Clarendon Chronicle Trinity Term 2015

Volume 4 Issue 3 | Trinity Term 2015 1

V O L U M E 4 I S S U E 3 | T R I N I T Y T E R M 2 0 1 5

T H E C L A R E N D O N C H R O N I C L E

CC

Photo taken by Santhy Balachandran

2 THE CLARENDON CHRONICLE | Newsletter of the Clarendon Scholars’ Association

Dear Scholars,At the end of another academic year, it’s always a pleasure to sneak a peek at what (or, rather, who) is to come: the first article in this issue presents the incoming Clarendons through high-level statistics (p. 4-5). It won’t be long before we welcome these impressive new Scholars into our community and learn about them beyond their nationalities and departments! We’re proud to feature a current Scholar, Emma Lawrance, in our second article (p. 6-7). Emma is one of the founders of the It Gets Brighter campaign, which aims to empower and support young people who are struggling with mental health issues. Such issues are more prevalent amongst students than we might think, and the campaign has been quite successful thus far. But this is only the beginning of their brave mission. We’re also excited to introduce a new feature—book reviews of titles published by Oxford University Press, our main sponsor. The inaugural review is of C. Stephen Evans’ God and Moral Obligation, which makes a powerful argument for how morality can exist without God, yet depends on God ontologically (p. 8-9). Between exams and dissertation writing, Clarendons always find time to enjoy summer through activities such as our annual garden party, held at Corpus Christi this year, and local day trips. This term, picturesque Cotswold villages were featured. We’ve published a lovely photospread highlighting both of these events (p. 10-11). Looking ahead to the next issue, we’d like to reflect on the extraordinarily diverse accomplishments of current Clarendon Scholars. It could be anything, big or small, academic or extracurricular—from winning a best paper award at a conference to hiking the Appalachian Trail. Please email us at [email protected] if you have an achievement you would like to share, another article idea, or a suggestion of an OUP book to review. We very much look forward to hearing from you!

Until Michaelmas,Yin Yin Lu Editor in Chief

Donna Henderson Designer

Hila LevyEditor

Aaron WatanabeEditor

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

IN THIS ISSUE1. A Note from the Editor 2. A Message from the President(s) 3. Incoming Clarendons By the Numbers 4. Looking for Sunshine in Oxford... and Within 5. OUP Book Review: Our “Divine” Conscience 6. Clarendons in Summer: From Garden Parties to the Cotswolds

Yin Yin LuEditor in Chief


A Message fromthe President(s)

Dear scholars, alumni, and friends,Trinity Term is always bittersweet. For many of you, it simply

brings the start of summer and perhaps an appearance of Britain’s rarest commodity: sunshine. For others, Trinity

marks the end of your Oxford adventure. Although your departure makes us sad, we wish you our warmest congratulations

and welcome you to the proud ranks of Clarendon alumni. We hope that throughout your time here, the Clarendon family has introduced you to lifelong

friends, prepared you for your exciting futures, and added a little extra magic to your life in the city of dreaming spires. We look forward to inviting you back soon as distinguished speakers. Whether Trinity was the end of your Oxford career or merely the end of the beginning, we enjoyed seeing you throughout at our events. We certainly had some memorable ones: the jazzy (and appropriately sunny) Garden Party, dinners in Exeter’s majestic hall and the cosy confines of the Univ MCR, our foray into the Oxford University Press museum, and so on. We are extremely grateful to everyone who helped us realise these events, including the Graduate Admissions and Funding office, Oxford University Press, and the Clarendon Council. We want to give a special thanks to everyone who hosted events at their colleges, bringing us into their gardens and halls. We would not have had such a successful term without you. This Michaelmas Term promises to be very exciting as we renew the Clarendon community with over a hundred incoming scholars. Just as our family will be a mix of returning scholars and freshers who don’t yet know Bod cards from battels statements, our term card will feature both classics and new offerings. Events we are planning include the famous Clarendon Thames boat trip, a scavenger hunt that will have you scrambling through Oxford’s narrow passageways, and an expedition to a waterside pub. And that’s just freshers’ week. Later in the term, we’re especially excited about the return of the Clarendon Lecture. We can’t reveal the details yet, but it’s a scoop. We look forward to seeing you there, whether you are freshly arrived or an Oxford veteran with endless wisdom to share with our newest generation of scholars. If you come to just one event in Michaelmas, make it the Annual General Meeting, tentatively scheduled for fourth week. This is our chance each year to discuss the Clarendon community and chart its future by electing the next leaders of the Clarendon Scholars’ Association. As you reflect on what you would like to make of your next year at Oxford, keep your Clarendon family in mind and consider running for a position on the Council—there is no better way to meet the unique, inspiring students who are the Clarendon scholars!

