘in the real world’.

The Burton-Taylor Studio exhibits the vast wealth of variety in Oxford student theatre, its showcase of new writing and

more experimental pieces is incredible.

It is a more manageable space and project size for those students just starting out, or planning to investigate more volatile ideas. The OUDS New Writing Festival recently realised this phenomenal ability student theatre has with its four original pieces. The NWF is a clear demonstration of the emphasis placed on creativity in Oxford student theatre with the four scripts introducing their audiences to a new generation of opinions, a fresh outlook on old debates and the introduction of new ones.

The Oxford Playhouse is far more financially demanding than other Oxford venues (though some might argue this means it has to ‘play safer’ in its production choices) and this means the potential it has to spread ideas across Oxford increases. OUDS National and International Tours are vivid illustrations of the enormous audience student theatre can have and the potential it has to influence such a variety of people.

Ashmolean Live Fridays again exhibit student theatre, exploring ideas in ways not offered by the core academic system.

Theatre, music, art, and history entangle and their links identified but also built upon to reach new conclusions. They also prove that student drama can bring town and gown together to create richer discussion.

The possibility of joining student pro-

have their work performed for the first time, a unique opportunity.

However the new writing did not stop there with offerings such as George and the Dragon and Potosi, a great advert for the importance of staging new writing.

Arts festivals have been rife this term, kicking off with the Turl Street Arts Festival, and subsequently joined by the Keble Arts Festival and the Somerville Arts Festival which is going on this week. Theatrical highlights of these have included rehearsed readings of Constellations and The Vagina Monologues, and Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea will not be a bad way to end it all this weekend.

We are all sure to be missing Oxford theatre over the holidays, so now is the time to get your final dose of it before we depart for the vac, and there is still some great theatre to look forward to. This week the Keble O’Reilly is playing host to The Architect. As tower blocks are built, family relationships are falling apart. This is a beautiful and moving play about people, family and love.

Some Molière finishes the term at the BT, whilst the late slot offers the Italian play, a chance for some linguistic culture before you head home.

It has been an incredibly varied term, with a lot to offer, and we are already looking forward to seeing what next term has in store.

MEGAN THOMAS

Somerville College ductions with other bodies, such as charities and even academic departments, further purports the capacity theatre has to educate through inducing conversation. Ophir’s recent production of Lucy Prebble’s The Effect at the Keble O’Reilly is a clear demonstration of student theatre working to such a purpose, as it joined with the Mind Your Head Campaign and the Oxford Counselling Service. The input from external organisations has potential at all levels from offering advice at the rehearsal stage on how to tactfully approach sensitive issues such as mental health, a core strand in The Effect, to a pre-matinee discussion with a professional from the counselling department.

The opportunities for collaboration are being increasingly recognised in Oxford student theatre and from debates at the Union to talks in college auditoriums, the important role student theatre can play in social discussion is slowly being realised.

The purpose of student theatre should not be simplified as the capacity it has to generate debate across Oxford, and even further afield, is phenomenal and vitally important. As students, we have fewer restraints than our professional counterparts and it is possible to take greater risks, to experiment with new writing and controversial ideas, as well as develop skills vital to our careers ahead and ‘have fun’!

5th March 2015

PROFILE

Profile 13

PHOTO/Natalie Bennett

Today and tomorrow with Anna Wintour A nna Wintour is not wearing her signature sunglasses today.

She meets everyone's eyes asshe greets them with a warm smile. She shakes my hand, asks my name and what subject I do, and even compliments my outfit. This is not the woman you might be led to expect by the public perception of the Editor-in-Chief of American Vogue, an impression fuelled by the looming caricature of Miranda Priestley from The Devil Wears Prada.

In person, she is characteristically welldressed (Valentino and Burberry, of course), very witty, and considerate.

She even kindly provides me with a copy of her speech, should I wish to reference it.

What does strike me though is her unwavering commitment to her job.

Perhaps it is this driven focus which is responsible for her rather Machiavellian reputation, but whenever she speaks about her work it is clear that she is not only diligent, but also that she cares deeply about what she does.

She was recently given the position of Artistic Director at Condé Nast, a role which she is keen to discuss.

“A lot of my time is now spent working on all of the magazines and all of the websites and trying to be supportive to all of the different Editors-in-Chief and the digital creatives as well as working on the magazine. Obviously the big shift that’s happening not just in the United States but all over the world is how we adjust to the growth of digital

whilst maintaining strength in our print property. That’s really my main focus right now.”

She repeatedly emphasises that she is “very much focused on what’s going to happen today and tomorrow rather than what’s going to happen in ten years.”

“I think it’s very, very important in whatever you do, in whatever field, to be able to give back. I think it makes sense for me personally to focus on the fields that make sense to my industry.”

It becomes increasingly clear that Wintour’s role is not simply as a journalist or as someone who works in the fashion industry; she is a manager and director, crossing the borders between several industries in the process. One gets the sense that if she dislikes the way something is run, she will either change it or leave. The worldwide nature of the Vogue brand is one area where she has a specific idea of how things ought to be run.

“There’s always been a sense that whatever country Vogue might be published in, it’s important that it reflect its own culture. I think Alexandra [Shulman, Editor-in-Chief of British Vogue] has done an incredible job of doing exactly that with British Vogue and there are a lot of things that I see and admire in British Vogue that might not make sense for us in America and vice versa.

But each one speaks with an individual voice and I think there are other publications and companies out there that don’t have that perspective; they make

things much more universal. That’s not something I subscribe to, I mean what’s of interest in British culture may not be of interest in the US. I think it’s very important to protect that individuality.”

This criticism of other companies is something which comes across in her talk as well, as she suggests that the majority of CEOs do not take enough time to experience new things; she endorses regular travel as an important part of remaining alert to new possibilities. She, on the other hand, shows no signs of becoming boring even in her 27th year

"Fashion is about change. A magazine like Vogue has to reflect that."

as American Vogue editor. Having overseen several milestones, such as putting a black model (Naomi Campbell) on the front of her first September issue as American Vogue editor or leading the way in the influx of celebrities onto magazine covers, she is constantly alert to the potential for a new approach.

“I think the covers are very much a reflection I think of what’s happening in the culture so it’s important to put women, sometimes men and women on the cover that are reflective of the moment and also at some point expected.

And from my point of view, what I like to do every now and again is what I call

an ‘event cover’, which is something that’s completely unexpected – like last year, when we put Kim and Kanye on the cover. There’s a reassurance in it being familiar, but at the same time fashion is about change. A magazine like Vogue, which we’re talking about particularly, really has to reflect that change. You need also to publish things that are a little bit out of left field.”

So many Vogue covers have come to represent their times of publication, and since Wintour is considered such an arbiter of taste, I am interested to know whether she has a feel for what will define this decade in terms of fashion.

“In my experience it takes ten years to really be able to step back and put everything into context. So whatever I might point out would probably be wrong. I mean, there’s no question that there’s much more influence and interest in street culture through social networks, through Instagram or whatever it may be. You know, what people are wearing in the street is of much more interest than it was ten years ago but I think you really do need the distance to be able to see it much more clearly.”

For many, one of the most definitive designers of the last two decades was Alexander McQueen, whose label continues his legacy five years after his death. We discuss how the impending Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibition at the V&A will honour his creations. Wintour sings the praises of Andrew Bolton, who originally created

ALYS KEY Somerville College the exhibition for New York’s Metropolitan Museum, and she is glad that it will now be seen in London. She also makes sure to mention Sarah Burton, the current Creative Director of the Alexander McQueen label, with whom she has had lunch on the same day as our interview.

