Approximately 300 demonstrators joined the ‘Oxford Unites Against the Far Right’ unity march Saturday afternoon, amid matriculation ceremonies. More than 23 local organisations took part in the peaceful march from Cowley Road to the Sheldonian Theatre, challenging the far right’s rise across the UK. 

Oxford Stand Up To Racism organised the march, which included representatives from political parties and matriculating students at the University of Oxford. 

A representative from Stand Up to Racism, Monique, opened the rally: “We are going to show the love of Oxford today. We’ve got to find our humanity – it feels like this country has forgotten that.” Speaking to Cherwell, she added: “The message is simple: everyone should be welcome. That is the way England has always been, giving refuge to those who need it.”

In her speech, Labour Councillor for Blackbird Leys Lubna Arshad referenced the City Council’s commitment to make Oxford an anti-racist city. “We must turn those commitments into action,” she told the crowd. “The far right does not speak for Oxford. The far right will not divide us.”

A small group within the crowd booed the councillor’s speech, shouting “F*ck the Labour Party” and “Labour is a racist Party”. The crowd hushed them, and Stand Up To Racism said: “Today is for unity. The far right wants to divide us. We are all speaking the same message.” At the end of the event, Ian McKendrich, a representative for Oxfordshire Stand Up To Racism, said: “We need unity irrespective of our differences on other issues.”

Crowds of newly matriculated students in sub fusc cheered as the march approached the Sheldonian Theatre, some joining in to sing ‘Bella ciao’ down the High Street. One matriculant told Cherwell: “I wanted to show there’s no place in Oxford for the far right, as much as Ghislaine Maxwell and Boris Johnson have come from here.” 

Emma Jones, speaking on behalf of the Coalition to Keep Campsfield Closed, called the detention centre “one of the biggest symbols of division in Oxford”. Since its reopening in December 2025, the centre has drawn regular protests. “Immigration detention is racist,” she told the crowd, “for more than 30 years, people in Oxfordshire have refused to accept Campsfield. The biggest danger of a thing like Campsfield is that we become accustomed to it.” Plans from the government to more than double Campsfield’s capacity are currently undergoing a public inquiry. 

The demonstrators held placards including “Make Nazis afraid again”, and banners which called for the protection of Oxford as a city of sanctuary. Seth, the former Co-Chair of Oxford Labour Club, told Cherwell: “These marches show the people to whom the far right poses a genuine, tangible threat that they are not the only ones who have a voice, that there are people everywhere in the community that care and that will stand up with them.”

“It achieves genuine things,” he added. “Look at Shabana Mahmood – she has changed her policy on immigration rules that she imposed last November because of these constant protests.”

This is the second consecutive year that Stand Up To Racism has led the march in Oxford. Reflecting on last year’s demonstration, a drummer from Extinction Rebellion told Cherwell: “I think it was appreciated by people who can feel under attack at the moment. People come out of their houses clapping and thanking [us] – it is in solidarity with those people too.” 

Oxford is one of eight cities to hold unity marches this Saturday. Speaking with Cherwell, Ines Wilhelm, the newly elected Chair for the Oxfordshire Green Party, said that “this is a happy protest. Lots of people are coming out, having a good time, and showing that they care about each other.” 

Additional reporting by Mair Andrews, Stanley Arlidge, and Freya Robson.

As Michaelmas rolls around once again, I open my phone to the unmistakable signs of a new academic year at Oxford. Society committee pleas, ads for upcoming club nights, and emails welcoming a new wave of freshers fill my inbox and feed. But this year, scrolling through those familiar notifications leaves me with a feeling I did not expect. 

Now in my third year, the time has finally come for the long-anticipated, even longer-in-the-making ‘year abroad’. While friends return to Oxford, I find myself watching the new academic year unfold from a distance – no collections to revise for, no frantic search for a last-minute BOP costume, and no Plush Thursday to inevitably mark the weekend drawing near. 

As I sit writing this from Buenos Aires, Argentina, I feel deeply conflicted. Of course, there is a certain melancholy in watching friends slip so effortlessly back into the rhythms of university life. It can be oddly unsettling to see a place that has played such a significant part in my adult life carry on as though I had never left.

Yet simultaneously, I am glad not to be there. The concept of lining up for hall food, pulling an all-nighter in the library, or squeezing into the queue at Bully is significantly less appealing from 7,000 miles away. For all the nostalgia that comes with watching Oxford from afar, distance has also given me something I didn’t realise was needed: perspective. 

And no, this is not going to be a long rambling of how I ‘found myself on my gap yah’. Although, somewhere between getting on the wrong bus to work and confidently preparing mate in entirely the wrong way, I have started to wonder why an experience this valuable should be reserved for students studying certain subjects. 

There is something liberating about being somewhere where nobody knows your name, your college, or your subject. While abroad, I am no longer simply an Oxford student navigating the same routines of term-time life; I am an outsider, and, most importantly, a beginner again. The world suddenly feels much bigger than the few square miles I had grown accustomed to calling home.

