The Beaver - #913 by The Beaver

issue 913 | Tuesday 12 October 2021

Newspaper of the LSE Students’ Union: Making Sense of LSE Since 1949

Tuition fee rebates: How SU proposals would make LSE grads pay tens of thousands more in loan repayments

Scan to read The Beaver. Online.

INSIDE INSIDETODAY: TODAY: NEWS Student hall occupancy at all-time high, Covid-19 remains under control

F E AT U R E S Sam Crutcher’s neurodiversity activism aims to “stick a dynamite under LSE’s neurotypical ignorance”

Bora Bayram

hroughout the pandemic, students have been complaining about the lower quality of education they have received, and one group mobilised for the fee reduction that many supported. Students United Against Fees (SUAF), the national campaign to provide compensation to students who faced a year of online learning with no end in sight, was led by David Gordon, 2020/21 General Secretary of LSESU. In the end, no compensation was given to students. This investigation by The Beaver reveals how the SU lobbied the government with proposals that would potentially result in many LSE graduates paying tens of thousands of pounds more in student loan repayments.

lished an article on proposals by student unions of various UK universities to increase interest rates on student loans by 3% to fund a £2,700 tuition fee rebate. In a letter to Education Secretary Gavin Williamson and Universities Minister Michelle Donelan, the student unions argued that this would ensure the fee rebate would be paid only by the highest-earning graduates, and would be fiscally neutral for the Exchequer. LSESU, along with the SU of the University of Sheffield, based this argument on analysis by economic consultancy firm London Economics, which argued increasing interest rates on loans would only substantially affect male graduates in the top 20% of the income distribution. The analysis suggested these graduates would pay back up to £29,800 more, while female graduates on average wouldn’t be affected as their lifetime earnings are lower.

On May 31, The Guardian pub-

The specific impact of this policy

Features Editor Illustrated by Lea Pelleteret

on LSE students raises questions about why the SU would spearhead such a proposal. As LSE has the highest-earning graduates out of any UK university, a policy that would increase interest rates would most probably increase the loan payments of many students, more so than at most universities. A student who spoke to The Beaver anonymously has said that this would, in their opinion, amount to a “redistribution [of income] from grads of elite unis to the grads of regular unis.” Nicholas Barr, Professor of Public Economics at LSE, seems to agree. Professor Barr, who is widely seen as the co-architect of the system of deferred student loan payments introduced in 2006, said that “the idea of trying to make high earning graduates pay lots more than they borrowed… means that LSE students who earn more on average than students from other universities will

repay more than their fair share.” He also suggests that if a rebate is to be given, the question of who is going to pay for it arises: “If you think that one of the purposes of government is as insurer of last resort … maybe there should be a rebate paid for by the taxpayer”, mirroring concerns by some that this is essentially students directly paying for their own bailout, something that was unparalleled during the pandemic. Even given the potential impact of this policy on students, campaigns like SUAF are not required to have a democratic mandate. Those that do can get them indirectly through the election of sabbatical officers or through motions in Union General Meetings (UGMs) to advocate for a specific issue. There was no mention of tuition fee rebates in the manifestos of sabbatical officers elected in 2020, nor was there a motion in

Suyin Haynes: exBeaver editor and current EIC of gal-dem on LSE, working at Time Magazine, and telling underrepresented stories

OPINION Murder after murder, when will we really feel safe? Parachute journalism and why I’m obssessed

flip for

We’ve missed you. So much has happened around campus in the one year we’ve been away. And it’s been a hard year. But we’re back — and better than ever. We can’t wait to held, heard and read by you again. Love, The Beaver Team

@BeaverOnline

@TheBeaverOnline

12 October 2021

Meet The Team Executive Editor Angbeen Abbas executive.beaver@lsesu.org Managing Editor Gustav Brincat managing.beaver@lsesu.org

www.thebeaverlse.co.uk

Episode V: The Beaver Strikes Back Angbeen Abbas Executive Editor

eing back on campus feels almost surreal. After eighteen months of virtual uni, I feel like one day I’m going to wake up, there will be a new lockdown Flipside Editor announcement, and the normalBeatriz Silva cy of our lives right now will once again disappear. Perhaps I’m espeeditor.flipside@lsesu.org cially cynical (which is a fact many on The Beaver can confirm), but I Beaver Editor find it difficult to let go of the cauJocelyn Tsang tiousness we’ve all had to learn to adopt while living with Coronaeditor.beaver@lsesu.org virus. In my final year, I’m trying to remember that I am here now, Multimedia Editor and that I need to be careful of not letting it all pass me by, because Vaneeza Jawad multimedia.beaver@lsesu.org God knows third year moves fast News Editor Aarti Malhotra Opinion Editor Edouard Chardot Features Editors Bora Bayram Jack Beeching Part B Editor Ambre Pluta Sport Editor Matt Sudlow Review Editor Inayah Inam Social Editor Alina Chen Any opinions expressed herein are those of their respective authors and not necessarily those of the LSE Students’ Union or Beaver Editorial Staff.

In spite of all this, nothing has brought me greater joy in the past two weeks than being able to work on The Beaver. Pre-pandemic, I never felt like I had much of a community on campus, save for maybe 5 people, and to experience it now, I am endlessly grateful to everyone who’s shown up to socials, to staff writer meetings, to hang around in our Media Centre aimlessly. I am grateful to our wonderful editorial board and the rest of the executive committee, many of whom have had to learn how all of this works in the past few months with very little prior experience. I’m grateful to have such a wonderful team and such a wonderful group of people to spend an evening at Tuns with.

Want to advertise your society events and socials with us? Email us now at editor.beaver@lsesu.org

Keep an eye out for our socials (@ beaveronline on Instagram and Twitter) as we keep bringing you the best journalism that LSE has to offer, no matter the medium.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

ADVERTISE WITH US TODAY!

Have something to say? For comments, insight, or just plain beef, email letters.beaver@lsesu.org

From the Wall to the Web

WHAT’S ON

Our featured work includes a deep dive into the tuition fee rebate campaign (which is also our cover story for this issue), how LSE students are returning back to campus, and an interview with a former Beaver alumna and now the current editor in chief of gal-dem. Flip over for Flipside, our magazine, and you’ll find the wonderfully talented Alanah Sarginson on our cover, alongside her creative work, the return of our sex column, and reviews of everything from Ted Lasso to Donda.

After over a year of not printing, it

Gustav Brincat The Beaver is issued under a Managing Editor Creative Commons license. he Beaver was founded in Attribution necessary. the 1940s as a Soviet-style wall newspaper, mounted in the Three Tuns. The often beerPrinted at Iliffe Print, Cambridge stained mural had variable popularity but invariable impracticality. Room 2.02 Saw Swee Hock Student Centre LSE Students’ Union London WC2A 2AE 020 7955 6705

feels good to be able to plan Tuesday newspaper distributions again. I had forgotten just how lovely it feels to see your name in print and to feel like all the work that you are doing means something. The newspaper you are holding right now required us to battle with many an SU employee, and it’s been designed over the course of two exhausting eight-hour shifts over the weekend, as the executive slowly accepts that we are not allowed to have leisure time anymore.

In 1949, The Beaver became a fully-fledged newspaper, with print copies, a stable editorial team and fortnightly publication. The goal of a print release, according to the paper’s inaugural editor, was to cure the “appalling lethargy” within the LSE community. LSE students weren’t interested in what each other was doing, and The Beaver came along to fix that. This issue marks our return to print post-lockdown, renewing the tradition established in 1949. But this time we don’t have any lethargy to cure. Campus is alive like never before, with freshers and old hands alike returning from social hiatus. Online life was undoubtedly difficult for The Beaver. While other publications had transitioned online by the 2010s, The Beaver stubbornly stayed true to its printed roots until very recently, donning only a Wordpress-style blog when the pandemic hit. Our predecessors weathered the paper through the worst of the cri-

For more information and rates, contact us at managing.beaver@lsesu.org

Starting from Scratch

sis and we’ve been able to focus on Vaneeza Jawad building The Beaver back up in the Multimedia Editor vision of its inaugural editor: to inform LSE students of what the LSE ow does a newspaper function community is, thinks and can do. without a dedicated multiThis summer has accordingly been media department for seventy-two transformative. We have a new team, years? Ask The Beaver. For sevennew website, and new readers! Our ty-two whole years (to my horror!) editorial team spent their summer diligently preparing a wonderful we’ve just been winging it, periodirange of pieces for this first issue. cally scrambling to find, source and Vaneeza, the Multimedia Editor, has touch things up last minute with been hard at work on our new website, which we hope makes it easier no full-time graphic designers or than ever to find us. And we hope illustrators or photographers. As our many new readers will enjoy someone whose Extent of Artsiness The Beaver during their time at LSE. culminates in the girlboss-buttonIf this all seems so exciting that you’d badge-tote-bag-laptop-sticker arlike to get involved, you’re lucky: chetype, designing everything you there’s never been a better time to see today has been nothing short join the family. We’re looking for all of what Mitski calls working for sorts of people, including editors, section staff writers, photographers, the knife. Visual appeal is often illustrators, and podcasters. Enthusi- taken for granted — maybe even asm rather than experience required. more so in a setting that centres And for those with an eye for detail, writing and editing and formathowever arcane, please do consider ting words above anything else. joining us as a copyeditor by sending This is a problem central to LSE, I me an email. I had the misfortune of think: we very easily lose ourselves copyediting every article in this issue and would love to expand the team. in doing the absolute most we can but never stop to add a flourish. We hope you enjoy The Beaver.

Long essays and think-pieces and editorials like this one come easy to us. We may even revel in them. But when was the last time any of us took a minute to just sit down and make something for ourselves? Not for a grade or the stray LinkedIn post, but for ourselves? Working for the knife, in this way, has been helpful in not losing myself to the rat-race university often feels like. It reminds me I can slow down; that there are more things to do than just type up an essay in the dead of the night. And now, I think, is the time for expansion, especially here at The Beaver. After one year of being out of print, I wanted us to reinvent ourselves with new logos, revamped social media and a brand-new website: because honestly, what’s stopping us? What was ever stopping us? And now we have something for everyone. You don’t have to sit down to write to be a part of our little community. You just have to show up and do something.

NEWS

News Editor Aarti Malhotra

Contact: news.beaver@lsesu.org

LSE students return to campus from red-listed countries amidst travel restrictions Amidst shifting Covid circumstances and a new academic year, LSE students return to campus from red-listed countries.

