A change to Oxford University Rowing Clubs’ (OURCs) Rules of Racing means that only athletes assigned female at birth may now row in a Women’s boat. This applies to boats entered in both inter-collegiate and university-level competitions. 

Several student boat club captains have condemned the new rule change, made on 26th April. OURC’s Captain’s Meeting minutes highlight that issues were raised about the process for verifying athletes’ gender identity, with students particularly raising privacy concerns: under the new rule, claims could be brought against athletes regarding gender verification. To bring a claim against an athlete, complainants would be required to submit evidence, likely involving private information about the complainee, to OURCs, where findings could be seen as ‘outing’ individuals. 

Towards the close of the Captain’s Meeting, an informal vote was proposed to gauge support for the changes to the Rules of Racing. Forty-nine votes were cast against the new rules, whilst only one vote was cast in their favour. Five of those present abstained from voting. Another informal vote asked captains whether they were comfortable competing in an event under the newly imposed rules. Twenty-four votes were cast against this informal motion, with only eight votes in favour of competing under the new rules.

Multiple boat clubs have since released official statements opposing the rule change. In a statement on Instagram, Wadham College Boat Club described the changes as “disproportionate, discriminatory, and impossible to enforce”, adding that they will continue “to fight for the previous rules to be reinstated”. Somerville College Boat Club similarly wrote that they were “deeply saddened by the recent rule change… which threatens our long-standing values of inclusivity and friendship”. Multiple students also told Cherwell of plans that Somerville Boat Club has to encourage all colleges to wear LGBTQ+ wristbands at this term’s Summer VIIIs, the University’s four-day intercollegiate regatta.

The rule change has also faced strong backlash from Oxford’s broader student body. On Instagram, the President of Oxford University LGBTQ+ Society has released a statement on the topic: “I am personally investigating the matter, and it is my top priority to resolve it by whatever means necessary.” The President also told Cherwell that “no contact was made with OULGBTQ+ prior to the change” with all meetings held “after the change was decided”. The President, who also holds the part-time role of LGBTQ+ Officer at the Student Union (SU), was not contacted in their SU capacity either. 

However, a University spokesperson told Cherwell: “The University has met with and engaged with the LGBTQ reps several times throughout the process to facilitate boat clubs meeting their obligations in relation to law & governing body requirements.” They did not specify that these consultations occurred prior to the change. 

Ahead of Summer VIIIs, Oxford University Rowing Clubs have been required by the University to align their policy on competitive eligibility with British Rowing, after previously only being encouraged to do so: in an update to University policy, introduced on 16th March 2026, the Director of Sport informed OURCs via letter that University policy now required clubs to align with NGB policy and asked that OURCs comply as soon as was practically possible.

Whilst OURCs has been aware of its requirement to update the Rules of Racing to align with national guidance as soon as practically possible, following a letter from the Director of Sport on 16th March 2026, the Captain’s Meeting minutes state that there had been an internal understanding between OURCs and Sports Federation that, should any changes be made, they would be done at the end of the academic year, after the competitive season was over. However, on 24th March onwards, a deadline for the rule change of 31st March was communicated to OURCs by the OURCs Senior Member, on behalf of the Proctors and Pro-Vice Chancellor for Sport. 

Given a number of OURCs’ constitutional clauses, holding that OURCs is bound to organise inter-college rowing competitions, conduct all activities in line with University equality policies, and conduct events within the bounds of conditions that the Proctors attach to the running of the event, OURCs has been required to make the rule change to fulfil its constitutional objectives. Summer VIIIs could not proceed without compliance with the rule change, given the club’s reliance upon the insurance provided by the University for the event. 

Subsequently, OURCs introduced a new power in the Constitution, authorised by the Proctors, permitting the Director of Sport to require changes to the Oxford University Rowing Clubs (OURCs) rules in compliance with the University of Oxford’s Diversity and Inclusion policy. OURCs is a student-run organisation which serves as a federation for the Oxford University Boat Club (OUBC) and all 36 Oxford college boat clubs.