“She’s been extraordinarily respectful and gracious about Alexander while at the same time forging her own identity. Her collections tend to be more poetic, more romantic. Obviously there are shades of the McQueen history in there, but it’s very much her own spirit.

And any great designer will do that.

You can’t be worried about looking to the left or to the right, you have to be your own point of view and your own stamp.”

It is this personal touch of interest in designers, both established and upcoming, which shows how Wintour works best; she does not believe that a meeting is productive if it has more than two people in it.

It is easy to see why there is such an aura around Wintour. Where others in the fashion industry play up to the cameras, she is primarily concerned with her work. Her supposedly bored-looking face during fashion shows is purely a sign that she is focussing on what is front of her. She may have little time for sentimentality or distractions, but that does not mean she cannot also be friendly and passionate about what she does.

Your student union is the first in the

Your student union got the University (and 4 colleges!) to accredit to the Living Wage

UK to run Sexual Consent Workshops for all undergrad freshers

Your student union won 200k for student It innovation projects

ÂŁ

Your student union won

ÂŁ150m in

matched graduate scholarships

What do you want us to do next?

Email: president@ousu.ox.ac.uk

Your student union negotiated a 10% discount on bus passes for students

5th March 2015

OXSTUFF

OxStuff 15

COME DINE WITH ME: ST PETER'S FOOD AND DRINK

PRICE

It's always a bit of a disappointment when you get chicken for a formal dinner. It feels like arriving at the prom in your floorlength gown, only to realise that your date is wearing brown shoes with a black suit – "Why did I bother?" A delicious lemon tart did, however, go a long way to salvaging my experience.

£10 for a formal is probably average, and really not bad for my overall experience. However, wine was not included, and, I feel compelled to reiterate, it was chicken. Again though, in the bar (clearly the part of the evening which made more of an impression), £5 for their famous mango Crosskeys cocktail was a very welcome end to my night.

6/10

ATMOSPHERE

7/10

8/10

WOW FACTOR

There's always a fun buzz at Peter's; the hall is small and lively and since the college is small too, everybody knows each other. They even spoke to the freshers at dinner. It was baffling. The Peter's bar vibe is always great, too, and a perfect place to make new, very drunk friends.

The hall itself, despite being smaller than most, is an impressive sight.

All the usual traditional Oxford College vibes are present, though this may wow an out-of-towner much more than it would a student.

Also, this was the charity formal,

Simon Amstell 7th Mar, 4.30pm The Oxford Union

Bloody Knuckles Ft. CJ Mackintosh 10th Mar, 10pm The Bullingdon

Concert for Lent with the Arcadian Singers 7th Mar, 8pm Balliol College

6/10

Michael Idov 10th Mar, 5.30pm Sutro Room, Trinity College

so I had to sit through a couple of speeches about charity, and how moral and noble we all were for eating this particulay three course meal.

CONVERSATION AND COMPANY 10/10

Seeing friends from other colleges is always fun and different, and the general chat at Peter's is, I must say, some of my favourite around. Between helping to fix someone's bra in the toilet, and peolpe stroking my face in the bar, I'd say the company was top notch.

TOTAL SCORE FOR ST PETER'S: 37/50

Serata Futurista 10th-14th Mar, 9.30pm BT Studio

PHOTO/Andrew Gainer

The Mask you Live in - documentary 5th Mar, 7pm Magdalen Auditorium

PICK OF THE WEEK

Alternotives Hilary Party Wk8 10th Mar, 7pm Merton College

Alexander Darby, New College

Womanity 8th Mar, 2pm10pm

Modern Art Oxford

Iolanthe 10th-12th Mar

The Coronation of Poppea SJE Arts, Iffley Road 7th Mar, 8pm Somerville Chapel

Oxford Pops Orchestra: At the Movies 10th Mar, 8pm St Peter's Chapel

As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams 3rd-7th Mar BT Studio

16 OxStuff

5th March 2015

CLITERARY THEORY PHOTO/ABBAS KAZMI

Those who missed out on seeing the Oxford Guild’s “Biggest speaker of the year” Kanye West, despair not: Abbas Kazmi’s comforting (some might say dazzlingly hypnotic) smile is here to console you poor souls. Not only has the President promised to upload a video of the talk, but the Guild assure us that they “completely randomly select students” for their balloted events. In light of this assurance we can only congratulate Abbas on managing to attract a frankly unbelievable number of familiar faces from the student press, and a strong contingency of Union hacks. It’s all win for ‘Cash’mi, then, who even managed to bag himself a bunch of new (hacky?) friends by adding and messaging all those invited to the event.

ABBAS KAZMI

LUKE BARRATT AND SACHIN CROKER Sachin and Luke, of two offices, both alike in dignity, feature here for a lack of amatory success this term in comparison with their respective co-editors.

The two may be romantically involved elsewhere, but surely they better than anyone can see that it would have made for a better story if they had found love together. Alas, the fatal loins of these rival papers were not enough to create two pairs of star-crossed lovers. Finding themselves relegated to the supporting roles, it’d be heartwarming to see Sachin’s Mercutio and Luke’s Tybalt make amends and embrace each other as warmly as their co-eds. With onlookers commenting on the pair’s similarities, suggesting they would be “great friends”, one editor has resigned himself to hoping for a “rom-com reunion” with his blonde nemesis. We will see what TT15 holds.

FLEUR D’AMORE Foreign Liasons Officer

I

t’s the last issue of term, and we’re all getting ready to pack up our bags and head home to better food, more sleep, and inevitably less sex. Unless you’re still in your school relationships, in which case go wild.

Naturally, this realisation has filled me with a real and heavy sadness, and I have therefore spent much of my week wondering, wishing, and plotting where I might get my holiday fix from. It’s very important for an athlete to stay at the top of their game, so you can imagine that a five week break with no happy ending in sight is not exactly welcome in my life.

Although there are still clubs (and alcohol) back home, there is definitely an added obstacle in the form of living with parents…

As I panicked about losing my form (and spending my holidays frustrated in several ways), I began to dig through memories of my past holiday escapades for inspiration. It’s great to learn from one’s mistakes, but even better to learn from one’s victories – and I have had a few of each.

In particular, I recalled my youthful travels around Europe, back in the days when sex anywhere other than my bed seemed a faraway dream and the idea of doing it with a stranger was basically fantasy fiction. As I gallivanted through Europe, however, I couldn’t help but find myself drawn to the many tall, tanned and mysterious men I found there.

They were everywhere! And they each had their own specifically odd way of mispronouncing my name, which, while something I had always found infuriating back home with teachers, was suddenly capable of making my knees wobble (and sometimes spread).

So there I was, in a hostel in Slovenia, making some fabulous and bizarre friends. On my first couple of nights, I had been certain I had heard rustling under covers on nearby beds, and been somewhat horrified. My naïve schoolgirl self couldn’t help but think, ‘hostels

are places for mutually respectful travellers to get some quiet rest and nothing else, right?’ Wrong, oh so very wrong. Hostels are places for random people to get together, drink, go out and then get together in special ways. It’s like speed dating, but with more alcohol and less dating.

So what did I do? Did I lie in the dark feeling embarrassed and awkward? For a minute, yes. But eventually I thought, ‘If you can’t beat them, join them.’

When my newfound roommates invited me out with them for the evening, I was vaguely bored by the idea, as small-talk is not my forte. However, I was a little tired of travelling alone and craved the company – and company I did receive.

