Cherwell, Oxford (2025)

14/02/2025

Seun Sowunmi has been elected as Undergraduate Officer, Wantoe T. Wantoe as Postgraduate Officer, Alisa Brown as Welfare, Equity, and Inclusion Officer, and Shermar Pryce as Communities and Common Room Officer in the latest SU elections.

In total, 1471 people voted out of a total student population of over 26,000 students – compared to last year’s turnout of 4206 students, this year saw a 65% drop. This is the first set of elections since the abolition of the position of president, under the new “flat” structure.

🖊Bryn Mollet

Image Credits: Seun Sowunmi, Wantoe Wantoe, Michael-Akolade Ayodeji, and Shermar Pryce

Read the winners’ manifestos via the link in our bio or online at cherwell.org

11/02/2025

Satire is at its best when it combines humour with an ability to razor the very real flaws of the world. Donna Tartt mastered this formula in The Secret History (1992). There’s a sense in which the novel has a connection to Oxford: both settings are cloistered, academic, moody, moneyed. Oxford is known for its Classics department and The Secret History features a class of (very rich) students of Greek. If art mirrors life, then we should expect similarities in other areas. Turn to look at the cast of characters...

🖋

Read the full article online at cherwell.org!

Image credit: Chatsworth House, Bakewell, United Kingdom/ CC0 1.0 via Wikimedia Commons

11/02/2025

Oxford University is facing backlash for a string of events featuring “gender-critical” speakers, including journalist Helen Joyce and Professor Michael Biggs. Oxford University LGBTQ+ Society (OULGBTQ+ Society) alongside several college common rooms have issued statements against this, condemning “the University repeatedly elevating anti-trans campaigners without meaningful opposition, in contradiction to its own equality policies.”

Yesterday, Biggs was hosted as part of the Department of Sociology’s seminar series to mark LGBTQ+ History Month. An Associate Professor of Sociology and Fellow at St. Cross College, Biggs discussed his article arguing that the 2021 Census of England and Wales overestimated the number of trans people due to “the census question confus[ing] a substantial number of respondents.”

Balliol College’s Philosophy Society’s upcoming event with Helen Joyce has provoked a similar reaction among the student population. The talk titled ‘Everything you always wanted to know about S*x (and Gender)* *but were afraid to ask’ [sic], taking place this Thursday 13th February, will involve discussion of questions surrounding transgender activism raised in Joyce’s book ‘Trans: When Ideology meets Reality’, which was shortlisted for the 2023 John Maddox Prize.

Oxford Literary Festival will also be hosting Joyce alongside radical feminist writer Julie Bindel in a sold-out event at the Sheldonian Theatre. The Festival is independent from the University of Oxford but is sponsored and associated with several University departments, Oxford colleges, and the Bodleian Libraries.

🖊 Éilis Mathur

Image credit: David Hays

Read the story in full via the link in our bio or online at cherwell.org!

10/02/2025

Oxford University students are facing serious accommodation issues, from sky-high rents to freezing rooms and persistent mould. Cherwell surveyed 650 students across 32 colleges to uncover the reality of student housing. The results expose stark disparities: while students at wealthier colleges enjoy better value for money, those at poorer colleges contend with pests, faulty heating and unresponsive administrations.

Respondents rated their overall housing, as well as their bedroom, kitchen and bathroom facilities, on a scale from 1.0 (“very unsatisfied”) to 5.0 (“very satisfied”). These scores were averaged to provide a comprehensive measure of student satisfaction, with the same approach applied to ratings of value for money. Students also had the chance to report problems with heating, mould or pests and to evaluate how well their college handled maintenance complaints, ultimately shining a light on which colleges provide the best places to live.

🖊Subhan Aslam

Image Credit: Euan Elliott

Read the story in full via the link in our bio or online at cherwell.org

10/02/2025

Oxford University students are facing serious accommodation issues, from sky-high rents to freezing rooms and persistent mould. Cherwell surveyed 650 students across 32 colleges to uncover the reality of student housing. The results expose stark disparities: while students at wealthier colleges enjoy better value for money, those at poorer colleges contend with pests, faulty heating and unresponsive administrations.

Respondents rated their overall housing, as well as their bedroom, kitchen and bathroom facilities, on a scale from 1.0 (“very unsatisfied”) to 5.0 (“very satisfied”). These scores were averaged to provide a comprehensive measure of student satisfaction, with the same approach applied to ratings of value for money. Students also had the chance to report problems with heating, mould or pests and to evaluate how well their college handled maintenance complaints, ultimately shining a light on which colleges provide the best places to live.

