Issue 4 - Trinity Term 2015

THE

OXFORDSTUDENT One step ahead since 1991

Volume 73 Issue 4

Vampires and pigeons: OBA film screening

Thursday 14th May 3rd Week

oxfordstudent.com

Meet writer Paul Cornell

» OXII Page 12

» OXII Page 15

Should referees get more respect in sport? » Page 22

Somerville College condemns culture of harassment

• College principal criticises “unprecedented” proliferation of harassment amongst JCR SCOTT HARKER DEPUTY NEWS EDITOR

Piers makes waves at the Union

Infamous tabloid beast wins over a cynical Union crowd. See page 13 Roger Askew

Students at Somerville College have expressed their “outrage” following reports of sexual harassment and threatening behaviour on campus.

Somerville Principal Alice Prochaska emailed students on Friday highlighting a number of incidents over previous months that have caused members of the College to feel “threatened, intimidated, or simply uncomfortable”.

Incidents included jokes about rape being overheard in the bar, reports of groping at bops, students being mocked for their sexuality, students heard making jokes approvingly about being arrested for assault, and even students being pressured to participate in sexual activity.

Prochaska stated that, whilst the behaviour appeared to be confined to a small minority of students, there had

been a dramatic rise in such actions over the last few months, with reports being made “on a scale unprecedented” during her time as Principal. At Sunday’s JCR meeting, the Vice President informed students that “just in Hilary 2015, [reports of harassment] were higher than in the past six years combined.” Prochaska reiterated to students in her email that Somerville “will not tolerate any bullying, intimidation, violence or disrespect among members of Somerville”.

JCR President Shyamli Badgaiyan commented that the college was “a very open, accepting community: one that values tolerance and respect in all aspects of student life”.

Badgaiyan added: “Although very rare, these incidents of harassment and intimidation shocked many of us. I can confidently say that the vast majority of the student body deems them as absolutely unacceptable.”

Continued on page 6 »

Life’s too short to hang out with Tories, urges Oxford philosophy blog • University academic compared ‘liking’ the Conservative Facebook page to racism, sexism and homophobia

JASMINE CAMERON-CHILESHE NEWS EDITOR

An Oxford University blog has come under fire this week after publishing an article criticised for “anti-Conservative bias”.

Dr Rebecca Roache’s article, entitled “If You’re a Conservative, I’m Not Your Friend”, was published by the Oxford University Practical Ethics blog on Friday. In the piece, Roache, a Royal Holloway Philosophy Lecturer based in Oxford, described how she had “unfriended” Conservative Party supporters on Facebook following the results of the General Election.

The article has since been criticised by Tory-supporting academics for showing an “anti-Conservative bias”. Within the piece, Roach stated: “life is too short, I

thought, to hang out with people who hold abhorrent political views, even if it’s just online”, and described how she unfriended Facebook friends who had “liked” the Conservative Party Facebook page.

Roache went onto conclude that in this environment, “shy Tories” thrived, and to openly express support for the Conservatives on Facebook or otherwise was “as objectionable as expressing racist, sexist, or homophobic views” and subsequently such “objectionable’ views” are offensive and encourage individuals to lose “friends and respect”.

Some of Dr Roache’s academic colleagues have reacted angrily. Jim Everett, an Oxford social psychologist who identifies himself as a “gay, disabled, workingclass Conservative”, commented by saying that the piece appeared to justify the view

“that it’s OK [to express] the idea that Conservatives are evil and therefore they are intellectually and morally inferior…

As an academic, I find that worrying…

“ Life is too short, I thought, to hang out with people who hold abhorrent views

”

I personally wouldn’t like to see her face disciplinary action.

“What I do think she should do is apol-

ogise and modify her statement. She’s obviously very clever, but far too biased and not applying the same rational standards of thinking that she usually does.”

The article also prompted a wave of negative online comments on the blog itself, with some users labelling it “needlessly rude” and accusing Roache of being unable to construct a “coherent argument”.

Within the bulk of the article, Roach pre-empted some of the criticism over her views, stating: “I am attracted by the view that we should all keep the debate open, discuss our political views, take other people’s views into account, and revise and improve our own as we all benefit from this dialogue. I’m attracted by the view that there is such a thing as progress in politics.”

Dr Roache’s work at Royal Holloway, University of London, specialises in mod-

ern philosophy, logic and practical ethics.

She is also the Associate Editor of ‘The Journal of Medical Ethics’ and a frequent writer for the blog ‘Practical Ethics: Ethics in the News’.

Numerous Oxford students rushed to defend Roache, however. One secondyear English student said Roache’s words were “probably not intended to be taken seriously”, adding: “I completely agree about de-friending Tories. I’ve removed a lot of them since Thursday night. They are fundamentally self-interested people and have no place in my life or my friendship circle.” Another humanities undergradudate agreed, commenting: “To talk of an anti-Conservative bias is absurd. Perhaps Mr Everett should consider whether academics are just more left-leaning as a result of their intelligence and thoughtfullness.”

2 Editorial

14th May 2015

THE OXFORDSTUDENT

Editorial Editors: Nasim Asl & Luke Mintz

One step ahead since 1991

This week in Oxford.

Student comment of the week

Students of Oxford

“So what’s the secret to having a good long distance relationship?”

“Lots of phone sex.”

Tutor comment of the week

‘At times I was physically repulsed by your essay’ Said to an upset English ‘student’

David Cameron Brasenose College 1985-1988

It’s certainly been a memorable week for the nation. A lot of us spent hours glued to our screens as constituency after constituency turned unexpectedly Blue - or, perhaps more predictably, SNP Yellow. It’ll certainly be an interesting few years - voters are already unsettled, as the London protests have shown - yet 37% of the vote swung towards the Tories, and it is Cameron that will lead us for the next five years. Now, the electoral fervour turns from the national frame back to the Oxford Bubble, as many JCRs spend Trinity term electing their representatives for the next academic year. It’s important to remember the importance of these positions and the impact that your JCR has on your Oxford experience, even though the candidates may not be appearing on your television. We also have the chance to voice our opinion on a university wide scale; OUSU’s referendums take place in fourth week, so don’t forget to vote if sub fusc is an issue that you feel passionately about. Without the distraction of politics, we are all reminded that exam season is almost upon us - our best wishes and thoughts are with finalists who are about to go through a tough few weeks, before embarking upon the rest of their lives. Don’t forget that there are support systems in place across the university and within colleges that you can turn to if you need any extra help.

Our main story this week concerns an al-

OXII

Alumnus of the week

Elections

Monsieur Jean-Pierre, Translator

@OxUniLabour

“The #milifandom will never die. #milibae forever.”

Jean Pierre:

BRASENOSE ARTS WEEK p.6

OULC hack Helena Dollimore to be named the Labour Party’s new leader

75/1

Daily Mail to publish career-ruining photos of students at summer balls

2/1

Ed Miliband to be found wasted outside Bridge whilst reliving Oxford memories in week long election defeat bender

20/1

as sexual harassment can only be eliminated once they have been widely acknowledged, and we hope that our front page this week makes a small contribution to this.

As occasionally occurs in a weekly newspaper, several of our other news stories this week concern a similar theme. Our reports on Trinity College conflict over “rowdy” gendered curry nights, as well as the account of a former student who recently sued Oxford University for allegedly failing to take seriously her claim of rape, both demonstrate a student population attempting to challenge what they see as institutional University sexism. Again, we commend these efforts, and encourage all students to challenge any form of discrimina-

FASHION

OXSTU, YOU SHALL GO TO THE BALL p.8

tion they may encounter on campus. In other news, you can find stories about the aftermath of the General Election, with several students (and one tutor…) expressing their feelings in strong terms.

And the rest

It’s Oxford Ball season. Thousands of us are donning gowns and tuxes and making our way to Colleges we don’t know in order to pass the night drinking and dancing with our nearest and dearest. Our fashion section took a trip down to a couple of the weekend’s biggest balls in order to snap some of the best dressed (OXII, page 8); the focus then shifts, as the section explore the cultural appropriation that the Met Ball has been accused of. A similar sort of injustice is also at the heart of Art’s content, as page 14 sees an exploration of the social decline depicted in Hogarth’s works. From there, jump into the distant future as you read an interview with Paul Cornell, screenwriter and novelist on page 15. If that’s not your thing, we have interviews with Oxford band Swervedrive (page 3) and fashion lawyer Charles Coleman (page 11), as well as media bigwig Piers Morgan over on page 13, just following the end of OXII. Oxford is at the heart of a lot of this week’s content - Sports features a report on the recent Netball Cuppers tournament and Screen reviews the final films made by the winners of the OBA screenwriting competition.

Comment retains a focus on politics, with multiple students weighing in to offer their thoughts on and reactions to the outcome of the General Election.

SCREEN

OBA FILM SCREENING REVIEW p.12

‘Hahahaha’, ‘DC’, Brasenose College: Letters You chaps just bought it hook, line and sinker, didn’t you? “Vote in Labour and the economy will literally vanish. A vote for Labour is a vote for the SNP is a vote for Scotland to annex to the Editors. disappearCumbria under Sturgeon’s fascist boot is a vote for the Nazis.” And you bloody well lapped it all up, didn’t you? I mean, Christ, I knew Lynton was good, but a majority is taking the bloody piss.

Send in your letters of Bye bye Cleggy, you self-satisfied wet sponge; enjoy the Commons’ canteen with no mates... unwavering support to ‘Oh my fucking Christ what has happened’, Every Labour our esteemed editors at: supporter, Every College, Every Year

Editors Deputy Editors

Screw you, OxStu and every other media outlet or self important psephologist of pollster. You told us- you promised- that we were going to be entering the sunlit uplands of Milifandom, or at the very most we’d have to toss Sturgeon a few quid and we could boot Cameron out. Waaaaaaaaah!

Nasim Asl & Luke Mintz David Barker, Kate Bickerton, Laura Hartley, Hugh McHale-Maughan, Srishti Nirula and Laura Whetherly News Editors Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe, Jennier Lee and Cason Reilly Comment Editors Polly Mason & Kathryn Welsh Music Editors Naomi Southwell & Jacob Wiseman Screen Editors Thomas Bannatyne & Megan Erwin Fashion Editors Elizabeth Evans & Charlotte Lanning Arts & Lit Editors Marcus Li & William Shaw Stage Editors William Aslet & Lucy Oliver Features Editors Ariane Laurent-Smith & Elle Tait Sports Editors Alice Richardson & Ben Sanders

STAFF

odds-ford bets.

leged culture of sexual harassment at Somerville College, brought to light following an email sent by the College Principal, Alice Prochaska. Though Somerville is the focus of attention this week, sexual harassment is a problem across all Oxford colleges, and indeed across all universities.

We commend Dr Prochaska for not shying away from this thorny issue, and we are impressed with how the issue has been addressed by the JCR. Whilst some students may complain that such reporting “sensationalises” serious issues, we believe it is important to bring these issues to the public light. Endemic cultural problems such

STAGE

editor@ oxfordstudent.com

... [tears]

News

Deputy News Editors Deputy Comment Editors Deputy Music Editor Deputy Screen Editor Deputy Arts & Lit Editors Deputy Stage Editor Deputy Features Editors Deputy Sports Editor Photographers

Scott Harker, Louis Mercier, and Latifah Sat Carolina Bax, Daniel Coleman and Elizabeth Webb Sean McIntyre Hector Manly Daniel Haynes, Sam Sykes and Georgia Watson Philippa Stacey Lynton Lees, Kate Plummer and Jamie Russell Taylor Yu Saskia Mondon-Ballantyne and Bethan Jones

Illustrator Chief Sub-Editor Sub-Editors

Associate Editors

Laura Mackenzie Sam Harman Jennifer Allan, Olivia Brown, Veronica Corsi, Henrietta Mosforth, James Sewry, Elizabeth La Trobe and Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan Alys Key, Sachin Croker and Jess Sinyor

Editors can be contacted at editor@oxfordstudent.com and Section Editors can be contacted through this address.

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.

14th May 2015

News 3

“Rowdy” Trinity College curry nights slammed as “offensive” • JCR members raise concerns over gendered BYOB events, especially the song ‘Chicago’ BENJAMIN HUSTON NEWS REPORTER

Trinity College students have raised concerns over the “rowdiness” of gendered JCR curry events in a recent open debate, with “offensive” songs labeled a particularly pressing issue.

The open debate was proposed

by Trinity JCR President Eleanor Roberts following discussion on the JCR committee. Members resolved to vote on four motions at the next meeting. These include whether the JCR should endorse the events, whether they can be separated by gender, and whether the song ‘Chicago’ - a college song based on double entendre - should be banned.

At present, the Trinity JCR endorses BYOB curry events which are separated by gender, and occur twice each term. The men’s curries typically attract about 40-60 students, while women’s events are generally smaller.

The primary issues raised at the debate concerned the rowdy and offensive behaviour which students reported as taking place, as well as the harm in dividing such events by gender.

Questions were raised over the song “Chicago” being sung at the men’s events, with critics saying that it created an “offending and uncomfortable atmosphere”. It was also said that sconcing at the women’s events often got out of hand and

Robert Cutts

that this discouraged freshers from attending.

Patrick Mulholland, a first year Theologian, commented: “There is a certain ambiance or ‘curry culture’, if you will, that verges on laddish behaviour. It’s an opportunity to let loose, to suspend some of the niceties of day-to-day conduct and be a bit rowdy.

The mood of the event, in effect, becomes something of caricature, and yes, I can see how that alienates or excludes people – particularly if you’re not a cis-gendered heterosexual male.”

The question of the impact of the gender divide proved to be more controversial, with some members appealing for the events to become gender-inclusive, whilst others argued that this would not change fundamental attitudes. A brief straw poll suggested a marginal preference against the gender divide, which was said to make an uncomfortable atmosphere for LGBTQ students.

A system with one mixed and one gender-specific curry each term in lieu of two separated ones was suggested.

Amanda Green, a second year student and entertainment rep for the JCR, condemned this gendered system as “projecting heteronormativity.”

Green continued: “The split gender system has manifested two very different looking curries which I think promotes the idea that men and women are culturally different…

A mixed environment should not compromise on the fun Trinity undergraduates have.”

Another student, who wished to remain anonymous, told The OxStu that while ‘Chicago’ and some of the rowdiness could go, the current system had benefits: “I have been to and enjoyed the men’s only curries and do think there is something to be said for the all male environment, although it’s very difficult to articulate delicately what this is.”

“There are a lot of boys in Trinity, including some very good friends of mine, who really appreciate the chance for an inclusive all male environment that cuts across years and friendship groups and would feel a bit put out if it was taken away,” he continued. “While I can see arguments for why the jcr shouldn’t be endorsing such a divide, I find attacking people who feel like this as rampant sexists to be really quite unfair.”

Worries were also raised that mixed events might prove impossible due to the large numbers and limited space in restaurants.

Leander Cascorbi, Trinity’s JCR Entertainment Rep, said: “I and many other people in Trinity oppose the way curries are run at the moment, I really hope the JCR will decide to change it.”

Votes will be held in an upcoming JCR meeting. If the JCR continues to endorse curries, a ban on ‘Chicago’ is highly likely, with the future of the gender split unknown.

University failed to investigate rape claim, says former Oxford student

• Former student, Elizabeth Ramey, attempted to overturn the University’s policy on sexual assault complaints JENNIFER LEE NEWS EDITOR

A former Oxford student has failed in her attempt sue the University for neglecting to properly investigate her rape claim, after accusing the institution of a “discriminatory stance on sexual assault”.

Elizabeth Ramey, a former Master’s student at St Antony’s College, attempted to overturn the University’s policy on investigating complaints of sexual assault after she was allegedly raped by a fellow student in 2011.

After the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to pursue the case for evidential reasons, Ramey pursued a claim through the University’s complaint procedure, but claims that Oxford authorities failed to take sufficient action against the alleged perpetrator.

Ramey stated: “Although I reported the incident to the university, the case was never seriously investigated, making my periods of anxiety and depression deeper and more frequent. It became clear that the University’s policy is not to investigate severe forms of sexual assault, except in extremely limited circumstances.”

The University suspended

the accused student for three months, but later allowed him to return after the CPS declined to prosecute. A letter from a junior proctor stated that there was little “tangible” evidence for the crime, and noted that if the male student was brought to an internal disciplinary panel, he would be forced to answer an accusation of rape that had not been tested in a criminal court.

An internal University memo suggested that the alleged attacker should be spoken to and advised to “be more careful in the future about putting himself in situations with female students which are open to misinterpretation.”

Ramey continued: “Oxford has chosen to wash its hands of sexual assault specifically, which predominantly affects women.

What the university fails to understand is how important it is to survivor’s welfare to provide a fair hearing to those who come forward to report. When the university says it will not investigate rape, it sends a message to survivors that it values the reputation of the offender more than the well-being of the victim.”

Her case failed in the High Court because it was based on a now defunct University policy.

According to her solicitor Louise Whitfield, however, Justice Edis recognised that the issues raised were significant, and stated that a policy in which the University only investigated rape under limited circumstances could be unlawful.

Whitfield told The Guardian: “We have already been contacted by other women students whose experiences have been similar to Ms Ramey’s and are considering whether a further claim should be brought.”

The Equality and Human Rights Commission and the End Violence Against Women Coalition supported Ramey’s case.

Rape and sexual assault has become a hot-button in Oxford during recent years, with one student, writing under the pseudonym Maria Marcello, attracting widespread publicity last year after claiming she was raped in her student bedroom after a game of poker. Thames Valley Police, Marcello claimed, pressured her to drop the allegations.

A University spokesperson told The OxStu: “The University notes the outcome of this morning’s hearing and welcomes the decision not to proceed with a judicial review of its harassment policy.”

High Court

14th May 2015

4 News

Oriel rejects OUSU disaffiliation in JCR referendum CASON REILY NEWS EDITOR

Oriel’s referendum over whether to disaffiliate from OUSU was defeated on Friday by a vote of 57 - 40.

The vote, which would have needed a two-thirds majority to pass, reflects a turnout of less than a third of Oriel Students.

The referendum was originally proposed by Oriel undergraduates Alex Chalmers and Eleanor Sharman. In the referendum hustings, Sharman said that the JCR and its reps on OUSU council had “exhausted all our options” in attempting to reform the body.

TIMELINE OF EVENTS

2000

Oriel first proposes leaving OUSU

2001

The college chooses to disaffiliate from OUSU

2010

Oriel votes to rejoin OUSU

2014

Temporary disaffiliation over concerns about OUSU policy positions

2015

Referendum to disaffiliate fails by 17 votes

Referring to the low turnout for both the hustings and the referendum itself, Alex Chalmers told The OxStu: “The extent of OUSU’s engagement problem was made all too clear. In the past, passions and tempers surrounding OUSU used to run much higher in Oriel; we have now reached the troubling point where very few people actually care.”

Oriel first proposed leaving OUSU in 2000, and has held several referendums on the issue since then. Given the result, Oriel JCR will remain officially aligned with OUSU and retain its three seats on OUSU council.

James Blythe, OUSU VP for Access and Academic Affairs, told Oriel students that he hoped to work with them to improve OUSU’s process, policies, and communication.

Telling Oriel’s JCR that “we as the students need our voice heard in the central University”, he also referenced OUSU’s role in rent negotiations, University policies, and other services. Responding to those supporting the disaffiliation, he said: “We will lose your voice.

We will lose your passion.”

Speaking after the referendum, Blythe said: “I am delighted that Oriel JCR has decided to remain affiliated to OUSU. It's incredibly important that OUSU remains the shared and clear voice of oxford's students, to the university and the world. This has never been more important than with a new government and in a few months a new Vice Chancellor.”

Chalmers remained less enthused with the result, and focused on pressuring OUSU to better engage with students: “The onus falls upon OUSU now to counter the rising tide of indifference that is engulfing the student population,

Kathryn Yengel

“ We as the students need

our voice heard in the central university

”

but I struggle to see any meaningful change on the horizon.”

The motivation for the referendum seemed to be a growing sense of apathy towards OUSU among the student population. This lower level of engagement has been accompanied by the perception of left-leaning political groups using their organizational muscle to control the OUSU policy agenda.

Speaking to The Oxford Student last week, one Oriel undergraduate

said: “OUSU does not seem to be particularly representative.”

In his statement, Blythe said that OUSU wants to engage with the problems considered during the referendum: “We would all be delighted to meet with anyone who has concerns, as we regularly do already. The specific comments made by the proponents of disaffiliation in Oriel are being very actively considered by the OUSU Executive at the moment."

14th May 2015

No change for Oxford East and West MPs • Labour candidate Andrew Smith and Conservative Nicola Blackwood both re-elected

JASMINE CAMERON-CHILESHE NEWS EDITOR

The General Election has resulted in little change in the Oxford area, with Oxford East re-electing Labour candidate Andrew Smith and Oxford West re-electing Conservative Nicola Blackwood.

Smith increased his majority by 7.5% in Oxford East, obtaining 25,356 votes - 50% of the constituency. In Oxford West (Abingdon), Blackwood gained 33% of the overall vote, with Labour candidate Sally Copley taking just over 7,000 votes.

The 2015 election marks Smith’s eight election in the Oxford East constituency. In an address at Oxford Town Hall following the result, Smith emphasised the emotional and personal challenges faced during the campaign and dedicated his success to his wife: “Given the gravity of Val’s health, this has been emotionally a very difficult campaign for me. I’m

very grateful for the spirit and the support which people of all parties have shown at this time.

I’d like to thank each and every one of my opponents for their understanding.

Most of all I want to thank Val, without whom everything I have achieved in politics would not have been possible. Thank you, Val, the dream lives on.”

In later interviews, Smith, who has also acted as Shadow Secretary of State, Minister of State for Education and Employment and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, affirmed his appreciation for the longstanding support granted to him by the constituency: “I’ve been really touched and heartened by the enormous number of messages I’ve had from constituents, including people who do not necessarily support me politically.There is an important message here; at a time when political argument and differences and principles quite rightly divide

us, there is a common humanity that unites us.”

“ The Oxfordshire results echo a

national shift towards the Conservative Party

”

In comparison, 35 year old Nicola Blackwood was first elected as MP for the Oxford West and Abingdon in the 2010 General Election and was appointed a member of the Home Affairs Committee. Blackwood also served as Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party between 2010-2013.

After the election, Blackwood was keen to thank her campaigners for their commitment during the campaign, affirming that: “They’ve been out in all weathers and really helped us win here.”

Blackwood also expressed a desire to instigate both local and national change, stating: “I want to make sure we continue to deliver on everything in the constituency, but I also want to make sure we have a louder voice nationally.”

Nicola Blackwood has not always enjoyed popularity among Oxford’s student population, with the Tory MP provoking anger for her oppsotion to same-sex marriage in 2013, and for her recent support of legal fox hunting.

Andrew Smith’s Labour majority in the Oxford East has left him as the only Labour MP in the county.

Blackwood was one of 331 Conservative MPs elected nationally a figure that gave David Cameron a surprise majority.

News 5

#GE2015

Twitter exploded with comments about the General Election last week and the #GE2015 tag is still going strong. Here’s what people thought: @AodhanMcGregor Our Health Minister is a man who believes in homeopathy.

Might as well be Minister for Magic! We’re doomed. #GE2015 #UK #CabinetReshuffle @Villazim Civil war is approaching fast & be ready for it everyone! #ToriesOutNow #GetTheToriesOUT #GE2015 @b0ringtweets Only 1826 sleeps until the next general election. @Mr_Mallen I think there should be a Liberal Democrat #Pointless special where the 8 remaining MPs take part. Winner gets the leadership. #GE2015 @rosiejbernard I’m going back to bed, wake me up in 5 years time #GE02015 @nasimicle Don’t think I’ve ever seen so many disillusioned and disappointed people

Benjamin Woolf

Andrew Smith

Students react to General Election result • Oxford students express shock, horror, and delight at Conservative majority

Students have expressed a variety of views on the surprise majority win for the Conservative Party on 8th May, with Oxford activist groups mobilising in preparation to protest the result.