My company came in the form of a handsome French man named Justin – which I now realise is a much less exotic name than it seemed at the time. He was a classic, tall-darkand-handsome European, who said things like, ‘what are you search for on this journey?’ I wasn’t sure what it was I search for, but I had found him, and I certainly wasn’t complaining. After some heated fumbles in a questionable Slovenian bar, we made a swift and smooth journey back to the hostel. It’s really quite simple when you’re already sleeping in the same room; nobody has to make the dreaded, suggestive invitation.

We collapsed onto his bed and did what came surprisingly naturally, and also surprisingly quietly.

I am not usually one to keep it all in, but it appeared that when it had to be done, I was able to silence my moans, or at least bite down on the duvet when sheer will wasn’t enough.

All in all, Jordan goes down in my list of victories, and hostels go down on my grey-area list of places that are almost sort of acceptable to have sex in. My one piece of advice (the part where I learn from my mistakes) would perhaps be to find a room which is not shared with a small Korean man who has come travelling with his 60 year-old mother. I’m not sure what it is about an old Korean lady snoring in the room you’re having sex in, but somehow it kills the mood.

ONE TO WATCH

PHOTO/LAWRENCE WARNER

BALLIOL JCR FOOTBALL his has been the year of the underdog, with Bradford’s humbling T of Chelsea and Sunderland and brave

little Spurs’ gallant run to the League Cup final. However, perhaps the most heartwarming story of all is the epic journey of Balliol JCR FC. Second division also rans, the self-styled ‘Kings of Jowett Walk’, pundits up and down the land gave them no chance of achieving anything.

Despite such damning criticism, Balliol won their first two ties, but in the quarter finals our plucky heroes were to face the might of Keble. Cometh the hour, cometh the hero: Denvar Antonyrajah. Before this game even the fact of the existence of this proverbial dark knight was disputed. Taking his referee’s whistle in hand, Denvar brought the hammer of righteous justice down on the Keble heathens.

With the game in deadlock at 3-3 he awarded completely unbiased penalty to his Balliol brethren, which was duly converted. The forces of good prevailed, and Keble descended into chaos, with Balliol only escaping the carnage thanks to a daring SAS rescue operation, but not before Loz Warner was brutally assailed by a deranged fan.

The damage, the doctors say, was a particularly nasty cold. He may never play football again. Next our heroes faced overwhelming favourites LMH, and at first it seemed that this was the end of the fairytale, going 2-0 dow at hald time. The turnaround, however, was immediate, with JCR League top scorer, Balliol’s very own Harry Kane (in that they’re in the form of their lives now, but they’ll both be three stone overweight and stinking out West Ham in five years time), Harry Rimmer, bundling in a goal soon after the restart before what will go down in the history books as the ‘Miracle of Jowett’.

Goalkeeper Jamie Farmer, the official man-crush of the JCR, taking a free kick 60 yards from goal, guided an missile of a shot into the top corner to make it 2-2. LMH went into meltdown, with a Blues striker who will go unamed dismissed for an attempted headbutt, and Rimmer finally putting the game to bed with an extra time penatly. The Kings of Jowett will face Penmbroke in the final next Friday. Can Balliol’s indominatable lions make history?

OxStuff 17

5th March 2015

PHOTO/Rosie Shennan

Puzzle by Anax

CROSSWORD

T

he latest figures coming out of the OxStu office suggest that as soon as 2020, there will be more zines than there are students at Oxford.

The stats get worse: by 2025, the Amazon will have dwindled to the size of a Centre Parcs resort to keep up with the demand for paper; by 2034, this crisis will have caused massive worldwide rationing, leading to all Collections being written on miniwhiteboards. In 2045, as the last trees in the world are cut down, Oxford is covered in a layer of rotting zines three feet deep (at least no-one rides a bike any more).

I never would have imagined that you could have as many publications in a single city, but Oxford really takes the cake when it comes to producing over-glorified pamphlets. Even the name ‘zine’, with all its connotations of the edgy, the DIY, and the revolutionary, is hideously out of place in the most bourgeois university in the country. It’s like Margot from The Good Life clamouring for the destruction of the corporatist state and its associated paraphernalia, with a glass of port in one hand and a hammer in the other.

And is it worth it in the end?

How many CV points do you get for saying “I started a zine with a readership of one, whose only submission was wrangled out of a ‘friend’ in return for a G&Ds”?

Alternatively, if the whole ‘working with other people’ gig is too much for you, you could always start a blog. It’s a kind of rite of passage, really: the first few entries start off all right, but it rapidly descends into something between a diary and Death Note. You let it go one day, and never speak of it again, hoping for it to vanish beneath the millions of SEO sites run by peo-

ple with a questionable grasp on English. All good and well, until years later, when your friends discover that you planned to sacrifice the bunch of them to Moloch after a particularly bad experience at Formal Hall.

You won’t find that sort of unprofessionalism in the real student newspapers of Oxford. No, they are run by committed, driven, and thorough individuals, whose publications reflect attenttion to detail, keen investigative instinct, and a real knack for getting to

to energy saving. Not to mention rumours that an unnamed member of the team claimed “rigging elections is a crucial part of democracy”, before stating “Lenin was a top guy”. Are they the vanguard Oxford needs, or just the one it deserves?

Really, you’re much safer joining the OxStu. Our determination to saving the planet is so pivotal to our very ethos that a potted plant is in the centre of the office, taking in the heady fumes of Mission Burrito and desperation, and in return it gives us sweet, precious oxygen. This hallowed office has seen so much pass through it – news, views, late night Chinese takeaways. Sometimes, even true love has been found at the top of OUSU Towers (presumably someone left a window open). It’s like a box of chocolates, really. Except the instructions have been lost, and someone’s eaten all of the toffees.

A wise man once compared a student newspaper to an idea; an identity; a journey. It’s not any of them, really: it’s a bunch of mildly terrified amateurs, desperately trying to avoid libel cases whilst scrounging around for anything which can be spun into a somewhat serviceable article. We run around the wheel, forever trying to escape the terrifying presence of the deadline, looming nearer and nearer. We are promised articles weeks in advance which evaporate when we need them most. We spend endless nights staring at screens as InDesign calls a wildcat strike.

And yet you still hate us for what we are. But it doesn’t matter, because we don’t do it for praise.

We do it because we believe we know better than you on ohso-many issues. And because we want – scratch that, we need – those CV points.

Rumours abound that an unnamed member of Cherwell claimed “rigging elections is a crucial part of democracy” the heart of stories. There’s never been a better time to join the student media, no matter which publication you choose.

Take The Tab for example, whose glorious tentacles are latched on to every university in the country. Who can say journalism is dead when it produces such searching articles as ‘I was on my way to lectures when I saw a taxi catch fire and explode’, or ‘My term at Bridge: the journey so far’? If Stephen A. Crane had been around today, he’d have bothered to stay in college just to get a shot at the red top of courage.

If The Tab’s not your thing, you could always look at Oxford’s own Versa – the last bastion of free speech in a city under siege by the dark forces of the Thought Police. Always ready to provide a well-balanced view to its wide readership, Versa’s the one for you if you’ve got views or you’ve had an experience, but feel the crushing hand of uni-wide censorship looming over traditional avenues. Vive la resistance!