It would be easy to romanticise this feeling. I am not Anthony Bourdain, travelling the world with a camera crew filming an episode of Parts Unknown. I am, instead, entirely reliant on a far less glamorous student loan, a questionably downloaded eSIM, and what appears to be a complete inability to read Google Maps.

Indeed, it can at times be overwhelming to think just how much I have left behind. Over two years’ worth of friendships, routines and rituals do not simply disappear because you board a flight. Friends are still there, returning to university for their final year, before graduating and stepping into the increasingly structured world of work. From a distance, it can feel as though everyone else is moving forward along a path that I have temporarily stepped away from.

For my friends back in Oxford, that step is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. With 78% of graduates reportedly worried about finding employment, and 71.9% already in professional-level roles within just 15 months of graduating, it is hardly surprising that the job market can feel overwhelmingly competitive. Talks of internships now dominate a FaceTime catch-up, and for many, there is little choice but to climb to the first rung of the corporate ladder as soon as possible. The opportunity to travel, experiment, and explore a different way of living (both personally and professionally) can all too easily be pushed aside in favour of getting on with the ‘more serious’ route of starting a career. 

That is precisely what makes the time away so valuable. It is a rare opportunity to step away from the well-trodden path for a while, without having to abandon it altogether. As more UK universities begin to offer years abroad across a wider range of subjects, it seems worth asking why Oxford should be any different.

The benefits are far from merely personal. I am now working at an Argentine news network, using a language I have spent years studying, but in an environment where getting the grammar right is rather less theoretical than it is in a classroom. Language students are fortunate in this respect: learning a language inevitably means learning something about the people and culture that speak it. But what about everyone else?

At its core, it is an exercise in empathy and human connection. A PPE student can encounter political and economic ideas outside the British context; a historian can experience another country’s relationship with its past; a scientist can apply their technical skills in a professional environment shaped by an entirely different set of assumptions. With funding available to make these experiences more accessible, there is little reason for the year abroad to remain the preserve of language students. Studying something is one thing; being forced to apply it somewhere unfamiliar is another.

With this may come the feeling of being out of one’s depth. But, certainly for me, that is the most important part. At a time when immigration, integration, and national identity occupy so much of British political debate, there is value in experiencing what it actually feels like to enter a society in which you do not automatically understand the language, the customs, or the unwritten rules. 

Here, I am a newcomer trying to work out how things are done. More than once, I have forgotten to kiss the cheek of a superior at work, or have asked for completely the wrong thing at a supermarket. With that comes a certain humility, as you become constantly more aware that integration is not simply a matter of arriving somewhere and expecting to feel at home – an all-too common attitude of ‘Brits abroad’. 

And perhaps that is the greatest argument for going abroad. Not because everyone needs to spend a Bourdain-esque year in South America, or because life in Oxford is somehow too small. It is because it is surprisingly easy to mistake the familiar for the universal. Living somewhere else forces you to question assumptions you did not even realise you had – about work, education, politics and culture, or even something as simple as whether a greeting calls for a firm handshake or a warm embrace and kiss on the cheek. 

Eventually, I will return to Oxford, and life will presumably slip back into its familiar rhythms. But I hope to return with a little more perspective on the bubble I have spent two years inhabiting – less convinced that Oxford is the centre of the world, and considerably more curious about everything beyond it.

St Edmund Hall has opened new, sustainability-focused accommodation in Norham Gardens, one of Oxford’s most affluent neighbourhoods.

 The College describes the buildings, which took three years to construct, as an “exemplar” of sustainability. Designed by architects Wright & Wright LLP, they are certified with a Passivhaus standard, widely regarded as the industry benchmark for energy efficiency, and were built using “sustainably sourced and low-embodied carbon materials”. According to a press release on the Teddy Hall website, the buildings will use 70% less energy than the typical modern building. 

It contains 127 en-suite study rooms, split across three new buildings: Willis House, Ashton House, and Elliott House, on the nearly 50-year-old Norham St Edmund site. The buildings, which back onto University Parks, are powered at least in part by solar panels and are heated by air-source heat pumps. 

The rooms include heated towel racks, big double beds, and dimmable lights. Despite the luxury, the College kept the nightly rate in line with the rest of its Norham housing. The College told Cherwell that it “recognises the need to keep rents as low as possible” and that its accommodation costs are “below the median of all Oxford colleges”. By that standard, tenants are expected to pay around £30 a night. 

Rooms on the site will be reserved for Teddy Hall returning undergraduates. They will not be available to postgraduates and, by extension, not be offered through the Oxford University Collegiate Accommodation System, now in its second year of opening college rooms to students from other colleges. The accommodation will allow Teddy Hall to accommodate all undergraduates for their whole degree. 

The development’s outdoor spaces are boasted as climate-resilient and biodiverse, with landscaped gardens and lawns. For budding geographers and biologists, the most intriguing feature may be an ecology pond. 

Chancellor William Hague said in a press release: “Norham St Edmund is a world-leading blueprint for future student accommodation projects and sustainable building design, both in Oxford and beyond. I look forward to seeing it serve a thriving college community for generations to come.