Aarti Malhotra News Editor

large number of students faced complications returning to campus for the new academic year due to the international travel guidance published by the United Kingdom government in June 2021. Although the government scrapped the amber and green lists from October 4 in order to simplify international travel measures, international students from red-listed countries faced various financial, mental, and logistical issues in their attempts to travel to LSE in time for the new academic session beginning in September. The travel guidance classified overseas countries into three lists in order of decreasing Covid risk: red, amber, and green. People travelling to the UK from countries in the red list were required to undergo a mandatory hotel quarantine for 14 days, costing more than £2000. Travellers from amber list countries were required to undergo home isolation for 14 days whereas travellers from the green list countries were exempt from isolation altogether. Although the government allowed fully-vaccinated individuals to forgo the quarantine in certain cases, the

We’re always looking for new members of our team, and would be thrilled to have you on board! We’re looking for staff across News, Features, Opinion, Social, Sport, and Part-B.

vaccination status of many students inoculated in their home countries was not recognised. Some students opted to undergo the expensive hotel quarantine, whereas others avoided doing so by transiting through an amber or green list country before travelling to the UK. For instance, second-year International Relations student Rodrigo Franco was able to circumvent the hotel quarantine by travelling through Spain before entering the UK from his home country, Peru, which was red-listed. He said, “It just made sense [to avoid the hotel quarantine] because of

the cost.” Other common transit choices of international students travelling from red list countries included Albania and France. The travel restrictions caused inconvenience for staff as well as students. Many staff members who had to isolate on arrival in the UK were unable to make it to some of the staff training sessions. James Greenwood, Head of Residential Life said, “This year, it was challenging training the wardens and subwardens since many of them had to isolate. Thus, for the first time, we [instituted] blended training to accommodate for this.”

and travel complications, LSE has various departments for support. Academic departments and the Student Wellbeing Service have programmes to support the mental wellbeing of students. Additionally, the International Student Visa Advice Team (ISVAT) offers immigration guidance for international students.

We’re also looking for editors! The positions we’re holding elections for include: 1x News Editor 1x Opinion Editor 1x Review Editor 1x Social Editor 1x Sport Editor 1x Podcast Editor To join, reach out at executive. beaver@lsesu.org, or contact us on social media! Instagram: Twitter:

@beaveronline @beaveronline

For students undergoing isolation

LSE’s initiatives to bridge the gap between students on and off campus LSE brings a focus to providing assistance to students living off-campus.

Dana Louise Satoc Contributor

SE’s Off Campus Support Scheme (OCSS), instituted by the School to provide additional assistance to students living off-campus, is confirmed to be running for another year. The scheme’s mentees met their mentors at the beginning of Welcome Week either over Zoom or in-person to answer preliminary questions. There was also a welcome reception on October 7. The OCSS came as a response from the School in recognition that “students living off-campus experience a different set

of challenges to those living in LSE halls of residence”. However, the ability of this scheme to practically meet its objective of supporting off-campus students has been put to question by some of its previous mentees. According to a previous OCSS mentee, the success of the initiatives put in place to help off-campus students are contingent on the commitment of the individual mentors. This student in particular felt the scheme was unsuccessful in helping her manage the overwhelming feeling of moving to a new city in the midst of a global pandemic. The student said, “[The scheme] was nothing that I’d expected and didn’t really help to manage the overwhelming feeling of moving to a new city in the middle of a pandemic… I think this is one of

through their accommodation. One LLB student said, “I don’t feel like I’m missing out, just that I have to put in a little more effort and put myself out there a little more to make friends and interact with others”. With the school continuing to deliver lectures online, off-campus students may find themselves at an even greater disadvantage to meet and interact with their peers. those things that depends a lot on who’s running it – I’m sure other students had more positive experiences based on who their mentors were.” The student – now a mentor for this year’s OCSS cohort – went on to say that “this is one of the reasons I decided to become a mentor this year, I wanted to make sure I could help first

years living off-campus and regularly check in on them because I know how anxiety-inducing it is”. Students living off-campus during their studies face the additional barrier of being unable to easily socialise with fellow students as they are unable to make new friends

According to another LLB student, “Online lectures are like a double edged sword. On one hand, [pre-recorded lectures] give you more flexibility which allows you to choose when and how you watch lectures. At the same time, that takes away the chance to get coffee with a course mate before or after lectures, or even make friends by sitting next to new people dur-

News ing the lecture. However, you can still make your studies a bit less lonely and more communal – it just requires a lot more intentional action.”

mentor and I am scheduled to meet other mentees which should help us get to know more people and form friendships.”

The scheme’s webpage goes on to explain that it is a platform to “connect new first year undergraduate and Study Abroad students who are living off campus with an experienced undergraduate student mentor” to create an effective support system.

*Some quotes have been shortened for the article.

One student starting the scheme this year stated, “Although I haven’t been a part of [the scheme] for that long – only 2 weeks – I’ve been in contact with my

Student hall occupancy at all-time high as Covid-19 remains under control in halls Aarti Malhotra News Editor

his academic year has seen a marked rise in LSE’s student hall occupancy to 99%, in contrast to the relatively vacant state of student halls the previous year. The rise is mainly due to a significantly greater proportion of second-year students opting to stay in halls instead of private accommodation. Due to pandemic-related travel restrictions, students entering their second year faced greater difficulties in their search for private accommodation during Summer Term and the summer vacation period. International students who undertook their first-year remotely had to not only coordinate virtually the house-hunting process such as viewings and lease negotiations, but also find flatmates to rent the properties with them. Franciso Marques-Guedes, a second-year student staying at Sidney Webb House this year, said, “As an international student, I think

Covid tremendously affected my ambitions to rent a house. First, dealing with all the restrictions and personal problems caused by [the pandemic] back at home made it difficult for me and my friend to meet up to search for flats together. Secondly, our intentions to travel to London in pursuit of an apartment were cut short as all the quarantining made it unfeasible.” While travel restrictions and the house-hunting process spurred some to seek LSE accommodation, many other second-year students opted to stay in halls to make up for the ‘student hall experience’ they missed last year. A second-year student staying at Carr-Saunders this year said, “I chose staying in halls over private accommodation because I wanted a proper halls experience at university that I felt like I lost out on last year due to all the rules and restrictions.” The rise in student hall occupancy in comparison to last year is strikingly reflected in the numbers. An LSE spokesperson said in an email statement, “In September 2020, LSE

Shafik extends term as LSE Director to 2024 Gustav Brincat Managing Editor

LSE rose from 74% in 2017 to 84% in 2020, jumping 81 places nationally.

aroness Minouche Shafik, the incumbent Director of LSE, has extended her tenure until the end of the 2023/24 academic year.

In 2019, Shafik was widely viewed as the government’s top choice for Governor of the Bank of England, despite insisting she never applied. She was also suggested as the next Cabinet Secretary, the UK’s most Baroness Shafik held senior senior civil servant, when the popositions at the World Bank, sition became vacant in 2020. NeiDepartment for Internation- ther job ultimately went to Shafik. al Development, International Monetary Fund, and Bank Shafik is LSE’s 16th Director. She of England before her ap- succeeded interim Director Julia pointment as Director in 2017. Black, whose term as President of

the British Academy expires in 2025. Shafik presided over LSE’s response to the Covid crisis, during which An economist by training, Shafik’s LSE was the first university nation- book What We Owe to Each ally to pivot online in March 2020. Other was released this year. NSS student satisfaction scores at

accommodation was 80% occupied. By Christmas 2020, occupancy was about 70% and by summer it was 45%, as the School released many students from their accommodation contracts. This year, LSE accommodation is 99% occupied.” For the Residences Management Team, this rise in hall occupancy has been a blessing. The increased rental contracts guarantee that the financial losses incurred from last year will be mitigated. Moreover, the high occupancy suggests university life for many students is nearing normality. On the other hand, the increased student populations at halls has also posed several challenges for the management team in controlling the spread of Covid. James Greenwood, Head of Residential Life, said, “Although managing the virus at halls has been challenging this year, we’ve done well so far. We’re managing about 3500 students in halls at the moment but as of [this interview], there are only seven reported cases of [Covid]. When I speak to other universities, it’s evident we’re doing much better.”

James credits all the residential and catering staff and the support of the university for the successful management of increased hall occupancy so far, and stated that the Residential Management Team was determined to support students in halls to the highest degree. He said, “There was an instance where residential staff at one of our halls personally visited a Boots store to purchase certain items for an isolating student that would have otherwise not been delivered in time.”

Overall, James remains optimistic about high occupancy at the halls. He said, “We still have certain restrictions at the halls, but it’s less than last year. This is great for the students as they are able to get a university experience that is closer to normal-ish lines.”

LSE holds swab test drop-in for 4 year- Jocelyn Tsang Beaver Editor old with cancer

n Saturday September 18, a swab test drop-in was held in the Saw Swee Hock Student Centre from 10am to 6pm to find a stem cell donor match for Esha, a 4 year old girl suffering from acute myeloid leukaemia. Esha was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia in May. It is cancer of the myeloid cells, a type of white blood cell that fights bacterial infections and prevents the spread of tissue damage. She spent 15 weeks at Great Ormond Street Hospital, going through two cycles of chemotherapy without success. The charity Anthony Nolan, which helps those who need stem cell transplants, launched a stem cell donor drive on Esha’s behalf to find her a match.

A donor was found on September 15, but the drop-in sessions continued to find a closer match. Several donors are usually needed to ensure a successful stem cell transplant, as some donors may not be a sufficiently high percentage match or healthy enough. A stem cell donor needs to have a similar tissue type to the recipient, which is the combination of proteins on the surface of one’s cells, called human leukocyte antigen (HLA) markers. This is so that the recipient’s immune system will not reject the donor’s stem cells. The drop-in session at LSE was held as part of a larger stem cell donor drive September 10 to 19, with 29 drop-in events mostly in London and across the UK, in-

cluding Manchester and Leicester. Two members of Esha’s family, who are LSE alumni, reached out to the LSESU at the beginning of September to ask for support. “We felt it was our duty to help,” said Josie Stephens, the General Secretary of the LSE Students’ Union. “We believe LSE students would want to help Esha, particularly as her need is so urgent.” As of publication, Esha has not yet been able to receive a bone marrow transplant, as she was found to have a blood infection early last week. Esha’s family could not be reached for comment.