You might consider applying to The Cherwell, though questions abound about their commitment

ACROSS 1 Winter – victory – end (8) 6 Nasty accident leading to wrong use of words (6) 9 What doctor Campbell did once in his life? (4) 10 It may be good going for proof (4-6) 11 Make an accident popular, definitely (3,7) 13 Indian dance requires one (4) 14 Plan to have no box for games console (8) 16 Surrounded by mountains, I’d explore interior (6) 18 Soiled underpants nuns stubbornly refused to take off (6) 20 I am important, so I begin working (3,5) 22 The idea of going head first (4) 24 Advance made by hotel reception, which is great (10) 26 Highly placed opposition to 11? (2,2,3,3) 28 Outstanding recital of Pindar’s work (4) 29 Private has to finish then start (6) 30 Bear laying odds in New York (8) DOWN 2 It might go off, dear. Look for directions inside (9) 3 Flowering plant, second raised on bed (7) 4 Bottom seen and massaged by tax collectors (5) 5 Declared part of total (3) 6 What supporter is doing is consigned to trash (9) 7 Taking out shotgun, crosses adversary (7) 8 One with attitude about fabulous writer (5) 12 Bemoan a version of a simple life (7) 15 Presumably sensible person knocked senseless? (3,4,2) 17 Find a nightclub – really (9) 19 Is there a race with more than one finish? (7) 21 Possibility of cave sections having a switch (7) 23 Project that is keeping politician supported by Left (5) 25 Sign that’s right in the middle of a Spanish port (5) 27 Clerical attire in royal blue (3)

Last week’s solution

10%

Discount

52 Bus Passes

On

-Week

All Oxford students can now save money on 52-week bus passes from Stagecoach or Oxford Bus Company.

Following requests from students, OUSU has been working with the University and the bus companies of Oxford to secure a discount on bus services for all students. This is part of our continued work to make Oxford cheaper for students.

Find out more by going to: www.ousu.org or scan the code.

5th March 2015

FEATURES

Emily Brothers: get stuck into politics

E

mily Brothers is not just another boring politician. Her background is in the public sector: she was a former Head of Policy at the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), where she was responsible for leading health and social-care policies.

She is currently the Labour party’s parliamentary candidate for Sutton and Cheam. The party, in a historic first for the British political scene, recently celebrated having the first female openly gay transgender politician to run for Westminster. We spoke to her about her journey to politics as well as the current election campaign.

So, how is the campaign going and what are your plans leading up to the Election Day?

[It] is going really well. We have a challenge on our hands, but it is the most open election in fifty years and I think we have an excellent opportunity to make a difference.

I'm doing, at the moment, a lot of awareness-raising around disability and LGBT issues. I came out as a woman with a transsexual history and a gay woman in December, and that was because of the increasing pressure on me as a parliamentary candidate. It is important in this time, when there is a lot of trust that has been broken in politics, to have an honest dialogue with the electorate, and I felt it was time to do that.

"There is a general breakdown of trust in politics, right through the generations."

Did you feel at all pressurized into coming out due to your political involvement?

In an ideal world I would never have come out, and I think that over time, as my profile increased, so did the pressure on me, or I certainly felt the pressure, to come out. There was a risk that I would be outed by a tabloid newspaper, and that would set a negative tone, so it got to the point where I felt that there was a risk, and I needed to set a positive tone. And that's what I did from the outset. The response, not just from the Labour Party, but also the wider public, has been amazingly supportive. It has only been the single intervention of Rod Liddle in The Sun that has basically tainted the positive messages that have been received.

Features 19

WILLIAM SHAW AND MARCUS LI

What role does student politics play in the wider political system?

Politicians are keen to hear the views of students. They are key in particular constituencies where we have transient populations, through universities like Oxford, so these student voices are very important.

There are issues that are very important to us as politicians and students, like tuition fees for example, and a whole host of other issue too, in terms of the issues they are concerned about. LGBT rights would be an example for many young people.

Students will in the future move on and take up roles in public life to lead the country, so the kind of message they are giving to the older generation is important so that we can pass on the baton in a timely and orderly way that is seamless.

But there is a serious problem with voter apathy, particularly among students, right? What do you think would be the best way to tackle that?

There is a general breakdown of trust in politics, right through the generations. So that's why we see, for example, far more protest votes for the likes of UKIP and the Greens, even though people realise that it isn't necessarily going to shape the government of the future. One of the big changes, of course, has been individual voter registration, and across all political parties we need to work harder to encourage people to register to vote, and, whatever their political persuasion, to take part. We also need to set out to everybody the importance of politics, that actually, it is the way in which we can bring about change. I'm in politics because I see it as a vehicle to bring about change, not to keep the status quothat's why I'm not a Conservative, I'm a radical Labour politician.

At the end of the interview, Brothers left us with some pearls of wisdom for our readers who are seeking to change the world in which we live.

Believe in yourself, be clear about who you are, and that might be your gender, your sexuality, your disability, about what strengths those experiences bring to the table. Don't see them as weaknesses or as things that hold you back. Utilise them in a positive way, and get stuck in. You may make mistakes along the way - we all do - but learn from them, and build on those experiences. I think the key thing, whatever you do, is be happy.

PHOTO/ www.emilybrothers.com

20 Features

5th March 2015

Teaching in the Balkans

SIAN ALLEN Queen’s College

V

oenna Rampa wasn’t how you might imagine a refugee camp to be - rather than the tented variety often shown on television, the camp was based in an abandoned school, run by a Bulgarian Government Agency and backed by EU money.

Bulgaria is constantly receiving Syrian refugees from Turkey who are looking to settle and find work in Europe, so is very much a temporary transit point.

Unfortunately, many refugees end up staying for years, due to the time taken for their papers to be processed, allowing them to move on.

Most of the refugees at Voenna Rampa spent their time standing in the courtyard all day – the half hour bus journey it took to get into the centre of town, combined with the limited funds available to the refugees, meant that leaving the centre was a rare occurrence for most. None were allowed to work in Bulgaria, a fact made even more saddening by the fact that many were professional engineers, doctors, architects and there were a number of university students who had been forced to abandon their studies. The situation was worse for the children, who for the most part weren’t permitted to attend school unless they could speak Bulgarian fluently, which of course they couldn’t.

When we arrived in Voenna Rampa, there had been no organized activities for the children in over four months.

Our plan was to teach the kids English, to help them communicate when arriving in Europe, combining this with activities which would give them some much-needed entertainment, as well as to set up a programme for the future to continue the children’s education. On our first day, we met briefly with the management. I think the only other thing I learnt from the meeting was that the centre management strongly believed that no Syrian wanted to learn. Their aim, from what I could understand, was to keep the refugees alive, and to keep them from escaping.

Contrary to what the staff said, I have never in my life met any kids who have been so incredibly keen to learn. On our first day, they were

PHOTO/ russavia

crazily hyperactive, trying to snatch pens and fight each other for seats in the classroom, which unfortunately coincided with a trip from a Bulgarian television crew to film our poor attempts at what probably looked more like crowd control than teaching. However, as time went on, the children were much better behaved, queued outside the door at the beginning of lessons and politely asked for pens.

We taught the children how to write letters, name parts of the body, animals, food and much more through a combination of activities and worksheets. This worked

incredibly well and when doing the worksheets, the kids would always ask for help, giving sheepish smiles when congratulated for the answers.

The older ones (our classes ranged from about 2-14 years old) helped look out for the younger kids and kept them from being too disruptive. But it wasn’t all hard work for the kids: I also bought a drum which provided much joy as I taught the kids some basic rhythms, showed them how to dance the Macarena and led many sing-alongs to English songs.

The attention the kids so badly needed and the absurd number of children in our classes (at times, two

of us were leading a class of 50) meant that in the second week, we recruited two extra volunteers. This made our job a lot easier, and meant that I was able to take a few of them at a time outside the classroom for reading English books. These moments were some of the most rewarding for me, as I was able to see how each of the kids were progressing, and on occasion some of the adults who could already speak a little English would join in.