‘Oxford rs21’, part of the national Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century movement, set up an event under the title “Planning the Oxford Fightback” in order to unite “everyone of Oxford of any left stripe to join us in beginning our resistance to this government!”.

One of the organisers of the fightback event, held on Wednesday 13th May, commented: “Tracking social media from Friday through Saturday it was clear that many people within Oxford are incredibly angry at the prospect of five years of benefit cuts, the dismantling of the EU Human Rights

Act and an electoral system that has failed the UK. “This meeting has been set up to provide a space for people to organise next steps, whatever that may look like.”

One third year Oxford student, who wished to remain anonymous, spoke out in support of the movement, saying: “A Conservative government and the austerity it will bring, is not what is needed for Britain and therefore it is important for me to personally to stand up against the Party and make a change where I can.”

University political societies have been also been assessing the defeats and planning their local and national strategies. The Oxford University Labour Club released an official statement pledging to come back fighting: “OULC is immensely proud of the hard work

and determination shown by all of its members and supporters over the course of the general election campaign. Your enduring and unwavering commitment to the Labour cause has been truly inspiring and OULC thanks you deeply.

This unwavering commitment has seen Andrew Smith re-elected for Oxford East …In this sense, we are delighted that, as the vast majority of Oxford University Colleges lie within Oxford East, Oxford is truly a Labour University.

“However, on a national level, OULC’s thoughts remain solely with the 1 million people who rely on foodbanks to survive, the 700,000 people on unstable zerohours contracts, the 3.5 million children currently living in poverty, the public sector workers that we treasure so much but face job insecurity and vilification, the

disabled people subjected to cruel and dehumanising work-capability assessments, the asylum seekers and economic migrants facing relentless demonisation and marginalisation, and many, many more.

“Another five years of Tory rule will devastate this country. That is why OULC will continue to fight for Labour values, and the working people of Britain. We will not stand by and simply watch our Union destroyed, our membership of the European Union lost, and our NHS decimated. Now is the time to unite and work for our future.”

The upcoming weeks will prove pivotal, as student groups throughout the University act in opposition to the next five years of Conservative government.

JCRs across Oxford organised election night parties.

@NorthernerLogic General Election drinking game: Chug the whole bottle to numb the pain. #GE02015 @MontysDogNigel Balls out. That’s a fact not a Friday fashion recommendation #GE2015 @mattleys If Farage, Galloway, Clegg and Balls are all out, I’m A Celebrity is going to be amazing this year. @R_Faragher I’m scared to stand up in case the SNP take my seat #GE2015 @ayymanduh

I think that @paddys_hat would probably taste best smothered in Nandos medium peri-peri sauce #paddyshatrecipes

6 News

14th May 2015

Turn Down for Oxford: Rap legend speaks to Oxford Guild • Despite having topped the charts worldwide, Mr Jon was humbled by 'nice' Oxford students LATIFAH SAT

DEPUTY NEWS EDITOR

Rap star Lil’ Jon spoke to the Oxford Guild on 11th May, following on from the success of Kanye West’s visit to the society in March.

Jonathan Smith, known by his stage name “Lil’ Jon”, engaged in intimate conversation with students, who reacted positively to the event. The globally acclaimed rapper responded to questions considering he music industry, the portrayal of women in music videos, racial issues and politics.

Organiser Sai Ulluri described the event as: “endlessly entertaining” [and one which] “shows how the Guild can get a wide variety of speakers who are good to hear.”

Students Akriti Nanda and Michael Hennel commented that the talk was “so much better than Kanye. Lil Jon came across as a chilled out dude. We like how we got to ask questions”.

“ I thought it was somebody playing a damn joke!

”

Having entered the music industry in 1993, the 44 year old rapper noted that hip hop has grown to influence pop music. Smith spoke of the beginning of his career, starting off as a DJ for a radio show at 3am. He told the audience that “you gotta mess up to learn how to do it correctly."

When asked about being invited to address Oxford students, Smith asserted his disbelief: “I thought it was somebody playing a damn joke! They want me to come to Oxford? Are you sure? Oxford in London?”

Smith thanked the audience for their attendance and expressed he was “having a good time” since this was “not a lecture like ‘Hey, stay in school." When asked later on his experience with the students, Smith commented that the student body was “really nice and asked very diverse questions”.

Known as the “King of Crunk”, Smith alleged that crunk differs from traditional rap in the sense that it is more rebellious and involves and big release of energy.

He was reminiscent that “people do not party no more…mainly because the main tempo for hip hop went from 90100 bmp to 60-70 bmp…and if 90 per cent of the records are that tempo, you can’t really get crazy to the tempo”.

Smith also said he was not opposed to music streaming services such as Spotify.

He mentions how “technology is amazing. Five years ago we never had anything like [Spotify] and 10 years ago we would never have dreamed of it”.

On being asked about his appearance on Celebrity Apprentice, Smith admitted he “did really well on that” and it showed him he could do anything. He said he applied the marketing and branding skills that he learnt in his career to each task.

Lil Jon is currently working on “some Arabic stuff.” He said: “I travel the world, so I’m exposed to all types of things.

I love culture and I love music. That’s how I stay relevant.” He acknowledged he would like to cooperate with Jay Z, Drake and Usher among others.

Smith indicated that he has no intention of leaving the music industry: “God gave me this voice - this talent - I should use it until I can’t use it no more…I want to keep using my voice as long as I can talk to push people…God put me here for a specific reason, [to make people] let loose and enjoy life a little bit.” However he did mention that if he did not enter into music he would have liked to be a psychologist or psychiatrist to help people with they problems.

Touching on racial issues in the United States, Smith denounced the television show Love & Hip Hop Atlanta, saying “people are just acting wild and crazy…

I don’t really like the way it represents black folks…they shouldn’t be on TV wilding up like that.”

Regarding the riots in Ferguson and Baltimore, Smith noted that “growing up in black America you see all sorts of different stuff. It will take time for those wounds to heal, for people to change.”

He said there are “ripples of change”, citing the investment in body cameras for police officers. He also said it goes back to the training for police officers.

Smith related his childhood as a skateboarder in Atlanta, Georgia. He said: “There weren’t no black skateboarders in the 80s. We was like the outcast.

Through skateboarding with Latino, Asian and white kids I opened my mind to other types of music: steel punk, reg-

Ultra Records

gae, dancehall. We all just liked to skate and listen to different kinds of music.

[Skateboarding] opened my mind to how big the world is.”

When asked on the Obama administration, Lil Jon commended him for “doing a great job”, comparing his presidency to restoring an old historic car. Smith pointedly said “the Republicans just like to criticise [Obama]. At the end of the day, it’s just because he’s black.” He further pronounced that his favourite presidential elect for now is Hilary Clinton.

On the topic of women in the hip hop sector, Lil Jon said “if you got the talent it don’t matter male female whoever…hip hop would love to have more female rappers, just not many have broken through yet.” Regarding the problem with media associating rap with scantily clad women in music videos, he said the women, such as Nicki Minaj in “Anaconda” knew what they were doing to garner views and that “she knows what she’s doing… she knows the effect for her to shake her butt in the video.”

It is not known whether the Oxford Guild plan to invite any more internationally acclaimed rap stars to Oxford in the immediate future.

"He was very impressed by Oxford"

Connor Roth

Guild members gave the humbled rapper a tour of Oxford which he shared with his huge international fanbase via Snapchat

More reports of "harassment" in last term than last six years »Continued from front page At a JCR meeting on Sunday evening, Somerville students passed a motion condemning the alleged sexual harassment, and encouraged students to use the support networks in place at Somerville to report any further incidents. The JCR also made a donation of £200 to the Oxford Sexual Abuse and Rape Crisis Centre.

Srishti Nirula, Welfare Officer at Somerville, said that whilst the JCR and the principal were “outraged” by the incidents, they were “still heartened by the fact that the JCR meeting in

which we put forward a motion condemning these actions was so well-attended and that the motion passed with no objections.

“The Welfare team in Somerville from the decanal team, to Welfare Officers and peer supporters - have always tried our best to be there for Somerville students, and will continue to do so throughout our time in Oxford."

One Somerville student commented that while the report was “truly shocking news” that needed to be dealt with “swiftly and decisively,” he worried about “the negative response generated by a select minority to both the Princi-

pal's email and the JCR meeting”.

He said: “There have been borderline cases where certain drunken behaviors have been accused of contributing to the propagation of sexual harassment around college. It seems that the people involved, who are most likely innocent of any true misdemeanors, have felt the need to defend themselves, and are thus causing unnecessary conflict.

“I feel that they are missing the bigger picture, and are getting too caught up in debating superfluous details and specific events. At the same time, we must not make these people into pariahs. The most important thing is that the college

stands together and that we support each other in these difficult times.”

JCR President Badgaiyan went on to say: “While it’s extremely sad that these incidents have occurred here, I believe it is a symptom of a wider, societal problem that needs to be addressed immediately. I am proud to be part of a college that has been working tirelessly to take a firm step in this direction, confronting the matter with honesty as well as extreme sensitivity”.

This itself is the real Somerville culture- not our immunity from these rare instances, but our ability to stand up and face them with courage and solidarity."

News 7

14thMay 2015

St John’s discusses gym gender segregation

• College survey questions whether gender specific gym sessions are necessary or valuable • JCR Committee is working along the MCR Women’s Officers to discuss the situation

LATIFAH SAT DEPUTY NEWS EDITOR

St John’s JCR is currently considering a motion that would see gender-specific hours being introduced in the college gym.

According to JCR President Christina St Clair, the motion brought to the JCR General Meeting two weeks ago has generated significant debate in the college, with questions being raised regarding the reasons for the request, the implications for gym users and the wider message it sends were discussed.

Opponents to the request cited the negative effects of gender “segregation” during the JCR meeting.

Further opposition then occurred when the reasons for women wanting a women’s hour were inappropriately conflated with women not being able to use the machines rather than the wider reasons of feeling uncomfortable, intimidated and body conscious.

The college has also survey has been conducted to review whether

gender specific hours in the gym are necessary or valuable, and to assess the amount of support behind the motion. The JCR Committee is working alongside the MCR Women’s Officers to write, conduct and analyse the survey results.The survey contains questions regarding which of the two gyms and the specific day and time during the week that would be best for gender specific hours without inconveniencing many people.

The survey received over 200 responses in only a few hours, a greater response rate than any of the other four surveys conducted by the JCR this term on other issues.

Once the survey has been completed, the JCR committee will discuss how this matter should be approached.

St Clair has also stated that she is “very pleased to be conducting this survey and to gain some more information in an anonymous way.

A lot of people often do not share their views at JCR meetings due to a lack of confidence or patience.

Some discussion has occurred over

Facebook but I do not think Facebook message threads are the most valuable way of gauging JCR opinion…I am particularly motivated to pursue this fully and to listen to those specific groups in the JCR who have particular needs that often many people cannot recognise or relate to.”

St Clair added that, “personally, I am massively in favour of getting more people to use the gym. I would like to think that we can find a way to help more people across the whole JCR to do exercise. University can often be quite stressful and I’m a firm believer in exercise as a stress reliever. I hope that the students of St John’s can support each other in improving both their physical and mental health.”

Speaking to The Oxford Student, first year St John’s student Crystal Chan commented: “I don’t think there will be a big implication even if there’s a woman only gym session. It’s not a proactive way of promoting the use of gym to selfconscious women after all.”

St John’s has two gyms, one of

which was installed in 2011. There is also a third specialised gym that is used for training by rowers. In addition there is a games room, table-tennis table and two squash courts, designed for use by all current St John’s members (students and staff) and their spouses.

According to the College Gym Rules posted on St John’s website, access hours are from 6am to 11pm with the cleaning times being 9:15am to 10:15am, contrasted with other colleges, whose gyms

are available 24 hours, minimising the availability of the gym further could be a reason for males to object to the motion.

Discussions on these issues also raised the issue of a general lack of knowledge and confidence among people of all genders regarding how to use the gym equipment properly. Following this discussion, an additional motion for “beginner’s hours” was also proposed alongside the proposition that the gym have gender-segregated sessions.

Kathryn Yengel

News in brief: the best of this week’s short news stories New College freshers lose Increased admissions to RON in JCR elections chances for MFL students This week’s New College JCR elections failed to produce a JCR President, after the ‘Reopen Nominations’ option beat two fresher candidates. Students Sorrel Evans and Pranav Subhedar received 57 and 98 votes respectively, whilst 98 students rejected both candidates.

The JCR will now hold a new round of nominations and elections before a President is elected. Whilst a ‘reopen nominations’ option is used on most JCR, OUSU, and Union elections, candidates rarely lose to ‘RON’. One student expressed surprise, describing both candidates as “promising”.

Town and Gown race, 2014

Town and Gown race a success

Almost 4,000 runners, both students and locals, took part in the annual Oxford Town and Gown race held on Sunday Morning.

The race route began on Keble Road and went through several of the city’s historic streets as well as University Parks following the starting of the race by author Christine Hamilton.

Participants are expected to have raised around £150,000 for the charity Muscular Dystrophy UK through sponsorship, entry fees and the junior 3k race and wheelchair race which took place earlier on Sunday morning.

So far, the Town and Gown race programme has raised over £1.5 million for charity.

The fastest runner completed the 10k race in just over 31 minutes.

Lead up to Professor of University fundraising Poetry appointment reaches £2bn

Nobel-winning poet and playwright Wole Soyinka currently leads the field of candidates for the Oxford Professor of poetry. If successful, he would replace Sir Geoffrey Hill, who is at the end of his term. The five-year position is highly regarded as 2nd only to poet laureate in the UK. Soyinka, who is 80, has had a prolific and widely-awarded writing career spanning six decades.

Soyinka has published dozens of plays, poetry collections, memoirs and essays over his life. He was imprisoned for two years during Nigerian Civil War. wThe professorship began in 1708, and has been held by many prominent poets, including W H Auden, Seamus Heaney, and Paul Muldoon.

An Oxford University campaign to raise funds for teaching and research has now raised over £2bn to go towards the student experience.

The project to raise these funds was launched in August 2004 and will go towards new scholarships, academic posts, programmes, buildings and facilities for students.

The current sum is £2,012,517,521.

This places the campaign as the biggest money-raising project in European university history, and is on par with US university donation funds Vice-Chancellor Andrew Hamilton commented: “I’m confident that the continuing goodwill and support of our donors and friends will allow us to achieve this, and that the £3bn target will soon be in sight.”

Students turn against Cuntry Living Students have reacted against feminist Facebook group Cuntry Living following discussion over the General Election result announcement on 8th May. Over 500 people have liked a post on the group discussion page stating “Not all feminists have to be left-wing. Not all feminists have to be Green-party voting, tuition fee hating, Liberal Democrat/Tory/Coalition reviling people”. Several threads were started expressing disappointment surrounding the Conservative majority in the General Election.

One of the group’s admins and several ordinary members also left the group during the course of these debates.

A new group has since been set up by some of these students and ex-Cuntry Living members, entitled “Feminists who left”.

An overall decline in A-Level language students throughout the country has resulted in an increased success rate for students applying for language degree courses at Oxbridge.

In 2014 the Modern Language and Linguistics course at Oxford received 61 applicants and gave 27 offers. The course had the largest success rate of all Oxford courses, at 44 percent.

This contrasts with other courses such as Economics and Management, which had the lowest success rate of 7%, receiving 1,149 applicants and granting 86 offers.

Jesus tops satisfaction survey Jesus College has received the highest student satisfaction score across the University for the period 2010 – 2014.

95 percent of students at the college over the five year period were satisfied with the quality of tutorials, 99 percent with the subject expertise of their tutors.

A vast 97 percent of students were satisfied with college welfare provision, and 90 percent of postgraduate students were also satisfied with their learning and living experiences.

Jesus also came first in a satisfaction survey carried out in 2013.

According to a National Student Survey also carried out in 2014, 100 percent of students in Modern Languages at Oxford have reported being satisfied with their course.

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14th May 2015

Comment 9

Comment

Our obsession with being thin is lethal

• Diet pill deaths should serve as a warning • Society's image of physical perfection is unattainable POLLY MASON NEW COLLEGE

A

bout a month ago, 21-yearold Eloise Parry took four times what is considered to be the lethal dose of a diet pill that she had bought over the internet, and later drove herself to hospital when she began to feel unwell.

Shortly afterwards, she began “burning up from the inside” and her metabolism “exploded like TNT”; there was nothing the doctors could do to help her. She died later that day.

She is not the first. In 2013, Sarmad Alladin and Chris Mapletoft, both 18, died after taking diet pills.

Sarmad is thought to have been recommended the pills by somebody at the gym. In the same year, Sarah Houston, a 23-year-old medical student, died after taking diet pills in combination with antidepressants.

The culprit in all four cases:

“ Our society shamelessly upholds that only thinness will do

”

2,4-dinitrophenol, otherwise known as DNP, a metabolism-boosting chemical which can legally be bought and sold as a fertiliser; it is commonly used in pesticides.

When DNP is ingested, fat and carbohydrate in food are broken down but the production of useful energy for cells is impaired and is instead released as heat. The enormous increase in metabolism causes drastic overheating and nausea; the former is, in many cases, lethal and yet, despite the risk posed, people continue to buy pills containing DNP because their effect in terms of weight loss is unrivalled by safe and legal alternatives available on the shelves in shops such as Boots and Superdrug.

Anyone who supplies the drug for personal consumption is liable to be legally pursued, but it is far more difficult to stop people from searching it out for themselves: websites selling diet pills are widespread and terrifyingly easy to access, catering to the desperation

of the masses to lose weight.

The deaths of these young people, driven to extreme measures, are symptomatic of our society’s toxic attitude towards body image and should serve as a warning against promoting an ideology which dictates that, in order to be successful, one must be thin.

And it is everywhere. We are fed a constant stream of images of women displaying thigh gaps and bikini bridges, with ribs and collarbones clear to see, and men with perfectly chiselled six-packs and cheekbones.

We are told over and over again that food and drink products are "skinny" or "light" or "low-calorie", given the impression on a daily basis that our lives will be infinitely better if we could only exercise enough self-discipline to drop another pound, to refuse a second biscuit with our cup of tea - which is made, of course, with Splenda instead of sugar. Instagram feeds are full of #cleaneating and #thinspo, with the hashtags accompanied by snaps of brightly coloured smoothie bowls topped with exotic fruit and selfies joyfully announcing yet more weight loss.

A society should be made up of people of all body shapes and sizes, from very slim to very overweight and everything in between, but ours shamelessly upholds that only thinness will do. Anyone who fails to conform to this culture is shunned, made to feel ashamed in their own skin, and this shame can undoubtedly spiral into the allconsuming self-hatred that leads to the development of eating disorders or the decision to risk one’s life by, for example, taking DNP. Instead of being told that it is okay for each individual to be who they are, we are indoctrinated with the idea that beauty comes in one form and one form only. The matter is made to seem black and white: anything other than thin signifies failure.

This is clearly a massively damaging and warped attitude.

Yes, obesity is a problem that we urgently and undeniably need to address: two thirds of British adults are either overweight or obese, according to a 2013 report.

But so are health issues at the other end of the spectrum such as eating disorders, body dysmorphia, and low self-esteem. Between 2006 and 2014, there was a 34 per cent increase in inpatient hospital admissions for eating disorders; 20 per cent of anorexia sufferers will die prematurely from their illness.

Morbid obesity and eating disorders are both resultant, at least to some extent, of a difficult relationship with food and body image. But this is rarely the beginning, especially for eating disorder sufferers deep-seated and unresolved issues, perhaps about relationships, trauma, or something else, which have been festering for years without ever really being addressed, invariably come to light when somebody is trying to work their way through food-related problems.

By the time somebody with anorexia or bulimia reaches an inpatient unit, or an obese person is hospitalised for heart failure, we as a society have already gone a long way to failing them as an individual.

They have been bombarded with messages and images telling them how they should or shouldn’t be, made to feel ashamed for the way they are, always told to be thinner, healthier, better. Young people die after taking diet pills and we feel a profound sadness, but we should also feel ashamed of ourselves for making them feel that they had no other choice by promoting an ideal which is, quite frankly, unattainable.

As a society, instead of endorsing a culture of self-hatred, we should teach our young people to recognise and accept the fact that the body image pictured in the media is simply impossible to reach, and encourage them to lead a healthy and, crucially, balanced lifestyle whilst cultivating a feeling of selflove and embracing themselves in all of their uniqueness.

A society of extremes

20%

of women have used diet pills by the age of 20

44%

Damaging and warped: Our attitude to body image drives people to extremes

increase in drugs dispensed for treating obesity between 2012 and 2013

725,000

The estimated number of people in the UK affected by an eating disoder Janine

14th May 2015

10 Comment

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he debate around funding for the Royal Family is a veritable minefield of misconceptions and downright mistruths. The most egregious is probably that the Royal Family’s expenditure is entirely met by the public purse. In point of fact, the Royal Family actually sacrificed significant income to the Treasury when it signed over the Civil List in 1760; in modern times, the income from Crown-based hereditary revenues has generally exceeded that spent on the Royal Family. Not even taking this into account, the gross cost to the taxpayer was effectively 56 pence per adult UK citizen.

This is not extravagant or unaffordable- it is vanishingly small.

Moreover, it provides extraordinary value. I think there are genuine and valuable arguments to be made on support for our monarchs based around fealty, tradition and rewarding their fierce sense of duty and service- but I appreciate that they will not find much support amongst the undergraduate community. Instead, I think there is a cogent and coherent case to be made simply on the pure practicalities.

Even if we are to break this tradition of our kingdom stretching back over a millennium down to the most undignified of measures, the cold, hard economic case is compelling. It is doubtless that a large portion of our emerald isle’s international appeal lies in foreigners’ fascination with the ruling family, which exceeds even that of British citizens themselves. And let’s be honest: this appeal is almost wholly to do with the trappings of power and ceremony- the grand houses, the Crown Jewels, the Changing of the Guard, the huntin’, shootin’, fishin’ at Balmoral. They are not interested in the Royal Family’s lives (for who could honestly say that they have more than a superficial knowledge of what the monarchy are really like) but, rather, in how they live. The appeal to overseas’ visitors is worth many, many times a few pence in your tax bill.

Moreover, a large proportion of the expenditure that we are nominally spending on the Royals we would be required to fund anyway. Huge parts of the Sovereign Grant go on maintaining the houses and estates that form the backbone of our history and cultural inheritance; the idea that, if we unilaterally ended taxpayer

HUGH McHALEMAUGHAN BRASENOSE COLLEGE

funding for the monarchy we would allow Windsor and Buckingham Palace to crumble is preposterous.

There are even more serious dimensions to consider, though, than the economic or tourist angle. The value of having the Queen as an impartial Head of State cannot be overstated. There are two important aspects to this. Firstly, the Queen’s role as a unifying figure (enjoying 69 percent approval ratings) is crucial in our increasingly polarised politics; one only has to look at the instability of Latin American Presidencies to see the dangers of mixing the roles of Head of State and Head of Government. Secondly, she and her family conduct plural and important diplomatic and ceremonial roles that free up time for senior government ministers and the Prime Minister, through, for example, state visits and her role as head of the Commonwealth. This indisputably leads to more efficient and effective government. But she can only serve this role with the trappings and finery requisite of a head of state and representative of our nation; it would hardly be reasonable or to pop her on an EasyJet flight to Canada in a Marks and Spencer coat.

We receive extraordinary value from our monarchy; both they and their residences form a crucial part of our national heritage; but, most importantly of all, they are in integral part of our national identity and represent the best of British values in service, duty and decency. To suggest that we should stop funding them is madness.

