Oxford's biggest student newspaper, produced by and for members of the University of Oxford, since 1991.
To put it simply: the disturbance caused by the coronavirus pandemic should merit cancelling all exams in Trinity term. The UK government has already cancelled all GCSEs and A levels and shut all schools. Further, a majority of people in the UK are either working from home or not at all. This disruption to society […]
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Image Description: A sign on the entrance of a local school signalling closure because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In response to the Coronavirus Pandemic, the UK Government has taken unprecedented steps to combat the spread of the virus. The imposition of a temporary ‘lockdown’ since midnight on 24 March has been the most dramatic of […]
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On Friday, the University of Oxford released a paper which suggests that over half of the UK population could have already contracted – and now be immune to – coronavirus. However, many experts have queried the validity of the findings, and the researchers themselves find them far from conclusive. So, is the media frenzy around […]
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John McDonnell, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, recently sparked outrage by describing Winston Churchill as a “villain” because of his role in the Tonypandy riots of 1910. However, is it really true that Churchill sent in the military to crush the strike, or is the truth more complicated? In the autumn of 1910 there was a strike […]
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Yesterday, seven Labour MPs — Chuka Umunna, Luciana Berger, Chris Leslie, Angela Smith, Mike Gapes, Gavin Shuker and Ann Coffey — announced their decision to resign from the party and sit together as a group of independent MPs, calling themselves “The Independent Group”. As of Wednesday, three Conservative MPs have also left to join the […]
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How can something like the possibility of a new centrist party in Britain, something which we are told again and again would be a doomed and counterproductive project, capture the political imagination (and perhaps the hope) of a segment of our MPs, and of the country at large? It is easy to rule out the […]
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Lucas Bertholdi-Saad is Oxford SU’s Vice-President for Access & Academic Affairs. It seems there is an article about access to Oxford every week in the OxStu – but you don’t need the evidence from the student press to tell us that students at Oxford are passionate about access and widening participation. Students help colleges and […]
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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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Recently, the University of Oxford suspended new donations and research grants from the telecoms giant Huawei. In these past tumultuous months, Huawei has been at the epicentre of a series of controversies, stemming from accusations that its technology could be used to conduct espionage. On 28th January, the US Justice Department filed 13 charges against […]
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Image Description: four female students from Lady Margaret Hall. Last year, the Joanna Randall MacIver junior research fellowship, which was established in the 1930s exclusively for women specialising in the humanities, was opened up to all genders. This decision was made by the senior committee of the university – the Oxford Council – in response […]
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At the protest against Marion Maréchal-Le Pen’s Oxford Union talk last Tuesday, protestors shouted anti-police slogans at rather impassive lines of officers (and four very well groomed horses) while members of the campaign group Stand Up to Racism distributed placards with anti-Le Pen sentiments. These well-designed and always-plentiful placards can be seen hovering over the […]
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The Democrats are in urgent need of a reality check. They did fairly well in last November’s mid-terms, but this guarantees nothing. With a crowded field of candidates seeking to receive the Democratic nomination for the presidency, the party must unify around a strong candidate. However, if they are not careful they could easily facilitate […]
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I’m a left-wing Labour member and I support Brexit. I write in the style of a confession piece because, throughout the UK and especially at Oxford, to make such a claim is to invite horror and disbelief. As recently as October, people marched in their thousands to campaign for a new referendum that would boil […]
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You’ve surely seen the adverts by now. The headlines have called them “controversial”, which is a rather kind way of saying that a few people from the army have said they’re great while everyone with a Twitter account reviles them. It would be quite fun to go against the grain and argue in their defence […]
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Is there a global turn to the far-right? To call this “global” is true, but the implication that this is inevitable for most established democracies throughout the world is not. What is “global” about this is that the conditions that must be met are largely the same: a lack of trust in public institutions, a […]
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If at first you don’t succeed, ask Daddy to pay for you to take easier exams. At least, this has been the case for several GCSE students at independent schools which are opting to take the easier IGCSEs over the more rigorous and difficult GCSEs which have been introduced during the Conservative government’s latest round […]
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If O2’s recent data failure showed us anything, it’s that we live in a time in which our reliance on connectivity is much like our reliance on a snow-free winter: any disturbance throws the nation into havoc. And much like a half inch of sleet, such instances may be easy to trivialise without considering the […]
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The widespread Gilets Jaunes, or “Yellow Vests” protests in France have entered their fifth week with no sign of ending. And with Macron’s approval rating having fallen to 18%, their success seems only to be accelerating. What started as a spontaneous appearance of protests by ordinary people across the country, furious about a regressive fuel […]
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For many commenting on George H.W. Bush’s passing, his life and legacy have been used as a tool for expressing their views on contemporary American politics. On the one hand are those who herald him as “the anti-Trump”, using his long career of service and respect for his office as a template for how a […]
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