Since September 2023, British Rowing policy has been that only people who are assigned female at birth will be eligible to compete in the Women’s category, whilst trans, non-binary, and all other individuals will be eligible to compete in the Open category.

Previously, OURCs’ Rules of Racing stated that, “trans people should be permitted to participate in their affirmed gender identity” at “less competitive levels”, including college-level rowing. Since January 2019, OURCs has allowed for self-identification in all divisions of Torpids and Summer VIIIs. 

On 8th October 2025, the Sports Federation updated its eligibility guidance, mirroring Cambridge University’s guidance update in September 2025, to advise sports clubs to align their Trans eligibility policies with their relevant National Governing Body. At this time, OURCs chose to delay alignment as British Rowing’s policies, which were (and remain) under review. This was possible as OURCs events are not run under the auspices of British Rowing. 

From this point on, Cambridge University Boat Club required oarspersons to self-declare their gender identification to their Captain before entering any Women’s Crew or Mixed Crew into a CUCBC event. If they did not meet British Rowing Women’s Category eligibility criteria from British Rowing’s “Trans and Non-Binary Competition Eligibility Policy and Procedures”, their captain must amend their entry to an event before its first heat (including the Getting on Race), removing and replacing any individuals who have declared that they are not eligible. This rule remains under review in accordance with British Rowing’s policy. According to minutes from the Oxford Captains’ Meeting, “it was made clear…that there was no choice but to comply with the request [made by the University to change the rule, in line with national guidance] and that failure to do so would result in OURCs’ deregistration as a University sports club and inability to run competitions, effective immediately”.

British Rowing’s policy claims that it is fully committed to “ensur[ing] Trans people can continue their participation in rowing whilst and after transitioning”. Their 2023 Competition Eligibility and Procedures policy, now being enforced by Oxford University Rowing Clubs, proposed two categories alongside the Women’s: an Open Category, where all individuals are eligible to compete, and a Mixed category, offered at any level of competition, providing 50% of the crew are eligible from the women’s category stated above. British Rowing encourages trans and non-binary participants to take part in “recreational activity” (non-competing) in the gender they identify as. 

Above college-level rowing, decisions regarding athlete qualification for Varsity competitions have previously been handled on a case-by-case basis, with joint input from both Oxford and Cambridge Directors of Sport. Registered University sports clubs and colleges’ sport organising committees are required to align their policies with the approach and criteria used by the relevant National Governing Body, including British Rowing, when considering the eligibility of transgender athletes.

The Student Union has stressed that it is essential that the University create an environment where all individuals “regardless of their gender identity, expression or sexual orientation, feel safe, welcome, and empowered to participate in sports and physical activities”.
A spokesperson for the University told Cherwell that it “remains committed to being an inclusive university”. The spokesperson also added that regarding competitive sports, “registered sports clubs and committees are required to follow the policies and eligibility criteria set by the relevant national governing body” as “this is necessary to ensure alignment with competition frameworks as well as compliance with the law”.

The Oxford Union has regularly been the subject of public outrage. From the 1933 ‘King and Country’ debate, upon which the Union, now, regularly looks back with pride, to the fracas surrounding a former presidential candidate’s comments on Charlie Kirk’s assassination, its financial model rests primarily upon attracting attention, an exchange of its establishment credibility and reputation in return for the heady fumes of public prominence. It is on those fumes that YouTube revenues and each year’s membership drives rest. So there is nothing particularly objectionable about the Union seeking speakers who will ignite that public debate and draw that attention, an even harder task in the modern media landscape.