We also spent some time working towards long-term education programmes for the children. After a meeting with the management of the centre, the volunteers we recruited

Distant Voice: from Russia with love A

s I stepped off the bus in -40 degree snow boots, a downfeather jacket, thermals, and as much of my remaining wardrobe as would fit underneath, into the 19 degree heat of a glorious September day, to meet the “babushka” (“grandmother” - essentially landlady/ adopted mother for the next seven months), I didn’t need Google Translate to decipher her first thought: “tourist”. The winds changed swiftly however, in more ways than one. After a mere few days of sunshine, winter arrived in early October, and with it the first snowfall, the babushka’s crisis of faith in my ability to survive out the winter, and the disappearance of either “minus” or “plus” before her daily

stating of the temperature outside.

Thus began apparent covert “mission cabbage”: to fatten the little English girl up for the winter, entailing sweets smuggled into lunch bags, extra meat cutlets sneaked onto dinner plates, and the daily potato challenge: a scientific experiment of whether or not it is possible consume your own body weight in carbohydrates. This eternal carb-loading is simply an ordinary cultural phenomenon here.

Russians apparently consume inhuman quantities of potato (resulting in an entire supermarket aisle dedicated to pick n’ mix of different types of frozen potato). Stereotypes about Russian potato passion unearthed, now to analyse said stereotypes in their

most potent form: vodka. Stories of Russian drinking seem so fantastical, so preposterous, that one doubts their reality. But not so. Within the first two weeks I found myself seated at the dinner table, attempting to quietly eat my cabbage soup, while being showered by perseverant insistences from the babushka’s 40 year old son to join him in necking vodka shots.

Now, bears. The trip does indeed appear to be turning into something of a bear hunt. The current sighting tallyis at four, including one mascot bear at the ice hockey stadium, skating round the stadium’s rink to “Eye of the Tiger”, and Yaroslavl’s own live bear, Masha, who lives inside the town walls in the city museum. I also had

the somewhat unnerving experience of turning round in Red Square for a chance meeting with a live bear (his name was Stepan and he liked crab sticks, wearing gold ties, and licking unsuspecting children’s’ faces). I have also encountered approximately 1,000 bears at Yaroslavl’s Teddy Bear museum - two rooms stuffed (pun definitely intended) with furry exhibits ranging from the interesting (a 100 year old bear that had outlived both tsardom and the Soviet Union), to the somewhat dubious (terrifying and/or resembling a Neanderthal version of the meerkat from the Compare the Market adverts), to the downright mistaken: the Winnie the Pooh toy, which I’m fairly certain was an owl,

were given permission to work at the centre for three mornings a week for the coming months. We were also given permission to organize an education programme for the children next summer, which will be run under the name of OXAB Bulgaria.

Back in Oxford, we are now in the process of recruiting 18 interns for the summer programme that we set up. It will run from July to October, and involve half-days working at one of the two centres in Sofia with half-days working on research and advocacy work for local/international organisations working with refugees (see www.oxabbulgaria.com).

MARIANNA HUNT

Wadham College and not a bear. I arrived in Russia armed with a camera, enough winter clothing to make me the spitting image of a giant knitted marshmallow, and one or two stereotypes. I’ll be leaving with yet more suitcases, approximately a million photos, a whole new view on the definition of “cold”, and a few more stereotypes to add to the collection.

Before coming to Russia, my mind was so full of these stereotypes, but of course I expected them to be just that, and not really representative of everyday life. Now though, I’m starting to think that maybe this country really is as wonderfully bizarre, dazzling beautiful, and utterly fascinating, as we all half-assume, half-doubt, yet entirely hope, it is.

Features 21

5th March 2015

Separating Oxford facts from myth

O

Mansfield College

WILLIAM SHAW

ne only has to walk down Broad Street and listen to the packs of dubiously qualified tour guides to understand the public’s perception of Oxford as a hub of mysterious and magical activity. As students we often consider ourselves above this melee, but do you know your fact from fiction?

Take this test and find out.

Legends: 1. St John’s College used to own Oxford Street in London, but sold it on to investors in the 1820s after losing a court battle to re-name the famous London thoroughfare after themselves.

2. J Sainsbury, (of the famous supermarket chain) gives money to Worcester hall to improve thewir food. He was so appalled by its quality when he studied there that he determined to donate a set sum of money every year to encourage the college to buy better food.

3. In 1646 whilst King Charles I was living in Christ Church, he wanted to borrow a book from the Bodleian and have it brought back to his apartments.

Despite his status as king he was told that he would have to go to the Bodleian if he wished to read it. He reluctantly obliged.

4. In 1828 the devil visited Brasenose College. A tall man in a long cloak was seen standing outside the window of a student’s room, who was a said to be a member of the notorious ‘Hell-Fire Club’ which promoted atheism, before the student unexpectedly died. It was

believed that the cloaked figure was the devil come to claim his soul.

5. Richard Francis Burton hated his time at Trinity College so much that he went to great lengths to get rusticated.

After challenging a fellow student to a duel because he mocked his moustache, he was eventually ‘sent down’ for attending a forbidden race meeting. In one last blaze of glory, Burton decided to leave in a horse and carriage, driving over the college flowerbeds and blowing kisses to women in the high street.

Answers: 1. False. While it is true that the John’s quest for world domination continues, they have yet to branch out into London.

2. False. Although J Sainsbury did study there, and the college does receive an anonymous endowment specifically to the hall, there is no connection between the two.

3. True. It seems that even being the King won’t get you past the librarianscome-bouncers in the Bod. 4. True-ish. Whilst there is of course no evidence for the devil’s presence, nor the existence of the so called Hell-Fire Club, an undergraduate called Edward Leigh Trafford did die in one of the rooms on Brasenose Lane near this time.

5. True. Remind the porter of this the next time they moan at you for walking on the grass. Just make sure you don’t insult their moustache, or you may find yourself caught up in a duel!

But that is not all. Experts have suggested that 80 to 90 per cent of diseases are stress induced. Students at Oxford, with our ‘work-hard-playhard’ attitude to life, are at a high risk of pushing ourselves too far over the edge. Research has shown that the occasional massage could help combat chronic diseases such as cancer, depression as well as lowering blood pressure.

Neal’s Yard Remedies understands that what you put on your skin is just as important as the treatment itself: they boast of using only the purest and most natural ingredients free from inorganic substances and animal testing. They also give advice on an array of super foods and natural remedies that can help reduce

your Oxford-stress level. They offer you an herbal brew that helps the body to get rid of the toxins released from your bodies after the massage.

We left floating away in a meditative trance.

Neal’s is a pleasant, calming and professional massage parlour; it is also one of the most economical in Oxford. Having a massage offers more than just about feeling good; it is also very beneficial for long-term psychological and physiological wellbeing.

For our readers, we have also secured a 10 per cent discount for your next appointment at Neal’s. Simply take a copy of this article to show upon arrival to receive your welldeserved elixir for staying healthy.

PHOTO/ Nea’s Year Remedies

PHOTO/ Holly Clarke

Oxford etiquette

SIAN BAYLEY

I

n our final issue of Hilary, we have substituted our regular restaurant review with a heartfelt recommendation.

An Oxford term is both physically and emotionally draining – there are no doubts about that. Recently, discussions of introducing a reading week to ease fifth week existential crises have been trending. But experience dictates that things are not likely to change anytime soon.

With Trinity being the term of the P-word and F-word, The Oxford Student looks for alternative ways to relieve your anxieties and stay healthy.

Massage. The word oozes extravagance and a slight hint of moral judgement. There is something guiltinducing about going for a rub down.

Indeed it is not a route students normally even consider. But why is that?