🖊️ Subhan Aslam

Read the full story online at cherwell.org

Image Credits: Euan Elliott

09/02/2025

Micro-internships are a popular way of getting experience: you’re “just competing against other Oxford students, so it’s easier to get in”, as one put it. However, for some of the positions advertised, competition can be fierce.

The large majority of these applicants are undergraduates, with just over 30% of the undergraduate body applying to summer and micro-internships. The highly competitive nature of some of the positions, compared to other sectors with virtually no applicants, suggests that lots of the applications are a segment of the student body fighting over the same few positions.

Oxford’s reputation as a centre of elites and old boys clubs doesn’t help: virtually everyone I spoke to mentioned worries about internships being doled out to family friends, rather than being judged on merit. One person worried about “the amount of nepotism and networking involved in many private-sector jobs”, and saw work experience as a way to enhance their own connections.

🖊️ Morien Robertson

Read the full story online at cherwell.org

Image Credits: The wub, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons and Ninara, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr

08/02/2025

I saw the writing on the wall, incidentally, in the writing of my undergraduate friends. Was this a possible welfare concern? No, but maybe it ought to be. What I was seeing was the slow, unceremonious death of handwriting. Last autumn, The Telegraph reported that “Children’s handwriting is now so bad that teenagers need lessons in secondary school, experts have warned”.

Have an opinion on the points raised in this article? Send us a 150-word letter at [email protected] and see your response in our next print or online.

🖋Kenneth Wong

Image Credit: Antonio Litterio/CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Read the full article online at cherwell.org

07/02/2025

The University of Oxford proposal to develop a new three-storey lab in Headington has been labelled “selfish and short-sighted” by Headington Heritage regarding its environmental impact. The new three-story labs building is proposed to be part of Oxford University’s Old Road Campus in Headington, including a substation building, cycle storage building, and associated landscaping.

The Old Road Campus is a University of Oxford site in Headington dedicated to biomedical research and includes buildings such as the Nuffield Department of Medicine Research, the Big Data Institute, and other lab buildings and for research on childcare, tropical diseases, and rheumatology.

Highfields Residents Association (HRA) and Headington Heritage have objected to the plans, fearing that building works will disturb residents and that the height of the labs building may “impinge visually on the residents” and cause light pollution. Fears of traffic build-up and flooding in the area have also been raised.

🖊 Mair Andrews

Image credit: D Wells / CC BY SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Read the story in full via the link in our bio or online at cherwell.org!

06/02/2025

Over a career spanning more than five decades, Gered Mankowitz’s lens has chronicled the evolution of music and culture, immortalising icons like The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and Kate Bush. Now based in Cornwall, he devotes himself to exhibitions, publishing, and selling his evocative prints.

🖊Dylan Brennan

Image Credit: Gered Mankowitz

Read the story in full via the link in our bio or online at cherwell.org!

05/02/2025

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has announced plans to develop the area between Oxford and Cambridge into what she said could become “Europe’s Silicon Valley.” She described the plan as building a “growth corridor” aiming to better harness economic and research opportunities. In a speech at Siemens Healthineers in Oxfordshire, Reeves outlined several major investments, including proposals to expand transport links and housing between the two university cities.

The project would see increased funding for East–West Rail, which already links Oxford and Milton Keynes, accelerating its continuation on to Cambridge. It also proposes 18 new towns along the rail line in the hopes of attracting and accommodating “world-class talent” to the “world-class companies” which operate in and around the cities. Oxford University’s vice chancellor Professor Irene Tracey expressed support for the plans, referring to the Oxford–Cambridge region as a “powerhouse of innovation and an economic crown jewel.”

The initiative has also been backed by Susan Brown, the leader of Oxford City Council, who commended its potential to create “well–paid jobs for our children and grandchildren”, while local Liberal Democrat MPs including Layla Moran said in a joint statement that they were “pleased to see the government’s commitment to East West Rail”, but that there is still “much further to go”.

🖊 Elizabeth Hamilton

Image credit: David Hays

Read the story in full via the link in our bio or online at cherwell.org!

03/02/2025

McDonald’s has been refused permission by Oxford City Council to remain open until 3am when it moves several slots down to a new location on Cornmarket Street, where Leon previously was. So far, the council report indicates the new venue will be allowed to stay open until midnight.

In its current location, McDonald’s has a licence to open from 6am to 3am every day, and the company applied for this same licence at its new location. The council has rejected this application on the basis that it is too close to residential areas, including student housing which is located above the new site.

In response to these devastating developments, one student told Cherwell: “McDonald’s has saved me after many a night out, and I know that I am not alone in feeling incredibly shocked at this news.”

Although the relocation was meant to happen this month, that now seems unlikely according to The Oxford Mail, giving students at least a few more weeks of late night Big Macs to savour.

