Student Life
Making the Most of University Life
As I write this, I’m hurtling down the East Coast Mainline at 120 miles per hour – the speed at which I feel I’m travelling through my university experience. Only nine weeks to go, and that’s it: the final year. Things start getting serious.
But, from my experience of the Oxford life thus far, this ‘seriousness’ is a thing worth keeping at a safe and respectable distance. As a bright-eyed fresher, determined to excel academically at one of the best universities in the world, I forgot to look for the things outside the curricular last year. I signed up for societies that I never went to, events that I would miss, balls that I was too exhausted to enjoy. The reality was that I forgot about the ‘normal’ university life, and pursued what I thought the ‘Oxford’ life should be. In the mind of my over-eager first-year self, Oxford was about the work, about the grind, about the one-hundred-and-one percent academic effort.
To some extent, I still believe that this is true. The Oxford experience is slightly different from what most of us expected from university. We were told to ‘make the most’ of our time here, told that it would be the best years of our life. For lots of people, such a sweeping statement is overwhelming; it contains too much, it has the potential to spiral into a never-ending train of sports clubs, socials, projects, trips. But, for me, this sort of mindset was exactly what I needed after the burnt-out academic frenzy I had mixed myself up in throughout my first year.
The demand on Oxford students is obviously immense, and I had convinced myself that university life at Oxford should be purely academic, that anything else was a distraction from the real reason I was here. I would be undeserving of the place I’d worked so hard to gain if I wasn’t wholly and completely committed to the degree. I would be lying if I said that I’m not a little sore about the comparative lack of work my friends at other universities have – in my mind, other universities were about drinking, socialising, and exploring. Oxford had no time for that. Here, I stand corrected. I have been thoroughly surprised by the wealth of things people get up to at this university. It turns out that even clever people get drunk.
When I began my second year, I was determined not to make the same mistake again. This time, I would commit myself to the societies I had abandoned last year. I would go to the events, I would take on all these opportunities. I threw myself into everything that I thought I would never have time for, just to prove my past self wrong. And I realised that it was possible to thrive academically as well as to have an enjoyable life outside the tutorial. I joined the college choir, wrote articles, edited student publications, took days out in the Cotswolds, joined independent bands. All of this, and I have actually achieved better grades than last year, and had more time off. Now, more than ever, I feel that I am living the true ‘university experience’, and I haven’t had to sacrifice any sleep, or grades, to get it.
But, the truth is, no matter how many societies we join, how many clubs we attend, articles we write, or places we go, many of us will still feel as though we aren’t fully taking advantage of the vast wealth of opportunities that Oxford has to offer. For everything you try, there are five things that you haven’t. With such short terms it can feel impossible to taste every flavour of university life. And that’s because it is.
At this point in my degree, I’ve come to accept that the most important thing to figure out is what you want your university life to look like. Whether that’s pure academic commitment, exploration of societies, or developing skills beyond the degree. I know people who are involved in more societies and sports and social events than me. I know people who are involved in less. Yes, it can be exhausting to even consider every possible way to spend your time at university, especially at Oxford. But, isn’t it just as bad rotting away behind a laptop screen staring blankly at a document titled ‘Week 6 Essay’? For me, taking a step back from the academic side of university life and learning to explore the world outside books was the best thing I could have possibly done for myself; the benefits have been enormous. I’ll never remember an afternoon spent tucked away in the Rad Cam, pouring over PDFs. But the memory of a trip to Charlbury, spent wading through mud on a cold day in February, will stick with me even after I graduate. Others may find the opposite, but, at the end of the day, nobody is missing out.
You cannot be in control of the rapid pace of Oxford life, but you can be in control of your own pace,: in control of what you can and can’t take on. You can learn what it is that you want to remember from these ‘golden years’. And that’s the beauty of university life – there is no one way to do it.