This week, we tried out the awardwinning Neal’s Yard Remedies on the High Street for a dose of end-of-term therapeutic relaxation. The problems from the Oxford bubble immediately melted away into an oblivious 60-minute session of lavender-scented pampering. As you lie on the bed, the sound of Indian music fills the warm air, the only worry you could possibly have is the session coming to an unwilling end. Our massage therapist Sue Evans’ gentle healing touch left us feeling rejuvenated and renewed. She was also a specialist trained in holistic remedies and her breathing techniques can help those everyday anxieties.

Corpus Christi College

B

alls can be a real issue at Oxford (you there at the back! Yes, you!

Stop sniggering!). At the end of every term there’s always at least one social event involving evening dress and vast quantities of overpriced alcohol to which one feels a moral obligation to attend - after all, what Oxford Student experience is complete without at least one instance of making a complete fool of oneself in as spectacular a way and as expensive a tie as possible?

While this column has to a great extent been concerned with observing the many strange quirks and foibles of Oxford, this is perhaps the strangest it has yet covered: the average Oxford student’s apparent inability to look themselves in the eye at the end of term and simply say “We’re going to have a piss-up” without wearing black tie and a gown. Or failing that, a kilt. It speaks to the Oxford student’s melodramatic nature to call for the maximum amount of pomp and circumstance possible when, really, pretty much the same effect could be achieved by a dozen mates and some reasonably-priced wine enjoyed in student accommodation of an evening, rather than several hours of wandering around in uncomfortable suits and evening dresses, desperately trying to neck enough of the ultra-expensive booze to make the inevitable prospect of dancing even remotely tolerable.

Balls are just so...loud, whereas I find that the best socialising is accomplished in relatively quiet rooms with a few good friends, preferably with pizza and ‘The Best of Queen’ playing at discreet volume in the background.

But maybe that’s just me.

At any rate, one ought to go into a ball equipped with the knowledge of proper conduct. Firstly, while alcohol is in many ways essential to the experience, for God’s sake don’t overdo it - hired suits do not generally respond well to spilled alcopops, vomit, et cetera. Don’t try and sneak out early, either - believe me, I learned this the hard way. If you go then you’re there for the long haul, no two ways about it. Beyond that, relax. Have fun. It is only a ball, after all.

22 Sport

OUAFC Women’s Blues scrape through on penalties The Women’s Blues managed to overcome a stubborn Bristol University team to win 3-2 on penalties right at the death last week. The game starting with a 30 minute delay was not the omen the team were looking for, and the game seemed to reflect that. Throughout normal time the Blues were lively and pressed hard, but the attackers just couldn’t seem to find the target. The Bristol team were physical from the off, causing problems and really getting stuck in, disrupting the Blues’ rhythm. Although the referee seemed to be lenient, it made for an exciting game. As both teams failed to score in extra-time, penalties were called for. Stephenie Mahay, Anna Green and Becca May all put away their penalties with aplomb, while Bristol could only manage two as Blues keeper Sophie Smith made some brilliant saves to help the Blues to victory.

Oxford win 2015 Swimming Varsity OUBaC performed brilliantly as last week’s BUCS Gatorade Nationals at EIS in Sheffield. Star-performer must of course go to Claire Weaver, who valiantly claimed 3rd place in the Women’s Singles, losing out to the first seed. Weaver also reached the last 16 in the Women’s Doubles and the Mixed Doubles, alongside Emily Giles and Matt Harris respectively. As for the Men’s Doubles, the pairing of Chris Lim and George Heinemann reached the last 32, as did Alistair Reed and Matt Harris, rounding off an excellent weekend for the Oxford club. OUBaC’s attention now must turn to the 2015 Varsity Match, hoping to put in strong performances to come out on top against an experienced Cambridge side.

Shots fired: Pistol club take Varsity win The Oxford A team beat Cambridge 2145 - 2097 to win the Pistol Varsity title for 2015 at the Elizabeth Way Range this past weekend. Oxford began strongly and looked favourites to win for most of the match, managing to hold on for a hard-fought win.

Oxford’s B team were also in action straight after, and went on to win their match, allowing Oxford the outright win.

Want to join the team?

We are now recruiting new staff for Trinity term. There are positions open across the paper including for Sports Editor and Sports Deputy Editor. Please send your applications in to editor@oxfordstudent.com

5th March 2015

AB de Villers proves himself once more

• AB de Villers scored a remarkable 162 from just 66 balls, propelling South Africa to a second win PRANNAY KAUL SPORTS WRITER

Anyone vaguely familiar with the early life of Abraham Benjamin de Villiers will know just how lucky cricket is to have AB de Villiers’ full and undivided professional attention. The extent of our luck was shown brilliantly last Friday when he annihilated the West Indian cricket team with a savage 162 from just 66 balls, setting a new world record for the fastest 150 in ODI cricket. He achieved this mammoth feat less than 7 weeks after simultaneously setting the world record for the fastest 50 and 100 against the same opposition.

Hailing from Pretoria, he attended Afrikaanse Hoër Seunskool, a school known for producing many exceptional athletes. De Villiers went through the ranks at Affies along side other athletes, notably rugby players Pierre Spies, Wynand Olivier, Fourie du Preez and cricketers Francois du Plessis and Jacques Rudolph. At Affies, he excelled in rugby, tennis, badminton, hockey, swimming and sprinting.

In his junior days, AB was shortlisted for the national hockey team, played for the U-18 rugby union side Blue Bulls, was on the national Davis Cup team, U-19 national badminton champion, held the junior 100m sprint record and six swimming records. His ridiculous record clearly displays how talented this man is, this in addition to his unbelievable dedication to cricket has truly made him the ultimate cricketer in all three formats of the game.

Making his test debut in late 2004

against England and donning the wicket-keeping gloves in his second test, a job he now does regularly in test match cricket, de Villiers made an impression in the final test of the series scoring his first test century. During 2006 & 2007 AB suffered a loss of form, but after once again demolishing the West Indies at the beginning of 2008 scoring an unbeaten 103, de Villiers was back and he really hasn’t gone away since. He along with equally talented, fellow wicket-keeper batsman Kumar Sangakarra, have dominated the ICC test rankings in the last six years. In both tests and ODIs de Villiers has 21 centuries making him 10th in the list of international centuries and with still 7-8 years of playing time left he could well end his career in the top 3.

His domination of the game is a direct result of his athleticism, just as most of the world’s top athletes, Cristiano Ronaldo, Novak Djokovic have impeccable physiques, AB is no different.

His agility, dexterity and shear strength make him the most complete athlete on the cricket circuit without a doubt. The maintenance of his physical form will be the strongest of habits after the sporting pursuits in his younger days. In every game he plays be it international cricket or domestic he looks the same, lean with very little unused weight and clearly a very strong core. He has the explosion required to destroy an opposition in a T20 match or the endurance and focus to wear down a side in a five-day test match.

With the amount of cricket available to be played around the year players have to be fit to be the best and de Villiers takes this to the very highest-level cricket has ever seen. He is rated as one of the best

PHOTO/ DEE03

if not the best fielder in the world be it close catching in the gully region in a test, ground fielding on the boundary in a T20 or athletic ring fielding during the power play of an ODI he is in the top 2 in the world. Strangely, his closest match is more than likely his compatriot, close friend and schoolmate Faf du Plessis.

However, one place where Faf cannot come close to de Villiers is wicket keeping. In his early international career South Africa were blessed with Mark Boucher, the man who holds the record for the most test dismissals in the history of the game, but since his unfortunate eye injury and retirement South Africa have been searching for a replacement.

De Villiers filled in with the gloves for the series that was planned to be a farewell series for Boucher and the captain Graeme Smith decided that the then part-time gloveman de Villiers was so good behind the stumps that he has now become their full time test keeper

in addition to their star middle order batsmen.