KATE PLUMMER LADY MARGARET HALL

T

he royal family is an archaic institution, built on the idea of elitism and privilege. They are also a bunch of glorified benefit cheats.

In fact, the only value that the royal family seem to possess is in serving as a symbol for the snobbery that this country is built on. If a working class family struggle to find work and sign on to claim benefits, they are met with horror. It is claimed that they are simply not working hard enough, that there are enough jobs to find if they were not so lazy, and are tarred as being dependent and ruining the country’s economy.

The royal family on the other hand are treated to a large amount of money because, as The Sex Pistols said ‘God save the Queen, because tourists are money’. This double standard seems unfair. We claim that benefits are cut, and austerity is necessary not just for economic reasons, but because of a principle.

Everyone should work to pay their way in society. Yet because of the power the Queen holds in attracting tourism, this principle is shirked. It is reminiscent of how trade unions are discouraged from striking because they are not democratic and so should not hold the country to a standstill. But we can apparently maintain low taxes for the rich just in case they piss off to another country. The Royal Family is just another instance of the rich being able to dictate the course of our country.

Not only this but it is clear that the

SHOULD THE ROYAL FAMILY YES BE FUNDED BY NO TAX PAYERS’ MONEY?

Erik Drost

monarchy waste money more than benefit ‘cheats’ do. In 2013 the Royal Family spent £400,000 on alcohol.

Whether this helps us to understand Prince Phillip’s behaviour or not, this is an unacceptable waste of money.

Their carbon footprint also leaves a lot to be desired. They consume on average, as much energy as 2,288 households.

Furthermore, the idea that they offer such important benefits so as to allow them to do sod all is not necessarily true. Ticket sales to Buckingham Palace raised £9.3 million in 2012.

However, I strongly doubt that if the Royal family stopped getting revenue and were even abolished then people would stop visiting Buckingham Palace. Its attraction is based on its history as well as its current inhabitants. People still visit the Palace of Versailles in France post the French Revolution of 1789, so I do not think we really have much to worry about on a pragmatic level.

They do do things. But not enough to warrant the amount of money and power that they dictate. Yes, Prince Harry is in the army, but so are many other people. It is not a strong enough argument. He also gets pissed in Vegas and has a penchant for Nazi uniform.

Kate Middleton has mastered waving at people, this is true, but again the money that she gets is not deserved.

Even if they were extremely cheap to the extent that it could not be argued that they were a drain on the state’s finances, there still seems no tangible reason to allow them to continue as an institution. When it all comes down to it, it simply seems odd that in this country we have a family that parades around, perpetually on the front cover of Hello magazine, purely because back in the day – as a History undergrad I can confirm that that is the correct terminology – their ancestors ruled the country.

We have moved on from this. We have found democracy (ish) and having this dead weight anchoring us back to ideas of privilege is morally reprehensible. For this reason, we should not pay the Royal Family’s benefits.

Fear and trembling for the UK’s next five years KATE WELSH ORIEL COLLEGE

A

s the election results trickled through, there was only one word on my mind: sorry. I’m sorry the hours of campaigning, canvassing and fighting weren’t enough; that throughout the past five years the days spent knocking on doors, engaging in debate and pouring our energy into swing seats wasn’t enough. Most of all, I’m sorry to all those vulnerable and ‘invisible’ voices in society that are set to remain so over the next five years.

I’m sorry to the 1 million people who rely on food banks, the 700,000 people on zero-hours contracts, the 3.5 million children living in poverty, and the disabled and their families who have already had to cope with severe benefit cuts and dehumanising workcapability assessments. Caught in the Oxford bubble it’s easy to see these as abstract figures, but it is these real, human, oh so much more than statistics that got people out campaigning

before the election and have left people feeling hopeless after.

Too often during the election campaign I was told not to get stuck in the past while disregarding the future. I should be focusing on the manifestos of the future, presenting gleaming new party alternatives. But we are ultimately looking at the same government, this time with even more power, continuing its rampage of cuts.

The years to come truly terrify me.

Not least because we are yet to establish where exactly Iain Duncan Smith’s £12bn of welfare cuts will actually be found, but because a Conservative Party that was one reined in by the constraints of a collation is now free to carry out those policies it could not before. It’s like the UK has signed itself up for a game of Russian Roulette; we’ve no way of knowing what’s coming and who will be hit, but we do know it’s likely to those who never wanted to be part of this sordid game.

Politics is always personal. To suffer so heavy and so unexpected a defeat when I, like so many others, had become so heavily invested in the

election was nothing short of heartbreaking. Days later and I’m yet to find an adjective that better describes the sentiment tearing through the Left.

Equally, there’s been much backlash from Conservatives who accuse the Left of undertaking some sort of aggressive witch hunt. Unfortunately, as is too often the case on social media, a minority of people have spread nothing short of hate speech. Yet the prevailing sentiments of anger and despair of the majority are exactly why I feel so strongly that a great wrong has been and will be carried out against so many members of the British public.

I am far from alone in this sentiment: at the time of writing, over 20,000 people have joined the Labour Party since polling day. The voices of outrage and shock are already converting into a tangible and dynamic fightback. Out of defeat is rising a movement stronger than ever. What the results of this election have shown is that the general tarring of the British Public with political apathy is entirely unfounded.

No matter how people voted, what is clear is that they care and will carry on

caring enough to fight the outcome no one was expecting.

Such mobilisation won’t be straight forward and summoning the energy to continue the fight that was fought so hard over the election campaign won’t be easy. This is particularly given the prolific resignation of party leaders – or, in the case of Nigel Farage, a publicity stunt – the bodies with which we are to unite are currently identity-less in PR terms.

Yet with each new announcement of new and fast tracked Tory plans, from the scrapping of the Human Rights Act to the legalisation of fox hunting, the Left is regaining its spark to fight back.

2020 feels like a world away from now, but we cannot allow the most vulnerable in our society to wait out those five long years for change.

Strong and direct political discourse, forcing public scrutiny of policy in an anything but apathetic society, is the only way we can stop the nightmare of £12bn worth of welfare cuts coexisting with lower taxation for the rich being realised. The fightback begins.

Jonathan Rolande

Comment 11

14th May 2015

The future of the UK is Tory-blue JAN NEDVIDEK CHRIST CHURCH

I

’m not going to lie: I love politics, I’m very passionate about it and probably spend way too much time thinking and talking about it.

Having arguments with my fellow students is one of the greatest things about being at university. However, on Thursday, the argument was settled by the British public: against all odds, the electorate returned a majority Conservative government.

“ On Thursday, the argument

was settled by the British public

”

Despite all of Labour’s passionate efforts to describe the past five years as a period of time in which the UK has been turned into a ‘burnt land’ governed by greed and selfishness, the majority of the UK are just not buying it. I am genuinely convinced - and I know very many left-wingers disagree with me on this - that the public are actually quite good at knowing what’s best for them. This time, people across the country actually feel they’ve done quite well over the past couple of years compared to what they had before when they were losing their jobs.

This is the thing: the British are a very sensible nation, and they don’t really care that much about abstract political ideologies and high profile speeches by party leaders. That’s why parties on either end of the political spectrum always do so badly, unlike our neighbours across the Continent. The party that can give people a decent job, allows them to keep as much of their own money as possible whilst providing the essential public services, and the party that gives people a hope that if they put aside a little bit of money each month, they’ll be able to buy their own house and look forward to security in retirement will win. Labour did that in 1997, and the Tories have done it now.

It’s absolutely staggering: the Tories gaining seats from Labour in places like Wales or North East of England, places where my puppy, if I had one, would have traditionally won if he was Labour. Whilst I’m constantly told by people that the Tories are a bunch of posh, Champagne-drinking toffs wearing top hats – admittedly I find it interesting that this argument is often made by Oxford students from very privileged backgrounds – we have seen a major shift of working class voters from Labour to Conservative (and UKIP for

that matter). The support for the Conservatives has surged among ethnic minorities, young people, the LGBTQ community or people on the lowest incomes since the last election.

I must confess that to some extent, I find the total collapse of the Liberal Democrats a bit unfortunate. I think they made the right decision to form a coalition with the Tories and I feel sorry that they had to experience such a rancorous, hate-fuelled campaign against them. However, they never really came up with any positive reason as to why people should vote for them. They have been living all these years off the rent of different forms of protest vote which have now gone all over the place: to the Greens, UKIP or the nationalists.

I know it’s very exciting the SNP have won virtually all Scottish seats, but let’s all remember the Scottish people voted to stay in the UK last year. The majority of the votes in Scotland went to unionist parties, and the Prime Minister is still the leader of our one, single United Kingdom.

Everyone was saying this election campaign was a bit dull and not very engaging. Well, we’ve seen one party win a majority beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. We’ve seen Miliband, Clegg and Farage go. We’ve seen a complete wipe out of Labour in Scotland. It almost makes me want to say the British have a sense of humour.

Every election sparks a lot of emotion. There has been a lot of intense disagreement and sharp debate over the past couple of weeks, but I believe we can all

“ The Tories are a bunch of posh,

Champagnedrinking toffs wearing top hats

”

still be respectful of each other’s views. Every country needs a well functioning opposition, and I wish Labour the best of luck in finding a new leader.

We must all be intellectually honest with ourselves and admit the world isn’t black and white. No one is of course claiming everything is great in Britain and that everyone is doing fantastically well: there is still a lot to be done to make the UK a fairer place where an honest day’s work pays and provides security for your family. I believe the record of the Conservative Party shows they have the best shot, and on May the 7th 2015, the British people agreed with me.

“

There are lots of people out there whose lives Katie Hopkins has attempted to deny the value of

”

A Union invitation for Katie Hopkins is a step too far BEN OLDFIELD

ST HILDA’S COLLEGE

T

he Oxford Union has by no means been short of controversial speakers over the past two terms; the chants of protesters can almost still be heard ringing through St Michael’s Street after the visit of Marine Le Pen. While instinctively opposed to appearances such as this, I nevertheless decided to exercise caution in wading into the free speech debate and so, undecided as to where I stood, chose to withhold judgement. However, with the scheduled appearance of The Sun columnist, Katie Hopkins, The Oxford Union has severely overstepped the line.

Now, I am aware that this is not the first time that she will have appeared at the Union, having visited for a question and answer session a year ago. Yet, in her ever-desperate struggle to remain relevant, since then, she has sunk to record lows of abhorrent bigotry. Particularly abhorrent acts include calling Palestinians “filthy rodents” and suggesting that those suffering from depression are nothing but “attention seeking bastards”.

The Union themselves know that they should not be giving a platform to such views and this is manifest in the fact that, in a cowardly move, they have opted to sneak her inconspicuously into a seemingly uncontroversial debate. This way, The Union avoids the immediate, unified uproar that would have come with her announcement as a speaker on her own, with members of the University instead not noticing her appearance until having closely read the latest term card.

Both Katie Hopkins and Marine

Harriet Bourhill

Le Pen seem to hold similarly worrying views; if anything, Le Pen’s political influence renders her a much more significant danger. So why am I more decidedly ready to condemn Hopkins’ appearance than I was that of Le Pen? To begin with, the title of the debate, and the side for which she is to argue, already implies some tacit approval of Hopkins. While simply inviting Marine Le Pen to speak in no way entails that The Union endorses her views, Katie Hopkins, on the other hand, has been invited to speak for the motion that ‘This house would rather be

“ The Union is, bizarrely, implying she might be considered ‘witty’

”

witty than pretty’. Let me put this into perspective: This is a woman who recently referred to migrants as “feral humans”, and The Union is implying she might be considered ‘witty’.

At least the appearance of Marine Le Pen could potentially be accounted for by appeal to the notion of freedom of speech and exchange of ideas through a figure who has been democratically elected. Presumably her opinions are formed by some sort of, albeit questionable, reason and are conducive to actual debate. Hopkins, on the other hand, seems to have no logical or reasonable basis for her beliefs at all.

The premise of her entire career is simply to spout the vilest hatred

that is legally possible. If it’s offensive, she will say it – her own belief and substantiating of the view seems to be an afterthought.

Opinions formed by no reason are not susceptible to criticism by reason, and so there is no debate to be had. So, while she has nothing to offer us by way of intelligent debate, Hopkins gains an invitation to another platform from which to spread her poison. It is only through such platforms that her toxic career is able to sustain itself, and The Union really needs to think about whether this is something they wish to be a part of.

I’m sure they are well aware of the criticism they will inevitably receive for this decision, yet they are mistaken if they believe the old saying that ‘any publicity is good publicity’. Inviting people such as Katie Hopkins to speak brings the integrity of The Union as a serious debating society into question. She must have been rubbing her hands in glee to think that the prestigious Oxford Union wants to hear what she has to say and, frankly, The Union ought to be embarrassed at the idea that others will also have this thought.

This childish game of ‘who-canfind-the-most-controversial-speaker?’ has to stop. There are people out there, within our university and beyond, whose lives Katie Hopkins has attempted to deny the value of.

They are seeing her and her opinions being recognised, and therefore legitimised, by one of the most prestigious debating societies in the world. If I have so far hesitated to vocally criticise The Union’s controversial speaker choices, let me now be clear: this time my voice is with the protesters. Oxford Union, shame on you.

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14th May 2015

Music 3

MUSIC Swerving back to former Oxford glory

NAOMI SOUTHWELL SOMERVILLE COLLEGE

• Swervedriver reunite, cementing their trademark sound to Oxford's homegrown muscial legacy

S

wervedriver are among the pantheon of Oxford bands featured in the documentary film, Anyone Can Play Guitar: a film that marks the surge of bands that came out of the surprisingly fruitful music scene in Oxford circa 1984-2007. The alternative rock of Swervedriver featured alongside Radiohead, Supergrass, Foals, Ride and The Candy Skins amongst others.

Despite being directly compared to one another, as is inevitable when initially belonging to the same music scene, Swervedriver were met with only moderate success in comparison to the likes of Radiohead and Foals.

Yet the band played a distinct role in the collection of shoe gaze bands that typified the 90’s. Their similarities with their noisier, fuzzier American counterparts Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr rather than their English contemporaries My Bloody Valentine and Ride may go some way in explaining Swervedriver’s relative lack of popularity in this country.

Adam Franklin, front-man of the band, readily admits, “we’ve always felt we’ve been more appreciated in other places like the US, Canada and Australia. The grass is always

greener.”

This is perhaps an unfair distinction to make. With Adam later clarifying “it’s a crossed arms, impress us sort of thing [in this country]. It’s definitely different, it’s sometimes difficult to say in a tangible way what the difference is.”

In England the band’s career has been marked with critical acclaim and their latest album sets to continue that trend. This year sees the band release the first album of their reunion, I Wasn’t Born to Lose You. The band’s last release was in 1998, making this record the culmination of an apprehensive few years for Swervedriver fans.

The reunion of a band of any stature is often marked by early anticipation and excitement but frequently ends in mediocrity and ultimately: disappointment. For Swervedriver, a band of critical acclaim and a small but dedicated following in England and across the pond, the pressure was more than palpable.

Despite this, Adam treats the issue lightly: “Reunion sounds like something lame, I’ve never been to a school reunion, that just sounds appalling and likewise you can think

about bands like that as well.” But behind the casual attitude there is definitely a desire to uphold the band’s legacy. “It would be ridiculous to come back with something that didn't sound like the old stuff.

“ The

record doesn't feel like just another '90s shoe gaze revival

”

We did agree we wanted something that has some hints back at what we were originally doing on the earlier albums. The sound has moved on but it’s certainly recognisably the same kind of sound.”

At the same time, the record doesn't feel like just another '90s shoe gaze revival album. Adam admits this was intentional: “We kind of wanted to do something showing a different side to the band as well.

There’s more of a psychedelic song

here and a more 'washy indie' one there.” This came from the band’s mixed and various influences, including singer-songwriter Scott Walker.

“You can’t hear a Scott Walker influence on the album but to me it's kind of there. It’s interesting to have those influences going on rather than the obvious.”

The recording process for I Wasn’t Born to Lose You, undoubtedly contributed to the album’s unique blend of up-to-date nostalgia. Reflecting on playing new material with the band, Adam remarked: “We all sort of slotted into similar roles we had back in the day and we had Adam Holder (who worked on the albums back in the day) helping out on the mixing. ” Wary of the conversation taking on a wistful tone, Adam points out his own reflections by adding: “I keep saying back in the day”.

But like the myriad of new influences, the band subtly switched up the recording and production of the album. “Parts were recorded in Melbourne and then half of it in London.” When asked how this affected the album overall Adam replied, “when you’re in a different

country and you're in the middle of a bunch of fates, you know everyone’s quite psyched up and that comes across more in the playing.” Having “never been in a studio outside the UK before” the unique character of both Melbourne and London undoubtedly allowed for the reflection on past work from an instinctively updated presence.

Yet, the band clearly want to play homage to their early roots, “I did the vocals round at Mark Gardener from Ride’s studio (OX-4-SOUND), brought it back home.” Returning to Oxford on tour, the band are set to return to their old haunts yet again.

But the release of the new album sees the band anticipating a different atmosphere as "actually having a new album out sort of rasies the bar a bit."

The band play the O2 Academy on Friday 22nd May For a small place, Oxford has produced an intense hive of musical talent. Swervedriver in their reunion appear to be celebrating this remarkable music tradition. A regrettably under appreciated band celebrating the city of Oxford, the much-maligned member in a world of legendary music scenes.

I Wasn't Born to Lose You Swervedriver not born to lose sight of Oxford Swervedriver

14th May 2015

4 Music

Mumford & Sons show their Wilder Mind

BERTRAM BEORROBERTS MERTON COLLEGE

• Mumford & Sons plug in and reveal their soft side amid electric overload

F

or a band whose second album release, Babel, prompted mild earthquakes in the dwellings of the waistcoat-ed, the lack of hype surrounding the long awaited third album has been surprising. Nervous that a modest publicity campaign would herald an album with much

“It is left to a

handful of songs that truly redefine the band

”

to be modest about, the two singles did not fill me with great hope. When the first sound in three years, ‘Believe’, stalls in the charts at number five, you question whether Mumford have taken a wrong turn on Hipster Highway into Soft-rock Street.

A similar sense of anti-climax followed the release of Babel in 2012 and so some will tell you the cold reception is just a repeat occurrence of fans holding back in fear of ruining their favourite band. But Babel was fundamentally a better album than

their debut Sigh No More. ‘The Cave’ may well draw the masses, but Babel combined variety, progression and retention of Mumford’s core values in a way that was simply unbeatable.

This isn’t the case for Wilder Mind.

With ‘Believe’, or the second single, ‘The Wolf,’ I don’t think we have a nascent classic waiting to be recognised. They’re catchy, but not scarring – ‘Whispers in the Dark’ leaves even the least literary wincing with lines

like ‘I’m a cad but I’m not a fraud I set out to serve the Lord.’ ‘Believe’ never builds up anywhere near the same lyrical intensity.

Listening to the album as a whole, there are a few songs in this mould, mainly clustered around the start, but also bookending in the form of ‘Ditmas’. They are, on the one hand, perfectly run-of-the-mill rock indie song, but Marcus Mumford’s voice drags each line into an unfavourable comparison staples from their past, and it is unnerving. Played onstage, no one will be able to tell one from another.

The failings aren’t consistent, but centre around a poor balance of overly repetitive drums to vocals, and a penchant for screechy reverb that was very innovative in 2002. The lyrics themselves pose serious problems: they either aren’t very good (‘say something, say something, like you love me.’ Oh dear…), are badly fitted into lines that drag out and rush syllables like a learner driver with clutch-control issues.

The saving grace is the moment in each of these, especially at the slower end, where they resemble the more generic songs from the previous albums. ‘The Wolf’ drops a piano riff that smacks of Babel’s ‘Lovers Eyes’.

However, they’ve borrowed from oth-

Wolf Alice are bland, boring and bog-standard

W

olf Alice is the kind of phrase that sounds like a really cool band name, until you think about it for more than five seconds. It conjures up a vague haze of fairy-tale like associations and vaguely ‘alternative’ ideas, without having to commit itself to any of them. And that sense of hazy non-commitment is endemic to their first album, My Love is Cool, which is perhaps the single most punchable title I have ever heard.

The overriding aesthetic of the album is one of despondent vagueness, which would be fine if there was the slightest hint of originality to any of it. Unfortunately, while MLIC demonstrates a few mildly interesting ideas and flashes of vague competence in its wafflingly overlong running time, the album is ultimately an exercise in mundanity.

The album starts off fairly well, with the nicely eerie opening track ‘Turn to Dust’, but from the start problems flare up which plague Wolf Alice until the end. While the bass line is sturdy, vocals are deliberately ghostly and ethereal-sounding. Although this vocal style can work beautifully (see Ellie Goulding), here it manifests itself as lead singer Ellie

Rowsell refusing to enunciate properly, which misses ‘ghostly’ and lands at ‘irritating’. Mind you, it’s perhaps not surprising that Rowsell’s pronunciation is poor, given the dross she has to work with; lyrical highlights of ‘Turn to Dust’ include “If fear is in the mind then my mind lives in fear”, which, again, sounds cool for about four seconds and then just sounds incredibly stupid. These are two problems which persist through-

“A bog-standard

totally unambitious indie potboiler

”

out the album; there’s a sense that the band are embarrassed about their own lyrics, which is understandable, given that a lot of them sound like the sort of thing which would be laughed out of a secondary school creative writing club. But dodgy lyrics alone are not a deal-breaker, and the instrumentation makes the effort to be interesting.

There are a few interesting musical

choices here and there, especially in the first few tracks. ‘Bros’ makes nice use of vocal loops (pleasantly reminiscent of ‘Viva La Vida’), while ‘Your Loves Whore’ incorporates the ‘false stop’ trick as a central figure of the song writing to create a unique effect, with the instruments pausing after every line. It’s jarring and unnatural, but it works, and makes for mood-creation even if not for a terrific song.

The next track, ‘You’re A Germ’ also works quite well, juxtaposing childish bickering with an epic, warlike anthem, and makes a very powerful movement from acoustic, ‘natural’ sounding guitars to a heavily distorted metal sound. Amateurish lyrics aside, it’s a very strong song, and one of the highlights of the album.

Unfortunately, by the time the fifth track, ‘Lisbon’, rolls around, things start to feel more than a little samey, and this stagnation only increases as the album progresses. Insipid tracks with vague names (including ‘Silk’, ‘Freazy’ and ‘Soapy Water’) and even vaguer lyrics come and go, feeling utterly interchangeable. There is a brief flash of quality with the middlingly decent ‘Giant Peach’ but the facile

ers as much as themselves. ‘Tompkins Square Park’, the opener, convinced me I’d put on Mystery Jets by mistake; Orson will be very upset when he realises the chords from ‘No Tomorrow’ have ended up in ‘Just Smoke’; Benjamin Francis Leftwich finally reaches puberty in ‘Snake Eyes’; and I even detected a hint of Jason Mraz’s ‘Im Yours’ in ‘Cold Arms’.

Mumford have, however, played themselves false. They’ve convinced us all their new sound is contained in their singles, when really it is left to a handful of songs to truly redefine the band. ‘Snake Eyes’ and ‘Broad Shoulders’ continue a tradition set by songs like ‘Reminders’, Babel’s soft air that shows the world sobriety can be sexy. The real ones to watch, ‘Monster’ and ‘Cold Arms’, will become favourites in about the same timeframe as ‘Ghosts That We Knew’ and ‘Dustbowl Dance’ did.

‘Monster’ preserves the tribal-folk lyrics while combining fresh complex guitar and the band clearly means it. ‘Cold Arms’ takes Johnny Flynn influences and pushes Marcus Mumford’s voice to places that it’s wanted to go for a while.

It will take a while for the good to be sorted from the bad but given time the hidden classics will reveal themselves.