OPINION

Opinion Editor Edouard Chardot Contact: opinion.beaver@lsesu.org

The Kurdish People’s Movement: a social, political and psychological challenge to the capitalist world order Agit Karatas Contributor

0 years of conflict. 40 years of bloodshed. 40 million people without status. The Kurds are a heterogenous people, abandoned by the books of history and subjugated by Western imperialism. This stark reality appeared before my eyes as friends, family and the wider community in Britain commemorated Mehmet Aksoy towards the end of September - a British-Kurdish filmmaker who travelled to Rojava (Northern Syria, Western Kurdistan) to join the media division of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), after an influential decade of political activism across the UK and Europe (the Guardian, 2017). As we gathered in solidarity to remember one of our heroes, the silence and oblivion of the system around us spoke a thousand words. Now I will speak a thousand words. Not as a radical retaliation, but as informative education. 100 years ago, the Entente Powers of World War I, led by the British and French, divided the Kurdish territory across four nation-states – Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran (Durham, 2010). Ever since, the Kurds have been fighting for status recognition all around the world, driven by the inspiration of Mehmet and the hundreds and thousands of other revolutionaries who have devoted their lives to educating people about the popular movement for self-governance and expression – exemplified by the social and political revolution in Rojava. Inevitably, the last decade has familiarised us all with the socalled Islamic State and the war it has been waging against civilians and rebels, in order to seize territory and exercise control in the Middle East – partly to curtail the ever-growing secularism and religious pluralism in the region. While giving us insight into the most barbaric war in peacetime history, Western media has failed to recount the position of Kurds in global history and has willingly perpetuated the state of non-recognition experienced by Kurds and their military representatives, who are only one of many commu-

nities who continue to suffer the traumatic ramifications of the Syrian civil war. How often have you heard of the Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG), a branch within the alliance of Syrian Democratic Forces, which unitedly fought against the Islamic State, in British media? Or the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), which is an exemplary model of military feminism? Rarely. Western powers originally deemed the YPG and YPJ as extensions of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), which is internationally recognised as a terrorist group. More than 40 years of a people’s movement which dedicates itself to freeing the Kurdish people from their colonial oppressors has been rendered illegitimate by the same oppressors whose hegemonic status is protected by the framework of international laws legislated by these exact same powers. It is no coincidence that the Kurdish movement has its roots in Marxism-Leninism, which follows a similar logic in understanding the West’s relations with the Middle East. The best theoretical depiction of Occidental-Oriental relations is Immanuel Wallerstein’s dependency theory, which posits that peripheries (countries with high levels of raw materials) are forced to depend on the core (capitalist countries) who have advanced means of production (Martinez-Vela, 2001). Since the Kurdish territories are materially

rich, it is no surprise that the West has always engaged in the social and political affairs of the region. This inherent dislike of the Kurdish movement started to decay, nonetheless, as the West’s vulnerability to the Islamic State increased, with barbarism spreading through many attacks across Europe and the United States (Chazan, n.d.). This resulted in a temporary shift in international consensus that the YPG and YPJ were terrorist groups. The United States formed an anti-Daesh alliance with the Syrian Democratic Forces, as a result of the growing Islamist threat (Gürçay, n.d.). Similar behaviours of self-defence, however, are regarded as terrorism when the players are Kurds. If engaging in a war for self-defence makes one a terrorist, we would all eventually be terrorists in the right conditions. This is a depiction of the state of nature, argued by Western philosophers themselves, where the ruling principle is kill or be killed (Hobbes, 1651). What compels the West to impede Kurdish autonomy is the risk that this could procure a brand-new model of socialist governance in the Middle East and threaten the centuries-long Western domination of the world order. The people’s revolution, as Kurds commonly call it, is more than a struggle for independence and autonomy. It is a struggle for universal rights, focused par-

ticularly on liberating women. The YPJ division of the alliance, for example, is an exclusively women’s unit – symbolising the necessary shift away from gendered warfare towards a feminist outlook on the most adversarial of human conditions: war. The administration also operates on a cooperative economy and a legal system overseen by restorative justice. Irrefutably, Rojava is a microcosmic representation of what the political left has dreamt of in their theories of historical development to an era of post-capitalism. Simultaneously, however, it is the worst nightmare of imperial-capitalist powers who once believed that the Treaty of Sèvres (1920), and Lausanne (1923) had suppressed the threat of socialism emerging in the Middle East. The capitalist state will do anything in its power to sustain its survival, at the expense of destroying lives and histories. This is what they did to Kurds. This is what they have been doing to the ethnic minorities. This is what they are doing to women. Your citizenship in a Western state is merely a document of agency to the pseudo-democratic state. It is in the DNA of capitalism to consistently exploit its subjects. As you read this article, some part of your mind probably questions everything you have read. That’s the power of capitalism. It absorbs your free will to cogni-

tion and knowledge, speaking for you about something you most likely have no clue about. It prevents the acquisition of knowledge and hence opinion through programming its subjects via pseudo democratic means like the media. “In the midst of death, I am very close to life”, said Mehmet, the freedom fighter who inspired me to be a voice for the Kurdish struggle, as he filmed the war in Rojava. Life for him was freedom of expression; life was freedom of identity. Now I wake up every day to a mind so free in a world so dark. Will you let a system, which continues to grow on the seeds of its own destruction, alienate your very existence too? If it is me today, it will be you tomorrow. This is a people’s struggle. This is our struggle. In writing this article, I commemorate the inspiring Mehmet Aksoy and all freedom fighters around the world whose chief objective is to liberate the peoples from oppression and injustice.

Opinion

Murder after murder, when can we really feel safe? Alina Chen Social Editor Content warning: mentions of rape, murder, violence against women

remember feeling devastated waking up that morning to the news of Sarah Everard’s remains being found. And stunned, to say the least, to learn that a Metropolitan Police officer from an elite unit was the suspect. It later emerged during his sentencing hearing that Wayne Couzens, then a Met officer, was very literally “hunting for a female to rape”. Using his Covid powers, police warrant card and handcuffs, he lured the victim off the street, before raping her and taking her life. A few months have passed, and sadly a similar case has once again happened in London. Sabina Nessa, a 28-year-old primary school teacher, was murdered a few minutes away from her house on September 18. She was on her way to meet a friend at a local bar, but never arrived. This is a fear that resonates with many of us in this country and beyond – to this day, we still live in fear of some impending doom. Every news report of such crimes painfully reminds us of our own vulnerability and the horrifying randomness of these acts of violence – it could easily have been one of us . A woman dies at the hands of a man every three days, according to the Femicide Census. It’s a repeated story, far too familiar, of men killing women, be it a law enforcement officer, or an ordinary-looking man off the street, or a husband, an ex-boyfriend, a classmate… And really, what more can we do? Is this to say that for the sake of protecting ourselves, we, as women, can no longer leave the house at night? Have we not been acting sensibly enough? One of the largest studies of sexual harassment

in Europe found that half of the 42,000 women surveyed had restricted their movement based on the fear of gender-based violence. But what is so wrong in wanting to meet a friend at a pub or making your own way home after 9pm? Why are we constantly getting told off for wearing something revealing, drinking a little beyond the limit now and again, or even flirting with some lad by the bar? It makes it seem as though it is our action that makes the difference. Indeed, years of societal conditioning have taught us ways to protect ourselves. Our parents, teachers, and the news have nagged… But how realistic is it to avoid ever being on our own at night for the entirety of our existence? Why do we have to suffer that lingering sense of anxiety every time we exercise our basic right to walk outside alone? Why can’t we leave the house with full confidence, whenever we want, wearing whatever we want? As a woman of colour, and especially an East Asian woman, my identity adds yet another layer of

complexity to the conundrum, with racial attacks against Asians rising over the course of the pandemic. According to End the Virus of Racism, there has been a 300% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes since the March 2020 lockdown. I vividly remember how much I feared for my life this time last year, coming out of lockdown from my family home, onto campus for the first time in many months. Back then, I felt vulnerable. It got to the point where I actively sought to change my class when I found that one of them was scheduled to end at 8pm. There has been talk among my friends of getting self-defence weapons that could be easily carried around. My parents worried about my safety, insisting that I should never head out unaccompanied, with the night falling ever so early in the winter. If I really had to, I should wear something that conceals any feminine traits. As if having a hood on to hide my hair would be my ultimate shield to potential rape, robbery or any other assault. We are constantly worried, calculating the poten-

Parachute journalism and why I’m obsessed Beatriz Silva Flipside Editor

I wanted to be many different things as I grew up. But something that I was mesmerised by from a young age was the idea of becoming a foreign correspondent. There was something about the job that seemed to fulfil many of my deepest longings and address my anxieties, one of them being the fear of life being too short to see the whole world. The idea of traveling from

place to place and meeting different people from around the world all the time was alluring. It was as if I would get to do many jobs at once throughout my life whilst bringing attention to real issues and holding leading political figures accountable for their actions. Being a foreign journalist was a job for the brave, and I thought I had just the right amount of reckless disposition to danger. Admitting that I once felt this way truly makes me cringe, and is slightly embarrassing.

For the past couple of years, and in recent months, my perception of the job of a foreign correspondent has changed dramatically. LSE and the people I’ve met here have led me to question whether this job is useful, if not potentially harmful to the local communities from which foreign journalists report. I became obsessed with this issue this August when US troops left Afghanistan. The reporting by major Western news outlets was mostly praised on social media by prom-

tial hazards to which our male counterparts are largely oblivious. Interestingly and (as it seems) almost inevitably, discussions around such topics on social media often spark numerous objections. It goes without saying that, yes, not all men. But how can we possibly know? Are we just meant to single out those ‘criminal looking’ people from an otherwise completely innocent population? How are we supposed to react when a policeman waves you down, claiming you have breached Covid rules? I do not wish to deliberately offend any men who feel as though they are blamed when they see women expressing their concern, feeling threatened and heartbroken over these tragedies. I have no intention to aggravate the existing gender polarisation any further because it is counter-productive. This is a systemic issue which can’t be solved without the solidarity of the entire community. So, please, can we stop the “not all men” debates, call off the vicinent journalists and audiences in general. What we were praising is the usual set-up of parachute journalism: when an award-winning, white (and preferably good-looking) journalist is sent to a country to report on whatever terrifying situation is unfolding, they manage to dehumanise even more people of that country by centering the events taking place around them, rather than lifting the voices of ordinary people. This shocks me every time. The job of a journalist is to inform, not to exploit human suffering for personal gain. I have come to realise that even the idea

tim-blaming, and the urge to preach the importance of protecting ourselves as women? Random occurrences of gender-based violence may be rare, but our fear is hardly unjustified when misogyny is still commonplace. As a society we need to put our heads together and come up with plausible solutions that could change our predicament. We need systemic changes, from reforming the criminal justice system down to cultivating understanding on an individual level through education, and plenty more. All of this is of course not to say that men or boys aren’t vulnerable or taken seriously as victims. I am merely saying that it is imperative we kickstart the process of uprooting this deeply entrenched misogyny. It is time we wake up from our utopian illusion and face up to the uncomfortable truth that unfortunately the remains of the patriarchy still play a big part in our society today. If we don’t speak up and do something, violence against women will always be sickeningly common knowledge.

“It’s a repeated story, far too familiar, of men killing women, be it a law enforcement officer, or an ordinary-looking man off the street, or a husband, an ex-boyfriend, a classmate…” of being a foreign correspondent is part of the Western imaginary, and of a white saviour complex that continues to creep in in unsettling ways. We Western audiences have also come to unconsciously adhere to a notion that the story can only be told by Western media because it is the only neutral source of information, as if good journalism doesn’t exist anywhere else. I was conflicted about this topic over the summer. At one point I deleted Twitter so that at once I would stop thinking about parachute journalism. Sometimes I felt

Opinion

Scan for Beaver Sound!

like I was going crazy because no one else seemed to be uncomfortable in the least by this type of reporting. I would tell myself, ‘Why do you always have to criticize everything? Calm down Beatriz’. But as weeks passed, I continued to often think about this. I once wanted to do a job that I now despise and I am starting to believe that foreign journalists are egomaniacs. Of course, nothing is black and white, and I don’t mean to say that this profession shouldn’t exist or that there aren’t good foreign journalists out there. I am simply constantly enveloped by a sense that some serious reflection has to be made about how to decolonise the job, without wanting to overuse the term. Because if what we have been seeing on social media and television is what journalism is all about, then I guess I don’t want to be a journalist.