De Villiers is certainly not all fantastic catches, huge shots and mammoth innings; he is also a charismatic honest and inspiring leader, captaining the ODI team full time. Leading from the front with his recent innings and general batting form, AB will be hoping that he and his star-studded side can shrug off the ‘choker’ tag in international tournaments and lift the world cup on 29 March at the MCG.

Fastest to 150: Player

AB de Villiers

Balls

64

SR Watson

83

ST Jayasuriya

95

L Ronchi

92

F1 in 2015: Picking up where we left off?

• Mercedes still dominant, Ferrari show promise whilst the rekindled Mclaren-Honda partnership falters ANDREW GRIGGS SPORTS WRITER

2014 was no doubt a season dominated by two men. Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton and arch nemesis Nico Rosberg took victory in all but three of the season’s nineteen rounds, which could have ben more if it weren’t for surprisingly regular reliability problems that the pair suffered.

Pre-season testing suggests that this trend is unlikely to change, with the paddock believing the Silver Arrows will be as much as a second and a half a lap faster than the next fastest team. However, whilst it is almost certain that Mercedes will be at the top step of the podium at the end of the Australian Grand Prix on 15th March, the rest of the grid is sure to have a shake up in light of some very different development paths in the preseason period.

Red Bull, who were Mercedes’ closest rivals last season have managed to find some more power out of their lacklustre Renault engine, however, are still down on the power of the Mercedes. Sporting a camouflaged livery to disguise aero parts, the car looks considerably different from last year, notably a tightly packed rear end and completely redesigned nose. Bringing in Kyvat who showed lots of potential last

PHOTO/GTSPIRIT.COM

season, Red Bull could be in the running for another handful of wins although won’t be able to challenge the front for out and out pace.

Perhaps the biggest surprise thus far has been Ferrari, who many expected to struggle after a complete restructuring of the management and continued problems with their power unit, which last year significantly lagged behind their rivals. However, Ferrari, in addition to producing a very good looking car, have managed to run a lot of laps and show some impressive pace with new signing Sebastian Vettel and veteran Finn Kimi

Raikonnen at the wheel. The team have targeted two wins but it is very difficult to tell where they will end up, some saying that they have been running at full power rather than at race pace.

The Mercedes powered Williams also seem likely to stake their claim to a victory this season after some impressive performances last year by Ferrari exile Felipe Massa and young gun Bottas. In addition, Lotus, who this year signed a deal with Mercedes to provide their power units after a dreadful year at the back of the pack have had a completely different testing experience this time around. Naturally,

with Pastor Maldonado at the wheel they are guaranteed at least five DNFs a season.

McLaren are perhaps the biggest disappointment so far. Boasting a new power unit from Honda, McLaren have rekindled a partnership that brought them huge success in the 1980s and 1990s, however, they haven’t given us much to believe their season will be an improvement on the last.

Problems with the engine early on meant that they have been severely restricted in their running, and despite completing a number of laps in the final test, Team Principal Eric Boullier has admitted that the team is expecting a challenging start to the season.

At the back of the pack, many will be delighted to see that fan favourite Manor Racing will be on the grid in 2015 after a deal allowing them to use a modified version of their 2014 car was signed off.

It is almost unfathomable that they will be competing for points, and some argue that they will be so far off the pace that they will cause problems in the race.

However, the British team have brought in youngster Will Stevens and will merely hope to survive the season and bring in some extra funding.

The first race weekend of the season begins on Match 13th at Albert Park and promises to be an intriguing affair.

Sport 23

5th March 2015

Manchester City put in a creditable performance against a strong Barcelona team, but tactical naivety cost them dear in a 2-1 defeat

PHOTO/JOHN URGUHART

Why are English teams underperforming in Europe?

• Defeats for Arsenal, Manchester United, Tottenham and Liverpool mark terrible fortnight in Europe for England • The Premier League’s fixation on money and fast attacking football has left English clubs trailling their rivals

RUPERT TOTTMAN DEPUTY EDITOR

Turns out money can’t buy you success. Fresh from rubbing their hands with glee at the new £5 billion TV rights contract recently signed by the Premier League, the clubs from ‘The Best League In The World™’ went into to Europe set on teaching those paupers on the continent that they had as much to learn on the pitch

ter United reached the quarter-finals last time round, and the year before not a single English team reached the last eight. So why is what is the increasingly the richest league in the world underperforming in European competitions?

First we must address the issue of the Europa League, which has become a byword for a useless waste of time and energy amongst managers that routinely participate in it.

Arsenal, City, Liverpool and Spurs lost in a train wreck of a fortnight for England as they did in the boardroom. In the end it was the pompous English that were taught a lesson, with Liverpool and Tottenham sent running back to their gilded homeland with their tails between their legs after being dumped out of the Europa League and Arsenal and Manchester City’s fate in the Champions League hanging by a thread after performances of significantly differing merit. Chelsea’s creditable draw away at PSG and Everton’s humbling of Young Boys of Bern provided rare high points in what was a train wreck of a fortnight for English teams in Europe.

Yet this decline is not a new phenomenon. From the halcyon days of the mid 2000s where England provided at least one representative in the final between 2004 and 2009, English football seems to have been on a decline, with only what even the most ardent Chelsea fan would admit was an unlikely tournament win for Chelsea in 2012 bucking this trend. Only Moyes’ Manches-

There is some merit to this idea, with sides taking part competition in the competition finishing on average 2 places lower than the season before.

But if you ask many fans, particularly those of sides such as Bolton Wanderers , Everton and Newcastle, who have at various points over the last 10 years built routines of qualifying for Europe before putting it to the bottom of their list of priorities, whether they would prefer a European run or finishing, say, 7th rather than 9th in the League, most would take a cup run. So why do managers continue to prioritise the league against the will of fans whom, more often than not, have the power to hound unsuccessful or unpopular managers out of their clubs?

The answer, as with more and more things in the modern Premier League is the bottom line. Whilst a victorious Europa League Campaign can net teams anything up to £10 million, winning the competition requires at least 15 matches, and the loss in

revenue from falling just two places in the league can be up to £5 million.

This would require a European run reaching at least the quarter finals just to offset. In this age of riches it is easy to see why teams from the most money-obsessed league have heretofore turned their noses up at Europe’s secondary competition. This however, is not the case with the Champions League, whose participation prize of £30 million have contributed to the creation of a gap between those who regularly take part in it and those do not. In addition, the provision of a Champions League spot from this seasons for the winners of the Europa League should have, theoretically given teams like Spurs and Liverpool, who had every chance of winning it, a financial incentive and potential safety net should they finish outside the top four. So if money is not the whole answer, what else has led to English clubs punching so far below their weight?

The answer is that perennial curse of English football; tactical igonrance.

Whilst English football is amongst the most exciting in the world to watch, the helter-skelter madness that can represent some Premier League games simply does not work against savvy European opponents at the highest level. It is no accident that games between the top sides during England’s period of dominance in the late 2000s saw turgid, low scoring affairs and that Chelsea, almost certainly the only English club who will have any further impact on this year’s competition, are famed for their cautious tactics against big sides. Jose Mourinho is not an entertainer, but that is perhaps the core reason why

he stands head and shoulders above his domestic competition as a winner. The key evidence for this was in Arsenal’s 3-1 loss against Monaco, City’s 2-1 reverse to Barcelona and Liverpool’s 1-0 second leg defeat and subsequent penalty shootout loss against Turkey’s Besiktas. In Arsenal’s case this tactical naivety was shockingly apparent, as wave after wave of ineffective Arsenal attacks failed, a number of shocking misses in front of goal notwithstanding, against Monaco’s famously miserly defence (the fact that they conceded just 3 goals in their group was, incidentally, barely reported by the British press), and were ripped apart thrice on the break.