However, with its invitations to controversial YouTuber and former UKIP candidate, Carl Benjamin, and to EDL founder and former BNP member Tommy Robinson, the Union has crossed a line. Benjamin’s invite has now been rescinded, but to invite one of Britain’s leading reactionaries, opposed to both feminism and Islam, to the Union would do nothing more than give him a chance to air his long-held views and gain credibility off the Union’s back. It took Benjamin five years to apologise to Jess Philips, an MP who has been a vocal campaigner against violence against women and girls, for saying he “wouldn’t even rape her”. This is definitive evidence that he is not some right-wing thinker or campaigner, but a provocateur of the lowest order, willing to sacrifice the well-being of others for the advancement of his own, narrow aims. Few have done more to promote the screed of anti-feminism online than his channel, Sargon of Akkad, and at a time when Oxbridge faces a reckoning with its own failure to protect students, his presence was nothing but a detriment to the University – sparking outcry from a number of student societies and organisations.

When contacted for comment, Carl Benjamin stated that, “my views are nothing more than the common-sense views of the average Englishman,” and that he, “appreciate[s] the flattery of the radicals who oppose me”. 

The invitation of Tommy Robinson – which still stands at the time of writing – is even more worrying. Again, like Benjamin, Robinson has been part of the steadily increasing right-wing extremist movement in this country, often targeting Muslims and immigrant communities. His rap sheet of criminal offences is long, and he was a prominent figure in the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally held last year, where Elon Musk spoke, saying: “Violence is coming,” and “you either fight, or you die”. This came after 2024’s protests in the wake of the Southport stabbings, for which Robinson publicly blamed immigrant and Muslim communities. His list of political affiliations is a who’s-who of the far right in the UK, from the BNP to UKIP, and now Advance UK. 

As I said earlier, there is nothing inherently wrong with the Union inviting right-wing or controversial figures; it is both how it has always functioned and how attention is captured. But there seems to be a double standard playing out in British public life, which the Union, as a centre of elite opinion, perpetrates. These extremist right-wingers, who actively promote violence against individuals and whole groups of people, are welcomed into these spaces with little challenge. Comparative figures on the left, or those who might actively challenge them, draw less attention; they don’t bring the same viewer counts and challenge the underlying social structures that maintain privilege. They were happy in 2007 to welcome Nick Griffin, the leader of the BNP, and David Irving, one of the UK’s most notorious Holocaust deniers, and are more than happy to roll out the red carpet again.

These rightwingers are accepted into respectable institutions like the Union and given the thin sheen of legitimacy under the guise of ‘debate’. Anyone who has watched a Union debate knows there is little chance of these men experiencing a Damascene conversion on the Union’s benches and repenting for their wrongs, or genuinely engaging with the arguments put against them. They are simply there to spout their normal lines, receive polite applause from the besuited ranks of Oxford’s students, and further their dangerous, damaging campaigns.

It might be argued that they are simply speaking into the void – that there is no need for the student body, or wider public, to consider what they say as anything serious. But history would disagree with this blase stance, which could only be held by someone who hasn’t been targeted by these groups. Just a year ago, Robinson whipped up right-wing fury to attack hotels holding asylum seekers, inspiring a broader climate of fear for the UK’s BAME communities. Robinson founded the EDL, the spiritual successor to the National Front that terrorised Black and Asian communities in the 1970s and 1980s.

My own family were harassed by the National Front, my grandfather knocked to the ground whilst out shopping with family. The Union might be a forum of free speech, but this self-serving gratification serves only to deny that it has any role in defining the boundaries of debate in a respectable society. To the Union, the lives of working-class communities, of BAME communities, are fair game for a debate, for something to list on their executives’ CVs.

In a decade, they will likely not remember the debate, but those who have to shelter at home, afraid of the baying mobs on the street, or who feel like they have committed a crime simply by being born with a skin tone below sepia, will remember. Our increasingly fractious and divided society will remember, as institutions like the Union make it clear that if you are a minority of any stripe, they don’t think you matter. Their wellbeing, your livelihoods, can and will be sacrificed for views, for cash, for attention.

Burnout is a word I have heard one too many times at Oxford. Once you have heard something enough, it becomes just a senseless humming in your ear – a buzzword that loses all significance. The mere existence of such a term validates an experience previously dismissed, and thus can only add kindling to this frenzied obsession. Once named, burnout becomes an inescapable reality. The medal that comes after having worked ‘hard enough’ is complete and paralysing exhaustion, watching your tea grow cold while intentions swirl aimlessly on its surface.