Scrambling for meaning Edouard Chardot Opinion Editor

Political unrest is rising in France as Eric Zemmour, a far-right pundit and journalist, is climbing the polls for the upcoming French presidential elections. Zemmour went from 3% a couple of months ago to almost 16% currently , making him a credible contender against Emmanuel Macron. His meteoric rise and the media frenzy around him bears a striking resemblance to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. Zemmour, who has cultivated an image of an highly cultivated and anti-establishment figure, has made himself the representative and defender of French identity threatened by multiculturalism and modernity at large, appealing to a sense of glory stemming from France’s history. But what sets him apart in the eyes of his followers is his ability to make sense of the past and the future, to offer the citizens of France a sense of purpose where they feel that there is none. This yearning for stable identities and a greater purpose does not just plague France but is the universal defining issue of our time and has been exploited by ideologues and the culture industry at large. This search can find its roots in modernity’s challenge of traditional socio-political structures, history, gender identity, sexual identity or cultural norms. While this has undoubtedly led to significant human and intellectual emancipation but has also left our generation disoriented, scrambling to make sense of our individual and collective existences.

In his 1989 book Postmodernism or the Logic of Late Capitalism, Fredric Jameson uses Lacan’s theory of schizophrenia to describe our current ordeal. For Lacan, one’s unconscious is constituted of “signifiers”, which form one’s own cultural values, ideals, and experiences These signifiers form links with one another; this is what Lacan calls the signifying chain, which constitutes the subject’s psyche and forms the link between the subject’s desires and actions. Lacan describes the schizophrenic condition as one where the signifying chain breaks, leading the signifiers to float like the words of a broken sentence. To quote Jameson (1989): Thus for Lacan, the schizophrenic condition is one where the subject experiences reality with overwhelming vividness and where things exist solely in their materiality, detached from their meaning and history. For Jameson, this has happened on a societal scale. In traditional structures, different aspects of our identity — gender roles, sexual identity, religion, national identity, economic status, culture — were all parts of a coherent whole, giving meaning to our past, our future and what role we ought to play in it. However, this is no longer the case. This signifying chain that used to form the narrative of our collective existences has snapped under modernity with the weakening of socio-political structures that we once took as universal (examples include the weakening of religion, the ero-

sion of traditional social classes brought on by democracy and capitalism etc.). Like Lacan’s schizophrenic subject, our society and its individuals struggle to locate themselves historically, existing in an endless present and whose relation to our surroundings is both ahistorical and material. In the cultural realm, our inability to situate ourselves in history has led to what Jameson coined the emergence of pastiche — past cultural forms which are used endlessly but void of their historical essence or perspective. Mark Fisher, taking the Arctic Monkeys as an example explains that “If the Arctic Monkeys weren’t positioned as a ‘retro’ group, it is partly because, by 2005, there was no ‘now’ with which to contrast their retrospection. [...] In the 1990s, it was possible to hold something like Britpop revivalism to account by comparing it to the experimentalism happening on the UK dance underground or in US R&B.” (Fisher, 2014) Artistic production has essentially amounted to the repetition of old sounds and forms coexisting without significant innovation with which to contrast them to. It would not be too bold to affirm that many cultural productions today amount to this “cannibalization of all the styles of the past.” (Jameson, 1989). Take for example, the flourishing of TV shows and films which appeal to a retro aesthetic (Stranger Things or Sex

Education are popular examples), the constant flow of remakes and spin-offs (Scenes from a Marriage, Gossip Girl, Blade Runner, Ghostbusters, Dune, The Jesus Rolls) or the periodic return of past fashion trends (the re-emergence of the “Y2K aesthetic” is a good example of this). With late capitalism’s call to consume ever more quickly, identity formation becomes more subject to consumerist trends. People adopt different aesthetics and tastes for a couple of months before letting go of them. Whereas a 1970s East End Londoner embraced the punk subculture due to philosophical, cultural and economic identity formation processes, adopting a punk persona in 2021 is more akin to simple aesthetic tastes, a very artificial understanding of what such a persona entails and a symptom of our desire for fixed identities. While the search for identity feeds on ever-changing visual identification to past subcultures and aesthetic forms in the cultural sphere, the same quest takes the cloak of ideological conformism and radicalism in the political sphere. The example of Zemmour is telling. Extremist ideologies are able to provide a systematic explanation of society, giving individuals a specific purpose. Every individual might just be a cog in a massive wheel, but their lives are now full of meaning, bringing that ideology to the rest of the society provides pride and moral gratifi-

cation. In an era void of absolute truths and stable structures, it is tempting to hold on to preachers of truth whose discourse lulls us into a false sense of security, but it is security nonetheless. The same goes for conformism. In a world where we are expected to make full use of our critical thinking but are drowned in an unending flow of information without any coherent narrative, choosing conformity offers not only moral gratification but also a sense of belonging. So what is to be done? I believe that we have to challenge those who pretend to hold absolute truth and choose clear-headed solitude over a false community. To fight for nuance and autonomy in an age of Manichaeism and individualism. To be lucid about the cultural impasse that we have reached and to try to create new cultural forms that won’t be the symptom of our age but rather the conscious product of it. Lastly, to be aware that we live in a very chaotic time of history and that reappropriating our past and our present is a crucial step in envisioning a collective future that can be so much more than our everlasting present.

FEATURES

Features Editors Bora Bayram Jack Beeching Contact: features.beaver@lsesu.org

Suyin Haynes: ex-Beaver editor and current EIC of gal-dem on LSE, working at Time Magazine, and telling underrepresented stories for a lot of people, and we’re keen to train people and give them the opportunities to cover these issues.”

Angbeen Abbas Executive Editor

hen Suyin Haynes started at LSE, she didn’t see herself as the type to become a journalist. Graduating in 2016 with a joint international relations and history, she started out as an Editorial Intern with Time Magazine in London, later going on to become an Associate Editor, and then Senior Reporter at the Hong Kong bureau. This year, she became the new Editor-in-Chief of gal-dem, a media company dedicated to “sharing the perspectives of people of colour from marginalised genders.” Founded by Liv Little in 2015, gal-dem started out as entirely volunteer-run, with Haynes contributing to it from the very start. Since then, it has transformed into an independent media company with full-time staff, a membership model, and an audience of around 330,000 unique visitors per day.“The transition from a voluntary group to a company is quite a big one, and it was amazing to watch this from afar,” Haynes said. “I think we owe so much to Liv Little and Charlie BrinkhurstCuff, my predecessor, the amazing brilliant women who’ve done so much because the work we’ve been doing has been pioneering.” As an alumna of both LSE and The Beaver, Haynes recognises how difficult it can be to fit into both spaces. As a first-generation university student, Haynes “hadn’t even heard of LSE” at 16. “Studying History and IR, I really found my people towards the end of first year. But you know, it’s a very strange place. I remember hearing people talk about spring weeks in first year and wondering, ‘What is that? Should I be doing one?’ I just wanted to study and learn,” she laughs. However, she didn’t really get involved with The Beaver until the end of her second year. “I had just been writing odd bits and pieces and the Executive Editor at the time invited me to stand for the elections as News Editor. I also got involved with gal-dem around the same time, in 2015. They were looking for sub-editors, and I wanted to do something more, something where I could cover underrepresented communities. My mum’s Malaysian Chi-

nese and my dad’s white British, and I wanted to feel some kind of connection to POC spaces, which were quite limited on campus.” Perhaps that’s why her work consistently focuses on the importance of telling the stories of marginalised groups. As News Editor at The Beaver, Haynes covered everything from the Occupy LSE movement to initiatives to address the attainment gap between BME and white students. “I remember being really unsure because I hadn’t seen that these things were being covered that much. I guess it’s a bit corny, but I’ve always felt drawn to these issues, and now we’re in an environment where they can’t be ignored any longer and I think that’s good. When I think about gal-dem and The Beaver, and some of the things I was writing for both, those kinds of stories were also just not being covered in traditional, mainstream press at all.” After interning at Time, Haynes found herself moving halfway around the world, quite unexpectedly. “At the end of it, I hadn’t really thought about what I was going to do. I just wanted to save up the money from it and maybe go travelling and do a post-uni gap year. And then my editor sat

me down and said, “You know, have you ever thought about moving to Hong Kong? We have a job there that you’d be really good for.” I moved in early 2017, and in 2018, I did more reporting. So reporting from around the region — Taipei in Taiwan, Seoul in South Korea — and then other remote reporting on stories from Philip-

“When I think about gal-dem and The Beaver, and some of the things I was writing for both, those kinds of stories were also just not being covered in traditional, mainstream press at all.” pines and Indonesia as well with a focus on human rights issues. #MeToo was really blossoming in East Asia in particular, and it was such a privilege to work on my first big feature for Time on that.” Moving back to London in 2019 as

a senior reporter for Time, Haynes wrote about gender, culture, and underrepresented communities, covering issues ranging from the SARS protests in Nigeria, to feminist and LGBT movements in Russia. In an industry where it’s hard to create newsrooms that reflect and are interested in representing the diversity of human experience, Haynes has carved out a path for herself that challenges traditional ideas about what is and is not ‘newsworthy’. Journalism is not a very diverse industry, whether we discuss the world’s largest newsrooms or the ones on university campuses (Haynes describes The Beaver as not “super diverse historically” compared to its leadership now). “I recognise the difficulty that people have getting into the industry, when parts of it are so conservative and toxic,” she said. “I think our role [at gal-dem] is to show that there are better ways forward. So much of the stuff that Charlie had initiated before me was really boundary-breaking. Having our style guide public and a sensitivity and inclusivity section within it, you know, thinking about how we speak about people who are trans, disabled, or facing challenges that we may not fully understand. How we talk about that in our coverage matters, and that’s important to us. We’re so proud to be the first byline

The importance of creating a sense of community amongst marginalised groups will underpin Haynes’ work as EIC at gal-dem in the coming months. “Going forward, we really want to expand our membership plan because we want our community to feel a sense of ownership and that they’re contributing to galdem” she said. “We’re really excited to return to in-person events because they had been such a big part of what gal-dem did before the pandemic, in terms of creating safe spaces for black people and POC, as well as LGBTQ+ members of our community. However, we also want to take the lessons we’ve learned from the pandemic about accessibility and inclusivity through online events.” Part of this commitment to their readership includes bringing journalistic training to underrepresented groups across the country, through a series of workshops. “We’re doing a series called Open Newsrooms, where we hold workshops with our editors for different organisations across the UK, working with different underrepresented groups. So we’ve got organisations in the West Midlands and the North. They all work with young people or people from underrepresented groups, and we’re going to be delivering these workshops to just try and make getting into the journalism industry a bit less scary and a bit more accessible. I think giving back that kind of community element is really important, especially for young, new and emerging writers.” Her advice to students navigating LSE right now? “I think I’d say don’t panic, because you’ll find your feet and your people. Stay true to yourself and don’t be afraid to figure it out alvong the way. It can be a really intense place, but I think just focusing on yourself and your path in spite of the uncertainty.”