Wenger has often been chastised in this country for his tactical inflexibility and starting only the in-form but inexperienced Francis Coquelin to anchor the midfield against a strong

reputation in Spain as a wily fox of a tactician, having taken Villareal to the semi-finals of the Champions League in 2005 and Malaga to the quarter finals in 2013, both times on a shoestring budget. Liverpool for their part, went to Istanbul with a weakened side and looked utterly disinterested, allowing Besitkas to completely control the tempo, with even the Turkish side’s well taken second half goal failing to wake them up. Lovren’s decisive missed penalty, blazed over the bar, felt like a mercy killing of a pathetically abject game of football and an equally abysmal Liverpool performance.

English teams, coached and experienced in the end to end maelstrom that is the Premier League, and their managers who are expected to set their teams up in a certain way to appease fans and boards who demand a certain style of play, have seemed

counter-attacking side would be unforgivable for any manager, let alone one that has managed at the top level for more than 25 years. Manchester City too, although performing enormously better than their counterparts from north London, were guilty too of tactical naivety, with their antiquated 4-4-2 formation resulting in Milner and Fernandinho being overrun in midfield, leaving their defence exposed to be taken apart by Barcelona’s forwards. This, and City’s general European ineptitude, is made all the more surprising by the fact Manuel Pellegrini has a well-deserved

incapable of adapting to the more cerebral rigours of the European game for some time now. In terms of players the Premier League holds an allure unmatched by any club save Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich and to look at the strongest line ups of Chelsea, Manchester City and even Arsenal, it is mystifying to think how such talented squads have consistently punched below their weight. The answer lies in the two demons that have plagued English football for as long as the Premier League has been in existence; money and ignorance.

This decline lies in the two old demons of English football: money and ignorance

SPORT

CRICKET

AB de Villers: The fastest to 150 proves himself again.

Page 22

FORMULA 1

2015 to pick up where we left off?

Page 22

Ode to Brendan: Rodgers takes reds from farcical to formidable

• Liverpool in the running for a Champions League spot after a remarkable transformation having sat tenth at Christmas.

• Rodgers has restored the attacking flair of last season with Coutinho, Sterling and Henderson firing on all cylinders.

DAVID BARKER SPORTS EDITOR

Born in Essex and having lived there my whole life, naturally, I am a diehard Liverpool fan. Despite never having been to Liverpool in my life, failing understand the language that the indigenous population speaks, or having any affiliation with the club or city in any way whatsoever, the remarkable turnaround over the past few months for the men in red has made me a very happy man.

In December I published an article for this very paper bashing the Liverpool team and their ill-fated endeavours in Europe, their consistent underperforming in the sacred Premier League and their pathetic inability to keep the ball away from the back of their net. Liverpool’s biggest villains of the time, the awful Simon Mignolet, the magnificent flop Dejan Lovren, the comical Mario Balotelli and the seemly perpetually injured Daniel Sturridge were part of a team low on confidence and reeling after the loss of Liverpool’s Uruguayan messiah, Luis Suarez. Defeats against the likes of the mighty Ludogorets in Europe, Aston Villa, Newcastle and Crystal Palace in the Premier League and Rodger’s fielding of a questionable squad against Real Madrid where titan Kolo Toure became Liverpool’s best player for a while certainly were low points. ‘Bring back the days of Carra’, Xabeh, Jerzeh, and Steveh’, all thoughts that ran through my mind.

However, through what would back then have seemed like a miracle, Liverpool now have a genuine chance of maintaining their place in the Champions League, the consequence no doubt of divine intervention by the Jesus of Premier League football himself, Brendan Rodgers.

Resurrected from the depths of the second half of 2014, this year, Rodgers has made some fantastic managerial decisions and has proved why he is one of the best man managers of the Premier League. Simon Mignolet, has at times performed with such little confidence and ability that it would have been better to call David James up and get him to have a go. However, he has been turned into a semi-respectable keeper. Rodgers replacing Mignolet with Brad Jones for those few games, taking the pressure of the Belgian and giving him a chance to regroup, may have been the reason for his much improved performances over the last few months. Mignolet has always been a good shot stopper, a comment that seemingly all crap goalkeepers seem to earn, however, he has now

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learnt to command his box and distribute the ball with the ability that his team expects of him. Whilst he is not quite in the running for the next Ballon d’or, Mignolet has already proven to Rodgers that sacking him off for a summer signing may not be such an obvious solution as it had seemed previously.

Another fantastic move by Mr Rodgers was sending our man Raheem off on holiday to Jamaica who came back energised and rapid as ever, slotting in some crucial goals in the absence of fel-

Liverpool's improved form since Boxing day

Matches

Before 26th Dec

17

After 26th Dec

10

Wins

6

8

Draws

4

2

Losses

Points

Win %

7

22

35%

0

26

80%

low countryman Daniel Sturridge up top. However, where Rodgers deserves most credit is in the new formation that he has built the team around. In reaction to the calamitous defending of the first half of the season, Rodgers went with three in defence, and Liverpool haven’t looked back. In fact, remarkably, Liverpool have one of the best defensive records in the Premier League since January. Mamadou Sakho, who still looks as good on the ball as a three legged Bambi on ice, somehow has one of the best passing success rates in the premier league for a defender – something that I actually got right in my previous Liverpool piece. Emre Can has perhaps been the most important figure in defence, playing on the right of the three, able to use his midfielding abilities to take the ball out of defence and pick out passes for the attackers and get in dangerous attacking areas.

Big man Jordan ‘Hendo’ Henderson has stepped up to the plate and Liverpool – as much as this breaks my heart – have hardly missed the greatest man to walk this earth, Stevie G. Whilst Stevie has been sulking on the bench, perfecting his trademark scowl, perhaps regret-

ting his decision not to pursue his famous transfer request to Chelsea, Liverpool’s midfield featuring Hendo and a man who was on the brink of transfer, Lucas Leiva, have held things together with wing backs Markovic who has proven himself to be a decent shout on the right and Alberto Moreno who is small, Spanish, left footed and quick, has also put in many a shift.

The likes of Couthinho, Sterling and Henderson have steered Liverpool back into contention Philippe Coutinho is, however, in a completely different league. Aside from being blessed by being Brazillian, naturally improving his ability, his finesse, pace, finishing, defending and fitness have made him one of the best players of the Premier League this season.

Some of the goals he has scored have been absolutely remarkable, notably the winner against Manc enemies Man

City, prompting scouse war cries audible across the North.

For Rodgers to reach Rafa B status in the minds of the short-termist Liverpool faithful, he must, however, harness the power of the squad’s biggest enigma and big man, Mario Balotelli.

He has played well when he has come on this year, notably against Chelsea in the league cup, but Brendan still doesn’t play him. Understandably so, perhaps, as the team has done so well without him. However, a Balotelli goal is a goal that makes me most happy. Let this be a plea to Brendan: please don’t sell Mario, please.

Will Liverpool have a repeat of the great final in Istanbul? Dropping out of the Champions League and Europa League at the hands of Beşiktaş will hardly delight Liverpool fans, and Stevie G is gone at the end of the season. But the future of the most successful team in Europe (standard Liverpool chat) is a bright one. Youth reigns supreme once again, and Stevie G has perhaps left at the best time for a club in a period of transition, and to quote the great man himself: ‘At the end of the day, it is the end of the day’.