Student Life
Oxford Union holds “This House Believes the West is Right to be Suspicious of Islam” Debate
Background
Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, otherwise known as Tommy Robinson, is due to speak at the Oxford Union at 8.30 pm this evening at a debate on the motion “This House Believes the West is Right to be Suspicious of Islam”. The event has drawn condemnation from University societies, local politicians, and local faith leaders.
The debate comes days after Yaxley-Lennon was detained at Heathrow Airport on Saturday evening under the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019, following his return to the UK from Russia. His phones were seized, but no further action has been announced by the Metropolitan Police.
Thames Valley Police (TVP) has confirmed a significant policing operation across Oxford city centre from 3.30 pm today. St Michael’s Street, where the Oxford Union is located, has been closed to vehicles and pedestrians since 4 pm, and will remain shut until 1 pm. Despite earlier statements, it has been confirmed that no other roads will be closed.
Businesses in the city centre have also been closing early: The White Rabbit pub announced in advance it would shut from 3.30 pm, citing safety concerns and solidarity with other independent businesses. The Handlebar Kitchen on St Michael’s Street closed at 3.00 pm – their pavement licence was revoked for the day. Activate Learning, which runs further education colleges in the area, has also written to parents and carers advising students to avoid large gatherings and allow extra time for journeys through the city centre.
In a statement, Oxford City Council Leader Susan Brown has raised the question of the cost of the large-scale security operation. She wrote that the Oxford Union “must meet the full costs of staging their event, rather than leaving Oxford’s taxpayers to pick up the bill”. The Oxford Green Party has also issued a statement, demanding that the Oxford Union “cover the entire cost of the security operation it is requiring” and that “compensation be paid by the society to local businesses forced to board up their windows and close”. Cherwell has previously reported that the Oxford Union is just years away from insolvency.
The Oxford University Islamic Society issued a formal statement warning that the invitation posed a direct threat to Muslim students’ safety, arguing that “extending a platform to individuals whose reputations are built upon targeting minority communities is not without consequence”. A group of Oxfordshire Liberal Democrat politicians, including MP for Oxford West and Abingdon Layla Moran, have also called on the Union to reflect on whether proceeding “was consistent with “the values of respect, inclusion, and community cohesion that Oxfordshire strives to uphold”.
Individual colleges at the University of Oxford have announced that they will remain closed to the public this afternoon, and have reached out to remind their students to take the requisite precautions. Wadham College, for example, urged students to “please act responsibly, stay safe and vigilant and take the disruption into account when planning your afternoon and evening”.
The debate is due to feature Laurence Fox and Jonathon Sacerdoti (alongside Yaxley-Lennon) on the proposition, and Jacob Rees-Mogg, Abdullah Al-Andalusi, and Michael Doward on the opposition.
Defending her decision to invite Yaxley-Lennon in an article in The Telegraph, Elrayess wrote: “For more than 200 years, the Oxford Union has existed to host debates – not to platform views uncritically, but to subject them to the most rigorous scrutiny. You do not invite a speaker to endorse them: you invite them so that their ideas can be examined, and their claims tested.”
A spokesperson for the Oxford Union previously told Cherwell that the Union gives “members the opportunity to challenge…a broad range of speakers” and “only host[s] speakers who agree to be challenged”.
The University of Oxford has shared a reminder that “welfare services are available to support all students”.
I was very close to rejecting Oxford for Exeter. While this is not why I eventually accepted my offer, I couldn’t stop thinking about the prestige the name ‘Oxford’ connotes. This ‘prestige’, however, was historically incubated through empire, slavery, class hierarchy, and elite political power. For these reasons, especially, I feel that studying here is nothing to boast about at all.
We often ignore the fact that Oxford did not merely exist during the empire, but helped to produce the people and ideas that sustained it. It was this institution, alongside Cambridge, that was tasked with educating generations of colonial administrators who governed the British Empire. Among them are: Cecil Rhodes, Lord Curzon, Alfred Milner, Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne, and Victor Bruce, 9th Earl of Elgin. Additionally, Britain would offer members of foreign elites a place to study at Oxbridge, a practice that some scholars view as a soft power tactic to strengthen British cultural and diplomatic influence abroad. Perhaps unrelated, today, over one quarter of the world’s countries still have a leader who was educated in the UK.