Features

Sam Crutcher’s neurodiversity activism aims to “stick a dynamite under LSE’s neurotypical ignorance”

Alina Chen Social Editor

(Content warning: Suicide attempt, discrimination)

n early January 2021, Sam Crutcher, then a second-year social policy student, introduced an SU referendum motion proposing the creation of a parttime Neurodivergent Students’ Officer. The election was held, and the motion passed. In March, Crutcher ran for the position and without any other contestant to challenge him, claimed his title with pride and absolute elation. So, what is neurodiversity and why should we care about it? As the first-ever Neurodivergent Students’ Officer at the SU, Crutcher is confronted by these questions on a regular basis. In fact, when this interview was first proposed at one of Features’ weekly meetings, an uneasy silence fell between us. Perhaps, rather shamefully, most of us didn’t fully comprehend what the term entailed. To Crutcher, this ignorance and apathy around the subject is exactly the reason why he wishes to dedicate himself to neurodiver-

sity activism at LSE and beyond. As he told his audience during hustings this year, he wanted to “stick a dynamite under LSE’s neurotypical ignorance and blow a hole in people’s idea of what neurodiversity is”, calling for overdue solidarity on the issue. Neurodiversity is an umbrella term that characterises neurological differences and disabilities across the human race, including ADHD, autism, and dyslexia. Just like the fluidity of sexual orientation or gender identity, neurological capacity too forms a spectrum. Therefore, Crutcher believes that labelling people as either “neurotypical” or “neuroatypical” based solely on a diagnosis would make very little sense. A diagnosis is an arbitrary and narrow measure of one’s neurological eccentricities; Crutcher explains that everyone deep down has the potential to be diagnosed. Therefore, it “shouldn’t be [only] until you see someone’s diagnosis that you start to think differently” about their character, giving them the benefit of the doubt. In his words, “Everyone is neurodiverse, [so] everyone should be behind this movement”.

ate view of the world, where every human being is seen as “uniquely beautiful and beautifully unique”, with their own endearing quirks and eccentricities. He believes neurodiversity is the “key intersection that unifies everybody”. In his opinion, taking a different perspective and seeing people as having a spectrum of differing neurological capacities has its benefits, encouraging us to broaden our minds and cultivate more patience and understanding for our fellow humans. Recently, Crutcher has been involved in the process of promoting key terminologies within neurodiversity. In particular, he is developing the term “neurophobia”, with the aim to draw attention to the ways in which society discriminates on the basis of neurological differences which, in his opinion, is an attribute no less arbitrary than one’s hair colour. It seems to him therefore problematic that people would be judged on the ways in which their brain activity and processing works.

Indeed, Crutcher emphasises the importance of tolerance on multiple occasions. Since a lot of neurological abnormalities actuIt is frankly difficult not to feel af- ally go undiagnosed, there is in fected by Crutcher’s compassion- fact a sizable “latent neurodiver-

gent community”, who potentially need support and yet do not even know they need it themselves. Many people will have lived with their conditions for decades, not knowing the reason for their struggle, until they receive their diagnoses somewhere down the line, often in adulthood. In particular, women are routinely and systematically under-diagnosed.

Despite the adversity life has thrown at him, Crutcher remains optimistic. When his world dulls down with the daunting academic pressure of LSE and his family struggles, his activism is where he derives his sense of purpose. When asked why raising awareness for neurodiversity is particularly important at LSE, Crutcher gave his answer in two folds.

But truly, neurodiversity is a “gift” – Crutcher cannot have a conversation about neurodiversity without mentioning the countless household names, all of those who have struggled with their neurodivergence yet have been able to succeed in their respective fields: Steve Jobs, Alan Turing, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin… The list goes on and on and Crutcher beams with pride. Neurodivergence, in his opinion, should never be viewed as a debilitating disability or an impediment. These neurological differences make the world a more stimulating and enriching place, with individuals contributing in their distinctive ways to the greater good. Neurodiversity allows humanity to explore an array of different possibilities, ways of thinking, and perspectives – ultimately, it gives us each a uniquely interesting lens as we grapple with the questions that life throws at us.

Firstly, LSE is an internationally renowned institution, with many of our alumni becoming world leaders in their respective fields. It is an excellent place, in Crutcher’s opinion, to advertise the value of inclusion and tolerance. Considering that for the majority of students, their years at university are going to be one of the most transformative periods in their lives, “their experience in education [is likely to] define their outlook”, determining how they think and behave. This would then allow more people to bring the principles of universal compassion beyond LSE and into the future.

For Crutcher, neurodiversity has become not only the passion of his life, but has also formed the missing piece of the puzzle to his identity that he didn’t know he was looking for. For 19 years of his life, he struggled with the constant malice of being misunderstood by his parents, peers and teachers. Before receiving his official diagnoses, the lack of empathy and understanding over the course of his schooling career and family life had been a splash of fuel that fed his growing fire of self-doubt and mental turmoil. He spent 19 years living and being treated as a neurotypical individual in a society designed for neurotypical people, unaware of his neuro-differences, his Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) or Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Crutcher’s mental health slipped to the bottom of the pit in 2017. It was the year when he jumped off a 35-meter-high cliff and sustained a severe brain injury that continues to trouble him to this day. What makes him indignant is the fact that society seems to need ostensible proof of your in-fact invisible disability to be willing to grant you the respect, support and understanding that everyone is entitled to. It took a despairing leap to make people realise that he needed help.

Secondly, LSE students might be especially vulnerable because of our “fragmented” sense of community as a city university. “Students don’t really know each other and don’t really want to know each other”, says Crutcher. At such a fast paced, pressure cooker of an institution with little sense of community, “it is very easy to feel anonymous and atomised” on campus and it is also very easy “to slip through the cracks” in terms of self-esteem. With more visibility and understanding around the matter, Crutcher hopes to “fill the void of neurodiverse representation” and cultivate a more inclusive and accommodating environment for everyone who could potentially be struggling. Crutcher came to LSE for the first time to study PPE in 2018. In his words, the experience “was a disaster in so many respects”. He was thrown onto a campus designed for ‘neurotypical’ students and into classrooms where teachers did not fully appreciate the implications of being a ‘neuroatypical’ student at LSE. His struggle was “multifaceted”, but his main source of anxiety and pressure came from the “disrespect”. He had fellow students dismissing him as “rude”, “weird”, and even “insufferable”. Teachers would be surprised about how he acted in class. All of which contributed to his decision to take a year out, away from the hectic and rather alienating student life at LSE. When he came back a year later, “things got better”, since he was better equipped for a neurotypi-

Features

cal campus. That said, towards the end of his first year, he realised that there still needed to be more visibility, representation, and discussion on campus. He wanted to speak up about his personal experiences in the most honest way possible with the wish to validate other people who might be on the same boat. Crutcher’s ambition goes further than simply speaking up. He has also organised roundtable discussions with fellow students as well

as professors who are devoted to reforming the current “one-sizefits-all” mode of assessment at LSE. Crutcher believes that we all have the right to be assessed according to our needs to reflect our true potential, citing the large number of people who identify as neurotypical but still struggle with timed exams. It seems to him indisputable that our intellectual understanding of the subject should be the primary assessment criteria, rather than one’s time-management abilities.

Crutcher thinks the issue involves more than just determining who is eligible for extra time. He says that it’s also about restructuring assessments, and designing creative and more inclusive ways of examining students, such as projects, coursework and presentations, dismantling the rigidity of traditional in-person timed exams. With the start of this academic year, Crutcher is aiming to raise more awareness, wishing to “make

2022 the year LSE embraces neurodiversity”. He’s looking to put together a range of bigger events during neurodiversity week involving high-profile individuals. He hopes that, as the campaign becomes more successful, fewer people will be puzzled by the term neurodiversity and more will have the courage to come forward to talk about their struggle. And with time, with increasing numbers pushing for change, LSE will become a friendlier and more ac-

commodating place to study, for every “uniquely beautiful and beautifully unique” individual.

Beyond Freedom Day: LSE implements strictest Covid regulations among top London universities Bora Bayram Features Editor Illustrated by Vaneeza Jawad

After almost two years of living with Covid-19 restrictions, in July England became one of the first countries to entirely relax its regulations. However, the government still issued guidelines to reduce the risk of transmission in various spaces, shifting its responsibilities to institutions and individuals. In light of this, universities across the country set their own rules for what students can and cannot do. LSE chose to be on the safe side: even though its teaching arrangements closely mirror other London universities, it otherwise has the strictest restrictions. For example, take testing: LSE is the only top university in London to require a negative Covid test from its students for access to campus. While other universities say they “expect” students to abide by testing twice a week, they don’t enforce this as strictly as LSE does. Face coverings are also mandatory in all LSE classrooms, whereas other top universities use more lenient language by saying face coverings are “expected”, with KCL only “recommending” face coverings. The lack of a uniform approach to this issue may seem bizarre, given the risks associated with transmission in each of these universities are similar. The case of face coverings demonstrates the shaky ground on which most restrictions now stand. Government guidance goes only as far as recommending face coverings in enclosed and crowded spaces. More importantly, contrary to the sweeping language used by LSE, the government has made it clear that no student should be denied education based on whether they are or aren’t wear-

ing a face covering. Even in light of the government’s relaxed approach, it remains to be seen if London universities will change their restrictions in Lent Term. Face-coverings LSE: “Mandatory” when prolonged contact is required such as teaching and learning spaces and lifts. Strongly recommended (but optional) in other indoor and outdoor spaces. UCL: Everyone on campus “expected” to wear a face-covering when indoors. Optional when outside. King’s: Recommended but not mandatory. Imperial: Everyone “expected” to wear a face-covering when indoors. Optional when outdoors. Government guidance: Recommended in enclosed and crowded spaces. However, no student should be denied education based on whether they are or aren’t wearing a face-covering.

Testing LSE: Proof of a negative test in the past 4 days required for campus access, even if fully vaccinated. UCL: Students and staff “should get tested” twice a week but not mandatory for campus access. King’s: Students “expected” to submit two tests a week but not mandatory for campus access. Imperial: Taking two tests a week is recommended but not mandatory for campus access. Government guidance: Students and staff are strongly encouraged to test twice a week. Lectures LSE: Lectures will normally be online, except a few. More lectures may be moved in-person in Lent term. UCL: Most large group lectures will be online. King’s: Large lectures will be online. Imperial: Some lectures will be in-person and some online, depending on the course. Government guidance: No restrictions for in-person teaching.

Classes LSE: All compulsory teaching will be in-person, including classes, seminars, tutorials, and workshops. Office hours, mentoring sessions, and dissertation/thesis supervisions will also be in-person. UCL: Most small group teaching will be in-person. King’s: Small group teaching will be in-person, but the extent will depend on the discipline and stage of studies. Imperial: Classes and labs will be in person.

Is graphic design your passion?