WILLIAM SHAW CORPUS CHRISTI

My Love Is Cool Interesting instrumentation redeems bland lyrics Wolf Alice

lyrics rear their head again when the band apparently decide that “My dark and pretty down” is the kind of searingly brilliant line that warrants building an entire chorus and crescendo around. As in, the chorus consists of that same line, repeated with very slight variation about six times. Even the relative quality of that track is marred by the fact that it’s followed by breathtakingly witless ‘Swallowtail’, a six-minute song which manages to find less to

say than most songs manage in less than half that time. The album finally sputters to a halt with ‘The Wonderwhy’. I mean, surely you’re already making your own jokes. The album finishes not with the satisfaction of hearing a great piece of music, but with the relief that it’s all over.

On the whole, My Love is Cool is too boring to get worked up over. It’s a bog-standard, totally unambitious indie potboiler, whose moments of quality are simply too sparse.

Music 5

14th May 2015

May the fourth be with you

OxStu’s 4th Week Playlist

4 Aphex Twin

Four Miles Davis

Four Seasons Vivaldi

4 Minutes Madonna & Justin Timberlake

Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles) Arcade Fire

Django Django’s second ablum is weird and wonderful LUCY CLARKE REGENT’S PARK

I

f I were a lazy journalist I would begin this article by making some point about second albums always being a struggle. As it is, I’m simply going to remark on how much I liked the first Django Django album. And how much I like this one.

It’s been a while coming, nigh on three and a half years since their self-titled debut, but it’s been worth the wait. The album begins strongly with the thumping bass line of ‘Giant’, the trademark off-kilter rhythms and tripping vocals returning atop a less-electronic-heavy instrumentation. By the time you reach the end of ‘Shake and Tremble’, a track so strong that I found myself wondering why it wasn’t the first single, you’re sure that this is the band having grown up a bit.

It’s a solid offering, the sophomore album hurdle leapt over with ease and with a new reliance on the piano. It’s futuristic while also backwards looking, drawing beats from rock and roll and blues piano while retaining the odd harmonies and chant-like vocals of their original material. There’s more variety

of instrumentation; mixing different synth sounds with varying non-electronics, the frenetic beats of ‘First Light’ and ‘Shot Down’ are like a party on a different planet. The opening of the latter in particular sounds like something from the Blade Runner soundtrack, crossed with a lovelorn ballad and then sped up a bit. The fusion of cowbells and thrumming bass is brilliant. Mad, but brilliant.

And that’s a theme that holds out through the album. The weirdness that marked out ‘Default’ way back in 2011 returns in the combination of syncopated, unearthly vocals with a cacophony of different percussion and synths. ‘Found You’ is a weird creation that sounds like a church choir mashed up with an 8-bit video game soundtrack. It shouldn’t work. It does, held up with the simple beat and bass lines that permeate the album. Second single, ‘Reflections’, is a corker; pulsing instrumentation boosting the now trademark vocal harmonies of Django Django. It doesn’t just retread over old territory, though; the inclusion of a monster horn solo midway through is a stroke of genius. ‘Pause Repeat’ is a particular gem, with a maddening chord sequence that threatens

not to resolve itself, bouncing around on a spring-heeled chorus before coming to a joyous conclusion.The album is a cohesive whole, keeping to a similar sort of sound that takes the bleeps and faintly-Mario-Kart-Desert-Hills sound of their debut and updates it with more varied instrumentation. It works well together, the first half of the album having enough variation to keep your attention, while not being so disparate as to detract from the form as a whole.

This said, a couple of the songs on the album are a bit samey; it’s solid stuff, as filler goes, but a bit standard fare, merging into a homogeny of synth and off-kilter rhythms. The Django Django formula works, and works well, but it’s a slight shame that the last third of the album is weaker than the barnstorming opening.

That said, ‘Born Under Saturn’ displays the maturation of Django Django’s sound, along with the maintenance of their quirky appeal; all odd lyrics and jaunty melodies. I’d argue it’s more musically sophisticated than their debut, but without denaturing the plain weirdness of the music that entranced listeners the first time around. It bodes well for their continuing career.

Django Django

BEST/ WORST DUOS PETE DOHERTY AND CARL BARAT

SUSAN TEDESCHI AND DEREK TRUCKS

THE CHUCKLE BROTHERS

Sean McIntyre

Jacob Wiseman Husband-and-wife duo, Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, launched their joint venture, Tedeschi Trucks Band in 2010. Having been married for nine years beforehand, both of them were formidable musicians in their own right before their musical matrimony. Derek Trucks is slide guitar player who has played for Eric Clapton, The Allman Brothers Band and Herbie Hancock among many others. His guitar sound fuses blues with jazz, funk and soul, forging an instantly recognisable tone. Susan Tedeschi is a soul singer and guitarist whose Grammy-studded solo career was underscored by a series of collaborations with the likes of Willie Nelson and Buddy Guy. Together, they have released two albums, Revelator and Made Up Mind, on which Trucks’ silky blues-infused guitar playing melds seamlessly with Tedeschi’s soulful power. Tracks such as the ballad ‘Midnight in Harlem’ highlight this, as Tedeschi’s voice seers until Trucks’ closing guitar solo.

Apart they are formidable, together they are unstoppable.

David Barker Brothers Paul and Barry Elliott from Rotherham are best known for their children’s TV show Chucklevision which ran from 1987 until its tragic axing in 2009. However, the Chuckle Brothers have since turned their focus to making it big in the music business and are currently on a massive blockbuster tour visiting cities from the UKIP stronghold Clacton-on-Sea, to the northern beach resort of Hull.

The big break for the dynamic duo’s foray onto the hip-hop scene came last year when they collaborated with UK hip-hop icon Tinchy Stryder, producing the critically acclaimed ‘To Me, To You, (Bruv)’. Where next for the Chuckle Brothers?

A campaign by Loaded magazine in 2007 to have Paul and Barry knighted fell flat on its face to the dismay of die-hard Chuckle-ites. Will their recent resurgence make another bid for royal recognition more likely?

Rumors rampantly circulating in the press is that the brothers next intend to work on a movie soundtrack, with Christopher Nolan said to be ditching Hans Zimmer in favour of the Rotherham geniuses for his next Hollywood sensation.

The perfect musical duo: it’s a subjective one. I want a bit of grit; a pair of anti-heroes who can suck you so far into their world that you don’t care about anybody else’s opinion. The Libertines’ famous (perhaps infamous) frontmen Carl Barat and Peter Doherty have achieved this. Their personalities perfectly supplement each other to create a blend of whimsical, British charm with frantic rock n’ roll mayhem. They wear whatever they want; they don’t need to mouth off to media to get attention; they make mistakes; they have fun.

Personality alone isn’t enough; the music has to be intertwined with the band’s image. Combining the catchiest riffs with poetic lyrics has allowed the pair to create songs that truly help you to escape from reality. Despite the escapism, the band often look around them and critique society in a truly distinctive way; illustrated by lyrics such as “what became of the working class? Nike and Reebok, Adidas” and “we’ll die in the class that we’re born, that’s a class of our own, my love.”. All of their lyrics have maintained their original relevance, and no duo today can match them. Two cold fingers to the cynics; Pete and Carl are the best music duo of our generation.

MICK JAGGER AND DAVID BOWIE Naomi Southwell

David Bowie and Mick Jagger, two legendary figures within the world of popular music, collaborating as a duo promised so much musical talent; the musical equivalent of an unstoppable force hitting an immovable object. Yet the duo’s offering, an 80s reworking of the classic Motown hit ‘Dancing in the Street’ by Martha and the Vandellas, has been decried by many. The video which sees Jagger and Bowie galloping triumphantly around a suspiciously abandoned warehouse, features on many a “worst music video of all time” list, with many citing the salsa dancing, high kicks and the slow motion leap off the stairs as evidence of failure.

Yet these elements only add to its greatness. Everything about the video and the collaboration screams cheese, louder than Jagger and Bowie’s own screams of “Tokyo” and “South America”.

The video ultimately goes beyond the realms of irony and into the depths of pure genius. And to all those naysayers, the single was for charity and debuted at Live Aid. Lighten up and learn the epic dance moves in preparation for your next street party or frankly anywhere where dancing spectacularly is mandatory.

6 Stage

14th May 2015

STAGE

Brasenose Arts week The college is soon to be transformed by the festivities that will see it decked out in colour and buzzing with artistic excitement.

Remi Mathis

Interview Arting around: Brasenose Arts Week

LUCY OLIVER

B

BNC Highlights

rasenose Arts Week is set to be better than ever this year with a full seven-day programme running all of 3rd week, packed with artistic and social events, spanning across many different art forms.

Talking to Chloe Wall, this year’s drama officer, I gained a great sense of the variety of this event taking over the whole college, utilising different college gardens, the bar, the chapel, even lecture rooms, crossing over to the Frewin Annexe as well.

This year a special Arts Week committee has been created, stimulating a highly collaborative planning process and thus generating lots of new ideas and events.

“We’ve all been quite keen to have Arts week as not just drama” ,says Chloe, emphasising the span of activities incorporated, from photography exhibitions to pottery workshops, with more of a participatory vibe offering creative opportunities to get involved.

The central event at the heart of Brasenose Arts Weeks, how-

ever, does seem to be the performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Set to be staged out in the open air of Brasenose’s New Quad, producer Chloe emphasises the atmosphere of fun and the

“ Throughout the week there

will be a recurring theme of magical fantasy

”

element of “not taking ourselves too seriously” with this production – very apt for this choice of Shakespeare play and arguably a perfect approach to the summery fun of an Oxford lawn play.

With the cast and production team drawn from a Cuppers endorsed pool of college talent, this version of A Midsummer Nights

Dream is keen to focus on the richness of Shakespeare’s characters, opening up the depths of their complex relationships, and even exposing a latent secret romance within the Mechanicals…

The production is set to have a great visual impact on its audiences, the scenery draped in organza cloth and fairy lights, unashamedly plugging the magical aspect intrinsic to this fairy play, here substituting wings for feathers in an extended visual motif.

They even hope to get the fairies climbing onto the set out of the surrounding windows – college permitting – to further the audience’s immersion in the divide between fairy and human worlds.

Although Brasenose Arts Week “doesn’t have a theme per se”, A Midsummer Night’s Dream seems to be the centrepiece of a continuing theme of magical fantasy running from the start of the ball the Saturday before right to the end of third week.

Throughout the week there will be a recurring motif of escapism, Chloe explains, perfectly timed

for that tense moment in Trinity term for finalists and freshers alike to find creative diversion.

Many events have been tailored around a theme of ‘My favourite…’, applying to place, poem, piece of music, the list goes on.

Events such as ‘Jazz on the Quad’ are set to drive away the postball blues, featuring performances from The Doughnut Kings and the female a cappella group In the Pink, Arts Week thus “starting off with a bang” on Monday, complete with a barbecue and garden games.

Brasenose Arts Week, despite evident difficulties in manoeuvring around college restrictions, seems nevertheless a-buzz with fresh ideas and creative energy, promising to open up the college to town and gown alike for a series of exciting events.

Brasenose Arts Week runs from Monday 11th - Saturday 16th May. Tickets are priced at £5 for one day and £12 for the whole week.

Worcester College

Monday

Jazz on the Quad 6-10pm

Tuesday

Improv Class

5-6pm, Lecture Room XI

Wednesday Silent Disco

8-10.30pm, BNC Bar

Thursday

Fine Art Exhibition

6.30-10.30pm, Frewin Undercroft

Friday

Platnauer Concert 6-9pm, Antechapel

Saturday

Dot’s Funk Odyssey 8-9pm, Antechapel

14th May 2015

Stage 7

Review Mercy of Titus, Exeter College Chapel

T

he beautiful setting of Exeter College chapel is no bad place to stage a musical performance. Its Gothic solemnity and atmospheric lighting provide a vivid backdrop for action, and the acoustic creates a sonorous resonance for orchestra. Opera, however, fares less well. While voices carry through the chapel, the words they speak are not easily discerned. In the case of The Mercy of Titus, which has a complex plot, words are necessary for understanding. Unfortunately, too often in this production they are lost.

This is a shame, because the Oxford Student Opera Company has put together an impressive production. Conducted by Eric Foster and directed by Hendrik Ehlers, The Mercy of Titus is a visual and aural delight. It isn’t always the case that good singers can act well, but the cast of six are all strong performers, presenting a bond between characters and a sense of interior life that is not easy when constrained by the necessity of communicating in song.

Mozart’s music frames and directs the action, dramatising the interior tumult of the characters and heightening their emotional experiences. Titus pivots about the feelings and impulses of Vitellia, daughter of a deposed emperor. Her impetuous and hasty decisions order the actions of the other characters, and of her adoring admirer Sextus in particular.

Vitellia wants Sextus to kill Titus, the ruler, because if she cannot marry him she wishes nevertheless to secure his power. A devoted

Sextus agrees and attempts to assassinate Titus. Although he fails, his plot is discovered and he is sentenced to execution. He does not betray Vitellia. Titus, famed for his mercy, struggles between his desire to free his friend and his sense of betrayal.

Bernadette Johns and Betty Makharinsky in the roles of Sextus and Vitellia respectively are the stars of the show. Both with glorious voices, the pair act well together, pulling off a love scene - that could easily be comic - with due solemnity. Sextus’ worship of Vitellia is especially well done: it is painful to watch his struggle

“ The Mercy of Titus is a visual

and aural delight

”

between wishing both to please her and to heed his conscience.

Lila Chrisp, in the role of Sextus’ friend, Annius, is another actress and songstress whose merits as both are notable. The powers of her voice are amplified by her persuasive presence on stage. Servilia (Alice Harberd), Annius’s love interest, is the opera’s only female role other than Vitellia, and Harberd exemplifies the contrast between the two women with particular delicacy.

Servilia is a much more con-

Review Jekyll & Hyde, Pembroke Pichette

F

or three years, Pembroke’s Pichette Auditorium has hosted a college summer musical, and this time it is Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical, a 1990 pop-gothic reworking of the classic story by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Fans of the book will probably not recognise it here; the directors note drily that “the addition of Lucy and Emma, the two love interests in the musical, is a divergence from the original tale”.

Still, the action zips along, and the production succeeds in evoking a Victorian London where panelled ballrooms and polite society exist among dark, crime-riddled streets and choleric poverty.

Though there was no shortage of good performances, the slow transitions and static staging meant that the first act, which lasted an hour and twenty minutes, felt very long indeed. Things improved after the interval, though, and midway through the second act, the production really hit its stride: transitions became snappier, the action accelerated, and actors and ensemble began to seem more at ease.

While it is in no way the fault of

the Pembroke team, the dire script was a serious stumbling-block. Dialogue largely follows the path of least resistance, and is littered with platitudes. At one point, a friend of Jekyll, amazed by his uncompromising ambition, cries: “Even if it means antagonising the established authority?!” The lyrics, while on the whole better, still descend all too often into banality: “this is the moment, this is the time - when the momentum and the moment are in rhyme.”

The problems of the script were, at times, compounded by a lack of sustained commitment among the actors. During several moments, the action froze as actors waited for a musical cue. The dialogue, on the whole, felt expected, so that even when characters said that they were surprised, they often did not seem to be. Accents and mannerisms were generally dropped the moment actors began singing.

Despite all this, there was an obvious richness of talent among the whole cast, from the three standout leads to the ensemble players. It was a real shame that under-direction, or under-rehearsal, meant this tal-

EMILY HOLMAN Balliol College ventional female figure, though she takes Vitellia on in a show of courage as she pleads for the life of Sextus. As for Vitellia, her strength is all in her desires: for power, for vengeance, for authority. She is merciless, a compelling contrast to Titus, who is all mercy.

These four women are the dominant figures in the production. Titus, played by David Smith, has a surprisingly unimposing role, even given the emperor’s characteristic as a merciful figure. Publius, Titus’s right-hand man, admirably played by Salvador Mascarenhas, also seems to have more authority on stage than Titus. Titus’ decision to show mercy ought to feel astonishing and humbling. Instead it passes less momentously than arias by Sextus and Vitellia.

Mozart’s La Clemenza de Tito is well-produced in this new English version, and is certainly worth seeing. But surtitles and a consistency of singing throughout would have made the difference between a good production and a superb one.

The Mercy of Titus was at Exeter College Chapel from Thursday 7th - Saturday 9th May.

Oxford student opera company

ALEXANDER HARTLEY The Queen’s College ent was often not fully realised.

In Alexander Ohlsson, the production has a frenetic, charismatic Jekyll; as the directors note in the programme, his ferocious drive contains a glimpse of a darker side that captivates long before Mr Hyde appears overtly.

Ambitiously, the directors chose to use just voice and physicality (and a little hair gel) to distinguish between Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Ohlssohn rose to this difficult task admirably. The other two leads, played by Joanna Connolly (Lucy) and Rachel Coll (Emma), both gave energising and multifaceted performances. Their duet, ‘In His Eyes’, was the undoubted highlight of the production and proved that, intelligently used, the limited staging and lighting potential of the Pichette Auditorium could be stunningly effective. Among all three leads, singing was expressive and dramatic as well as note-perfect.

Jekyll & Hyde was at the Pembroke Pichette Auditorium from Wednesday 6th - Saturday 9th May.

Preview A Doll’s House, Keble O’Reilly PHILIPPA STACEY Christ Church

“I

’ve never felt so clear. I’ve never felt so certain.”

There’s an unavoidable challenge involved in tackling a classic: repetition becomes tiresome, but radical reinvention risks ruining a masterpiece.

Poor Player Productions’ new take on one of Ibsen’s most famous and controversial plays, A Doll’s House, will involve just such a balancing act. Thankfully, director James Watt seems to know exactly what he wants and how to make it happen.

By his own admission, they’re playing the play pretty straight.

Originally set in nineteenth century Norway, Ibsen explores one woman’s attempts to understand and articulate her needs and desires. Nora Helmer’s life appears the epitome of domestic content: a typical housewife, her marriage seems happy and her husband’s job promises a fruitful future.

But when a past secret threatens this charmed existence, harmony is swallowed up by Nora’s disillusionment. Asking more questions than she can answer, Nora challenges her husband and her life, and must decide what is truly real.

To the question of ‘how to do something different?’, Watt’s answer is ironically a conventional one: he’s changed the setting. But this choice promises something new and interesting. Watt relocates Ibsen’s play to the 1950s

- the decade of the post-war repressed housewife and the early roots of Second-Wave feminism.

This production doesn’t chase the contemporary, although the cast are unanimous in their belief in the relevance of Ibsen’s examination of sexual politics to a twenty-first century audience. Combined with Simon Stephens’ recent translation, this production has an air of immediacy about it. Delving beneath the veil of Victorian properness, Watt seeks to highlight play’s resonances to contemporary concerns.

The success of the show will, of course, rest upon its cast.

Something that’s particularly striking in conversation with the cast is the thoroughness of their concern with the psyches of the characters they’re playing. Watt expects the characters to feel “as real to the audience as the person sat next to them”.

A sense of place, of claustrophobia and the tension of a domestic horror are needed in Ibsen’s play.

The set, evoking an archaic world fraying at the edges, will really allow this production and its cast to come to life.

Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is widely regarded as a masterpiece. However, this production promises not to rest on its laurels, delivering a tense, powerful and confronting exploration of entrapment and disillusionment.

A Doll’s House is at the Keble O’Reilly from 13th - 16th May.

What’s On Passion

Wed 20th - Sat 23rd May, 7.30pm @The Keble O’Reilly

Into the Woods

Wed 20th - Sat 23rd May, 7.30pm @Queen’s College Gardens

A Flea in Her Ear

Wed 20th - Sat 23rd May, 7.30pm @Magdalen President ’s Garden

The Real Thing

Wed 20th - Sat 23rd May, 7.30pm (matinée Sat 2.45) @Univ Master’s Garden

8 Fashion

14th May 2015

14th May 2015

Fashion 9

Balltenati

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

OxStu, you will go to the ball Photography: Tom Reynolds

14th May 2015

10 Fashion

FASHION

The Great Ball of China

FLORA HOLMES LINCOLN COLLEGE

• Lack of Chinese designers at the ‘China: Through the looking glass’ themed Met Ball

T

he Met Gala is an annual party hosted by Vogue in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s a fundraising event for the Costume Institute and is meant to celebrate the theme of the Institute’s exhibition for that year. If you were not on the guest list, in 2014 it would have cost you $25,000 to gain entry to what is arguably New York’s most exclusive event.

If it’s not ringing any bells to you, it’s the event that two years ago a very pregnant Kim Kardashian wore a flowery Givenchy gown to and then was the subject of many a sofa joke the next day. The theme that year was ‘Punk’, and this year’s was ‘China: Through the Looking Glass’.

The exhibition and theme’s aim, according to curator Andrew Bolton, was to recast orientalism in a more positive light as “an exchange of ideas and an honored source of influence”. This has been subject to a lot of criticism in the past few days, especially as despite its aims the exhibition still seems to represent less an exchange of ideas, and more the West taking interesting and exotic aspects of Chinese culture with little return. The literary theorist Edward Said defined orientalism as the way in which imperialist Western cultures have inaccurately and patronizingly interpreted ‘the East’. Looking at the exhibition, one

Y

es, designer handbags are fairly pricey (a Mulberry Bayswater in Oak Natural Leather is currently priced at £895) but for what you get for that price, they are definitely worth it. You might be able to get a nice looking bag from Topshop or other high street stores for around £50 but it’ll last you a year, if that, before it gets frayed and worn and you feel the familiar yearn for something new.

A designer bag is an investment for life. You pay for a quality that just cannot be found on the high street, unless you want to pay nearly designer prices. When you spend that much money on a bag, you definitely want to make it worth it, so you will take that bag everywhere instead of the usual process of alternating between various

Topshop

can see elements of the accuracy of this definition. One piece featured is a Dior dress patterned with screen prints of Chinese characters, taken from a letter by Zhang Xu. As elegant and exotic as the dress seems, the characters plastered across it are actually describing a nasty stomachache. Not so romantic. Another less tasteful design featured is a dress with Mao Zedong’s face repeatedly printed all over it. If we forget who Mao was, the dress looks cool and edgy. But when looking at it from a different angle it seems like a designer is making light out of the death of millions.

The whole exhibit only featured

“ this outfit choice smacks

of imperialism

”

Poppy Delevigne wore a plunging red dress by Marchesa featured with poppies all over the torso. Some have said she was merely dressing as her namesake, but she told reporters that she had “come as opium”.

Given China’s violent history with opium and Britain’s involvement in the Opium Wars, this outfit choice smacks of imperialism. Some made even less of an effort to adhere to the theme. Kim Kardashian and Beyonce both looked amazing in gowns sprinkled with jewels leaving lots of flesh on show, by Peter Dundas for Robert Cavalli and Givenchy respectively. However, these dresses had little to relate them to the actual theme of the event.

Even though some celebrities made a bit of an effort to appear theme-appropriate, with Justin Bieber wearing a Balmain jacket decorated with golden dragons and Lady Gaga and Karen Elson sporting headdresses, very few veered off the beaten track by wearing Chinese designers. Others wore traditional Chinese colours of red and yellow, perhaps in an attempt to play it safe with the

theme.

A handful of guests, such as Rihanna and Chinese actress Fan Bingbing wore Chinese designers.

Fan Bingbing played it right in a floor-length, gold sequined gown and green silk patterned cloak by Christopher Bu, whilst Rihanna caused a stir in a regal yellow coat trimmed with fur by Chinese couturier Guo Pei. Since the event the internet has been littered with memes and pictures of Rihanna wearing an omelette, a pizza, or my personal favourite, a steak bake. All jokes aside though, Rihanna looked flawless. In imperial China, only the emperor was allowed to wear yellow, and the colour symbolized prestige, good luck, and a balance of yin and yang. In her majestic yellow gown, Rih not only actually dared to wear a designer not usually featured on a Western red carpet, she revealed her inner Empress (as if we needed reminding of it). This is not to say that Guo Pei is an unknown designer; in China she has long

FLORA HOLMES

Plume Hermes bag costs £5,120. That exceeds my yearly rent as Oxford, it exceeds the cost of a car with insurance and it exceeds the cost of 146 Accessorize bags of a similar size at the cost of £35 each.