Oxford further helped intellectually legitimise the empire and colonial hierarchy. Subjects like classics, theology, and my own subject, ‘Oriental studies’ (now Middle East Studies), were historically intertwined with imperial governance. These disciplines provided the ideological justifications and administrative frameworks necessary to establish and manage the British Empire. Even today, I have classmates from ethnic minority backgrounds who have told me about Oxford coursemates and even a tutor who has proudly introduced themselves – to them specifically – as the grand or great-grandchild of the governor of areas in Bangladesh, India, and so on.
Oxford has also benefited from wealth derived from colonial exploitation. The Codrington Library at All Souls College was funded by Christopher Codrington. His fortune was accumulated from Caribbean sugar plantations where enslaved Africans were put to work. When Oxford has wished not to associate with its donors, they have renamed libraries. The Ferdowsi Library in Wadham College was initially the Ashraf Pahlavi Library, as it was funded by the last Shah of Iran’s sister in 1977. Just two years later, when the Shah was overthrown, the College didn’t hesitate to rename the library. The Codrington Library, however, still bears a slave-owner’s name.
Looking back at the last three years, Oxford students organised encampments calling on Oxford to divest from companies linked to the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, and criticised the University for insufficient transparency regarding its investments. Oxford was quick to ban and dismantle the encampments. In January 2025, as many students may remember, abseiling police officers were seen scaling the Radcliffe Camera to arrest protesters from Oxford Action 4 Palestine. Would the University’s response have been so harsh if students were protesting a different humanitarian catastrophe?
Another cause of personal discomfort for me is every single time I have to wear my sub-fusc. The same sub-fusc that was worn by Leo Amery and Lord Alfred Milner, who, along with Arthur Balfour, drafted and authorised the Balfour Declaration.
These ongoing and past injustices are easily traced back to Oxford’s alumni and donors. Apart from these alumni and Oxford’s current polemical financial investments, having played a role in fuelling injustice in current ongoing international conflicts, its links to past atrocities can still be seen in its landscape. The relationship between Oriel College and British imperialist and white supremacist Cecil Rhodes (the founder of the colonies of North and South Rhodesia) is perhaps the most high-profile example. Rhodes left a financial bequest to the college, which funded the construction of the building that still bears his name, and his statue remains prominent in Oriel. Again, in the past, Oxford has renamed buildings and can easily do so again. For instance, the Faculty of Asian and Middle East Studies was previously the Oriental Institute – while the name has officially changed, the ‘Oriental Institute’ sign remains.
In 2015, the University of Cape Town, after immense pressure from its student body, removed the statue of Cecil Rhodes from their campus. Our students continue to campaign for the same, especially after the “Black Lives Matter” movement, but the Rhodes statue remains. The global “Rhodes Must Fall” movement has argued that Oxford glorifies the Empire while marginalising those harmed by it. At times, our student body has done the same, like in 2015, when the Oxford Union named one of their cocktail drinks: “Colonial Comeback”.
It is public knowledge that up until that year, academics from Worcester College were drinking from a 225-year-old skull, thought to have belonged to an enslaved woman, and gifted to them by an alumnus. Why did that alumnus feel that human remains, which were passed down in his own family, were the best gift to present to his college? Why did he assume it would not raise any questions? Why did multiple Oxford academics even think to use it for such a purpose, and comfortably do so for years? Even after it was damaged, they used this human skull to store chocolate. All this alone reveals so much.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was some Oxford academics (Julian Huxley, John R. Baker, and E. B. Ford) who were among the elite who perpetuated eugenic theories, and played a role in legitimising racial hierarchy under the guise of ‘scientific research’. In recent times, other Oxford academics, like Nigel Biggar, Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral Theology, have defended certain aspects of colonialism, as can be seen in his article for The Times in 2017. As for Oxford donors whose names are ingrained in stone in the buildings we study in, their names are also found in the Epstein files. If not for word-count sake, this list would go on, all raising questions about the kind of institution I feel I really belong to.