We need you. We’re looking for graphic designers and illustrators. To join, email us at multimedia.beaver@lsesu.org or get in touch at instagram.com/beaveronline

review edited by INAYAH INAM

Thank you for picking up this issue. This has been a summer of rebirth and growth for The Beaver as we came out of this bizarre covid hibernation. The articles in the reviews section are a mixture of film, theatre and literary ruminations on what interested our contributors most this past month and will hopefully interest our readers just as much. As many of us retreated indoors, I, like many people, relied on tried and tested comforts to keep me sane. For me, this became watching films. Not once a week. Not twice a week. But for most of the time every day. I tried to estimate how many films I had watched from the start of the pandemic to now and I guesstimated somewhere in the region of 200-ish films. This sounds depressing - you don’t have to tell me, but I’ve got to the point where I don’t care anymore. I’M A CINEPHILE. THERE I SAID IT! Let’s get one thing straight. I’m no Roger Ebert. But I do love films. I adore them. It’s a great medium for building empathy and seeing the world (literally) through someone else’s lens. In a global pandemic that highlighted issues surrounding representation and a dying commercial appetite for ‘art-house’ cinema, being critical about what we consume and emulate has never been more important. To paraphrase the late Roger Ebert, most of us do not consciously look at movies but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. I look forward to the reviews section being an exciting forum for dialogue around the new and subversive content to come out in the 21/22 season. I also intend to nurture an open space for debating and discussing the path that cinema, music, literature and culture is taking in the next year. I hope you enjoy reading our section and perhaps will act upon your deep dark cinephilic, bibliophilic desires to join us. Inayah Inam Reviews Editor

A Beginner’s Guide to Ted Lasso by SYED ZAID ALI SYED MUDZHAR

By now, I’d say that it’s nearly impossible to not have heard of Ted Lasso, the hit comedy TV series released on Apple TV+. With the second season coming to a close, let’s look back at the first and discuss what makes it so good. Be it a friend excitedly endorsing the show’s laugh-out-loud, witty writing, or its record-setting twenty(!) Emmy award nominations, there’s no ignoring the phenomenon that this show has become; if you are familiar with ‘the Lasso Way’ as described by one of its fictional reporters, it is clear why it has. If you haven’t, well, that’s probably why you’re here: why are people so excited about that football show with the guy from We’re The Millers and Horrible Bosses anyway? The show’s titular coach (played by Jason Sudeikis, also co-creator and writer) has just arrived in the UK after being hired by Rebecca Welton (played by Hannah Waddingham, of Game of Thrones and Sex Education fame), the new owner of AFC Richmond, a struggling team in the Premier League. As we meet the players and their fans, we see that they are clearly angry with this development. Why? Well, let’s just say that Ted, uh, knows nothing about football. He’s led an American football team before, but soccer? Forget about it. As it turns out, Rebecca has recently divorced Richmond’s previous owner, and hires Ted in an effort to ruin the club, which was one of the only things her cheating ex-husband loved. The feelings of disdain felt by the players and fans towards Ted and his assistant Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt) remains throughout a good portion of the season. However, this slowly changes over the course of the ten episodes, thanks in large part to how Ted treats everyone around him. Intoxicating amounts of positivity Looking back at the absolute dumpster fire of a year we had in 2020, which has undeniably left an indelible mark on our minds, it’s not difficult to see why the show resonated so much with so many. Sure, a large part about being stuck at home was having more free time to watch the show and more. But more importantly, it felt like a glimmer of hope in a largely depressing year thanks to the positivity it exudes, which is most apparently seen in how Ted reacts to negativity.

I mean, you wouldn’t be very optimistic either if your favourite team suddenly gained a coach who is absolutely clueless about the sport. However, despite the jeers he gets from the fans of Richmond, Ted continues to do his job to the best of his ability, and his perseverance in the face of everyone else’s pessimism is ultimately what drives Richmond to some form of success. Adding on to that, his philosophy surrounding success itself is rather humanistic; more often than not, it seems as though he emphasises the players’ well-being over winning. He cares about seemingly trivial matters such as snacks in vending machines and water pressure in the showers. One can accuse Ted of being ignorant, but in fact, we soon realise that player well-being is an important aspect in leading the team to victory. As such, there has been a healthy amount of discussion surrounding what people can learn from the show, with numerous articles discussing how Ted Lasso teaches us to be a good leader. In the end, one could argue that nothing we can learn from it is particularly eye-opening, but the time in which the show was released and the ways in which it presents these lessons are what makes them salient to me. Another reason it worked for me had to do with how my reaction to Ted’s character mirrored that of the team’s fans. In the first few episodes, I kept thinking: what does this seemingly dimwitted outsider have to offer? Betraying expectations Well, as it turns out, quite a lot, actually. I think that the showrunners definitely could have played up the role of Ted as the stereotypical naive outsider having a hard time adjusting, milking this archetype for its comedic and dramatic potential. Whereas he clearly misses the mark with some cultural differences, he’s revealed to be much wiser than he lets on, and this smartly subverts what we expect from his character. Additionally, the writers give Ted’s character much appreciated depth, as seen through the meaningful parallel between him and Rebecca formed by their respective romantic relationships. Similarly with Rebecca, they could easily have made her into a pure antagonist, but her connections to Ted and the ways in which she develops over the course of the season make her character much more interesting.

Her relationship with Keeley Jones (Juno Temple) -- who does marketing and public relations for AFC Richmond -- also acts as a pleasant surprise in a show revolving around football (a sport so often associated with men) since it allows for the show to easily pass the Bechdel test. Despite all this, there are still plenty more revelations throughout that are sure to come as surprises, which I think are what make the series so exciting. Compelling characters No discussion of Ted Lasso should ever be undertaken without mentioning just how good the characters are. Some mention has been made of Rebecca, whose character might be tied with that of the immensely hilarious Roy Kent (played by the incredibly talented Brett Goldstein, who initially came on the show only to write) as my favourites from the show. Partially based off of near-namesake Roy Keane, Roy Kent serves not only to be a great source of comedy due to his grumpy demeanour often being contrasted against Ted’s cheeriness, but like most of the characters in the show, his character allows us to assess how we live our lives. As the aging captain of the team, and one of the best players in the League, we learn that Roy struggles with ideas of self-worth, which is something I believe many of us experience as well. He is soon to retire, but has a hard time accepting this because he associates his self-worth with his ability to play football. In fact, one can look at practically any of the characters on the show and find something in them they can relate to, and that’s where I think it succeeds. Ultimately, how the characters develop throughout the season was what kept me hooked. By introducing interesting ones to begin with, and having them interact in exciting ways, it wouldn’t be unlikely for you to binge watch the show. Sometimes, trying to juggle too many characters can be a detriment to a good story, but how they are treated in Ted Lasso is what lends incredible amounts of charm to the show. Hopefully, this guide of sorts has been enough to convince you to give it a shot if you haven’t already. Be warned, though: one moment you’ll be crying laughing, and the next you’ll probably just be straight up bawling your eyes out. A box of tissues should come in handy.

Love it or hate it, the Met Gala shows activism is fashion’s latest accessory by RACHEL HOLMES Whether they awed, confused or disgusted onlookers, the looks from “fashion’s biggest night out”, 2021’s long awaited Met Gala, did not disappoint. The theme, ‘In America: A Lexicon of Fashion’, provided adequate scope for thoughtful collaborations between designers and this year’s attendees. Interpretations varied: from Kim Kardiashian’s ridiculed dementor-esque dress by Balenciaga, which showed Kim to be so established ‘In America’ that she didn’t even need to show her face, to Timothee Chalamet’s controversial converse, which were a pretty practical choice considering he walked several blocks to the event. However, some of this year’s most talked-about looks were those who ditched eye-catching bags and extravagant jewellery in favour of protest pieces commenting on the America they found themselves in on the night of the event. Accessories are always risky. Wear the wrong pair of shoes and your feet will thank you with blisters; make the wrong political statement and the public scrutiny will be just as brutal. The same was true of this year’s Met Gala attendees who showcased more controversial couture. Cara Delevingne donned a Dior white industrial vest adorned with ‘PEG THE PATRIARCHY’ in red capitals. US congresswoman, Carolyn Maloney, made a not-so-subtle nod to the suffragette movement with her ‘EQUAL RIGHTS FOR WOMEN’ gown. Meanwhile soccer star Megan Rapinoe reworked the official motto of the United States to ‘IN GAY WE TRUST’, which was printed over the Sergio Hudson designed clutch bag. Yet it was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s shot at political apparel that was subject to the most scrutiny. Ocasio-Cortez made her Met Gala debut in a Brother Vellies off-the-shoulder, bridal-style gown, which would likely make for a forgettable ensemble, were it not for the bold red lettering demanding ‘TAX THE RICH’ scrawled across the back. Though the gown was far from radical, any couture that challenges the capitalist status quo is a risk, even for a progressive like Ocasio-Cortez. Unsurprisingly, the look was met with mixed reviews, with the Right labelling the representative a hypocrite, and the Left were critical of her flippant reference to a goal that she and her party have so far been unsuccessful in achieving. Truth can be found in both views, and criticism should be expected when flaunting such a message to an event so symbolic of the establishment. In short, Ocasio-Cortez’s attempt to ‘stick it to the man’ was largely lost by doing so at an event costing $35,000 to access. Whether you view Ocasio-Cortez’s controversial couture as hypocritical or simply tone-deaf, what remains louder and clearer than any slogan scrawled across a garment is that protest fashion is here to stay, and is no new phenomenon. Carolyn Maloney’s gown reminds us of this the most through her nod to the suffragettes. The suffragette movement knew that what we wear can say a lot about us, and brands today clearly know this too, with Balenciaga’s spring/ summer 2020 editorial that mimicked election coverage serving as only one example. Brands, and the celebrities who wear them, must engage in socio-political movements more than ever following the rise of social media that keeps brands and celebrities accountable around the clock. However, what September 13 has made most clear is that apparel is no replacement for action. image via @aoc on Instagram

Overflow, a review: FOUR STARS by JAMES KNUDSEN

We are greeted by the main character, Rosie, a trans woman who has been forced to lock herself inside a nightclub toilet as a means of protection from aggressive transphobes who lie in wait on the other side of the door. Rosie takes us on a journey through her life, providing a review of some of the more memorable bathroom experiences she’s had, and the people with whom they have been shared. They are punctuated by memories of friendship, allyship, drama and abuse. Rosie embarks on a rollercoaster of emotions that originates from her interactions within what has become both a safe haven and hot political battleground for trans women – the ladies’ bathroom. The audience is skilfully and seamlessly guided through a series of flashbacks. Here, the work of Hannan and her creative team really shows. Transitions between the past and present are extremely punchy, fluid and effective, with sharp lighting and stage design helping the stationary set feel alive and ever-changing. Colourful neon tones and the use of practical staging and scenery epitomise this. Lyons’ performance also aids this dynamic feeling, effortlessly snapping between characters as she multi-roles between past versions of herself and other characters essential to the narrative. These flashbacks make up the bulk of the storytelling, and are the most humorous, technical and enjoyable parts of the show.