Picture this: you’re ready to go out for an evening, wearing a new orange dress - it’s garish but Vogue says it’s the latest style. Then - shock horror - you turn to pick up your designer tote only to compare the light blue shade to your outfit and cringe. Such an investment is questionable if it does not match with every one of your outfits.

Similarly, the creamy leather bag is not appropriate for every occasion, necessitating the purchase of further bags to compensate, rendering the walking-safety-deposit box somewhat obsolete.

Proponents of buying designer bags would point to the longevity of the items, however whilst the luxurious material it is composed of may last, the design will not. If we cast our minds back to the likes of the Tapestry bags of the 1970s, or the 1980s brightly coloured patented style, it becomes apparent that a bag

been a top designer, she designed the costumes for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and she just released a 16-piece collaboration with MAC cosmetics. Speaking to The Cut recently she said that she wanted the world to know China’s tradition and past and give the splendor of China a new expression. She said ‘I hope that people do know China in this way’. Sadly, with the main talk about Rihanna’s outfit being negative, and others wearing Chinese designers going relatively unnoticed to those in the classic big names, the Met Gala may not have helped much to further her ambitions.

a small number of actual Chinese designers, although Wong Kar Wai, a Hong Kong Second Wave filmmaker, did help to curate the exhibit.

The lack of actual Chinese design and distasteful orientalism continued onto the red carpet. Digital Spy high street buys. The top quality and classic look means that you won’t need or want another bag – it’ll last you years and you can pass it down, along with all the memories, to your children. If you buy your bag in a classic style it will go with all of your clothes, so no need for another. Truly a bag for life!

The outside of a designer bag (obviously) looks cool, but what is often forgotten about the bag as a whole is the inside. Luxuriant linings, leather trims, zip pocket after zip pocket complete with zips that don’t break after the third use. Let’s also not forget about the care instructions and help that comes with your purchase – would you get that at your local H&M? All these points have only touched on the practical elements of buying a designer bag. That’s because it basically goes without saying that you’ll feel like an absolute fashion boss when you go out with your bag. It will automatically transform any drab or boring outfit into a cool and classy one, something that just cannot be said about a high street bag.

LINCOLN COLLEGE

A

Debate: are designer YES handbags NO worth the price tag?

LIZZIE EVENS NEW COLLEGE

purchased now could not be wearable in the future.

The principle of buying bags for the designer brand name is somewhat problematic. Obtaining certain brands is tantamount to sharing in the status of the make, though there is another side to this. In sharing in the status of the brand you can be perceived to share a wider set of values.

This becomes an issue when designers come under fire, most recently Dolce and Gabanna and Hollister, for making comments that caused offense, which could cause you to cover up that logo you so lavishly invested in.

But ultimately for me it comes down to one simple fact; who wouldn’t rather have 146 different styles than just the one design?

Mulberry

14th May 2015

INSTAWORTHY

Spotlight: diverse careers in fashion

Fashion 11 CHARLOTTE LANNING PEMBROKE COLLEGE

• Charlotte Lanning talks to New York based fashion lawyer Charles Coleman about this expanding, yet niche, section of legal practice What is “fashion law”?

@sassyworlduk This vintage online retailer is a psychedelic treat, with their posts including every possible every colour under the sun. There are clashing prints in the form of products, style inspiration and nail art as well as regular appearances from sassy icons such as Miss Piggy and the Powerpuff Girls. A fun follow which will definitely make you stop and stare as you scroll.

Over the past few years, a lot of people have been talking about ‘fashion law’. In my view, this term is really just a shorthand way of referring to the legal/business issues that recur in fashion-related matters. In many ways, this comes as no surprise: a ‘medical device lawyer’, for example, should understand patent law, products liability, administrative law, and the unique characteristics of the industry in question. In the same way, attorneys representing fashion clients should be knowledgeable about trademark law and the right of publicity, design-protection regimes, advertising and labeling law, statutes and regulations related to sourcing and distribution, issues concerning employees versus independent contractors, the corporate structures most commonly used in the industry, etc. (Of course, attorneys tend to cultivate expertise in particular area of the law, especially as their careers progress, but it’s dangerous to lose sight of the broader legal landscape.) It’s also crucial to have a certain level of familiarity with

@sassyworlduk

OxStu Fashion on Intagram @oxstufashion

Fashionnexus

the mechanics of the fashion industry itself. In my view, ‘fashion law’ doesn’t represent a new discovery as much as an emerging understanding that attorneys who regularly handle fashion-related matters should have a certain level of appreciation of, and sensitivity to, these legal and business issues - before the client ever walks into the room.

How did you get to where you are now?

I’ve been a musician for a long time; perhaps unsurprisingly, I gravitated toward courses in copyright while in law school. I found myself especially intrigued by subject matter that did not fit comfortably into the traditional American copyright regime, like fashion design. (I have a couple of articles coming out in the coming months analyzing how the U.S. IP landscape for fashion design came to be.) I was also drawn to trademark law, perhaps because of its focus on symbols and communication. (My college major was linguistics.) Once I was in practice, fashion caught my eye as an industry in which the issues that interested me most arose quite frequently.

Initially, my focus on fashion was primarily on the legal and business aspects of the industry. But I found myself increasingly fascinated by the sociological aspects of fashion - I came to see it as a sort of paradigm for understanding countless aspects of contemporary culture. I educated myself about fashion theory, design history, and visual-culture studies, and have been fortunate to have the opportunity to explore issues at the nexus of the fashion and law through

both my academic research and my teaching positions at NYU. I was thrilled to create a course on fashion history and theory for graduate students in NYU’s ‘Visual Culture: Costume Studies’ program. In short, my focus has gradually expanded from “fashion law” to ‘fashion and law’ - that is, I’m now equally interested in the practical and theoretical ways in which these two components of culture speak to each other.

“ To be an effective lawyer, you have to understand the mechanics of your client’s industry

”

Is an interest in fashion crucial to work in this area?

To be an effective lawyer, you have to understand the mechanics of your client’s industry. This is true of lawyering in general. When it comes to fashion, you don’t have to maintain a comprehensive mental database of who showed what in what season, but you do have to know who the major players are, what the conventional practices and latest trends are, how common business strategies can be facilitated by - or are in tension with - the law, and the ethos of the segment of the industry in which a

The new model ‘Brat Pack’

client is working. It’s much easier (not to mention more fun) to acquire an understanding of these things if you’re interested in fashion. But it’s also important to remember that your clients are coming to you because they need a lawyer, not another designer. I have enormous respect for fashion designers and great appreciation of beautiful design, but my clients care most about whether I know the law - and how it pertains to their situation. I’ve never had a client ask me if I love fashion.

Do you see the sector expanding or do you think it will remain a fairly niche area of practice?

I’ve said this before, but I think the recognition of ‘fashion law’ as a field has less to do with the number of employment opportunities available, or the nature of those employment opportunities, and more to do with client expectations. Now that more attorneys are advertising their experience with the fashion industry, designers expect greater familiarity with the nuances of the industry than they might have in the past. I doubt most designers would have walked into an attorney’s office twenty years ago and referred to a ‘diffusion line’, ‘factoring’, or a ‘pavé setting’, for example, without immediately providing more information. These days, there is a critical mass of attorneys focusing on fashion, so this level of knowledge has arguably evolved from a ‘plus’ to a requirement for attracting and retaining top fashion clients. Knowing the relevant law remains crucial, of course, but that’s not enough anymore.

LIZZIE EVENS NEW COLLEGE

• Lizzie Evens considers this emerging band of models

C

SUBMIT TO US

ertain models can be seen to symbolise different eras in fashion; Twiggy epitomises sixties mod, Iman established herself as a supermodel in the 1980s, for the nineties it was the chique gaunt Kate Moss and for the noughties the glowing Gisele. Today there is a band of young, influential models climbing the fashion ranks.

Kendall and Kylie Jenner, Gigi Hadid and Hailey Baldwin are members of today’s model ‘Brat Pack’. Each photographs flawlessly and each has

If you have any ideas for articles, features, interviews or shoots please send them over to fashion@oxfordstudent. com!

KendallJenner

the ‘perfect’ figure, though they have other traits that tie them to this generation. Three of them initially found fame thanks to reality television; Kendall and Kylie Jenner are the youngest siblings in the Kardashion dynasty and Hadid is the daughter of Yolanda Foster of Real Housewives fame. The fame credentials of Hailey Baldwin, daughter of Alec Baldwin, need not be elucidated.

They have amassed huge followings on social networks, pioneering Instagram by uploading pouting selfies and

showcasing outfits. The Jenner sisters have almost 50 million followers between them, and pictures regularly break the 1 million like mark. For their followers the images are a point of interaction, and a quick look in the comments section reveals the cult following this group has accumulated.

Comments include “goals”, “you are so perfect”, “I need this outfit” and “so in love with you”.

The revelation about Kylie Jenner’s famous lips has dominated the press, gaining coverage in The Independent, The Daily Mail and other major online news outlets. Yet this seems somewhat strange when one considers she is just 17 years old and her decision has become ping-pong for writers to comment on whether they deem this move acceptable. One can’t help but see something rather sinister in Jenner’s following. For every comment of overwhelming praise there is one of abuse or even more disturbingly objectification. People can comment on the appearance of these young women in a way they could not in person.

Topshop

14th May 2015

12 Screen

SCREEN

Oxford Broadcasting Association

Vampires and pigeons: OBA film screening I t wasn’t a promising start. It was midday, always distressingly early to be engaging in cultural activities, and a post-ball Sunday. As people queued for the annual Oxford Broadcasting Association’s screening of student-made films there was much swigging from water bottles and rather desperate dragging of cigarettes (ok, I’m mostly talking about myself here).

Feeling more unpresentable than usual mingling amongst the hipster folk of Oxford’s filmmaking scene, it was with slight reluctance that I entered the bowels of the Ultimate Picture Palace.

However, despite my concern that once the lights dimmed this would end up being a two hour nap rather than a visual smorgasbord, I was instantly transfixed. The screening kicked off with the deliciously witty and acerbic Isaac, directed by Franky Murray-Brown and written by Marcus Balmer. Made in a mockumentary style, it interviews the friends and colleagues of Isaac, a vampire - or one of the ‘daylight challenged’ - who has recently enrolled at St Bartholomew’s College as part of their diversification programme. Isaac picks up the mantle from last years OBA short Genius, a wickedly funny mockumentary of Oxford’s drama scene, in hitting slightly too close to home for comfortable viewing. Isaac dives boldly, but sensitively, into the debate that has raged over the past year over free speech vs. safe space.There is an

unmistakeable dig at not just students but members of the establishment who have jumped on the ‘rights’ bandwagon for their own selfish interests.

Appropriation of Isaac as part of an oppressed minority runs throughout the film, as student activist groups take it upon themselves to lead the campaign for vampire rights. This is underscored by the fact that we don’t see Isaac himself until the last scene, where after a barrage of questions we only see him shyly open his mouth before the film ends. While wanting to generally “poke fun at Oxford’s self-righteousness”, writer Marcus Balmer said that “it was important for us that Isaac wasn’t the butt of the joke but the people who speak for him”. Isaac certainly achieves something special in that, despite being a student ‘mockumentary’, the mocking never feels malicious or moralising.

Yes, it is holding up a mirror to us lefty students; and yes, I definitely recognised the reflection, but actually no one escapes its piercing eye unscathed (even the college scout has a hilarious cameo), I imagine not even the makers themselves.

In A Chaste Soul, written and directed by Anthony Maskell, a murderer, a priest, and a rather loquacious victim of abuse come together under very unexpected circumstances in a gripping drama about morality, religion, and the consequences of the choices we make. Inspired by the crisp black and white of Pawlikowski’s Ida, the

monochrome is only broken by a flash of red blood reminiscent of Schindler’s List. While A Chaste Soul certainly doesn’t shy away from the “big questions”, its underlying concern is very human. When the victim apologises to the murderer, masquerading as the priest, for forgetting that of course priests “laugh, cry and eat like the rest of us”, her words ring just as true of the murderer himself and the humanity that the victim, priest and murderer all share.

“ While A Chaste Soul certainly

doesn’t shy away from the ‘big questions’, its underlying concern is very human.

”

One of the consequences of these being student made films, with limited budgets, is that many of the filmmakers made innovative use of Oxford for sets. While this in itself afforded the viewer a rather base pleasure akin

to seeing one’s house on the news or on Google maps (I mean we’ve all done it), it also made them feel intimate and deeply relatable. This was certainly true for me of The Pigeon and the Priest, written and directed

by Tom Dillon, which managed to delicately combine existential crisis with a wicked gallows humour.

Scenes are split between the office of a priest, whose book-lined walls are instantly recognisable from every tute you’ve ever had, and the room of a student, Tim Davis, who explores one of those mysterious blocked up fireplaces. Jonathon, another student upset by the death of his dog and the end of his relationship, seeks help from the priest. He is met with blatant disinterest; the only ‘comfort’ offered by the priest is an animated retelling of the story of another of his unfortunate charges; Tim Davis, who is thrown into existential crisis by the discovery of the skeleton of a pigeon bearing a mysterious message in his chimney. There is a clever camera juxtaposition between the two tortured teens, separated by time and space, as they both struggle to ask and answer the question ‘what does it all mean?’. While such scope could easily have fallen rather flat with only fifteen minutes and a tight budget to work with, The Pigeon and the Priest’s self-awareness saves it. The priest belittles Jonathon’s existential agonies by responding “you’ve got to stop taking yourself so seriously”. This is at once

MEGAN ERWIN CORPUS CHRISTI

the obvious but impossible solution to all teen angst and also the source of The Pigeon and the Priest’s brilliance – it never takes itself too seriously.

Like The Pigeon and the Priest, many of the films screened delved deep into the psyches of young people, revealing and exploring our deepest fears. This is particularly true of Sally, directed

by Anne Stelzer and Ben Morrison and written by Sam Ward, a chilling and powerful exploration of a young woman trapped in her apartment by fear of the outside world. Morrison has said that it was inspired by discontinuities in surrealist cinema, focusing on rhythm, light and performance.

The darkness and claustrophobia of Sally’s enclosed life is immersive and terrifying. Her tentative communication with the outside world, through immaculately folded paper planes, speaks to how all of us occasionally feel, like we are putting our thoughts and feelings into flight, into the void, in the hope that they land with someone who cares.

I was blown away and a little humbled by the extraordinary films shown on that unextraordinary Sunday afternoon. What advice do the directors, writers and producers have for any budding filmmakers? The advice from Morrison was unequivocal: ‘Make the film. Write it, direct it, act it – make whatever contribution you can.’ Let that be a clarion call to any potential filmmakers out there reading this – you know what to do.

14th May 2015

Screen 13

Review: Far from the Madding Crowd

I

t is fair to say that I was anxious about seeing an adaptation of what is, in my opinion, one of the finest novels in the English language. Its role as a cultural touchstone cannot be overstated: Hardy’s Wessex is the paradigmatic merry England of our collective imagination and memory, sheepscattered and sun-dappled, which we damn as lost and strive to protect and revive with equal fervour. We can see it in our vexed and melancholy relationship with rural communities, a griefstricken sense of something lost, or never quite having existed. And it was with emotions almost as mixed as entering that I left the cinema: for while it was truly excellent, there was something slightly hollow and missing at the heart of such an ambitious project.

This is doubtlessly a fine film. A large part of that can indisputably be put down to director Thomas Vinterberg’s clear sense of character as the key stone of the novel; all four of the main actors in the fraught love story are superband surprisingly so, for none are easy parts, all compelling a complex subtlety requisite of Hardy’s brilliant imagination. I had entertained endless dispute with a friend about who would have been a more natural Bathsheba than Carey Mulligan, whom I damned as too inalienably urban and urbane to capture the wilful passion of a quintessentially Hardian heroine (Billie Piper or even Poldark’s Eleanor Tomlinson had sprung to mind). I argued that precisely the qualities that conferred on Mulligan a natural sense of being

the perfect Daisy for Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby would disqualify her from a polar opposite role in Far From the Madding Crowd. Yet I was wrong, and dramatically so: Mulligan’s performance if anything carried the film, and she captured Bathsheba’s characteristic tension between vulnerability and spiritedness to a tee.

The stand out performance, however, came from Tom Sturridge’s inspired Sergeant Troy, whose combination of consciously masculine and moustachioed militarism and louche sexuality made him feel lifted straight from the page. In particular, the repositioning of the infamous swordplay scene from an open hillside to a misty ‘hollow in the ferns’ heightened the peculiar eroticism of one of the most unusual and breath-catching scenes of the book.

Mulligan’s tender surrender to the domineering Troy was perhaps even more unbearable on screen than page.

The performance was elevated further by the knowledge that it would have been so terribly easy to caricature the role- Sturridge’s resistance of this and poignant emotion at Troy’s various emotional peripeteias is admirable.

Matthias Schoenaerts’ Gabriel Oak was an odd choice- an Antwerpian in the most English of roles- yet his performance of earthy generosity and open-heartedness was pitch-perfect.

Indeed, the sense that he was focusing rather too precisely on his diction actually helped to create Oak’s slow certainty. The oddest choice, though, was doubtlessly Sheen, whom I have

HUGH McHALE-MAUGHAN BRASENOSE COLLEGE always struggled to see as anyone but his uncanny and oft-repeated Tony Blair; yet he was eerily perfect as the damaged and darkly love-struck Boldwood, whose incomprehension at both his own affection and Bathsheba’s rejection culminated in a shooting of Troy that was genuinely disturbing in its dead-eyed alienation.

But, superb as it was, I cannot help feeling that this was a misplaced focus on character and characterisation. The magic of Hardy’s novels comes precisely from that sense of the world which he evokes: a timeless rural idyll, somehow both before and after the Industrial Revolution. The film, in its somehow fragmentary jump from famous scene to scene, destroyed this entirely.

The occasional stunning shot of gorgeous Dorset is not sufficient to create that true sense of the countryside and its way of life. There is perhaps a fundamental tension between the slow rustic pastoralism of Hardy’s novelsthe sense of a world unfolding rather than a story developing- and the cinema screen. It is certainly the case that the finest Hardy adaptations have been lengthy television series. I cannot help feeling, however, that David Nicholls’ presence on the project cannot have helped this: for, as fine a novelist as he is, Nicholls is fundamentally the storyteller of the individual rather than the community. And it was here that the film really fell down: in this atomised performance of individual stars, there really was no madding village crowd at all.

D

ST HILDA’S COLLEGE

3

Reese’s Pieces in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) When 10-year-old Elliott discovers ET lurking in the trees behind his house, he devises a plan to lure him inside with a trail of chocolates.

Mars, deeming ET too ugly and off-putting to be associated with their products, did not allow the Spielberg production to use M&Ms. Hershey stepped in, and saw their profits rise a reported sixty-five percent thanks to the use of Reese’s Pieces. Unafraid of his wrinkly face, the company then plastered the alien all over their packaging too.

Universal

2

General Motors in Transformers (2007) When The Italian Job was released, it was claimed that the real stars were the Mini Coopers that featured heavily. A similar remark was made by a General Motors executive when Michael Bay’s Transformers was released. Not content with making a feature length toy advert, Bay filled the 140 minutes with cars ‘donated’ by GM, in an unabashed marketing ploy. It was a move that upset even diehard fans, when the original VW Beetle was replaced with a more profitable Chevrolet Cammaro for the new version of Bumblebee.

Paramount Pictures

1

Aston Martin, Omega, Heineken etc. in James Bond The James Bond franchise is notorious for its product placement. Skyfall saw an incredibly lucrative tie-in with Heineken, while back in Dr. No he drank a Red Stripe in the place of his now iconic Vodka Martini. In the novels, Bond drives a Bentley, but he is best known for driving an Aston Martin, and has dabbled with BMWs. In Casino Royale, he quickly replies that he is wearing an Omega watch, when asked if he is sporting a Rolex.

Everett

Allstar

THOMAS BANNATYNE

COUNTDOWN

THREE SHAMELESS MOVIE PRODUCT PLACEMENTS

id you know that Deal or No Deal is still being made? I was shocked when I found out too. To be honest, I’m astonished they made more than about twenty episodes. It’s not the most varied of shows. It’s not the most exciting either. I really don’t know what it has going for it at all, but people clearly like it. But listen to this; they have made more than two and a half thousand episodes.

It would take more than one hundred days to watch all of them without a break. And if even one is boring, think about how excruciating that would be. If the Spanish Inquisition were around today, Deal or No Deal would be their instrument of choice.

Even the worst daytime quiz shows require a modicum of skill, either physical or mental. Deal or No Deal requires you to say numbers. That’s basically it. You can win a quarter of a million pounds if you get lucky and say the numbers in the right

order. But the main problem isn’t that the whole thing is based on chance. I don’t get angry when the lottery comes on. The problem is the deluded sense of reverence that the contestants and the unbearable Noel Edmonds have for the process.

Each episode takes an hour and each is padded with more sappiness than an X Factor audition show.

Contestants are overwhelmed with

that could be half an hour long with this tearful or cheerful nonsense.

And then there’s the Banker.

When Deal or No Deal was in its prime he was a cult figure - a greedy, snarky prick on the other end of the telephone. The money in the game is supposed to be his own, and he is supposed to hate charity. Why is he offering money to people for no reward? This pseudo-fictional back-

unwarranted gratitude just for opening a box, if it happens to be a good one. Others are crushed with guilt when their box has the wrong number inside. Why? Mainly because Edmonds raises the expectations of the players and can’t resist reminding everyone of how “life-changing” each game could be. It’s true that many of the prizes can change people’s lives, but there is no need to fill a game

story makes no sense at all. Edmonds straddles the line between reality and fiction, playing up the real-world effects of this game while indulging the made-up narrative behind TV’s least threatening bad guy. Has this guy not got better things to do than ring the studio every ten minutes?

If he were that rich he’d have an assistant, wouldn’t he?

Noel Edmonds has been known

DEAL OR NO DEAL

in the past for going around giving out presents and charity on TV. That is no bad thing. But inflicting something similar on an unsuspecting audience in the guise of a game is just irritating. Edmonds drains the fun out of it with his ever sincere approach (his dubious choice of shirts and facial hair are best left unexamined), and as host has bought into the reverence and ritualistic atmosphere a little too much. He’s supposed to be the voice of reason, the bastion of calm against the hysteria, but he gets just as excited as the rest.

The logo of the programme is a box, not the phone. That says it all.

Choosing ‘deal or no deal’ is the only part that requires any thought. But instead the boxes are treated as if they are magic. The sense of awe, the unfunny exchanges over the phone, the sober, stilted conversations. It’s all too much. When, oh when, does it end?

14 Arts & Lit

14th May 2015

ARTS & LIT

William Hogarth’s world view

• We look to Hogarth in light of recent heated debates on social inequality • His evocative paintings depict social decline in 18th century London

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orn at the end of the 18th century into a period of growing social inequality, William Hogarth’s engravings and paintings are one of the best insights we have into the people’s world of the early Georgian period.

Hogarth’s work is more than outwardly critical of the society in which he lives. Each of his engravings is intricately done, with minute details adding yet more context to the face-value story they’re telling.

And, of course, it’s the story-telling which makes Hogarth’s pieces so memorable. The Rake’s Progress, perhaps his best known piece, is remarkable for the way in which not just a man’s life, but the strata of society, is conveyed through just eight images. Tom – the anti hero of the cycle – journeys from middle class comfort to the gaudy excess of the New Moneyed elite before tumbling downwards the debtors prison and, finally, Bedlam.