And yet, instead, for reasons I cannot fathom, Oxford is somehow considered by so many to be a source of moral and intellectual authority. In a clothed expression of classism, a former sixth-form teacher of mine even went as far as to describe Oxford students as “the peak of civilisation” to explain why he was shocked that Oxford has one of the highest statistics among UK universities for cases of sexual assault on university grounds.
I will never belittle all that Oxford has given me, including my Oxford education, and I suffered greatly for my place here. However, pride in this institution – in where I study and who has studied here before me – will always be impossible for me.
We cannot pick and choose. We cannot believe that we are inheriting a millennium of intellectual achievement, and also dismiss the moral weight that comes with it. We cannot falsify, erase, or deny history, and a large part of Oxford’s history is shamefully one of empire, elite political power, and built with slavery-linked wealth. Students have every right to question what that legacy means today. If anything, doing so reflects the very critical thinking and values that Oxford claims it champions.
The post Oxford’s prestigious reputation deserves scrutiny appeared first on Cherwell.
The Home Office has proposed a second phase of development to the Campsfield Immigration Removal Centre (IRC), increasing its capacity from 160 to 400 beds. This expansion to the facility – whose reopening in 2025 has been followed by regular protests – would progress through the Crown Development approval process, bypassing the Cherwell District Council.
Located north of Kidlington, Campsfield holds detainees whose custodial sentence has ended and who are awaiting deportation, and those who do not have a legal right to remain in the UK. The facility was previously closed in 2018 following significant backlash for its treatment of prisoners and staff, with 41% of Campsfield detainees in 2018 reporting that they felt unsafe.
The proposed expansion would see an additional 240 beds, 176 staff members, and 10,840m2 of floorspace as part of a broader strategy to increase national detention capacity to 3,500 by 2030. The Home Office has justified both the expansion and the choice to pursue the Crown Development route by referencing its policy goals. In a Statement of National Importance included in its planning application, the Home Office argued that “insufficient detention capacity is a critical bottleneck in the immigration system” and that “both the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have confirmed that tackling illegal migration remains a top government priority”.
According to the Home Office, Campsfield plays an important role in government immigration policy, with Phase 2 of construction labelled a “nationally significant development”. They have also acknowledged the controversial nature of the proposal, saying, “Phase 2 is significantly larger [than Phase 1, which reopened the facility] and is expected to attract greater public interest, making the local planning route less appropriate”.
Advocacy groups have already criticised the planned development, with Oxfordshire charity Asylum Welcome Joint-CEO Hari Reed writing in a press release: “We are concerned by proposals to increase Campsfield’s capacity from 160 to 400 and would encourage people to engage with the consultation process.”
In a leaflet shared with Cherwell, the Oxfordshire-based Coalition to Close Campsfield (CCC) claims that the reopening occurred “despite the opposition of the parish, district and county councils” and that the Crown Development route for expansion “is expressly designed to override the wishes of local people and the local planning authority”. The CCC has also criticised the expansion for its proximity to the Oxford Technology Park and disputed the Home Office’s assertion that the expansion is “value for money”, calling for a public inquiry “in view of the issue’s importance and contentiousness”.
A recent Cherwell investigation found that at least 9 Oxford colleges indirectly invest in Mitie Group Plc, whose subsidiary runs Campsfield. The University restricts investments against certain types of arms production companies, tobacco companies, fossil fuel exploration and extraction companies, and funds which invest in these types of companies, but does not limit investment in companies involved in the border industry.
Mitie told Cherwell, “Our colleagues are committed to upholding the highest standards of dignity, safety, and respect for those in our care.”
Public consultation on the proposal is open until 24th July, 2026.
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