Student Life

Testing my patients: ‘The Effect’ at the BT Studio reviewed

Published

1 week ago

June 10, 2026

info@oxinfo.co.uk

It is always refreshing when a company chooses to stage a contemporary play, as if they are deliberately ignoring the expansive backlog of canonical theatre. This affront to the canon is made particularly exciting since, for me, Lucy Prebble’s The Effect (2012) was unfamiliar. It imagines two patients taking part in a drug trial for anti-depressants, exploring whether we can reduce our feelings to chemical processes, and whether this question really matters. Tristan claims “I can tell the difference between who I am and a side effect.” This is an unfortunately one-dimensional premise. The characters of the text are largely symbolic, and though this might prove a challenge for a director wanting to present convincing depictions of real people, the depth which was brought to each role was astounding. Thanks to the steering of director Joshua Robey and producer Sanaa Pasha, Fennec Fox Productions have done a remarkable job in presenting an enjoyable and immersive production at the BT Studio.

The stage is set in traverse, and it is clear that Fennec Fox have thought deeply about their use of space. It’s confrontational – a word pertinent to their production – to see the BT rearranged in such a way. A projector tells us what we’re in for: ‘The Effect’, a helpfully ambiguous title which anticipates what’s left once the play has ended. It has a firm resonance with something, though Fennec Fox refuses to specify exactly what. This is, in part, enabled by Yusuf Naeem’s set, which is minimal and impactful. A tarpaulin lies across the floor, illuminated with soft white lighting; there is a sound of bubbling – ostensibly brewing suspense – and immediately the audience is struck by the importance of sound design in this production.

Ice Dob’s sound acts, at times, in perfect harmony with the text, whilst at others it grates cruelly against the scene. The production includes a striking motif: each time the anti-depressant medications are taken an all-encompassing wall of sound and light embodies the intensity and severity of the decision to swallow. When the actors throw the empty cups against the wall, they clatter whilst an ominous voiceover explains the ‘DOSAGE INCREASE.’ At times, the sound is a pounding bass, distinctly club-like and entirely antithetical to the scene at hand. But it works, because the sheer volume and intensity of the noise creates such an anxiety that, even though nothing has happened, there is the sense that something is bound to go wrong.

Robey knows how to keep everyone, including the actors, engaged throughout. As Dr James (the marvellous Robyn Hayward) stands assuredly still at one end of the stage, she interrogates one patient while the other turns to the audience and idly invites us into their character. Connie, played by Rose Martin, is agitated and unsettled whilst Alec Day Greene’s Tristan waits with cool indifference, his demeanour telling us at once that he isn’t concerned about the drug trial. Dr James is introduced to the patients as a blank wall, Hayward playing her as an uninterpretable page which resists the patients’ attempt to read her. She is effective in asserting her institutional power, embodied perfectly through her rejection of the patients’ jokes, and her laconic, almost lethargic authority. Martin and Greene’s energies play off against one another perfectly, her restless uncertainty absorbed by his relaxed and rebellious composure.

A sincere life is brought to the characters, especially in the case of Greene, who was repulsive and entrancing in equal measure. The dance number (if one could call it that) was unexpected, a startling juxtaposition to the chaos which was to follow. Martin looked genuinely enamoured with Greene’s impression of a mating bird. The sexual tension between the two was palpable and well-illustrated in a vignette sequence which saw them engaged in various moments of intimacy between blackouts.

Alongside this ostensibly harmonious relationship, power dynamics are a persistent theme accentuated by Fennec Fox’s production. The physical positions of the actors on stage corresponded well to where the characters saw themselves standing, socially. By the end of the play Hayward is so far hunched into the wall that she is easily forgotten until she speaks again. Her progression from monolith to husk was wonderfully pitted against Martin’s gradual assertion of power, tenderly and subtly expressed at the play’s ending. Up to this point, Martin has reminded us that Connie is not altogether sure of herself – “What if I take advantage of you,” she asks meekly. It is clear that this cannot be the case.

Dr Toby Sealey (Rohan Joshi), the nepotistic counterweight to James’ institutional upset, did a remarkable job of navigating the awkward traverse staging to give an exceptionally compelling presentation about his father. Holding a brain aloft, like some STEM Hamlet, Joshi made Sealey’s revelation that it was his father’s truly unsettling. He was sympathetic when necessary, and yet, condescending in other moments as he seemingly disregarded the opinions of James for the sole fact that she is a woman.

However, it is in moments like this that the text resists the complexity of Fennec Fox’s production; the takeaway is so straightforward that it is almost disappointing. Susan Sontag says it better in Against Interpretation: “Sometimes a writer will be so uneasy before the naked power of his art that he will install within the work itself […] the clear and explicit interpretation of it.” Fennec Fox retaliate against the text’s simplicity by utilising the absolute force of theatre. Lights and sound are violently deployed against bare set, insisting on an experience of the play that is sensational rather than analytical.

Altogether, the production is a successful one; this is largely owing to the performances of Greene and Hayward who commit to such a convincing, almost aggressive realism that one is compelled to check if the actors are doing alright afterwards. Necessarily navigating the difference between ‘side effects’ and reality, the play strikes a fine balance between what one thinks and what one feels.

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Student Life

Oxford Union holds “This House Believes the West is Right to be Suspicious of Islam” Debate

Published

3 hours ago

June 17, 2026

info@oxinfo.co.uk

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”.

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Student Life

Oxford’s prestigious reputation deserves scrutiny

Published

6 hours ago

June 17, 2026

info@oxinfo.co.uk

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.

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Student Life

Home Office proposes doubling of Campsfield capacity

Published

8 hours ago

June 17, 2026

info@oxinfo.co.uk

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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