No section of society escapes the harsh wit of Hogarth’s brush. In his world, the rich are vapid, the poor wretched, and the protagonists unlikable. In The Harlot’s Progress, a precursor to The Rake’s Progress, a priest passes by on his horse while an innocent Moll (soon to become the titular Harlot) is inspected by a brothelkeeper and a pimp. Even the clergy are objects of ridicule in this step beyond the normal into the absurd, and every detail of the world has been scrupulously created, down to Moll’s date of death inscribed on her coffin, noting the age of this “old woman” – 23.

Hogarth’s social world also gives us an

The Rake’s Progress

A series of eight paintings depicting the social and moral decline of Tom, the son of a rich merchant Wikipedia Foundation

insight into the rich diversity overtaking London. Forget the white-washed façade you’re probably imagining.

Looking into the engravings, there are African prisoners, Jewish merchants, syphilitic prostitutes and French dancing masters, showing off a rich tapestry of characters coming from a distinctly London-centric artist. There’s glorious chaos in almost all of Hogarth’s pictures of the lower classes, painting a world for his wider audience which

speaks of a city expanding as they begin to reach further across the globe.

And all the time, he’s doing this with his audience in mind. Hogarth’s paintings are more than simply critical of the world he lives in. They’re deeply satirical. As well as commentating on the state of things as they are – and Gin Lane, perhaps his most famous painting, showing a mother so intoxicated by gin that she throws her baby into the river whilst laughing manically –

doesn’t just comment on the poor who were driven to cheap alcohol. It’s also a comment on the demonization of these same poor, particularly by the wealthy, who viewed them not just as another class, but as another species. When he draws an image of Moll the prostitute, sat on her bed aging and syphilitic, he does so in resemblance of the Annunciation of Christ. No object is sacred from Hogarth’s scathing brush, least of all established religion.

Is capitalism consuming our artwork?

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n a record-breaking transaction this February, Paul Gauguin’s 1892 painting ‘When Will You Marry?’ was sold for as much as $300 million.

To put it in perspective, that’s around three times as much as the British nation raised for Comic Relief this year, or ten times Oxford City Council’s 2015 budget. Something in all of us can’t help but wretch at such an obscenely large amount of money being spent on the private acquisition of a ‘trophy piece’ of visual display when both the money and the painting could be better deployed elsewhere. We all know that the true value of art lies not in its monetary tag, and that the ‘success’ of an artist cannot be gauged by the price paid for their work. Yet we continue to allow art to be priced, bought, and sold like any other commodity, making our society’s artists compete for commissions and sales to earn a living in the capitalist marketplace, and permitting wealthy individuals to buy and ‘own’ a work of art that they have not created themselves. In short, we are allowing art to be subsumed by capitalism.

The real value of art lies in its ability to inspire and enthuse the viewer, listener or reader. A good artist transforms a palette of external colours, sounds or words into a spectrum of internal emo-

tions by conveying, as the philosopher Clive Bell put it, a “significant form” or meaningful arrangement to its audience. The ultimate aim may be to convey or portray a particular message or scene or simply to engineer aesthetic beauty through visual, aural or verbal patterns and shapes. Each one of us

“ Society is in crisis, and capitalism is to blame.

”

will experience a work of art in our own way and draw different but equally valuable meanings from the feat of human creativity we behold. Roland Barthes held that the writer – and the same might be said of the painter, sculptor or composer – is not the “author-God” of their own work, but merely an intermediary channel through which the culture and society of which they are part speaks to itself in the form an audience that, through their own interpretation, actively participates in the

creative process.

In this sense, the most ‘valuable’ art is that with which the public most engages, which means that it must not only be emotionally significant in and of itself but also be accessible to a large number of people. That’s where the problem of ‘ownership’ of art comes in.

In a capitalistic world in which each person’s ‘success’ is gauged by the size of their bank account, the wealthy can buy the right to choose whether to keep a work of art for their private friends or show it to the public, in either case showing off their own wealth and superiority.

Works of art can be reproduced of course, and it is through copies of the original recordings and manuscripts that music, film and literature are generally experienced. But here, too, capitalism has art in chains. In the capitalist world, writers, performe r s and producers are not automatically provided with the money or resources they need to live on the basis of their contribution to our collective culture and enjoyment of life. Instead they

must continually prove their worth through the fickle measure of sales to a ‘consuming’ public. The result is that we are brow-beaten into listening to particular songs or watching particular reels by music and film industries that greedily employ their own art of mindmoulding marketing and fickle persuasion to “sell” their commissions to the general public. But if that public dares encourage that art to flourish by sharing it freely with their friends and neighbours, they risk being hauled into court for breaching copyright laws.

LAURA WHETHERLY ST PETER’S COLLEGE

His work also turns towards the upper-middle and elite classes, especially in London. In Marriage a-la-mode, our two protagonists have entered into an arranged marriage in which they both engage in a purely superficial version of “love” masked by the fripperies of velvet and lace. In true Hogarth style, the story soon takes a dark turn, with the wife’s lover murdering her husband and the subsequent suicide of the widowed wife. Pretty grim. But also a morality tale with a clear message to the observer: don’t get caught up in money and material goods, not when it comes at the expense of true feeling.

That’s some deep stuff, come direct from the pen of the 18th century’s artist of choice. But it’s not all Protestant work ethic and rejection of the trappings of middle class life. Check out some of Hogarth’s jokes hidden in the plain sight: in the scene Shortly After Marriage in Marriage-a-la-mode, the wife’s spread legs underneath her broad skirt indicate that someone’s been enjoying at least some of the advantages that marriage can bring.

The first true social commentator and satirist, Hogarth was an artist who worked everything around him into his pictures and engravings. To look at his work is to get a glimpse into the complicated world of early 18th century London, to walk in the streets and hide behind the velvet curtains of a wealthy family’s drawing room. Hogarth’s work was characterised by its biting social commentary, and even today we can maybe learn something from looking at ourselves through the lenses of another world.

TOBIAS THORNES ORIEL COLLEGE This control of art by neither the artist nor the audience but by intermediary profit-driven corporations demonstrates without a doubt the stranglehold upon our culture that capitalism exerts. The need to make money out of art assaults the freedom of the artist by constraining them to move upon a plane of convention and proven saleability that satisfies their corporate masters but undermines the quality of their expressions. The ability of the disgustingly rich to squander their unjustifiable wealth upon privatised paintings in denial of the cooperative pleasure that could be achieved through public ownership is a further symptom of this capitalist drive towards the pursuit of individual success at the expense of equality and collective prosperity. The distinction between the ‘High Art’ media of the rich and well-educated and the ‘Low Art’ of the television-opiated masses serves as a powerful indication of the excruciating lack of equality of education, aspiration and power that ails our society today. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, it is this distinction between different artistic media that conveys a profound message. Society is in crisis, and capitalism is to blame.

IMAGE/sobadsogood.com

Arts & Lit 15

14th May 2015

The ghost of London with Cornell Treasures WILLIAM SHAW CORPUS CHRISTI

P

aul Cornell has had a rather diverse career. He started out writing Doctor Who novels in the early nineties, and since then he has gone on to write extensively for television, including Coronation Street, Casualty and the revived Doctor Who. He has also written several comics, including characters as iconic as Superman, Wolverine and Captain Britain. 2013 saw the publication of London Falling, the first in his ongoing Shadow Police series, centred on a police division unexpectedly thrust into the supernatural underground of the capital. The second book in the series, Severed Streets, came out last year, and Cornell was kind enough to talk with me about the series, its place in the contemporary urban fantasy scene, and the usefulness of Doctor Who fans in the Metropolitan Police.

I started by asking Cornell how he would describe the Shadow Police series to someone who had never heard of it. “The Shadow Police is a series about a group of everyday, undercover, modern London police officers, who suddenly gain the ability to see the magic and monsters of London. They feel that the only thing they can do to keep their sanity is to use real police methods against it. In book one we set all that up, and in book two they encounter what seems to be the revival of Jack the Ripper, who is only killing rich white men. It’s my critique of the Ripper legend, of Ripperology, of how what wasn’t even a blip in business as usual for Limehouse and the Docklands in general, Whitechapel particularly, became fetishised into the creation of the serial killer, while actually there were ripper-like killings before, during and after.”

I asked Cornell what first inspired him to write the series. “Way back in the day, about fifteen years ago, it was a TV pitch that I was putting together with Steven Moffat. That never got anywhere- all that remains of it is some character names and a central idea. The plots of the books are entirely new. I really like it when

Cornell’s Career Highlights 1991

first Doctor Who novel published – Timewyrm: Revelation

2001

works as a writer for Casualty

2005

tapped as one of the writers for the revived series of Doctor Who

groups of professionals encounter the completely inexplicable, and have to rely on professional skill sets to deal with it. Urban fantasy also gives me the opportunity to write about now, about how things are right now, in terms of austerity, and the terrible conditions, politically, we’re under. All of these create metaphorical monsters, which I enjoy playing with.”

The London-centric fantasy novel has become a bit of a thing over the last few years, especially after the popularity of Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series, and authors like Neil Gamian and China Mieville getting in on the act. What do writers find so attractive about the capital? “London has lots of depth. London goes right down to the Boudiccan destruction layer, and beyond that. The Boudiccan destruction layer is where Boudicca leveled the city, and you can absolutely see it, as an archeological line across the strata of the rock. It not only has depth historically, it deals with space on the ground in a really interesting way. You’ve got little things tucked round corners and those invisible divisions between neighbourhoods based on class, that only the British seem to sense, as a kind of forcefield. These books are all about invisible influences, supernatural, political and financial.

“Ben Aaronovitch is an old friend, and I realised years ago that me and him were working on basically the same sort of book at the same time.

We gradually became aware of this, and I thought ‘He writes really slowly, I’ll have this out way before he does’, and he had three of them out before I had this out! So he’s sort of created this whole London urban fantasy genre.

We’re in this tiny, tiny sub-Amazon section, of former Doctor Who writers, metropolitan police modern urban fantasy- there’s me and him. But there’s also loads of other writers. It’s thrilling that we’re all discovering such depths of interest in this exciting city. There’s certainly something to London, a real ghost to the place, a real sense of place to it. I think perhaps familiarity has made the British a little less excited

by London than they should be. It’s an incredible city.”

A novel like this requires a lot of research, some of which requires the help of experts. “I have my intelligence officers, my police officers, and my pathologists. Certainly, my police officers have been incredibly helpful. One of them rose to the rank of Detective Chief Inspector in the Firearms Unit, having written for Tom Baker’s Doctor Who, back in the 70s. He provides me with information, but also with a writer’s eye to it. So he knows the shapes I can use. I know quite a few undercovers, whose work gets put in here, and whose names I have to keep secret. The Thanks in the back always include initials, and in some people’s case they think even initials is a bit too risky! Rather wonderfully, the Met, especially the undercover branch of it, seems to be full of Doctor Who fans, so I get a certain amount of access, which is gorgeous.”

I ask Cornell what it’s like to return to writing prose after spending such a long time working in TV and comics.

“They do require different bits of your brain, moving between television, comics and prose. Prose is this immersive

from afar

Wikipedia

ALEXANDER SHAW

I

Paul Cornell

experience- you look at the clock and it’s nine o’clock, then you look again and it’s one P.M! You have to engage specific muscles for comics and TV, which are closer to each other than prose is. Television is about lack of resources; you can’t show the whole army, you can only show a bit of it, and you have to find reasonable ways to get around that, without underlining it. Comics is about a budget of space, having only so many words per speech

“

London has a lot of depth. London goes right down to the Boudiccan destruction layer, and beyond that.

”

balloon, only so many panels per page.

Although most artists would say you really can’t show the army in comics either. They’d much prefer it if you didn’t show all ten thousand men coming over the top of the hill! [Laughs]. It’s really just making a mental adjustment.

I quite often have to move between the two during the day, and I kind of

always hope there’s lunch between them. It’s like one of those triathlons where you have to leap off your bicycle into the water. I always think their leg muscles must get really confused in that moment. I prefer prose. It’s just everything. It’s the whole thing. You get to be the director and the casting person and the lighting person.”

So, what’s next for Cornell? First off is a big Doctor Who comic coming out this summer, with artist Neil Edwards, whose “Capaldi is something to be seen”. On top of that, “there’s three other comics projects which are going to happen this year, I’ve got my collected short stories coming out this summer, which I’m very proud of, that’s a bit of a lifetime ambition, and the new novel. The third one in the Shadow Police series should be out in December. The first draft’s in, so unless things go horribly wrong, it’ll be out before Christmas.”

The sheer range of his upcoming projects demonstrates just how hardworking and versatile a writer Paul Cornell is, and after a nearly thirty-year career he is showing no signs of slowing down. The thing that attracts people about Cornell’s writing is his persistent sense of humanity; his characters always feel rounded and alive, even when they happen to be paranormal police officers or time lords from outer space.

This humanity was what first helped Cornell break out as a big name, and it looks likely to sustain his work for a good while yet.

JESUS COLLEGE

n Vanishing Lung Syndrome, Czech poet Miroslav Holub’s vision is both microscopic in focus (as fitting for an immunologist) and geographically wide-ranging. I recommend this collection, translated

by David Young and Dana Hábová, as much for its imaginative scope as for its alertness to surprise and paradox. Holub’s poems embrace the publishing houses and madhouses of Diderot’s Paris (‘1751’), ‘Nineveh’ and the free world that must have seemed dizzyingly foreign to this quiet dissident, who lived under the political straitjacket of Communist Czechoslovakia.

Typical of Holub’s feeling for the interplay between multiple strata of human experience is ‘Los Angeles: Haemophilia’. The colon in the title invites an equation of personal and political, of the disease stricken body with LA’s dysfunctional body politic.

Repeated imagery of circulation suggests first traffic congestion along an imagined landscape of freeways, and then the disturbing progression of haemophilia through nightmarish bodies. The repetition, indeed circulation, of the phrase ‘And so it circulates’ – with its Biblical tenor – anchors Holub’s surrealist flights of fancy in a reassuringly ritualistic framework. Holub shows us, then, how the stability offered by poetic form can help us to come to terms with personal and civic decay.

‘Animal Rights’ is also based on repetition but with a whimsical twist characteristic of Holub’s wit. After the repeated liturgical invocation ‘Pity for…’ becomes stultifying, the speaker explodes into a very personal rant: ‘Patients/with progressive amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/can just fuck off’ Consider the distinction which Holub draws in ‘1751’ between ‘the sane, who veil themselves in words’ and ‘the insane, who rip off feathers from their bodies’. The value of Holub’s poetry lies in his understanding of words both as comforting ‘veil’ to protect against loss and as ‘feathers’ for unexpected imaginative flight. Holub appreciates the peculiar mix of sanity and insanity in a poet. And it is because his poems never threaten to anaesthetize the reader to the constant possibility of the unexpected that they circulate, a vital force in the bloodstream of European poetry.

FOR YOUR CULTURE FIX: SEE YOU NEXT WEEK!

14th May 2015

LUKE MINTZ CORPUS CHRISTI

Profile 13

Piers Morgan Profile

P

iers Morgan has no interest in being liked. “I couldn’t give a monkeys”, he firmly replies after I ask whether the vicious online arguments he regularly finds himself in have ever affected him emotionally, “you show me someone everyone likes and I’ll show you a very boring person”.

Thick skin is a necessity is Morgan’s line of work, and this journalist-cum-TV personality has seen his share of vitriol.

While campaigning for US gun control on his CNN show in 2013, Morgan famously aggravated over 100,000 Americans into signing a petition to have him deported. The petition even prompted a response from the White House, as Morgan recalled with a chuckle while addressing the Oxford Union on Tuesday evening.

“I like polarising opinions,” he tells me after the talk, as we sit in the Oxford Union’s Gladstone Room, surrounded by keen students all itching to take a selfie with the man who remains Britain’s best-known journalist, “I play up to it, I encourage it, as long as you follow me on Twitter I don’t care. A bit like Katie Hopkins, I wonder aloud, thinking of The Apprentice star’s ability to generate online outrage. “No, I’m not as painfully intolerant as she is,” he responds, “I’m actually a very tolerant person, when it comes to gay rights, or anti-racism, or whatever it may be. She is excruciatingly vile in her intolerance.”

“ I like polarising opinions. As long as you follow me on Twitter I don't care

”

Since his high-profile dismissal from the Daily Mirror editorship in 2004, Morgan has appeared as a celebrity judge on America’s Got Talent, Britain’s got Talent, and even hosted his own US news show on CNN. Currently an editor-atlarge for the US Mail Online, Morgan is perhaps best known among the student population for his illustrious social media presence. Indeed, as he enters the Union chamber Morgan jokingly informs a lone booing student they will be “dealt with on Twitter later”, a nod to his high-profile online spats with Katie Hopkins, Jeremy Clarkson, and Joey Barton.

Inhabiting for years the world of Britain’s Fleet Street elite, Morgan unsurprisingly shows great affection for the nation’s tabloid press. “I think all tabloids should be the pulse of the nation. They should be out there, in your face, screaming about whatever is going on that’s important.” Those who look down on tabloids essentially look down on working-class people, he thinks, and Morgan describes as a “travesty” the growing feminist campaign to remove topless women from Page 3. “When Keira Knightley does it in Vogue it’s

A divisive personality:

Piers Morgan discusses journalistic practices and media politics after his visit to the Oxford Union earlier this week.

Roger Askew

art, but when Laura from Birmingham does it it’s seen as disgusting,” he tells the Union audience, condemning seemingly middle-class, Guardian-inspired attempts to extinguish a slither of joy from the lives of working-class people.

Speaking only days after David Cameron’s shock outright victory in the General Election, I was keen to hear Morgan’s views on how tabloids may have influenced the result. Indeed, a key talking point during the campaign, particularly for much of Oxford’s ‘Guardianista’ Left, was the seemingly negative coverage given by much of the ‘Tory Press’ to Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour Party. Could The Sun’s vicious attacks on “Red Ed’s” sandwich-eating abilities really have cost Labour the election, and if so, is it right that Britain’s papers persist in taking such firm partisan stances?

“Yes, I don’t think it matters,” he tells me quickly, “I don’t care, it’s all part of the fun, we all vote, why shouldn’t the papers vote?” The Sun might well attack Miliband on a personal level, but The Daily Mirror (Morgan’s old paper) attacks Cameron, he tells me. They all do it. The conversation moves quickly on to an increasingly controversial topic: Rupert Murdoch, and his ownership over large sections of the British press.

Appointed Editor of News of the World aged only 28, Morgan has worked closely with the Australian media mogul, telling the Union audience that he spoke to

Murdoch at least every weekend during the mid-1990s. The two publically fell out in 1995, following the News of the World’s use of a front-page photo of Victoria Spencer inside a detox clinic, a story criticised by the Press Complaints Commission. Murdoch was said to have accused Morgan of going “over the top”.

The high-profile falling out has clearly not dented Morgan’s affection for his former boss, however. He describes Murdoch as a “genius”, noting that Sky News, Murdoch’s British TV news channel, has “no partisan side to it”. He also thinks that The Guardian probably wields more influence within its own high-end readership than do any of Murdoch’s papers. Rupert Murdoch, Morgan insists, simply “inspires more envy” because he is considerably more successful. Indeed, there is nothing wrong with being rich, or seeking to make money, he explains.

Further attempting to undermine the “demonization” of Rupert Murdoch, Morgan insists that never as Editor of News of the World was he told what to write by his mogul boss. If reports in The Guardian are anything to go by, however, Murdoch’s leadership style seems to have changed during recent years, with the 84 year-old Australian reportedly phoning editors at The Sun on numerous occasions during this year’s election campaign and forcefully encouraging them to take a more vociferously anti-Miliband stance.

“He is sceptical as to whether the press

Career Highlights 1994 Appointed Editor of News of the World, aged only 28 1995 Leaves Murdoch title to edit the left-leaning Daily Mirror 2004 Fired from Daily Mirrror for allegedly publishing false photographs 2006 Joins America's Got Talent as a judge, alongside David Hasselhoff 2014 Appointed editor-atlarge at US Mail Online

can really influence an election. “Facebook is far more powerful than The Sun now,” he explains, attributing Labour’s failure at last week’s General Election to the voters of Middle England rejecting the politics of Miliband, as well as the potential influence of Nicola Sturgeon, whom he describes “Braveheart” in his typical outspoken manner.I leave my interview with Morgan somewhat surprised. Having usually only heard his name uttered in the same sentence as some form of expletive (indeed, a quick look at his Twitter account shows the vitriol he evokes on a daily basis), this beast-of-British-journalism seemed to me a pleasantly friendly and warm man, whose divisive and confrontational persona seems more strongly driven by a sense of journalistic fun than any inner malice.

What is next for Morgan, I ask as our interview draws to our close? He mentions a host of TV offers, though he cannot be specific. Maybe a role on Top Gear, I suggest? Sadly not, he tells me, though he encourages me to repeat the rumour, “just because it annoys Clarkson”, a nod to his infamous tussle with the Top Gear presenter at the British Press Awards in 2004. Following a General Election campaign dominated by months of hostility and macabre seriousness, Morgan’s playground-like perception of British public life proves surprisingly refreshing.

Oxstuff 15

14th May 2015

OxStuff

Come dine with me: St Hugh's College Ball FOOD AND DRINK

6/10 I arrive on time to the ball but the queues for food guaranteed a half hour wait already. The helpings of candy floss are generous but the sweet popcorn lacks crunch and is small in quantity. Towards the end of the night I manage to get to the front of the artisan pizza queue - just as they run out of pizza. I manage to get a scrap of crust, which is absolutely delicious but it is mixed with the bitter taste of disappointment. The falafel wraps are also rather tasty but the portions sizes are abismal. Drinks are rather weak as only one shot is allowed per cocktail, but the whisky tent makes up for that.

ficult to get your money's worth if you're not ruthless in your queuing.

WOW FACTOR 8/10 There is nothing particularly new or original at this ball, so the wow factor comes down to the impressive organisation and execution of this ball. Few balls manage to stick to their themes as well as St Hugh's did and if the cheering at the fireworks display is anything to go by then I'd say most guests were suitably wowed.

ent areas dotted throughout the college.The silent disco is the perfect end to the night as everyone gathers in the huge music tent for a good singalong.

The swings are a lot of fun, if a little nauseating after a couple of drinks.

ATMOSPHERE

9/10

9/10 Few Oxonians have ventured out as far as St Hugh's College, but it is well worth the trek. The grounds are beautiful and there couldn't be a more perfect setting for this "Enchanted Forest" ball. As soon as you walk through the college doors it is evident that a lot of effort has been put into making this ball a magical success.

8/10 Tickets cost ÂŁ95 which seems reasonable for what's on offer. The problem is that the queues are so long it's dif-

Although the bands selected for Hugh's Ball were not well known, the music continued to impress throughout the night. There are bands playing their own original music as well as numerous cover bands in various differ-

TOTAL SCORE FOR ST HUGH'S BALL: 40/50

I Nominate 12 - 16th May, 9.30pm Burton Taylor Studio

A Doll's House 13 - 16th May, 7:30pm Keble O'Reilly Theatre

PRICE

Passion 20th - 23rd May, 7:30pm Keble O'Reilly Theatre

GIRL TALK 21st May, 10pm Kiss Bar

ENTERTAINMENT

SUPERMARKET 14th May, 10:30pm The Cellar

Alex Addison

Vulture Presents: Life Drawing 15th May, 6pm Wadham College

PICK OF THE WEEK

Medea 21st May, 7:30pm Christ Church College

OxHoli 2015 23rd May, 11am Brasenose College Sports Ground

String of Pearls 19th- 23rd May, 7:30pm Burton Taylor Studio

Ashmolean LiveFriday: Social Animals 15th May, 7pm Ashmolean Museum

Alexander Darby, New College An Audience With Susanna White 14th May, 8pm Oriel College

A Flea In Her Ear 20th - 23rd May,7:30pm Magdalen College

16 OxStuff

14th May 2015

Cliterary Theory ANITA HEAD

SEX MEDIATOR

Oh Stuart. How proud we all are of you; how far you have come. From the protazoic baby-hack of the Standing Committee, to this: laughing and joking on the President’s stage with none other than Piers Morgan. How long is it until you inevitably occupy the seat of power in your own right ? (and, unlike Olivia Merrett, you even by all accounts actively chose to run in a substantively competitive election rather than shin the greasy pole via procedural inevitability.) But more than that- Piers even tweeted a photo of you! 54 favourites; 22 retweets: the endless power, the shining glory. Perhaps the only blemish on your evening was a flurry of tweets from the Twittersphere which expressed their disdain that your fashion choices are disloyal to your football team. For shame.

