Oxford's biggest student newspaper, produced by and for members of the University of Oxford, since 1991.
Image description: An aerial view of Oxford, including the Radcliffe Camera and other college buildings. ‘Oxford’s 38 colleges and six permanent private halls are both an integral part of the collegiate University and also independent, self-governing academic communities. Diverse in age, size and scope, all contribute significantly to the core activities of the University: learning […]
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From freshers’ week to Christmas dinner, Michaelmas is usually a term filled with fun and festivity. This year, it’ll look slightly different. Students are returning to Oxford’s halls for the first time since March – though not to Exam Schools or the Four Candles but to online lectures, staircase bubbles, and outdoor boozing at a […]
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Image description: an aerial view of London, and the river Thames flowing down the centre of the photo. “To attract and admit students from all backgrounds with outstanding academic potential and the ability to benefit from an Oxford education.” This is the first commitment of the university’s 2018-2023 Strategic Plan. While Oxford is far from […]
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Access initiatives at Oxford spend a lot of time trying to portray an equality across colleges. This includes their culture and what they have to offer which can help students decide what space is right for them. This is problematic and here is why. Growing up in East London, I always had ethnic minority peers […]
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Image description: Guests dancing at the Elmayer-Kränzchen (Elmayer Ball) in Vienna Earlier this year, two Oxford students attended a Viennese Ball, paying for a return flight, a night of accommodation, and the cost of ball tickets, for less than the cost of an Oxford Commemoration ball. The total cost of the trip was £154, with […]
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Reuben Cooper – DON’T BAN BORIS FROM BALLIOL IF YOU BELIEVE IN FREE SPEECH Whatever your opinion of the man, to bar Boris Johnson from Balliol would be censorship in all but name. It would feed into the unfortunate stereotype of ‘wokeness’ or ‘snowflake-ism’, often touted by the political right to decry the increasing levels […]
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A wide regional disparity exists between college outreach links in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, The Oxford Student can reveal. Whilst there are 20 colleges that have links to areas within London, other regions have significantly fewer college outreach programmes with just four colleges having associations with the North West. Using data from the Office of […]
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We’re all familiar with the usual discourse surrounding Oxbridge and state school admissions – Oxford needs to tackle its access problem urgently. Andrew Adonis, Labour peer and former Transport Secretary, has recently pitched a brand-new suggestion: opening new colleges aimed solely at applicants from state school backgrounds. In January, Adonis stated in The Guardian that […]
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Image Credit: Tom Gould Two Oxford colleges still maintain scholarships reserved for former students of certain private schools. Wadham’s Peter Wright Scholarship is open to “any graduate student or applicant who is a former student of Manchester Grammar School”, according to the College’s website. The scholarship covers course fees up to a maximum of £10,000, […]
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New Oxbridge colleges should be established to make more space for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, a policy report has suggested. The report was published by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) based on ideas taken from MPs and academics. Given the expansion of places at many universities nationwide, the report recommends more places at Oxford […]
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As any self-respecting access officer will tell you, there is little real difference between Oxford colleges. Wherever you end up, you’ll probably have a great time and will end up laughing over the times you pored over prospectus pages to find ‘the college for you’ before you applied. …But once you’re here, it’s difficult to […]
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Oxford, we need to get with the times. Not a day goes by without someone accusing us of being out of touch, elitist…the list goes on. We need to stop associating our colleges, hallowed places of education, with long deceased, predominantly white, predominantly male academics. It’s time to inject a little glamour into the dreaming […]
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Oxford colleges have wildly different provisions for sexual consent workshops, an Oxford Student inquiry has found. Despite OUSU claims that all college junior common rooms hold compulsory workshops, many have indicated that the status of these workshops is far less clear across the university. These workshops have recently caught the attention of the national press, […]
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Every year the Norrington Table is released, an oft-cited and even more frequently bemoaned system for ranking Oxford colleges based on their exam results. But what if this system was based, not on exams, but your vote on vegetables? Hence the new ‘Vegetarian Norrington Table’ proposed by Oxford University Animal Ethics Society, a group created […]
Continue ReadingBy now, many of us have read the article ‘I Was Raped At Oxford University. Police Pressured Me Into Dropping Charges’, written by an Oxford student under the pseudonym Maria Marcello. The first post on a new blog, it details the author’s experience of being raped by someone in her college, and the process of […]
Continue ReadingFigures released by the University have revealed wide disparities in the strength of applicants to different Oxford colleges. Analysis done by The Oxford Student has shown that the strongest applicants overwhelmingly apply to Worcester, Brasenose, Magdalen, Merton and New, whilst St Hilda’s, St Hugh’s, St Peter’s and Mansfield had the weakest applicants choose to apply to their respective colleges. St Hilda’s, who received the lowest quality applicants […]
Continue ReadingThis year’s Norrington table has caused a few surprises, with dramatic changes in rank from several colleges. Whilst New and St John’s still dominate at the top of the league, Harris Manchester has raised a few eyebrows by moving up twenty places to fifth. Likewise, Pembroke has boosted itself from bottom last year, to half […]
Continue ReadingI realised the extent of inter-college rivalry even before I even arrived at Oxford. On a tour around my college, a current student announced, “all the colleges are pretty much the same, but we’re the best”. It’s a ridiculous statement for any intelligent person to make, but I ignored it – maybe they were a […]
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