There have always been moments when I have taken myself too seriously, but, amid the deluge of essay crises and reading lists, it can at times feel impossible not to. In Oxford, life can so easily slip away into a to-do list, a time-blocked schedule perfectly coloured in your Google Calendar. Yet even in those line breaks, every conversation becomes a self-assessment against a productivity scale, achievement measurable in hours studied, marks received, and flashcards reviewed. The weeks of term being so few in number only serves to further contribute to the need to be constantly in motion, constantly productive. A society event, that one night out: everything becomes pressurised, everything has a deadline. 

Tiredness is one consequence, but one distinct from the inherent exhaustion of burnout. Perhaps this is what leads to the disillusionment which some feel towards the phrase. You can hear it in every library after dark, in every coffee shop dotting the High Street. There is hardly a moment in which it isn’t breathed, from welfare emails to the depths of the mid-afternoon doomscroll, when even the fluorescent carousel of Reels begins to push you towards a clear and convenient answer. In its proliferation, ‘burnout’ can lose its potency. It becomes an excuse, a mask that is worn by laziness, paraded about by a culture of self-improvement. 

It is easy to denounce burnout as a masquerade if you have never watched a candle burn itself out. Every wick has an end, and it is quite satisfying to see the flame eat away at it, the wax dripping and melting, reforming in a puddle on the table below. It is a mess to be admired, a sculpted proof that you used everything you had – that is, until you try to light the candle again, and there is nothing left to burn. Melted wax seals and stays. It is this stasis that defines burnout: a sense of complete exhaustion and detachment, against which every best effort to resist is insufficient. 

However, despite intimate knowledge of this, I am often fooled by the scepticism towards this costume. Perhaps it is impossible not to be. The World Health Organisation labels burnout as solely an ‘occupational phenomenon’, not applicable to other areas of life. This definition neglects the academic, social, and emotional contexts: those especially pertinent to students. It is this pattern – one that rejects the reality of overwhelm – that encourages us to dismiss burnout as a fiction, a self-pitying justification for poor discipline. 

When we contribute to this dismissal of burnout as defeat,  an excuse to avoid responsibility, we only feed the destructive culture in which we live. Modern values tell us that success equates to productivity, busyness is equivalent to happiness, and entirely disavows difficulty. So it remains an obligation to continue to show up, to meet deadlines. Obligation, though, comes to engulf every facet of existence. Waking up in the morning (if only after the ninth alarm), attending any social event (if only to sit in silence, unhearing), becomes as burdensome as the original stressor, completely overrun by apathy.

In the self-contained environment of university life, which preoccupies itself with productivity and attendance, admitting to this exhaustion seems synonymous with defeat. Comparison is oppressive and wholly inescapable. All those around you become a measure of what you should be doing. Anything else is not enough. Yet, when it is simultaneously too much, how can we accept that we just have less capacity to work than those around us, writing the same essays, sitting in the same classes?

This is perhaps where I concede, because I cannot pretend to have these answers. I am always the first to revert to blaming my own ‘laziness’, to see exhaustion as merely a product of sufficient work. It is a cynical tendency to roll my eyes at the usual chain of uniform advice – “take a walk, take a break, just get it done” – but one that I maintain all the same. It is easier to lie in bed, to listen to the alarm ring, than to face it. Accepting this wake-up call, the necessity to change, is a daunting prospect. It involves acknowledging that our limits are not boundless, that our attention is finite, and that rest should never be a luxury. Burnout cannot be resolved not by forcing down the brakes, but by fixing patterns, remoulding the wax, and guarding the flame more steadily this time.

It may not be possible to deny that our perception of burnout has been intensely coloured by its ubiquity, but this does nothing to undermine its reality. Burnout is not a convenient excuse, a means of slacking. You may believe it to be, for all I care. But there is no shame in naming your struggle. There is no need to ask for permission to rest.