STUART WEBBER

VERSA How the mighty have fallen. Just under a year since their triumphant launch blazed out over our newsfeeds, forged in the fire of free speech and shameless hack-ambition, it seems that VERSA (I won’t grace them with the epithet of ‘our rivals’ any longer) is grinding slowly to a halt. The “glory days” of Amelia Hamer’s defection and ‘10 most eligible bachelors of Oxford’ must seem an age ago now; onto a third stream (and second-string) of editors, it’s remarkable if VERSA even produce a single article a week (and ‘article’ has to be applied in the loosest sense of the word). The ‘real home of student news’ has had a grand total of five articles since the start of term- despite (to judge by the turnout at the VERSOxStu Crewdate) employing over 20 staff. What do they all do?! Like Cameron calling home those naughty errant Tories from UKIP, perhaps it’s time for the VERSA journo-hacks to return to their natural home in the OxStu towers…

T

hey might be a friend, confidante, substitute mum or deadly enemy. But, whatever your relationship with your scout, it’s clear that they’re a pretty big part of college life. They’re some of the few people who have access to your room whenever they want, and some of the few people who know the truth about your (admittedly quite extreme) Oreo habit from the contents of your bin.

And, of course, this means that they’re also scarily informed about your sex life.

Picture the scene – I’m sure that it’ll be familiar to a lot of you. During a sweaty Thursday night at Bridge, you managed to pull that fit lad/lass (delete as appropriate) that you’ve had your eye on for the last couple of weeks.

And, best of all, that brief moment of horniness/true love on the cheese floor spiralled into something more, and now they’re in your bed.

Perfect. A happy story all around.

That is, until early on Friday morning, when you wake up in each other’s arms, not to the sound of birdsong, but to a cadenza of bins slamming against each oth-

er as your scout barges into the door and grabs the rubbish bag.

There is literally no way out of this situation. If you were keen, one of you could always try and hide under the duvet, but let’s be honest, that’s never going to work. All you can do is ride it out by a) pretending to be asleep, or b) lying there awkwardly until your scout disappears again.

You also have to face up to your scout the next day, and that’s never fun either. There’s nothing wrong with ending up in bed with somebody, stranger or mate, partner or whatever, but my scout always seems faintly disappointed in me when we next see each other.

That’s not where it ends. For the sake of argument, let’s pretend that the dreamboat you managed to snag last night is at the same college as you. You can be certain that scouts talk about the students among themselves – let’s be honest, as a group, most of us are pretty dysfunctional – and that same gossip spreads from the bedroom to the scouts to the rest of college.

So, we’ve established that your scout is the most likely person to walk in on you when it’s the Morning After. But they’re also the people who clean your room, and see the contents of your bin. It might be condom packets or lube containers, or just dirty tissues accidently dropped next to the bed.

FLOP

CHRIST CHURCH DO FIFTY SHADES OF DISNEY

Those gross things which you forget about when you’re caught in the moment look even grimmer in the harsh morning light. And guess what? Your scout sees all of them. And judges you.

It’s bad enough that the atrocious mess that is your room (let’s be honest, none of us have the time or energy to keep our bedrooms tidy) is on show for your scout to see.

It only gets more awkward when you realise that in among that mess are stuff like your sex toys, which you’d checked so often were going to be delivered in unmarked packaging and snuck into your room.

Plus, some of the more environmentally conscious colleges have now introduced a policy of emptying just the contents of our bin into their bigger bin. Great for the polar bears, bad for me, because you can be sure that the scouts notice what you’ve left in there. Used condoms (icky, but hey, at least you’re being safe), the morning after pill…

There are some things that are intended to be private, but in college, no space is sacred. On my first day in Oxford, the Freshers’ Rep who showed me to my room took far too much pleasure in relating to me the entire history of her sexual experience in first years. I can confirm to you that every piece of furniture in my room (and a lot of the floor) has been used for surprisingly deviant sexual practices, and the fact I know this is not something I’m particularly happy about.

Once upon a time, I dreamt that I would wake up to the view of dreaming spires, in the arms of a lover, and just lie there as the sun rose in the east. Sadly, those dreams are just confined to Friday and Saturday nights, at least while living in college. I hope my scout realises that I’m just as uncomfortable as she is with this whole situation, but at the end of the day, sex is always going to take priority over a bit of awkwardness. Sorry.

FLOP

BOP!

OxStuff 17

14th May 2015

The Malcontent

R I

BN OC BABY

t is difficult to know whose hubris was greater: the Oxford University Liberal Democracts claiming to be “on the brink” of taking Oxford West (where they eventually finished 10,000 votes behind the Conservatives) or OULC’s campaign statement that they were within 100-150 votes of winning Reading West (where the Labour Candidate was 8,000 votes short of the Tory total). Either way, past feuds are swiftly forgotten in love’s shifting and twisting tales; this week’s political offspring is more potent than Will Straw or even the ultra-connected Stephen Kinnock. Sprung from the loins of arguably Oxford’s ultimate hacks, former OULC Co-Chair Helena

Dollimore and OUCA President-elect Jan Nedvidek, a baby with a greater future than even Prince George has emerged from the old parties into the era of new politics.

Was it the horrible product of an attempt to instantiate the much-feted ‘grand coalition’?

Romance sprung from a shared contempt for the Liberal Democrats? Or simply the inevitable end-product of combining the high drama and emotion of the most exciting election for a generation, the ‘Oxbridge metropolitan elite’ and the dark corners of Bridge?

The only thing we can say for sure is that this BNOC Baby is the most zealous extoller of that old axiom: “The only purpose of power is to exercise it...”

owing in summer, contrary to popular belief, is a fucking nightmare. Whilst for the uninitiated, Summer VIIIs might be a lovely Saturday afternoon of Pimms, pleasantries and pretending to know something about rowing, but for us rowers, it’s hell.

The early mornings. Whilst they’re nice in Trinity are still fucking early.

5.30am is 5.30am, the fact there is a beautiful sunrise will not make my mood anymore sunnier.

Also - God help the person who is last to the boat house. If eight other people can get out of bed on time, you bloody well can too. I just want to get this over with. I’m not your mother here to kick you out of bed.

Who the fuck thought it would be a good idea to let punts go on the Isis?! PUNTS?! WITH STEAMERS?! AND CANAL BARGES?!

The most uncontrollable of water transport; it would be easier to steer a fucking dolphin than punt on the Isis. What I can’t stand is the smugness of the people in what is essentially a shitty gondola. Sorry mate, but mine literally is bigger than yours, and I will crush you. Party boats can do one too. Blaring shitty club music has no place when I’m trying to hear what the coach has to say on the bank. Party boats are an obnoxious creation for chino wearing, pocket square proffering

d e n a De

wankers who attend Bridge on a Thursday.

And then you get the pretentious college first boats. And don’t worry – they’ll let you know who they are by the wanky different blade designs and stash to remind you. Boat houses – one thing – fuck off Univ if you call that monstrosity a ‘boat house’.

My whole college building could fit in there. It’s not a boat house.

On top of this, I have to act like a fucking sportsman about it all. No swearing in the boat or a £50 fine.

No hitting a swan or a £50 fine. No cox not wearing a life jacket or a £50 fine EVEN THOUGH the cox has to pass the swim test! OURC, who do you think I am?! Constantine Louloudis?! No. I could give less of a shit about ‘water etiquette’.

THE SWIM TEST! The worst waste of my time and money. Okay so if you’re on the river you need to be able to swim. Fine. But I am not a circus seal here to perform tricks for you.

So, if I hear one more wistful “I wish I did rowing” I will punch a swan. Rowing is not a wonderful Oxford tradition to tell the children you did, its a self flagellating fiasco of annoyance that is driving me up the wall. Why on Earth did I agree to this?! Why do I keep getting up early for this?! I don’t care how good Summer VIIIs will be, fuck rowing.

FLOP

Naked IN THE LIBRARY

One artist’s impression of the perpetrator

An unfortunate Corpus Christi lad went into the college library whilst totally bevved, stripped off his Ralphie clobber right down to his birthday suit and fell asleep face flat to the floor. Later found by an unsuspecting porter, this poor chap found himself emptying the bins in a jiffy.

THE LIBRARY WANK

One horny fresher found himself in a spot of bother after being caught bashing one out in the library by a roaming librarian. The student whose identity has been kept anonymous, was discreetly procrasti/masturbating when the connection between headphones and laptop became trafically uncoupled, broadcasting to the rest of the library the sounds of the his porno of choice. A solid community service deaning and a stern talking to was the response and the student now prefers

Socialism BOP!

BOP!

One angry socialist mug was so enfuriated by the outcome of the glorious general election result that she chose to bottle her tory mate with an empty bottle of Co-op vodka.The innocent conservative supporter was taken to a private medical practice for stitches to her head. A good deaning is underway and criminal charges may be brought against her.

REFERENDA TRINITY 2015

Wed – Fri, 4th Week

YES/NO

Should students at Oxford continue to be required to wear sub fusc clothing to University Examinations?

VOTE &

HAVE YOUR SAY!

14th May 2015

Features 19

FOCUS Oxford Hub: Schools Plus

Features

• Oxford University and Oxford Brookes students tutor pupils

in a variety of subjects at thirteen local schools

HENNA SHAH REGENT'S PARK COLLEGE

D

espite the obvious academic prestige associated with the city of Oxford, schools in our local area suffer from some of the lowest attainment at GCSE level in the country, with Oxford being ranked 320th out of 324 areas in England for this in 2012.

This is inextricably linked to social and economic deprivation in the outer areas of the city, with pupils from lower income households in these areas (those on free school meals) performing below students from similar backgrounds across the country. This is a huge problem, not only because it is evidence that young people are being denied basic qualifications due to things they can’t control, but also because a lack of attainment at this level severely reduces the educational opportunities that they have in the future.

Significant numbers of young people in our city are leaving school not only with attending their local university a pipe dream, but with little hope of making it to university at all.

“ It's not okay for us to simply revel in our ivory tower

”

So how can we help to solve this problem? Of course, there is no one easy solution to the complex array of factors that contribute to the incredible amount of educational inequality that exists not only in our local area, but also in the UK as a whole as well as around the world.

That doesn’t mean, though, that students can’t make a real difference, particularly in our local area. This year alone, more than 300 student volunteers have been involved in a total of 27 projects (such as Reading Plus, Maths Plus, and History Plus) in 13 local schools, including six projects that were set up this year.

It’s not just a numbers game either; our impact evaluation (both qualitative and quantitative) has shown studenttutoring makes a huge difference, both to students’ grades and their attitudes to learning in general. For example, in one school 83 per cent of students attending Geography Plus tutoring sessions with Oxford University and Oxford Brookes students gained 5 good (A*- C, includ-

ing Maths and English) GCSEs, compared to 73 per cent for those who were not participating in any Schools Plus projects. Teachers agree – 83 per cent of teachers interviewed strongly agreed that taking part in tutoring sessions had a positive impact on their students’ confidence and interest. In the words of one English teacher: “Not only do they feel increasingly familiar and confident with the texts they will be called upon to analyse, they feel listened to, supported and valued by their mentors, and this can only help to increase their chances of GCSE success… These are typically students on the C/D borderline, for whom securing a grade C will significantly impact upon their future prospects and life chances.” She also highlights the broadening of horizons the project fosters on both sides of the relationship: “Our students begin to learn about the possibilities available to them after school – both at university and in the wider world. I would like to think that this is also reciprocal and that one of the many benefits the visiting mentors gain from working with other students is a greater insight into their lives, situations and hopes for the future.”

My personal journey with Schools Plus began by accident, because someone I knew happened to work at the Hub and was running a project, English Plus. I enjoyed my first couple of sessions, but something was missing – my passion for the subject. So I set up my own project, piloting History and Politics teaching in two secondary schools in Oxford. The challenges were unique in each. In one school, we as tutors were acting as an element of continuity for an A level class which simply did not have a permanent teacher. Helping with exam technique and revision guidance, we were providing students with a more in-depth knowledge of the subject and critically, passion, that they didn’t have elsewhere. In the other, passion was still key, but this was about helping a small history department in a huge school extend its reach into different subject areas and teach its best students the kind of independent research skills that their permanent teachers simply couldn’t. More than this, the sessions gave us all the opportunity to ask and answer questions, dispel myths and just have a laugh.

By spending a few hours a week, tutoring the subject they love not only can students boost grades, we can also engage with our local community. It’s not ok for us to simply continue to revel in the privilege of our ivory tower – an excellent education should be within the reach for everyone, regardless of social and

economic background. I believe we as students have a duty to take action. Over 70 per cent of Schools Plus tutors feel their volunteering has helped increase their understanding of educational issues in the UK, but we can and we must, do better. Nervously going along to my first session ages ago because someone I knew thought I’d enjoy it, and being completely terrified of not fitting in has somehow evolved into a personal passion (some might call it an obsession) for tackling educational inequality and social action in general. By continuing to hold talks, debates and conferences on these issues, and by sharing our stories of them, we can break down the barriers of difference – not only between communities, but also within our own community.

I believe everyone has a social cause that is important to them, and it is through engaging with our local community, and by actively raising awareness of it that we as students can create real sustainable change – both in terms of measurable short term impact and in terms of educating ourselves and each other into making social impact an integral part of our lives well into the future.

The Oxford Hub and the projects it supports are essential to this; without it our School Plus volunteers would not have been able to make the difference they have, and many students would not be able to pursue their dreams.

Schools Plus

The Oxford Hub: a history

Students tutor pupils in local schools on a variety of subjects

2007

is founded

2011

Turl Street Kitchen opens

2014

receives the Queen's Award for Voluntary Service

2015

Oxford University stops funding the Oxford Hub, leaving it to find £70,000 by itself

All/ Schools Plus

14th May 2015

20 Features

The importance of the Dignity Drive

HOMELESSNESS IN OXFORD AND • Oxford students work with local charities to provide THE UK crucial personal sanitary products for homeless women 12

out of the 85 areas in Oxford are among the 20% most deprived areas of the UK

17%

cut in UK spending on homelessness since 2013

£1m

Oxford City Council’s spending on aiding the homeless

6,580

the number of people sleeping rough in London in 2013/14

T

he Lib Dems lost almost £150,000 after the recent election. That’s a shocking figure any day but in light of the budgetary cuts which have already been announced and the even deeper cuts which have been forecast, that sort of money is going to be important to all sorts of organisations and charities who have ever increasingly large numbers needing to use them. Homelessness in Oxford is just one very clear example of this: it’s already a huge problem, and with a combination of services being cut and new businesses coming to Oxford demanding new employees, the problems are going to be exacerbated further still.

There’s a wide range of charities and organisations in Oxford attempting to deal with this issue, so it might seem all too obvious to ask, why form another one? Dignity Drive is dealing with a very small, but very potent, issue facing homeless and vulnerably housed people in Oxford and the surrounding areas: menstruation. That’s probably not a word that you see in print all that often, and that’s exactly the problem. Periods have such a taboo surrounding them that we

just don’t think about this monthly issue that faces at least half of those accessing homelessness services.

“ I’m not suggesting

that everyone has £150,000 lying about

”

That’s where Dignity Drive comes in, we’re seeking both to enable access to safe and hygienic sanitary wear and to attempt to break down this antiquated stigma, one sparkly tampon brooch at a time.

Many people exclusively associate Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS) with wearing tampons for too long.

Unfortunately that’s not the case. It can also be caught from using leaves, moss or other unsterile products as emergency sanitary wear. However, such products are not solely used in an emergency for many of those

Prelims’ pressures and pains • As Prelims approach, Laura Whetherly offers some different advice

LAURA WHETHERLY ST PETER’S COLLEGE

xam season is well and truly coming. The sun has begun occasionally appearing over Port Meadow, finalists have disappeared into the bowels of their rooms, and the first pictures of ecstatically trashed students have begun to appear on our Facebook feeds.

Following on the tail of these picturepostcards of the Oxford summer comes a highly nervous figure clutching a pile of books and fiddling with subfusc which they haven’t worn since Matriculation. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Exam Season Fresher.

They’ve been talking about how nervous they are about Prelims for at least seven weeks, but it hasn’t spurred them on enough to actually make them do any work. The prospect of cranking out essays for three hours is just about something they can cope with, having survived through two rounds of collections, but the idea of these being marked, of them counting, is terrifying.

You can feel the change of atmosphere in first-year accommodation already.

The end of term doesn’t just mark another holiday, it means exams. For most students, the last set of exams they took had a lot riding on them: a university place, future job prospects, CV fodder.

Freshers, here’s a piece of news for you. Prelims aren’t the same.

This isn’t school any more. What you get at the end of this summer really isn’t going to have any relevance in a year

everything for a minute.

What’s the worst that’s really going to happen following the exams? If you’ve been really, truly struggling to keep up with work – through illness, stress, not understanding, or anything else – then your tutors should have already picked it up. Hard as it is, the constant pressure of deadlines and having faceto-face contact with tutors means that your work is being monitored all the time, and that you have a person on the other side of a desk or email to ask for help if it’s all getting too much.

For the majority of students, we might feel all the time like we’re failing, but, actually, you’re probably doing ok.

And you know what? In prelims, you’ll probably do ok too.

Trinity term definitely feels different, and nobody’s disputing that. Alongside the sun, punting and Pimm’s, exams have suddenly returned into your lives, and it’s scary. But at the end of the day, they’re just another way of judging where you are with your work, and some kind of indication of where your degree might be headed if you keep going in the same direction.

Work for your prelims. Try your best, and revise hard. At the same time, though, remember to keep things in perspective, as with most things in Oxford. Caught up in the famous bubble of academia and stress, serious exams jump out as the next obvious thing to worry about. At the end of the day, they don’t really matter.

E

or two’s time, despite the carnations and gowns and trashing and all of the rest of the ceremony. Your tutors are going to want you to do as well as you can. Obviously, you are too, but apart from maybe a few employers looking for interns, if your marks are lower than you hoped, it’s not going make a massive impact on your life, or your degree, at all.

“ Exams have suddenly re-

turned to your life and it’s scary

”

Talking to your friends about it probably isn’t helping either. Living in a college environment, stress spreads amazingly amongst Freshers and between you, you end up just winding everything out of proportion. Suddenly you’re all terrified of what’s going to happen in five to seven weeks time in that exam room, even though your friends at other unis, where the first year exams count, seem much more chilled.

So, before it all gets too much, take a deep breath and step away from

who do not have sufficient disposable income just to be able to pop to the shop and pick up their product of choice: it’s a necessity. On average, someone will use 10,000 products throughout their life and when a box of Tampax in Boots costs £2.99 for 18, that’s £1661.11 across a lifetime.

That’s a shocking amount to spend on an essential for anyone, let alone for those whose benefits have been cut or who are forced to beg in order to eke out an existence. Of course, this cost can be dramatically reduced through the use of reusable sanitary products, such as menstrual cups, but the upfront cost associated with many such products forces many into a cycle of dependency upon both financially and economically unviable products.

I’m not trying to suggest that anyone has £150k lying about like the Lib Dems but, in this case, every little helps. Next time you go shopping, pick up an extra pack of tampons or towels from the ‘female hygiene’ aisle which is hidden away in the far corner of Tesco and buy them with pride.

Don’t hide them under the grapes in your basket as if menstruation is something to be ashamed of and hidden away. Instead, start seeing it as what it really is: an essential (albeit

BETHANY BOWEN ST HUGH’S COLLEGE sometimes inconvenient) fact of life, without which, all those politicians making it increasingly difficult for many to feed, clothe and home their families wouldn’t be around.

This week Oxford Dignity Drive organised events which addressed the various issues surrounding both homelessness and menstruation, starting with an information stall at Wadstock last Saturday. This was followed by a series of panel discussions throughout 2nd week which covered topics such as the ban on abortion in Ireland and dispelling the prejudice around menustration.

The week ended with a screening of Diana Fabianova’s enlightening film, ‘The Moon Inside You’.

Yet, the campaiging continues.

Dignity Drive has an open mic night at St Anthony’s college on Friday May 15th at 9pm, and is running a exhibition with artist Mirren Kessling at 7pm on May 22 nd at St. John’s College using sanitary products. You can support them by donating products or change to the boxes in your college or via http:// www.gofundme.com/sfdprg. To find out more, go to oxdignitydrive. wordpress.com or follow ‘Oxford Dignity Drive’ on Facebook.

The stress of Prelims

Students often feel under an inordinate amount of pressure Oliver Mallinson Lewis

14th May 2015

Features 21

Support a finalist

Chicken Saltimbocca on a student budget JAMIE RUSSELL WADHAM COLLEGE

Ingredients

2 Chicken Thigh Fillets 2 Unsmoked streaky bacon rashers 2 tsp Marjoram 4 cloves of garlic 300 ml white wine Plain flour Oil

S

altimbocca is a popular European dish which was originally made by cooking seasoned veal, wrapped in prosciutto in a wine sauce.

In many recipes chicken has come to replace veal while richer sherry or marsala is often used in place of wine.

Even then this impressive but simple dish uses ingredients which are rarely found on a student budget or in a student kitchen, even in Oxford: so here’s a way to prepare saltimbocca from ingredients which you may already have in the fridge.

Method

1) Bring a pan of water to the boil,

add the bacon and cook for 5 minutes before removing and setting aside. The fat from the bacon can cause the pan to boil over suddenly so keep an eye on it.

2) Cut most of the way into the side of the chicken thighs along their whole length. Then open them out like books before squashing them, one at a time, between two dinner plates. This will soften the meat a little and ensure that they are thin enough to cook quickly. On a separate plate, coat the chicken in flour.

3) Peel and bruise the garlic and fry over a medium heat with enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan, until the garlic begins to brown.

4) Add the chicken to the pan and cook for around 5 minutes on each side; it should be golden brown at the end of this time. Add a little more oil if the pan becomes dry.

5) Sprinkle salt, pepper and 1 tsp marjoram on each of the cooked bacon rashers set aside from earlier.

Carefully remove the chicken from the pan and wrap in the bacon.

6) Return the wrapped chicken to the pan and cook for further 2 or 3 minutes on each side to brown the bacon slightly.

7) Add the wine to the pan and reduce on a high heat until it forms a

ELLE TAIT MAGDALEN COLLEGE

Jamie Russell

thick, light brown sauce. Depending on the hob and pan being used this can take up to 10 minutes.

8) Serve the chicken; smother the chicken in the sauce and garnish each serving with one or two of the garlic cloves from the pan.

Tips and Variations

Saltimbocca is a really versatile dish which goes well with pasta, potatoes, couscous, or any of a wide variety of vegetables. The flavour of the chicken

isn’t particularly dominant alongside that of the wine and the seasoning so couscous made up with chicken stock makes a simple but fitting side.

If you find that the bacon falls off of the chicken in the pan then it can be held in place with a wooden skewer or cocktail sticks, just be sure to remove any skewers before serving. Of course, it goes without saying that the dish is best served in true European style: outside, with a glass of wine.