Best wishes,

Robert Brand (pictured right)

2015 President of the Clarendon Scholars’ AssociationAaron Watanabe (pictured left)

2015 Vice President


Nearly everyone thrust into a social situation at Oxford must at some point run the gauntlet of the “identity elucidation game”. It’s not quite twenty questions, but it may entail the following:

• Where are you from?• What is your programme of study (or department)? • What college are you in? • What is your research about?

In some ways, this game helps us develop a nice, compact narrative of our academic and personal plans. I certainly was not one hundred percent sure of what I was working on when I first arrived. Developing a way to explain my niche research has become a useful skill, and being thrown into the social wilderness was excellent practice. We also perfect our thirty-second self pitch, though at some points, we may catch ourselves acting like social speed-daters. “Hello, I’m [name], from [country] studying [programme] at [college].” Soon after our arrival, more identities accumulate—memberships in societies, clubs, sports teams, lab groups, and so on. It may seem that our taking on these additional college, department, society, and even scholarship-associated identities can be a burden, but it is strictly human. We are finding ourselves, making friends—building a home amid the simultaneous multitude of opportunities and solitude of study. Though we will all share an Oxonian identity in the end, why not embrace a few more along the way? Speaking of identities, let’s find out about this year’s incoming class of Clarendon Scholars. Please note that the data presented below reflects provisional information that is subject to change. The first week of October heralds the arrival of 134 new Scholars: the 2015-2016 cohort. As with previous years, this group remains diverse and talented, representing over thirty countries and nearly all fields of study and colleges at the University of Oxford.

Hila Levy

Incoming Clarendons By the Numbers

New Clarendons By Department and Gender...Incoming Scholars reflect the gender balance within their respective divisions.


By College...Merton, St John’s, Jesus, New, and Wolfson have the most Scholars.

By Nationality...• Thirty-six countries in total are represented.• Previously unrepresented countries include Albania, Iran, Lithuania, and Vietnam.• The United Kingdom now surpasses the United States with the most Clarendons in 2015-16 (a total of twenty Scholars).


Looking for Sunshine in Oxford... and Within

Oxford, I’m sure you’ll all agree, is a pretty darn amazing place to be. The city is filled with interesting and friendly people, incredible study opportunities, and a constant plethora of events. To many of my Australian friends, getting a scholarship to Oxford seemed equivalent to a letter to Hogwarts—a

ticket to a magical and beautiful world. Yet life among the dreaming spires is not always dreamy. I have been fortunate to make many dear friends here—talented, confident, accomplished people. Nevertheless, many of them have confided to me their struggles with mental health issues. They have often been surprised and comforted when I share that I too have battled mental illness. I know from firsthand experience that although things can seem hellish and hopeless in the midst of struggles, it really can get brighter. We shouldn’t be startled when we hear these stories from our friends—the statistics show that at least one in five students will struggle with some sort of mental health issue. Indeed, 75% of mental health issues begin before the age of 24. In a high-pressure environment, sometimes far away from home, it is no surprise that we sometimes need some mental health support. So why are people shocked when they hear that I previously struggled with a severe mental health problem? Because we don’t talk about it enough. Because we don’t realise how many other young people have been through similar experiences. Because we still have misconceptions about what mental illness looks like, or who it affects, or what kind of recoveries are possible. I want to change that. When I was diagnosed with OCD as a 14-year-old, I felt really alone, and confused about how I had suddenly ended up in a box labelled “crazy”. I wish I could tell myself then that actually, what the doctors were saying wasn’t true. That with support and hard work I would remove it from my life. This is where the It Gets Brighter (IGB) campaign comes in. Our aim is to bring messages of hope and support to young people struggling with mental health issues. In 2013, I joined a small group from Mind Your Head, led by Joshua Chauvin, to create a video testimonial campaign by and for students, to change conversations around mental illness and show young people that they are not alone. I’ve learned a lot as we’ve developed the campaign, working with students and mental health professionals, chairing a conference, leading workshops, and meeting incredible young people. Our website launched in January this year, and we now have nearly 70 videos from people around the world, including several Oxford students, the Vice Chancellor of Oxford, comedian Ruby Wax, and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Stephen Fry tweeted his support when we launched, and we have developed partnerships with mental health organisations around the world. At the moment, we are mainly working in the UK, Canada, Australia, the USA, and Lebanon, but we will soon expand to Germany. It Gets Brighter China was launched recently and is spreading with great success.