Lyons’ performance is full of energy and charisma, displaying a range of emotions that mostly feel believable and raw. She is funny, genuine and entertaining. This is what can be achieved with good casting. Some of Lyons’ strongest moments were those of stillness, silence and reflection. Overflow is a contemporary play in every possible sense. The subject matter, the script, I was left wanting more of those at times, since Lyons’ energy is mostly emphatic throughout. the stage and lighting design, and the performance in this one-woman show by Reece Williams all amount to a refreshing and enlightening experience. The slick direction All this to say that Overflow is educational and entertaining. It helps explain what Lyons from Debbie Hannan and the stage and lighting design by Max Johns and Jess Bernberg means when she says that there is an “unwanted gaze” on the trans community, and it helps provide a dynamic theatrical experience that hits hard and provokes thought. I am sure us better understand what we can do to help validate trans people as regular functioning these were the sole intentions of the creative team, and they are achieved here splendidly. citizens, and give the trans community the right kind of attention – the kind that it deserves. image via bushtheatre.co.uk

Donda Review: THREE STARS by AKHILESH HURIA The pursuit of commercial appeal is a bitch. The result of the TikTokification of music can Glizzy sleeping through 21 tracks of Made-for-E-boy shit. The only problem is that it will eration, it’s no wonder Donda is 26 tracks and nearly 109 minutes long. Given the nature want to win against Drake. Though Donda is drawn out and largely inconsistent in tone

be seen in Certified Boy Lover’s recently released Certified Lover Boy, with sell. Taking Kanye’s ego and his tense relationship with Drake into considof how streams to album sales ratio is calculated, it would make sense to and quality I still believe it contains some of Kanye’s best work in years.

Fortunately, I’m not someone who can wholly relate to this album, and I hope at least the majority of Kanye’s fanbase can’t either: living after the loss of a parent must be incredibly exhausting and it’s clear how much of a toll it’s taken on Kanye. What makes me appreciate this album beyond the outward sentiment is that when the music works, the listener is not a part of it. It’s abundantly clear that when he made the excellent songs on here, of which there are a few, it was only about him and Donda. That’s not to say that the features were necessarily detrimental to any song’s quality. It’s simply that for an album so personal, other artists and Kanye himself really needed to be careful about how their individual artistic visions would complement each other as well as keeping the tone of the album consistent, which was not always achieved. The quality of sound is fantastic and is apparent from early in the album. Of the first nine tracks, “Jail”, “God Breathed”, and “Jonah” stand out as minimalist but affecting songs, with both the engineering and the clear connection to the memory of Kanye’s mother remaining unbroken. The difference between these tracks and the others (aside from the Donda Chant), is that though on a superficial level the sound of the songs is largely consistent, tracks like “Hurricane” feel diluted. What I mean by this is that Kanye is not felt as the dominating presence within these tracks. When you listen to a song like “Praise God”, the instrumental feels geared more towards Travis Scott’s vocals. There is a repetition of this issue in songs like “Tell the Vision”, with the part two section being overly long and the production style becoming slightly stale with each passing song. In these moments, it felt as if Kanye had distanced himself from his mother, and for whatever reason, decided to include artists who didn’t quite understand the point. Though their words might be loosely relevant, their styles conflict so heavily with Kanye’s, the songs ending up feeling like ersatz Kanye. It’s interesting to then see what could be considered Kanye’s best run of songs, perhaps since Yeezus, to be placed amid filler. From “Believe What I Say” to “Jesus Lord” (“Jesus Lord” easily being the best on the album), these 8 tracks make the album. The sincerity is finally there from everyone involved. He has carefully selected who will appear on these tracks, finally nailing the tone. Even through songs like “Moon”, it feels like Kanye is pulling the strings. It’s cinematic but poignant, and that sweet spot is achieved when Kanye trusts that his sound is better than nearly any other sound in the genre. In conclusion, Kanye needs a bigger ego.

My Summer of Rest and Relaxation Some book recommendations for fall that I read in summer by accident By NAMRATA MENON An Equal Music – Vikram Seth First impressions: often long-winded, but equally as often lovely. Many of its reviews mention the accuracy of Seth’s descriptions of music and of playing it, and while I am no musician myself, it reads like an especially lyrical concerto. The plot follows a violinist and his reunion with an old flame, but really, I stayed for the language. (It tet,

also introduced for which

me I

to The Trout Quinam very grateful.)

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer – Siddhartha Mukherjee My thoughts before opening the book went somewhat like this: it was exactly the kind of thing I’d say I’d read, even as it sat there, spine intact, reminding me I’d failed. Science writing for the layperson (500 pages of it, no less) and I are uneasy companions. Despite all this, I was halfway through before I knew it. Mukherjee writes with compassion, flawless pacing, and encyclopaedic knowledge; some accounts of medical experimentation and advancement – a description of cancer from Ancient Egypt comes to mind – were truly electrifying. In terms of aesthetic value, I can also guarantee that pulling this out of a tote bag on campus has the potential to be highly impressive. I will not go as far to call this life-changing, but I will say this. It had me doubting my PPE degree. Maybe medicine was my calling after all. The Secret History – Donna Tartt This is possibly the latest I’ve ever been to a party, but I will recommend the book anyway because it made me stay up all night, despite myself, until I got to the last page and realised I could hardly breathe from all the tension. It has murder, it has intrigue, it has pretentious conversation, and it left me melancholic in a way that is perfect for fall. There is nothing more to say about a novel so deeply entrenched in our cultural consciousness that it’s almost single-handedly birthed dark academia TikTok.

The Idiot – Elif Batuman In a year with so much (unasked for) plot, I’ve gravitated towards fiction that meanders with no apparent purpose. In The Idiot, the narrator, Selin, observes her world in droll but almost excruciating detail – and does not do much else. She’s a freshman at Harvard in the mid-90s, she takes linguistics classes, she agonises over what she learns there, she becomes infatuated with another student, she writes emails, she goes to Hungary. She is the only character whose point of view we are concerned with, but we do not really get to know her. I managed to relate anyway; I’ve spent so much of being nineteen and twenty vaguely disoriented in the way she is. By the end, nothing had happened, but I had broken out of my reading slump and – as you will see – everything changed. My Year of Rest and Relaxation – Otessa Moshfegh Next in the no-plot-just-vibes genre, I recommend this if you’re feeling particularly nihilistic, or, alternatively, if you want to feel good about your life (because at least it’s better put together than the narrator’s). Our protagonist is obnoxiously privileged and desperately alone. While this part sounded familiar enough, her decision to sleep for months on end to fix herself (with the help of more pills than I can list here) most definitely did not. I was repulsed and frustrated by her in turn, but could not look away. I went on to read Homesick for Another World, which I loved just as much. Otessa Moshfegh’s unhinged, weird-for-the-sake-of-it, eminently entrancing writing has ended up influencing my reading list for the rest of 2021 much more than I expected it to. (A side note: I found that this book paired extraordinarily well with Fiona Apple playing in the background.)

sport

edited by MATT SUDLOW

Balls, Beer, and Banking: what sport means to LSE SPORT EDITOR LSE isn’t known for very many non-academic things. Unlike other universities, especially those two that turned most of us down, there’s no real bustling arts scene. There’s no notable amateur theatre club, churning out the next generation of Taskmaster contestants. The last pre-Covid event I attended was the Music Society’s Annual Revue, and as great as both the performances and the Costco-level buffet was, there were more performers than audience members. But we know this. Most of us knew it when we came to LSE. It’s like the Tinder hook-up of universities - you turn up, do what you came to do, and leave. It’s all just so transactional. However, there is one aspect of LSE life that inexplicably breaks this mould. That forces even those who spent Freshers over-perfecting their Goldman Sachs internship application to take a break - sport and the AU. From the seemingly infinite amount of clubs that encompass every sport you can imagine (and some I’m still convinced have just been made up – I mean, floorball? Come on!), to the seemingly infinite amount of excuses to get leathered at 8am on a weekday morning, sport is the beating heart of the LSE community. Exactly why is sport so prominent and other activities not? Is it just intrinsically better? Possibly. Is there a deeper, psychological reason? Again, possibly, although given I’m not 100% sure what psychology is, I’ll leave that to someone who is slightly more in the know. However, what my limited skills allow me to do is examine what I believe are the two main purposes of sport at LSE, and see why on earth it means so much to us all. The first of these is, well, to do sport in a club - an aspect so blindingly obvious, it makes me look like an idiot just for stating it. As a university with Capitalist values pumping through its veins, LSE inherently pits students against each other, rather like the economic system (ooh, satire). Our classmates will do anything to ensure that they come out on top in life-or-death matters such as getting that single internship spot, or if their parents have avoided the most tax. What a place, ey?

Sport doesn’t pit one against the other. Sport unites. It’s quite unique in that sense. It’s you and your teammates against the world, rather than against each other – the unvarying feeling throughout the rest of LSE. The sense of camaraderie that comes from a tough game against UCL, or a less tough game against King’s, is really unmatched. Even 6am rowing circuits! You win together, you lose together, you fight together. It is all an extreme cliché, but it all is just so true. Take away all imposed constructs and humans thrive collectively. At LSE, sport is what breaks down the pathetically intense atmosphere of one-upping each other. Sport is what connects. And that brings us to the second, and most definitely most important, purpose of sport at LSE. Everything that is social at LSE is through the AU! Maybe I’m not giving enough credit to that single yearly event other societies put on, where you’ll have maybe three other people in attendance and of course the obligatory bag of carrot sticks. But from Carol to Zoo Wednesdays, from Fight Night to the AU Ball, the premier reasons we leave our overpriced rooms in our halls all are because of sport. Even Tuns looks like it is perpetually run by people straight from the football team of Riverdale High.These events become a ritual almost immediately after we start here, a religious dedication. There is no better place to get to know other people at LSE. Forget about taking a photo with a person sweating their bollocks off in a beaver costume, underpaid no matter what they’re receiving, sport is what truly makes you feel #PartofLSE. I should probably say at this point that the closest I’ve come to doing any sort of sport here is walking up the library stairs, and even that knackered me. This entire article may just be a cacophony of hypocrisy. But I truly have regrets! Don’t make the mistake I did. There is no LSE community without sport. A bold claim to make, perhaps, but a claim so true. Without sport, we are colleagues. With sport, we are LSE.