🖊Noah Robson

Image Credit: Selina Chen

Read the story in full via the link in our bio or online at cherwell.org

03/02/2025

Despite an overall increase in headcount, Oxford University made 519 redundancies in 2023-24, over 100 more than any other Russell Group university. This figure includes staff at the end of fixed term contracts, a practice which is heavily prevalent at Oxford, with 66% of employees on such contracts compared to an average of 40% at other UK institutions according to a report from the University and College Union (UCU) released in October 2023.

This number does not include staff from Oxford University Press (OUP), where 137 additional redundancies took place, with the subsequent total of 656 resulting in a total cost of £5.3 million for the compensatory payments. The number also does not include redundancies made by individual colleges. Despite this, a University spokesperson told Cherwell that the overall number employed by the University rose by over 500 to a total of 16,905 staff.

In its annual report and accounts, the University set out the figures under “compensation for the loss of office.” Comparison to previous years shows that this is the highest number of redundancies (excluding OUP employees) in a single year since the data began being publicly released by the University in the 2018-19 report, including the period affected by the pandemic.

🖊 Noah Robson

Image credit: David Hays

Read the story in full via the link in our bio or online at cherwell.org!

02/02/2025

Building on a strong recent tradition of plays performed in Sanskrit (with surtitles!) we are delighted to present this beautiful drama from ancient India, performed by students and academics in Sanskrit, South-Asian studies, and related fields, and open to a diverse audience of school students, academics, and the public in general – it will be both richly entertaining and educational. Last year, we put on the Mālatīmādhava (the Tale of Mālati and Mādhava), a very successful production which sold out almost as soon as booking had opened.

🖋 Benjamin Atkinson

Image credit: Newberry Library, 'The Little Clay Court, Scene 6 Vasantasena enters the bullock cart' via Wikimedia Commons

Read the full article online at cherwell.org

01/02/2025

Working in the tutoring sector, I help students improve their knowledge and skills. This raises the general level of education for the good of society as a whole. Those who have greater knowledge and skills will go on to become more productive citizens.

Recent Oxford graduate and private tutor Peter Brookes responds to Rizina's article from Week 0, ‘Admissions tutoring proves that money beats merit’.

Have an opinion on the points raised in this article? Send us a 150-word letter at [email protected] and see your response in our next print or online.

🖋Peter Brookes

Image Credit: Laurence Cooke

Read the full article online at cherwell.org

31/01/2025

After experiencing the wettest month in 250 years in September of last year, Oxfordshire County Council has set into motion a new Local Flood Risk Management Strategy. The council formally approved the plan on the 21st of January, and has commissioned Wallingford Hydrosolutions to develop the plan.

The plan will take place over five years and will also consider the long–term implications of climate change. This follows a public consultation and the formation of an Oxfordshire strategic flood risk group that took place in December of last year. The plan focuses most on “local flood risk resulting from surface water, groundwater and ordinary watercourse flooding.”

The plan outlines five objectives: “improving understanding, greater collaboration, ensuring holistic and sustainable approaches are used, preventing increases in flood risk, and improved communication.” The new strategy responds to an ongoing trend of increasingly frequent and intense floods in the region.

🖊 Charlie Bailey

Image credit: generalising / CC BY SA 2.0 via Flickr

Read the story in full via the link in our bio or online at cherwell.org!

30/01/2025

Brian Cox is a classically trained Scottish actor, known for his roles as Logan Roy in Succession and Agamemnon in Troy. He has received numerous accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe.

Cox sat down with Cherwell to discuss his upcoming project, Glenrothan, his critiques of method acting, and his relationship with the cast of Succession.

🖊Billy Jeffs

Image Credit: The Oxford Union

Read the story in full via the link in our bio or online at cherwell.org!

30/01/2025

Brian Cox is a classically trained Scottish actor, known for his roles as Logan Roy in Succession and Agamemnon in Troy. He has received numerous accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe.

Cox sat down with Cherwell to discuss his upcoming project, Glenrothan, his critiques of method acting, and his relationship with the cast of Succession.

🖊Billy Jeffs

Image Credit: The Oxford Union

Read the story in full via the link in our bio or online at cherwell.org!

29/01/2025

It could be in everyone at Oxford’s interests if private schools were abolished. This includes the interests of the privately-educated themselves, and therefore at least a third of people reading this. That’s provided Cherwell’s readership precisely mirrors Oxford’s demographics, but that’s an investigation for another day.

You might argue that going to private school is a better experience in itself than state. You might cite the better facilities, fewer behavioural issues, and a greater amount of personal attention afforded to each student. On the downside, you’ve never lived in the real world.

🖋Laurence Cooke

Read the full article online at cherwell.org

Image Credit: Henry Lawford/CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

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