Brasenose College Boat Club

Memoirs of a NVSP- Beginnings

I

was first seduced into rowing at Brasenose by the prospect of being “part of the oldest rowing club in the world on its two-hundredth anniversary year” and by the suggestion that I should “give it a go” (a phrase easily mistaken for “this is a no-pressure sport”). Rowing at Oxford seemed to be a rite of passage, even for a Not-Very-Sporty-Person.

Perhaps I was still under the naïve impression that rowing down the stream is done gently and merrily…

So I stood on a cold morning in second week, ready to begin my first rowing water session. The boat rocked dangerously when I stepped in it and it occurred to me that there

were only a few millimetres of metal separating me from the murky waters of the Isis (could I be the next episode of Lewis?). We were bombarded with confusing jargon. I spent a good part of that first session petrified that a live crustacean would find itself at my feet, until someone explained that “catching a crab” is what happened when you don’t get your oar out of the water properly and it starts to act as a brake. As for the instructions the coach was yelling at us, I had more difficulty understanding them than Juliette in front of me, an exchange student from France.

Front stops? Back stops? Why is it called a stop when you’re already

stationary? Finally, just as I felt like I was getting the hang of this rowing lark, I realised too late that we were headed straight for a flock of ducks minding their own business on the river. Unable to remove my oar in time, I ended up giving one of them a gentle pat on the backside.

Despite my not-so-impressive debut, I had enjoyed my first session: the sun was shining and it was glorious to be in the fresh air and learning a new skill. They told me it wouldn’t last. And it didn’t. A few weeks later I was awoken at four in the morning by a fear of oversleeping and missing the morning session I had been signed up to. It was pitch black and

MARYSIA CZEPIEL BRASENOSE COLLEGE bitterly cold, and when I arrived at the class I had straight after the session my hands were so numb that I was physically unable to hold a pen.

“Is it normal to have bruising all up my stomach from where the oar has been hitting it?” I asked some of my friends later. “Please quit rowing,” Jess, one of my sympathetic listeners, groaned. “If someone else had done this to you, we’d have to beat them up; as it is, we can’t, because you’re doing it to yourself!”

“But I really love it,” I replied weakly.

“That’s just what you’ve convinced yourself,” Martin, my college brother, said darkly. “This is an abusive relationship.”

Mike Knell

A

s we get further into term and dreaded finals (or prelims) edge ever closer, their gloomy faces become easier and easier to spot around college.

With this in mind, here is a super easy guide to cheering up a your finalist friend or college parent with a care package.

Coffee. I would explain why this is a good idea, but that would be pointless. From here until the end of finals, it’s pretty much an endurance test. Plus, buying them the caffeine saves our poor finalist a trek to Sainsbury’s and preserves those valuable five minutes of revision.

Herbal tea. Relaxing, calming, helps with sleep. Nothing not to like. Works best in tandem with caffeine, I would not advise substituting one for the other.

Pens. Preferably in large quantities with fun colours. Revision is significantly more fun in neon.

That is probably something we non-finalists believe, but certain colours are proven to have a mood-boosting effect and our favourite gloomy finalists are not really in a position to turn that down.

Hand cream. So much writing equals so much pain.

Chocolate. Or whatever kind of cheering-up food they might like.

On second thoughts, if it actually does start getting hotter chocolate might not be the best option I can only imagine the pain and struggles of discovering your revision-break chocolate has melted to mush. Heartbreak.

Bear this in mind.

Oranges. Because vitamin C. Like I said, it’s just an endurance test and nobody got time for pesky colds.

Something fizzy, fun and celebratory. Whatever they’re not allowing themselves to have during finals, buy it for them as motivation. I know, I know, it sounds a little bit mean but trust me, it works.

14th May 2015

22 Sport

Oxford Sport In brief...

Memorable regatta yields huge success Oxford University Women’s Lightweight Rowing Club had an extremely successful time at the British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) Regatta last weekend, picking up three medals in the process. Without doubt, the highlight of the event was the Lightweight 8 crew’s gold medal – not least because they managed to defeat Cambridge in the process, therefore managing to avenge their 3ft defeat at Henley Boat Races in April. The Lightweight 4x and 4crews were determined not to miss out on the action, and each picked up silver medals. The squad now have their eyes firmly set on June’s Henley Women’s Regatta where, on this form, they should expect to pick up another large set of medals.

Barcelona beckons for OUWAFC Oxford University Women’s Association Football Club is looking ahead to a luxury tour to Barcelona this summer. It has been a remarkably successful season for OUWAFC, the highlight being their Varsity triumph.

Moreover, they came within touching distance of promotion to the Premier South - after making it all the way to the promotional play-offs, the misfortune of suffering a weakened squad meant that they came up short against Southampton Solent. Many of their players will prepare for their summer stay in Catalonia by aiming for glory in the 6th week college 5-aside tournament.

Singing the praises of Oxford Sirens The Oxford Sirens, Oxford’s only competitive cheerleading squad, are seeking to consolidate a successful season by reaching out to even more OU undergraduates. Cheerleading – a uniquely co-ed sport, with both men and women competing together – is rapidly rising in popularity within the city, and the Sirens’ squad has now doubled in size since only last year. This surge in enthusiasm has clearly garnered rewards in the arena – last term, in national competitions, the Sirens achieved second-place with their Co-Ed Level 4 stunt group and their All Girl Level 2 team took a fantastic first-place. The Sirens are still searching for even more fresh recruits, and are aiming for yet more success over the coming months.

Opinion: Do refs get enough respect in sport?

ALICE RICHARDSON SPORTS EDITOR

In waterpolo once a referee has made a decision you have to stick to it. You cannot argue, you cannot back-chat and you cannot lose your temper, however frustrated you might have been made by the call.

The same goes for handball, and in rugby. The reason why this is the case? There are consequences for answering back and throwing a

“ There

are consequences for answering back

”

tantrum in response to a referee’s decision in these sports. You will be ‘binned’, or sent off, or excluded for however long the ref sees fit according to the severity of your offence.

To avoid your team playing a man down for the rest of the match, you very quickly learn to keep your trap shut (except to apologise), and respect the referees with their powers of decision-making.

A lot of the time in these kinds of sports, referees are ex-players who have had years and years of experience and understand the rules of the game better than most. As a result, they are best placed on the court/on the field/on poolside to make decisions about what does and doesn’t constitute a foul, what does or doesn’t warrant an exclusion and what is a kick-out offence. At least in waterpolo, not only are the refs the most experienced waterpolo players out of the pool, they also have the advantage of perspective in more than one sense. For example, whilst those in the water are often blinded by splash or have their heads under the water so are deaf as well as blind to the goings on around them, the ref is clear of the water and clear to make level headed decisions from a birds-eye view of the pool. The position of the ref as one of authority therefore goes unquestioned in sports such as these.

However, this is not always the case. The most publically visible

Sporting news to share?

Contact us at: sport@oxfordstudent.com

cases of referee abuse occur in football and are shown to those watching at home, in pubs, sports clubs and bars all over the country and across the world. The shouting, swearing and threats directed towards referees in your average national game of football can be shocking and the faces of our much loved players are contorted into those of snarling, hissing animals. Who knew Rooney had it in him? How national and international players can continue to behave in this way without checking themselves and realising how unacceptable this kind of behavior is in the real world is baffling. Or are the every-day rules of every-day courtesy and politeness left in the dressing rooms when it comes to playing football?

I once served Wayne Rooney and his family in the pub I work for in Cheshire. He was lovely and no foul-mouthed snarls came from him that day – rather a pretty generous tip. So what causes these seemingly normal and well-mannered individuals to become so impolite and frankly terrifying when they’re playing their sport? Is it because they’re so pumped up playing their sport that they forget decorum entirely,

“They’re so pumped

up playing their sport they forget decorum

”

or is it that they simply don’t see the need for civility when the matter of life or death that is Man United’s most recent match score is hanging in the balance?

The challenge referees in football face is not just abuse from players, but also from passionate fans.

A lot of pressure is placed on the shoulders of football referees when it comes to making decisions and sticking by them. They have to have a lot of confidence when it’s pretty likely that whatever they decide, they won’t be pleasing everyone all of the time. A decision in one team’s favour is against another’s and so, most of the time football referees will be displeasing 50 per cent of the players on the field, as well as their

Troubled first year: Man United’s Ángel Di Maria was sent off after pushing referee Michael Oliver in the back.

Jon Super

The Independent

However, the nature of decisionmaking is similar between sports like football and rugby and both sports have a huge national and international following. So the nature of refereeing on a public stage cannot be the only contribution to the discrepancy in respect we see for refs between the sports.

Instead, it’s most likely that the lack of repercussions for this kind of behavior and attitude in sports like football is the root cause of this recurring problem. If players swear at the ref, generally disrespect them or even threaten them, there is never any real comeuppance. Instead, the only way a player is ever punished for these things is if they are so serious that a referee feels the need to report them to the FA and then they will, at most, suffer a fine. And when you’re on such high wages, a fine does not have the same resonance as it would for someone on a lower income.

The epitome of the lack of discipline and punishment we see in football, at least for me, is Luis Suarez. How someone caught biting another player on camera, not once

“The epitome of the

lack of discipline is Luis Suarez

”

but three times, can be allowed to continue playing their sport at such a high level is beyond me. As a well-known player, his position of responsibility as a role model should urge football authorities to discipline him accordingly. My 12year old little brother has a picture of Suarez on his bedroom wall, I’m sure my mum, as I don’t, doesn’t want him looking up to someone who acts like that.

A general culture of respect needs to be encouraged in football in the same way as it already exists in sports like waterpolo, handball and rugby. You’d think the size of international rugby players compared to most international rugby referees would mean rugby refs would have the potential to be as disrespected as football refs appear to be. This simply isn’t the case. If anything, the referees in rugby are amongst the strongest, most no-nonsense referees in

the professional sporting world alongside MMA and other martial arts refs. Referees in sports that are as dangerous as these have to be at the top of their game and have to be listened to with respect and immediacy or serious injury, potentially life-changing or fatal, could be accured.

However, whilst the respect for refs in these sorts of sports is warranted for safety reasons, it should be expected from other sports stars more generally. It’s clear something has to give here. Whilst referees in some sports are respected, this is

“ A fine does not have the same

resonance

”

definitely not the case across the board – as it definitely should be.

If individuals like Suarez are dealt with more harshly and put off from misbehaving again, then a fearful respect for referees could and indeed should be instilled into players whose arrogance has previously left them feeling untouchable.

SPORTING ATTITUDES Rugby

The last word of the ref is taken with a small show of discontent, but no backchatting.

Handball

Arguing with the ref is an offence worthy of temporary or total exclusion from the moment the ref decides they are not happy with your attitude

Football

For some reason, verbal abuse is tolerated in football, even if this abuse is directed to a singular referee by multiple players. The only time this changes is if the ref complains to football authorities.

Sport 23

14th May 2015

Should bonus points be included in Six Nations?

• With England missing out so narrowly on the Six Nations title this year, and many England supporters disappointed, would bonus points prevent a future repeat?

CONNOR McCARTHY SPORTS WRITER

Saturday 21st March 2015. This day, “Super Saturday”, was arguably the most entertaining chapter in Six Nations history, featuring a record-breaking 221 points scored, a best-ever 27 tries, and a massive 55-35 victory for England against France. An unprecedented number of people tuned in to watch the action on TV. The spectacular nature of the final day was widely praised, but we should contrast it with what was a pretty average tournament before that point. In the first four rounds of matches, just 35 tries were scored.

“

Ireland grab victory: Would a bonus points The spectacular system give England a nature of the better shot at winning?

final day was widely praised

Getty Images

The Six Nations stats:

”

This was not an anomaly. For many years, there has been an ever-increasing trend in international rugby towards “Super Saturday”: low-scoring, kicking-based, defenceA record-breaking 221 points scored, a best-ever 27 tries and a dominated displays. In the 2013 Six Nations, the competitors only scored massive 55-35 victory for Eng37 tries, the lowest total since the game land over France. went professional in 1995. Moreover, Wales registered the lowest number of Tries scored in the competition tries by a Champion - nine - when they before “Super Saturday”: won the Six Nations two years ago, only 37 (lowest number of tries since to be lowered further by Ireland, this the game went professional) year’s Champions, who scored just eight.

Commenting after the third round of fixtures in 2015, All-Blacks coach Steven Hansen highlighted his worry that rugby was becoming a tedious affair. “Rugby at the moment is all geared to defences doing stuff that inhibits the attacking game”, he remarked in an interview with The Mirror. “There are some things as a sport we have to address, otherwise our game will become a negative sport, rather than a positive one.”

One possible reason behind this growing negativity, at least in the Six Nations, could be the absence of a Bonus Point system. The Six Nations is the only major rugby tournament in the world that does not use this system.

The introduction of Bonus Points has been flirted with a number of times. Discussions on the subject were held in 2005 and John Feehan, the Six Nations Chief Executive, also drew up two consultation papers for Unions to consider in 2013.

The normal Bonus Point system works by awarding four points for a win, and two points for a draw. One bonus point is awarded to a team that scores four tries (or more) in a match, and one bonus point is given to a team that loses a match by seven or fewer points. No team is able to get more than five points from one match.

But would this system actually have a big impact on improving the entertainment value of the Six Nations? Super Saturday provides evidence to suggest that the teams do not lack the quality to be free-running, adventurous and attackminded - the key reason for this sudden change in mentality being the incentive of the Championship title.

The Bonus Point system is a way to pro-

vide this kind of incentive in every match, not just on the last day. The temptation of a four-try bonus point could provide winning teams with significant motivation to step further onto the gas, and the bonus point awarded to narrow losers would encourage losing teams to keep going until the final whistle.

“In 2013, 10 bonus

points would have been given on the ‘four-try’ basis

”

This would encourage “ball through hands” play in every week of the Six Nations, rather teams simply trying to kick their way to victory. However, others argue that, due to the history and success of the tournament, this change is simply not necessary, and that adding this extra system could create confusion among casual viewers.

Regardless, any move to this Bonus Point system would have to be unanimously agreed among all Unions, which would be problematic due to France’s stated opposition. Their argument, and the primary argument against a Bonus Point system, would be that it would make it possible for a team to win the Grand Slam – i.e. win all of their matches - but not the Championship. They argue that this would be unfair, because they see the Grand Slam as a “holy grail”.

Indeed, this scenario would have transpired in 2002 if the Bonus Point system

had been in effect. France won the Grand Slam, but England were rampant in their victories. England would have won a bonus point from every game - including their narrow 20-15 defeat to France in Paris - while France would only have earned one, against Ireland. Both teams would have finished with 21 points and, if points-difference were taken as the deciding criterion, England’s total of +131 would have won them the trophy.

However, if teams’ head to head record were instead used as the tiebreaker, then France would have nonetheless been crowned Champions. This highlights the importance of the tiebreak criteria that combine with any Bonus Point introduction. Alternatively, a ‘Grand Slam’ bonus could be added to the Six Nations to prevent this from happening.

Moreover, in 2013, 10 bonus points would have been awarded had the system been established. Yet, only four would’ve been given on the “four-try” basis – the other six would have been awarded for tight results. This casts doubt on whether Bonus Points would really improve the contests.

The traditionalists do not want change, but change is inevitable. It must be remembered that the introduction of points difference as a tiebreaker is also relatively recent - in the amateur era, the trophy was shared if there was no clear winner. Rugby is won in various ways, but a Bonus Point system could provide invaluable entertainment value for the Six Nations. It is time that history and tradition are prevented from holding discussions back, and it is time for this issue to be seriously considered - rather than just debated in the press.

Wimbledon date change: an extra week’s training •

A change is as good as a rest: will the extra week’s training affect the end result of the Championship Competition in this year’s rounds of tennis?

• Adjusting to the change in court conditions between the French Open and Wimbledon has always been a challenge; will that be made easier?

Washington Post

»Continued from back page with a 115-year old tradition, we might be on the verge of seeing even

“ The ball moves faster and bounces

lower on a grass court than it does on clay

”

better things to come. Perhaps we’ll even live to see the day when they abandon Robinsons Squash.

In addition, the decision to push Wimbledon back a week is a good thing in its own right. Until now, there had only been a two week gap between the end of the French Open – played

on clay – and the beginning of Wimbledon, which is played on grass. Clay and grass are very different surfaces.

The ball moves faster and bounces lower on a grass court than it does on a clay court. The texture of clay also allows players to safely slide around quite a lot, making it relatively simple to avoid twisting muscles. Conversely, grass – if it’s been raining recently - is often slick and at other times is quite hard, and as such it is notable for having great capacity to cause injury.

So it’s very welcome that players will now, we expect, find the Wimbledon surface less perilous now that they’ll have an extra week to train on grass surfaces and re-acclimatise to the differing conditions. Judging by recent evidence – in Wimbledon 2013, seven players dropped out through injury on one day – that’s a change that is desperately needed to help players deal with the intensity of the grand slam

schedule.

One player that may particularly hope to benefit from this shake-up is Rafael Nadal. The Spaniard has won Wimbledon twice, in 2008 and 2010, but his previous three showings have been poor. They’ve comprised, respectively, a second-round defeat by Lukáš Rosol, a first-round defeat by Steve Darcis, and a fourth-round defeat in which Nadal was so unintimidating

“ The Spaniard has won Wimbledon

twice, in 2008 and 2010

”

that his opponent, Nick Kyrgios – no shrinking violet, admittedly - won a

point by playing a shot through his own legs.

To the dismay of his fans, Nadal has been in bad form in most of his tournaments over the past 10 or so months, and he recently fell to fifth place in the world rankings - with great potential to fall further in the coming months. However, his terrible recent record at the All England Club might have arisen partly because his body, rendered fragile by tendinitis in his knees and generalised injury problems, needs more time to get to grips with grass after the long clay season.

As such, we can legitimately hope that the extra week will help him reestablish his past, glorious mastery of SW19. If there’s one tradition that Wimbledon needs to re-establish, rather than abolish, it’s the tradition of Rafael Nadal playing inspirational tennis – before time runs out, or his body gives up.

Questionable traditions at Wimbledon: Wearing all white:

Completely impractical for a physical sport, particularly on grass. We feel sorry for Andy Murray’s mum doing his washing.

‘Miss/Mrs X’:

Umpires insist on calling female players by their title and last name. No such treatment for the men.

Strawberrys and Cream:

Actually, no. Who doesn’t love this tradition?

SPORT e-mail/ sport@oxfordstudent.com

Opinion:

Should referees get more respect? » Page 22

Rugby:

Would a bonus-point system help Six Nations? » Page 23

Somerville keep the reigning champs out • Teddy Hall fails to repeat as Somerville crowned as Netball Cuppers Champions • Two hundred players were cheered on by an impressive gathering of supporters

TAYLOR YU

DEPUTY SPORTS EDITOR

29 teams entered, but only one emerged victorious. No, it wasn’t Teddy Hall, who were trying to repeat as champions after winning it all in 2014. It wasn’t New, who escaped a challenging group unscathed and seemingly with all the momentum on their side. Nor was it Oriel, who entered the tournament as league winners,

“ Over 200 girls played in the one-

day tournament

”

intimidating as always. Instead, Somerville were crowned as Netball Cuppers Champions after defeating Keble in the final, preventing the latter from pulling off the Cupper’s double after winning the men’s Rugby Cuppers days prior.

With the sun shining over the six courts at the Marston Community Centre, over two hundred girls played in the one day tournament, cheered on by an impressive gathering of supporters university-wide.

After beating Oriel in what would be the

upset of the day, Teddy Hall joined New, Somerville and Keble in the semifinals.

Unfortunately for Teddy Hall, their tournament ended there, as they were unable to rattle a strong Keble side, backed by a commendable cheer squad that included a few of the members from the victorious rugby team. In the other match, Somerville defeated New, led by their infallible Goal Defence Harriet Dixon, Somerville’s sole Blues player, who proved pivotal in orchestrating an impenetrable defence throughout the tournament. The final was expectedly tight, in which Somerville was able to withstand a Keble onslaught in the first half before rallying to victory in the second.

The matches were short but extremely competitive, yet what impressed Hebe Westcott, the OUNC Cuppers and League secretary, the most was the sportsmanship demonstrated by the players.

Complaints about umpiring were also minimal, as everyone cooperated with the umpires who were provided by each team and thus not necessarily experienced with the rules of the game. "I don’t think the competition negatively affected any team", commented Westcott. "There were plenty of apologies for stepping on toes, which strongly contributed to the sportsmanly

Somerville snatch it:

Teddy Hall loses Netball Cuppers HEBE WESTCOTT

atmosphere of the day".

4This is particularly good news for netball, which has somewhat of a negative reputation with regards to sportsmanship. Despite this, netball has nonetheless become increasingly popular over the last few years, at least from a college participation point of view. With the intention of promoting the sport of netball further, Westcott was extremely pleased that twenty-nine teams competed this year, which was nine more than the year prior, with entries ranging from big-name colleges, like Oriel and New, to perpetual university underdogs such as Regent’s Park and Osler.

Netball Cuppers was a success not only in terms of the organization and partici-

pation, but also with regards to providing students with an opportunity to embrace sports and compete for their respective colleges. Out of the 200 or so players that participated in this year’s Netball Cuppers, only a handful had played the sport at university-level. Most were either novices who were trying the sport out and getting a feel for the game or players who haven’t competed since high school. This isn’t at all to say that the quality of the games was low; it’s more an indication of how Cuppers can get more people involved in sports and help generate a friendly sporting competitiveness to distract many from the stress of weekly essays and revision.

In the end, this is what Cuppers is supposed to be about – to remind people that

sports do not always have to be as intense or as savage as sometimes advertised, and that it should ultimately be fun. Why else would we play sports in the first place?

The break-down: Semi-finals:

Teddy Hall vs. Keble New vs. Somerville

Semi-finals' results:

Keble beat Teddy Hall decisively New are trounced by Somerville

Final:

Somerville victorious

Wimbledon breaks 115-year tradition: dates changed to avoid French Open

• To give world-class players enough time to recover between competitions, Wimbledon have made a tough decision BEN SANDERS SPORTS EDITOR

Breaking from tradition: Should Wimbledon change more than its dates?

NY Post

On the 12th July 2015, a new set of Wimbledon victors will be decided and declared. If you’re an eagle-eyed reader, and a big fan of tennis, you might be puzzled by that sentence.

Previously, it’s been impossible for the final to happen so late in the year because - for a scarcely believable 115 years - the Championships have started on the Monday lying between 20th-26th June. This year, however, the All England Club is, after such an enormous length of time, breaking that tradition, and starting a week later.

That might sound uninteresting, especially to those who put little stock in the importance of habits.

But don’t underestimate the effect this could have and the change it

represents.

Some of the customs that persist at Wimbledon will irritate many

“The

organisers insist on its competitors wearing white

”

regular viewers. For example, umpires continue to refer to women as “Miss” or “Mrs” X, even though they almost never refer to men as “Mr” X - a discrepancy that seems to have undertones of sexism. Moreover, the organisers still insist on its competitors wearing entirely white clothing, which isn’t much of an issue in itself except for the fact that, as claimed

by Pat Cash amongst others, tourna-

ment officials actually checked some players’ underwear last year, to make sure it conformed to the dress code.

Furthermore, the “Middle Sunday” convention remains a feature - only three times in the Wimbledon’s history have matches been played on the first Sunday, i.e. the seventh day, of the tournament. This is despite its peerless potential to cause scheduling havoc, in best evidence during the 2007 tournament. Then, despite a fixture backlog, the organisers nonetheless decided not to play on Middle Sunday. Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic had to play four gruelling matches in four days in the following week as a result. Unsurprisingly, this culminated in Djokovic breaking down with injury.

So, now that the organisers have shown themselves prepared to break

Continued on page 23 »