The Battles of Berrylands by YANNICK KAUFFMANN Picture this: you’ve woken up far too early on the Saturday after Welcome Week, feel a bit under the weather after five days and nights of partying courtesy of the LSESU RAG Band, and now somehow find yourself at Waterloo station, excited and ready to embark on your first trek to Berrylands. Soon that excitement turns into impatience, leading you to ask — much like you might have done on a family holiday as a 10-year-old—“are we there yet?” In one form or another, thousands of LSE students have lived through this experience over the past 100 years. While not all LSE sports teams play at Berrylands, it has been LSE’s spiritual home since the acquisition of the sports ground exactly 100 years ago, in 1921, with the university hosting its first Sports Day in 1922. Needless to say, a lot has changed in that time. More recently, Ramz, the artist behind the single “Barking”, played for the LSE 2s of the Men’s Football Club, with awestruck Fulham F.C. Academy players watching in amazement. Unfortunately, some things never change: according to LSE archivist Sue Donnelly, in 1924, “the first XI football team was the first LSE team to reach an inter-collegiate final, losing 2-1 to UCL”. Those of you who read the first and second articles of this trilogy know this wasn’t the last time LSE suffered at the hands of UCL. After a short deep-dive into the history of the LSE Sports Ground, we now turn our attention to the big question: is Berrylands a bastion, our bastion? While LSE teams have not gone unbeaten at home, Berrylands has certainly been a stronghold for success. In fact, LSE teams have won over 55% of their games at home compared with only 42% away*. Indeed, all sports except fencing, volleyball, and Ultimate Frisbee have a greater win percentage at home than away. With such a strong home record, one would expect the biggest victories to have occurred on the holy ground at Berrylands, right? Wrong. Four of the top five wins, as calculated by the difference in scores, have been away from home.

Up until now, games between LSE teams have been ignored. However, these do occur occasionally, with the higher-ranked team coming out on top in all of the five biggest intra-LSE thrashings. Certainly, as a lower-ranked team, there is nothing better than winning against a higher-ranked team as I have done in all my games for LSE Men’s Football 2s against the 1s. But these are often scrappy wins, not clear-cut dispatches as displayed in the table above. In different times, such achievements would have been celebrated appropriately. Sport is crucial in providing a strong sense of community at LSE, and going through an academic year with almost no sporting events merits a celebration of it. In 1922, then-President Sir William Beveridge refereed the first sports day. Perhaps it would be fitting to reinstate this tradition on its 100th anniversary, helping to make students feel #partofLSE? What do you think, Baroness Minouche Shafik? Fancy reffing? * Data sourced from BUCS Digital Project Manager Mark Handley via email (June 2020)

Sport at LSE: What You Would Not Expect by SOFIA GERACE It is common knowledge that joining a sports club at university can However, Judy Zhu, PPE student and president of Chess really enhance your student experience. LSE is the right place for Society, says that even though they focus on their inall those looking for new challenges and close-knit communities. formal weekly meetups where members can come in for a casual game, like other sports clubs the soIndeed, while I was scrolling through the Students’ Union ciety also participates in national tournaments. website looking for a sports club to join ahead of arriving in London, I discovered clubs going far beyond the more pop- Chess Soc is for beginners but also expert players. Inular and obvious ones to join! At LSE, the diverse and inter- deed, two teams compete in the British Universinational character of the university is well-reflected in the ar- ty Chess Association tournament each Lent Term, ray of sports clubs. Freshers really can find the unexpected. and last year several players won individual awards. Ever heard of kabaddi? Kabaddi is an Indian sport and the SU website characterises it as a cross between tag and rugby. When I asked Sachin, a Flipside Sport contributor, exactly what it was, his first reply was to search for it on YouTube. Oh, was he right! As a contact sport, it makes rugby look like tiddlywinks. Your team quite literally scores points by piling on the opposition player. It’s a sport you must try out. Maths and economics undergrad Ahilan Parthipan is the president of Kabaddi at LSE. He admits that he fell in love with the sport from the very first session, going from “not knowing how to play at all to becoming first team captain and representing the England national team in kabaddi by [his] final year”. And amazingly, Parthipan isn’t unique in this regard, with multiple students playing for the national team. LSE’s kabaddi results are excellent: the women’s team are national champions and the men’s team are ranked second in the UK. Parthipan repeatedly referred to Kabaddi as a family, emphasising that “as a fresher, from the very moment [he] walked into the first session, [he] felt extremely welcomed by all the members of the club”. The kabaddi student community is larger than it seems, with the club engaging frequently with other universities such as Oxford, KCL, Imperial, Birmingham and Manchester through social events and tournaments.

The welcoming community also plans to host weekly meetups in addition to virtual events. “We have a variety of games in our Steam library and we’re no slouches in the console section either!” Arora explained. And if you need that final push, this year they have the holy grail that is a PS5. Need to escape the pressure of university?

“Yoga society offers a safe, non-judgmental, and open space where students can come practise yoga and switch off from the pressures of university life”, emphasises Hannah BraidUnlike kabaddi perhaps, we all know what chess is, and es- wood, president of the society and a management student. pecially if you have seen The Queen’s Gambit, have some intellectual curiosity about it. According to Zhu, “Chess Classes are designed to be fully inclusive, so whether you’re Soc is a place to turn [this] curiosity into a life-long hob- an experienced yogi or a complete beginner, LSESU Yoga is by”. If you are no Anya Taylor-Joy, do not worry, with the a great place to go to get in touch with your body and mind. club catering to all levels of experience, “balancing friend- Braidwood affirms that as a society they strive to ensure ship and sportsmanship”. You can learn the fabled game of that the community is as fun and stress-free as possible. chess from fellow students, while having a bloody good time. Despite the pandemic, the society managed to engage Beyond the reality many students by holding Zoom sessions. Now, the committee is looking forward to meeting their members in perIn the run-up to the Tokyo Olympics, the suggested in- son: sessions every week and socials every term are already clusion of esports was much discussed. Ultimately, they on the agenda. “Don’t expect any invites to career events! If were not selected for the Tokyo 2020 games and will also you’re looking for something a little different at LSE, come not be included for Paris 2024. However, according to Sta- grab a yoga mat and get involved”, Braidwood concludes. tista the number of gamers is increasing every year with an estimated 3.24 billion gamers globally in 2021. It is no surprise that many LSE students share this passion. Speaking to Kieran Arora, accounting and finance student and president of the Gaming Society, the message to anyone interested in the club is to join the thriving Discord server. Throughout the pandemic, with many sports clubs winding up activity, the server enabled the community to continue.

The focus isn’t simply on esports either. On the Discord server, The Gymnasium of Mind Arora claims there are “channels dedicated to party games and Is chess a sport? This is still an open debate. The SU says no, rhythm games, as well as dedicated teams to compete against with chess categorised as a society rather than a sports club. other universities in competitive games like League of Legends!”

part b

edited by AMBRE PLUTA

“

I wanted to capture the disorientation, as well as the excitement, that comes with entering new environments, and the (largely unconscious) growth that comes with doing so. I’m a completely different person than I was when I first joined LSE, and I feel like the changes that I’ve gone through only really make sense in retrospect. Collaging motifs around growth and utilising the simple cream-blue contrast allowed me to play around with what entering new environments and states of being means to me. Overall, my message is that it’s okay to be as equally excited as you are confused at the start of university; both can happily, albeit messily, exist at the same time. For me, it’s always been about taking the time to cherish the beauty of these emotions and experiences.

”

New Beginnings, Alanah Sarginson

“

Hélène Sentuc (Visual Arts Society Secretary):

This watercolour painting represents a marble vase on a socle. The scenery takes place in an outdoor setting, as can be noticed by the ivy trying to invade the sculpture. It seems that nature wants to reclaim its space again. The challenge of the painting lies in representing the colour of the stone. If one looks carefully, one realises that some stones showcase a variety of colours and nuances. To depict the richness of the colours was the main focus of the painting, and I hope I managed to, at least partly, do justice to it.

”

raat ki rani (night jasmine) by Angbeen Abbas i tell you again, we’ve been sitting outside for too long. the ink of night has seeped into the edges of the sky, and the porch lamp is the only thing illuminating our faces, damp from exhaustion and the sweltering heat today. soft cups of Kashmiri tea, cloudy and pinked with saffron sit patiently by our knees. we’ve neglected them all evening. and how can we not? when the air is so much sweeter at the back of my throat, where I know you are waiting, where my dupatta keeps slipping from. in the summer everything feels louder because it can feel real. this, the most achingly perfect thing that lies in our mouths, it can feel real. don’t tell me you need to go home just yet, not until i’m done. ammi will stay up and wait, the sun will come back, you will pretend our chai was never covered by the gluey lipgloss holding our lips together. it’s okay for us

Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Woman with a Parasol in a Garden 1875

to forget ourselves until the clouds remind us. wait for me, for a minute, a year. i’ll let the dried grass remember the form of your back, while i carve the soil into something i can remember.

A Review of Love after Lockdown by Anna Baker It’s safe to say that lockdown changed my relationship with my partner significantly. As our worlds became smaller, things that used to sustain me coffee with friends, or visiting new places - disappeared. Having a supportive partner in this time of crippling uncertainty was invaluable. Yet the impact of the lockdown fog on our relationship was undeniable. I realised I had no idea how to navigate a relationship in such strange circumstances. Whilst this was scary and uncertain, it forced me to bust wide open some popular relationship rhetoric, leading to a healthier and more sustainable love. During the first leg of lockdown, I felt lonely, bored, and unfulfilled. Falling prey to the popular rhetoric that your partner has to be your everything, I thought this must be sympt o matic of flaws in my relationship. My partner is supposed to fulfill me, be my best friend, intellectually challenge me, and be my main support. In a huge way, my partner does all of these things. But, as things started to disappear from my life with COVID, I realised how many other things had been fulfilling me. My best friends, for example, were a huge support: those comforting chats over tea and coffee made me feel loved and held. Arguing with my dad over politics kept my appreciation of different perspectives growing and challenged my thinking. Knowing I could pop over to my sisters for a chat about anything and everything was invaluable friendship. Thus, my partner was not my everything - and that was ok. How one person can ever be expected to be your ‘everything’ is crazy. A partner is a human being, not a demigod. This brings me onto a second lesson learnt from lockdown. It became incredibly important to realise that I am responsible for my own happiness, not my partner. Now, this may sound like a hugely obvious thing to say. But during lockdown, like many of us, my mood took a huge hit. I looked

upon my partner like an old Disney prince: I expected him to come and ‘save’ me from my gloom. When this did not happen, I rationalised that my relationship must be wrong: why wasn’t he curing my low mood?! Until I stumbled upon an important truth: you cannot put your happiness in the hands of anyone else, even your most loved person. It is so important to take radical responsibility for your own happiness, and revel in that. The final gift lockdown to bust wide open what love was a feeling. your partner, you what, and you these things tion during may not partlove

bestowed upon my relationship was love meant for me. I always believed You feel butterflies when you see want the best for them no matter love being around them. Whilst all are true, on day 80 of self-isolaa global pandemic, you certainly be feeling this way towards your ner (!). Instead of a feeling, or a noun, became a verb, an action: a moment everyday of actively choosing my partner. Some days I felt like I could cry with love for him. Some days he was just a person in my life who kept leaving his crap on my floor. But whatever my feelings were, I chose him each day, just as he chose me, and that, to me, is love.

And so, whilst lockdown challenged my relationship hugely, forcing both of us to reflect on ourselves together and apart, I believe it has revealed what is important to sustain us, leading to a stronger, healthier post-lockdown love.

ISSUE 913

12 OCTOBER 2021 REVIEW: BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO TED LASSO | SOCIAL: REFLECTIONS ON FIRST YEAR | PART B: RAAT KI RANI (NIGHT JASMINE) | SPORT: WHAT SPORT MEANS AT LSE

L A N A H SA RG I N S O N