Photo taken by Joshua Chauvin

Logo by Melissa Montero Habaue


The best moments are of course when we receive emails from young people sharing their happiness about what we are doing, and see that we are reaching communities in need. We want IGB to be a tool for communities around the world to start conversations around mental well-being and to share their messages of hope and support. It already has had such an effect: a group of indigenous American students at the University of Dartmouth wanted to respond to the high number of suicides in their communities, and the silence and stigma surrounding mental illness. Using It Gets Brighter as their platform, they collected a series of powerful video testimonials from young people and elders in their communities as part of a Generation Indigenous Project. The videos can be seen on the homepage of our website; their promotional video is particularly poignant and powerful. We look forward to working with many more such communities. What makes us unique is that we have allowed people struggling with mental health to be the voice in creating a genuine message of hope, and we have shown how many incredible individuals out there have been through a whole range of issues. You’re not alone and it does gets brighter! To share this message, we rely on the support of our student volunteers, and our collaborators at Students Minds and Mind Your Head. We are also indebted to the students who attended workshops and strategy days, made videos, and spread the word about It Gets Brighter. We can only make a change when you do as well. Please help us reach other young people by visiting www.itgetsbrighter.org, liking our Facebook page, and sharing as widely as possible. If you are interested in becoming involved with our growing campaign, or have any ideas, please email us at [email protected].

Emma Lawrance

“Our aim is to bring messages of hope and support to young people struggling with mental health issues.”

Photo taken by Sven Jungmann and Olivia Viessmann



Our “Divine” Conscience

If God does not exist, as Ivan concludes in Dostoevski’s The Brothers Karamozov, then “everything is permitted”. So begins C. Stephen Evans’ God and Moral Obligation, which explores

the nature of moral obligation and whether it can be intelligible in nontheistic conceptions of morality. Using the work of Oxford’s G.E.M. Anscombe, Evans makes a case for the reality and universal character of moral obligations, and presents an argument for a divine command theory (DCT) as the most reasonable way of accounting for such obligations among various metaethical alternatives. At the same time, Evans contends that such a theory can exist in a pluralistic society, for such obligations do not necessarily require knowledge of their source to be experienced as valid. If moral obligations indeed have ontological reality, how might they be known? Evans, a Kierkegaard scholar by trade, brackets the appeal to religious texts for such knowledge by questioning how moral obligations could apply to those unaware of them, concluding that “it is hard to see how an unknowable moral obligation could be an obligation at all” (38). Neither can such obligations be grounded in what society or the state believe, as this would render a moral critique of them impossible. Rather, Evans grounds our capacity for grasping moral obligations fundamentally in conscience and compares it to understanding mathematics, in which innate human capacities require training to realise their full potential. Evans illustrates how our experience of moral intuition points toward the reality of moral obligations with the example of Sam, a trumpeter considering whether to leave a $300 bill for his services off his tax filing. If Sam does this, he can choose to distrust his basic moral faculty, ignoring conscience and alleviating any guilt with the idea that moral obligations have no ontological reality. However, if the promised $300 for his trumpeting is never paid, Sam will suddenly be quite sure about the reliability of his moral senses (which are outraged) and the reality of moral obligation, which now seems as plain as the correspondence between sight and the reality of things seen. Evans argues for the basic reliability of these moral senses, and that such senses need not be infallible to point to the reality of a moral law, just as infallibility in mathematical ability is not necessary to point to the existence of truths in mathematics. While Evans acknowledges (with Kant) that the force of moral obligations can weaken without some explanation for their reality, he does not entirely follow Nietzsche’s contention that Western conceptions of morality necessarily disappear apart from Christian faith. A person without an explanation for morality may still sense an obligation to act in accordance with conscience; if divinely-given moral obligations are indeed directed towards the good, then there will be some measure of natural recognition that to act in accordance with them is indeed beneficial, even without acknowledging God. Indeed, atheists may be “aware of God’s claim on their lives, even if they are not aware of that claim as God’s claim on their lives” (183). Evans’ reliance on the faculty of conscience in God and Moral Obligation gives his work a constructive appeal for those operating from a naturalistic perspective and, though his book is one of moral philosophy and not theology, his approach of bracketing the category of revelation does not make his work incongruous with theological accounts of morality. Indeed, by relying on conscience as a sign of broader metaethical and metaphysical realities, Evans finds himself in good theological company with figures like C.S. Lewis and John Henry Newman, for whom the gift of conscience is attested to be the “aboriginal Vicar” of Christ himself.

Matthew Thomas

GOD AND MORAL OBLIGATIONBy C. Stephen Evans210 pages | Oxford University Press | £61.00 (hardback) | £25.00 (paperback)

Photo taken by Evan Rosa

10 THE CLARENDON CHRONICLE | Newsletter of the Clarendon Scholars’ Association Garden Party photos taken by Yin Yin Lu


Clarendons in Summer:From Garden Parties to the Cotswolds

Cotswolds photos taken by Carlos A. Rios Ocampo and Adam Formica

Volume 4 Issue 1 – Michaelmas Term 2014 12Clarendon Scholars’ Association 2015

Documents

Clarendon Chronicle Trinity Term 2015